new star trek video game – Trekking with Dennis

I still don’t know what Star Trek Infinite is supposed to be…

I genuinely don’t understand what Star Trek Infinite is. Am I stupid? Have I missed some key piece of marketing material? Or could it be that Paramount and publisher Paradox Interactive haven’t actually done a good job at communicating what this unexpected game is going to be?

I’ve been a huge advocate of the Star Trek franchise when it comes to video games. In the ’90s and 2000s, when Star Trek video game adaptations were at their peak, I bought practically every title on the market. Some of my favourite games of all-time are from the Star Trek franchise, including relatively obscure titles that didn’t sell very well!

Box art/promo art for *Star Trek Infinite*.

I’m also a fan of Paradox Interactive – though some of their games can feel overly-monetised, with vast arrays of DLC that can be incredibly pricey. Paradox Interactive has created such titles as Europa Universalis IV and Hearts of Iron IV, and has a reputation for being the undisputed master of the grand strategy, economy-management genre.

Combining Paradox’s in-depth gameplay with the Star Trek franchise should be something special, and I am genuinely looking forward to what the game might have in store. But I feel that its announcement was poor, and that the game hasn’t been marketed especially well thus far. That could be an issue for Infinite, so I’ll try to explain what I mean in this article… as well as share my thoughts on what Infinite might be.

Of the three Star Trek video games released so far this decade, I want to say that Infinite would be the one I’m most interested in. I adore a good strategy game, and strategy is a genre that the Star Trek franchise hasn’t touched since the days of Star Trek Armada and Armada II around the turn of the millennium. Those games were a blast; I have very fond memories of LAN parties with Armada II in particular! A return to the strategy space is incredibly welcome, then!

But Star Trek Infinite has had a very strange announcement. Initially announced at Summer Game Fest, a brief CGI teaser promised that more information would follow on “Captain Picard Day” – i.e. the 16th of June, which was only a few days later. That already didn’t make a lot of sense to me; why not simply show the real trailer at Summer Game Fest? Surely more eyes would be on Star Trek Infinite at that moment than would be on it at a random date that isn’t actually celebrated by Paramount. No other Star Trek events were planned for the 16th of June… so what was the point of this weird double announcement?

A promo screenshot that appears to show the main map.

Then there was the second trailer itself, which I dutifully tuned in for a few days ago. Actually, calling it a “trailer” is being unnecessarily generous to Paradox, because we saw barely any gameplay and didn’t get much of a feel for the game itself. It was a poor trailer, one that neither generated much excitement nor showed off a significant amount of gameplay. We caught a glimpse of the game’s four playable factions: the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians… but that’s about it.

Hopping over to Paradox’s website, there is a bit more information about the game. We know that Infinite will be a grand strategy game, presumably in the Paradox mould, taking the game Stellaris and its mechanics and systems as a starting point. I confess that I’m not familiar with Stellaris, but it’s a Paradox grand strategy title that seems to have a good reputation among players. A solid start, then!

*Star Trek Infinite* is supposedly built atop the bones of Paradox’s grand strategy game *Stellaris*.

The game promises to put players in charge of one of the four competing factions – so presumably there will be more to the game than fleets and space battles, with some amount of economy management, perhaps planetary and space station management, and other related things, too. Although Infinite claims to have “streamlined” some elements of Stellaris, it still promises to be an in-depth and complex strategy experience.

But there’s still a lot we don’t know. How will fleet battles work, for instance? The first teaser trailer prominently featured the Borg – yet they aren’t listed as a playable faction. The game looks to be set in The Next Generation era, but again I couldn’t find any specific details about this beyond what was implied in artwork and screenshots.

A Federation fleet and Borg vessel as seen in the first teaser trailer.

I’m absolutely on board with the idea of Infinite as a Paradox grand strategy game set in the Star Trek universe. If that’s what it is! But the game’s announcement was poor, with two trailers on different days that didn’t really show off much in the way of gameplay, nor succeed at really communicating what kind of title this is going to be. It’s only because of my familiarity with some of Paradox’s other titles that I even have a vague idea of what I’m going to be in for with this new game.

The Star Trek franchise has long struggled in the video game space, despite Star Trek and gaming being a perfect match on paper. A game like Infinite has the potential to reach out beyond the current Star Trek fandom to fans of these kinds of grand strategy games – potentially bringing a few newbies into the fan community. That’s a great idea… but I fear that Infinite’s lacklustre announcement and marketing is going to get in the way of that.

I shouldn’t have to waste time digging through websites and reading marketing doublespeak to understand what a new game is going to be at its most basic level. I’m thrilled that Paramount is being more open with licensing Star Trek games, and a deal with a successful developer like Paradox Interactive feels like it could be a real coup. Taking the skeleton of another successful space-based strategy title and bolting Star Trek onto it is also a clever concept, one that I hope bears fruit.

But again, the way the game has been teased, announced, and marketed has been poor. And even after doing some digging and reading official announcements and press releases, I confess that I’m still not entirely sure what Star Trek Infinite is going to be like to play. The strategy genre is massive, broad, and varied – and there are many different styles of gameplay even within the grand strategy sub-genre.

A promotional screenshot that appears to show a Klingon starbase and starship.

Still, I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for a fun, enjoyable, and perhaps even in-depth experience with Star Trek Infinite when it’s ready. No release date has been announced, though the game is tentatively on the schedule for 2023. That may change, of course, but for now it seems as if we might get to play Infinite before Christmas. If so, I hope there will be a better and more elaborate marketing push in the weeks leading up to release.

I don’t like to be negative here on the website, especially not about a brand-new game that I haven’t gotten to play for myself. But I’m deeply unimpressed with the way in which Star Trek Infinite has been announced, and the difficulty in figuring out just what kind of gameplay experience this is going to be. I’m positively thrilled at the idea of a Star Trek grand strategy game, and the franchise’s long overdue return to the strategy genre. And I will do my best to cover Infinite here on the website if we get a significant update, or to share my thoughts on the title after its release. But for now, sadly, a lacklustre announcement and a lack of clarity have taken at least some of the shine off Star Trek Infinite.

Star Trek Infinite has no solid release date, but will be coming to PC and Mac sometime in 2023. Star Trek Infinite is the copyright of Paramount Global, Paradox Interactive, and Nimble Giant Entertainment. The Star Trek franchise is the copyright of Paramount Global. Some screenshots and other promotional material used above courtesy of Paradox Interactive. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Let’s get hyped for Star Trek: Resurgence!

Mon 13.12.21Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There may be minor spoilers ahead for the Star Trek franchise.

I was blindsided by the recent announcement of Star Trek: Resurgence – a brand new video game set in the Star Trek galaxy. Though there have been a couple of crappy mobile games and the ever-present Star Trek Online, it’s been almost a decade since the last single-player video game in the Star Trek franchise… and that didn’t go too well!

On the whole, Star Trek as a franchise hasn’t been especially well-served in the video game realm, despite the fact that there’s always been a significant crossover between Trekkies and gamers. When compared to the Star Wars franchise, which boasts some truly excellent games, Star Trek titles have never really managed to cut through, and with only a couple of exceptions even the best Star Trek games have mostly been the preserve of existing fans.

A new Star Trek game is warping onto our screens!

Here’s hoping that Resurgence can change that! Early indications are actually pretty good: the game’s announcement came at the Game Awards, one of the biggest industry events outside of E3. Resurgence has been picked up by a number of gaming publications and websites, featuring on several lists of the “best announcements” made at the event. Because it’s been a while since there was a Star Trek game, I think that might actually work in Resurgence’s favour to an extent!

One of the main things that seems to have piqued the curiosity of many players is the pedigree of the developer: new studio Dramatic Labs. Dramatic Labs is a studio comprised of former writers and developers at Telltale Games, the studio behind titles like the incredibly well-received The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and the Batman adaptation. Many Telltale titles were exceptionally popular, with fans praising the quality of the writing and the unique branching stories that led to multiple narrative paths and several different endings.

I played through Telltale’s Batman game a few years ago and it was an enjoyable experience that was something different from many other titles. These narrative adventure games put storytelling and dialogue front-and-centre, allowing players to choose what to say at key moments and to influence the direction of the story through the choices they make. When I played through Batman it felt almost like an interactive film: a deep story, well-animated cut-scenes and sequences, but with many different moments at which I could choose what happened and which way the story would proceed.

The choices in games like these aren’t always obvious. In games like Mass Effect or Fallout, for example, there’s usually a “good guy” choice and a “bad guy” choice, sometimes with a neutral option thrown in for good measure. In Mass Effect you can, for example, choose to punch a news reporter or answer her questions, and in Fallout 3 you can choose to defuse a bomb or arm it and blow up a settlement. Both examples show how players can influence the story and shake up the game world, but in both cases it’s clearly telegraphed which are “good” and “bad” options. Telltale/Dramatic Labs titles don’t always make it so obvious!

For example, in the Batman game I mentioned, there are several points at which you have to make decisions that can have ramifications for the rest of the game but where the choice isn’t obvious. Choosing whether to save one character or another can end up creating a new villain to fight, or choosing to attend an event in costume as Batman can lead to a wholly different outcome than if Bruce Wayne attended without his disguise. These are just examples of the kind of branching narrative choices that Dramatic Labs is teasing us with in Resurgence.

We’re also promised third-person action sequences throughout Resurgence, and we saw examples of this in the trailer too. The official announcement also lists “shuttle piloting, phaser fights, tricorder scanning, stealth, and micro-gameplay mechanics” as things we’ll be able to do in the game. I’m not sure what “micro-gameplay mechanics” means in this instance; it sounds like it could be mini-games, and things like picking locks or computer hacking spring to mind as examples from other franchises. But it all sounds like a ton of fun!

From the trailer we got a glimpse of some of these systems in effect. There was a sequence with a character wearing an EV suit on what looked like the outer hull of a starship firing their phaser, a tricorder scanning sequence that looked like a lot of fun, and some sneaking around that was potentially representative of one of the stealth sections.

The idea of having two playable characters is fun, too, and we’ve seen a number of recent games do this to great effect. While we don’t know much at all about either of the playable characters, the fact that one is a senior bridge officer and the other is a non-commissioned engineer should mean we get to see two very different perspectives on the same story. Both characters should be approaching the situation from very different starting places, and that already sounds like something that could be a lot of fun. Aside from Chief O’Brien, we haven’t spent a lot of time with enlisted personnel before, and Resurgence might actually be the first time we’ve seen an enlisted crewperson as a playable video game character.

It was so great to see Spock in the trailer, and I felt that the voice actor did a creditable job at imitating Leonard Nimoy’s iconic performance. Whether Spock will have a major role to play in the story isn’t clear at this stage, but as one of Star Trek’s most legendary characters his presence should be interesting at the very least. Dramatic Labs has also teased that there may be other “fan-favourite” characters included in the game, but no details yet on who those characters could be.

Dramatic Labs promise that players will “make those similar tough choices that iconic Star Trek heroes have been forced to contend with.” This is emphasising the narrative choice aspect of the game, and reinforces what I said earlier about the difficulty of some of the choices in games of this nature. The story seems to involve two alien races “on the brink of war” – I didn’t recognise either of the alien races seen in the trailer. Resurgence sounds enthralling, and I’m really excited to get stuck in.

Players will have to make some pretty tough calls in *Resurgence*…

We need to set appropriate expectations, though, no matter how exciting it may be to finally get a new Star Trek game after such a long time! This isn’t going to be a sprawling adventure on the scale of something like Mass Effect, nor will it be an open-world title like Cyberpunk 2077. It’s a narrative adventure game, and that (hopefully) means that we’ll get a very strong and engaging story with a good degree of choice over how it proceeds. The third-person adventure elements look fun too, and I’m excited to try out things like phaser combat and tricorder scanning.

So keep an eye out for Resurgence when it arrives in the spring. Given the developers’ pedigree, I think Resurgence has the potential to appeal to fans of narrative titles and Telltale Games as well as Star Trek fans, and as long as the game is released in a bug-free state it has a lot of potential. Star Trek feels like a natural fit for a narrative adventure title, and it reminds me in some ways of games like Deep Space Nine: Harbinger and Hidden Evil from the late 1990s/early 2000s.

I’m trying not to get over-excited! I’ve been hoping for a new single-player Star Trek game for years, and hopefully Resurgence will be the first of many as the franchise continues to grow and expand. Regardless, I’m eagerly awaiting its Spring 2022 release! I hope you’ll come back when Resurgence is out for a full review.

Star Trek: Resurgence will be released for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X in Spring 2022. Star Trek: Resurgence is the copyright of Dramatic Labs and ViacomCBS Consumer Products. The Star Trek franchise is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Five ideas for Star Trek video games

Wed 28.04.21Sun 13.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the Star Trek franchise, including minor spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery Season 3.

The Star Trek franchise has not been particularly well-served in the video game realm, especially in recent years. With the exception of Star Trek Online, which continues to receive updates, there hasn’t been a major release since 2017’s Bridge Crew. Both Online and Bridge Crew are somewhat niche titles, too, with the former being a massively multiplayer online game and the latter being a title designed with virtual reality in mind.

There have been a couple of new smaller games released this year, including free browser game Star Trek: Kobayashi Maru and Star Trek Legends for Apple Arcade, but considering the renewed popularity the franchise is currently enjoying, it feels as though there’s potential for ViacomCBS to do more with Star Trek as a video game franchise.

*Star Trek: Kobayashi Maru* is a free browser game. And it’s pretty good!

Star Trek Online was originally launched in 2010, and while the game is still being supported at time of writing, surely its lifespan is limited and it will eventually come to an end. The only other significant release really in the last decade has been the awful 2013 Star Trek action/adventure title, which was so badly-received that director JJ Abrams criticised it, fearing it actually harmed Star Trek Into Darkness when it was released that same year.

In this article I’m going to suggest five potential Star Trek video game ideas, and we’re going to consider different ways that the franchise could make a new attempt to score a hit in the gaming realm – something that hasn’t happened in a long time! Two of the biggest and most successful Star Trek video games that I can recall were 2000’s Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary last year, and the Star Trek: Armada duology of real-time strategy titles which were also released around the turn of the millennium.

As always, caveats apply! I’m not saying that these games will ever be made, and I don’t have any “insider information!” This is just a wishlist from a fan. Nothing more.

Number 1: Star Trek: First Contact

I’ve already proposed a First Contact tie-in once before, but this time I want to hone in on one particular aspect of my suggestion from a few months ago. In short, First Contact – which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year – would make for an excellent first-person shooter title with horror elements. Think Star Trek’s answer to Doom Eternal and you’re in the right sort of area!

Players would take on the role of a security officer aboard the Enterprise-E during the mission to Earth, and this character could be customisable which would be a nice touch. After arriving in the past, the player character would be one of the security officers tasked with holding the line and retaking the lower decks of the ship from the Borg as they attempt to assimilate the Enterprise-E and prevent first contact from taking place.

An Enterprise-E security officer firing his phaser rifle.

Though the main cast of the film would be present at points, the game wouldn’t necessarily have to follow the entire story directly. This would be a looser adaptation, with a focus on the battle for the lower decks of the Enterprise-E while Picard, Riker, and co. are busy with the main plot of the film. This would allow for maximum storytelling leeway, and I think a fun and engaging story could be written depicting the fight between Starfleet survivors and the Borg, which was something we saw parts of in the film but not the entire thing.

The first mission might take place during the Battle of Sector 001, and the player character could be present for significant moments like the holodeck scene with Picard and Lily, or even the spacewalk to prevent the Borg using the main deflector. In addition, the narrow hallways of the Enterprise-E, as well as jeffries tubes, catwalks, and even areas of the ship we haven’t seen like nacelle tubes would all make for dangerous and scary enclosed spaces to battle the Borg!

Number 2: Star Trek: Discovery

As Discovery approaches its fourth season later this year, it’s not unfair to say the series has well and truly established itself in the franchise! As the series which brought Star Trek back to television after a twelve-year break, Discovery has been flying the flag for Star Trek for almost four years now. Some Discovery characters have been included in Star Trek Online, but it would be wonderful to see the series get its own video game adaptation.

Though there are many different ways a Discovery game could go, I feel like a third-person action/adventure title would be a great fit. Think Star Trek meets Uncharted or Jedi: Fallen Order and you’re on the right track! A game with a strong focus on story and with mysteries and puzzles to solve along the way would suit this game perfectly, and while it could be connected to either the Control story or the Burn, perhaps an altogether new and original storyline would work even better.

Michael Burnham would be the game’s protagonist.

Players would, of course, take on the role of Michael Burnham. However, at points in the game it would be possible to assemble away teams, picking up at least two other characters to join Burnham on her mission. Games like the Mass Effect series worked well with three-person squads, and adapting it to work here would be great.

The game could be set in either of Discovery’s time periods, but the 32nd Century naturally allows for the most storytelling options, as there’s nothing in canon to constrain it. The game could bring back familiar Star Trek races that haven’t been seen since past iterations of the franchise, and all of this could be done without treading on the toes of anything the series wants to do on television. Tying a game into an ongoing series makes a lot of sense, and while it isn’t something we see every television show try to do any more, it would still be a fun idea.

Number 3: Star Trek: Armada III

A sequel to this game would be fantastic!

I mentioned the Star Trek: Armada games earlier, and they were great fun to play around the turn of the millennium. The real-time strategy titles – of which there were two – played similarly to games like Age of Empires, and there were campaigns to get stuck into as well as random matches. Star Trek: Armada II in particular became a LAN party favourite for a couple of friends and I, and we played it regularly!

In addition to starships that could fight, part of Armada II involved base-building and resource collecting, with different kinds of ships and space stations required to research, build, and maintain the fighting ships. There were different factions to choose from as well, which is a must for this kind of title.

Armada III could pick up where the earlier games left off in the early 2000s, with a setting around the 2370s-80s. Or it could be set in the 23rd Century to connect with Strange New Worlds, with factions like the Klingons, Tholians, and Gorn. Alternatively, a 32nd Century setting would be an option, with the rump Federation and factions like the Emerald Chain and Ni’Var.

Regardless, I’d keep the real-time strategy gameplay more or less unchanged, with options for deathmatches and a single-player campaign. There are plenty of real-time strategy titles at the moment, with the genre going strong. There’s no reason why a new Armada title couldn’t be one of them!

Number 4: The Dominion War

If Armada III would be a real-time strategy game, I imagine that the Dominion War could be adapted to make a wonderful grand strategy title. If you can imagine Star Trek mixed with the likes of the Total War series, you’re on the right page.

The Dominion War is perfect for this kind of grand strategy game, and players would have the choice of siding with either the Dominion and Cardassians or the Federation Alliance. The game would depict the entire war from beginning to end, starting with the loss of DS9 and concluding with the Battle of Cardassia… or the Dominion conquest of Earth!

Earth seen in *Discovery* Season 3. Think you could conquer it if you were in charge of Dominion forces?

Both factions would change as the game wore on, with the Romulans joining the Federation alliance midway, and the Breen throwing in with the Dominion about two-thirds of the way into the campaign. Perhaps, though, these events would not be set in stone, and failing to achieve certain objectives or keep key characters alive would mean the new allies don’t join.

The game would be similar to Total War titles in that there’d be an overall campaign map, but players would also be able to dive in and participate in individual battles. Pre-made battles or randomly created ones could be available to play in multiplayer as well, though the main campaign would be a single-player experience.

Number 5: An open world title

A map of the galaxy seen in *Discovery* Season 3.

Perhaps the expression “open galaxy” would be more appropriate! It would actually be tricky to create a true open world in a Star Trek game, unless the action was to take place entirely on a single planet. But in the vein of games like the Mass Effect series or Knights of the Old Republic, perhaps a role-playing/adventure game could be created with multiple planets to visit.

Players would have their own starship or runabout to command, along with a variety of potential recruits to join their crew, giving this game a “Mass Effect meets Star Trek” kind of feel. In addition to a main quest, which would see players tasked with defeating some kind of nefarious villain, there would be many smaller missions and side-quests allowing for plenty of opportunities for Star Trek fun.

A Mass Effect-style game in the Star Trek galaxy? Yes please!

I imagine the player character would be a Starfleet officer, given a “covert ops” assignment and sent on their way with minimal interference from Starfleet command, which would account for the large degree of player choice on offer. Though there would be a main story to follow, a big part of the fun of open world titles is exploring the map, discovering fun locations and side-missions, and getting lost in the world.

Star Trek has what I consider to be the best world-building of any franchise, so crafting a game that took advantage of the deep lore that the Star Trek galaxy offers should be something achievable. Giving players a practically blank slate to create a character and take them on their own Star Trek adventure sounds amazing, and I bet a game like this would win the franchise new fans.

So that’s it. Five ideas for future Star Trek video games.

*Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force* (2000).

Star Trek video games, unlike comparable titles in the Star Wars franchise, have never really hit the mainstream in a big way. There have been some successes: Voyager – Elite Force had a moment in the year 2000 where it was popular with PC gamers, for example. But I don’t think it’s unfair to say that most Star Trek games have really only appealed to hardcore Trekkies. Finding a way to reach out beyond that is key to the success of any future title.

That doesn’t mean ViacomCBS should jump on some of the gaming industry’s fads or worst trends, but I think it does mean that, if they’re going to go to the expense of developing a video game, it should be one that has more than just niche appeal. I’ve mostly considered single-player games, because those are my personal favourites in most cases, but as Star Trek Online has shown, there is room for multiplayer experiences as well.

Star Trek is currently enjoying a renaissance, and if this continues it’s not implausible to think that future Trekkies might look back on the 2020s as a “golden age” of Star Trek in the same way fans of my generation look back on the ’90s! Video games aren’t essential to Star Trek’s success going forward, but the medium continues to grow and there’s a huge degree of crossover between Trekkies and gamers, so taking advantage of that and producing a high-quality, engaging game that’s fun and easy for new fans to get stuck into seems like a no-brainer to me. I’d dearly love to see a new Star Trek game some time soon – and I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed!

All video games mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, publisher, etc. The Star Trek franchise – including all titles mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.