A fully detailed description of the entire expansion was sent on the newsletter
No it wasn't:
Elite Dangerous Newsletter 297
....and the dash will still be orange?
Ay, there's the rub! That dash says it all. How long would it take to program a proper colour editor that lets you customize HUD elements individually? A day? But you know it will never happen. That carrot-vomit dash is
forever. Like all the other QOL niggles.
Similarly, that trailer will have pushed the boat out to make whatever meagre content FD are planning to add look as sexy as possible. But you know that trailer is
everything that might be in
Odyssey.
The player community needs to understand that FD are not interested in producing a great game, they're only interested in players' money and getting it out of them as cheaply as possible, so that they can concentrate their resources on other money-making games to get money out of other player bases.
You also need to understand that the Community Managers are not kind helpful people who care about the game and about the player community. Their job is to cover the fact that FD never release any real details of their updates until they already have everybody's money, by which time FD are obliged to deliver only minimal content. That is the only purpose and the only result of the CMs' apparent understanding and helpfulness, and indeed of the crawling sycophancy of their stooge community fanbois.
This is what they don't want you to know.
Odyssey Gamma is probably already complete and ready to go and took about a fortnight to program, and the devs are being flogged to work on some other game now. But FD still have to sell
Odyssey. The longer the CMs can keep players in suspense about an update like
Odyssey, the more players' wild expectations of the long work that is apparently going into the update will sell it. Only once FD has everybody's money, can it safely emerge that the update is mediocre and far short of expectation. By which time I guarantee the CMs will fall curiously silent, their job done.
I don't enjoy bursting people's bubbles. But as a Founder Member of the Elite I already paid FD for everything years ago, and they know they don't have to deliver any of it because they already have my money, and there's nothing I can do about it but warn people who have yet to part with their money.
Don't buy this update. At least not until it's released and you're still happy to pay for it. If you've already paid for it, don't expect anything from it. It's enough that FD have your money, don't let them have your hopes as well.
.