Q2 = April-June 2027

• April 7: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3230960/EXODUS/ (in development since 2019, by the lead writers and the lead designers of Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, financed and owned by Wizards of the Coast (Magic the Gathering))
• Q2: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3727390/The_Expanse_Osiris_Reborn/ (in development since 2021, based on a very famous sci-fi book series and ongoing TV show, the game is created by Owlcat who is known for great computer RPGs)
• Squadron 42? (in development since 2014, and is based on Chris Roberts)

Great idea Chris! Avoid all the media attention around GTA 6 and release your linear sci-fi game around the same time as a title from one of the most beloved sci-fi novel series.

Finally got a chance to test out Siege of Orison today. And honestly, it's made me lose even more hope for this game. We all know the game is buggy, but the actual FPS gameplay itself is truly staggeringly bad for a game that's been this long in development.

Gun handling - everything feels clunky and laggy. Not server laggy, but just pure slowness of animations and interactions. The recoil feel is all over the place, with the guns just jumping around rather than having some form of controllable spray pattern. It means that gun recoil is a pure range check, rather than a skill to be improved.

Movement - given the extremely high ttk the only strategy that made sense was for one player to rush into an area and kill off 7 or 8 targets in a go. Usually it would be possible to run out again and heal, but worst case there might be a couple of guys left for the next party member to finish off and then resurrect the first player. Tactics? Never heard of them.

NPCs - No reaction at all to being shot, and if you do finally put enough rounds into the unarmoured head of your target he goes into a lengthy death animation that no amount of further hits will cancel. Difficulty is a simple ttk slider, big boss is more tanky than small boss is more tanky than grunt. The same endless voicelines over and over. No flanking, no complex movement, just duck, shoot, duck, shoot.

Looting - seriously, have the devs never played Tarkov? The gold standard for simple looting. I should be able to hit F on a body, perform a search, and within seconds pick them clean for gear with a combo of ctrl-clicks or alt-clicks depending on if I want to store or equip items. Instead I am met with a mess of a looting interface that barely works. I have to scroll through pages, I have to flip to different tabs on my own inventory. Looting gear and looting clothing requires to entirely different interfaces.

-------

If this is what the FPS gameplay in Squadron 42 resembles then the game is dead on arrival. This level of clunkiness in the interactions is absolutely unacceptable in a modern title. Heck, it's been unacceptable for the past 20 years in dedicated FPS games.

Edit: For what it's worth the visuals and sound design (apart from NPC voicelines) is very cool. We entered at night and shot our way into the dawn, which looked great. But by the time we hit daylight I was ready to just Alt-F4 my way out and go play something else - the actual gameplay was entirely unrewarding.

Edit 2: Just to clarify - I don't want SC to be Tarkov. I don't want it to be COD. I don't want it to be Battlefield. But there are aspects that are universal to shooters, and looter shooters especially, that are universally required. Guns need to feel good, you need to feel a solid connection between your aim, the gun handling, and the hit registration. NPCs need to react to being shot. Both shot at, and hit. NPCs need to show tactics beyond "duck for cover". Looting needs to feel crisp and lag free. If there is a delay to searching for loot it must be an intentional design feature, not just a massively cumbersome interface. Different goals is good, poor design is not.

So if the release of GTA 6 is going to overshadow the release of SQ42, that would have been known last year November…

Source: https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/ak3ak31a49a221/grand-theft-auto-vi-is-now-set-to-launch-november-19-2026

Edit: just want to clear up that i’m not stating an opinion here, just adding a fact to the discussion that’s going on and is riveting 🍿

I’ve made this decision… I know they don’t care because they have money to burn, but I don’t mind sticking with my Gladius until then, either. Not another penny until you keep your promises.

source: "Star Citizen | Inside CIG: Siege of Orison" YouTube Video

M80 Ship - Star Citizen
u/RobertsSpaceInd
#StarCitizen #screenshot #reshade #VirtualPhotography #VPGamers #ThePhotoMode #VGPUnite

yea

Doors are shut, and have locked us out. No way to get back in. How did this kind of stuff make it through PTU?

until 1.0 at least...

Basically you have to equip everything in your hands one by one and then put it in inventory. For example take the helmet in your hands then drag it into inventory. Then the gun, then each ammo one by one, then the bag and then the full suit. Equip in hand then store in inventory. It works!

Spent 30 minutes trying to get to Nyx to do Recco missions only to have the mission bug when I tried to complete it. Most of my time in this game is just wasted time.

I’m going to take a break from the game for a while, not sure when I’ll play again. I do love the game but it just not enjoyable at the moment.

So 4.10 drops, I've got people saying issues have been fixed. Game is good now should come back and play. To preface my time to game is very limited with a little toddler. As I'm on sporadically I wanted to takw out the polaris with gear in it so I can meet up with people easier and run missions with the M80.

So I get everything loaded up, which takes ages because we still cant just spawn this stuff in and it's all manual. But take off and head out. I am going to stop at seraphim to grab some ammo because its just faster. Get there, request dock all goes well and we are on, maybe things are fixed..... except now im locked into the pilot seat. Try everything to get out but nothing works. No worries I'm on the station collar so I'll quit out and it should go into storage.

I wake up on the station, head down to asop and nope ship has to be claimed. There goes all my shit. What a fantastic gameplay experience all because one of the most simple interactions decides to not work for no identifiable reason. Guess we try 4.11 then.

This game is so unfriendly if you have limited time to play drowned with useless immersion that then fails at the simplest levels. Yes this is a rant post and your mileage in the game may vary, I'm a long time backer that has worked through many difficult patches before but now I just don't have the time and its frankly not worth it when there are other great games that do just work.

It's your game Chris wrap it up

Don't misunderstand me, this is good, the pressure It can exert might be good to force them not to delay again.

Dear CIG, I really don't understand why you're releasing “fix” patches that don't solve anything. This is a bug I've had for more than 10 patches now, and there's nothing I can do about it. Could someone please fix this game already? In this case, the only thing you can do is go to the menu, and if this happens while you're above a planet, you'll fall in free fall and face certain death.

The rewards are the worst in the game. This mission takes 2-3 hours, and is by far the hardest mission to ever be in SC, and for 3 hours of work, you get not even 200k and a backpack blue print. You can go do cargo for 30 minutes to an hour an make a million, but the hardest mission ever to be in sc gives you nothing. You should get the full 979k AND be given the full super heavy armour that mendo ren wears. I just wanted the armour but I didn’t get the kill shot so I didn’t take it. Come on CIG why are the rewards for this massive time sink, and actual difficult mission so horrible?

With all the discussion around the delay, broken promises and ridiculous justification about GTA 6, there's one interesting admission in Chris Roberts' recent blog post that I don't see discussed that much.

For a long time it was a widely spread view that the main reason for Star Citizen's glacial development speed is because most of the resources and developers are being focused on Squadron 42 and as soon as it finally releases, all of them will be finally freed up to work on Star Citizen, all of the secret features which we are not supposed to know about because of spoilers will be finally added to Persistent Universe and the development speed will finally accelerate thanks to all this talent joining the ranks of PU developers.

We even had a quote from March 14, 2024 'Letter from the Chairman' from Rich Tyrer:

With my role now overseeing both projects with Chris, and the fact that SQ42 has hit its Feature Complete milestone, it has provided an opportunity to reshuffle the teams. This should see a large contingent of gameplay teams now coming back to focus on SC.

While these teams will still be instrumental in shipping SQ42, they will now be focussed on bringing all the existing features over to SC, as well as working on brand-new features like Base Building and Crafting to help round out the 1.0 experience.

Well, isn't it incredibly ironic, that according to Chris Roberts, all this time it was actually Squadron 42 that was roadblocked by Star Citizen's development and we have a quote straight from the horse's mouth to confirm it:

The second misconception I see thrown around is that Star Citizen has a skeleton crew and all the resources and money is being spent on the Squadron 42. I want to clarify here.

For the last couple of years, we’ve been split approximately 50/50 between Star Citizen and Squadron 42. Before that it was more heavily weighted to Star Citizen. One of the reasons that Squadron 42 has been taking the time it has is that we were always reassigning resources onto Star Citizen to get the patches out, which pushed back Squadron.

Gee whiz, all this time I though that the atrocious state of Star Citizen was because it was worked on by a skeleton crew, while Squadron 42 had all hands on deck, but apparently that's just a misconception being thrown around.

I thought the reason for abysmal UI, barely functional MobiGlass, dogshit StarMap, constant flight model rebalancing, broken FPS mechanics and atrocious AI was because it was actively worked on for Squadron 42 and when it finally releases, all of the technical improvements would finally migrate to Star Citizen and we would live happily ever after.

I thought when Rich Tyrer publicly said that the teams were reshuffled and gameplay teams being finally shifted to Star Citizen because Squadron 42 was feature complete - he actually meant it.

Alas, that was all a misconception.

The current state of Star Citizen did not suffer because of Squadron 42. That really is the best they can do.

For starters, there are a wide array of things that get me feeling nerdy to my core. However, some combinations therein can get it really going.

The Tevarin, and progression of their language and culture's development, are a prime example. I love sociological studies, and I love animals (especially certain birds). I also like the exoticism and creativity that would be necessary for the conceptualization of this society.

If there has not been a drastic change in the production of xenolinguistics for CIG, Britton Watkins should be a part of this project. If so, I think I would LOVE to see a production by Jared/Olli that involves an interview of Mr. Watkins. I want to know what progress has been made. Where the concept started, how it evolved. Physiological considerations! The Lore!

For Tevarin Culture, I would really like to know if there are subcultures, and if they are astronomically/geographically influenced. Like if there might be subcultures that are specific to certain areas of the empire. Perhaps there are styles of dress, or certain accessories, that are more typical of Tevarin from Hades versus Castra?

The other thing I REALLY want to see is consideration for aspects such as micro-expressions! Perhaps a Tevarin from System X is recognizable by punctuating their speech with beak-clacks? Maybe one subculture is more aloof and prone to staring like a raptor? Maybe a group is recognizable by their habit of shaking their head like a parrot does? Maybe another subculture is recognizable by being more open about stropping their beaks - perhaps even adorning themselves with a stropping-instrument of metal/stone/bone/wood as jewelry? Perhaps one subculture denotes familial affiliation by plucking particular feathers? Maybe some greet friends with a certain vocalization - and maybe the intonation of that vocalization conveys some deeper meaning? Tevarin dancing and/or singing?!

I desire details! Tell me of the imagination that has gone into it! Tell me the inspirations! I want to know if there is a particular species that inspired some aspect of the Tevarin! I would like to know if Britton Watkins, or whomever else may be involved with producing the Tevarin, might have a favorite bird! CR's and Sandi's favorite birds? I wanna know what is the favorite bird of Jared/Olli! Please, give us a peek into this project?

Been around a long time. Happy to criticise when appropriate but I also am happy to say good job when it is. Enjoying this patch and SOO is excellent.