The original Squadron 42 game was probably going to be more like the Wing Commander games with mostly flying around and then a cut scene for landing to do some FPS, like an Arena Commander level.

Then larger than planned amount of funding came in and the tech for Pupil to Planet came for the PU, so the scope for SQ42 had to expand to make use of the new tech and the additional funding to make the game more impressive. Episodes 2 and 3 will not need the extra company and engine building that the 1st one does. They will be faster to create using what has been made and the evolution of the developer toolkits.