The singleplayer game Squadron 42, which is being developed in parallel with Star Citizen, no longer has a release date. Originally planned for 2014, it now seems that 2018 is the new release window. However, there is no official target date.
Squadron 42 is the singleplayer part of Star Citizen. The campaign is set to feature Hollywood stars such as Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill, or Gillian Anderson. Chris Roberts aims to tell a singleplayer story that is also meant to be experienced offline. Squadron 42 is particularly targeted at fans of Roberts’ earlier works, the “Wing Commander” series.
Originally, Squadron 42 was planned for 2014, then it was postponed to 2015, and later to 2016. The latest information was that Squadron 42 should still be released in 2017, at least the first of three episodes. That also now seems questionable.
A year ago, players complained that they had not seen anything from Squadron 42. A presentation was expected in October 2016 – at CitizenCon, the trade fair of Star Citizen. However, nothing from the game was shown there.
This trade fair is approaching again, and once again there is bad news for Squadron 42.
Squadron 42 will not be at CitizenCon – only in December stream
In a letter to fans, Chris Roberts announces that Squadron 42 will not be shown at CitizenCon in October 2017. Instead, Squadron 42 will be the main part of the “Holiday Streams” in December 2017.
Roberts explains in the letter how closely intertwined Squadron 42 and Star Citizen are. It is said that CIG has a team working on Squadron 42 and is making good progress. Roberts aims to elevate the storytelling style of Wing Commander to a new level.
Roberts is confident that Squadron 42 is worth the wait. The game should be able to compete with any other AAA story-driven game.
Release date of Squadron 42 removed from the website
Apparently, CIG has removed the planned release year 2017 from the Squadron 42 website as part of this development.
In the Reddit forum, hardcore fans welcome this decision. Hardly anyone expected that Squadron 42 would be released this year anyway. They feel that CIG creates a false impression with the fixed release dates and wonder why CIG has repeated this mistake several times.
The fans on Reddit anticipate a release of Squadron 42 at the earliest by the end of 2018 and are generally in good spirits. The general mood seems to be: “Now it doesn’t matter how long we have to wait. As long as it turns out to be really good.”
The most famous and sharpest critic of Star Citizen, Derek Smart, interprets the news entirely differently and mocks that the project has been postponed from 2014 to now 2018. He sees that as confirmation of his reservations.
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