Star Citizen’s FPS module is titled Star Marine and promises to deliver on the widely shared dream of integrating a first-person shooter into a space simulation game.
“Since the days of Wing Commander, I’ve dreamed of integrating a first person shooter with a space sim,” Cloud Imperium Games founder Chris Roberts stated with his latest hail. “It’s such an exciting idea: you might land your fighter on a carrier and then race into battle to repel alien boarders … or you might put down on a seedy border world and fight off pirates eager to steal your cargo! And on a broader level, it speaks to our longtime goal of increasing immersion: you’re no longer taken out of the action with between-mission gameflow menus or worse. Instead, from the moment you start the game to the minute you exit, you’re living in and interacting with the Star Citizen world!”
Roberts added: “That’s why we kicked off Star Citizen as a ‘First Person Universe’ right from the start, and it’s why we picked an FPS engine to build on. Star Citizen isn’t like my previous games: you aren’t directly ‘playing’ a ship… you’re controlling a character who is flying a ship. You’ve had first person action against fighters in Arena Commander, you’ve explored your hangar… you’ve even drawn your pistol in combat to take shots at other players and their ships!
“Thanks to the support of Star Citizen’s backers, the framework of our modular development process and the incredible talent of the teams working on the game, melding elements of a first person shooter with a space combat adventure are no longer a distant dream… it’s an impending reality! Star Marine, like the upcoming multicrew module, means a leap far ahead in this process; it’s something many of us (and I suspect many of you) have dreamed about for many years.”
Star Marine will launch with “animation fidelity and attention to detail that you wouldn’t normally expect in an ‘alpha’ gameplay module,” says Roberts. This also includes a full sci-fi sports game with zero-G movement.
There’s still some work to be done before backers can get their hands on Star Marine, though, some of which is detailed in a series of blogs written by members of the Cloud Imperium team. There’s certainly some interesting reads, including info on new lighting and improved performance, which is linked to an internal upgrade to a newer version of the CryEngine.
Editors Thoughts
While the concept behind the seamless transition is certainly entertaining for many, it may take an awfully long time before this is done efficiently and well in the current iteration of the game that we get to mess around with. We are all secretly hoping Chris Roberts is spending some of his $82million on hurrying game development along.
VideoGamerGuy 