Star Trek: Bridge Crew Debuts At E3

| June 14, 2016 | By: John Duchak 15 comments so far

Ubisoft and Red Storm Entertainment yesterday debuted Star Trek: Bridge Crew at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).

After viewing a trailer (which you can check out below) featuring gameplay footage as Star Trek cast LeVar Burton, Jeri Ryan, and Karl Urban played the game alongside Red Storm Entertainment Creative Director David Votypka, attendees were treated to a demo of the virtual reality game.

Bridge Crew takes place in the JJ-verse aboard the U.S.S. Aegis, an experimental starship. The game supports up to four players and can be played online with friends or offline on the PS4 and PC. Players take on the roles of members of the Aegis crew: her captain, the helmsman, the tactical officer, and the chief engineer. Previous starship-based Star Trek games, such as Star Trek: Bridge Commander, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, and Star Trek: Klingon Academy all had players commanding a ship of their own and managing the helm, tactical, and engineering in the midst of missions.
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The story focuses on an initial mission to find a homeworld for the Vulcans, but Red Storm’s Brian Tate, the director of the game, told CNET that the initial mission serves as a launching point for the story. In fact, Tate and his team at Red Storm did not expect the game to be made. Their goal, he said, was to create a VR experiment. When Red Storm approached CBS, the studio “loved it right away” and commented “that it was the Star Trek game they always wanted to see made.”
Bridge Crew focuses on teamwork in a virtual reality environment. In online play, the captain orders the tactical officer to raise shields when a hostile Klingon ship approaches, the helmsman to take evasive maneuvers, and the engineer to boost power to shields and weapons.
In diverse and fast-paced scenarios, you have to work with your crew to accomplish multiple aspects of a mission. In the E3 demo, the U.S.S. Aegis responds to a distress call from a friendly vessel under attack by the Klingons. Survivors become stranded in escape pods as the Klingons attack the Aegis, and it is your job to hold off the Klingons and rescue the survivors.
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Each crew member has their own responsibilities in accomplishing this mission. For instance, the helmsman needs to maneuver into weapons or transporter range to take on the Klingon battlecruisers or beam aboard survivors. The tactical officer fires on the Klingon vessel and establishes a transporter lock on the survivors, and the chief engineer reroutes power to weapons, shields, and the transporter system at the right time to protect the ship, and assign repair teams to damaged parts of the ship. You can’t fire the phasers unless the helmsman gives you a firing solution. The helmsman can’t go to warp unless engineering prepares the warp coils first. The chief engineer can’t transport stranded survivors onto the ship unless the tactical officer lowers the shields. And so on.

Votypka told IGN that this game caters to Star Trek fans and casual gamers alike. “We want it to be a lighthearted social experience. We want players to have fun,” said Votypka. “We don’t want to create a complex tactical simulation.” However, multiplayer situations can become tense and exciting as each crew member has to rely on the other to complete the mission, with the captain giving out orders and making sure that the crew are all working together to accomplish a specific task during the mission. While it is designed as a four-player multiplayer game, any of the crew positions can be taken over by AI.

Star Trek: Bridge Crew will feature a number of story missions, along with a random mission generator. Votypka also said that Red Storm may add additional roles on the Aegis for players to fill. “We have a lot of interest in doing more with the brand,” he said. While the E3 demo focused on space combat, Tate told CNET that “combat is an essential part of Star Trek, but it’s never the point of anything you’re doing. It’s always the thing getting in the way,” says Tate. We can expect missions focusing on exploration, rescue, and more to be revealed later.

Star Trek: Bridge Crew is due out later this year and will be available on Playstation VR, and on the PC through Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

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Ubisoft is one of the worst companies on the planet. Avoid.

Looks like fun. I’ve been playing Trek games for as long as they’ve been around. I still remember the first time I played the old Star Trek arcade game, Strategic Operations Simulator with its old vector based graphics. That game is still fun today. Amazing how technology has changed the game playing experience.

I also still have my old big box PC games of the 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites. Those old graphical adventure games were a blast to play back in the day.

Lame

Please elaborate on that statement.

If it isn’t exclusively the nuTrek world I would be on board for this… but as it is… unless it can be modded by fans to be prime universe, I’m just not a fan of the look of the nuTrek designs/world look.

What would be awesome is if you could be in the TOS movie era and play in THAT environment. It would be soooo awesome to see how you would do against Kahn or how you would do against General Chang.

If it does well, I am sure you will have different settings and such…

Original 60’s ship or GTFO.

Experience the original JJTrek feel:
“Two Klingon battlecruisers, closing in fast.” – “On screen!” – “Uh… they are on screen, captain..” – “Well, how is one supposed to see a bloody thing with all those lights and reflections everywhere? And why is that bespectacled guy running around shining a searchlight into everyone’s eyes?”

We’ve just been told that we can sit on the bridge of a ‘virtual reality’ star-ship and fight Klingons, explore the unexplored and have the options to do it with friends….which is basically what I’ve been dreaming about since I was 6yrs old and first watched Wrath of Khan…..and so for, 90% of the comments have been negative! Guys….Original Trek was great, but don’t hold it up to be the pantheon of all that is good with Trek…OLD Trek was NEW at one point…if our friends in the 1960s and 1970s were like some of us today, we would literally have NOTHING to complain about :)

Do want!

And all for the low low price of hundred and hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

Now… who knows a nice little… completely unguarded and more or less forgotten bank I can rob to buy the equipment for a full 4 Player experience… and where do I get 3 other people?

Is there a light switch mod to turn the lights off ?

I don’t understand Star Trek rights today. If they went to CBS for approval, why is it in Paramount’s JJ universe?