(This post has been updated at the end.) Over the course of February, we covered a growing thunderstorm in the Elite Dangerous community about – wait for it – lore. Last summer, Frontier told players that it would be reducing GalNet lore in favor of in-game, on-camera event narratives like Interstellar Initiatives. Then in early 2020, those were also put on hold by the studio. Across a massive thread, community members argued that the lore was essential to the game’s immersion and even proposed ways that players could fill the void left by developers presumably working on things like the spacelegs expansion. When Frontier stepped in to explain that the small size of the team and the purported confusing impact of the GalNet lore meant that the lore and associated events had been deprioritized and probably wouldn’t be back.
Then that prompted the intervention of no less that Drew Wagar, the author who’s previously penned official Elite novels. “As the author of two official books in the Elite Dangerous universe I can only watch with dismay as Frontier lets the heritage of the Elite series of games wither away,” he wrote in our comments, calling the game’s universe “empty and sad.”
That brings us to this week, when Elite players inquired once again about the status of all of the game’s lore tools and initiatives and were met with a new answer:
“There are no plans on returning Galnet News Articles, Community Goals, and Interstellar Initiatives at this time. If this does change we will let you know.”
If you’re thinking that’s ominously ambiguous, you’re not alone. Previously, Frontier had said only that this content would be “on hold” while the studio focused on the updates and betas coming over the following months. But the new statement seems to imply there’s no plan to bring them back at all.
Here’s Wagar’s video from last month, laying out the problem. He’s currently in the middle of planning his next Lore Tour for the game.
“Just wanted to jump in this here locked thread and clarify Stephen’s earlier post. Essentially, the plan has not changed for how we’re treating future GalNet articles, which (as we stated here) will be tied to in-game activity, significant narrative developments, new ships and modules and so forth. It is the ‘off-camera’ narratives, that we have previously published via GalNet, which we currently have no plans to return. The framework for Community Goals exist and while the regular cadence of Community Goals is not planned to see a return, we will still see some Community Goals in the future. Apologies for any confusion that was caused!”
h/t Stuart!
