Last week, during the CitizenCon 2024 event hosted in Manchester, UK, Cloud Imperium Games debuted live gameplay of Squadron 42, the single-player campaign associated with the space simulator Star Citizen.
Yet, the game has been in development for over a decade, and Squadron 42 itself has been shown several times in various form since the original crowdfunding campaign in 2012.
While development has taken a long time and there is more work to do, Cloud Imperium Games is continuing to update its technology in parallel with the game’s development. The result is that Squadron 42’s star-studded cinematics have evolved radically over the years.
That’s why we decided to create a detailed video comparison between the various showings of the game, and you can watch it below.
The differences are certainly evident, including much more detailed character models featuring famous actors like Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill, Gillian Anderson, Mark Strong, Henry Cavill, and Jack Huston.
The ship models have also been changed radically, especially considering that they have been developed to be flyable in Star Citizen, with their interiors fully explorable and interactive.
The cinematographic and effects have also evolved, and the progress is certainly impressive.
If you’re unfamiliar with Star Citizen and Squadron 42, together they form a crowdfunded project directed by Chris Roberts of Wing Commander fame. It includes a multiplayer sandbox space simulator and the single-player campaign, both exclusive for PC.
The game has passed $733 million in crowdfunding ($733,435,125 at the moment of this writing) and counts 5,375,563 registered users. Of course, many of them aren’t paying customers, as they register accounts to enjoy Free Fly Events.
At CitizenCon we also got to see plenty of features and tech coming to the game, on top of the overall vision for version 1.0, which will be the full release of the game, albeit it doesn’t yet have a date.
Squadron 42 is actually the only part of the project that has an official release year, 2026. We don’t yet know the specific release date.
Full disclosure: the author of this article has backed Star Citizen’s crowdfunding campaign.
