Star Citizen's stunning single-player spinoff is "over 40 hours" long and now "fully playable from beginning to end"

Star Citizen is probably best known for its eye-watering, incomprehensible budget - a quick check in on Cloud Imperium Games' crowdfunding tracker shows a figure north of $925 million. I still don't fully believe it. Regardless, Star Citizen itself is evolving at a rapid pace these days, but so too is Squadron 42. This cinematic, single-player spinoff is one of my most anticipated games of next year, and in its end of year message to Star Citizen fans, Cloud Imperium has confirmed that things are moving along very nicely indeed. Not only does it claim that the game is now playable "from beginning to end," but it also says that Squadron 42 will be over 40 hours long.

While Star Citizen is all about nerdy spaceship tinkering and making a crust in a persistent galaxy, Squadron 42 presents the same universe as a dramatic blockbuster. Mixing boots-on-the-ground FPS game combat and exploration with huge spaceship battles, it's the kind of linear, narrative-driven single-player game that you're seeing less and less of these days as purse strings tighten - of course, purse strings aren't too big a concern for Cloud Imperium, so it's splurged on some glorious visuals and a cast stuffed with big-screen names. You'll see performances from greats like Gary Oldman and Gillian Anderson, Star Wars legend Mark Hamill, and even Superman star and Warhammer enjoyer Henry Cavill.

Cloud Imperium has kicked the can down the road for many years with Squadron 42, but at last year's CitizenCon, it finally unveiled some extended gameplay and locked in a 2026 release date. It actually looks like this date will be met, too, with the studio's boss, Chris Roberts, revealing some promising info in his new letter to the community.

"On the Squadron 42 front, our focus throughout 2025 was to build on the progress of 2024 and what we showed at last year's CitizenCon by bringing the game to content complete and closing out remaining core tasks in preparation for Beta," he writes. "All chapters are now fully playable from beginning to end, and we've been playing through the game ourselves regularly. Squadron 42 is a large game, over forty hours in length, and it's becoming increasingly clear how special it will be once the remaining polish, optimization, and bug fixing is complete.

"A big part of what makes this possible is the technology we've built at CIG over many years," he continues. "The ability to move seamlessly from on foot, into a vehicle you can fly and move around inside, down to a planet or across star systems, all without loading screens, creates a level of immersion that's very difficult to replicate. That combination of close-up interaction and galactic scale is at the core of what will make Squadron 42 so unique."

Roberts also says he is "incredibly proud" of the quality of Squadron 42's writing, performance capture, environments, ships, lighting, sound, cinematics, and design.

It also sounds like Squadron 42 could appear in beta quite suddenly next year without much warning. "We know many of you are eager to play, and we're looking forward to putting it in your hands," Roberts says. "We don't plan on a long, drawn-out marketing campaign as we've already done our share of trailers and gameplay previews. When it's time, you (and the rest of the gaming world) will hear a lot more from us."

With plenty of innovations planned for Star Citizen itself (read about them in Roberts' post here), the incredibly likely chance of funding hitting the $1 billion mark, and the launch of Squadron 42, 2026 is going to be a seismic year for Cloud Imperium.

While the complexity, depth, and incompleteness of Star Citizen has meant that I haven't really been compelled to play it, I have always admired its universe and what it's trying to build - Squadron 42 feels like a glitzier, more accessible way for me to get immersed in that world, and I'm hoping that the performances and writing are as consistently strong as Roberts says they are. If so, we could be looking at a truly great game.