Somewhere in Elite Dangerous’ gargantuan (and, some might say, dangerous) universe, there are aliens. Or there were. Nobody’s entirely sure yet. But players keep finding clues, and the latest discovery—or at least, the way it occurred—even shocked the game’s developers.
A played named xdeath (not to be confused with Elon Musk’s character, Spacexdeath) discovered a hidden planet full of alien constructs far more impressive than the artifacts players have uncovered over the past year. How’d he do it? By watching a trailer for the game’s latest expansion really, really closely.
“I triangulated the position of the system using the position of Andromeda, Pleiades Nebula, phakt and epsilon columbae, as they were seen in the trailer,” xdeath wrote in a Reddit post (via PC Gamer). “I located the planet by matching the craters as seen on the moon in the tower shot. I located the ruins by picking the most interesting looking area and doing a fly by. They can be heard and seen from quite a ways if any one wants to do [their] own search.”
Here’s a video of the planet, courtesy of CMDR Josh Hawkins:
And here’s some more from Zarkatron:
Even the head of Elite developer Frontier, David Braben, was taken aback by how xdeath pieced together the puzzle:
As ever with these alien discoveries, the big question looming over all of this is, “What now?” The answer, for the moment, is, “Well, um, hmmm. Let me get back to you on that.” Players have found what appear to be interesting objects inside and beneath the ruins, but they can’t access them yet. For now, players are left with more questions than answers:
The aliens might also worship a potato???
Someday, perhaps Elite Dangerous players will encounter actual aliens. Or maybe even after all this build-up, they’ll never reveal themselves. Just like in real life! Aliens are dicks like that.