Elite: Dangerous finally received its second major expansion, Odyssey, mere days ago. Unfortunately for excited players, Odyssey suffers from a myriad of bugs, design flaws and performance issues that impede gameplay in Elite: Dangerous immensely.
The Odyssey expansion allows players to finally leave their vehicles to explore and fight on foot for the first time in the game's seven-year lifespan. Until Odyssey released, players were limited to their spacecraft and their land vehicles if they owned the Horizons expansion.
The highly anticipated expansion launched to overwhelming disappointment from the gaming community, with Odyssey's Steam review page at 33% Mostly Negative. Common criticisms from reviewers include rudimentary enemy AI, important information missing from the new ship selection UI, disappointing terrain generation, frequent mission reuse, a general lack of new content and various graphical errors. Some players who paid for alpha testing note that the alpha version was much more stable, notably lacking the performance issues present in the official release. Even the few positive reviews commonly mention that it may be worth waiting for patches before buying.
Odyssey releasing in this state likely means Frontier Developments rushed the game out to meet its deadline of May 19. With the expansion having been delayed before, however, Frontier has shown that it is willing to delay unfinished content, and considering the state of Odyssey it could have easily done so again. This could be an attempt at avoiding the backlash that may come from impatient gamers frustrated by a second delay, as much of the playerbase is extremely dedicated to the game and are willing to defend the in-game universe from malicious players despite that normally being left to the developers.
To launch in a broken state is not unheard of with AAA releases, so the team likely intends to fix the problems later. Elite: Dangerous and its expansions, being parts of a live service game, have received numerous updates in the past, so it is likely that Odyssey will improve significantly with time. For the time being, though, the Odyssey expansion is widely seen as an undercooked disappointment.
Elite: Dangerous as a whole is still enjoyed by fans, with the reviews for the base game at a 77% Mostly Positive on Steam. Surely when Odyssey's problems are fixed, it will shape up to be a worthwhile expansion to the already massive game. With the other major expansion, Horizons, being incorporated into Elite: Dangerous' base game for free, there is more content than ever for aspiring captains to pilot into.
Elite: Dangerous is available now on PC, and coming to PS4 and Xbox One in Fall 2021.
Source: Steam Reviews
