There are 400 billion star systems in Elite: Dangerous’s 1:1 recreation of the Milky Way. That’s as many as scientists think are in the one we’re spinning through now. It’s a dizzying, overwhelming number, but makes for a compelling space sandbox. If you see a star glinting in the sky, you can visit it. It might take you all day, but you can.
But only a small corner of this galaxy, set a thousand years in the future, is actually inhabited by humans. This is a future where we’ve mastered faster-than-light travel, but have only taken the cosmic equivalent of a few steps down the road. Billions of those systems out there in the depths of space have never been seen by human eyes, and you could be the first, like the pioneers of old. You can then scan these frontier worlds and return to populated space, selling the data for profit.
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It’s not all about money, though. There’s some stunning scenery out there in the far reaches, and you’ll regularly find yourself stopping your ship just to gaze at stuff in wonder. On my travels I saw burning purple suns, colossal asteroid belts, tranquil Earth-like planets, and dying stars. You really do get the feeling that you’re exploring a vast, uncharted galaxy, and you’ll be hitting that screenshot button a lot.
But, this being an Elite game, that’s just one of many paths. If exploration isn’t your thing, there are dozens of other ways to seek fame and fortune. It’s a sandbox in the truest sense, and you have to make your own fun. When you start the game you wake up in a basic Sidewinder ship, on some backwater Federation outpost, with 1,000 credits to your name. What you do next is left entirely to your imagination.
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