The Making of Elite Dangerous

[shadragon]

Consider for example if Mass Effect allowed you to explore the entire galaxy once you finished the story.

You can in GTA5, but I have not touched that game in months. That sandbox is not designed to be played (long term) without a story. You can drive/fly around, shoot things and get chased by cops, but that's pretty much it. There is the GTA5 online side of things, but that's a rats nest of random human interaction.

Elite was designed to be dynamic. It is not at it's potential yet by a long shot, but there's always something to do. The layers being added now and in the future sit on that foundation. A single player cannot affect the galaxy in any appreciable way and that frustrates many.

Any mission system that complies to a story or plot will be finite by nature. Once all other things are in place, its possible Frontier might be able to drop in linear missions, but they would have to be Solo mode only for obvious reasons and that kills the MMO portion of the game.

There is no perfect solution that will make everyone happy, but keeping Elite dynamic is working to engage players presently. Yes, it needs to be a lot more dynamic, but I sense that is coming. Given the amount of work that needs to go into AAA games, it won't happen any time soon. We just need to be patient and engage with the devs to (hopefully) stay on the right path together.

 

[Gelt Vaughn]

Braben nails it for me at the start of that article. "I know to a lot of people it’s just a backdrop to the game, but to me it’s magical that on a clear night I can look up into the sky and see things that I’ve seen in the game, and vice versa." I would not be playing Elite Dangerous at all if it wasn't for this one fact alone. Good article lots of interesting bits..

 

[the100thmonkey]

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.

It's an interesting comment, I mean E|D could have spin-offs that do focus on lore-building in a constrained story arc. CQC/Arena demonstrates that it's possible.

People often complain about miliatary progression; story-driven campaigns could be a nice way to sidestep grinding it - I've sunk probably 50 hours in Mariokart 8 recently, just trying to get 3 stars in all cups at 200cc. Give me a mission and I'll damned well work on it until my fingers bleed. That's not a criticism of the main game, by the way; it's just an observation of another side of my gaming character. My wife has learned all the English swear words that matter watching me play MK8.

 

[GW42]

There appears to be several new ship designs there including a Beluga, several unknown shapes and even an alien language. Can't post images for some reason but just zoom in.

Did you mean this bit:

I've never tried adding an image, but link is here: http://imgur.com/kK1PXeZ

To me, that looks like very early concept art for outline shapes for........

Thargoids confirmed!

 

[shadragon]

Yes, I actually upscaled the image and saw many had two of four legs. They could be PG creatures.

 

[Martian Successor]

It's an interesting comment, I mean E|D could have spin-offs that do focus on lore-building in a constrained story arc. CQC/Arena demonstrates that it's possible.

People often complain about miliatary progression; story-driven campaigns could be a nice way to sidestep grinding it...

That's a very good idea actually. Making the (currently) two military rank progressions into a sort of story driven progression instead of the current, no offence, bland characterless grind. That would be pretty cool and a rare occasion where it is completely in the realm of possibility to have a single player-like story inside a shared world game.

The conformity of the military style progression lends itself quite nicely to the idea of some individual driven story content within ED's game world. I mean we all go through the same process of obtaining these ranks and it doesn't involve changing the Universe as we all know it every time one of us reaches Admiral or King. But adding in some story progression you can play through with maybe some Yes, No choices from the player along the way would greatly personalise each of our rank achievements as individuals

 

[babelfisch]

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?

The game has a story, it's just not woven around the player but around the galaxy. They tell it very slowly and sometimes let the players influence it. Unlike other games you are not able to advance or influence the story by playing it, so you could compare story telling in elite to a tv series with different episodes and seasons rather than games like ME or GTA.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Thanks for the link

 

[pryzm]

What has been pointed out as alien symbols on the back wall are not that at all on closer inspection.. They are silhouettes of creatures.

Also if you look at the screen of the person with the high visibility jacket, and the person to their lefts screen.. They both appear to have dinosaur images on them in my opinion.

 

[Fox White]

Best quote and hope for 2.1


"Elite Dangerous has never been better, but letting go of a game is sort of like sending your child off to school and they get beaten up in the playground. You want to give them a baseball bat.”

 

[Insomnia]

Edit: Deleted. Don't wanna start anything...