Adopting an external camera view, it's also possible to look in your own smaller craft, where your pilot is visible, using the controls and hitting the throttle when you press the corresponding buttons on the controller. In the short sequence we saw, the player can explore the vast landing bay of a 1km long space carrier, entering a fighter and flying out to get a better look at the huge mother craft (which is constructed, Roberts says, from seven million polygons). Right now, Roberts' small, mostly freelance team has come up with an impressive demo, using a heavily modified version of Crytek's Cry Engine 3 tech, but it's little more than a graphics showcase right now. There may be a news event somewhere or a spike in prices somewhere else, or a battle will result– people will feel like their actions are having an imprint on the world." That's part of the idea: players have to feel that the things they're doing can ripple out across the wider universe. When you write a new series you start with your bible then write the first five or six episodes and broadcast it – if people like it, you listen to what they're saying, and some of the story lines will be adjusted depending on what the audience likes or does't like. Developers have become a modern day version of a dungeon master, where you're riffing off your players. One week we may add a star system, another we may had five small missions on the other side of the galaxy. A lot of online games use these big monolithic updates once every year or two years, my goal is to have something where we're doing constant updates. So a lot of the tools we're building for the online persistent world allow us to micro update the content. "It's about ownership: I want players to feel like they're becoming part of the lore, the history of this galaxy. "With the economy, I want the players to feel like what they do has an impact on the events that unfold," he explains. He acknowledges the work CCP has done in this area with Eve Online but reckons the Star Citizen implementation is very different. The game's immense dynamic economy looks to be a key element for Roberts. Opt to be a mercenary or merchant, however and it's fortune and glory that drives you rather than military ambition. When you complete it, you enter the persistent universe as an elite warrior, like a Navy SEAL: "and then you venture out into a Privateer-style world," says Roberts This can be attempted offline, but if you stay connected, friends can join in to be wingmen in key battles. This Wing Commander-like option puts the player on the frontline of a battle along the edge of Earth territory, attempting to get into the eponymous unit – essentially, it's the French foreign legion of space. Within the game, a full single-player campaign named Squadron 42 lurks. "There will be a combination of more procedurally driven missions, there will be specific story missions that we'll be adding and curating as we go along, then we'll try to build a place where you can hire someone to be your wingman who hire them to take someone out - so players help to make the content too." "It's not dissimilar to how Privateer and Freelancer worked," says Roberts. That then opens up a new level of other things you can do in the galaxy."Īnd from here, a range of experiences are on offer. You can win citizenship through military service, or you earn it through civic duties, or by becoming a merchant and buying it. There's a little bit of Starship Troopers in there, but that in itself is modelled on the Roman system. "Citizenship is a big deal in this universe," says Roberts. Roberts says the idea is essentially the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but in the distant future. Set in the year 2942, the game takes place within Earth's vast cosmic empire, which is now being threatened by an emerging alien civilisation – the Dralthi – on the other side of the galaxy, as well as hordes of barbaric space raiders along its borders.
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