$149 Million Budget Game Star Citizen Gets a Stunning New Development Diary

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A few days ago, developer and publisher Cloud Imperium Games released the latest monthly developer diary for their gigantic space exploration game Star Citizen. Check it out below.

Directed by Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts, Star Citizen raised an incredible $149 million through crowdfunding, making it one of the biggest budget games of all time. To put that number into perspective, Horizon Zero Dawn and Mass Effect: Andromeda cost $47 million and $40 million respectively, both of which were considered to be huge AAA productions. Star Citizen has a larger budget than both of them combined, so this is one absolutely gigantic game.

As you explore Star Citizen’s huge galaxy, you’ll come face to face with some horrific creatures, including the giant worm monsters in the videos below. Interestingly, xenolinguistics specialist Britton Watkins, who worked on Star Trek Into Darkness, helped to create the languages spoken by the sentient alien races you’ll be encountering, such as the warlike Vanduul (pictured at the bottom of the page).

Both space combat and ground-based first-person shooting will also play a large role, and this video pretty much confirms that the game will be rated M by the ESRB. The gameplay snippet in a derelict spacecraft below also shows off some of the more creepy aspects of Star Citizen, and to me it almost seems like it has a kind of Dead Space vibe.

In addition to the open world component, Star Citizen will also include a story driven single-player campaign called Squadron 42, which will feature a huge A-list voice cast including Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill, Rhona Mitra, Gillian Anderson, Ben Mendelsohn, Mark Strong, Jack Huston, John Rhys-Davies, Liam Cunningham, and Harry Treadaway.

I never thought I’d see the day when a crowdfunded game could be classed as AAA, but Star Citizen more than fits the bill. Because it’s such an expansive and technologically advanced game, a console release is unlikely (Roberts has stated that he will not allow it to be dumbed down to work on less powerful platforms), so we can assume that it will be exclusive to PC unless future consoles have the horsepower to run it successfully. Either way, you can stay updated with Star Citzen on its YouTube channel and Cloud Imperium’s website.

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