This week Cryptic went all the way to Germany to show off their upcoming MMORPG, Star Trek Online. While there they showed off a promotional video of the game showing space and ground footage. Video shot off screen from that is now online, check it out below. Interestingly. the famed (and legally controversial) Guardian of Forever is featured in the video.
Star Trek Online Gamescom Off Screen Footage
This video from 1up.com was shot at the GamesCom trade fair in Cologne, Germany taking place this week. You can hear Star Trek Online producer Craig Zinkievich speaking, describing the game.
The footage show above is not the same in-game live demo that was shown last week at the Las Vegas convention (see TrekMovie report on that). Zinkievich recently tweeted that he was going to be showing a demo to the press at the con ‘in a locked room, behind closed doors’, which will likely have the same restrictions as Las Vegas with no video allowed. Craig has also been tweeting a series of photos with his ‘companion’ as they journey to Germany, here is a composite. The final image appears to show the smaller monitor in the ‘behind closed doors’ room where Craig will be demoing the game.
Zinkievich and Spock travel to Germany to show off Star Trek Online
Harlan Alert!
The footage above clearly shows that the Guardian of Forever is currently in the Star Trek Online game. The Guardian originally appeared in the TOS episode “City on the Edge of Forever” and Harlan Ellison, the writer for that episode, is currently suing CBS/Paramount over licensing rights related to the Guardian.
Harlan’s Guardian makes it into the 25th century
Looks like they need to pay Harlan Ellison for the G of F!
Oh, boy. The Guardian of Forever.
Fans, wave goodbye to the Guardian of Forever for he is never coming back. This is going to be one of those things that will not be in the final product.
It’s a nice idea to include both space and ground combat, but honestly: Bridge Commander and SFC3 and Elite Force 2 and all that stuff is several years old and still looks better than that!
I think, for an MMO the graphics are great!
Honestly, I am excited, it looks good!
Meh, I couldn’t stand the interface for the Starfleet Command starship combat sims, and Bridge Commander was even worse.
The best was the Star Trek: Starfleet Academy game. Full 360 starship movement, bridge station access, plus acting and plot. Yea… they should have checked that out.
This looks amazing! The attention to detail, the multi-level play, this is the Trek game we’ve been waiting for!
The ground combat looks awful surely they can do better than that?
Looks fun. But is it just going to be dogfights and shoot em up? Doesnt look there’s any interesting story.
I want to do the picard maneuver on a romulan!!
Guardian of Forever AND the Enterprise-D? Nice!
Star Trek Online looks DAMNED GOOD!!!!
I can tell already that, much like with Bridge Commander, if I were to play this it wouldn’t take more than a minute before the shrill sound of phasers drove me absolutely insane. That really is such a grating sound after only a few seconds of it looping.
I’m certain the graphics will get better the closer we get to the launch date, remember it is not coming out til next year, plenty of time to still tweak the looks of the game.
Hope this works, I’ll try it, but I’m not so wow about it as I was the original concept of the game.
CynicalTrekkie, why didn’t you like the Starfleet Command interface?
I’ve played every starship combat sim out there and I’ve found the 2-d starfleet command layout much more intuitive than even the bridge commander interface.
Not to say the bridge commander layout wasn’t very well done, but it just didn’t give you the level of control over the ship that you’d want in a game like that or the space portion of Star Trek Online from the looks of it.
Actually, that footage shows more 3d combat than starfleet command ever had, so it is closer to bridge commander. Didn’t show any type of UI layout, though, so who knows how much of the ship you get to control?
As for depth of graphics, with as much going on in those scenes, and with as many different rigs that people are going to try to run this game on, I’m actually pretty impressed. Perhaps my intel dual core w/ nividia geforce 9300m gs laptop WILL be able to run it when it comes out a year or so from now…
5:
I don’t know why the trend towards actual footage of actors in video games went south, just as the technology was making it easier to load and integrate such footage…
I loved the use of that in ST games of the Nineties (Starfleet Academy, which you mentioned, along with Star Trek: Klingon and Star Trek: Borg), but games in general are all mo-capped and rendered now instead. :/
Eh, I’m not too impressed. I doubt it’s gonna do that well. Even the most hard core trekkie wont play a game for too long that sucks. Look at Legacy, epic failure of a game. Even the fact that it had all of the voices of the captains couldnt save it. As for STO, I dont think it has to be as good as WOW, but it would be nice for it to be at least solid and hold up as a game, not just as the fact its Star Trek.
Just square off the edges and call it the ‘Sentinel of Eternity’.
Im no legal eagle so someone please explain to me why Harlan Ellison thinks he has rights to something he was paid to do (work for hire). Why doesnt the person who wrote the first Klingon script lay claim to Klingons, etc etc. Does David Gerrold own the Tribbles?
Does Orci own Nero and Red matter? No! The Angry Klingon is right. Why is Ellison in such a snit over this?
@5: Starfleet Academy? You mean the game with the hundred-meter long starships that handled like TIE Fighters?
Give me SFC any day.
I’ve never tried an MMO; I may have to take the plunge for Trek’s sake :D
Who’s doing the music for ST Online, just out of curiosity?
Almost forgot:
Dear Mr. Ellison,
Take deep, cleansing breaths, and step away from your lawsuit-o-matic. Go drink some herbal tea or something.
So far it looks manly like a combat simulation game. So what? I hope there is more to it than that. Trek is much more than simply space combat. Will their be an exploration component? Diplomacy? First contacts? Mysteries to solve?
I dunno. Looks like the combat model suffers from the same issues as any game that strictly adheres to TNG / DS9 / VOY, namely that it’s boring, and involves little to no strategy, aside from shoot until one of you dies. Slow ships with generic omni-directional weapons don’t really lend themselves to sophisticated tactics, imho.
Diplomacy doesn’t sell games. Ever watch the WoW trailers? They don’t focus on quests!
I saw an Intrepid class! Wahoo!
I saw the Prometheus in there. I wonder if they included the Multi-Vector Assault Mode?
I can’t wait for this damned game!! It looks right on so far imo!
Ever since Tabula Rasa was destroyed I’ve been dying to find an mmo that I like enough to pay for.
#21 they have a whole procedural generation “Genesis” system of exploration. They haven’t gone into it too much, but it has been said to have diplomacy, science, research, and of course exploration components.
#25 no MVAM, too much weird stuff to work out game mechanics wise (what happens to the player if one part of the MVAM gets destroyed?)
I saw the demo in the LV ST con as well. This version was really sped up in parts. Space combat is much more tactical than was shown in some parts. Ground combat could use some work and hopefully they keep tweaking their cover system so it is useful, but the action on the ground does look fun.
Combat is something that Cryptic does, and does well. I bet they are releasing the combat stuff first because it is more polished than the other aspects, and more exciting. MMOs naturally evolve, that’s the beauty of MMOs. Hopefully Cryptic knows to include diplomacy and player directed content like player made structures/starbases and has some nice crafting of your ship like Geordi and Scotty would do it. If they can figure that out, we have a quite a game to play…
look at 4:23
how can THAT ship be there?
#28 It’s just a game, and one that’s in alpha at that. Do you really think that’ll be in there once it goes live? However if you need an explaination right now how’s this:
In one of the recent game magazine articles it mentioned that you and your ship go back in time via the ‘Guardian of Forever’ to the 23rd Century. Maybe the Enterprise-D came forward in time via the same means.
Of course it won’t happen because the Ent-D appearing in that trailer was clearly some dev just having a laugh.
Can’t believe some of the nitpickers in here!
The game isn’t ready yet its merely a preview to give people/fans a glimpse of an MMO Called Star Trek Online. Fans moan cos they weren’t getting enough screenshots or in-game footage. Now when Cryptic show some EARLY footage of a game in development they get shot down cos it doesn’t look good/needs work! At least they’re showing us something! Which is more than Perpetual ever did. (other than some concept art and 2 or 3 screenshots)
When STO finally does get released i doubt it will be perfect, but when WOW was released either was that. However Blizzard to thier credit has continued to put in loads of updates/patches to iron out the kinks and are still doing it, more than 3yrs since the game was released! Hopefully Cryptic show the same commitment.
The fans who have been following the game since it was acquired from Perpetual should be aware that Cryptic are creating a huge amount of backstory for the game so that they actually have a decent scenario in which to set quests for. They’ve even incorporated events depicted in the ‘Countdown’ Comics just to keep the canon/continuity freaks at bay (although that wont work no matter what you do)
I agree with what an earlier poster said that when WOW was being shown off in video form there was rarely any details given/shown about quests, most the vids were of action (as were the screenshots)
As for the ground/space combat, as MMO’s go i think it looks good. Its never gonna be like Elite force 2/Bridge commander because they aint MMO’s. They were developed around a different framework.
If you aren’t sure about the game at least download the free trial or something and go into it with an open mind. Give it a chance and maybe we can all have a Star Trek game that we can be proud of.
:)
love it !
looks pretty good so far.
the graphic is really cool, much better than the most other mmorpgs !
Said it once, say it again….Second Life and United Federation Starfleet is STILL the best Star Trek MMORPG out there. 100% customizable and you get to play exactly as you want, and totally free.
http://www.ufstarfleet.org/page.php?28
http://www.secondlife.com
http://www.ufstarfleet.org
Enjoy!
The only class you can play is captain? How boring is that?
And .. space combat, big deal .. only cool things are the background pictures of space.
I’m getting more and more the feeling that it won’t even be worth taking a look at, when it comes out, because of its limitations.
#17 sez “Im no legal eagle so someone please explain to me why Harlan Ellison thinks he has rights to something he was paid to do (work for hire).”
The writer has to explicitly sign authorship away, or it wasn’t signed away. Also, don’t confuse the specific legal concept of “work for hire” with the more general real-world concept of being hired to do work. The words sound similar but it’s night and day.
Ellison’s claim is about ink on paper, period. If he’s proceeding forward, it means he or his counsel sees the ink on paper that they feel they need to see. It isn’t about abstracts, it’s about what’s actually on the page, whether in (A) Ellison’s registration documents (B) Ellison’s contract or (C) some other relevant documents we don’t hear as much about. Ink on paper, and (if need be) a court’s interpretation of same.
If ellison’s bunk claims are validated in court, every writer of any episode on this show are any other can claim ownership of any characters or items they introduced in their script. Ridiculous.
I’m sure that Ellisaon didn;t design the look of the time portal, and the idea of a time portal is not his exclusively.
He’s a creative jerk.
#34 – I have to agree, this notion that “everyone wants to be a captain” is completely false. Growing up, I wanted to be the Doctor. Later, I wanted to be the Engineer. Not everyone wants to just bark orders…. the fact that they missed this doesn’t speak well for the rest of the game… what other assumptions have they made? But, I’m still cautiously optimistic.
I realize it easily couid be the editing of the video that is primarily responsible for this reaction, but as much as I like space battles they ain’t the true stuff of which TREK is made. Seeing an endless barrage of ships shooting at each other cheapens TREK, IMHO.
But on top of that – toward the end there’s a Romulan Warbird being circled and is subsequently destroyed in a blitheringly inadequate explosion. Really? We can create 3D explosions (or some reasonable FX to match) and NOT make them look like a quantum singularity drive is going up? Uff…
TREK has become more than what has been presented as entertainment on our television and movie theater screens (canon). I am in firm agreement with #21. It’s STAR TREK: ONLINE. No ‘BATTLE” in there, no ‘WARS’, no ‘INSURRECTION” (*shudder*)…
@ #5
Are you kidding me? Star Trek Bridge Commander was the best!
#36: “If ellison’s bunk claims are validated in court, every writer of any episode on this show are any other can claim ownership of any characters or items they introduced in their script.”
As far as we know, Ellison’s specific situation (with the copyright claim filed back in the day) isn’t also true “every writer of any episode.”
Help me: Is Ellison’s claim along the same lines as to why VOY’s Tom Paris wasn’t named Nick Lacarno? I had read that the writer of “The First Duty” would have to be paid royalties each time the character was used, so for VOY it would’ve been for about 175 episodes. Fact or Crap??
Isn’t it a shame producers/Hollywood is so cheap that they cut the creators in for a reasonable slice for the sake of story and continuity? The character on VOY SHOULD have been Nick Lacarno….a guy with a nasty backstory we already knew. Instead we got Tom Paris. It’s hard to cheer for someone’s redemption when “the fall” takes place of screen and it isn’t nearly as interesting or as significant as the events of The First Duty.
And wouldn’t it have been great for Generations to see Edith Keeler or Carol Marcus as Kirk’s Nexus love interest instead of some no-name woman from his past we had never heard of? (And there were plenty to have picked from.)
Ironically, Harlan didn’t even create the Guardian of Forever. He created the Guardians of Forever….impossibly old humanoid life forms that controlled time. The version of the G of A we all know was from a Gene Roddenbery re-write to save on costs. Funny how Harlan bitched about the re-writes and interference for 40 years…until it came time to make a few extra bucks. (I’m reminded of the deranged kid from Miri and his tricycle…”Mine! Mine! MINE!”
What a bunch of shit.
Looks more like a cheap Star Wars clone.
@30: You can’t believe some of the nitpickers in here?
Haven’t been on this site long, have you?
It’s a trailer. Trailers are designed to be explode-y and attention-grabbing. They can bear very little resemblance to the final product. Didn’t we go through all of this griping with every single trailer for the new movie?
Never Trust A Trailer.
#44 CarlG
LOL! no no, i’ve been a fan of this site for a loooonnng time. Can’t remember how long ago i started frequently viewing this site but it was a while prior to JJ being confirmed as Director of ST09. I think it was soon after it was announced that Paramount wanted a new film.
This site has given me my trek fix for the last couple of years.. AND LONG MAY IT LIVE AND PROSPER!! :D
Re my nitpickers comment. I’ll put it down to the early morning.
STO: Space Combat: Looked like it _could_ be fun, but it was all omniscient, 3rd person (no bridge, no HUD, no ship). Also, no indication as to what resources you’d have to manage during combat. Are there any? Or is it just press button and phaser/photo comes out?
P2P Combat: Bizarre! I mean, bladed weapon vs. phaser at point blank? And, going multiple rounds with each player attacking with their respective weapons. Very odd to say the least. Reminds me of a scene in “Police Squad” where you see a shoot-out between Leslie Nielson and a “Bad Guy”. The shooting at each other and ducking behind cover between shots. Then, the camera pulls back and you see that Leslie and the “Bad Guy” are only a few feet apart.
#42. Check the Circuit! wrote: “Ironically, Harlan didn’t even create the Guardian of Forever. He created the Guardians of Forever….impossibly old humanoid life forms that controlled time.”
Thanks for that observation. I have read that original script and never made that connection to his claim. However, isn’t that rather like making a movie featuring the “Wizards of Oz” who does exactly the same thing as in the classic MGM film? I think it still counts as a derivative copyright … on the other hand, I don’t think it has ever been tested in the courts.
This thread had some interesting chat about Ellison’s claim. Search for “Ellison” or “son of a Maui Portagee”
https://trekmovie.com/2009/07/25/orci-talks-again-about-linking-next-two-star-trek-movies/
Mr. Ellison now officially spells his name: HAR₤AN €₤₤I$ON
#48 – now that$ funny!
49 – Thank$!
When Harlan says thanks, do you hear a ka-ching!?