[X-POST] Elite Dangerous: Odyssey First Impressions

Note: This was originally posted on Mastodon at Vulpine Club and has been reformatted and edited for posting here.

Elite Dangerous: Odyssey

Putting aside the horrible performance issues, this DLC quite possibly broke the game completely. The new on foot gameplay elements would be great if it weren’t for the complete destruction of the galaxy.

The new planetary engine changed all of the beautiful colors of the planets we all know and love (those reds and pinks and icy worlds) into just a generic moon grey. The huge canyons and mountains are gone, and the terrain generation is flat and bland, ruining landmarks and making gravity racing impossible.

The lighting system is too dark while, somehow making light sources too bright, rendering night vision completely useless.

The UI changes to the galaxy map, system map, and other elements of the game make it more cumbersome to navigate, and break basic features we used to enjoy, like plotting a route to a specific point in a system.

Somehow, fleet carrier management has had regressions to the original maintenance fees from the fleet carrier betas that were way too high to be tractable, and they’re useless right now because jumps are disabled.

Everyone is focusing on the performance issues which are bad but that’s usually ironed out in a couple days, however the damage it’s done to the base game that we were promised wouldn’t be changed is immense.

In my opinion, it deserves the mostly negative Steam review.

Developments from after I posted this

• Hotfixes 1 (link to patch notes) and 2 (link to patch notes) were released.
• Statement from Elite creator and Frontier Developments founder David Braben was issued.
• The Elite Dangerous: Odyssey DLC store page with all the negative reviews from others.