Game ZXC recently had the opportunity to speak with two senior developers for Star Trek Online: design director Al Rivera and senior environment artist Nick Duguid. Ever since its release back in 2010, Star Trek Online has been the go-to MMO game for fans of the series, and it is worth noting that this year marks the game's 11th anniversary.
To those unaware, Star Trek Online is currently hosting a huge anniversary event, which will be available on the PC until February 25. In our chat with Star Trek Online's developers, we were able to dive deep into the involvement of several Star Trek Discovery actors in the game, the many inspirations behind Star Trek Online's design, what Cryptic Studios has learned in the past 11 years, and what's in store for players in the future.
GR: House Reborn features L’Rell, played by Mary Chieffo from Star Trek Discovery. We know that Kenneth Mitchell was supposed to reprise his role as Tenavik. But apart from the two, are there any plans to bring more of Discovery’s cast in the game?
AR: We have been lucky enough to have several Discovery cast members join Star Trek Online including Mary Wiseman, Rekha Sharma, Jason Isaacs, Anthony Rapp, Sonequa Martin-Green, and now Mary Chieffo. Many of them appear early in the game if you start with a Discovery era character. We have really enjoyed working with the cast from Discovery. They are all so talented and enthusiastic. They all love their characters and Star Trek. They’re just a joy to work with. So, of course, we would love to have any of them join Star Trek Online in the future, or perhaps have someone who has joined us come back to work again.
It’s not just a matter of will. Our stories take years to develop and fit a character into our story arcs. We don’t like just sticking an actor into Star Trek Online just because it is cool. Their character must have a role in the story - something that only they can do, or something that is personal to them. So I can’t say who or when, but I am sure we will see more Discovery cast members, as well as casts from other shows, in the future.
GR: This is L’Rell’s first appearance in Star Trek Online and is also the first time players will see her after Star Trek Discovery Season 2. What should players expect?
AR: This story takes place in 2411, more than 150 years since we last saw L’Rell. She is not around at the beginning of the story. To say how she shows up, and what is her role would be a bit of a spoiler. Let’s just say expect to see L’Rell in all her glory. L’Rell is a symbol. The great Mother. A figure that only Mary Chieffo can bring to life.
GR:Â House Reborn will focus on the epic Klingon war. What can players look forward to seeing in the update?
AR: A deep dive into Klingon culture and mythology. And a familiar face or an old friend.
GR:Â Now that Star Trek Online Season 22 is out, is Season 23 already in development?
AR: Yes. We started developing S23 development in November. We know exactly where we want to go. We have also started planning for S24 and the next year.
GR: In House Reborn’s first mission, players will explore the planet of Boreth, which is based on the same location from Star Trek Discovery Season 2. What are the challenges of recreating this world?
ND: This is largely similar to the process we’ve used to bring other canon locations to life. It starts with getting screen captures of as many details as we can from the show. Compared to something like the Enterprise D Bridge, Boreth was thankfully only shown in two episodes of Discovery, so that was fairly simple. But Boreth was also filmed on location, rather than on a closed soundstage, so we also gathered reference images of the actual location, which was Knox College in Toronto. Fortunately, Knox College is also a popular place to stage wedding photos, so our reference folder for this Klingon Monastery is full of human wedding photos.
Once reference materials have been gathered, it’s all about just making it as true to the original location as we can. The main challenge was just building it all. The nice thing about Gothic Revival architecture is how modular it can all be. That is, it is easily broken up into small chunks that can be repeated over and over again. So we don’t need to create 50 pillars, we make one, and clone it around to fill a space.
As STO continues to grow, we’ve tried to improve our modeling and texturing procedures, and Boreth certainly took advantage of our latest processes, allowing us to put more detail into everything than we might have a few years ago.
GR: Star Trek’s aesthetic has evolved dramatically from TOS to Discovery. How has this affected the way content is designed in Star Trek Online?
ND: We try to stay spiritually true to a given era, while still maintaining a common methodology to keep it all looking like it belongs in the same universe. This is certainly pushed to its limits when you look at The Original Series vs Discovery. When we built out our TOS expansion, Agents of Yesterday, a few years ago, we strived to have the ship interiors look and feel like the show, but also push the material choices to feel more like what was intended. That is, when you look at the hallway walls in TOS, the reality is that they are painted plywood, but what was that meant to represent?
So we try to keep the same forms, but make the objects look like the materials they were meant to be. In the case of the walls, we gave them a slight metallic feel. At a distance, they should look much like the show, but up close, or when running by, you may notice them catching light a little differently than painted plywood would.
While the sets of later shows have gotten more complicated and detailed, even in Discovery, the walls are still being made out of materials like painted plywood. But the set designers on these shows have received bigger budgets and access to more materials, creating an interesting mix of things for us to sample. In the end though, the process is the same: Try to make our interior look and feel as much like the show as we can.
GR: Is there any point in Star Trek’s timeline that heavily inspired the design of the game? Do you take inspiration from one specific era, or is it a combination of the entire franchise?
ND: We reference, and showcase all eras of the shows. We’ve done TOS things, TNG things, DS9 things, Voyager things, and now, Discovery things. We want it all, and we want to show it all off. One of the great parts about working on STO is that we get to mix things together that they couldn’t on the shows, simply because they may have been made 50 years apart. So we can take this character from one era and have them meet, then interact with this other character from another era. It’s really fun to find all of the little dangling threads throughout Star Trek, and figure out how to tie them all together in unexpected ways.
GR:Â How important is it for Star Trek Online to have its own unique look?
ND: I’m not sure if it really is that important. When recreating canon locations like Boreth, it’s more important to maintain the look, or more specifically, the feel of what we saw on screen. As mentioned earlier with our Agents of Yesterday work, we do take liberties, so it may not be exactly what you saw on screen, but we try to capture the essence of the scenes we know. Star Trek Online does have its own look as compared to other games, but even that isn’t really the important part. The important thing is not that we look different from anyone else, but that we look, and feel Star Trek, through and through.
GR: Star Trek Online is celebrating its 11th anniversary. What have you learned during that time?
ND: I’ve spent more of my game dev life working on this game than I have on any other title. I have grown more as an artist and as a person in that time. The lessons we’ve learned over the years have helped shape what we put out today, and are a large part of why we are still around, and doing so well 11 years on. The main things for me all probably sound incredibly trite or seemingly obvious: Quality over quantity. Gameplay is number 1. Canon is a close second.
AR: We’ve learned so much. I’m not even sure where to begin. We’ve moved from a subscription model to a Free-to-Play model, and that in itself was a tremendous learning experience. How to do that right has been invaluable. How to craft deep, meaningful stories that have an emotional impact on your player was something I did not know how to do 11 years ago, and now I think we are pretty good at it. How to get players to come to your game and stick around with things they want to earn - and how to do that efficiently. This last year in particular, due to Covid, we have learned how to work from home. This has forced us to adopt new tools, new practices, new forms of communication, and new processes. It was hard and stressful at first, but now I think we are a better team for it.
But I think Nick nailed it overall. Just do less, but do it better.
GR: What’s in store for Star Trek Online in the next 11 years?
AR: Well, first we will wrap up our Klingon Civil War Arc. We are already hard at work on our next epic story arc. That will take us through the next year and possibly beyond. We will be working even more closely with ViacomCBS. ViacomCBS is dropping so much new content, it is impossible to keep up. That’s awesome for us. Expect to see us bring something from all the new series into Star Trek Online. You will see the ships, weapons, gadgets, locations, characters, and stories from all those new shows, and we will continue to honor the classics. Star Trek Online represents all Trek, so every fan can experience the fantasy that is important to them. We bring them all together and tell our stories in a way that is unique to us. There is so much to enjoy. It is a great time to be a Trekkie.
Star Trek Online is available now on Mac, PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
