Fed up with the usual orcs-and-goblins, swords-and-sorcery fare of massively-multiplayer online games? Ever wanted to step onto the bridge of a starship instead?
Star Trek Online, a 2010-slated game from City of Heroes developer Cryptic Studios, aims to give you the chance. We asked the game's executive producer, Craig Zinkievich, what makes the newly trendy Star Trek world so approachable.
"Star Trek's fanbase is enormous," Zinkievich said, with a grin that was almost audible. "So many people know what Star Trek is, even down to the details. If I ask my mom what a Vulcan is, she knows they're logical. She knows that Klingons are warlike. That's what makes this universe accessible."
He's also done away with one big pitfall of online role-playing games. Most start new players at the bottom, leaving you to hit rats with sticks for hours in order to accumulate experience and unlock the cool stuff. But new Star Trek Online players can sit down in the captain's chair immediately.
"Everybody starts as the captain of a starship," Zinkievich said, "but that's a formal title. You start as a Lieutenant. As you complete missions, you do level up -- you gain skill points to apply to attributes your captain has. You go through five different ranks, each with ten grades."
You also gain access to different starships as you increase your rank, but even earlier ships remain useful as time goes on.
"Our goal was to make you feel like you were in one of the TV shows, one of the movies," Zinkievich continued.
Star Trek Online will include segments set both on board your starship and planetside, and in each you'll be accompanied by a team of bridge officers boasting distinct personalities, names, and skills. Missions will see players constantly switching between the two settings: engaging other starships, exploring the cosmos, and generally boldly going while on board your starship, and checking out terrestrial locations and tackling hostile aliens while on the ground.
"Our goal was to make you feel like you were in one of the TV shows, one of the movies"
Up in space, he's taken inspiration from ships of an altogether different nature. "Starship combat is a lot more like tall ship combat than a twitchy, reactionary game," he said. "You're constantly moving, positioning yourself against your enemy, and then reacting to what's going on." The combat has proved a big hit with the game's development team, who've been spending their Friday evenings trying to blast each other out of the sky ever since the system was added.
Many Star Trek fans are notoriously picky about which particular era they prefer, but Zinkievich and his team have dodged the question altogether, striking out into the uncharted future of Gene Roddenberry's universe. "The game is set 30 years past Star Trek Nemesis," he explained, "and 22 years past the supernova that sent Spock and Nero back in time during the latest movie. You play either a member of Starfleet --which is the military wing of the Federation -- or you're aboard a Klingon vessel."
In Star Trek Online's world, the Federation and the Klingons are at war (yes, again) -- and they're not the only warring parties. "The Romulan homeworld has been destroyed, and their empire is fractured," Zinkievich said. "The Cardassians are still around, and not happy about being under the Federation's watch." Oh, and as if that wasn't enough, everyone's favorite cyborg bad-guys, the Borg, are back, and more dangerous than ever.
That's not just fluff, either. Head for the Neutral Zone, said Zinkievich, and you'll be able to jump into the war yourself, taking on players from your opposing faction. Optionally, of course.
"Player-versus-player combat is 100% consensual -- you'll have to seek it out," he explained. "We've tried to make it accessible, so players who wouldn't usually try it might actually be driven to do it, but it's purely consensual."
Most importantly of all, are there Tribbles?
"Oh, there's got to be Tribbles. There's got to be time travel, there's got to be the mirror universe, there has to be Deep Space Nine," Zinkievich said. "If you can think of it, we've really tried to get it in there." He's even thought about translating all the game's text into the Klingon language, but fortunately for us non-Klingons, he's decided to leave that to fans.
"That'd probably only take them a weekend," he laughed.
Look for Star Trek Online in stores on February 2, 2010.
Star Trek Online Image Gallery
Posted: 16 Nov 2009
