Elite: Dangerous Update 18 Marks The Beginning Of The End Of Its Thargoid War Narrative

The ongoing Thargoid War in Elite: Dangerous is nearing its end as Frontier Developments rolls out the final chapter in the overarching narrative with the release of Update 18 earlier today. Players will now be able to bring the full might of the Aegis to bear on the Thargoid Titans with the help of a powerful new weapon – the Guardian Nanite Torpedo Pylons.

“The war with the Thargoids has entered the end game!” the studio announced. “The research has finished, the prototypes have been made, and a production pipeline has been established. Aegis has stated ‘We and all of humanity await news from any intrepid Commander able to bring this tool to bear against the Titans. Good luck.’”

As with previous update releases, the Update 18 patch notes are extremely light on the story details, but it does reveal a variety of bug fixes and gameplay adjustments related to enemy AI, the user interface, and shadow pop-in issues. Additionally, Power Play and System Authority agents will no longer attack players unless provoked. Pirates, however, will still be as aggressive as they were before.

Frontier Developments has presumably left out a ton of items from the release notes based on its abnormally large 30GB download size. By comparison, Update 17 only took up a mere 3GB of hard drive space.

In any case, Elite: Dangerous players have a daunting task ahead of them as the Thargoids won’t be going down without a fight.