Gillian Anderson has a laugh in new Star Citizen video

YouTube

The new Squadron 42: Behind the Scenes video featuring Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame is fun not because of what it tells us about the single-player campaign for Star Citizen or the work that's going into it, but because of Anderson's visible amusement (and bemusement) about the whole thing. She takes the work seriously—she's a pro—but she's very all too aware of the fact that she's running around in her long underwear, waving a toy gun at imaginary space monsters.

The gun, in fact, leads to my favorite moment in the video. “When I used to shoot guns on the X-Files, it was a SIG Sauer, it was a proper issue, metal, heavy gun,” she says. “And these [Squadron 42 props] are pieces of wood stuck together, painted grey.” For one segment, Director Chris Roberts explained that the aliens she's shooting at are actually enormously tall beasts, prompting Anderson to hold up the pistol and ask, with just a shade of doubt, “And this will work on them?”

But all was well at the end of the day. “I had a huge amount of fun,” she says. “And it wasn't embarrassing enough to not come back again.”

We took a closer look at Squadron 42, the single-player campaign of Cloud Imperium's crowdfunding behemoth Star Citizen, last month, and also spent some time with a couple of Anderson's costars, Mark Hamill and John Rhys-Davies, which you may enjoy here. Star Citizen has so far raised over $106 million in funding, but does not yet have a release date beyond what I'm guessing is a very tentative some time in 2016.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.