Tag: Elite Dangerous

The hunt for aliens in space game Elite Dangerous took a giant step forward earlier this year when . Now, the hunt for answers has taken another interesting step – onto a brand new set of alien ruins.

Today the Elite Dangerous community is abuzz with excitement following the discovery of a third alien ruins site. There are multiple threads showing off pictures of the site on and the , but my favourite is this aerial shot, which makes the whole thing look a bit like a Boglin.

For our younger readers baffled by the reference, Boglins were a series of toy puppets distributed by Mattel in the 80s. They looked like this:

You almost certainly saw the news when it landed – or rather, invaded – last week, but .

Most players assume the rather unique ship discovered in the far reaches of space belongs to the Thargoids – a notoriously aggressive alien race that’s been with the franchise since its inception in 1984. It’s big news either way, potentially heralding huge changes to Elite: Dangerous in the near future.

Whether or not these mysterious aliens do indeed turn out to be the Thargoids, it’s intriguing stuff (certainly enough to tempt me back into the cockpit of my diamondback explorer after an eighteen month hiatus), so I’ve taken a closer look at what this first contact might mean for Elite: Dangerous in the video below. Spoilers: probably war.

There are a group of Elite: Dangerous players who do not care for shooting other ships, mining for materials or trading precious resources. This group focuses on a more scientific pursuit: hunting aliens. Aliens that aren’t even in the game yet.

Aliens have so far failed to turn up in Frontier’s space game, but clues as to their inevitable arrival have been drip fed into the universe over the last 18 months. And for the last 18 months the Canonn, one of the largest, most dedicated groups of Elite: Dangerous players there is, has sought to unravel the mysteries of its virtual universe.

Last week, one Canonn member made the most significant discovery yet: an alien ruin. But the rush to make sense of the find has posed more questions than answers: this does not look like any of the alien objects so far seen in the game. This looks like, something else…

It feels strange to say it so soon after launch, but I think I’m about done with No Man’s Sky. On paper it’s very much my kind of game – I’m a big Elite: Dangerous fan and very much enjoy bimbling around in open world games – but there’s simply something about the experience of playing No Man’s Sky that rings hollow.

I’ve been doing a fair bit of thinking about this and I’m convinced the reason for the flat gameplay experience lies somewhere between procedural generation and emergent gameplay – specifically that No Man’s Sky has shedloads of the former and almost none of the latter.

The video above explains what I mean in greater detail, with reference to other games that use procedural generation to far greater effect. Sad as I am to say it, I feel like I’ve less reached a journey milestone in No Man’s Sky and more reached journey’s end.