Apparently there's a new release? Morrissey or something?
Today probably.
Stretch your legs commanders!
The third Odyssey developer diary, Frontier released today (below) has revealed a lot of information. Of interest to me is the details about the player weaponry and the surrounding lore.
Three weapon classes from three manufacturers
Who are they? The three manufacturers are Kinematic Armaments, Manticore and Takeda.
Kinematic Armaments have been seen previously in Elite Concept Art, but this will be their first representation in game. They will produce kinetic weapons, such as traditional bullet firing rifles and pistols as well as rocket launchers.
Click on photos for larger image
Manticore are currently known as the manufacturer of the limpets, but their weapon making roles will be the plasma weapon class.
Finally a new name to the game is Takeda, who are manufacturing the laser weapons class. Their logo is distinctly visible on the new laser weapons in both this and previous dev diary videos.
With the weapons, much like the ships, each manufacturer has a distinct look and feel to their products. A glance can tell you which gun came from which manufacturer. I see a few weapon blueprints in my future next year!
Sounds good
Frontier took themselves to Pinewood studios to record sound effects for the new Odyssey weapons. They recorded the same weapons in a variety of environments, so that when playing Odyssey the weapon sounds will change based on the CMDRs location.
Odyssey Engineers
As with ship engineers, Odyssey will come with engineers who can modify, tweak & upgrade weapons and suits. There are different suit types, each with a unique add-on tool, such as a plasma-cutter. These support different roles, so players will need to swap suits for each occasion, switching back to the old vanilla flight-suit when back in the safety of their ship.
Combat
Conflict can take place anywhere; bases, planet surfaces and even stations, however the security level of the location will mean there would be dire consequences for starting a shootout in the wrong place. Mission-giving areas and social interaction locations are the exception.
In Frontier's end-of-year stream, Odyssey lead designer Gareth Hughes, spoke about combat being on foot, SRV and ship in the same conflict zone. He also mentioned there would be assassination missions.