Today, during the keynote for CitizenCon 2018 Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games showcased quite a few interesting elements of the game under construction.
We got to see a trailer for the Drake Kraken scout carrier, then we moved to a playthrough of a mission starting on the giant planet Hurston that will be implemented in the game before the end of the year.
The video starts by receiving a mission from one of the local quest givers, followed by a look at the functioning mass transit system and the spaceport, including a Kraken, which really looks big and imposing.
As the player finally gets airborne on the renewed Consolidated Outland Mustang (of which you can also see a trailer below), we get to see the massive scale of the planet, which is always breathtaking. We also get to see the different biomes included in the planet, which is 2,370 km in diameter, or 1/6 of the size of Earth. This size has been determined by the balance between scale and traversal times.
We then see how the player lands in an area of Savannah to go check out the mission objective. Things get a bit awkward as the player dies after trying and failing a jump twice, but this is what happens when things are demonstrated live in real-time.
As things get a little hairy, we see the intervention of an Anvil Valkyrie (with appropriate soundtrack), a new dropship coming with alpha 3.3. Incidentally, at this point, we got to see the Valkyrie’s trailer.
Speaking of 3.3, it’s releasing today including facial recognition, FPS AI, object container streaming (which appears to have improved overall performance considerably) and lots of new ships and weapons.
The demo continues with the airdrop of a vehicle from the Valkyrie, and a mixed ground and air battle. After that, we get to see one of the first examples of an underground facility, which is a new feature added to the game.
Another important feature we get to see is the brand new ability to purchase ships from a dealer with currency earned exclusively in the game.
Star Citizen is a crowdfunded project and at the moment of this writing, it has gathered from registered users.
If you want to see more, you can check out another recent video showing the RSI Apollo medical ship. You can also read our recent interview with Global Head of Development and Foundry 42 Studio Director Erin Roberts.
For the sake of full disclosure, keep in mind that the author of this article is one of the backers of the game since the times of the original Kickstarter campaign.