Star Citizen Smashes $20m, Adding First-Person Combat

Quantum Hyper Nebular Solar Roman Numeraled News FLASH: Star Citizen has made money. This probably comes as a complete and utter SHOCK to all of you, especially those who contributed everything they owned and also a half-eaten sandwich they FOUND with barely any mold on it to Chris Roberts' cause. And so, SOMEHOW, the interstellar cash train keeps on chugging along, this time to the tune of another couple million. The result? Star Citizen has now officially soared past its $20 million goalpost, meaning that first-person planetary combat is joining the spacefaring everything-er's ever-ballooning feature list. Details below.

Here's how first-person combat will work, per a blog post from Roberts himself:

"First person combat on select lawless planets. Don’t just battle on space stations and platforms… take the fight to the ground! What this means is that we’re expanding the FPS mechanic we’ve already created for the ship boarding system to apply to more areas of the game. Join an ongoing battle on a contested world, launch an attack on a pirate base, come to the rescue of distant colonists and fend off Vanduul raiders… the possibilities are endless."

Endless! Maybe there will be candy planets. Or planets where dogs walk people, and people vomit on rugs even when they're not drinking.

But why stop at $20 million? After some debate, Roberts and co are planning to keep their contribution counter updated, and they've set a new goal in light of that. At $22 million, Star Citizen will gain facial capture tech that'll apparently greatly enhance the game's characters. Also, players will be able to have their diamond-sharp cheekbones and perfect Spanish noses imported into the game by Roberts Space Industries folks at events.

There's just one problem here: feature creep is a thing, and this sure sounds a whole lot like it. Roberts directly responded to that fear by noting that these stretch goals are carefully considered, and leverage either a) technology that's already in the game or b) tech that "will make the game better and allow us to be more nimble and economically efficient in continually creating content for the ongoing universe that we are aiming to support." Also, he noted that all of these features won't necessarily be in the game at launch, so it's not like the core features (ships, flying, exploration, etc) are getting haphazardly hammered together because super cool hangar fish tanks have suddenly become priority number one.

Granted, all of Roberts' promises should still be taken with an extra large grain of salt for now. It can now safely be said that Star Citizen is one of the most ambitious games ever, and fitting all these infinitesimally tiny, constantly shifting puzzle pieces together will take some incredibly skilled hands. I wish the dev team the absolute best, but - even if Roberts hadn't spent many years on the sidelines, away from game development's many new evolutions and wrinkles - I'd still have my doubts. So, fingers crossed, but my hopes are still firmly anchored.