When Enterprise
went off the air last year it left a huge hole in the sci-fi universe. For the first time since the late Eighties there
were no Star Trek shows or movies on the horizon. All of that changed a few weeks ago when
Bethesda Software announced that they were working on two new Star Trek games.
We were able to score an interview with the creative director of Star Trek:
Legacy, the strategy game that is slated to be released on the Xbox 360 and the
PC later this year.
GamingNexus: Can you
introduce yourself and describe your role on the project? How long have you been in the industry and
how did you get into gaming in the first place?
Greetings. Ian Davis
here, a.k.a.,“The Mad Doctor,” Creative Director on Star Trek®: Legacy at Mad
Doc® Software. I’ve been working with the Project Director, Producer, and our
entire team of talented game developers overseeing everything from the vision
of the game, to core design, and gameplay.
I’ve loved and played games all my life, and at some point I decided,
“Hey, I should get paid for this!” Got
my Ph.D. in AI and then went straight into the game industry. I’ve been making games professionally for 11
years now and this is my third Star Trek title!,
GamingNexus: Were you
a big fan of the series before you started working on the game? With the Star Trek franchise in stasis (no
current television or movies planned), do you feel any additional pressure to
deliver the game? Do you think there is any additional scrutiny from outside
the gaming press?
Ian Davis: Huge
fan of the series, always have been, always will be. Anytime you make a game, there’s intense
pressure to deliver, intense scrutiny.
It’s the nature of the beast. So,
do we feel additional pressure to deliver from press? I’d say this: we understand the Star Trek
audience; we know how invested they are.
We know how long they’ve waited, and how badly they want this. And we’re hellbent on doing our best to
deliver an amazing gaming experience for them.
We know that for most of the fans this will be their biggest Star Trek
fix in years, and at Mad Doc, we take our fans seriously.
GamingNexus: The
official statement said that Legacy will span all of the Trek series, including
the prequel Enterprise.
Will we see material from the cancelled seasons of Enterprise, such as the Romulan War, the
Klingon conflict and temporal cold war?
Ian Davis: In
Legacy, you’ll see familiar faces like the Romulans, Klingons, and the Borg – sorry,
can’t give you details yet on specific conflicts, etc.!
GamingNexus: How will
RTS combat be used in the Voyager levels? Voyager was stranded in the
delta quadrant, and there weren't
any major battles because there was only one Federation ship in that series.
Will the Voyager levels focus on the Borg, like in Elite Force or will
you include other races from the delta quadrant (such as species 8472)?
Ian Davis: Legacy really is not an RTS game. I like to think of it more along the lines of
“a sexy squad shooter in space.” It’s
quite tactical in that you often need to coordinate multiple ships, but it’s
far more focused on the action of these intense naval battles in space. Missions in Legacy will include elements from
all the series, but will not necessarily take place in all the same settings
they were focused in.
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