The Art and Design of Elite Dangerous - A Discussion about Realism vs. Stylized in Videogames

[Lord Syd]

Hello Commanders, male and female alike!

Before I start, let me state that I am no native speaker of the English language, so if you find errors, feel free to correct me, as I love to better myself. Also, I followed Elite since the first day it launched after kickstarter, so I can see how it evolved greatly over the years. So if I come over as critical, I do so because I think this game has achieved great things, but could do so much more with the canvas that it created.

With the new beta live and changes to exploration I found myself being pulled back into the game after taking a brake for well over half a year. What I loved the most about Elite was the way it made you feel you are flying a real spacecraft. Especially after I opted for a dual stick setup, I found time and time again how I enjoyed just piloting the craft -in realspace that is. Because, lets be honest, it takes quite some time to fly somwhere that is farther than a few hundred LY away.
What drew me into the game in the first place was, I admit, a misunderstanding of the game and its features. As I had gotten an VR headset some months before I got the game, I was looking forward to searching for a nice planet with a biiiig ocean, landing my spacecraft there in VR and just enjoy the view, sipping a cocktail while I am at it. Well, yeah, that didn't work out, as you can no doubt imagine. But still I tried exploring, and did so time and time again when new changes hit, but found myself coming back again and again to the same question.

Why do most of the star systems look so dull, or "samey"?

This brings me to the heart of the discussion I want to have here. The admittedly grant sounding title is there for a reason. What I want to have is an exchange of thoughts about the subject, think sitting in a cigar lounge, sipping rum and smoking, talking. I don't want to change the game, I don't want to petition Frontier. If something worthwhile comes out of this discussion so be it. But in the meantime I just love taking a thought and getting to the core of it - this being much more fun and far easier together with different people

When I think about games that left me speechless, that took my breath away with visuals or scenarios, that linger in my mind after 10 years or more, there seems to be some connecting features.

One of these games, thematically fitting, is Freelancer. That game had one of the most imaginative game worlds, visually, I have seen to this day in a space game. I still think about the scene when, spoilers, you fly through the alien jumpgate and find yourself facing a wall, going to infinity up and down from you - with a planet orbiting close to it, its shadow giving you a sense of scale, leaving you in awe, goosebumps on your back. And all this with over ten year old graphics.

If we look to a genre that is somewhat more far removed form the space-sim that is Elite, we could bring up RPGs or Adventure Games, like The Witcher 3, Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Horizon:Zero dawn. I group these games together because for this discussions sake they managed to do the same thing: They made me stop while playing, lean back, and just enjoy the view, some times for more than fifteen minutes. That is quite a long time in a game standing still and doing nothing.

Another game that comes to mind when generating a feeling of longing and wanting to know more about the game world was Mass Effect, 1+2, to a lesser extend 3. I remember the first time landing on Illium in ME 2, walking between the people there, looking out over the city, flying cars zipping all around. Imagining what was going on down there, what daily live must be like on this planet. Or another scene where you are invite to a party in some rich guy's house. Standing on the balcony, silhouette of a big city far in the distance, again, flying cars coming and going. Standing there for half an hour and just dreaming of visiting there, being able to explore it.

So what do this gameworlds have in common for me? They are all not realistic, but stylized. We can argue about the Witcher and Horizon, but something tells me that though they look realistic, they achieve that look by exaggerating some qualities, how light works, how the environment looks and so on. Also they are embedded inside a world that has shown to have surprises, fun ones at that and "unrealistic", so it sends my imagination flying looking at the horizon in these games...

And here we hit the heart of the problem I am having. Because try as I might, I could not but my finger on it what the problem for me with Elite and how it looks is.
Sure, most explorers in Elite will know the feeling of saturation after jumping for the 200th time, every sun beginning to look the same, whether it's a dwarf or giant. So is it that the game is incapable of generating stunning visuals? I think not, if you look at some of the videos on youtube - although there could be a point made about framing, composition and editing that makes these videos great, not the "raw" footage.
Also, I thinking about white dwarfs and neutron stars, these are some of the most stunning looking star systems, for me mostly because they look so much different from others. Or I remember when I first found one of what I like to call a "tropical space station", complete with palm trees and parks. I was feeling some of the longing I felt in other games then, wanting to delve deeper in to this station, see what it has to show.

Another point I would like to make are the alien ruins - especially the guardian ones. Maybe there are other, greater, things planned for the future, but what is there at the moment disappoints from an explorers point of view. The feeling I got from these ruins was "human settlements with blue color scheme". Complete with skimmers and beacons to scan. I understand that these are the game mechanics that we have, bit I still couldn't help getting a sense of deja vu "exploring" these ruins. Maybe what I wanted to see was something really mind boggling, like tower a kilometer high, or a tunnel system equal as long. A building with real alien looking architecture, looking lived in and abandoned, other than dead....

There could be said a lot more, but I am hitting you all with a wall of text as it is already. And after all I want to have a discussion here!

So what are your thoughts about this subject? Do you think Elite could be enhanced by going into a somewhat stylized directory - one that in a way guardian tech shows already the stating point of? Or are more in favor of a game world being realistic to the core? And what is it that you love about these kind of game worlds - thinking about how it could enhance Elite?

Thank you for reading,

o7 Cmdr Lord Sydonay

 

[JohnRoberts]

Fair warning: I only skimmed through your text, but,

If you want Elite's visuals to take your breath away, try it in VR.

 

[Lord Syd]

Just a quick reply: I did, and VR is stunning. But I would love to discuss how some games achive this without VR. But I imagine The witcher would look crazy in Vr.

One thing VR does is give a sense of scale, a problem Subnautica also suffered from. You cannot appreciate how massive some things are outside of VR. That surely would be one way to improve everything, have a way to give some sense of scale to us.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

there is "good" realism and there's "bad" realism.

Elite's direction for some time has been tipped slightly towards thr bad one.

example 1:1 scale of the galaxy = good
maling you traverse it in a tedious repetitive fashion = bad

allowing players to fly space ships = good
making them take the space ship to the shop for regular oil changes and filling out registration paperwork = bad

discovering ancient alien device and figuring out how ti active it = good
performing the same activation mechanic 100 times to unlock ingame content = bad


it seems to me that ch 4s objective is to tip the scales towards "fun" and way from "tedious.

I'm all for it.

 

[c00ky1970]

I think the challenge that Elite has is that it has a partial "Hard-Fi" setting.

Ignoring Supercruise and FTL travel, the environment that it is set in is supposed to be a realistic model of the Milky Way galaxy, see the most excellent stream on how the galaxy is modelled by Dr Kay Ross.

This means that the systems will have 1 or more suns (large spheres of thermonuclear explosions) followed by a number of gas giants (failed suns) and then a plethora of planets (with or without metal content).

Prior to 3.3 that was all you had to see as well as asteroid locations. And given the 1:1 scale then these interesting locations could be minutes or even 10's of minutes away from entry point.

Alien artifacts havwe generally have all been human scale, eg. the Thargoid ships, probes or larger land based structures on planets, only the recent the in space Guardian object provided a massive scale environment to fly about.

I understand you desire to exist in front of something truly gargantuan and go "wooooah", but even visitrs to teh klargest star in the glaxy only know its large because the ship tells them they are 12000ls away and it looks the size of a normal star.

Maybe if the physics that set the drop from warp limit around a star were adjusted so that to scoop a star you had to fly close enough that the star's horizon was actually an almost flat line across your cockpit, but probably this has been discounted as at that distance the star would have fried you to a crisp.

The challenge is also balancing artistic license (and therefore detailed hand crafted art work) versus procedurally or just stock generation of assets in game. The beigeification of planets was one outcome of FDev trying to reduce impact of CPU cycles working on planets (and also to make them more 'lifelike' based on planetary modelling known at that time), an interesting note is the subsequent images of Pluto that NASA released showing a wide and stark contrast of environments and colours on what is a dwarf planet that is smaller than our moon!

Sound also plays a key part in inducing awe and astonishment in a game. Elite has a great set of ambient music that changes depending on situation. The impact of a capital class ship dropping in to a Combat Zone is definitely improved by the overlay of the massive bass sounds of the warp hole appearing and the ship ponderously sliding through. You will notice, but probably now are inured to the throaty rumble of a planet going past you when in supercruise, a brilliant way to add weight to a virtuial object, but as it happens so often in game it is now no longer a singular event.

I do prefer its realistic standpoint, as it stands out from other games, its the unique selling point of its genre. So having it revisualised in a more stylised way would detract from the experience.

However, I would say that artistically regarding new assets, new encounters, new aliens (maybe) these could be on the fringe of what is expected, as the galaxy is a big place and there should be room for space whales and super intelligent shades of the colour blue, as well as asteroids and comets...

 

[Turd Ferguson]

realism looks great on paper and people get excited about the IDEA of realism, but it doesn't make for a fun video game experience, which is what you have to produce to sell product.

It's a difficult thing to balance. I think in games like Elite, people THINK they want more realism than they actually want. Realism gets tedious...and one of the biggest complaints in Elite is "the grind". As a developer, the trap is you need to include the realism that players THINK they want, but allow them to bypass it before they get tired of it. This means that a lot of times you end up coding features that SOUND cool but after using them a couple of times (like to show your friends how cool the game is) most players are going to take the bypass because you just want to skip to the fun part. Unfortunately if you tie too much game mechanics and "balance" to the tedious repetitive parts, you have a problem.

Why is it that people think that spending 10 hours doing nothing but jumping through star systems and scooping fuel just to play in a different part of the galaxy is "part of the game"? It's because getting there (and the time wasted) is unfortunately, too large a portion of gameplay. It shouldn't be.

Instantly jumping (or taking a megaship transport) from the bubble to Colonia SHOULDN'T get players up in arms because it's eliminating gameplay. There should be enough to do once you get there that getting from one place to another should be little more than an afterthought....of course if you want to spend 10 hours jumping from system to system, you still can.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

I absolutely adore the gritty realism of ED, and is a key aspect of me being able to play this game for a long time. NMS or Astroneer never even got a chance after seeing the candy style and oversaturated colors. FisherPrice space doesn't work for me.

 

[Lord Syd]

@Turd Ferguson: I think I get what you are trying to say. But If we are speaking strictly, there is only one thing that is "realistic". And that is reality. Everything else is a depiction of reality an thus can only be an approximation. If we look at hyperealistic art, the awe effect comes courtesy of the skill of the artist, him being able to draw something life like. But the art itself, in my opinion, is kind of boring, as it only copies reality.

Now, when trying to design a realistic game, you face some problems. Reality has the advantage of "speaking" to us in different channels, that being sight, smell, touch, hearing and so on.
A game has only two, and one.... "meta"-channel to work with. Sight and sound of course, with "feeling" as the meta (as in emotion). Because how something sounds or looks is very dependent on how we feel about it.

If you take for instance a game like Desecent:freespace 2, which was able to sell the idea of an absolutely alien race and the fear this brings with graphics that are a collection of blocks - in comparison with today of course. That is one way how Elite some times falls flat, or did so in the past, at least for me. It is really hard to care or feel for anything in this vast galaxy, as there seems to be a disconnect between the world and the player. Hopefully this will change slowly with more voiceover work and the introduction of scenarios.

So, if you want to produce the same feelings that reality provides us with, I feel realistic is not the way to go. As you have only two and a half channels to work with, you have to use them to the fullest, even if it means designing some hyper real assets that are from our current understanding of physics are fantasy at best.

Edit: After reading your second Post I have to say I completely agree with you, Turd Ferguson. You state some good points there!

Which brings me to what you said @c00ky1970: Sense of scale is one thing, I agree, and there would have been ways to sell that. But, I also like the hard-sci-feel the game has as a whole, but I think this could be used to give really alien things so much more impact. The thing is, not everything feels hard science fiction in Elite. The Thargoids an their ruins, or installations, especially fell alien and somewhat bending reality as it is. The lightshow you get after you deliver the probe, link and artifact could also be said to not be strictly realistic, even if Frontier has a good explanation how everything works behind the scenes. But why not scale the idea in these effects up, give as ruins to explore that are full of derelict alien machinery that works on principles we do not, and maybe never will, understand. Because that is where adherence to realism falls flat in media or art. What we know as real is just a snapshot of our time. What will be real 2000 years in the future no one can say. Just... give us something for our imagination to latch on to.

What you said about Pluto is a good point. I think nobody could have guessed how interesting this place could look like. But, maybe it is just me, but I feel the lack of exploring planets with atmosphere hampers the possibility for presenting different looking locales in Elite. Because in the end most of the planets look like dead rocks, and are of course. And ice planets at the moment look like blue hued variations on rocky planets.
Also, geological features: Here you would have a way to present some really interesting sights to us. If I am correct water geysers on Enceladus for instance are huge and fling water kilometers high. Something on this scale still seems to be missing inside Elite.

Maybe I would like to see more things that COULD be possible, not things that ARE already possible, if you get what I mean.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

@Turd Ferguson: I think I get what you are trying to say. But If we are speaking strictly, there is only one thing that is "realistic". And that is reality. Everything else is a depiction of reality an thus can only be an approximation. If we look at hyperealistic art, the awe effect comes courtesy of the skill of the artist, him being able to draw something life like. But the art itself, in my opinion, is kind of boring, as it only copies reality.

Now, when trying to design a realistic game, you face some problems. Reality has the advantage of "speaking" to us in different channels, that being sight, smell, touch, hearing and so on.
A game has only two, and one.... "meta"-channel to work with. Sight and sound of course, with "feeling" as the meta (as in emotion). Because how something sounds or looks is very dependent on how we feel about it.

If you take for instance a game like Desecent:freespace 2, which was able to sell the idea of an absolutely alien race and the fear this brings with graphics that are a collection of blocks - in comparison with today of course. That is one way how Elite some times falls flat, or did so in the past, at least for me. It is really hard to care or feel for anything in this vast galaxy, as there seems to be a disconnect between the world and the player. Hopefully this will change slowly with more voiceover work and the introduction of scenarios.

So, if you want to produce the same feelings that reality provides us with, I feel realistic is not the way to go. As you have only two and a half channels to work with, you have to use them to the fullest, even if it means designing some hyper real assets that are from our current understanding of physics are fantasy at best.

Edit: After reading your second Post I have to say I completely agree with you, Turd Ferguson. You state some good points there!

Which brings me to what you said @c00ky1970: Sense of scale is one thing, I agree, and there would have been ways to sell that. But, I also like the hard-sci-feel the game has as a whole, but I think this could be used to give really alien things so much more impact. The thing is, not everything feels hard science fiction in Elite. The Thargoids an their ruins, or installations, especially fell alien and somewhat bending reality as it is. The lightshow you get after you deliver the probe, link and artifact could also be said to not be strictly realistic, even if Frontier has a good explanation how everything works behind the scenes. But why not scale the idea in these effects up, give as ruins to explore that are full of derelict alien machinery that works on principles we do not, and maybe never will, understand. Because that is where adherence to realism falls flat in media or art. What we know as real is just a snapshot of our time. What will be real 2000 years in the future no one can say. Just... give us something for our imagination to latch on to.

What you said about Pluto is a good point. I think nobody could have guessed how interesting this place could look like. But, maybe it is just me, but I feel the lack of exploring planets with atmosphere hampers the possibility for presenting different looking locales in Elite. Because in the end most of the planets look like dead rocks, and are of course. And ice planets at the moment look like blue hued variations on rocky planets.
Also, geological features: Here you would have a way to present some really interesting sights to us. If I am correct water geysers on Enceladus for instance are huge and fling water kilometers high. Something on this scale still seems to be missing inside Elite.

Maybe I would like to see more things that COULD be possible, not things that ARE already possible, if you get what I mean.

yes. you want Star Trek/Star Wars realism, not Waterworld or Mad Max.

 

[Lord Syd]

More Star Trek than Star Wars. Space Wizards are not my thing.

The thing about Waterworld and Mad Max is - the setting is everything. Here I feel Elite struggled to sell the setting sometimes to every player- galnet is not the optimal channel to to that in my opinion.

 

[ChrisF0001]

Personally, I'd prefer to have real over stylized, even if it is less 'imaginative'. I find added worth in looking at a particularly nice ring system, or sunrise over a planet of whatever, and being able to think that something like that could, perhaps, actually exist somewhere.

I realize that I may be in the minority here...

 

[Turd Ferguson]

More Star Trek than Star Wars. Space Wizards are not my thing.

The thing about Waterworld and Mad Max is - the setting is everything. Here I feel Elite struggled to sell the setting sometimes to every player- galnet is not the optimal channel to to that in my opinion.

yeah you're right. I forgot about the space wizards. But yeah waterworld and Mad Max is too tedious. Yeah it's a really cool setting....but just getting from point A to point B doesn't make a good movie. In fact in both of those movies the conflict was surviving random gankers while trying to just get from point A to point B (with some cargo).

 

[Lord Syd]

yeah you're right. I forgot about the space wizards. But yeah waterworld and Mad Max is too tedious. Yeah it's a really cool setting....but just getting from point A to point B doesn't make a good movie. In fact in both of those movies the conflict was surviving random gankers while trying to just get from point A to point B (with some cargo).

XD Yeah, some similarities there.

Maybe this whole discussion becomes moot in a few months and the new exploration mechanic shows us there are strange things to uncover in this galaxy already. And with new Thargoid varieties being revealed who knows what is to come.
But, to quickly bring something in that was discussed to death already: The whole Cone Sector debacle. Don't worry, I am not going to open this can of worms to far, just to say one thing. The pull this "event" had on so many players was a sing that there seem to be more commanders lacking adventure than previously thought. Thing is, often you know something is lacking only when something better comes along. And the premise to be stranded far away and having to find the way back, Voyager stile, was really enticing to some.

That is what should be possible more - intrinsic, real adventure, and the danger not being killed by grievers or aliens, but being lost, navigating somewhere, making the journey the andventure. Jumping and supercruise alike take away most of the fun of flying, and that makes them feel tedious. I am one of the people who like docking, just because it takes some skill and input from myself beyond pressing a button.

I don't know... maybe make real dangerous parts of the galaxy, where interference is so crazy that you cannot plot a course any more, forcing you to use other means to navigate there. Hide something really crazy there, reward us for taking the risk - beyond grind and shooting at alien obelisks and scanning glowing blue balls.

But... I want an adventure, that the game gives me - not the one I have to make myself. If I want that I take a few of my friends and play PnP.

 

[Feculator]

I am firmly in the "fun over realism" camp, a small nugget of realism is definitely good, but I don't want too much. When it comes to Elite, the authentic feel of the ships, all the buttons to push are why I stay with it...but everything else I kinda don't really like. I can absolutely see where OP is coming from, a bit broader artistic licence, with the environments for instance, would be just one way to improve this game for me.
No Man's sky has those great color themes and nebulas, and utterly unrealistic (but fun) distances between bodies...but it also spawns asteroids out of thin air in front of you no matter where you fly. A good example of going too far in the other direction.

 

[Vorxian]

Realism is a thing in and of itself though. The true beauty of the galaxy isn't in the weird and wonderful 'Star Trek' universe we're so familiar with, it is the fact that space, systems, and planets all conform to laws of physics, and it takes miracles and millenia and a hand of god to turn a ball of rock into something that flourishes life. If ED was more like Star Trek.. then it'd be balmy and unrealistic, the fact that actually, space is full of dead balls of rock, made of the same stuff, so alike in nature is the unfortunate truth. The beauty lies beneath. The Stellar Forge goes a long way, it picks up principles and offers a life like representation of what moons, planets and other features may be like. Would be dumb seeing an earth like world flourishing, 25 AU from a brown dwarf.. would never happen, but to infrequently find planets in the sweet spot is a true spectacular find, and a lottery win.

Which can be boring as hell for one group, and incredible to another. I think FDEV have done a great job with the engine. Additions like atmo, and gas giants, and plausible geological features, and ultimately likely flora and fauna... would be creme de la creme.

Space is still barren and derelict though

 

[Lord Syd]

I am firmly in the "fun over realism" camp, a small nugget of realism is definitely good, but I don't want too much. When it comes to Elite, the authentic feel of the ships, all the buttons to push are why I stay with it...but everything else I kinda don't really like. I can absolutely see where OP is coming from, a bit broader artistic license, with the environments for instance, would be just one way to improve this game for me.
No Man's sky has those great color themes and nebulas, and utterly unrealistic (but fun) distances between bodies...but it also spawns asteroids out of thin air in front of you no matter where you fly. A good example of going too far in the other direction.

Also just a small reply: I found it interesting that Star Citizen devs choose to make the planets about 1/6 or so the real size, because it still sells big without making getting around tedious. That is a compromise I like, knowing what you want to sell and finding a way to bridge two different angles.

No Mans Sky, although having gotten much better in the last months, never drew me in, maybe because it was to "out there". I like realism, because, as stated earlier, rally alien things hit that much harder then. If you ever played Descent: Freespace 2, you may know the mission where you are sent into a nebula to find out what lurks there. That was scary, full with seeing not where you re going plus suddenly bumping into an alien ship so massive and powerful that you shat your pants, sorry for the profanity. Even after 10 years I remember this mission, and that Is what I would love in Elite. And that is also what I think Elite would be able to deliver, if just aliens are allowed to be really strange in the future. Don't get me wrong, some things are great already, sound design being one when the Thargoids are concerned. But here could be done so much more.

 

[Florenus]

I like design direction ED has taken, although it lacks a little bit in variety and details of things in it's universe. Spaceships designs are fine, but too few for a galaxy populated by billions of people in hundreds of solar systems. Empire is supposed to be different, being separated for long time from the rest of humanity, but all they have to show for it is one Spaceship building company that has 4 (5 with a ship launched fighter) designs on sale. Space and planet stations look almost exactly the same throught the galaxy if you don't count different colours and slight variations here and there.
World of ED is huge and must be built with all kinds of generic assets, but in my eyes it seriously lacks in building blocks.

Other than that I believe this game is designed to provide player with slightly different experience than Single Player games - here you, the player, are only a small part of gigantic, living universe. Things unfold whether you take part or not, game mechanics are designed to provide you with means to endlessly do what you like to do. In SP games it's a good thing to have a point in a story, where you will be presented with breathtaking visuals, mindboggling twist or things like that - in MMO it's not that important. In game like ED, you create your own story, so the variety in details should be more important, so that even if as a trader I'm doing the same thing in Federation solar systems or in Empire, there should be enough detail to make this interestingly different story.

 

[SentineI]

TLDR

At the very least try grouping your thought into sections (with headers).

 

[Archvillain]

I'm currently working on a game (different genre) that is trying to achieve those kinds of the sit-back-and-take-a-sip visuals (despite various limitations working against that), so it's something I've been putting some time and thought into. (For example, I subtly adjust the speed that time passes to enhance gameplay, and because I'm already doing that, I might as well tweak it slightly to subtly slow down the changing elements of the world during times when they're most likely to be producing the best landscapes, thus creating more chance of the player noticing things when they're at their best. Elite by contrast wishes to present reality-based celestial motion, so this kind of sleight-of-hand isn't an option.)

I think part of the issue with Elite is that it takes more of a photographer's eye than most games; I'm constantly stunned at the amazing screenshots people are able to produce in Elite, and I'm constantly trying to match that in my Elite photography, and... it's unfortunately quite the skill. It's very easy to fly through something spectacular without noticing because you're thinking about the next thing you plan to be doing, or because you're focused on reaching that station, etc. Even once you have noticed something spectacular, it's not as easy to frame a great shot in Elite as it is with say Breath of the Wild or Horizon Zero Dawn where you can rapidly move anywhere and rapidly position the camera. In Elite by contrast, it's all a bit more deliberate and the orbital mechanics are orders of magnitude slower, and what could take 3 seconds of moving your character in Zelda or Horizons might require a trip into and out of supercruise, then another trip in and out of supercruise to finetune it, suddenly you're looking at minutes to do something that takes seconds in other games. It feels more like real-world photography to me, but I'm not sure the skills transfer over to real-world photography

Weirdly and perhaps significantly, I'm much more tempted to put in work to try to wrestle great shots out of Elite than I am with other games.

Maybe it's because Elite is able to generate a lot of art that I would have found mesmerizingly evocative when I was a kid starved of good sci-fi art. Maybe it's because art from Zelda is straight up fiction, while art from Elite can be aspirational in vaguely resembling a future we could build?

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

You are using too many words to say that you want handcrafted experience instead of generated one, without understanding what is ED appeal.

And that's fine. It has been said many times and many people still not getting it.

Fact after seeing 1000 planets they feel the same is not the point. Planets aren't there to awe you. They are context, part of gaming world.