Elite: Dangerous‘ orchestral soundtrack was composed by a talented musician named Erasmus Talbot. It’s perfectly nice, but there’s also the game’s other soundtrack, composed by the likes of Billy Gibbons, Norman Greenbaum, and Ace Frehley.
Any time I play the game, I tend to mute the in-game soundtrack and pipe in a classic rock playlist of my own choosing. Mr. Talbot’s soundtrack is appropriately grand and often quite lovely, but it just can’t compete with the magic of cruising past an asteroid belt while a chunky guitar solo plays.
As Luke pointed out to me when I was talking about it last week, I basically role-play as outer-space Doug Masters:
I’m not sure what it is, exactly, that makes classic rock and outer-space flight go so well together. While I’m pretty sure it predates Guardians of the Galaxy, that film effectively captured the space-rock “thing” better than most.
I know I’m not alone in this — plenty of people on various Elite forums have been sharing their favourite playlists for various activities in the game. For my part, I generally tune in to this terrific Rdio classic rock playlist, though I think I’ll be curating my own playlist at some point in the future.
Some favourites:
Foreigner, “Juke Box Hero”
…for when I’m approaching a new starport.
Ace Frehley, “New York Groove”
…for when I’m in the middle of a long trip across multiple star systems.
The Doobie Brothers, “China Grove”
…for departing, be it for a short journey or a long one.
Norman Greenbaum, “Spirit in the Sky”
…for floating above an uncharted planet, taking in the view.
Kansas, “Carry On Wayward Son”
…aka “The Supercruise Anthem.”
ZZ Top, “La Grange”
…for any dogfight, ever.
Anyone out there have tunes or playlists they listen to while playing Elite? If so, share ’em below.
Comments
7 responses to “Classic Rock Makes Elite: Dangerous Way Better”
My favourite to listen to is these guys: https://soundcloud.com/turbo-laser/ramming-speed?in=turbo-laser/sets/turbo-laser-the-album-1
Also good is Ghost Fighter, Planet X, Jungle Mission, pretty much the whole album. Whenever flying with some of this playing I seem to end up spinning the ship around a whole lot more. Just feels necessary. And cooler.
Derek Sherenian is a monster keyboard player.
I had to google that to figure out what you were talking about. Planet X is just another Turbo Laser song 😛
If I hear Spirit in the Sky one more time, I will gouge my ears out with a spoon.
I hadn’t really thought of trying this, so it’s a good recommendation. God knows I’ve really only been in this for the single-player, avoiding the hell out of Community stuff, so this is probably something I should’ve known about earlier. 😛
Yeah, I wish they had kept the offline single player mode.
I’m not as fussed on that point, mostly because you can still solo.
Well. I haven’t actually logged in yet, but my understanding is that you can still play completely solo so the online part is just to make sure your solo universe stays consistent with the procedurally-generated crap everyone else has, and that if you do opt to go co-op at some point, decisions don’t have to be made about whose universe is ‘real’, and reducing how much needs to be relayed between players, how you get that data-store of universe-mapping onto the other player without passing it through the server and increasing server-load, etc, etc.
Which, y’know… I don’t particularly mind, it’s certainly a much more useful implementation than, say, Diablo 3 Always Online which had no advantages whatsoever (and a boatload of disadvantages) that couldn’t have been offered with an optional online mode, similar to the open/closed battle.net of the past.