Admittedly I haven't always been a Star Trek fan. To that extent, I've only begun to explore the Star Trek final frontier in the last eight months. I find it amusing that something as non-direct as Cryptic licensing an intellectual property could actually introduce me to a new lifestyle. What's more, a lifestyle I’ve always been out of the loop about from within my circle of friends. I love Star Trek, but the biggest question I continue to ask myself is, "Will I love Star Trek Online?"

Sitting down with Craig Zinkievich at New York Comic Con, was a genuine pleasure. Even though we had spoken with Craig back in October, there was a lot of new, exciting stuff to go over; namely the character customization that was shown in a trailer at the Con, as well as the differentiation between space and ground combat. For the sake of structure, I'm going to start with character customization.

Before Craig got into the gritty details of how broad the customization can be, he once again confirmed the classes that would be available at launch. You'll be able to play a Klingon, Human, Vulcan, Andorian, Gorn, Orion and likely others not mentioned. I tried to trick him into saying Borg but saw right through me and made it clear that the Borg would not be playable at launch. However, he jokingly said that perhaps the Borg will be added as part of a live update. After telling us about the classes, he jumped into how players will be able to uniquely customize their respective races. To clarify, you'll likely be given a race template to select from, and then given free rein to create an unorthodox looking Klingon, or something I like to call, a Tamatopian, which is essentially an Andorian-Gorn mix.

To put that in perspective, you'll be able to mix any cosmetic feature from a race within the game, with another, to create your own. Moreover, Craig described body scaling and accessories like tails that weren't shown in the trailer. The possibilities are endless. There are games that brag about how unique everyone's character will look. From what we've seen, no one can touch what the Star Trek Online team has already accomplished in this area. As great as this sounds, the reality is that we've only seen a trailer. It remains to be seen if Cryptic can pull it off in the live game.

Moving along to gameplay, we wanted information about space and ground combat. We knew they were on the right track with character customization, but we asked if space combat would be traditional. "When we got the Star Trek license, we sat down and said 'Alright, what is Star Trek space combat?' It's not a dogfighter. Some games have really tried to take the Enterprise and make it do barrel rolls and such. That's not what Star Trek is about. Star Trek space combat is paced, strategic and positional. It's about transferring power from different sub systems, balancing your shields, getting to your enemies’ weakest side, knocking their shields down and hitting them with that photon barrage." said Craig.

What about ground combat though? From what we were told, ground combat is more face paced with more action. You beam down with five people no matter what. If you're soloing, you go down with four of the NPC bridge officers from your ship; whereas if you're teamed up you beam down with your friends and the remainder, if any, is filled with NPC crew members.

Everyone is a Captain and everyone pilots his or her own ship. The NPC bridge crew and bridge officers provide that extra spice to the ship. To individualize your character you get to pick a career that sounds like it will help you focus on learning certain skills. "It is a skill based game" said Craig before he continued, "The role that I play is really up to what I want to do that day. ... It all goes under that total customization. Not just cosmetically but the gameplay and who you want to be that day as well." Additionally, your crew has a lot to do with how you level your character. Craig told us that you actually recruit and customize your bridge officers. You customize their appearance, how they level up and become more efficient. These NPCs become a part of your character.
 
Craig made it clear that they've kept the traditional Star Trek universe in mind by saying "If you can't fly out to the middle of nowhere, find a star, beam down to a planet that no one else has seen before, explore that system and the planets around it, beam down and explore the ground, then we haven't done our job.". Of course that brings up the question about how it's possible to artificially create that much content.

We asked if the galaxies would be randomly generated, which was met with a smile and the phrase "procedurally generated". This is apparently a mix of randomly and manually created content. The Star Trek Online team has spent a considerable amount of developer time creating worlds to embody the "boldly go  where no man has gone before" feel that is the very essence of Star Trek. From what we were told, players will be able to explore new planets they come across, most of which will be solely for the sake of exploration. However, players will also randomly encounter planets that have "full episodes" of quests and story.

When it came time to ask about something that hasn’t been mentioned before, we got the scoop on PvP which they've recently added and is already extremely functional, not to mention enjoyable. PvP will be a monumental part of the overall game and they're currently testing it internally with six to eight personal battles. While PvP was to be expected at launch, it's nice to know that it’s a focus this early on. After all, what would Star Trek Online be without PvP?

Unfortunately Cryptic isn't quite ready to start talking about ship customization yet. But they mentioned that they would be within the next month or two. With a little touch of what they've already done, the ship creator will be unique, like their character creation tools.

In our final question we asked about the possibility of a 2010 launch. Craig smiled and said that it'll be sooner then you think. He then went on to say that it will be after the release of Champions Online, expected summer of this year. Could that mean that the possibility of a Christmas 2009 rollout of Star Trek Online is not out of the question? I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.

Andrew "Tamat" Beegle
Editor-in-Chief
Allakhazam.com