In an interview, developer Chris Roberts reveals the plans for the massive sci-fi project. GTA 6 seems to be having a major influence on it.
As early as the middle of last year, Star Citizen’s lead developer Chris Roberts compared the single-player campaign of the massive project to another massive project. Squadron 42 is set to be the most important release of 2026, right behind GTA 6.
However, he refers to this proximity not only in terms of the scale of both titles, but also in terms of the release itself. A proximity that doesn’t only have advantages.
The Star Citizen boss doesn’t want to commit
In a conversation with Edmond Tran fromThis Week In VideogamesRoberts opens up about the development status of Star Citizen and Squadron 42. Of course, the first question he’s asked here is when the sci-fi spectacle is set to be released. Nothing has been finalized yet regarding the 1.0 release of the main game.
Currently, the game—for which countless backers have shelled out nearly a billion US dollars—is still in Early Access, and has been for 14 years.But at least for the story campaign, an end is in sight.
We’ll release Squadron first… the plan is for the end of this year, but there’s a certain thing in the industry that we—like everyone else—have to pay attention to,so I can’t guarantee that 100 percent. After that, we’ll release version 1.0.
With this, he is unmistakably hinting at Rockstar’s GTA 6 release, which now seems to be causing him a few worry lines on his forehead.
Later in the conversation, Roberts finally turns to the transformation of the gaming industry. Since he has been working as a developer since the 1980s, he has witnessed a large part of video game history from this perspective as well.
Back then, he developed games like Wing Commander within 18 months with a team of just ten colleagues, and it was released as soon as it was finished. With projects like Star Citizen, that is unthinkable today.
Cloud Imperium Games, the studio behind it,now consists of 1,000 developers scattered across the globe. Since 2016, it has been releasing new playable versions of the space simulation on a regular basis. Roberts cannot imagine building a game of this scale behind closed doors.
At the same time, player expectations pose a major challenge.
They want a high level of detail, simulation and rendering performance, as well as significantly greater gameplay depth than one would have expected ten to 20 years ago.
Ultimately, these expectations are also one of the reasons why games like GTA are so popular with people. “It’s the incredible attention to detail. When you play the game as a player, it simply draws you into this world. It captivates you, so to speak. And the more you get caught up in it, the more intense the experience becomes, in my opinion.”
For Star Citizen, this likely means there’s still a lot to come. While the simulation will continue to grow even after the 1.0 release, according to Roberts, the basics still need to be established first. The end goal is a planetary simulation that appears physically accurate.
