The video critically examines the persistent technical and design flaws in Star Citizen’s “Siege of Orison” gameplay, highlighting issues like poor AI, buggy mechanics, and performance problems that persist even in controlled test environments. It expresses deep skepticism about the project’s progress and urges players to reconsider investing in the game, given its ongoing delays and unfinished state despite significant funding and development time.
The video is a critical reaction to a live gameplay session of “Siege of Orison,” a module within the Star Citizen universe, showcased by Cloud Imperium Games (CIG). The developers chose to play on an internal, private build rather than the public PTU due to persistent performance and instancing issues that have delayed the release from the originally planned 4.9 patch to 4.10. The presenter expresses skepticism about CIG’s claims that these technical problems will be resolved soon, highlighting the long-standing nature of these issues and fundamental design flaws, such as poorly designed multiplayer maps and problematic elevator mechanics that allow unfair player advantages.
Throughout the gameplay, numerous technical and design shortcomings are evident despite the controlled environment of only four players on a high-end dedicated server. These include NPCs exhibiting poor AI behavior like standing in the open without taking cover, repetitive and immersion-breaking animations, long death sequences, and buggy player interactions such as weapon switching and grenade throwing failures. The video also notes that Twitch chat was heavily moderated, with many critical comments deleted, reflecting community frustration and dissatisfaction with the current state of the game.
The video critiques the instancing system, explaining that previous attempts to run multiple dedicated game servers on a single Amazon server led to resource conflicts, prompting a shift to one server per Amazon instance. However, this change has not resolved the underlying performance problems, and instancing alone is unlikely to fix issues like lag and interaction bugs. The gameplay footage further illustrates these issues, showing NPCs behaving unrealistically and the game struggling to maintain smooth performance, even under ideal conditions.
There is also concern about the implications of these problems for the highly anticipated Squadron 42, the single-player campaign within the Star Citizen project. The poor AI, clunky gameplay, and persistent bugs seen in Siege of Orison raise doubts about the quality and readiness of Squadron 42, which has faced multiple delays. The video suggests that despite over a billion dollars in funding and more than a decade of development, the project still feels amateurish and unfinished, leading to a strong recommendation for players to stop investing money into the game.
In conclusion, the video portrays a bleak outlook on the current state of Star Citizen’s development, emphasizing that even under ideal testing conditions, the game struggles with fundamental technical and design problems. The presenter and community members express deep disappointment and frustration, questioning the studio’s ability to deliver a polished product. The overall message is a call for realism about the project’s status and a warning to potential players about continuing to support a game that appears far from complete.