Star Citizen ’s latest Around The Verse has been released, and it focuses on 3.0 Evocati progress as well as new designs for legacy Outlaw armor. We’ve got your full recap of the 44-minute clip.
Starting with the 3.0 Evocati, the list of must-fix issues has increased to 25 compared to last week’s 23. While many issues were resolved during the course of the week, the most recent pressure points included crashes when activating a ship’s afterburner, problems with UI focus effects, terminals not spawning ships and characters getting stuck by spawning under their beds. The biggest blocker of all revolved around airlocks not opening properly in a release build. Developers said finding a solution in that type of build would take some time to do.
On the bright side, however, skins now function properly within Star Citizen’s new interaction system. It means that not only can players buy skins at shops, but they can also steal items or comment on clothes other explorers may be wearing.
Outside of 3.0, this week’s main feature was the first part of a multi-part ATV focused on redesigns of legacy armor. In Star Citizen’s early days, armors for the Outlaw would function as a one-piece suit. The current goal is to offer players the freedom to mix and match as they see fit. Armors are currently being divided and remade in four pieces: chest, arm, head and legs. To bring these older sets up to par on modern tech, close attention is being pad to add new elements while still preserving the most iconic parts of each look.
It’s a pretty difficult task considering the legacy aesthetics weren’t originally designed to be piecemeal like they will be in the final game. It means every single piece of Star Citizen armor must have consistent line formations regardless of the combination the user picks. The end result has to essentially make sense every time, and that’s posed a significant challenge for creators.
The highlight armor of the episode was the Light Outlaw set, and its design goal was to capture the iconic helmet designs of the manufacturer. The skull-like design in particular is sleek and intended to be familiar to those who’ve been with Star Citizen from the start. The idea is to make the light suit look somewhat athletic, and it’s apparently been difficult to create unique designs that are also functionally realistic.
Beyond armors, undersuits are also important because they’re necessary for all outside-ship activities. You can take a look at some undersuit concepts made by Concept Designer Jeremiah Lee. He’s creating every undersuit for all classes of armor.
While the Medium Outlaw is still in deeper phases of production, the clip did show off a sneak peek of the Samurai-inspired redesign of the Heavy. Those familiar with the original look will recognize the football-like pads, but now there are additional embellishments in the chest plate area that call back to Japanese culture.
At the episode’s conclusion, Character Art Director Josh Herman described his philosophy behind the creation of new aesthetics for legacy armor:
“One of my favorite artists that I really look up to, he said when he was redesigning characters that you have to look at it one of two ways. You can either completely throw the thing aside and say 'this is going to be something completely new and we'll just start over and say this is the new thing,' or you can look at the old one and kind of use it as a reference point and kind of change it off that and redesign it from there.
“That's the way we're going to go. We want to keep those in mind. We're going to redesign from there.”
Star Citizen is in early alpha for Kickstarter backers on PC.
What do you think of these new legacy armor designs? Will they make Star Citizen’s characters look cooler? Tell us in the comments section!
