Last month CIG invited over 100 fans (primarily of Star Citizen as it’s what people have available to them, currently) to their Manchester, UK office to get a five hour hands-on tour of Squadron 42. While those of us who were not invited managed to get a whole slew of individual attendee impressions, none of them were able to record anything other their thoughts. CIG promised that we’d be getting additional info shortly after the event, and yesterday they finally dropped a slickly produced montage presentation featuring actual Squadron action, culled from attendee’s gameplay.

I considered doing a “reaction video” but I hate reaction videos. Still, this is something best experienced in moving picture format so if you want to see things how I saw them, watch the video. If you’d rather get impressions, read on and enjoy the slide-show.

How it starts

Thanks to the original Squadron presentation a few years back, we know that our character is initially part of the front-line defense of Vega II, assigned to the 2nd Fleet of the UEE Navy. We mainly man a turret in the game’s opening sequences, and also get to run around inside our assigned Javelin destroyer, the UEES Gauntlet. As an invading Vanduul force arrives and the ensuing battle demolishes the UEE fleet, we ended the video with our character dragging Captain Rachel Maclaren (Gillian Anderson) into an escape pod and ejecting…with a (questionably) malfunctioning door which leads to our apparent demise.

The October event’s gameplay montage shows us the next step in that narrative. We’re being wheeled through a corridor into a hospital, our body in some kind of stasis field.

Our following “reconstruction” allows us to build our character’s appearance. The editor looks very much like the one we have in Star Citizen, although there are a lot more sliders going on here.

CIG also provided us with a tiled wall of attendee’s chosen appearances, showcasing how broad our options will be.

Our next assignment

Once we’ve recreated ourselves, we’re off to our next assignment: the UEES Stanton, our home for the rest of the game. The Stanton is an Idris-class frigate commanded by Captain Noah White (Liam Cunningham) and his XO Sophia Kelly (Rhona Mitra).

Fun but unconfirmed fact: the Stanton is docked at the INS Malcom, which I am assuming is an homage to Malcolm McDowell who played Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn in Chris Robert’s Wing Commander games. History!

Our arrival is kind of ignominious: we’re crammed into the back of small cargo puddle-jumper with a bunch of boxes, and are discovered by Chief Engineer Eugene Morrow.

This scene gives us a good view of the flight deck, where the crew is currently servicing an Aegis Gladius, which is the ship we’ll be flying for a good portion of the game.

Getting our space-legs

Next it’s off to the Master-at-Arms, Duncan Chakma, who tells us that it’s required for all pilots to carry a sidearm when out on patrol…in case we get shot down and need to defend ourselves, of course.

I am guessing that this is the start of our learning experience. They showed the player at the shooting range, picking off holographic targets. Just by looking at the video, I could tell that the gunplay feels pretty tight, which is good considering how watery it feels in Star Citizen.

Although there are no stats we can look at for our character, we will be able to improve ourselves organically. Visiting the gym allows us to increase our strength by lifting weights, and we can use the “hamster wheel” treadmill to increase our stamina. I loved this frame: inside the wheel is a holographic projection of a road which scrolls as we run. Brilliant!

We also learn that carrying medical supplies on our patrols is mandatory, so we stop by the medical facility on the Stanton and meet Medical Officer William Fallows who tells us where we can pick up our hypo-sprays (in the med bay or at any first aid kit found within the ship).

This was the first display of the “inner thought” interaction system. We will be able to respond to NPCs by selecting an option from a floating list. When switching between the options, we hear our character’s voice reading the words; when we select an option, the character paraphrases a matching response out loud.

When we’re bored, we can play video games…inside a video game! What will they think of next?

Mission time

Then it’s off to the bridge to meet White and Kelly. We learn that we’re in the Odin system which is mainly populated by corporations and some civilians, but is also home to pirates and smugglers. You know, cannon fodder.

Before they let us take a real Gladius into space we have to put in some time with the simulator so we can learn the controls. I have no idea how close the control scheme will be to what we have in Star Citizen, although I know that Squadron’s more narrow focus means we probably won’t need to worry about mining or salvaging, and will possibly only be on the receiving end of any refueling gameplay, so that’s a whole suite of controls we can ignore.

Basic flight training includes…actual flight, asking us to navigate through these holographic asteroids as we fly through consecutive gates.

We do get holographic combat, too, including some information on the difference between ballistic (good against shields) and energy (good against armor) weapons. It might be hard to see in this image, but this scene showcased CIG’s “Maelstrom” system. As ships take damage, the areas where they are damaged can break off. This is not just cosmetic: the ships will get damaged and the destruction happens dynamically and not along pre-defined “shatter lines”. This can also cause critical systems to malfunction (as power and control lines are severed) or become destroyed (as they spiral away with parts of the fuselage).

Make it your own

In Star Citizen, our armor is customized by choosing pre-defined suit pieces; if we want the same armor in red, or green, or desert, we have three different physical versions. The Squadron video shows how we will be able to customize a single piece of armor by cycling through different paint and patterns.

Also — and I really hope this is a one-off — we were treated to a 20 second (or something like that) sequence of a character getting into his flight suit which, while impressively animated, would be a massive PITA if we had to see that every time we changed clothes.

Our time has come

Finally! We get into the cockpit of a real Gladius, and follow Steven “Old Man” Colton (Mark Hamill) off the Stanton’s flight deck. The layout of the multifunction displays (MFDs) is a lot better in Squadron than they are in Star Citizen. The right MFD shows one of the flight crew doing their marshalling signals, and I think we actually have to parse his movements to know when we’re cleared to take off. Authenticity!

I’m not really sure what we’re looking at here; it might be a jump gate to a neighboring system, or part of the massive asteroid belt in the Odin system called The Coil.

As we fly out to a patrol point, we see the new “quantum travel” in action. In Star Citizen, we have to designate a destination, align, and activate the quantum travel (QT) jump. In Squadron — and eventually in Star Citizen — we can point in any direction and enable the QT engine. The light blobs are, I think, objects we have to avoid, making this version of QT an interactive event rather than a “get up to pee” event that we enjoy in Star Citizen.

One of the QoL features I noticed in the video was how our targets display overt shield (blue) and integrity (red) meters. In Star Citizen, it’s sometimes difficult to keep my eyes on the target MFD, watching shields deplete to the point where I can switch over to using better weapons on the armor. Some people might complain about this feature, but I like it.

First-person shooting

Of course, there is on-foot gameplay as well. We see mostly combat, which is OK; I suppose showing things like hacking or repair or moving crates wouldn’t be terribly exciting for this sizzle reel.

The good news is that, once again, the gunplay seems solid. The audio is stellar, in my opinion. In this screenshot, we see a player attempting a headshot on an unsuspecting NPC, and after the first or second hit, the NPC’s helmet shatters. Maelstrom!

One of the many features I’m waiting to be ported to Star Citizen is the personal ping. We have sensor pinging in ships, but in Squadron, pinging on foot can highlight enemies, even through walls and other objects. There is a cooldown between uses, but it seems incredibly useful.

Once more into the breach

We then had some scenes where the player was leaving some kind of hangar of what I assume to be Archon Base, a station in the Odin system. We also have a communication from Randall Graves (John Rhys-Davies, another long-time Roberts collaborator), Chief of Security aboard Archon.

In closing

After the montage concluded, we got to see Mark Hamill greeting the attendees; Hamill, as you may know, has worked extensively with Roberts on the Wing Commander series in the past, so it’s nice to see him return albeit as a different character. I sometimes wonder what these actors think about their roles in Squadron, and if they have any idea how contentious CIG’s activities have been over the past 14 years.

Oddly enough, CIG dedicated a good few seconds to talking about Squadron in VR, showing Hamill giving it a spin using the Valve Steam Frame. VR (at least for Star Citizen) started as a skunkworks project by a lone developer within CIG and kind of burst out of the gate. I wonder if VR had always been in the works for Squadron, or if they backfilled it once the Star Citizen version launched.

…but wait! There’s more!

This cryptic panel was displayed at the tail end of the presentation, and it has me wondering. Right now, we’re missing three critical things. The first is an official launch date. We know Squadron was moved to Q2 2027 so as not to collide with the juggernaut that is GTA VI (although I think GTA VI is launching for PC in Q2 2027, so WTF, CIG?). We don’t yet know exactly when in Q2 2027 Squadron will launch.

The second thing that’s missing — according to many people who desperately want it, like me — is a demo. Demos aren’t required theses days, or as prevalent as they used to be. Now we just get early access and complain about it but since Squadron has been radio silent for so long, no one outside the company aside from these lucky 100+ people have gotten their hands on it. Since the prevailing wind following the event was that the game the attendees played was pretty solid (with some obvious issues that would require a Q2 2027 release window), could a demo be in the cards for December?

Interesting to note that Squadron is available to wish list on Steam…and Steam’s winter sale starts on December 17th. Could the third possibility be opening pre-orders of Squadron 42 on December 16th? I wouldn’t be surprised.

Thoughts

I am as jazzed for Squadron after seeing this as others were for WoW Forever, and others are for GTA VI. We all have our silos, and this is mine. My primary interest is still in Star Citizen, but I saw so many game systems in the Squadron video that I recognize…but in a much, much better state than I’m used to. Some/many/most/all of these systems have been promised to be ported from Squadron to Citizen, but we’ve yet to really see anything move across that divide as most recent work on Citizen has been done on the back end, tracking down and fixing bugs, and keeping the funding ship afloat with a steady stream of new ships.

I know it’s wishful thinking and someone will invariably tell me or at least think to themselves that I’m full of crap, but I’d love it if Squadron launched and totally catches people by surprise. I’m not really sure how prevalent it is within the minds of PC gamers, outside of being the butt of many jokes and accusations throughout the years. Is this what a billion dollar game looks like? Well, it’s what part of a billion dollars can get us, as those billions technically came in through the Star Citizen door, but to me it looks damn impressive…just as impressive as GTA VI. Blasphemy, I know! GGTA has somehow become a cultural touchstone for certain types of gamers, and power to them, but Squadron is my GTA VI and I’m beyond stoked to see it in action.