Chris Roberts and members of the studio Cloud Imperium Games showed off some of the core gameplay of Star Citizen at CitizenCon 2015, which took place Saturday night in Manchester, UK.
The demo showed off the seamless transition from between first person human perspective and manning a ship perspective, with one pilot walking through a space station alongside his fellow squad mates. He descended into the atrium where he arranged to have his ship placed in a docking bay. As he made his way to the bay, he could see his fellow shipmates at a distant bay getting into their ship.
Getting into the ship remained in first person human perspective, as players could walk around the innards of their ship and into various cabins. Even when the ship took off, the non-pilot was able to see what was going on through the ship’s windows.
The squadron then engaged pirates harassing a satellite array in true Wing Commander fashion. The battle was more tactical than fast - then again, the chosen ships were multi-person crewed ships, so they weren’t intended for pitched dogfights, but rather a crushing victory with missiles and laser fire.
Impressively, one crew member engaged in EVA, leaving the ship in his pressure suit - again, seamlessly from ship into a first person human perspective - to enter the satellite, fix the station’s computer, and return to the ship. (One almost expected pirates to ambush the player inside the satellite, but no dice this time.)
The ships then flew back to a space station for repairs. Docking with the station was done in real-time, and drones came out after one of the damage ships had docked to repair and re-arm it.
Roberts also noted at the conclusion that none of it was rehearsed - the pirates sometimes win, but in this case, ”it was a wipeout.”
The entire CitizenCon 2015 live stream can be viewed on Twitch here for a limited time.
