Spoiler Warning: Beware minor spoilers for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Picard.
I wasn’t planning to cover anything that came out of “Summer Games Fest” this year; none of the rumours about updates, reveals, and announcements prior to the broadcast really leapt out at me – and I still have a backlog of games from the past few years that I need to get through! But I was pleasantly surprised to see that Star Trek: Shadow Frontier has been announced – a new single-player, third-person, horror-focused adventure game from Bloober Team… a development studio that I’ve actually heard of!
Skydance-Paramount is doing some *weird* things with the Star Trek franchise at the moment, eh? After cancelling every single TV series that had been in production at the time of the corporate merger, we’ve since had three new video games announced: the VR-only Infection, the absolutely brilliant Across The Unknown (which I reviewed earlier this year), and now Shadow Frontier. Just as Star Trek seems to be winding down on the small screen, at least for the foreseeable future, in the interactive space, we’ve hardly ever seen this many titles in production at once!
Paramount Games is Skydance-Paramount’s newly-formed publishing arm, and in addition to Shadow Frontier, it’s also going to be taking the reins of other big franchises and properties that now fall under this growing corporate umbrella. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin was also announced at “Summer Games Fest,” and there’s a fighting game based on the Avatar: The Last Airbender series, as well as a few other titles. Paramount Games is also taking over the publishing rights for the SpongeBob SquarePants franchise, which has several video game adaptations under its belt, and even (weirdly) the upcoming title Marvel 1943: The Rise of Hydra.
I think it’s interesting, in the aftermath of the corporate merger, to see Skydance-Paramount making a big push in the video games space. Interactive media is a growing and lucrative business, so it makes a lot of sense – and for a big corporation with successful and beloved IP, it’s a no-brainer to develop video games using those familiar names. As a Trekkie, I kinda hope that this means we’ll see more Star Trek games going forward, and I want to support Shadow Frontier as best as I can with that goal in mind. If Star Trek is disappearing from streaming/TV in the years ahead, and perhaps only popping up as an occasional cinematic franchise, video games could be a new frontier for the franchise, keeping the lights on and throwing a bone to the fan community.
Very few Star Trek games have ever really taken the gaming landscape by storm, which is such a shame. If you think about it, there should be a huge overlap between Trekkies and gamers, yet most Star Trek games have tended to be relatively low-budget titles that really only appealed to the existing fanbase. The only real exception that I can recall was 2000’s Elite Force, which, for a time, became a darling of LAN parties and the burgeoning online shooter scene.
Bloober Team, though, is a good developer – their Silent Hill 2 remake a couple of years ago was wildly successful and highly-praised. You could hardly have picked a better studio to develop a single-player horror title, and I’m genuinely optimistic and even enthusiastic for Shadow Frontier based on little more than the development studio’s pedigree.
A horror game wouldn’t necessarily have been my first choice – it isn’t my personal favourite genre for video games, films, or TV. But there are two great reasons to be hopeful about Shadow Frontier. The first, as mentioned, is Bloober Team’s track record. Their two most recent horror titles: Silent Hill 2 and Cronos: The New Dawn were both well-received upon release. And the second, to be honest, is that Star Trek can do horror really well.
Recent episodes of Strange New Worlds, Picard, and Discovery have all leaned into horror and horror-adjacent ideas in recent years, and going further back, episodes like DS9′s Empok Nor are rightly heralded as classics. Star Trek may not be the first name audiences think of when considering sci-fi horror, but after telling almost 1,000 stories across six decades, it’s fair to say that the franchise has tangled with the genre on more than one occasion! There are some truly unsettling aliens and monsters in Star Trek’s galaxy, and even if none of them are going to be the main antagonist in Shadow Frontier, I think it’s fair to say that space has all kinds of terrifying monsters and mysteries to explore.
I got the impression, just based on the teaser trailer that Paramount Games released, that players are going to be wrangling with a new alien or monster on this occasion, not a familiar faction like the Borg or Klingons. So my dream “Borg Invasion” idea will have to wait a bit longer! It’s hard to judge from a very short teaser, which was mostly cinematic and seemed to show only the barest teases of gameplay, but I got a kind of Dead Space or Prey vibe from the weird-looking tendrils or “corruption” that seemed to be afflicting parts of the starship.
But there will clearly be room for connections to familiar characters and factions, even if the entity or alien monster itself is new to Star Trek, and I’d really love to see how this new story will fit in with what we already know of this part of the 24th Century. I don’t want to speculate too much, but I think it’s gotta be at least possible that a bigger link to someone like the Borg, the Dominion, or the Romulans will be part of the game’s narrative.
And then we have Ro Laren! Ro, who will be voiced by original actress Michelle Forbes, is going to be the main playable character! That just sounds like a really fun idea, and I can see Shadow Frontier potentially filling in some of the gaps in Ro’s story in between The Next Generation and her return in Picard a couple of years ago. Despite the TNG-era combadge, which featured prominently in the trailer, I’m not convinced that this game will take place during or just after The Next Generation, but rather a few years later, perhaps, somewhere in the final couple of decades of the 24th Century.
Ro’s role in Starfleet, which was explained in Picard, makes her a great choice of character for a game like this. If we assume that this alien monster (or whatever it is) will be something that Starfleet needs to send a covert agent to tackle… I mean, the stage is pretty much set for someone like Ro, isn’t it? Above all, I just think it’s so nice, all these years later, to be getting new stories with this wonderful character. Ro was one of the first major recurring characters in the Star Trek franchise, and her arrival also began Star Trek’s expansion, with the Bajorans and Cardassians taking on an important role in Deep Space Nine. I was thrilled to welcome Ro back to Star Trek a couple of years ago, and to get a new chapter of her story in this interactive form… it just sounds really fantastic!
I’m also thrilled to see Skydance-Paramount greenlighting a *single-player* title for Star Trek, instead of trying to cram the franchise into a live service or online multiplayer mould. There are too many games like that already, and even massive, well-established brands have faltered when trying to launch that kind of game. You need only look to Marvel’s Avengers or Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League for examples of that. There must’ve been a temptation to say, “hey, let’s try to make a Star Trek Fortnite clone,” with the ambition of raking in stupid levels of cash. That was never realistic, of course… but when has that stopped a corporate executive from drooling all over their shirt at the chance of making that kind of money?
I’ve always preferred single-player games, and I think I always will! So, speaking for myself, I’m really glad to see this kind of game being created in the Star Trek franchise. I’m sure there’ll be a “special edition” with character costumes and that kind of thing, and perhaps even DLC if Shadow Frontier sells well; such things are par for the course in the modern video games industry. But at its core, Shadow Frontier will be a single-player adventure with a story to follow… and I just like that kind of game much more than the open-ended, story-less titles that have become more common in recent years.
There are, I should point out, reasons to be cautious with a new Star Trek game. The franchise doesn’t have a great track record in the video games space more generally, even if some recent titles have done very well. 2013’s Kelvin timeline game is one of the worst games of its decade, being released in a broken, unplayable state. And some other titles, despite seeming to have potential, never really took off in the way I’d have hoped.
The current video games industry also has its unpleasant trends. “Release now, fix later” has screwed over so many titles in recent years, as games are launched too soon, needing a lot of work in order to meet what I’d consider the bare minimum acceptable standards. And there are monetisation problems, not only with titles being overpriced, but also coming with expensive “special editions,” paid “early” access periods, and more. I hope that Shadow Frontier will be priced fairly, and that if there is to be DLC, it’ll be good value for what it is. Above all, I hope that the game will launch in a decent state, and won’t be forced out too soon to meet an arbitrary deadline.
So that’s all for today.
I’m genuinely looking forward to Shadow Frontier, and I think the game has a ton of potential. It’s the first Star Trek game from the newly-established Paramount Games, and of this new Skydance-Paramount era, so I hope the corporation is planning to go all-out and make it special. Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown did really well earlier this year; I think it’s fair to say that that game exceeded expectations. If Shadow Frontier can do something similar… we could be seeing a Star Trek resurgence in the interactive space. And that would be fantastic.
In the 60th anniversary year, things have felt pretty quiet… or even disappointing. Starfleet Academy’s cancellation may have been expected, but it was still a bitter blow to learn that Star Trek on streaming seems to be winding down in its entirety. This announcement may not be as big or bold as a new TV show, but I’m still pleased to see it. And there are reasons for positivity. I’ll do what I can to support Shadow Frontier, and when it’s ready I’ll try to review it here on the website. Thanks for reading, and as always… Live Long and Prosper, friends!
Star Trek: Shadow Frontier is currently scheduled to be released in 2027 for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and Nintendo Switch 2. Star Trek: Shadow Frontier is the copyright of Bloober Team and Paramount Games. The Star Trek franchise is the copyright of the Skydance-Paramount corporation. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 