Cloud Imperium Games is continuing to show off upcoming content for its massive space game Star Citizen.
We get to take a near-final look at Lorville’s Business District, a new area on Hurston that will be implemented in version 3.4 before the end of the year. Later in the video, we also see the new mission giver Wallace Klim.
Things get even more exciting as we move on to take another look at the Coruscant-like urban planet Arcorp, which will come with version 3.5 in March, and its moon Lyria. The video also shows the very first look at Microtech, which at the moment is slated to come beyond 3.6, likely in the second half of 2019.
The second part of the video is dedicated to female characters and their armor. Players will finally be able to select a female character with 3.5, alongside a whole new facial customization process.
A second video provides some information on AI crews. Players will be able to hire NPCs that will work as crewmembers on bigger ships manning turrets and other tasks. They will have full-fledged personal schedules, and we’ll see them sleep, eat, and do what people would do on an interstellar voyage.
Of course, we’ll be able to issue red alert commands which would cause all crew members to go back to battle stations. Long shifts will even cause their morale and performance to drop.
Last, but not least, things seem to be coming to a head with the infamous lawsuit by CryEngine developer Crytek against Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games focused on the switch to Amazon’s Lumberyard.
Recently, the United States District Court Central District of California granted Cloud Imperium Games’ motion to dismiss multiple points of the lawsuit.
The judge ruled against Crytek’s breach of contract allegations which were mostly based on a rather convoluted interpretation of the term “licensing” and on whether Cloud Imperium Games engaged “in the business” of promoting a competing game engine as opposed to Cryengine. If you want a rather interesting and detailed explanation, you can check out this video by Leonard French and a second one by Lior Leser.
Crytek has been given 21 days to present an amended complaint, which would be the third since their allegations have already been found faulty twice. If that doesn’t happen, at least this part of the case will be closed after roughly a year of legal bickering.
If you’re not familiar with Star Citizen, it’s a crowdfunded game for PC which has gathered $210,826,062 in pledges with 2,196,925 registered users at the moment of this writing.
If you want some insight on why so many support the game with so much of their hard-earned money, you can check out my extensive article on the topic and see some raw gameplay and screenshots. You can also check out more videos showing upcoming content.
For the sake of full disclosure, the author of this article is one of those mentioned above who pledged for Star Citizen a long time ago.