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As Scam Citizen turns eight years old, the single-player campaign still sounds a long way off

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Star Citizen's single-player campaign, Squadron 42 is still in development, Cloud Imperium Games has insisted, but don't hold your breath on it coming out any time soon.

"We still have a ways to go before we are in beta, but everyone on Squadron 42 is working very hard to deliver something great," CIG boss Chris Roberts said in an AMA on the Roberts Space Industries website to coincide with Star Citizen's eight birthday (Star Citizen was unveiled on 10th October 2012).

The AMA was meant to celebrate Star Citizen's milestone, but among posts about upcoming features for the main game were questions from clearly disgruntled fans who complained about the radio silence around Squadron 42, which is currently six years behind its original delivery target.

Squadron 42 is meant to be a cinematic, star-studded story-based single-player adventure akin to the Wing Commander games Roberts made his name with in the '90s. CIG has released flashy trailers for the game, starring virtual recreations of Hollywood actors such as Mark Hamill, Gillian Anderson, Gary Oldman and Mark Strong, but it has yet to become playable for backers in any form.

Squadron 42 was originally announced for release in 2014 during the Star Citizen Kickstarter campaign, but was delayed multiple times. In mid-2019 CIG said a beta release was planned before the end of Q2 2020, then an estimated Q3 2020 on a now abandoned roadmap. But that date has passed and there has been no meaningful communication from the studio on the status of Squadron 42's release.

"As it stands the community has completely divided opinions on the expected release date of SQ42 with opinions varying from that SQ42 is in beta currently to it being 5+ years away," said a user called Bobblenator in an AMA question.

"You stated in the pledge (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/the-pledge): 'We, the Developer, intend to treat you with the same respect we would give a publisher. You will receive regular updates about the progress of the game.'

"Given the massive uncertainty on the progress of SQ42 within the community, do you feel as though you have been meeting this objective?"

Roberts stepped in to address this question, announcing the imminent release of a show focused just on Squadron 42 called The Briefing Room. New episodes are planned every three months until the game comes out.

Roberts admitted however that the studio hasn't done a good job of showing progress on Squadron 42.

"Squadron 42 is a tricky project to communicate on as we really don't want to give the experience and story away which can make updating on certain content or features challenging," he said.

Roberts stressed the pledge Bobblenator referred to in their question related to Star Citizen, as opposed to Squadron 42 (each has its own development roadmap), and insisted "we also communicate way more than any other developer or publisher than I am aware of in terms of work and progress".

He then went on to suggest different people want different types of communication, ranging from deep dives to release date announcements.

"It's impossible to please all the people all the time, and with a project as complicated as Star Citizen or even Squadron 42 it's impossible to have iron clad dates due to the huge amount of ongoing R&D.

"So yes, I do feel like we have been meeting 'The Pledge'."

Roberts, in a separate post, then addressed concern about the status of Squadron 42 specifically. And unfortunately it sounds like fans will have to wait a while longer.

"You're not really asking about what is being worked on Squadron 42, you really just want to know when it will be done," Roberts said.

"The best answer for your question is Squadron 42 will be done when it is done, and will not be released just to make a date but instead once all the tech and content is finished, polished and it plays great. I am not willing to compromise making a game I believe in with all my heart and soul, and even though everyone (including me) wants Squadron 42 sooner than later, it would be doing a huge disservice to everyone working really hard on the project and all of you that are looking forward to it to deliver something that isn't great.

"The new roadmap will show how we are doing towards that goal and as we get closer to the end it will be more accurate but it will never be a perfect crystal ball of the future as there is always a certain amount of unpredictability in game development, especially when the game is hugely ambitious and has a very high quality bar; Red Dead Redemption 2, Last of Us 2 and now Cyberpunk have all taken a lot longer than originally communicated and those projects didn't even announce a release date until very deep into their production, when most of their tech had been resolved.

"We still have a ways to go before we are in beta, but everyone on Squadron 42 is working very hard to deliver something great."

As you'd expect, Roberts' comments have sparked a vociferous response among the game's community, with some players complaining about the long development time of Squadron 42, and others saying they are happy to wait.

"See the issue I have is that we're not treated with the same respect as a publisher," wrote redditor danivus on the Star Citizen sub.

"A publisher is told how far along things are. A publisher is told when something is taking longer than expected, where challenges have been encountered and content cut.

We're treated like players, only given the good news and shown shiny things in the hopes we'll buy more jpegs."

Danivus' "jpegs" line is in reference to the sale of virtual spaceships you can't actually fly in-game. Star Citizen has raised an astonishing $314m from nearly three million people since launching as a crowdfunded project in 2012, and the money continues to roll in: according to the official website, Star Citizen generated over $3m in September. Drilling down further, $236,775 was made just yesterday, 9th October.

Star Citizen and Chris Roberts have come under fire for years now for failing to release the game, or provide a target release date. Yesterday, the developers launched the Star Citizen - Alpha 3.11: High Impact update, and kicked off a Halloween-themed event as well as an in-game election. Fans will watch the new Squadron 42 show due out today with great interest.


What the hell is this huge amount of ongoing R&D? This is crazy.
 
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YuLY

Member
I really want to believe the SP campaign will come out and it will be decent. We dont get many games of this type with AAA production. But I remember Chris saying that the story wont be complete in this, he already has it planned it parts. Can you imagine how much we have to wait until we actually finish the story for that? 2035? ...
 

Starfield

Member
they've released two new videos on Squadron 42 today. One is 19mins long the other one is 1:18hr

They said they're in "close out" phase right now meaning finishing all remaining tasks and bug fixing, etc.

Probably beta release next year if were lucky
 
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Kerotan

Member
I really want to believe the SP campaign will come out and it will be decent. We dont get many games of this type with AAA production. But I remember Chris saying that the story wont be complete in this, he already has it planned it parts. Can you imagine how much we have to wait until we actually finish the story for that? 2035? ...
Many donors will have died before this thing is finished.
 
I really want to believe the SP campaign will come out and it will be decent. We dont get many games of this type with AAA production. But I remember Chris saying that the story wont be complete in this, he already has it planned it parts. Can you imagine how much we have to wait until we actually finish the story for that? 2035? ...
It's cool that they got Gillian Anderson to lend her voice and likeness. She's one of my favorite actresses. But man, that trailer released two years ago.
 

martino

Member
i have 2-3 friends that will find every excuse
(and revisionism for when dev began too i see :D)
the hype is still there for them at least
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Release option 1: Finish a fleshed out SP campaign, do other modes and DLC later

Release option 2: Finish a fleshed out MP game, do other modes and DLC later

Release option 3: Finish reasonably featured SP and MP mode so gamers have a bit of both, and do more content later

Release option 4: Work on a game for 7 years, not close to finished, ask for more donations and sell $10,000 virtual starships, and supposedly release the game when everything is uber awesome using Unreal Engine 8 in the year 2040

I wonder which one Chris Roberts chose.
 

LostDonkey

Member
I mean, yeah I've spent 70 or so pounds on this project and I've had some amazing experiences travelling around the verse, even in it's current form.

If, for some reason, it never comes to fruition, I've pissed more than that up the wall on a weekend. No big loss.

If I'd have put thousands in then yeah but you have to be pretty mad in the first place I guess.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
I mean, yeah I've spent 70 or so pounds on this project and I've had some amazing experiences travelling around the verse, even in it's current form.

If, for some reason, it never comes to fruition, I've pissed more than that up the wall on a weekend. No big loss.

If I'd have put thousands in then yeah but you have to be pretty mad in the first place I guess.

The irony is the people who put thousands on virtual JPEGs are fine with all of this, more fine than you are.

Chris Roberts is not selling a game, he is selling a dream, and he gets people on board with that dream, and they all talk about the dream and how everyone who doesn't believe in it just doesn't get it. It's the closest thing to Amway and shit like that I've ever seen in vidya, it's incredible.
 
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KyoZz

Tag, you're it.
Chris Roberts:

“Blablabla Squadron 42 will be done when it is done, bla blabla blablabla bla tech is not ready yet (!). Blablabla I am not willing to compromise my vision. This is for you because I dont want to deliver a bad game blablabla bla blabla"


tenor.gif



 

YuLY

Member
I am still very interested in the SP part, Squadron 42. I know this will be more limited than Star Citizen, the mmo/online part. But I was wondering, does anyone have an article or a list of the locations we will be seeing in Squadron42? I'm curious if we will be able to visit one of those cyberpunk looking cities on some planet, or its a lower scale thing with just some barren moons and a space station.
 

Fbh

Member
Crazy that I bought a pc years ago with a shiny new 1080 thinking, "this'll future proof me enough for Star Citizen," and it still doesn't have a release date.

Lol. I remember early on all my friends who play on PC were really hyped about this because " it would finally show what a modern AAA game could be when it isn't held back by shitty consoles".

But by the time this launches (if it ever launches) we'll have consoles that will run it just fine .
 

Herr Edgy

Member
Met a (junior I think) graphics programmer working on it in VRChat recently. I was basically just laughing when it came about my opinion on this project (not in a rude way, context matters). We were talking for a couple hours, not really about the project but more about dev experiences in general. Was interesting.
 

TheMan

Member
What a frustrating game. All signs point to an insane, groundbreaking, fantasy-fulfilling level of potential here but they just can’t pull it together. After all these years it seems we’re not actually closing in on a finished product. I’m highly tempted to buy in but I don’t want to reward this level of bullshit
 
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The problem with saying a game will be obsolete by the time it's officially completed - is it take's literally nothing but money incentive for an artist to come and update about 5 asset's a day graphically.

A graphical update to keep thing's updated is simple as loooong as the money keep's coming in, and that part is trickier. But I do CGI stuff - I could update most asset's seen in as little as three hour's and no more than a day in most cases unless it was some large custom environment recreation. The game asset's wouldn't take long to update graphically or even be an issue with future updates. Money would be, likely.
 
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I wonder if they can just take one planet and create some 4-5 hours plot.

It would be hilarious if Starfield will have more content and become Skyrim in Space lol
 
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Ozzie666

Member
This game has set such high standards, it's almost impossible to deliver, if they deliver anything at all. But hey, at least its keeping people employed for a while. Hopefully they are getting paid well and zero crunch time..
 

nani17

are in a big trouble
EA are pissed they never managed to do something like this were people paid for an unfinished idea..... Oh wait :messenger_hushed:.... That's its like most of EA's titles.

Anyway not surprised
 

iHaunter

Member
I really do enjoy the online game where it is now. I do hope they do finish SQ42. I give it a 70% chance. We'll see.
 

Tickrate

Member
Stopped taking this game serious as soon as I found out they developed the game in (at the time already outdated) cryengine.
And laughed when they transitioned into Amazon's lumberyard, which at the time didn't even have the ability to delete game entities from the scene at runtime.

This game has received 300m in funding and started development around the same time CD Project Red started Cyberpunk 2077...
 

Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
I don’t see how these developers aren’t investigated for fraud. Someone find out whether they’ve had any higher income lifestyle changes.

It is disgusting in the way you view any addiction. Can’t help but feel bad and know the house is taking advantage of people. I don’t blame the addict.
 

jaysius

Banned
I keep saying wait until the Netflix doc telling us how this was all an elaborate money laundering scam, who knows where the money is flowing to/from.

I just hope we don’t have to wait until it’s released to see the documentary :messenger_tears_of_joy:.
 
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