“For 200 years, we have battled the Vanduul. We’ve called these attacks raids, skirmishes or incursions. But I am here to tell you, we are at war.”

These are the first words spoken by Admiral Bishop in the opening cinematic of the “Star Citizen” single-player campaign, “Squadron 42.”

“Squadron 42” is a crowdfunded game, which means ordinary people, like you and I, contributed to the game’s development. By buying game packages, supporters helped Cloud Imperium Games and its European counterpart, Foundry 42, to continue to make huge strides in the development process.

In the game, players take on the role of a rookie United Empire of Earth Navy combat pilot in a stunning single-player epic adventure within the backdrop of the “Star Citizen” universe.

Combat will be ever-present in this campaign — slicing across the void of space with a ship will blend seamlessly when exiting to perform ground combat operations with armored suits and firearms.

To help make the characters have gripping and realistic emotions, as well as move the story along in a meaningful way, the developers have used donations from backers’ to hire voice actors such as Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker from “Star Wars”) and Gary Oldman (Jim Gordon from “The Dark Knight”) who voices Admiral Bishop.

As a Navy man, your character will serve aboard a massive Navy capital ship.

The ship in question is the gigantic 1100-meter Bengal Class Carrier. While on that capital ship, you will interact with living, breathing crewmembers that have lives of their own within the context of Navy men and women.

Hopefully there will be a mission where you must stop boarding parties from running amok inside the ship. Watching as a marine detachment and crew members help to fight off boarding parties would be so cool.

There is no official date for the first missions to be released, but they are being hinted at as either coming out this year or early 2018.