Star Citizen

Taking a trip around the new worlds of version 3.0

his year’s Gamescom was an opportunity for Cloud Imperium to show off version 3.0 of Star Citizen. Backers playing v2.4 or v2.5 begin on a space station, and can cruise around together in spaceships, but the experience is mostly about combat, with limited sandbox appeal. Version 3.0 brings the first proper star system to the game, and it’s a major advance.

TI’m shown a system containing four big planets, a smaller one, space stations and moons—places where you can trade, haul cargo or partake in piracy. There’ll be a range of missions, some templated, some scripted and voice acted. In this case the devs are taking on a story mission offered by a guy called Eckhart, who invites them to the settlement of Levski on Delamar for a security job.

The crew of devs climbs into a Freelancer vessel, and the pilot “quantum drives” (warps) the ship to Delamar. That ship requires a $132 pledge to Star Citizen’s crowdfunding campaign (the eventual release will allow you to earn ships without spending real money). I wouldn’t personally pay that for any game, or any item in a game. But as I watch the ship seamlessly warp from the station to the orbit of Delamar, then burn through its atmosphere, the audio-visual quality is of a level I haven’t experienced before in a space game. It’s immediately impressive.

The planet is fully rendered, Chris Roberts tells me, with no skybox. Levski is a blip of light at first, but as we get closer, jagged outlines of rocks and cliffs across

the ship seamlessly warps from the station to the orbit of DelamaR