Will Weissbaum · Associate Narrative Director

I think, like with a lot of Star Citizen, because it's such an expansive game experience and there's so much going on, we've talked about this before, we tend to cast a wide net and then we hone the parts that need honing and polishing. Not only does that save our sanity and allow us to accomplish the work we need to do, it also gives the project the breathing room it needs to change and grow, because every patch we're learning and things are changing. And a lot of our lore has been written in a way that makes it flexible enough that it can grow and accommodate with the project. And then sometimes, unfortunately, we have to do retcons. We have to change stuff. Pyro has been the first big example of that. I'm totally not answering your question. Pyro was a really big learning experience when we brought it to life, because we had this idea of, I think some people remember from the original Galactic Guides, a much harsher, inhospitable world. And that was also coming back from a lot of our early nuggets of planning, where there weren't going to be that many planets to touch down on. We wanted reasons to make stuff no-go zones because we didn't think we could handle it. So it was all blocked off. But then coming in, it's like, no, we want players to be able to explore more of these planets. We're building these planets. Let's get them down there. And then it's like, well, if everything is super uncomfortable and inhospitable, then it doesn't make sense to have outposts there, and then we don't have the gameplay that we want. So it's like, all right, maybe some of the continents are inhospitable. Maybe one of the planets is closed off, but then let's open up the other ones and have them be much bigger play spaces. And I think that's the Pyro that you're seeing today, which makes a lot more sense for the gameplay loops and experience that we want to have.