An excellent article with art work I've never seen before and lots of DBOBE Commentary.
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/04/08/the-making-of-elite-dangerous
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/04/08/the-making-of-elite-dangerous
The Making of Elite Dangerous
- Thread starter shadragon
- Start date
Thanks for posting, looks like a must read.
Yes, several new items caught my eye.Be sure to view the office photo in high res- there's a lot of cool concept art on the hind wall
Thank you for sharing!
Yeah- hair on the generated heads, for example!
More then that, there's a ship that makes the Corvette look small. And much more.
Where?
Very interesting read, thank you for posting the link.
One quote from David Braben in particular caught my attention:
“It was this concept that to market it you’d need a focus, a character and a story,” he says. “And that’s why I think Mass Effect ended up the way it did. I don’t know the guys who made it all that well, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it started in someone’s mind as an Elite-like game, and then they added some story, and the story took control of it. I’ve seen that happen with other games in other genres, where you end up with something that… you have to constrain the game world. Mass Effect’s a great game, but it’s not the kind of game I personally wanted to be part of making. And my fear was it would be driven down that route and people would say, ‘Oh, it’s just a ripoff of Mass Effect’ [laughs].”
Does this mean that Braben is not interested at all in developing a story for the game? It seems like he's saying that story somehow restricts a game and therefore story should always take a back seat to gameplay.
One quote from David Braben in particular caught my attention:
“It was this concept that to market it you’d need a focus, a character and a story,” he says. “And that’s why I think Mass Effect ended up the way it did. I don’t know the guys who made it all that well, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it started in someone’s mind as an Elite-like game, and then they added some story, and the story took control of it. I’ve seen that happen with other games in other genres, where you end up with something that… you have to constrain the game world. Mass Effect’s a great game, but it’s not the kind of game I personally wanted to be part of making. And my fear was it would be driven down that route and people would say, ‘Oh, it’s just a ripoff of Mass Effect’ [laughs].”
Does this mean that Braben is not interested at all in developing a story for the game? It seems like he's saying that story somehow restricts a game and therefore story should always take a back seat to gameplay.
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dont you realised Elite history is being written now? people is shaping the galaxy and the content playing with powers and factions, while galnet keeps some of us hooked in the events going on..
There is a story, but there is no script yet, and if there is one it is a very long one, starting from the lore to the very end of the game development.
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That is an excellent article. Thanks for posting. It really gives you a sense of the sheer scope of a project like Elite and how much thought, planning and organization it really takes to bring a dream like Elite: Dangerous to fruition...It makes me want to congratulate David Braben and the developers at Frontier all over again.
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Agreed. That back wall is chock full of interesting goodies. Anyone know of a decent program to upscale JPG's?
I've realised there is no story in the conventional sense, as in some kind of narrative being written by the game creators. Outside of the scripted apearances of the UAs and the barnacles the majority of ED's vague narrative progression is being created by the players. It is a different approach to storytelling (however vague) in a video game and one that happens to lend itself quite nicely to the MMO genre - where storytelling is often times ignored.
I am just curious to know if Braben has a certain dislike of story driven games like Mass Effect? Or if he simply decided to go a different route in creating a story within the game, i.e. let the players write/progress the story?
I have 80 hours on Mass Effect 3 which has a story. Stopped playing it soon after I finished the game.
I have over 2,000 hours on E: D. which does not have a story. I play it every night.
I don't think DBOBE needs any lessons in game construction.
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Good point. But that may not necessarily be down to one game having a story and the other not. Sure, Mass Effect has an end game built in (both in story and game progression) where by the end of the game ther's nothing to do but finish the game. Elite Dangerous doesn't have an end game whereby you have nothing more to do once you get past a certain point.
But I don't think the end of a story is the main reason you would put more hours into ED than a game like Mass Effect. I played a game called Freelancer (space sim released in 2000) for a long time until I finished the story. And once the story was finished I could roam between the 4 distinctly unique cultures that inhabited the 4 quadrants of space that was available to the player. Explore, trade, bounty hunt, dock at space stations, inside battleships, on planets (couldn't walk around though), check out creepy sounding and creepy looking space anomalies, pretty much everything I'm doing in ED now except for the dark space anomalies.
Consider for example if Mass Effect allowed you to explore the entire galaxy once you finished the story. You could go visit and revisit the places that changed because of your decisions in the story. Maybe start ferrying materials to help rebuild places that were destroyed. Start hunting down pirate factions and their leaders who've made certain parts of the galaxy lawless while you were off saving the entire Universe. I'd probably still be playing Mass Effect if it was opened up like that - and there's nothing to stop the developers from periodically adding gameplay expansions and the odd story expansion from time to time.
I enjoy ED but I want to point out that having a story is not to be looked down on. It's just hard to make it not feel like an end game element in a shared world game that has no use for an end game. But that doesn't mean it is not worth the effort. Freelancer pulled it off - you could also play Freelancer online.
