They are here – looking like some sort of demonic flowers scanning ships with eerie, otherworldly music.

That’s right, Thargoids have arrived to the space of Elite Dangerous. And while it’s difficult to say what they are really planning for the overall universe, they’re arrival is a huge answer to a question Elite players have been asking for a long, long time: Are we alone in the universe?

To set things up, a Thargoid scout ship is bigger than any human construction flying around in the game, including huge human Corvettes. We can probably expect that in the future Thargoids will bring more, even bigger constructions to the world of Elite Dangerous, since the one we saw was just a scouting unit.

Also from observation of the first encounters, it seems that aliens are not really leaving human pilots much control over their ships, switching off engines, sensors and weapon systems. Although it might be a safety feature, it also raises a simple question: Are Thargoids friendly and is there any way to shoot them down if they are not.

The first game of the series, called Elite: Dangerous, was released in 1984 and in this installment, Thargoids were at war with the human race. According to the game’s lore, the Thargoids retreated from the galaxy, as human race discovered some sort of virus, which affected the biological structure of Thargoids ships.

When the game was released again in 2014, there was no sign of Thargoids. In 2015, Frontier, the game’s developers, introduced crash sites with alien artifacts. This was the first suggestion that Thargoids would be back. During the first discoveries of alien artifacts in the game, vast amounts of commanders were trying to shoot them down, assuming that this alien race cannot be friendly.

Thargoids are here – and impressive as hell! And there will probably be more in the not so distant future. Frontier confirmed that this is not the end of close encounters. They also mentioned that there will be more than one alien race in the game.

Take a look and if you are human - prepare for your encounter with alien race: