World

The galaxy in Elite Dangerous lives up to its name.

Without a doubt, Elite Dangerous offers a bigger game world than any game before it. Most games settle with mapping a city, a country, or maybe even a continent; Elite Dangerous maps out an entire galaxy: our galaxy, the Milky Way.

And in case you needed a reminder, our Milky Way contains around 400 billion star systems. Even traveling at speeds many times faster than the speed of light, exploring the entitrety of Elite Dangerous’ galaxy is so vast that a single player has little hope of visiting every star.

At times, Elite Dangerous can be a downright eerie experience. When all that’s separating you from the infinite vacuum outside is the glass of your cockpit, and the only company you have is the low hum of your engines, it’s easy to feel like a miniscule pebble skipping across the ocean — but, in fact, you’re much smaller than that.

Knowing that every star and nebula that you can see really does exist in the game — instead of merely being part of a decorative backdrop — creates a remarkable sense of realism and immersion. The scale of the world really is one of Elite Dangerous’ best features, but it is also the one that most frequently works against it.

This is mining. It's not as fun as it looks.

Even in the “busier” systems, where there is trade and space traffic aplenty, it is disappointingly rare to come across another human soul. In fact, I have been playing the game since release, and I would estimate that I have encountered about five or six human players in all of that time.

Frontier Developments made the right call in creating what is essentially a scale model of our galaxy for players to get up to mischief in, and I would hate for them to do anything to curtail the game’s scope after release. Here’s hoping, though, that they come up with some ingenious ideas for drawing more players to the same locales.