Elite: Dangerous - Game Preview

Elite: Dangerous

The new installment in the “Elite” series titled Elite: Dangerous will be the fourth installment and will feature the same environment as its predecessor. In whole, Elite:Dangerous is a space adventure, trading, and combat simulator game.

In the game, you pilot your spaceship in the open galaxy atmosphere. The game serves as a sequel to the Frontier: First Encounters, the third game in the Elite series, released in 1995. Unfinished versions of the game have been playable by backers since December 2013, and the game is due for a Windows release on 16 December 2014.

Development

The game is being developed by Frontier Development’s own in-house COBRA game development engine. When asked about the development of the game, the developers replied by saying,

"As a developer we’ve used our own game engine throughout the company’s history so we have considerable experience in our own technology. For Elite: Dangerous the game presents a number of challenges that we have to solve. The first (and most obvious) is the scale of the game, putting aside the requirements of procedural generation for a moment the spatial size of the game’s locations are an immense problem. It’s quite common in space games to fudge the scale to make things look good and work, however this results in spatial locations being condensed.”

They stated that they used COBRA engine for improving the game’s design and graphic detail. Also the game’s original budget was 8 million pounds but have increased significantly. In December 2013, a playable version of the game which was named “alpha version”.

After that, the developers announced that the latest alpha version will be released on May 2014, and the latest version will focus more on the bugs and better graphic detailing which featured more depth, scale and scope.

A higher level of the game, the “Beta version” whose phase 1 was released on July 2014 and its Beta 2 phase launched on 30 September 2014. Later it was announced that a constant internet connection was required to play the game in the multiplayer mode. As the game features MMO(Massive Multiplayer Online) broadband connection of 256 kbps at least is required.

Gameplay

If you have played the previous installments of the game, then you would be familiar with the gameplay. In the beginning, you start with a spaceship and small amount of money. With a limited number of resources in your hand, you make your way to the open galaxy where you can carry out your living either legally or illegally. When questioned about the gameplay, director Braben said,

"The real galaxy and so on. For the combat model we are doing more fly-by-wire than in Frontier, but this is to improve the feel of the game; the realism is still there. Don’t forget there was fly-by-wire in Frontier too. The game design is a lot richer than it's ever been, building on where we were with Frontier and First Encounters."

The general scaling even in the game is 1:1, where the players can fully experience the milky way galaxy along with the 400 billion start system. All the physical features of the planet like the rotation and the dynamic day/night transition has been shown beautifully. The whole environment is designed by taking data from real-time astronomical analysis.

As mentioned earlier, the game features only online single player modeand no offline mode. Along with this, the game features massive online multiplayer system. Your actions will define and affect the story. The developers have also considered allowing players to play within small, trusted groups so that any in-game encounters are only drawn from that group.

Naturally the game has to feature updates. Some of the expected updates are supposed to allow the players to drive vehicles on the rough surfaceof the planets and other updates are expected to provide first person combat shooting. Other planned updates will allow players to operate ships with multiple players, and make available giant "executive control" capital ships to players.

What to Expect

With a strong development and a respected banner name, what can we expect from a game like this? We expect a good and a satisfying story. We have seen many games with a huge banner considerably fail because of weak storylines.

And among the other things, we can expect and want odd visuals. For a game which is set in the galaxy and is showcasing the entire universe, one would obviously wish for breathtaking visuals so that we can actually feel that we are traveling in space.

And the last thing which we expect is that the developers give the gameplay which they have promised. So with all this said, we are waiting for December 16 when Elite: Dangerous hits the store.

You can check out the trailer below.