After years of searching and many mysterious hints and clues, an Elite: Dangerous player finally makes contact with the elusive Thargoid alien species.

While some gamers are still lamenting the disappointing outcome of No Man’s Sky, other gamers have moved on to other space simulator titles like Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous. The latter of these two, Elite: Dangerous, has been available for a couple years, and continues to receive regular updates and features for players to enjoy.

Yet despite so much to do and millions, if not billions, of man hours spent on the game, there’s been one mystery in the title that’s eluded players since launch: The Thargoid alien race. For the last couple of years, Elite: Dangerous players have been stumbling upon numerous ruins of Thargoid spacecraft, but have yet to run into any living, breathing Thargoid, until now.

After years of searching through cryptic hints and mysterious clues, a player known as DP Sayre finally came face-to-face with a functioning Thargoid ship. DP Sayre recorded the gameplay footage on Xbox One, which can be found here, and shared the experience on Reddit.

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Naturally, some gamers were quick to call foul, claiming the footage is doctored in some way, or created in an effort for DP Sayre to get attention. However, the fact that the footage was captured and shared via Xbox One, and not simply uploaded directly to YouTube or another video service, seems to point to the authenticity of the spacecraft. It’s much harder to doctor something within Xbox’s recording system than to develop a video and then upload it to YouTube.

Additionally, the Elite: Dangerous developer, Frontier Development, shared the footage via Twitter, seemingly confirming the reality of the alien ship. Frontier Development didn’t say anything beyond sharing the footage, so it’s unknown if the experience with the alien species will continue beyond simply discovering its existence.

That said, many Elite: Dangerous players will now be on the hunt for the Thargoid creatures in an attempt to learn more about them and their role in the game. So far, the aliens don’t seem hostile, at least in DP Sayre’s footage. That said, the gamer didn’t do anything to antagonize the alien ship, so there’s no saying if attacking it will encourage some sort of response or not.

Undoubtedly, there are players in the Elite: Dangerous world who are anxious to attack a Thargoid ship to see what happens. Hopefully such players don’t spark a galaxy-wide war within the game, though such an outcome would introduce a rather intense new aspect to the space simulator.

What do you think about the footage of the Thargoid ship in Elite: Dangerous?

Elite: Dangerous is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.