This week’s episode of Star Citizen’s Around the Verse kicks off with a check-in from the Austin team, specifically PR, animation, and QA. The star of the show is the behind-the-scenes segment on NPCs, however. The first NPCs will enter the game in late 2016 with the 2.7 update, gradually expanding to include hireable crew and merc NPCs.
“The initial set of characters will consist of things like shop keepers, store patrons, maintenance workers, entertainers, tourists and vagrants and they’ll be found predominantly in the larger landing zones,” explains CIG’s Tony Zurovec. “The longer term objective is to inject as much as dynamism as possible into areas that will be populated with NPCs – one of the ways by which we mean to do this is via the addition of dynamically constructed daily schedules to the NPC population.” For example, at night, you’ll see fewer NPCs, and more of them entertainers, drunks, and criminals. So definitely always land at night.
“Ultimately what we want is for the various landing zones to feel like living, breathing environments and not static portraits.”
