Elite Dangerous Says The Galaxy Won’t Be The Same After Update 14
Elite Dangerous is moving on to a new saga following the cliff-hanger of a conclusion to its two-year-long story arc with the launch of Update 13 earlier this month. The climactic ending featured the destruction of a superweapon when it failed to destroy the Thargoids allowing the alien insectoid race to launch a quick counterattack.
Players were able to watch the disastrous events unfold via an 
“As we move towards Update 14, and the Aftermath, we'll be really escalating the Thargoid threat, to the extent commanders have not seen before,” Senior Producer Samantha Marsh told PCGamer. “I think everyone can see that bad things are coming. But the Aftermath will continue to kick that into higher and higher gear, and we're really excited to see exactly [how] everyone deals with it. And it's definitely safe to say the galaxy won't be the same.”
The in-game cinematic was a new way for Frontier Developments to share the story with players but don’t expect a lot of them as the studio still wants players to discover things for themselves. “[We] love putting little mysteries in the game for players to solve,” said Lead Game Designer Luke Betterton. “One of the things that we do quite a lot of is pretty hefty kind of narrative consideration behind a lot of what we create. So for people to be able to piece together what that narrative is when we're not quite upfront with it, for players to get those theories, all the cogs are whirring, they're trying to figure out exactly what is happening here. What's what is coming next? That's a great joy of mine.”
The developers also revealed a different kind of threat that’s constantly hanging over their heads, especially with the relatively quick advancements in astronomy. “If you're asking whether the James Webb Telescope is terrifying for Elite Dangerous' future? Yeah, it is, yeah,” Betterton said. “If they start seeing stuff that we then have to retrofit into the game, that's going to be a challenge.”
For those who don’t know, Elite Dangerous is a simulation of our very own Milky Way galaxy and the developers are serious about getting it as accurate as possible. According to Betterton, there had already been an instance when he had to rename a galaxy because NASA decided to change its name. “They renamed it because the original name, they found to be a bit more offensive these days,” the lead designer said. “So, we actually went in and renamed it ourselves to match the new name from NASA as well.”
The developers said that they won’t be renaming each and every star or galaxy in the game if there are a lot of new discoveries, but it’s probably safe to assume that Elite Dangerous will constantly be evolving down the line.
