Star Citizen Live: Q&A - The Story So Far (2025.04.24) Star Citizen

Guests:

• Dave Haddock, Narrative Director
• Will Weissbaum, Assistant Narrative Director

TL;DW:

• Cinematics team, facial capture, galactapedia and other features will be used for Star Citizen narrative in the future. Can't be used now as all of them require technical effort which is a no-go until work on Squadron 42 is complete.
• Regen Crisis storyline will continue to expand, with more in-game effects in the game (environmental ones, like NPCs reacting to those events).
• Regen Crisis doesn't affect players due to gameplay reasons. Doing otherwise when game is still in the state it is would be too punishing.
• Regen Crisis may or may not affect Death of the Spaceman whenever that comes online.
• UEE are still working on the Regen Crisis but it's mostly behind closed doors and focused on other systems. They're using civilians and corporations because narrative has to be a player centric experience.
• We will be able to go to research centers related to the regen crisis story in the future.
• Player role in regen crisis will be more focused on an unfolding narrative experience from the perspective of a small participant, there may be no concrete answers in regards to the cause of these failures.
• Current storylines (not singular events) won't repeat after 1.0 release. Most of the content is designed to always be there in the typical MMO fashion but the story itself will keep moving forward.
• The reason they're focusing on the story now instead of waiting for 1.0 is to give the team a chance to go through an alpha phase and work out any issues related to their content production approach. They also think giving narrative context to in-game activities makes them more engaging.
  Finally, it's a "thank you" to players who decided to stick with the game during development rather than jumping in after 1.0 release.
• The idea to implement Wikelo (the first alien in SC) came down to the fact they needed a merchant interested in barter rather than money based trade. "Basically it's tier -1 of crafting almost."
• Full-on Banu implementation isn't ready yet, that's why he's just a head and a torso contacting us through video calls. They do want him to walk around his station once that changes.
• The reason Wikelo wants what he wants for his trades (i.e. items not necessarily related to what you get in return) has to do with him being a fabricator and using them to produce other stuff. They also wanted to tie it to the Align and Mine.
• Items requested by Wikelo will change as patches add new things to do and collect.
• They wanted an ability to use stolen/found vehicles to trade with Wikelo but stumbled upon a technical issue and had to scrap the idea (for now).
• People helping Wikelo instead of providing resources to the regen crisis storyline won't affect the latter. They just wanted to give players a choice in case they don't want to work with one or the other.
• No comment whether T. Bannister kept in Wikelo's collection is Tessa (mission giver from pre 3.0 version).
• Fight for Pyro story (and more specifically Frontier Fighters being what they are) came out of the need for a storyline fitting a mission string created by one of the designers for the Pyro release rather than being a narrative driven event.
• Frontier Fighters being a forced enemy faction rather than a joinable one was always planned for this storyline. While they do want some reputation based gameplay, not every faction in future events will be joinable (it would require too much time, functionality and effort to include all possible routes in an ever expanding story).
• Another important part in terms of joinable factions is CIG's desired limits in terms of how far into depravity they want to let player go. Don't expect being able to help the worst of the worst.
• There will be local factions you'll be able to work with without it affecting your reputation with bigger entities.
• No confirmation if/when old Pyro gangs (Overlords, Fire Rats, Vipers) will show up in the game due to all the content work required for that (and focus on S42). They do still exist in lore.
• They feel for people who followed the game for years and are unhappy with lore changes but it's the nature of development and the result of changes due to technology, direction, quality etc.
• Gangs living in trash heaps is meant to indicate you're entering seedy and unwelcoming places. "There are more important things when fighting for your life than picking up your protein bar wrapper."
• Don't worry about gangs stealing so many huge ships, "some suspension of disbelief has to happen".
• They want to change Stanton corps into local factions instead of proper ones with major reputation as going into negatives could cause issues with accessing content. Foxwell Enforcement (new faction which took over as mission givers to some quests recently) is the first step in realigning their reputation approach for 1.0.
• "From a high level perspective regen crisis story is a non combat one." The hope is to have a proper balance so people can take part in events without having to fight (in the future, I assume).
• Tevarins are on a crossroads: part of them left UEE to create a new home world for themselves, others want to assimilate as proper UEE citizens.
• Data pads will always be a part of presenting the story. They want to progress into audio and video logs, other stuff in the future. Some comm calls are intended for 4.1.1. They'll do what they can with the resources they have for now.

One thing I'd like to comment on is what Jared said during the show: "while resources are tied with work on S42 we shouldn't stop adding things for SC".

I agree, sure, but why not focus on storylines that can actually be supported by currently available features? Why make a regen/medical/science related narrative and not tie it to those systems when they're added?
I dunno, there's probably no good answer to that since I know I'd be just as annoyed if all they focused on for the next year/two/whatever is needed to finish Squadron was combat stories. Not like they were interested in avoiding pew pew in a science storyline but whatever.

Anyway, pretty interesting episode for those interested in things beyond gameplay.

Yes, please! I'd much rather read about it than watch stuff.