Rishabh Borde
Few games have managed to dominate the attention of gamers all over the world more than ‘Star Citizen’. One of the first high-profile titles to fully embrace the emerging trend of crowdfunding, ‘Star Citizen’ broke all kinds of records back in 2012, garnering $2.1 million in just one month on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. Since then, the game has raised a staggering $250 million via its own crowdfunding webpage, making it one of the most expensive games of all time.
The hype is not slowing down either, with recent reports indicating that developer Cloud Imperium Games raised $9 million in funding last November alone. However, if there is one game that can justify those kinds of development costs, it is ‘Star Citizen’. If Cloud imperium manage to deliver on their promises, it could well be the most ambitious video game project of all time. Of course, that is assuming that the game ever does get released after over 7 years and counting in development hell. Read on to find out everything we know about ‘Star Citizen’.
Star Citizen Plot and Gameplay
It is hard to pigeonhole ‘Star Citizen’ into a single video game genre but at its essence, it is a Multiplayer space combat and trading game with First Person Shooter (FPS) elements. The game’s mammoth scope and ambition has seen it adopt a modular approach to its various gameplay modes.
During the early stages of development, the game featured three distinct modules – the Hangar Module, which allowed players to view and modify various spaceships inside a hanger; the Arena Commander mode, which demonstrated the game’s ship combat mechanics against computer controlled AI or other real players, as well as spaceship racing; and the Star Marine mode, which showed off the game’s First Person combat and gunplay mechanics in classic multiplayer FPS modes such as Capture and Hold, Elimination and Last Man Standing.
Eventually, all three of these modules were combined into the Universe module, a persistent universe that combines all the aforementioned modules into a singular Multiplayer platform. The Universe module even allows players to navigate freely around one planet, seven moons, one planetoid and a gas giant. Other galactic fixtures such as space stations and asteroids were also added in later updates.
But wait, there’s more. Besides an entire galaxy to explore, ‘Star Citizen’ will also have a dedicated narrative focused Singleplayer campaign known as Squadron 42. The developers describe Squadron 42 as a “spiritual successor” to Origin Systems’ Wing Commander franchise, which was also created by ‘Star Citizen’ creator Chris Roberts.
The plotline of Squadron 42 will follow an elite military unit of the United Empire of Earth Navy, and will reportedly feature branching choice paths that will affect the Multiplayer persistent universe as well. The single player campaign will feature an all star cast of Hollywood actors including Gary Oldman (best known for his role as Commissioner James Gordon in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy), Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars trilogy), Gillian Anderson (FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in ‘The X-Files’ TV series), Mark Strong (Dr. Thaddeus Sivana is DC’s ‘Shazam’), Liam Cunningham (Ser Davos Seaworth in ‘Game of Thrones’), Andy Serkis (Ulysses Klaue in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies) and more.
Squadron 42 will reportedly be released in an episodic format similar to Square Enix’s ‘Life is Strange’, with the first episode offering an estimated 20 hours of gameplay. The entire story campaign will be roughly 70 hours long, which seems to suggest that Squadron 42 may also feature some Role Playing Game elements as well.
The developers recently also showed off their latest addition to the ‘Star Citizen’ universe – a frigid new planet named microTech that players will be able to fully explore. There are also plans to add in a new 20 vs 20 Multiplayer mode to the Theatres of War module, which the Multiplayer First Person Shooter section of ‘Star Citizen’.
While initially ‘Star Citizen’ was being developed on Crytek’s CryEngine, the developers switched to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) integrated Amazon Lumberyard engine in late 2016.
Star Citizen Developers: Who Are The People Behind It?
‘Star Citizen’ is being developed and published by Cloud Imperium Games. Founded in 2012 by video game industry icon Chris Roberts along with Sandi Gardiner and Ortwin Freyermuth. ‘Star Citizen’ will be the studio’s first major release.
Project lead Chris Roberts is a longtime industry veteran best known for the space combat simulation franchise ‘Wing Commander’.
Star Citizen Release Date: When And Where Can I Play It?
‘Star Citizen’ was initially announced in 2012 as a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign and marketed as a spiritual successor to games like ‘Freelancer’ and the aforementioned ‘Wing Commander’ series, although development had already begun 2011. The game is currently in early Alpha, but playable builds have been accessible to the project backers for a while now. The first Hangar module came out on August 29, 2013, followed by the Arena Commander mode on June 4, 2014 and the Star Marine mode on December 23, 2016.
The release date of ‘Star Citizen’ has been pushed back numerous times from an initial release date in 2014. The scope of the game has expanded significantly since its announcement, as has the feature list. Currently, there is no concrete release date for the game, but the developer has hinted that the single player narrative mode Squadron 42 could release sometime in August 2020 or later. Cloud Imperium Games has laid out a development roadmap on their website, which currently goes only outlines the plan up to Q2 2020. As to when the full game will launch, it doesn’t seem like we’ll see ‘Star Citizen’ launch anytime before late 2021.
Star Citizen Trailer
You can watch the trailer for ‘Star Citizen’ right here:
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