Developer Log - Stardate: 23763.1
As our Admiral Maldonado said in Dev Log #2, this game is about "telling your own Star Trek story", with every word of that sentence being equally meaningful;
It needs to be a story, it needs to be a Star Trek story, but it also needs to be your own.
The canon
Star Trek and the particular era we chose to base ourselves in is brimming with rich material, many stories already told, small and large, it has been studied, memorized, dissected and analyzed by one of the most intensively passionate audiences in pop culture, and Star Trek now encompasses multiple generations of audiences.
We've all (the fandom at large) discussed what is canon, where canon contradicts itself, what is not up to the quality of the canon, and similar topics, we've reinterpreted rationalized and theorized how to make it all make sense and be as coherent as a work of so many different authors can be.
This sets up a challenge with high expectations on us and also everyone will want to see that episode they love be somehow represented in our game.
The canon gives us a great starting point, the known characters and political stage and their relationships, something that adds meaning to the events that will unfold from the point the player takes charge, but from then on, the story must be told by the players.
The Themes
Some stories we referenced explicitly, repeating specific events seen in the shows, others are more like Easter egg subtle references, where people will be trying to remember what episode was that from, but we couldn't just lift episode by episode all the happenings of the quadrants.
We needed to tell our own stories while making sure they fit the universe and feel authentic.
To achieve this, it was important to understand what Star Trek is about. You might think that having so many different shows, movies, authors and fans this would vary wildly and make it hard to pinpoint, even when focusing just on the 1990’s shows, but it’s not.
Star Trek is about exploring all aspects of the human condition and learning to understand and live with one another no matter how different we are or if we used to be enemies. It’s all about empathy, both when it succeeds and when it fails.
Another key aspect of Trek is always looking at how things can improve, even when telling its darkest stories. The world and our lives can be made better through empathy, we can get there, so it’s also fundamentally about hope.
Your Story
There are many ways to tell a story in a strategy game. The most obvious of them are the narrative events, but it goes beyond just a text in a popup. Because we know who the four powers are, the event may mean something different for each of them, and when you make a choice (if you don't look only at the mechanic rewards), you are telling a story about who the power you are playing really is.
This philosophy was extended to all possible interactions between story and player action. When we set out to design the four playable factions, we didn't start by "what would be fun? what would be powerful?", we started with "who are these people? what do they believe in?" and their mechanics and traits flowed from there almost naturally.
For the Mission trees we asked ourselves “what are the significant history pivotal points?”? And what happened in-between? How can we fill the story gaps with beats fitting who they are and what player actions would tell those stories? It’s not enough to have the right text in the mission node; the player must live that story.
Additionally, it won’t be your story if you can’t make a few choices and possibly change the very identity of the character you are playing. We went back to the canon and looked into what-if possibilities, the alternate paths that were always there in the stories told by the franchise. What if the Federation failed to uphold its own values? What if the House of Duras took over the Klingon Empire? How would that affect the lore we know of this universe?
This is how the story becomes yours. While some things are destined to happen, like invasions from the other side of the galaxy, your choices about who you are, the actions you take and what that means within this world will tell more stories than we can write.
I hope you tell good ones, and I look forward to you sharing them with the community.
Andres Chamarra,
Technical Director and honorary Loremaster.