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E3 2006: Star Trek Legacy

	Author: Jim Zabek Article Type: PC Game Preview Publication Date: 5/19/2006 Developer: Mad Doc Software Publisher: Bethseda Related Categories: Science Fiction, Real-time, Tactical, Spaceship Combat, Convention Coverage

Star Trek Legacy

The legacy of Star Trek games has been mixed. Forty years of the franchise on the television and big screen have revealed that, like Mr. Scott’s episodic inability to get a transporter lock on someone, game developers have sometimes struggled to translate the series into a stellar gaming experience. Fortunately there have been enough successes to keep the faithful inspired; Star Trek Legacy may be the next.

The latest attempt to beam the franchise on to the PC has been undertaken by Mad Doc Software, who are working on Star Trek Legacy for the PC and Xbox 360. The merging of PC and console gaming experiences was evident in the E3 demo for the game; while we saw the PC version of the game being demoed, the game itself was played with a console game pad. Despite the emphasis on graphics, console playability, and a simplified interface, there were a number of things that left us with the impression that Star Trek Legacy was one of the best games we saw at E3. 

From the second that we saw the game, it was clear that the game was developed to take advantage of both platforms’ graphical strengths. The visuals are stunning. One of the demos we saw recreated a scene from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and it took a moment to realize we were looking at the game, not a trailer from the original movie. In Legacy, the developers have sought to include every major class of ship or individual ship from all the television series and movies. To ensure that the ships in the game were as authentic as possible, Rick Knox was brought in to oversee their design. One of the foremost experts on Star Trek ship design, Knox’s contributions helped convince Paramount that publisher Bethseda and Mad Doc should be given command of the Star Trek gaming franchise. 

Parker Davis, producer for the game, said that Star Trek Legacy is the game that his team had always dreamed about making. In determining what kind of game they wanted to make, they first asked themselves, “What do people want?” The answer was, “To be Captain Kirk.” Indeed, the heart of Star Trek Legacy is tactical space combat, in which players pilot a ship, playing as Kirk, Picard, Janeway, and others. In later missions, the player can control a fleet of ships in three-dimensional space in tactical space combat. (The demo’s tie-in to the Z-axis maneuver used by Captain Kirk in The Wrath of Khan wasn’t lost on us.) Players concentrate on tactical positioning of their vessels to maneuver for advantage in firing on a target. Weapons are all mounted on hardpoints that correspond accurately to their representation in the series or movie, and each of those hardpoints has a limited arc of fire. Players can even warp across the map to enter or flee battle. .

The emphasis of gameplay is primarily on combat through fire and maneuver tactics, although shades of Star Fleet Battles and Starfleet Command are present. With the focus on real-time tactical combat in Legacy, there is little time for complex allocation of power as seen in those earlier games. However, they weren’t entirely neglected. Players will be able to direct their ship’s energy to either weapons, shields, or engines. There is also a two-dimensional strategic map that players can pull up to issue orders to every ship in their fleet. The player can personally command a wing of up to four ships in a single group and quickly toggle between them. Once orders are given, players can remain hands off to let the AI manage the battle, and they easily jump in to command a specific ship on the map when desired. 

The player will start the single-player game piloting the NX-01 and will gradually progress to later era ships. Classes will include Sovereign, Defiant, and Galaxy classes, with emphasis on the capital ships of the franchise. Mad Doc has paid careful attention to more than just the visuals and mechanics of the game. In addition to Rick Knox acting as the visual architect, other top writers and actors from the franchise are being employed to ensure that the plot and voice acting is top-notch. The other demo we saw at E3 was from an episode of Deep Space Nine, in which a large fleet of Romulan ships are attacking the space station, but just as the battle seemed about to reach its climax, a Borg cube appears. Hostilities between the Romulans and Federation immediately ceased as Starfleet and Romulan forces engaged the new, greater threat. 

Gamers seeking a real-time space sim immersed in the Star Trek universe need to move to Red Alert: Star Trek Legacy will be arriving sometime later this year and they will want to be at their battle stations when it does.

About the Author

Jim Zabek has been playing wargames for over thirty years. He still has his first copies of PanzerBlitz, Starship Troopers, and Tobruk, amongst others. In fact, his closet can’t hold all the boardgames in it. That doesn’t stop him from buying more even if he can only rarely play them. PC games don’t help the situation. He loves games so much that his wife has to periodically remind him that the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily love games as much as he does. He’s not sure he believes her, though.