During the New York Comic Con I had a chance to sit down with Craig Zinkievich, Executive Producer of the exciting Star Trek Online. We talked about the game, it's future, and some of the hurdles in creating a game for fans as rabid as trekkies.
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People have been waiting for Star Trek Online for a very long time. First things first, when does it take place in the Star Trek Universe?

Star Trek Online takes place in they year 2409, which is thirty years after Nemesis, the last major Star Trek movie that came out. The Khitomer Accords have broken down, and the Klingons and Starfleet are on the verge of all out war. There’s an ancient threat who’s come back to threaten the entire quadrant. It’s a pretty exciting time in the Universe timeline.

When players start off, what race can they play as?

Players will start off as either an officer in Starfleet, or as a member of the Klingon Defense Force. You’ll be able to choose from any of the races you know and love: Klingon, Vulcan, Andorian… one of the things that’s really exciting is we’re releasing footage later today on our race creator. Not only will you be able to play as the races you know, but you’ll also be able to create your own race. You’ll decide what it looks like, where the antenna are, how the forehead looks, where the ears are, and then you’ll choose attributes for that modify the role, and how you play the game.

So you’ll be able to create your own nose ridges and antenna and everything. Now those created races, can they only be played on the Starfleet side?

No, you’ll be able to create those races and play on both sides. You’ll be able to create them with your friends so you’ll be able to create an entire fleet that came from that one planet that you guys have the background story for.

You just mentioned fleets. Is that what guilds are going to be in the game?

Yes, fleets are our version of guilds. There are a lot of differences to them, but the idea is the same: large numbers of players working together for the same goals.

Early screenshots showed off space combat and ground combat. How are those going to relate, if at all?

One of the things we did when we got the license, rather than taking the standard MMO template and applying Star Trek to it, we asked ourselves, “What is a Star Trek game?” We realized very quickly that there’s not one episode that takes place in just one setting. You’ll start off on your ship, and there could be some space combat. You get down to the planet, maybe rescue some scientists, and you beam back to space station that may be on fire, grab some technology out of there, and engage in a climactic space battle at the end. SO the gameplay is varied. You’re going from space to the ground, and back to space again. It’s really cool and exciting.

When playing while on the ship, do you control it from a third-person view, or can you actually go into the ship and walk around?

When you’re on the ship, and you’re in combat, you control it from a third-person point of view. Space combat is strategic and positional. It’s all about making sure you’re on the right side of your enemy. You’ll be balancing your power between your sub-systems, and your shields. You get to the weakest side of your enemy, knock his shields down, and then let loose with your photon barrage. It’s all about timing and positioning.

And when you’re not in combat at all?

There is shipboard play where episode content will take place on ships. We’re looking at making it so you can have your ship at launch with an interior, but whether or not you’ll be able to customize that, and get other people on your ship is yet to be determined.

So let’s say you’re on your ship, and a friend is on his. Are you going to be able to group with friends and complete this missions together?

Oh, you definitely have to group. It wouldn’t be an MMO, and it wouldn’t be Star Trek if you couldn’t group. You can definitely group when you’re in space, flying around as a team. When you beam down on an away team mission, it’s you, your friends, and then any of the final five slots that are left open will be filled by either your bridge officers, or your friend’s bridge officers.

All wearing red shirts I’m assuming. At least one of them.

[Laughs.]

What is the current cap on the amount of friends you can have with your party system?

We’re looking at a team size of five right now. It seems to be working really, really well. We like what that gives us in order to provide really compelling gameplay. I think five is what we’re going to stick with.

Is the game more open world, or more instance based, and along those same lines, will there be larger, more raid-type instances?

The five-limit is the majority of the content. PVP is going to have to have much larger instances where larger teams can get together. There’s going to be a time where the Borg invades a sector, and anyone from that sector can jump in and join that fight. By no means are you ever only playing with, or seeing only four other friends.

Star Trek is different things to different people. For some people, it’s about trying to become the admiral as fast as possible. For others, it’s about going to fight on the Klingon front, and trying to turn the tide of that battle. Some people want to get into the episodic content, to really get immersed in rich storylines, and what’s going on in the universe. Even others just want to point their ship at a star, and explore some place that nobody has seen before. There’s all sorts of different content in there.

You keep saying “episodic.” Have you based any of the missions off of things from episodes of the show, or the movies, that people would be familiar with?

We’ve definitely placed a lot of the stuff that happens in locales that people will be familiar with. There are storylines from the shows and such that we carry on, but we haven’t tried to recreate specific episodes.

So we shouldn’t expect a ship full of Tribbles any time soon?

There may be a ship full of Tribbles. I don’t know if it would be a Star Trek game if there weren’t any Tribbles.

While you’ve said we won’t be able to customize the inside of the ship at launch, how much say will players have over the look of the outside of the ship?

We’re going to be talking about ship customization over the next couple of months, and releasing stuff on the web about it. Trust me though, you’re really going to be able to, within the realm of that class of ship, modify it and really make it look like yours… It’s really cool.

What do you think was the biggest hurdle to get over when creating a game for Star Trek fans?

There are a lot of different hurdles: technical, art style, story. If I had to choose one, doing space combat was one of the things that we looked at really early on, and we realized that in Star Trek, it’s not a dogfight. It’s not fast-paced combat, and a lot of games have tried that in the past, and that’s not the way it is. But we found a version of what we wanted to do with space combat, and it’s really fun right now. Trust me, it’s really coming along.

Aside from the space combat, are there any other aspects to the ship, like shuttles or anything?

There are shuttles in the game. There are smaller fighters in the game. But players shouldn’t expect to fly around, or take a Runabout down through the atmosphere to try and land it.

What are you most proud of in the game? What has come the farthest in your mind since you started development?

Wow, you’re going to make me narrow everything that we’ve done down to one thing. On the tip of my mind right now, I’d have to go with our Race Creator. That stuff really blows me away. It’s just really cool what the artists have been able to provide the player.

Is there a release window in sight?

We haven’t announced any release or beta dates, but it’s gonna be soon.

It’s PC exclusive right now?

It’s PC and console, but we haven’t announced which consoles yet.

Will there be a delayed release (for the console version)?

That we also haven’t announced, but it will be decided within the next few months.
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We'd like to thank Craig Zinkievich and Cryptic for their time, and look forward to more chances to see what Star Trek Online has to offer.

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