Today the back-story for upcoming Star Trek Online MMORPG to a big leap in syncronicity with the Star Trek movie and Countdown comics. We have the latest ‘Path to 2407’ below, along with some new screenshots and more from STO. And that is not the only gaming news, we also have the first gameplay videos from Star Trek D-A-C, the download arcade shooter coming out in May.
Star Trek Online ties into Star Trek movie and Countdown prequel
Over the last few months Cryptic has been telling the story between the end of of Star Trek Nemesis (2379) and the beginning of the setting for the game in 2409. Today they put up the entry for 2387, which is the same year as the the setting for the "Star Trek Countdown" comic prequel to the Star Trek movie. And in a nice bit of synchronicity, the backstory for the game has incorporated those events. Here it is [note it contains movie and comic spoilers]
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Path to 2409: 2387 (via startrekonline.com)
The Daystrom Institute has announced the successful launch of the "Jellyfish," an experimental spacecraft equipped with trans-metaphasic shielding designed to withstand conditions that would destroy most other ships.
Designed by famed engineer Geordi La Forge, the ship is slated for extensive testing before it can be used for scientific and exploration missions. Starfleet is working with La Forge and the institute to determine which of the ship’s systems can be adapted for Federation use.
Starfleet Intelligence recommends that the Federation keep a close eye on activities of the Orion Syndicate. A multi-year crackdown on criminal activity in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants has been successful in curbing the threat of the Syndicate for Federation citizens, but on Stardate 64163.8 Hassan the Undying assassinates top Syndicate boss Raimus on Farius Prime.
Raimus’s death opens the door for Hassan’s employer, Melani D’ian, to take over Raimus’s Syndicate operations. Starfleet Intelligence estimates that Melani D’ian now controls as much as 30 percent of the Syndicate’s operations, and that other Syndicate bosses may seek to topple her before she seeks to expand her powerbase even more. Analysts note that Melani D’ian is the first Orion to rise to a top spot in Syndicate leadership in more than 20 years, and speculate that this could mark the return of the Orions as an interstellar power.
On Ferenginar, social and economic reforms pushed by Grand Nagus Rom are a topic almost as important as the stock market. The Nagus presents a bill to the Economic Congress of Ferengi Advisers that would formally ally the Ferengi with the Federation. Opponents of the bill launch a campaign of advertisements that argue that a formal alliance with the Federation is an attack on traditional Ferengi values, and that the Federation would force the Ferengi to turn their backs on profit and the Great Material Continuum. The bill fails to pass the Congress after several lawmakers are paid to vote against it.
On Stardate 64317.6, Klingon long range sensors pick up a small Romulan fleet led by Sela. The fleet passes the Beta Stromgrem supernova remnant and continues into unexplored space.
Starfleet sends a fleet to Cardassia Prime to assist the Cardassians with the dismantling of their military, a process which is expected to take several years. The Cardassians plan to use a much smaller self defense force to patrol their space, and coordinate with Starfleet for issues outside of their borders.
This arrangement is soon tested when Alpha Jem’Hadar take control of Devos II, which has been mostly unpopulated since the Dominion War. The Jem’Hadar establish a base of operations near a former Dominion ketracel-white storage facility, and then expand the facility so they can manufacture their own supplies of the substance. Starfleet sends the USS Stargazer-A to the Devos system as a precautionary measure, but chooses to take no additional action as long as the Alpha Jem’Hadar make no further aggressive moves.
On Stardate 64333.4, a Romulan Mining Guild ship observes the start of a chain of events that will forever change the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. The star in the Hobus system, in the far reaches of Romulan space, begins to exhibit massive fluxuations of radiation. Days later, Ambassador Spock of the Federation appears before the Romulan Senate to warn them about the dangers of this star.
Spock believes that if the Hobus star goes supernova, it could create a reaction that would threaten much of the Romulan Empire, and he asks the Senate to coordinate with Vulcan to find a solution. After a lengthy debate, the Senate rejects Spock’s plan.
After the close of the Senate’s session, Donatra accepts an invitation from Colonel Xiomek to visit Crateris and inspect the construction of the new Reman colony. Their path allows them to perform a sensor sweep of the Hobus system.
After arriving on Crateris, Donatra and Xiomek spend several hours in a private meeting, where it is believed that Xiomek gives Donatra information about possible rogue elements within the Romulan military and government. Donatra decides to return to Romulus earlier than planned, and invites Xiomek to take passage on her ship, the IRW Valdore, so he can be in Ki Baratan for the next meeting of the Romulan Senate.
On the way back to Romulus, Donatra contacts Admiral Taris, who is in the Levaeri system, and orders her to return to Romulus. The message is recorded by Romulan military communications relay stations, but Taris does not change course. A later review finds that there is no evidence of the message in the computer banks of Taris’s ship, and that the communications officer who would have been on duty during that time cannot be found.
Ambassador Spock returns to Vulcan, where he meets with Ambassador Jean-Luc Picard. The two appeal to the Vulcan Science Academy to assist the Romulans with the crisis in the Hobus system, but the academy declines their request without comment. The two former Starfleet officers decide that they will make their own plans to deal with the situation.
On Stardate 64444.5, the IRW Valdore reports unusual stellar activity, including a disturbance equivalent to a force seven ion storm. Romulus loses contact with Donatra’s ship, and dispatches four D’deridex class warbirds to search for the Valdore.
The Romulan Senate finally authorizes an evacuation order, and ships are recalled to help ferry Romulus residents off-world. Military estimates are that it will take a minimum of six weeks to evacuate the homeworld.
Twenty-seven hours later, the Hobus star goes supernova. The resulting chain reaction destroys Romulus and Remus. Billions of Romulans are killed.
Starfleet immediately orders all available ships to cross the Neutral Zone and assist the Romulans with any possible relief and recovery efforts. Several of these ships are attacked by Nero, who is captaining the Narada, a heavily modified Romulan vessel. Additional cruisers are diverted to escort relief vessels to Romulan space.
Intercepted Romulan transmissions indicate that Praetor Chulan and the leaders of the Senate escaped Romulus before the planet’s destruction. But the USS Nobel, en route to Romulus, find the bodies of Chulan and the Senate’s ruling council floating in space near their derelict shuttle.
After Nero expands his attacks to Klingon ships, Chancellor Martok orders a fleet to enter Romulan space. He appoints his friend Worf as one of the mission’s commanders, giving him the rank of General for the mission.
Meanwhile, Geordi La Forge brings the Jellyfish to Vulcan and agrees to allow Spock to pilot it to the Hobus system.
According to sensor reports recorded on Stardate 64471.6 by the USS Enterprise-E, the Hobus supernova was contained by a limited singularity, ending the threat to the quadrant. Starfleet believes that both the Jellyfish and the Narada were lost.
"He sacrificed himself to save us all," Ambassador Picard says of his friend Spock. "May his soul live long and prosper."
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More STO News – Screenshots and Beta Key
Gaming blog Kotaku.com has three exclusive screenshots of Star Trek Online. Two of the screenshots are spaced based and one is land based. The land based screenshot is of a forested planet. One of the spaced based screenshots is of a Federation ship in flight while the other is of space combat.
Click images to see enlarged at Kotaku
Comic Creation, Win a Beta Key
Cryptic has announced that they are running a contest, the reward being a desired spot in the beta. Interested individuals will submit a three panel comic based on the Star Trek Universe. Not only will the winner of the contest win a guaranteed spot in the beta but they will also have their artwork posted on startrekonline.com!
Contest Rules Can Be Viewed On the following Link: startrekonline.com/contest/comic
For those who may not be familiar with MMORPG’s (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game) the beta is a version of the game that comes out before the official release. As a beta player/tester you will be able to experience parts of the game before its release.
Star Trek D-A-C Gameplay video
In other gaming news, GameTrailer.com has three gameplay trailers for Star Trek D-A-C, the $10 Download arcade shooter inspired by the Star Trek movie.
The Jellyfish…
Fascinating.
DAC Deathmatch looks like asteriods….. WTF?
So the game will continue in the “Prime” universe, while the movies continue in the “Alternate” (“Subprime”?) universe. Seems a reasonable approach.
Whoops, I mean fourth :D
Anyway, kewl stuff
I never understood how this supernova thing could work. So, the Hobus star went nova – did that cause the Romulan star to go nova as well? Or was it just the shockwave from Hobus that hit Romulus (which wouldn’t make sense, as the Enterprise and Spock were able to stop the nova, not the shockwave).
Very pleased with STO’s approach to the time-wibblyness.
#5 I’m led to believe that Hobus was no ordinary supernova, if it could even be described as a supernova at all. If left unchecked, it would have gobbled up most of the Alpha quadrant in just a few years. Not a chain reaction of stars, just one big whoomph.
Trans-metaphasic shielding. Sweet!
#3- Randy : Going by the early toy listings (specifically for Spock) the Universes are “Prime” and “Alpha”-
(I wonder if this is covered in the movie so that we can have some consensus…)
Yeah, looks like a modern version of asteroids with a star trek skin, no way worth $10, $5 at most. I’m surprised theyre not making a real game out of the movie, like they do with pretty much any movie these days.
DAC doesn’t really look very good. It’s a shame. I would have rather had something like Star Trek Legacy for Xbox 360. That was a great game!
On Ferenginar, social and economic reforms pushed by Grand Nagus Rom are a topic almost as important as the stock market. The Nagus presents a bill to the Economic Congress of Ferengi Advisers…
When will the world recognize that great Star Trek isn’t about these Phantom Menace-style administrative proceedings?
This DAC looks like a joke. I would rather take the 1997 Star Trek Starfleet Academy port for Xbox for this money.
DAC looks like Star Trek: Encounters for the PS2 and that was horrid. At least this continues the legacy of horrible Star Trek games. At least we have movie mods for Bridge Commander emerging.
Star Trek D.A.C. kind of reminds me of that old online multiplayer PC game called Subspace.
I find it hard to get annoyed by DAC’s simplicity. I respect the fact that they didn’t have three years to work on it and come out with a new Bridge Commander. They understood their limits. I also respect that they aren’t trying to make it seem more than it is. They’re not calling it a herald of a new gaming paradigm, they’re fully acknowledging that it’s just a fun thing you can play with. I like honesty.
I’m still in disbelief that Romulus is destroyed, that’s a very ballsy thing to do for Star Trek, to essentially eliminate a whole race. Very Cool! I’d like to see a series that explores this time frame.
I think it’d be really cool if someone made a Star Trek game that played like Mass Effect with the action, dialog and exploration all wrapped up in a sick little story with a side of awesome graphics. and to be able to walk through the corridors of the Enterprise while between missions. I like this idea, it’s excitin’!
in addition to my previous post: that would be a game based on the new movie with kirk and spock as playable characters.
“On Ferenginar, social and economic reforms pushed by Grand Nagus Rom are a topic almost as important as the stock market. The Nagus presents a bill to the Economic Congress of Ferengi Advisers…
When will the world recognize that great Star Trek isn’t about these Phantom Menace-style administrative proceedings?”
Some time after you remember that you are talking about the Ferengi?
Non-canon
@18
That is exactly what has to be done!
I LOVE Mass Effect, it’s the perfect structure for a Star Trek game- I would only wish that they would add space battles as exciting as if you were in Star Trek II
Looks like a lot of fun. Why does every game have to be a big deal?
Looks like that HORRIBLE HORRIBLE Star Trek Encounters that came out before Legacy. Ill try it but yeeouch!
@15
Same thing I was thinking. Love playing that game back in the late 90s (and still play today). Now if only they’d do DAC for the computer and allowed modding I’d play. And for anyone who played subspace it’s still around and kicking, its just called ‘Continuum’ now.
@17: “a very ballsy thing to do for Star Trek, to essentially eliminate a whole race”
The Romulan race wasn’t eliminated, just its homeworld. One of the best arguments for setting up interstellar colonies (or empires, like the Romulans) is that if some disaster hits the home system, the species will live on. In other words, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
It is pretty ballsy, though, and even though the Romulans live on, I wouldn’t be surprised if the loss of the homeworld had such a huge impact, that what’s left of the Romulan Star Empire collapses or is conquered in a few years
Star Trek as a “Mass Effect” style game would be awesome, but more would need to be done to the space combat system to make space battle Trek-like.
If anyone remembers the old 25th Anniversary Star Trek PC game, and it’s follow-up, Judgement Rites, those games were a lot of fun because you got to beam down and explore too, kind of old-school Kings Quest/Space Quest style. I miss those kinds of games.
#27 – Here here, I too wish that would come out with a more adventure-based game. Just imagine an “open galaxy” exploration game based on Star Trek” … That would kick ass!
Ohmanohmanohman I can’t wait for STO!
These “Path to xxxx” things are way too long… ugh. I can’t be bothered to read something that long which isn’t actual canon
I think I worked out what DAC stands for. Does Anyone Care.
What a pile of crap. Total waste of time and a perfectly good licence. I would rather play Legacy with all its bugs than DAC.
I find it funny that all you guys say this and haven’t actually played the game.
It’s $10. That is POCKET CHANGE compared to $60 fully featured video games. Get over yourselves.
DAC will be fun guys, lets quit the worrying :P
#26 I said “essentially” eliminated, but you make a very good point.
Is this “All Good Things..” slowly becoming a reality??? Of course there were some differences, but the Romulan Empire was taken over by the Klingons in that episode.
#3. Randy H.
Who’s to say that we don’t find ourselves at the end of the movie with the timeline restored?
So this does connect in with the movie!
To those who have seen the movie: If I remember correctly, doesn’t “The Daystrom Institute has announced the successful launch of the ‘Jellyfish'” conflict with the origin of the Jellyfish as described in the movie. A simple answer will suffice, so as not to spoil anything here.
Roberto Orci told me to “Wait for the novelisation” to find out how the Hobus star had the affect it did. Why?
It seems to me that the comic prequel was given very little thought. Not wanting to step on Alan Dean Foster’s toes in clearing this scientific void up, the STO writers gloss over it in the same manner as the comics. Irritating.
I want something resembling plausible exposition as to what makes the Hobus supernova an immediate threat to the galaxy.
Something nice and complex, with words like subspace, and gravimetric… Come on! I’m a TNG fan! I lap this stuff up!
(I am deadly serious. Mock me all you want, Technobabble is the shizz.)
Oh shag it, I’ll do it for you.
The Hobus Star’s unique composition, a core of decalithium in a state of plasma, gives it unique subspace properties. A sort of quantum entanglement occurs within the star’s gravity well. As the energy released by the star increased, it became linked, on a quantum level, to other stars of similar masses, due to their concurrent gravimetric displacements.
As the supernova progressed, the Plasma-decalithium core’s change in pressure tore open a fissure in subspace. Any gravity well entangled with the Hobus star would experience massive spatial disruption as these effects were propagated.
The energy required to entangle a similar gravity well increases with distance, so stars closer to the Hobus star, such as Romula, suffered the brunt of these effects first, but without intervention to contain the nova, eventually all G-type, main sequence stars were at risk, throughout the universe.
The sympathetic stresses at the heart of these stars lead to a severe, and unpredictable risk of local nova.
Locally, that put the majority of the active powers of the alpha and beta quadrants in jeopardy, including Sol.
Fortunately, the only populated system to suffer a nova was the Romulus system, though 13 stars in the region went nova in the 56 hours between Nova and Singularity.
By introducing Refined Enhanced Decalithium, or “Red” matter, into the heart of the nova, a “Unique singularity”, a space time disruption similar to a black hole, but operating in three of our four dimensions (length, breadth, and time), as well as several other dimensions outside our perception, was created.
This effectively “patched” the ruptured spacetime at the heart of the supernova with a spacetime imprint from a different point on the 4th dimension, while consuming the decalithium feulling the growth of the explosion.
The exotic properties of the singularity would destabilise after several hours, and the phenomenon would collapse into a standard black hole.
How’s that?
@34: “Is this “All Good Things..” slowly becoming a reality??? ”
They’re pretty smart, those Q!
Why is Star Fleet fighting the Vorlons??? Those don’t look Like Romulan ships!!
Did anyone else notice that the videos seem to finally explain the meaning of D-A-C? Or was this revealed already and I missed it?
Mass Effect is pretty wonderful and it’s already pretty close to a “Star Trek” like experience.
D-A-C looks very (very) pretty in that “modernized version of Combat for the Atari 2600” kind of way. Maybe this is the kind of game that Khan played, which is what gave him that two-dimensional thinking :)
#40: Good question. And now, combining that with the above, I’m picturing Captain Kirk standing on the bridge screaming “Kossssssh!”
oh god this is suck game!
You could’ve warned me. I read the word ‘Sela’ and immediately fell unconscious. Banged my head and everything.
Honestly, I wish someone at Paramount would first remove Denise Crosby from canon – entirely – and then re-release all Trek that she appeared in, sans her appearances. Maybe digitally superimpose a rotting turkey over her face or something! I got really, really sick of hearing her cry about her upbringing.
#45: Denise Crosby never cried about her upbringing on the show; it’s usually best not to conflate real-world human beings with fictional characters.
I’d accept all this as Canon. It should be..it’s very well written.
#38 – Nicely done! We’ve had to do this sort of “retro-explanation” ever since TOS Season #1. TNG and its progeny did things a little better in that regard, but what you said works for me!
This is an amazing backstory for the movie, I like it!
#46
True,
but I was right about the rotting turkey. It’d be more compelling anyway.