Elite Dangerous: Understanding Scale & Awe

Space is vast and as far as we know, it is infinite. We’re still finding the far reaches of space filled with planets, stars, and whatever Pluto is this week. We just don’t know how far the infinite blackness of space will go, and as far as that description explains it could go on forever. Something video games often lack is that scale, that understanding of how huge planets really are.

We are nothing more, to borrow a bit of a joke from Frankie Boyle, than shaved monkeys clinging to a dying rock falling through the infinite void of space. Most of us have never been outside of our little communities, nevermind countries, continents, or even the upper atmosphere. Most of us just can’t grasp the scale of how substantial space is. We have no reference of how mind-meltingly massive planets are, and how vast the space between them happens to be. It is limitless what could be out there, and we know very little of any of it. We’ve spent the last 50-70-years just touching the end of our own planet, and very few of us have reached our own moon.

If we can survive the next 100-150 years as an advanced (for our time) human race, we might very well have commercial space travel in some capacity. I (like many others) have spent most of my lifetime enjoying and dreaming of what is out there thanks to Star Trek and Doctor Who. I’ve spent the last two weeks reading Doctor Who books and falling into that comfort of adventure in the deep dark void of what could be out there. In fact, I listened to Yahtzee Croshaw’s brilliant Will Save the Galaxy For Food, which is about an unlikely adventurer caught up in a huge ruckus, a while back.

Very few games capture that scale, that adventure, that… nothingness. For all the grand and climatic chaos of No Man’s Sky, it is resource gathering. I enjoy Rebel Galaxy and Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, but they lacked this momentary jaw-dropping awe of floating there in front of a planet. Both have their qualities, but nothing has given me that sense that I’m in far too deep out of my depth. That was until Friday when I finally got Elite Dangerous to work properly after it being offered free from the Epic Games Store. For the time being it still works, which is nice.

There was one episode of The Orville, where the crew encounters a massive ship with a disgusting and horrible alien. It is a messy and dreadful encounter. Mostly due to a lazy captain without motivation to lighten up and keep his ship in shape because he is lonesome in his little life of nothing happening in space. My point is, I can relate to him with how messy and 80’s sci-fi my desk is. With all the knobs, switches, buttons of different colors, two / three cups or glasses with coffee, juice, or water, post-it notes, USB sticks, tablets, phones, and everything; I feel for him. When playing Elite Dangerous with two monitors in front of me, I have an odd sense of immersion to that life.

What probably makes it worse is the TNG-style red shirt I was wearing that first time. I just had to smack myself into reality again. Why? Well, my first-moment Elite Dangerous spat me out in the vast bleakness of space onto the edge of a Saturn-style planet with the methane-like bands circling it. Not only are you on the edge of these rings, but you are looking out of your little ships’ view screens, and it is an actual planet in front of you. You feel dwarfed by it, there is nothing around you small enough to make you feel large or important.

That is magical, and I’m about to kick the game but do so in such just the right way. Without a flight stick or equivalent, flying and basic movements can (and do) feel a little foreign in all the right ways. It gives you a quick “fly around here, go shoot some things, and now you are a pilot!” tutorial, and once you are given your license, you can go anywhere. Though, I wouldn’t advise that. Being given the galaxy on a 1-for-1 scale makes it such a far-reaching blanket to be smothered in that you should feel tiny. You hardly know how to fly properly and you are being given the keys to the galaxy.

See, this isn’t a review or an opinion on the game as a whole. My point is that unlike so many other games like it, there is a sense of scale with such beauty in the emptiness of space. Those quiet moments as you jump between star systems and stop dead in front of a colossal ball of hatred suspended in front of you is awe-inspiring. Coming to grips with how comprehensive flying can be, doing simple tasks to earn money, and having those encounters with the very few people out there; it is unlike so much of what we play.

Games like the wonderful Rodina capture that sense of scale, the imagination that there is something out there and that you can create your little ship however you like. Though, they lack this realistic look to planets and such; which is a good thing. So many games (including Rodina) want to give you power out of the box. They give you the fantasy that you can conquer the universe and rule over it at your mighty whim.

Sometimes what I want is that sense that I am just the tiny spec of humanity that I really am. Sometimes it is impressive to sit there and just look at it, and sometimes I just want to sit and read an adventure-space book while looking out at Gliese 581c. Well, until I’m scanned by a pirate and have to act like the intrepid adventurer in all the books. Dropping that and the coffee to wrestle the controls into action as I fight off the stranger trying to brute their way into my cargo hold.