Elite Dangerous: Horizons - The Commanders Preview

Frontier have had to abandon their original plans to have the four announced updates for Elite Dangerous: Horizons out within a year. It’s been five months since Patch 2.2: The Guardians hit the live servers -- but the latest patch is here.

Patch 2.3: The Commanders contains a few headline features focusing very much on appearance, and the first up is the Holo-Me. Holo-Me finally allows you to customise your avatar in the game and dictates how you appear to others.

Holo-Me has a lot of settings you can adjust.

The customisation on offer is pretty substantial, every element has a lot of knobs for you to twiddle to get your space-faring alter-ego looking how you want them. You can also change your suit colour. The initial free pack of colours is pretty basic, offering red, blue, green and greyscale variants, although it’s clear this is another aspect Frontier will be taking advantage of with cosmetic microtransactions.

The meat and potatoes portion of the update is Multi-Crew, the ability to join other players in their cockpits and assist them. Options for joining or requesting other players show up in the Comms panel in a new tab, from there you can select the type of activity you want to partake in and it will find a group. You can also manually invite friends, just like joining a Wing.

The Multi-Crew options allow you to pick the activity you are interested in.

Only a selection of ships currently allow Multi-Crew, roughly two-thirds of the current roster, and the actions other crew members can perform is a little limited, being able to take on a Gunner role which gives access to the ship's scanners and weaponry using an external view to assist in combat or they can take control of a fighter if you’ve a fighter bay fitted.

The ship’s captain is permanently in control and can dismiss crew at any time, so you don’t need to worry too much about griefers. Most activities except for piracy also enforce lawful actions meaning anyone being naughty will first be warned and then booted from the group.

Multi-Crew finally allows us to see our Commanders in all their glory

The feature works seamlessly and is itself very promising, just feeling a little sparse in its current state. For each crew member you get an extra pip to distribute around your systems, and if you have two fighter bays, you can have both a player and an NPC out in fighters at the same time. Which is neat and a definite advantage in combat over playing solo.

Important to note however is that players who join don't get reputation or any progression other than credits and bounty rewards for combat. Outside of combat activities there is very little to occupy and entertain players who join this way besides the social aspect if they are playing with friends.

They do have full access to the new Camera Suite however, the third main addition in this patch. The Suite is a totally new implementation of the old Classified Camera feature which allows for a lot more freedom for taking pictures.

The Camera Suite removes many of the old limitations.

Once you change to the new Camera Suite, there are some built-in default “views” ranging from in front and behind your ship to a variety of interior views. With a button press, you can unlock the view and move it much as you could before but with a lot fewer restrictions.

In space you can now pull much further away, allowing gorgeous vistas of asteroid belts or your impending destruction. You have more control over the camera itself, too, with access to depth of field effects along with the ability to zoom in and out.

Unusually, going against what has been said in the past, Frontier also allows you some control of your ship in camera view, allowing you full flight control. You can’t really play like this as you have no HUD elements or game information, but it will allow the community to make some much more intricate images and videos.

Internal views have limited interaction but still provide unique new looks.

And that’s the bulk of the update. Outside of Multi-Crew, there isn’t much in the way of core gameplay additions but there are, as is usually the case, quite a few quality of life improvements.

The Comms window has gained a bit of spit and polish, improving the previously text only box with avatar images. There has also been a section added for player history so you can see who you’ve played with or encountered for easing the acts adding to friends or blocking.

You can also finally name your ships, which is visible in the cockpit and for commanders who target you, and you’ll soon be able to buy cosmetic decals to display the name on your hull.

There is also a new passenger liner ship, the Dolphin, along with new chained missions and the usual array of bug-fixes and adjustments

All in all, Elite Dangerous: Horizons - The Commanders feels quite content light compared to prior updates. What is included is nice; it just doesn’t change the way you play in any significant way (or at all).

Elite Dangerous: Horizons - The Commanders is currently in beta and is aiming for release soon on both PC and Xbox One. Elite Dangerous: Horizons is available via Steam or the Frontier Store for PC and the Xbox Store for Xbox One for £19.99/$29.99/€24.99.