Star Citizen Alpha 2.6 was the focus of yesterday’s holiday stream from Cloud Imperium Games, and Squadron 42 wasn’t a part of the showcase. After being delayed to 2017 at the beginning of October, the lack of footage didn’t go over well with fans.
Instead of showing off the single-player module, most emphasis was placed on advertising ship sales for the coming days before the Alpha goes live. The “all-ships” sale from the recent Anniversary stream, has returned, offering varied discounts on just about anything you could want. A lot of care was also taken to advertise new crafts, like the MISC Razor, and various discount packs that can augment existing fleets. For newcomers, you can get started for as low as $35.
That sort of stuff is all well and good, but to the thousands of fans that have already donated hundreds of dollars to this crowd-funded effort, the pleas for more cash fell on deaf ears.
The main reason for tuning into any Star Citizen stream is, of course, gameplay. In that regard, the lion’s share of the footage focused on a new build of the game’s first-person shooter module called Star Marine. The showcase didn’t vary much from what we saw in November, which didn’t help curb the ambivalent attitude towards the project in the first place. That being said, those with access to the public test servers can enjoy some limited online action as we speak.
The real missing piece to the stream was Squadron 42 . While it had been speculated in the days prior that the campaign would get some kind of feature or tease by the end of the year, an email to backers from CIG founder Chris Roberts squashed all hope.
“After all the effort we expended for CitizenCon, we didn’t want to spend additional developer time polishing intermediate solutions if it wasn’t going towards the final product”, it read. “A slick demo isn’t that helpful if it pushes back the finished game, so we decided that the priority should be completing full systems over getting the vertical slice into a showable state.”
As such, the fate of Squadron 42 remains unclear. The mission-based narrative has been discussed by Roberts over the last three years, yet we know almost nothing about it beyond its star-studded cast. The first episode, set to release next year, has promised 70 missions and 20 hours of gameplay. With so little to show this month, a playable portion seems like a ways off.
In preparation for the more immediate future is a hot trailer for Alpha 2.6. It highlights the dozens of new ships, Star Marine and space combat changes introduced in upcoming update. Its full release was originally pegged for Dec. 16, but it has since been delayed until at least sometime next week.
To make matters worse, awkward dialogue, botched effects and audio issues carried on throughout the entire presentation. Hours after everything had been shown, parody videos were created like the one below. When you don’t have the goods to show, the modern internet won’t ignore small technical problems.
Star Citizen is in alpha now on PC.
What did you think of yesterday’s stream? Were you expecting to see Squadron 42? Are you looking forward to 2.6? Tell us in the comments section!
