Star Citizen’s first-person shooter component, Star Marine, was promised to us earlier this year. PAX East has come and gone, and fans are yet to see a trace of the component. What Cloud Imperium Games showed at PAX looked decent and playable already, and game director Chris Roberts said they only needed a few more weeks to get it to where they needed it to be for release.
One thing has to be made clear: The devs are not necessarily gunning for perfection before they drop Star Marine in fans’ laps. “[W]e know that with Star Marine we need to release a build that at the very least shows people where we want to go and not just what we were able to do before a clock ran out,” said Roberts in a recent Letter from the Chairman. They want to be able to release something that looks like it’s actually going somewhere.
Considering how much detail they’re trying to cram in this component, a delay is somewhat understandable. Roberts explains that the FPS team’s problems involve a lot of system-building from the ground up. These systems are meant to address matchmaking issues, as well as make the game run more smoothly. They’re still testing these systems out, so we don’t expect them to roll out Star Marine in the next few weeks.
It’s already obvious that the dev team is taking their time with this component, but what does that mean for the rest of the game? According to Roberts, only 15% of the whole Star Citizen team is actually working on the FPS component. A relatively small team for what appears to be a small task, but to have the FPS component properly integrate with the game will help move everything forward. But can the project move forward with Star Marine lagging behind?
“I can’t stress enough that two additional months spent on Star Marine are not the same thing as two months of a delay for Star Citizen,” said Roberts. The other teams in Austin, Santa Monica, and the UK are all working hard and developing the other portions. It sounds like they’re making good progress, because Roberts says that they’re looking into releasing a build that just has Star Marine disabled.
The delay of Star Marine is a letdown, considering how confident Roberts sounded during PAX East about the release of the FPS component. Now he assures us that though they may not make it to every deadline, they know exactly what they need to do in order to produce the best possible Star Citizen. It just might take a little longer to get it right.
