Star Citizen single-player spin-off Squadron 42 will arrive in 2026
After a decade of development, Cloud Imperium Games has announced that its Star Citizen spin-off Squadron 42 will be released in 2026.
The details:
At the in-person CitizenCon 2954 event in Manchester, CIG announced that the game will arrive in 2026 and presented a new hour-long gameplay showcase after the title was confirmed to be "feature-complete" last year. "Last year we announced that Squadron 42 is feature-complete, so what's the team been doing since?" CIG CEO Chris Roberts said. "Given the scale and ambition of Squadron, our teams have been focused on polishing and optimizing to ensure the game meets all the high standards that I have, the team has, and you guys have."
According to Roberts, the single-player game will take anywhere between 30 and 40 hours to complete. The title also features a star-studded cast, including Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman, Gillian Anderson, and Henry Cavill, though many of their performances were captured nearly a decade ago.
The hour-long live gameplay demo at the event included a look at the cast, on-rails, and first-person shooter sections, as well as several crashes and bugs. "We feel confident we can bring the quality of the game up to the level we've just shown and more, without crashes," Roberts said about the release.
Squadron 42 was first announced in 2014 as the single-player module of Star Citizen, CIG's massive multiplayer space sim that had been in development for even longer before becoming a standalone game. Star Citizen has yet to receive a release date despite raising over $729 million in development funds, resulting in a number of controversies over its progress since 2012. It is still in alpha, but Roberts has previously stated that it "is what we consider the features and content set to represent 'commercial' release," and that CIG intends to push the game to its full 1.0 release soon.
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