Chris Roberts, the head of Roberts Space Industries and Cloud Imperium Games, gave a detailed interview to VentureBeat, praising the standalone, single-player portion of Star Citizen called Squadron 42, whose launch is at least two years away.

„The difference between this and a movie — every single secondary character has their own arcs and stories. It’s tied quite tightly into how the story unfolds. I feel like, hopefully, if it all works on an emotional basis, it will be an experience that will be pretty awesome for people. As we’re making it, as I see this stuff as it happens, I can feel how that’s going to be and how people will be taken by it. I’m excited to get to a point where other people can see and experience that.

I know there are elements — whether it’s God of War or Red Dead Redemption 2 or The Last of Us, other games have similar aspects to this. I feel like we’re at a level that’s above that, a level of connection and acting and characterisation. But of course, I’m very biased. I’m hoping it will push forward that sense of interactive — whatever you want to call it. In the old days, we’d call it interactive movies — this story where you are the star that you’re driving forward.

We’ve crafted it in such a way that you’re making the choices. The difference compared to — in some of our past games, some of the actual decisions you make, regarding character interaction, are made for you, not by you as the player. But in our case, we’ve very carefully crafted it, so you choose who you befriend, who you hang out with, who you talk to, how you find out what their life stories are.

As the story unfolds and things happen to various characters inside the story — and of course they do, because otherwise, it wouldn’t be a fascinating story — then hopefully it’s more affecting for you. If someone gets killed and you spent the time to get to know them and like them, that should be more emotionally affecting than if you’re told that you should be upset, if you’re crying about them just because that was constructed into the narrative. We’ve tried very much to be subtle, to paint with texture. When it all comes together, I think the detail of it will be impactful,” Roberts said.

Star Citizen: Squadron 42‘s beta test is going to happen during the second half of 2020, which means its launch could be in 2021 at the earliest. The multiplayer, space sim/trade game, Star Citizen, might take a bit more time, though…

Source: WCCFTech