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Yes, it's probably best not to read that spoiler until you've finished the game. It's about something that will give you good vibes when you figure it out yourself.

Here is a forum post that precedes the game's release that talks about how they made the crew sketches. Pretty cool.

Oh man, I was checking that thread for years, it was so cool hearing about all the stuff he had to deal with. Hours and hours spent on making the rope rigging move realistically, stuff you might not even think about.

It totally makes you realize and appreciate what an undertaking it is to make an indie game. Oh, and he composed that amazing soundtrack too? Spread some of that talent around, man!

Are there any other similar and recent puzzle and/or detective games that any of you recommend? I'm starting to realize that solving something in a game is more satisfying than killing something.

Wow, those devlog posts are crazy! Never would have thought that much thought and detail went into a game that seems fairly straightforward in terms of B&W graphics. Shows how little I know!

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im so excited to get this game. i been waiting for a year for the release of it and its release 25th may this year

So the Elite Odyssey alpha is kinda promising. For like, a lite RPG open world being injected into a narrative-less flight sim...

What they've added so far is essentially some pretty station hubs for gathering missions / buying stuff...



And a collection of frontier towns on the planets...



It's too early to tell how much longevity this core gameplay will have, but the main beats seem solid enough:

• The towns will let you mooch around anywhere that doesn't require security clearance (tier 1-3)

• If you want to sneak into those places you've gotta use illegal actions, which can get spotted. Like cloning an NPCs ID when they're not looking. Or arc cutting a panel and overloading the access point. It becomes a bit of a game of 'How can I get to the Tier 3 zone', and gets varied a bit by altering circumstances. (Like a bunch of raiders can drop by at abandoned sites. Or another player can set the whole settlement on high alert by setting fire to something, or just cause all the power to drop out by stealing the main power source ).

• Actual stealth activities seem to be mainly of a 'download precious data from this port' / 'hack into this crate and steal goods' level. Or 'assassinate this one guy and get away with it'.

The tools to do all this seem decent enough. Even if stuff like the NPC crime / player detection is ropey at points. (One non-security NPC seemed to detect a cut panel from the other side of a wall, then immediately decide I was the culprit)

You can jetpack all over the buildings, especially on the low G planets. And the gunplay all seems solid enough (if with long TTK, due to a 'lasers vs shields, then kinetics vs armour' dynamic). The ways you end up interrogating each site (a mix of visually scouting the layout and judging how alert they are, and checking out site maps for opportunities) seems solid.

Yeah, I dunno, pleasingly robust on the whole. If lacking the full AAA gloss of a dedicated stand-alone title perhaps.

Will be interesting to see how it plays out when they add the ships and buggies in, and whatever else is planned.

Main downer for me is that the VR system only has a crappy '2D screen' placeholder for the on foot stuff, and it's pretty meh to use :/. (Unless VR heads manage to hack some actual 3D on foot play not sure I'll get huge use out of it. Other than taking part in big firefights in the buggy I guess).

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EDIT: Oh I should totally mention that the travel times are still an absolute ball ache. Made worse by the alpha only allowing NPC-driven taxi rides at the moment (which can take 10 minutes+ in the test system if you chose a bad mission location. And there's no way to interrogate distance easily at the moment). I have no idea how many noobs this will be a deal breaker for come launch, but I suspect it will be many. Hopefully they at least slaps some more QoL on it...

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Yes, definitely.

First, Her Story. My wife and I played it straight through in one day (tiny breaks for food and whatnot only), for like five hours. The premise is you're using an old VHS video clip system and searching transcripts of police interviews to piece together what happened. Cannot recommend it enough, and it's just $10. The developer (Sam Barlow) has another game in the same vein out, but this is his best.



Second, there's a guy named Tim Sheinman who's put out some small indie games that scratch a really similar itch. He's got a handful of games on Itch (two are on Steam, as well) that I think fit the bill: Rivals, Conspiracy! and Family. You can buy all three in a bundle for $10. They're all about piecing together relationships and/or timelines from various media (articles and audio clips, primarily), and two of them heavily feature original music and style parodies that give them such a great (and authentic-feeling) vibe.

Definitely a lot simpler (they're a couple of hours each, maybe), but it's got the same deduction-and-research-as-puzzle hook, and for the low cost and time commitment I think they're no-brainers for any Obra Dinners.

I'll stop there, because while I have lots of other puzzle game recs, they all feel a bit different, so I'd probably wanna poke your brain a bit more before deciding which things are or aren't a good fit. But the titles above are very likely to land.

That's very helpful, thanks! Rivals looks particularly interesting. One critic's description of it being like Obra Dinn, but without all of the walking (which I didn't mind) means it gets a spot on my wish list.

Hehe. Personally, of those three, I think I liked Family the best. That's the one where you figure out which people played in which fictional bands. It was the most challenging/satisfying of the three. But they're all worth the time, especially if you enjoy the music in the two music-themed ones for its own sake (I did).

Plus, there are some freebies there that you can simply play in your browser. Wuacamole is a nice time-waster.

reminds me of cyberpunk kinda

Well I got scanned by a security guard who was just a torso stuck in the floor last night.

(And yesterday a similar one shot me because they couldn’t get close enough to scan me, so assumed I was running away )

There are similarities

gosh u seriously lol
i had close call i almost bought cyberpunk when they had glitch and bugs problem lol

Elite gets to hide behind its alpha tag for now.

Guess we'll see if they still have killer torsos in the release version

oh thats true lol

Looks very appealing. Are there any plans to add a primary narrative?

It gives me some No Man's Sky vibes with (hopefully) more emphasis on interpersonal interactions.

It's pretty unlikely. Elite is a super odd game, because it's all built around it's giant procedural galaxy (very much NMS style). They've never had a 'hero narrative' as such.

What they do instead is have a kind of background narrative told via news stories. Its only implications are that it provides backdrop to the weekly community missions. (The missions have been super basic to date, like: Deliver this much X to station Y being built. Kill this many of faction X, who have decided to thwart the station Y build etc). They work as a way of focusing online players in one bit of the galaxy, but the only personal journeys they take you on are the ones you tell yourself

I'd bet good money that they'll use the main alien race (Thargoids) as part of the ongoing story, and we'll be going toe to toe with them. But that's probably about as dynamic as it'll get

I get what your saying on the 'more personal NMS' take though. I'm hoping that will be one of the effects of the DLC. Just mucking around with the mission givers you chat to in the stations, seeing how they frame the missions, and how the missions use the 'Background Sim' (that's the different factions they dial up in each system, who all tussle with each other etc)... It's promising

But very much still in a 'tell your own story' kind of way. Using those tools.

Standard Elite Caveat: Travel times are stupidly long in Elite. It's the one aspect of the game that really drives me nuts. I'm just warning you about that downside now

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EDIT:

It's a tiny touch in the scale of things, but after a tedious taxi ride in the alpha, I did like this light atmospheric hue that welcomed me - one of the additions to their austere science-ball planets. It's another dash of humanising colour



As was the admin guy who spotted me sneaking through the heart of the Command building, and thwarted my first assassination attempt. But so it goes

Ah. I had fun draining a couple of weeks into the revamped NMS. Apologists said it captured the lonliness of space, but I felt it was just pretty hollow in character. This looks more interesting from what I've seen, so I'll likely give it a go. It already looks fun in its current state, but I may wait until it's a little more fine tuned. I'm tempted to try powering through the current load times and bugs though.

Hah, ED die hards make the same claims about the long travel times . (PS not load times, load times are fine. It’s the flying around the 1:1 scale galaxy that takes time...)

Ultimately ED does have more ‘character' than NMS to me though, yeah. (And more skill challenge in the flight gameplay, which provided the longevity for me. But that’s an acquired taste )

I wouldn’t pay extra to play the alpha. Wait for official launch in Spring (probably May), check reviews. If it seems like they’ve got some meat in the planetary gameplay, and some colour into the world, (and haven’t completely buzz-killed any positives with the 'realism scale' ), give it a go

(I’ll probably be around reviewing it, but I’m biased, I’ve got a lifetime pass )

Re: travel time. I'd be curious how it compares to EVE Online.