Single-player ‘Star Citizen’ campaign ‘Squadron 42’ misses planned 2016 release

By Gabe Gurwin October 10, 2016

Squadron 42, the single-player campaign component of Cloud Imperium Games’ space epic Star Citizen, was originally planned to launch in 2016, but the game appears to be behind schedule.

Announced during a livestream at the Citizencon event, CEO Chris Roberts revealed that the game would no longer be released this year. Kotaku U.K. managed to grab screenshots from his presentation, which state that the game’s “base technology” is already entirely finished. However, other components such as “full animation integration” and improved AI, as well as optimization for different processors, are still being worked on.

Cloud Imperium Games says that all chapters in the single-player Squadron 42 campaign are at least at the “grey box” stage of development, meaning that they are relatively close to completion, with one chapter being taken “to final shipping quality” to remove any bugs and improve polish.

Of all the many individual pieces that make up Star Citizen, Squadron 42 may just be the one Cloud Imperium needs to succeed the most. It promises to be capable of providing relationships with “a living, breathing crew” and features several big-name actors, including Andy Serkis, Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill (who worked on Chris Roberts’ game Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger), Jack Huston, and Gillian Anderson.

This is far from the first time that Star Citizen has seen one of its many “modules” get delayed. The first-person shooter “Star Marine” component was reportedly delayed indefinitely following technical and networking issues, and though Chris Roberts has stressed that the component is still in active development, he admits that some of these issues have prevented the team from releasing a playable version of the game to the public.

Star Citizen stands as one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns of all time, surpassing one million backers back in October of last year. The game has also raised more than $100 million in crowdfunding.

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Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…

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