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First new Star Trek Online shots revealed by Cryptic |
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Written by Derek Kessler on
Wednesday, 20 August 2008
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 The new owners of the Star Trek Online license, Cryptic Studios, have unveiled the first footage of the upcoming online role-playing game. Set in a future thirty years beyond Star Trek Nemesis, Star Trek Online will at first allow you to play as a member of the Klingon Empire or of Starfleet, from there, the possibilities are practically endless. You can customize your character to be a plain vanilla human or go all out as an Andorian or a Gorn. Or make up something entirely unique and heretofore unseen. Players then enter the Star Trek Online universe where they gain experience and rank, leading to larger ships to pilot and more crew at your command.
Cryptic Studios took over Star Trek Online from Perpetual Entertainment, which was floundering in near economic failure. Cryptic, which has published the enormously popular MMORPGs City of Heroes and City of Villains, took no assets in the acquisition - only the rights to make the Star Trek Online game and a good deal of concept art. All graphics and the gaming engine were created by Cryptic.
Unlike most MMORPGs, which pit individual players in one-on-one combat with swords or spell or superpowers and the like, Star Trek Online is obviously complicated by the whole starship aspect of it all. As such, players will all have their own ships that they will be able to take into ship-to-ship combat, as well as beaming down to the surface and dueling it out with phasers and bamboo diamond cannons. And being Star Trek, there’s also to be a serious exploration aspect to Star Trek Online. The fluid digital nature of an MMORPG will allow for new worlds to be generated as the game expands to accommodate new players.
Being set further into the future than any other Star Trek, you shouldn’t expect to run into Jean-Luc Picard or James T. Kirk at any point, though Cryptic did hint that there might be an Enterprise flying around out there. It just won’t be one that you’d recognize. And of course, you’ll be able to pay visits to the favorite worlds of the Star Trek universe, including Andoria, Vulcan, Bajor, and Qo’noS.
Pricing and a release date for Star Trek Online have not yet been announced, though City of Heroes and City of Villains both operate on a subscription basis that starts at $14.99 a month (the one-year subscription knocks the price down to $11.95 per month). It is assumed at this point that Star Trek Online will be released for PCs and maybe Macs, though the FAQ posted on the new Star Trek Online website indicates that Cryptic is pursuing a console (PlayStation and Xbox) based approach as well.
For more information, including a trailer of real in-game footage and some interesting screenshots, head over to the Star Trek Online website.
View: Star Trek Online website
Discuss: TrekUnited Forum
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