It's hard to bring more than one A list actor aboard for a single film, let alone a video game. In games we make big fuss about one hollywood actor being one of the voice actors. Motion capturing is hardly done by them. Even when it comes to Sony's first party devs like Naughty Dog, they bring some average actors on board for motion capturing. It tracks body movement but their facial expressions or voices aren't recorded. Later voice actors like Troy Baker and what not are brought to record the lines in a booth. Later facial expressions are created by animators. Then all the data is merged together to give us pretty good performance.
Squadron 42 on other hand uses different approach. It uses performance capture instead of motion capture. The suit and the cameras record everything at once; body movement, facial expressions and their voice on stage. The game probably features the greatest cast ever assembled for any medium, not just for the game. They've brought Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill, John Rhys Davies, Mark Strong, Jillian Anderson, Henry Cavil, Andy Serkis, Ben Mendelsohn, Liam Cunningham and so on. Being shot at leading performance capture studio founded by Andy Serkis, Imaginarium Studios, Squadron 42 features something being called 'interactive cinematic experience.'
You will have your long cutscenes with camera movements but you can also enjoy these story driven moments like you'd enjoy a Half Life game. Pressing a key gives control back to the player and he can see everything through his perspective. They've combined performance captured animation with handcrafted animations, so the NPCs look at you as you move through space, while they also play pre recorded animations captured in the studio. I stopped following the project a few years ago but recently once again have gotten hooked to it. With the released of Persistent Universe's alpha 3.8, I've more confidence in the project than ever before.
They had the technology but I wasn't sure if it'll come together to give us a fun gameplay experience. But now it seems they have. Interactions have become more responsive, and the alpha is actually fun to play. They've found perfect balance between Sim and Fun part of the game. Squadron 42 (stand alone SP game) shares features with the persistent universe, so any progress made there will also benefit the long awaited single player game. In 2017 we incredible gameplay demo. Despite it being rough around the edges it was extremely impressive. It showcased great mixture of exploration, storytelling and combat. The game has come a long way since then.
Squadron 42 is planned to enter final beta in Q3 2020, however I expect minor delay to Q4 2020. But there is no doubt that it's entering final stages of development and we'll finally get our hands on it in 2021. And it'll definitely go down as one of the greatest and most well acted game ever made.
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