Like a beleaguered Starfleet engineer, Frontier has once again found itself neck-deep in Elite Dangerous: Odyssey’s maintenance shafts in an attempt to patch up the ailing ship.
Elite’s latest expansion landed in something of a sorry state a few weeks back, so riddled with bugs and issues that Frontier boss David Braben felt compelled to apologise “wholeheartedly” for Odyssey’s state at launch. Since then, the studio has been working hard to patch up the expansion, releasing a hefty 5GB update full of bug fixes last week.
Now, Odyssey is receiving a second maintenance patch, this time coming in at a slightly smaller 3.5GB. The game’s patch notes show a laundry list of corrections, from fixes to AI at planetary outposts, broad rebalancing of the game’s audio, and a host of changes to lighting, UI, cosmetics and more.
One particularly painful issue that stopped explorers from plotting routes containing Neutron stars (super-charging your ship off these stars lets you make a jump far further than your normal range) has also been fixed. Would’ve been a nice fix before I decided to wrap up a 20K light-year trip across the galaxy but thanks, I guess.
These updates go a step further towards getting Odyssey back into ship-shape. But it doesn’t fix more fundamental issues that have been visible since the expansion’s alpha—namely, that much of the on-foot missions, activities and FPS arenas are just flat-out naff.
Landing on planets and making footprints for the first time still feels phenomenal. Travelling to the heart of the galaxy to have a janky shootout under a different sky? Not so much.