What was an icon in the heady days of PC gaming among games like Quake, Myst, and the Ultima series is finally coming back to todays’ PC gaming.
Star Citizen - Overview from Roberts Space Industries on Vimeo.
Chris Roberts, the man who brought us Wing Commander, is stepping with us into the universe of Star Citizen. After a 2 decade long hiatus we are welcome to the game he’s always been wanting to make, he just had to wait on the technology to get here. This game is not being produced by a publisher but by crowdfunding, which is basically us. His level of communication to his pledgers is unheard of. There are 2 video updates weekly, then usually some lore updates at least once a week. Additionally, there are forums where you can ask the devs questions about various aspects of the game and they are usually quite responsive to the public.
Chris Roberts wants to build the best damn space sim ever. I wish I could make that period bigger just to emphasize how he feels about it. Judging from what the public sees so far we tend to agree with him, considering to date he’s gotten $42 million dollars in crowdfunding to back him in building this game. He means to make an AAA game without any publisher funding whatsoever, and after his issues with Microsoft and EA I can’t say I blame him.
Star Citizen will be a space flight simulator but with a bit more put into it; put in a dash of FPS’ and a gameplay economy model and throw it in a sandbox that will continually grow. New star systems will be created and wait to be found by us, giving us the right to name it and become part of the Galactapedia lore that comes with the universe. We can also choose to keep our mouths shut and try to keep it as our own private source for mining raw materials or shipping lanes without threat from piracy. The universe is going to be what you choose to make it: you can be a merchant, a pirate, or build an economy in a star system that provides supply and demand for it and other local star systems. Players can use the system wide internet database to find others with bounties on their heads or cargo that can be hauled around for profit. No venture is devoid of risk here, and your life will eventually be firmly on the line, be it from pirate, Vandull or void of space.
There is no leveling, you bring what skills you have to this game. If you want to help a buddy fly a capital ship, like the one below called the Idris, you could man the turrets or keep the engines online in a combat instance.
You could also help out by using one of the Hornets nestled inside of it to shoot down the opposition!
Ship sizes and crew complement (either PC or NPC) vary from ship to ship. But understand that when you’re out in the verse’ people can disable your ship in combat enough to come alongside you and board your ship. Allowing you and your friends to take the supplies or in turn fighting to keep them.
Did I say this was a sandbox game? I’m sorry, I misspoke, it’s pretty much going to be Gobi Desert when it comes to explorability. They’re stating there will be 100+ start systems to explore on game launch. Some taking quite some time to go from one end of the other to map out. Some of the jump points (travel between systems) will be different. Some can’t fit larger ships, some aren’t stable. Some systems may have multiple stations for you to explore and gather wealth, others may have thousands of asteroids containing who knows what kind of material for you to mine.
You can hire NPC’s to assist you in your missions, fly cover in other ships, man turrets or stations in your larger ships. Better yet invite your friends to do the same!
At the time of writing this there are less than 350 alpha slots remaining. The dogfighting module was revealed at PAX East a couple days ago. So I urge you, if you’re so interested, to get in now before the alpha slots are gone. Getting into the Alpha will cost you a bit more: $5 to be exact, in addition to your pledge ship cost.
Otherwise, if you’d rather just stick around for the release of the game, it’ll cost you the price of most games nowadays ($60) for the single player Squadron 42. The online persistent universe will come for free along with it.
Before the Alpha slots are gone the minimum package you can pledge for is this one at $40 range.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/store/316-aurora-mr.
Outside of that they go up in price depending on the ship you’d like to buy.
If you’d like to continue with a group of 2old2play members, then I am also part of an organization (or clan if you will) called Fulcrum Cargo and Consulting. We’d be happy to have you join us! You can do a search on the org page:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/community/orgs
And search by using our name, or come direct to our page at:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/orgs/FC2
Hope to see you in the verse’!!!
