In the latest episode of Inside Star Citizen, the team that brought Maroks and Kopions to life in the PU took the scene to talk about the challenges they faced to add new wildlife to the game, and also promised more animals, including Space Whales and Space Cows.
According to senior system designer Zac Preece, both Space Whales and Space Cows are now in active development, and we even get to see them both briefly in the final section of the video, as the next wildlife to come to the game.
As always, don’t expect any timestamps on when you should expect the new wildlife to arrive, as we are still going to explore our opportunities with Maroks and Kopions in Alpha 3.23 for a while, but having those bigger animals in the pipeline is quite exciting.
Aside from adding to the immersion and giving more life to the planets of Star Citizen, developers see wildlife as one of the entry points to the crafting gameplay. Currently, you can loot a few valuable stuff by killing Maroks and Kopions, which can be sold in the market.
However, with bigger animals offering more valuable parts, you can expect hunting these creatures to turn into a business in the future of Star Citizen, adding more depth to the crafting gameplay, and allowing players to go creative with what they earn when risking their lives to hunt deadly animals.
In Alpha 3.23, players will receive a dedicated mission where they should find Kopion nests and kill them. Since Maroks are rather peaceful creatures, you will not get quests for them, though you can explore the planets to find them flying around, and even hunt them if you are too stone-hearted.
Space Whales and Space Cows were originally teased as conceptual wildlife back in 2020, but we haven’t seen or heard much about them since then, until now that the first batch of animals are ready to be released, and more are about to come in the future updates.
