I call my shotgun the ‘prime directive.’ Get it?
Like the universe itself, Star Citizen’s ambitious scope continues to infinitely expand. Chris Roberts himself, infectiously enthusiastic as always, was at PAX Australia last week to unveil the first public demonstration of Star Citizen’s FPS module.
The nearly ten-minute slice of gameplay offered a glimpse into a gorgeous, and decidedly tactical, take on space piracy and boarding actions, featuring a lot of walking around in empty corridors and painfully stilted faux-military talk. While still very much in an early state with rough edges to file down, it’s hard not to get excited when they shut off the artificial gravity and the spacemen keep right on trying to kill each other while floating about. I didn’t even know how much I wanted that until I saw it in motion.
A pre-recorded dev diary with the chaps from Illfonic, the team outsourced to handle the FPS end of the game, went into depth about some of the planned features they’re excited about. Along with ideas about permadeath and realistic independent arm aiming, the developers are super pumped about being able to see your feet when you look down and the top of your helmet when you look up. Finally, the future is here!
So as of now, Star Citizen is a space combat simulator with an epic single-player campaign worthy of the PC glory days of Wing Commander and Freelancer, a persistent multiplayer universe ran on a player-based economy and faction system, with career options outside of combat such as mining, trade, and professional spaceship racing, and now a competent FPS combat game.
No one ever faulted Chris Roberts for a lack of ambition, but at what point do you say enough is enough? I can’t wait for the deep space barista module where I can practice making raktajino in a zero-grav environment.
