Star Citizen was the focus of a lengthy Gamescom stream and, while it did showcase more than a few unfortunate glitches with the still-developing title, it also offered a glimpse at what could still be one of the best space sims ever made.
As it will be releasing in “the very near future,” the bulk of the stream emphasized features planned for the title’s upcoming alpha 3.0 release. Project Director Chris Roberts announced that the content coming to backers would include three moons and an asteroid with a landing zone to fully explore.
Before getting to all that real estate, however, the demo first introduced Star Citizen ’s MobiGlass interface and new modular clothing system. Instead of adding wearables in sets like was shown during last year’s stream, it’s now possible to mix and match coats, armor and other accessories any way the player sees fit.
That customization is a pretty critical thing considering the super impressive “Face-over IP” features that were demoed shortly thereafter. In partnership with Faceware Technologies, the system allows avatars to speak and move their heads as players talk in real time. Even facial expressions and lip movement is scanned as well. The process is just in prototype and won’t be featured in 3.0, but it’s designed to work with retail-level webcams when it releases. Check out a demo of it in action below.
This sci-fi fantasy is centralized around a smart GUI that essentially resembles a smartphone. The current build of MobiGlass has at least six different apps dedicated not only to outfits but also ship refuels and equipment, journal entries, communication and navigation around the larger Star Map. Most critical of all is the Contract Manager. This is the app through which players will track objectives offered by mission givers like Miles Eckhart. Alpha 3.0 will feature two mission givers that offer millions of possible tasks in 26 different archetypes.
The whole purpose of this foundation, of course, is to provide a backdrop for the game’s massive procedural universe. The first area shown off in that regard was the free-town of Levski. There, over 200 AI NPCs cycle through daily schedules using subsumption technology. This is where the demo players bought weapons and supplies for the mission ahead. For now Levski will focus on smaller shops, but later alphas will introduce ship stores too.
With the right items in hand, the next step was to follow Eckhart’s bidding to find a black box on the sandy moon of Daymar. After getting in touch with a pilot that could take them there, the players took a rover to a landing zone. In Star Citizen, all players will have to specifically request landing spots to make sure these ports don’t become too crowded.
Once the pilot arrived, the rover was packed into the ship’s cargo hold and we got to see our first look at space flight. At this point Roberts took the opportunity to describe the rocky surface of the Delmar planetoid. It’s over 200 kilometers in diameter with craters large enough to fit all of Skyrim. It’s important to note that the three main moons will be even larger than that. Delmar is just a single piece of a massive asteroid belt.
From this point the three-person crew activated hyperdrive and made their way to Daymar. The mission directed the group towards an abandoned wreck where the black box would be located, and, as expected, other players were waiting for them. Fairly standard FPS chaos ensued, and a call for reinforcements was made.
That help came in the form of a capital ship called the Idris. It’s the first time one of these had been seen in-game, and the development team had just gotten it working a few weeks prior. The crew made their escape only to be confronted by the opposing captain in open space. A firefight commenced, and, again predictably, the good guys won.
As amazing as all of that sounds, however, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the obvious technical problems. Just before activating hyperdrive to head to Daymar, the pilot lost connection to the servers causing an unfixable mission crash. In one of the most cringe-worthy gaming moments of the year, it took about 20 minutes of Roberts pacing on stage to get the game running again and another 20 minutes to speedrun the demo to recover lost progress. It also took four separate tries to land the Idris so that its hatch could fold out to accommodate passengers. Bugs are to be expected when working from alpha code, but there’s no denying how hard it was to watch live.
Such is the story of Star Citizen, though. It’s a game with an amazing vision that still clearly has lots of kinks to work out before its ideas can be fully realized. This vertical slice was fairly impressive given that it’s an alpha, but we still only saw a few small interstellar rocks in a game advertised to have 100 full star systems. Alpha 3.0 is currently pegged to arrive sometime in early September, but no firm release date has been offered at this time.
Star Citizen ’s previous alphas are available now for Kickstarter backers on PC.
What did you think of the Star Citizen Gamescom stream? Did its bugs worry you? Tell us in the comments section!
