TIL that Elite Dangerous is apparently adding ship interiors.

ED’s feature set is quite improved considering it started out only allowing players to exist in the cockpit of a single ship at a time. They’ve added ship carriers, on-foot gameplay, and now this (in addition to a lot more, I know). Sometimes we have to ask, if this is happening now, why didn’t it happen back when the game launched?

I don’t know, and neither do you. We can point at what FDev might have said when asked in the past, but we’re here now so things obviously change over time, decisions are reversed, and stances are re-evaluated. Adding in features that take players out of the cockpit or allows for additional gameplay beyond just flying, shooting, or mining seems natural for a game like ED, but it’s also kind of natural to speculate on whether or not these changes would have happened if not for other games in the genre that are adding features like these.

No Man’s Sky has added more features in it’s lifetime than I can enumerate off the top of my head. Of import, though, are things like modular ships, fleets, and their own ship interiors. Like ED, none of these were part of the original game, and as consumers we can’t know how far out these features were originally planned.

Of course, Star Citizen has had all of these features for over a decade or so now. Low energy theorists might suggest that ED copied NMS copied Star Citizen, but time and effort doesn’t work like that. Neither NMS nor ED could possibly design, develop, test, and implement these features between the time they saw another game doing it, and the point they kicked the feature out the door. At best, I would speculate that rumor, leaks, and word of mouth might have put bugs in designer’s ears, or maybe the features we are getting in these games are just natural progressions, or maybe it is all coincidental that we’re getting an “evening out” of feature sets across some of the big names in spaceflight sandbox sims.

I am very excited about ED’s upcoming update and do hope they retrofit all of their ships to include interiors. I prefer Star Citizen over both ED and NMS, of course, but Star Citizen’s future will always be in question until it isn’t. Having other games with similar feature sets makes me happy, even if each title handles things differently than their peers. I still dislike landing on planets in ED, and feel that even having planetary landing is a pain in the ass considering how weak the reasons are for landing in the first place. On-foot gameplay isn’t all that varied, although I like a lot of the ancillary activities we can do when on foot. I have overplayed NMS and hope that time away will reset my interest but I can’t be sure. I would go back to it in a heartbeat if it ended up as the only kid on the block, though.

Even if games cannot possibly copy one another, it’s good to see the validation of feature sets across the genre. I think we’re well past the days when a simple “ass glued to seat” space shooter is representative of the genre, and as always, a range of choice is always welcome.