FIRST vs THIRD
THINKY vs MANUAL
SURPLUS vs FASHION
SQUADRON vs CITIZEN
I've done one of these recently, but I wanted to go even further, "I want to strip back every tacked-on feature this game has suffered from over the six years of its twisting turning production roadmap," and see what is actually left or worth incorporating into a multiplayer online space-sim experience.
What is Star Citizen trying to achieve and what does it actually mean to 'be a star citizen'?
- EVERYBODY starts the game with a space ship:
this is a throwback to Squadron 42-styled carrier-launched fighter-pilot gamplay where there was no point in you being in the game at all unless you had a ship to fly. What's a Top Gun without his bird, right? - EVERYBODY starts the game with access to military weaponry and armour:
this is a post-Squadron 43 narrative of a somewhat liberated universe with loads of surplus stock hanging around that people could/can use/buy, if they had the cash. Therefore, economy. - EVERYBODY plays the game in first person:
for no better reason than CI thought it would increase immersion if they embedded this game in the first person view, this is how the game was intended to be played. And for a cockpit-only game, it might have made sense. Quick third person cutscene of your pilot avatar scrambling into his ship, job done.
Scratch all of the above, because that game-concept crowd-funded in 2012 to the tune of $30,000,000 doesn't exist any more. Star Citizen has evolved (feature creeped and goal post shifted) to become much bigger than that, far more sprawling an idea. CI is currently sat on about $220,000,000 of private backer fnding across six years and a billionaire has just bought 10% of the company for $50,000,000 which CI are going to pump into marketing their first-person single-player story-driven game Squadron 42.
Star Citizen, judging by its name, is supposed to be, ABOUT BEING A CITIZEN OF THE STARS... and he/she doesn't have to have made it out there, yet. Planets and moons and asteroids and space stations and capital ships and starmaps aside, you the player is not in this universe yet. You're not even BORN. You don't have an IDENTITY. You don't have a reason to be, other than the arbitrary post-Squadron concept of a liberated universe of potential homeworlds that you could belong to. A universe of potential career ladders you could ascend. A universe of creatures and races your could meet and interact with. Alien vs Human will give instant conflict.
And when that happens, "What's the best way to resolve the differences?" as a game project...