Elite: Dangerous has always been an easy game to get lost in, and it’s always been accommodating towards all sorts of playstyles. Those who are big into space battles are all but guaranteed to be satisfied by
Elite: Dangerous: Horizons – Guardians. But what of those who simply love to travel? This season expansion has those people covered, too – in a way they might not have seen coming.
While Elite: Dangerous is certainly many things, there are some things it’s never been. Among those things it’s never been is personality-driven. Sure, regional politics play a role in several aspects of the core gameplay, but you never really get a sense of the people who actually live in these places. Guardians changes that.
You can now outfit your craft to take on passengers, which is a delight. If you’ve kept to delivery and trading missions, the prospect of becoming an independent Uber/Lyft driver in space, you can do that now. Even more interesting is the amount of personality that passengers add to the mix. Taking regular passengers provides the requisite gameplay patterns you’re undoubtedly accustomed to, but higher dollar passengers have their own requests and demands; let’s just say that people never fail to surprise. Satisfying these individuals is a wholly unique and rewarding challenge in and of itself, and failing to do is deliciously enraging.