I was going to post in this thread earlier, but now with the new video up that's even better. Star Citizen is basically the modern day Duke Nukem Forever, take a heavy dose of skepticism over whatever they put out and I really wouldn't give them your money.
Back when kickstarter was just starting to take off, PC gaming had rebounded in a big way and now you had crowd funding to revive old discarded genres, Chris Roberts of the old Wing Commander games came out with a pitch video for a 'Space sim like they used to make them' pitch and had a highly successful kickstarter campaign.
Double checking wikipedia to get numbers correct, that was way back in 2012. A full 11 years later, and over $500M crowdfunded, they have yet to release a commercial product. 'Squadron 42' is basically what was promised back then and they easily could have delivered way back, instead Chris Roberts shifted to this big persistent universe MMO and with pre-production starting in 2011 I think it's matched Duke Nukem Forever in development time. In the meantime, there's been plenty of space sim games of all varieties developed and launched to fill that empty niche Star Citizen was going for.
I'm not mad as a prior backer, back in the day it was a good way to get old genres back in development but backing a kickstarter is no guarantee of anything and if you do it you're bound to lose out on something. I just think it's rich seeing them release a video again 11 years later calling it "The future of gaming".
Back when the pandemic shut downs and I had the afternoon to myself I actually decided to give the game an honest go. It was terrible. The locations featured in that video (I just watched a bit of it) were there, at a glance what I can tell they've just added some environmental effect, but of course in game the game looked like crap, the place was pretty much dead yet still laggy, and the most exciting thing I did in the few hours I played was ride the train as when I finally got to the hangar I hit the button to enter the cockpit of the crappy starter vessel my character climbed in and immediately popped out the other side. Took me a good 10 minutes to find just the right angle to actually get in the damn thing without popping right out or clipping through the roof or whatever. Then finally getting to leave the hangar the experience wasn't any better.
I think the point to take away from my anecdote here is that was after 8+ years of 'development' and 3 and a half years later it's still just more tech demo's. If they ever do actually release something commercially I'm skeptical it will be any better than Duke Nukem Forever ended up being.
