In a stunning new announcement, Chris Roberts has revealed that the single player component of Star Citizen, Squadron 42, is now feature complete.
Announced in 2012, with pre-production starting two years before that, Star Citizen holds the distinction of the video game which has experienced the longest continuing development time. While Chris was able to convince fans to give him half a billion dollars to fund the game, the extended development and developer Cloud Imperium Games’ frustrating communication meant that many lost faith that the game would ever be completed and released.
To put things in perspective, CD Projekt RED first approached Mike Pondsmith about the project that would become known as Cyberpunk 2077 in 2012. Cyberpunk 2077’s entire saga of its rise and fall, and its eventual redemption arc, all of that happened, while this game, and any of its components, were finished and released.
In a new 26 minute video on YouTube, Cloud Imperium Games revealed the progress that they had put into the game. At the end of the video, Chris Roberts himself came up on screen to share this message:
“Now, I know you are all asking: “When can I play it?!” When we have the locked release date you will be first to know.
Now we’re in polishing phase on Squadron 42. You’ll start to see a lot more things coming to Star Citizen as well as overall progress on the Persistent Universe.
The polish phase can take some time. We have come this far, and we want to make sure that Squadron 42 delivers of the promise of being this generation’s Wing Commander.
Now even though there’s only a few of us in this video I’d like to extend a big thank you to all our staff around the globe who have been putting their heart and soul into bringing Squadron 42 to life.
And I would like to thank everyone in the community for your patience and your support. To paraphrase Admiral Bishop, when people ask, what did you do in the development of Squadron 42?
You can look them in the eye and say, I held the line! I am proud to stand with you. Thank you for making this game with us.”
So, things are looking up, especially for the long loyal Star Citizen fans. Chris Roberts was clear that Squadron 42 still isn’t releasing yet, and they also did not provide even a timeframe. But given the progress that the team was able to demonstrate was found in the game, we now know for sure that the long wait was not in vain.
It would have been better if Cloud Imperium Games had not kept us in the dark for this long. The last time we ourselves reported on Squadron 42, the Nintendo Switch did not even get released yet! But this update also seems to indicate they are confident enough that they will be releasing it soon enough.
