More than two years after the game was released, first contact with an alien race has finally been made in Elite: Dangerous. A player of the Frontier Developments’ space simulator made first contact with the insectoid aliens, known as the Thargoids, yesterday, and recorded and uploaded the encounter for all to see. The player, known as “DP Sayre,” uploaded clips of their encounter with the aliens to Xbox DVR. The close encounter feels truly mysterious and even frightening as the player’s ship is pulled out of “witch space” (something which has never happened in the game until now) only for the strange Thargoid ship to suddenly appear and scan the player’s disabled spaceship.
After the clip was uploaded and spread around the internet, Frontier Developments seem to have confirmed the legitimacy of the video on Twitter.
The Elite: Dangerous community is, of course, freaking out. After the first encounter, other players have gone searching for and encountered the Thargoids, and have even compiled a list of coordinates of the locations of these encounters on the Elite: Dangerous Reddit page. There are also various conspiracy theories being made about the aliens as players search for earlier in-game clues to their existence, including the fact that Galnet (the in-game news source) has logo that bears a very strong resemblance to the alien spaceships.
Now that the Thargoids have been discovered, many players wonder what Frontier Developments is planning to do with them. While many players try to decipher the clues scattered across the galaxy, only time will tell what these aliens true intentions are.