@delamoxica
If you ever play Elite again try going way "above" or "below" the galactic plane and just watch the stars slowly disappear with every jump until the only one you can see is the one you jumped in from, it's a bit eerie
@gniccolai
A few things you may have not noticed about Elite Dangerous. 1. You can visit the Capital systems of several in-game faction (Sol, Achenar, Sirius and others) when you gain enough faction standing with them. 2. The skybox is real. Once I was at Barnard's star (20 LY from Earth), and noticed a set of stars that looked like the Orion Belt; then looked a bit better and noticed that was indeed the Orion constellation. If you fly to that region, you'll see how stars look like from that position, and everything in around 2-3K ly from Earth is NOT (completely) generated; most of the stuff comes from real astronomical data. 3. Because of how hyperspace jump works, doubling jump range more than halves travel time. Even relatively basic ships you could certainly afford in the video may have increased your travel distance by about 3 times. 4. Neutron star and white dwarf jets overcharge the hyperdrive, giving you about 3 times you jump range for one jump. There are a few notable "neutron star highways", that further help cutting down travel time around the galaxy. 5. With all the upgrades and following a neutron-star route, you can have jump ranges of 200-300ly. Still, getting to Sagittarius* takes easily a couple of days.
@Android480
Elite Dangerous is seriously special. For all it’s problems, no game has ever done “space” the justice this game does. I have a hard time playing now a days, but those first 200 hours were immaculate
@Hero_Of_Old
The voice of Neverknowsbest is the sound of a cosy, crisp evening. Wind lashing at the window as I rest my weary head in the dark and listen.
@Arganoid
Very good video. I worked on Elite Dangerous in the early days, first half of 2013. I was involved with collecting star data and figuring out how the ingame factions would be placed, based on their home star systems from the previous game (whose galaxy map was much less accurate) and the real life star positions. The stars were quite inconveniently positioned in real life.
@дигл_лайв
The story of a spaceship commander who winged and cheated his way into his position because he was so excited for space exploration, got some initial lucky success, only to get lost in the middle of nowhere with no fuel and shooting himself out of hopelessness is very cool, and I think says a lot about what space exploration actually is compared to what it is made to seem like by media.
@mranthonymills
My experience of flying to the other side of the galaxy and back over two weeks of arduous effort is a happy memory, including the time I flew dangerously close to a black hole, and seeing my ship's paint all streaked and pitted from countless jumps. Also, Elite Dangerous does the space mining thing amazingly well. And dogfighting in VR is just next level.
@Vandreren83
I haven't watched the video yet, but I just wanted to thank you, NeverKnowsBest, for continuing to make these videos. I know you said a while back that you weren't sure if you wanted to continue because of a variety of reasons. I always enjoy listening to your videos, and once my financial situation has stabilized a bit more I will certainly make sure to throw some of that surplus over to your patreon. Hope you are doing great!
@jacknixon2812
the world in No Man's Sky is built up around the story. Everything is simulated right down to the player character, who's sole purpose in life is to experience the world the Atlas built. So it kind of makes sense to me that the game feels safe, as it is an experience meant for appreciation, wrapped in the fabric of a space game
@fareflight2029
1:19:42 This isn't entirely true. You can visit the Sol system and it's decently well detailed, but you need a Federation superpower rank of Petty Officer to get the permit to go there. I wouldn't expect you to learn that though because you can only really find that out on the wiki lol.
@rempha
In Elite Dangerous you have head lights and night vision to help in dark places.
@Manleydanley
Randomly finding a wrecked Thargoid ship while driving around on a planet was one of the coolest and terrifying things I've experienced in a game. I can't describe how big and intimidating it was. The fact that I wasn't expecting anything at all just made it so much more exciting.
@Jonoridge
Outer Wilds is peak space exploration, discovery and storytelling. When another game comes along that comes close to capturing the magic that that game has please let me know. :yougotthis:
@skdKitsune
As a member of the Freespace 2 modding community, I'm really glad to see it mentioned in this video. Great essay!
@spacesui-t
My favorite space exploration game ever is Starsector. I can probably write an entire assay in the comment section about it but for the sake of brevity I'll condense it into one sentence: Starsector combines danger, opportunities and wanderlust with a robust sandbox to create a nearly perfect space exploration gameplay. Every new playthrough is like 14 year old you booted up Skyrim for the first time, but without bugs.
@j.d.4697
I think the irony with Star Citizen is that the things it keeps getting criticized for are what make it resemble space exploration more than any other game. An impossibly massive and never-ending project, shooting for the stars, getting there step by step and when zoomed out it seems like it didn't actually get anywhere yet, but when you zoom in it is filled with amazing stuff.
@TheGregoryodd
When I sit and think about the original Elite, it blows my mind that they got so close to the ideal so early
@Mr.Gnomebody
Obviously this is a very different type of game with a different target audience, but Spore (for all it's many faults and shortcomings) is another interesting space game worth mentioning. A lot of things in Spore are aplicable to the discuassion of space exploration games. Mainly the size of the game world and how the player is able to traverse it (the galaxy is large but not unmanageable), and how that world is populated. Spore is really a fascinating game when you start thinking about all the things it was trying to juggle. A universe populated by player created content (lifeforms, vehicles, buildings, etc) is an almost shockingly obvious solution to the samey feeling that plagues many space games. It's nice to imagine how such a content creation system could be expanded in a modern game targeted at a more mature audience.
@woozyguy9
The GOAT of video game essayists gifts us another one. Truly appreciate you man.
@BloodRider1914