Star Trek: Resurgence is aiming for a Spring release and I recently spent time with a playable demo at GDC 2022, along with also being able to speak with the development team as I played. So, is this finally the great Star Trek game we’ve been waiting for?
The game is being created by developer Dramatic Labs, an independent collaboration of 20+ former Telltale writers, developers, designers, artists, and producers, so we should all have high hopes for the overall storytelling. The game’s timeline is set in the era immediately following the Star Trek: The Next Generation feature films and before the recent string of Star Trek feature films starring Chris Pine. It is a narrative-driven game, with your dialogue choices determining your overall path, and with this team of writers, it shouldn’t disappoint.
The tale of two characters
The game will have two playable characters and I was able to briefly play as both of them. The first character is Jara: the First Officer on the USS Resolute. Coming from the top of her class at the Academy, she had already been battle-tested in the Dominion War, so she’s no rookie in the fleet. Since one of the playable characters is the First Officer, this will open up quite a few opportunities for away missions, but for now, I was just introduced to gameplay on the USS Resolute itself.
There were several dialogues to play through and each one had several multiple-choice responses which may impact decisions down the road. The interactions with each character was pretty smooth and the animations were spot on. As someone that reads lips due to hearing loss, the speech animations were pretty damn close.
The second playable character is Carter Diaz. He’s an engineer that skipped the Academy in order to get out and see the Galaxy quicker. While I didn’t get to solve any engineering puzzles, the team did say that we can expect quite a few tasks ahead for this guy and they will test our brainpower and puzzle-solving abilities. His interactions with other characters will also help to develop the overall narrative of the story, and I did have several conversations with other characters below deck with him. Just like Jara, the conversations were branching, and which branch you took was determined by your responses. I’m really curious to see what puzzles Carter is presented with once the game is released.
To not use Spock would be illogical
The main story found us on a peace mission to a warring planet. Ambassador Spock has been asked to join due to his many years of experience and it will be up to our First Officer (unofficially of course) to go behind the negotiating scenes and find out the root cause of the animosities between the warring factions. We may have to choose sides at some point, but the development team played very coy when asked about it. While Spock isn’t a playable character, we will have many opportunities to interact with him.
The graphics looked really polished in 4K, with smooth animations and a very detailed environment. Character design and details were also impressive, with Ambassador Spock looking every bit his age of 150 years old. Each character is unique, each with their own personality that ranges from adoring to egotistic. Confidence in your Helmsman is important, but can they be overconfident? I hope not. For the record, that isn’t Sully as the Captain of the ship, but it could sure pass as a future clone. The Federation is made up of many different and diverse people from alien planets all over the galaxy, and the USS Resolute’s crew reflects this nicely. The team did say we will be visiting many different planets throughout our voyage, so we have that to look forward to as well.
Who lives? Who dies? Who knows.
The story for Star Trek: Resurgence will be full of twists and turns with a bunch of characters to interact with. Some of these characters may not make it to the end of our voyage, and the color of their shirt won’t be the deciding factor. The team says that our choices and actions will have outcomes we may not like, which may lead to multiple endings to encounter. While the overall story may stay the same, our voyage may take us to places we aren’t comfortable being and force us to make choices we aren’t comfortable making. As a First Officer on an away mission, the buck may stop with you.
There is no set release date for Star Trek: Resurgence, just a Spring 2022 release window. Spring has sprung so hopefully, it’s just a matter of time before we find out when we can start our epic journey to the stars.
