There’s something fantastic about owning your own ship in a video game. From Final Fantasy to Mass Effect, whenever they’re given the chance to not just travel the world but explore the vehicle that gets them there, a surprisingly strong bond is formed between player and ship.
Star Citizen, the upcoming space game by Wing Commander Chris Roberts, is taking this to levels that my inner 14-year-old could only ever dream of. When I was a kid, playing Privateer and X-Wing, my perfect game would have been one where I not only flew a spaceship, but could get in and out of the pilot’s seat seamlessly, exploring its corridors and getting to know every inch of its hull as though I actually owned the damn thing in real life.
Star Citizen’s Hangar Module lets you do just that. Released as a sort of thank you letter to backers of the crowd-sourced game, there’s very little to do. You certainly can’t take off and fly a ship. All you can do is walk around, climb in your ship (or ships, depending how much you backed the game) and… get back out again.
Sounds boring, and in isolation it would be, but the fact you’ll be able to do this in the final game is something space shooter junkies have been longing after for decades.
There’s a tiny sequence in Star Wars, near the end, where Luke runs his palm across the underside of his X-Wing. It’s as tender and thoughtful as Luke gets in the entire trilogy, because it’s not his lady, or his dad, it’s his ship.
If Star Citizen can make us feel that way about our ships in the game, it’ll be one hell of a game.
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