Elite Dangerous: Odyssey will never leave you without a weapon

Walking on a planet surface
(Image credit: Frontier)

You'll never be left without a firearm in Elite Dangerous: Odyssey, a heavily armed Frontier Q&A explained this week.

Odyssey's big sell is that, on top of getting out of your ship to stretch your legs, you'll be able to shoot up all sorts of bandits and lawmen across thousands of dusty extra-terrestrial towns. To that end, you'll never be left unarmed.

"Just as you will always have a Sidewinder available as a ship, all players will have a side arm to help them in combat," Frontier explained.

The Q&A generally covers the essentials for understanding Odyssey's first-person blasting. There'll be a wide range of weapons to acquire and modify, from "pistols, rifles and SMGs, to shotguns and rocket launchers". You can leave ammo and items for other players, and while there'll be no dedicated melee weapons, you'll be able to thwack people with the butt of your rifle.

Frontier has already described how they want a "sphere of combat" including on-foot, SRV and starship combat. This week's Q&A goes a little further, making it sound like you'll be able to do significant damage to unshielded ships with rockets and grenades.

Elite Dangerous: Odyssey is coming later this Spring, following a closed alpha earlier in the season. While this isn't the first time Elite has made planetfall, the developer recently went into great depth on how it's rebuilding billions of traversable planets for Odyssey.

Natalie Clayton
Features Producer

20 years ago, Nat played Jet Set Radio Future for the first time, and she's not stopped thinking about games since. Joining PC Gamer in 2020, she comes from three years of freelance reporting at Rock Paper Shotgun, Waypoint, VG247 and more. Embedded in the European indie scene and a part-time game developer herself, Nat is always looking for a new curiosity to scream about—whether it's the next best indie darling, or simply someone modding a Scotmid into Black Mesa. She also unofficially appears in Apex Legends under the pseudonym Horizon.