Alongside the space MMO side of Star Citizen, Cloud Imperium Games has been developing a single-player campaign set in the same universe. While some teaser trailers and details about the long-delayed campaign have been released over the years, today, the studio revealed that it is "feature complete" and has moved to the polishing phase.
As the studio focuses fully on "optimizing and fine-tuning" the experience, to celebrate the occasion and the latest CitizenCon event, a gameplay showcase of what players can expect to see has been released.
Watch the 25-minute showcase below, which has a whole lot of space combat and first-person gameplay, in-engine cinematics, and developer commentary on what"s being shown:
Players will have fully customizable male and female options for their protagonist, who will take part in the story with fully voiced and, in the case of third-person cutscenes, acted out cinematics.
Both ship-based and first-person levels will be featured in the campaign"s missions as players join the UEE Navy"s 42nd Squadron of fighters for this story. Per the studio, the first-person levels will feature destructible settings, physics-based puzzles, as well as animations for any interactions players will have with the environments for increased immersion.
As previously confirmed, high-profile actors play the game"s major characters in the storyline. Today"s presentation shows Gillian Anderson, Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman, Liam Cunningham, Mark Strong, and John Rhys-Davis, with many others like Henry Cavil and Andy Serkis also being involved.
"Everything you see during the campaign has been heavily inspired by the classics of 70s and 80s sci-fi but with a modern twist," says the studio regarding the levels and environments players will face. "We want everything you see to feel like it has a soul, its own personality, and tells a history of long before you"ve arrived. Crafting interesting flight spaces and their connecting tissue has been one of the more unique challenges we’ve needed to overcome for Squadron."
Unfortunately, Cloud Imperium Games is still not sharing a release window for Squadron 42, only saying that the polishing can take some time. Studio co-founder and Star Citizen director Chris Roberts had this to say about the road to release:
"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 over a decade in, the Star Citizen project"s crowd funding pool recently breezed past the $600 million mark. On the game"s Persistent Universe MMO side that"s in public testing, Alpha 3.21 content update went live just last week, adding new types of missions, a bomber variant ship, and more. Future updates are slated to bring a new star system, base building, and other features.