 In this video we are taking a look at the content release schedule for Elite Dangerous Horizons and how it may relate to what we are now seeing in Elite Dangerous Odyssey. To make sure you don't miss any of our videos hit like and subscribe, remember to click the bell icon and select all notifications and to help directly support this channel you can also join our Patreon via the link in the video description. When we started looking at making this video it was originally going to be a retrospective on what new features had been added to Elite Dangerous Odyssey since it's launch however through our research for the video we began looking at the content release schedule for Elite Dangerous Horizons. If you started playing Elite Dangerous in the time since 2018 then you may not be aware of just how basic Horizons was when it launched in late 2015. Elite Dangerous launched on the PC in December of 2014 at that point no flavour of planetary landing was possible in the game whatsoever. It was a game of spaceships and starports trading and combat but that was pretty much it. There were no Thargoids, no Guardians, no one knew the engineers existed and you couldn't even multi crew into another player's ship or launch a ship launched fighter. When Horizons arrived on the scene one year later it brought with it the much anticipated planetary landings on planets with no atmosphere and the now ubiquitous Scarab surface reconnaissance vehicle with which you could gather some limited materials and investigate POIs, surface starports and settlements. It wasn't until the release of Elite Dangerous version 2.1 in May 2016 five months after the release of Horizons that the now familiar engineers arrived in the game bringing with them the original and now replaced by the way version of ship engineering. Alongside the release of engineers minor faction representatives at starports were also given a face with the introduction of NPC portraits. In June 2016 Elite Dangerous Horizons arrived on the Xbox but not yet on the Playstation that was still a whole year away. The next major release into the game came on October the 25th 2016 five months after the engineers with the release of version 2.2 entitled the Guardians. The headline new additions for the Guardians were the addition of NPC piloted ship launched fighters, five new engineers, fungal alien life on some planetary surfaces, guardian ruins, the beluga liner and the Taipan SLF. The release also saw the introduction of tourist beacons and passenger missions neither of which had existed in the game prior to the content drop. Additionally new starport interiors were added to better reflect the economy of refinery, tourism, high tech and agricultural systems. The patch also saw the introduction of systems that these days we all take for granted such as applying filters to map route planning, transferring stored ships to a station, selling your own ships remotely, storing ship modules at a station as well as transferring them to another station, the interstellar factors service, harvesting materials from volcanism and geysers etc and supercharging your FSD from the plumes of a neutron or white dwarf star. Remember this is all nearly a full two years after Elite itself launched and nearly a full year after Horizons launched. The next significant update to the game didn't arrive until after a delay of around 6 months brought the arrival of version 2.3, the Commanders in April 2017. Headline features for the Commanders included the addition of multi-crew for the first time in the game, the ability to customise your commander's appearance via the holo me system, the first proper implementation of the game's camera suite, the ability to name your ship for the first time, yes really. The patch also introduced the dolphin as well as seeing the first mega ships and asteroid bases and last but by no means least what we later learned to be the Thargoids made their first appearance in 2.3 with the first high predictions and Thargoids surface structures being discovered. A full 5 months then passed before the next significant content drop known as version 2.4 The Return arrived in September of 2017. Unusually content for the Return was released into the game in a more staggered player driven manner as the narrative within the game progressed but in essence 2.4 introduced more Thargoid interactions, ships and surface structures, anti-Thargoid weaponry and modules, save slots to facilitate multiple holo me appearances, galaxy map, route finding now plotting up to 20,000 light years ahead up from just 1,000 light years and taking account of FSD neutron boosts, search and rescue contacts were added in route outposts as well as Jameson's crash site and station evacuations appeared in the game for the first time and the type 10 defender made its debut. During the initial horizons editions that I've talked about here the game then saw a further raft of editions added starting in early 2018 that went on to add. The Alliance Chieftain, the first appearance of wing missions, a revamp of the in game crime and punishment system, a complete revamp of the in ship engineering system bringing it to what we see today, material traders, technology brokers, missions that involve interacting with megaships, text to speech gal net, customizable Kovas, the Alliance Challenger and Crusader, the crates, the Mamba, core mining, the squadron system, the codex, notable stellar phenomena, the detailed surface scanner, Thargoid incursions and combat zones and of course fleet carriers to name but a few examples. So why am I telling you all this? Other than I think it's just plain interesting I've often said on this channel that I believe Odyssey is a platform for Frontier to build on. What we see at launch is not the end of what Odyssey is but rather the start. Understandably those can seem to many like empty words and without it being explicitly stated by Frontier why would anyone be inclined to think differently. Having had such a troubled launch the content of Elite Dangerous Odyssey what it includes and importantly what it doesn't include has often gotten lost in the noise of player outrage and disappointment but when the expansion's sometimes perceived lack of variety and content is taken in context with a look at the journey Elite has been on so far I'd argue a degree of optimism for the future content within the expansion is not unreasonable. Just since launch Odyssey has had the following features added. All surface missions are now essentially team missions and can be shared. The camera suite got an overhaul, enforcer rocket launcher troops were added, anti-air turrets were added to surface conflict zones, Apex taxi mid-flight redirection system was added, module and navigation bookmark limits were increased, NPC ships now fight in the skies above surface conflict zones, various ships now have a 4th bridge seat added to allow a full team complement to ride in one ship. More new on foot engineers have arrived, some mega ships now have interior concourses, the on foot emote system was introduced, there are new missions to meet with NPCs at settlements, new delivery and smuggler missions were brought in, bounty hunter and assassin ships were added to some missions and most recently the scorpion combat SRV was added alongside multi-limbit controllers and mission providers now appearing at settlements. We know in future we'll soon have carrier interiors to look forward to and yet more further enhancements to surface missions and encounters. At a very fundamental level the gameplay of Odyssey is a direct transposition of elites spaceship game into the on foot space. This is indeed one of the criticisms levelled at the expansion. Your suits are your ships and modules, your guns are your weapons. You engineer them and you go on missions to instanced points of interest and encounters all the while gathering materials and affecting things like influence and reputation etc. I'd argue that Frontier are probably to some small degree drawing quite heavily still from the elite dangerous and horizons playbook that worked for them before. Technical problems aside Odyssey is basically elite but on foot and I think it likely content wise we'll see versions of what has come before in the on foot space including things like Thargoid encounters. With Horizon's era content drops there was a fixed seasonal schedule announced quite some time in advance with predominantly large quarterly drops into the game. With Odyssey it does feel somewhat like the landscape has shifted with Fdev moving away from the engagement peak and trough pattern that significant large drops with nothing in between tends to instill and instead they're going for more regular but smaller feature additions and drops. This is much more in line with the trend of other live service games and tends to keep the player base more consistently engaged month on month as there is always something just around the corner. Ultimately this is healthier for the game and for the company financials. When players stay regularly engaged they're less likely to wander off to another game and more likely to buy arcs to use in Elite Dangerous. Were you in the game for the birth of horizons and what do you remember being the biggest addition during that time? Also what are you most looking forward to being added into Odyssey? Let us know in the comments below. That's it for now. Thanks very much for watching. 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