Star Trek: Resurgence – not an action game (Picture: Bruner House)
A reader offers their review of the new Star Trek game and is pleased to find it values Telltale style moral decisions over combat.
Star Trek and gaming have been odd bedfellows, except for a small handful of interactive games in the late 1990s nearly every studio has focused on the combat of the series above all else, which was never its focus and failed to capture the spirit of the series and why many people hold it in high regard.
And then a new game comes along, from a relatively small studio, and manages to deliver a new interactive storytelling experience that delivers that feeling of exploration and wonder. Not a flawless gaming example, but one that really understands and captures the tone of what made Star Trek so appealing.
Resurgence is a modern day interactive, choose your own adventure style of game. It’s developed by former Telltale developers and that shines through in its structure and design. There are action elements but fundamentally this is a choice and narrative driven experience, requiring you to guide and shape the story, while always leaving you with a sense that your choices matter. Certain character fates or outcomes are almost entirely in your hands and that is a powerful and emotive feeling, to fully buy into your decisions having weight and purpose.
The game is set in the post-Next Generation period and although some knowledge of the series is beneficial, and adds a deeper meaning to certain decisions and actions, it does not curtail or restrict your understanding.
It has a real authentic look and feel to its style, uniforms, ships, and character designs, that feel authentic to the series. The musical score has familiar beats and melodies, it feels inspired in several parts without ever directly reusing more iconic and identifiable themes from the show. It is its own creation but certainly in the style of the series as a whole.
The game mechanics do feel a little buggy in places, it is certainly not the epitome of game design. Certain aspects, such as the scanning and discovery, just feel a little unpolished or unrefined, requiring a great deal of perseverance to find clues hidden in open rooms. Combat, for what It is, feels a little random and rough around the edges, often relying on luck over skill.
Some of the more technical faults also become more pronounced the longer you play, with musical themes and achievements not loading in time or at the proper moment and voice quality occasionally a little muffled. All things that can be addressed but that do not impact on your enjoyment of the experience.
The heart and soul of this game is the crew under your command and the bonds you forge over the modest time you spend together. They are a unique and memorable band of officers and enlisted crew; I genuinely came away longing to go back and spend more time with them.
Star Trek: Resurgence – there is a bit of action (pic: Bruner House)
You come away feeling you’ve only just begun to scratch beneath the surface of these characters, a sign of a creative team that understand how to craft memorable and authentic characters to interact with. What makes Star Trek an enduring success after 60 years is the human condition and how these disparate individuals come together in duress, to save the galaxy against an overwhelming threat.
You do feel your choices matter or, to be precise, the outcome is forged and shaped by the decisions you make. The broad beats will always be the same but how and why certain characters arrive at their final destinations do feel remarkably like they are a consequence of your actions and choices throughout the game.
There are no paragon or renegade hints or tips to suggest a course of action, it comes down to a gut instinct and what you feel to be right in the moment or in the bigger picture. And that is in keeping with what makes Star Trek so memorable.
Although there are a finite number of decisions and paths that can be followed the story does feel more personalised because of that freedom to make decisions and live with the consequences. It makes outcomes feel more weighted and personalised, and in turn increases the immersion in the experience. This allows you to reflect upon your decisions in contrast to other players.
Here, it was fascinating to see certain choices were common, others less popular. It perhaps restricts the option for additional stories with this particular crew but that does leave you with a slightly bittersweet feeling, it was such a great cast and performance you do want to step back into this setting with these people.
It leaves you to speculate on what could have been, the road less travelled. But delivers this in a way that feels authentic to the spirit of the series. A crew sometimes at odds with each other but coming together and focusing on exploration and discovery over combat and warfare.
There were a glut of Star Trek games released that focused entirely on blowing things up and they didn’t really do particularly well. Here, instead, the focus is on an interactive communal adventure in the final frontier, and they manage to deliver that with merit from a narrative based perspective. There are technical issues, but this is a really positive example of what can be achieved with a little belief for and respect towards this series.
By reader comfortablyadv (Twitch/Facebook/Instagram/Twitter)
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A reader offers their review of the new Star Trek game and is pleased to find it values Telltale style moral decisions over combat.
