Because we live in a culture that throws large numbers around the way NFL players sadly do their "loved ones," we don't really process what it means to be inside a space sim experience replete with 400 billion star systems (themselves often chock full of solar systemic features like planets, asteroid belts, moons, etc.). Elite: Dangerous gives us that authentic and actionable opportunity.
Get this: at the current rate of exploration, Elite's playerbase is visiting 17,585 new systems every day. That's 732 per hour, or 12 per minute. At that rate it will take players 150,895 years to map the entire galaxy.
This game is kinda big.
At the same time its not a "sandbox"; rather its a playground. Baudrillard-like in its simulacra and simulation, Elite ensures that, well, you can be you. Whatever you want to do in this galaxy from the cockpit of your chosen ship, you pretty much can do. Its so vast and - occasionally - overwhelming that substantive portions of the playerbase have complained about a lack of a guiding campaign to give them the narrative and path structure publisher Frontier Developments is determined NOT to give.
Its all about you. You, and 400 billion star systems, beautifully rendered with a sound scape that is second to none.
Are you up for it?