![]() Once you've gotten your space legs under you and upgraded to something resembling a viable ship, it's easy to settle into semi-comfortable routine. All that's necessary is the occasional alt + tab to make sure I'm not about to plow headlong into a star. It's perfectly possible, as it turns out, to conduct an intragalactic smuggling operation en passant. Even as I write this, I'm hurtling through space on a trade run at 16.64c, window minimized. ![]() Tellingly, there's a pre-flight systems checklist that you can run through every time you take off, but Elite pulls its punch and lets you opt out. Elite is at its best when it’s forcing this more deliberate level of engagement, and I wish it happened more often. The absence of a docking computer meant that I'd be guiding the little craft into station on manual instead having the autopilot unceremoniously dump me onto landing pads. The Sidewinder's rinky-dink frame shift drive forced me to take a more considered look at the galaxy map or risk leaving myself stranded between long system jumps. It wasn't until I totalled the shiny new spacecraft I'd been loaned and tried to make a go of it with the chintzy, standard-issue Sidewinder that I came to better grasp Elite's systems. In supercruise, astral bodies fly by like billboards. And there's all the missing data that can only be found outside of the game, from critical trade information to a plain-words explanation of how your ship's fuel tank actually works. There are the glitches, like the time I spawned into the game to find a shiny new "Wanted" label I'd earned for no reason, or the aforementioned docking snafu. ![]() That, and the imposing galaxy map, with its disorienting scale and legion of similar-sounding star systems. There's the inscrutability of your cockpit dashboard to contend with, loaded for bear with functionality that never gets articulated. You have the freedom to go where you will and do what you want, but friction and false starts ensure that you won't be going there very fast or doing it very efficiently for some time. A few intersecting occupations are accounted for: trader or smuggler, pirate or bounty hunter… and miner for those who prefer the company of floating bits of rock. There's no expressed goal in Elite: Dangerous if you're looking for signs of progress they might be found in your reputation, a one-word descriptor ranging from "Harmless" to "Elite." But you could just as easily mark your improvement by the accrual of bigger and better ships, or in cold hard credits. It's quite a thing, to dump a player into a scale representation of the entire Milky Way galaxy with only the vaguest hint of direction. Even if you do your due diligence in the game's tutorial-tampering with the controls, pitching and rolling until you can parallel park at half the speed of light-the game's vision of spaceflight simulation still proves aloof. That's my kind of sci-fi, and Elite: Dangerous often delivers it, like a spacefaring Euro Truck Simulator.īut in Elite, that sort of familiarity is hard-won. But all the fussy details have been neatly elided, the edges gently worn and rounded from use. The science is still there, of course, doing all the work to keep the cold void of space safely on the other side of the glass. It's Chris Pratt punting alien lizards while dancing along to a cassette, or the way Cowboy Bebop segues from interstellar gateways to bell peppers and beef. It's the genre's unique thrill: seeing the incredible trappings of futuristic life fade into the background, turn second nature, become mundane. ![]() Lasers, explosions, dystopian public service announcements.that was one of my more dramatic deaths in Elite: Dangerous, but it's actually in the routine of the parts preceding my demise that I experienced the quintessential sci-fi experience. Exiting hyperdrive up-close and personal with a star is wonderfully jarring. "Loitering is a crime punishable by death," a female voice helpfully intones over a loudspeaker, as I'm perforated by what is, frankly, an irresponsible amount of laser fire from station security. "TRESPASS WARNING" flashes in deadly red text, and a timer begins counting down from thirty. And that's when things go very, very bad. No problem-I'll just cancel my docking request and resend it. In a Whedonesque bit of bathos, Elite: Dangerous has glitched, and instead of the chirps of the landing guidance system, I'm being rewarded with the angry, electric snapping sound of my shields grinding on raw space station. I'm master and commander at the far side of the galaxy. Almost casually, I flip on the landing gear, invert my ship, and reverse thrusters, deftly drifting into landing pad number 44. I fiddle with system checks on the holographic dashboard, wearing an expression of self-satisfied disinterest. I am skillfully piloting my Zorgon Peterson brand Hauler through the rotating port of one of the eighty bazillion space stations in Elite: Dangerous.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |