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IGN Preview of Star Trek
By the time Star Trek releases in early 2013, Digital Extremes will have been crafting it for three years. In an industry dominated by shooters built with a 12-18 month turnaround, lengthy development cycles, especially on licensed games, is becoming increasingly rare. Digital Extremes' Sheldon Carter attributes this to quality control.
"This has given us time to experiment and prototype instead of making quick decisions," Carter told IGN. With so much room to flex, last year's excellent E3 demo wasn't even a complete slice of the game. "That was still pretty early," said Carter. "It was more, like, to give you a feel. I'm not saying we wouldn't use some of the stuff that was in that, but that was the feel we were going for." With E3 2012 looming, "you're gonna see it for-real realized in a lot of different ways."
The new gameplay teaser below is an exciting sample of exactly that.
Star Trek Gameplay Teaser
As Creative Director, Carter knows Star Trek will live and die not only by the strength of its mechanics, but its dedication to an established franchise as well. As it turns out, these two pieces go hand-in-hand, and embody a design philosophy that Digital Extremes and Paramount Pictures have seen eye to eye on since the start. Without cooperative gameplay that explores the relationship between Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, Star Trek just wouldn't work.
"If you take it back to day one when we started talking about making a game, and you break down what Star Trek is," said Brian Miller, Senior Vice President and Producer at Paramount Pictures, "it really is the story of Kirk and Spock, which is halves of the same whole."
To achieve this, the studios brought on Marianne Krawczyk, who wrote the God of War series, to consult with the film writers, establish a believable banter between characters, and flesh out an independent story that exists in the universe of JJ Abrams' films. The new creatures and worlds this Star Trek game brings to the universe had to fit, too.
"This thing, at its core, has to be a great game," Miller said. "Everybody knows the trouble movie-game tie-ins have, the problems most of those face, and why critics don't respond to them. We've been careful not to do that with this game."
Paramount and Digital Extremes afforded themselves enough time to ensure Star Trek gets done right.With such a strong focus on the personalities, there's a natural expectation to hear the appropriate voices for Kirk and Spock as well. When the inclusion of Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine came up in conversation, Miller pointed to E3 2012 for announcements.
He isn't exactly subtle about the importance of ensuring accuracy. After all, Paramount kicked "every asset from the film" over to the developer, including ship designs, facial scans and more. Once those pieces were in place, where was Digital Extremes to go with gameplay? What it's shown has been not only competent but impressive, interesting, and original.
Explosions and huge shootouts aren't exactly what Star Trek is all about, though, and this is something Digital Extremes takes to heart.
"The question that comes up a lot," Carter told IGN, "is, 'What's exploration like in Star Trek? What does it mean to seek out new alien worlds and technologies, and to relate to them in a way that's not just cover shooting?'"
This isn't something last year's proof-of-concept E3 presentation considered. While it conveyed a lot of information in a brief time, its focus was almost exclusively violence.
"That's something that's been on our minds right from the beginning," Carter said. "This is not just a game where you're going to run and gun and kill everyone."
Miller chimed in to agree, stating, "A lot of what Trek is, as Sheldon said, isn't just a run and gun. It's about exploring, and from a narrative we can explore that." Star Trek proves this by bringing action/adventure elements to its shooter landscape. It presents non-violent play, platforming, traversal, and collection goals to players to balance its action and drama.
The characters interact with the environments on a moment-to-moment basis in different ways during these scenes. Spock understands the environment, he's going to approach it with a very vulcan mind set, while Kirk has "improvisational skills we want to bring to the forefront, he's going to jump right in there" Carter explained.
He continued, "these characters kind of lead themselves. They react differently to different situations. Realizing that in gameplay is challenging, but it's also super fun."
Carter told IGN that The Darkness 2 was a guiding force with respect to its Star Trek development. The studio learned an immense amount about storytelling, pacing, narrative delivery, and "staying true to the characters" in a way that "absolutely, 100 percent" benefited its development of Star Trek.
This is reassuring, if you had any doubts: The Darkness 2 was a terrific example of what video game stories are capable of saying.
"There's a lot of speculation about what we're doing with the game not just story-wise and location-wise, but who our enemies are going to be," Carter said. Editors in the IGN office suspect the under-construction area in the image above would lend itself well to a vulcan refugee camp following the destruction of their homeworld in Abrams' first movie.
Miller clarified that the team is working hard to nail the aesthetic and vibe of the filmmaker's universe, and that "if you can draw those parallels, that's a homerun for us." Again, he looked toward E3 for specifics about villains, enemy forces, events, and that location, among others. Miller also alluded to additional platform announcements when asked about Vita and Wii-U.
"We are exploring right now all of our options to get on the platforms that make sense. It's early," he said. "Good thing we have a lot of time to figure that out, and over the next few months we'll be able to announce a few more things."
In the meantime, check out IGN's
target="_blank">initial impressions of Star Trek and keep that gameplay teaser above on loop.
Mitch Dyer is an Associate Editor for IGN's Xbox 360 team. He's also quite Canadian. Read his ramblings on Twitter and follow him on IGN.
©2012-04-17, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
"This has given us time to experiment and prototype instead of making quick decisions," Carter told IGN. With so much room to flex, last year's excellent E3 demo wasn't even a complete slice of the game. "That was still pretty early," said Carter. "It was more, like, to give you a feel. I'm not saying we wouldn't use some of the stuff that was in that, but that was the feel we were going for." With E3 2012 looming, "you're gonna see it for-real realized in a lot of different ways."
The new gameplay teaser below is an exciting sample of exactly that.
As Creative Director, Carter knows Star Trek will live and die not only by the strength of its mechanics, but its dedication to an established franchise as well. As it turns out, these two pieces go hand-in-hand, and embody a design philosophy that Digital Extremes and Paramount Pictures have seen eye to eye on since the start. Without cooperative gameplay that explores the relationship between Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, Star Trek just wouldn't work.
"If you take it back to day one when we started talking about making a game, and you break down what Star Trek is," said Brian Miller, Senior Vice President and Producer at Paramount Pictures, "it really is the story of Kirk and Spock, which is halves of the same whole."
To achieve this, the studios brought on Marianne Krawczyk, who wrote the God of War series, to consult with the film writers, establish a believable banter between characters, and flesh out an independent story that exists in the universe of JJ Abrams' films. The new creatures and worlds this Star Trek game brings to the universe had to fit, too.
"This thing, at its core, has to be a great game," Miller said. "Everybody knows the trouble movie-game tie-ins have, the problems most of those face, and why critics don't respond to them. We've been careful not to do that with this game."
Paramount and Digital Extremes afforded themselves enough time to ensure Star Trek gets done right.With such a strong focus on the personalities, there's a natural expectation to hear the appropriate voices for Kirk and Spock as well. When the inclusion of Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine came up in conversation, Miller pointed to E3 2012 for announcements.
He isn't exactly subtle about the importance of ensuring accuracy. After all, Paramount kicked "every asset from the film" over to the developer, including ship designs, facial scans and more. Once those pieces were in place, where was Digital Extremes to go with gameplay? What it's shown has been not only competent but impressive, interesting, and original.
Explosions and huge shootouts aren't exactly what Star Trek is all about, though, and this is something Digital Extremes takes to heart.
"The question that comes up a lot," Carter told IGN, "is, 'What's exploration like in Star Trek? What does it mean to seek out new alien worlds and technologies, and to relate to them in a way that's not just cover shooting?'"
This isn't something last year's proof-of-concept E3 presentation considered. While it conveyed a lot of information in a brief time, its focus was almost exclusively violence.
"That's something that's been on our minds right from the beginning," Carter said. "This is not just a game where you're going to run and gun and kill everyone."
Miller chimed in to agree, stating, "A lot of what Trek is, as Sheldon said, isn't just a run and gun. It's about exploring, and from a narrative we can explore that." Star Trek proves this by bringing action/adventure elements to its shooter landscape. It presents non-violent play, platforming, traversal, and collection goals to players to balance its action and drama.
The characters interact with the environments on a moment-to-moment basis in different ways during these scenes. Spock understands the environment, he's going to approach it with a very vulcan mind set, while Kirk has "improvisational skills we want to bring to the forefront, he's going to jump right in there" Carter explained.
He continued, "these characters kind of lead themselves. They react differently to different situations. Realizing that in gameplay is challenging, but it's also super fun."
Carter told IGN that The Darkness 2 was a guiding force with respect to its Star Trek development. The studio learned an immense amount about storytelling, pacing, narrative delivery, and "staying true to the characters" in a way that "absolutely, 100 percent" benefited its development of Star Trek.
This is reassuring, if you had any doubts: The Darkness 2 was a terrific example of what video game stories are capable of saying.
"There's a lot of speculation about what we're doing with the game not just story-wise and location-wise, but who our enemies are going to be," Carter said. Editors in the IGN office suspect the under-construction area in the image above would lend itself well to a vulcan refugee camp following the destruction of their homeworld in Abrams' first movie.
Miller clarified that the team is working hard to nail the aesthetic and vibe of the filmmaker's universe, and that "if you can draw those parallels, that's a homerun for us." Again, he looked toward E3 for specifics about villains, enemy forces, events, and that location, among others. Miller also alluded to additional platform announcements when asked about Vita and Wii-U.
"We are exploring right now all of our options to get on the platforms that make sense. It's early," he said. "Good thing we have a lot of time to figure that out, and over the next few months we'll be able to announce a few more things."
In the meantime, check out IGN's
target="_blank">initial impressions of Star Trek and keep that gameplay teaser above on loop.
Mitch Dyer is an Associate Editor for IGN's Xbox 360 team. He's also quite Canadian. Read his ramblings on Twitter and follow him on IGN.
©2012-04-17, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved