GDC: Star Trek Online Preview

Dana Massey is out in San Francisco this week taking in all the sights and soundbites of GDC. His first bit of news comes to us now with an update from Perpetual Entertainment about the upcoming Star Trek Online.

On the eve of the Game Developers Conference, Perpetual Entertainment hosted a mixer event at their San Francisco offices. At this event, the press were invited to tour the studio and get a close look at their star project Star Trek Online.

Currently in heavy pre-production, Star Trek Online has a small team of under forty people. At the event, Perpetual set up stations on around the office to display small aspects of the game. Unfortunately, they were not yet prepared to show us their client in action.

There were stations for character animation, environments, concept art and ship modeling. With the team pushing to produce their first land environment, it provided them with a chance to show us how they're able to innovate in places where the TV series had its hands tied. For example, all aliens in Star Trek tended to be humanoid since actors wearing prosthetics portrayed them. In a massively multiplayer 3D game, that is no longer an issue. The monster in the animation display was a massive, fat blue creature with spindly legs that would likely not be able to stand in real life. On the screen though, he looked great. The level of detail in this actual game model was impressive, especially the animation. It's no secret that their other project - Gods and Heroes - is known for animation and if the facial animations of this creature are any indication, STO only raises the bar.

The fat creature, combined with the concept art, reinforced recent comments from Executive Producer Daron Stinnett, who said that the game has moved towards a less photo-realistic style. The creatures were not quite "cartoony" in the World of Warcraft sense, but they definitely are stylized. For example, the Gorn was on display as concept art on the wall. It looked very little like the man in the rubber suit from the original series. In this game it's much more like a T-Rex in body armor. Even better, below it hung a concept of one of their ships, which will be a sight to behold.

Also in the concept art department, they had a wall of star ships. Among them was their take on the famous Enterprise. With the game set 20 years after Star Trek Nemesis, the company was able to take some liberties, rather than just a derivative ship. It was unmistakably the Enterprise. The Lead Concept Artist described it as more of a "bulldog pose". The ship excited the hardcore Star Trek fans in the room, and seemed to indicate a much more militant style. The ships all had more detail, more armor and more guns. Perpetual definitely has a more grown up vision of where Star Trek is headed.

Another key area showed off actual models of the ships. Again, the detail was spectacular. The detail rivals that off the upcoming EVE Online models. They did take some time to show us ships displayed through the client, unfortunately though, they were not actually flying around. In contrast to the monsters we saw, the ships seemed to be a bit more realistic. This contrast may be a problem for them down the line, but it's much too early to tell.

It remains far too early to get a handle on the direction of Star Trek Online, but it's clear that the team is getting its feet under itself, and has started to develop a firm idea of where they want to take the franchise. At this stage, that's all you can ask.

Dana

Join us over at Star Trek Online on WarCry to keep up to date on the progress of the game!

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