Star Trek: Resurgence - narrative adventure game set directly after TNG era

[Monk]

https://www.startrek-resurgence.com



https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/star-trek-resurgence

Spoiler

 

[Monk]

 

[Monk]

"The boss wants us in engineering, like, now."

 

[gurugeorge]

God that looks awful. It also looks like it was made about 10 years ago.

 

[WallaceChambers]

There were games with better animation with this 10 years ago. This shit looks straight up unfinished.

 

[deuxhero]

If it's a video game, why are the only non-humans in the crew human with ears and human with makeup markings? That shit is barely tolerable in live action because budget and effect limits, but stupid in animated sci-fi.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/star-tre...-spirit-of-the-90s-shows-in-a-long-long-time/

Star Trek: Resurgence is the first Trek anything to capture the spirit of the '90s shows in a long, long time
A short demo delivered promising discussions of diplomacy and warp drive disasters.

It took me maybe half of the first season of Star Trek Discovery to accept that it wasn't my kind of Star Trek. Discovery's grim, militant war with the Klingons felt tonally off for a series that's always been about exploration and humanity at heart, and when Discovery did spend time on its crew, the melodrama dial seemed permanently stuck at 11. Good or bad, I knew it wasn't my Star Trek.

I had the opposite experience last week when I played a demo of Star Trek: Resurgence, a story-focused adventure from former Telltale developers at new studio Dramatic Labs. Within five minutes, Resurgence's captain was lamenting a catastrophic warp core malfunction and dropping technobabble like "10,000 teradynes per second" while he stared out a viewport. 20 minutes later and the senior officers were sitting across a table from Ambassador Spock, talking about their mission to negotiate a tricky peace between two alien races. Diplomacy was the obvious answer, but what type of diplomacy? A polite debate ensued.

Good or bad, this is definitely my kind of Star Trek.

Resurgence gives off big The Next Generation vibes, and not just because it's set a couple years after Nemesis, the final (and oh-so bad) TNG film. A Telltale-style adventure seems like a perfect mold for Star Trek now that I've seen it. The best episodes of the TV shows are about characters solving problems together, grappling with their own weaknesses, or solving some quirky sci-fi mystery. Character drama, lots of dialogue, puzzle solving—yep, that's an adventure game.

I only got to play about half an hour of Resurgence, which included introductions to the main cast and not much more. I swapped between the perspectives of incoming first officer Jara and young engineer Carter Diaz, with subtle dialogue options that let you nudge their personalities rather than going full Paragon or Renegade Commander Shepard. If you, like me, appreciated the range of emotions Jean-Luc Picard could express with a frown, you'll also vibe with how much Resurgence seems to be focused on capturing the nuances of Star Trek chatter. Dialogue choices don't have to alter the course of the entire story to carry meaning: I got a kick out of my captain's flicker of annoyance when I diplomatically disagreed with him in front of Spock.

The developers told me that the full game will have some actiony bits to break up the conversations, but in the demo I didn't do much more than walk a few feet and click on bits of the environment to get a little color commentary. I hope there's more opportunity to explore the ship in the full game, which sounds like it'll be bigger than I expected: Resurgence will roughly be the length of a full Telltale game season, which the devs equated to a Trek miniseries in length. I'm curious to see whether the entire thing is focused around the diplomatic mission the demo introduced, or if it'll combine multiple storylines.

Though Resurgence's tone is exactly what I want out of Star Trek, I'm worried the developers aren't going to have quite the time or budget they deserve here. Dramatic Labs is using Unreal Engine and opted for a realistic art style that stumbles into the uncanny valley. The facial animations aren't bad, but have a robotic quality you don't see in today's luxuriously motion captured games—they remind me of the first couple Mass Effects, now well over a decade old.

Likewise, the walking animations have an awkwardness to them that feels mismatched with the fidelity Resurgence is shooting for. These flaws stand out more in a realistic game than in the comic book style Telltale used for so many years.

Resurgence isn't finished, of course, and there's time left to smooth out the most noticeable flaws. But the developers said the animation is close to where they want it to be, so I'm not expecting a dramatic transformation between now and release later this year. I can look past some goofy moments if the rest of Resurgence is as promising as it seems, though—even The Next Generation open palm slammed the silliness button every few episodes. TV Star Trek may no longer feel like the '90s Trek I loved, but Resurgence is doing its best to warp headfirst into that void.

 

[I'm Big Into Anal]

"resurgence"

sounds like a porno

 

[deuxhero]

Only thing it has in common with 90s shows is budget limits. Might have Voyager's totally inconsistent writing though.

 

[gurugeorge]

That article makes it sound promising, but I can't see how they can do something like this on a low budget unless it's like half an hour long and a pure labour of love for everyone involved. It looks incredibly VO-heavy.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Indeed the "special effects" look like from the '90s. Too bad the airstyles look like from 2022.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

I'll say what everyone's thinking. Sacrifice this game and bring back Stage-9 as a commercial product.

 

[Hobknobling]

So I guess we have now moved on from pixel art and low-polygon into taking inspiration from Dating Ariane?

I can look past a rough presentation but the "gameplay" does not look very good either.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'll say what everyone's thinking. Sacrifice this game and bring back Stage-9 as a commercial product.

ffs I watched this and thought this was what the thread was about then read your comment
fucking

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

This is supposed to be an adventure game? From the footage it looks like a generic mid '00s action game with an "important" plot, right down to a NPC asking you to follow them. I guess it could end up being good but I doubt it.

 

[WallaceChambers]

It's a TellTale style narrative adventure game, it will be mostly choice based. Although it seems they're also adding in little action & minigame moments. I'm not expecting much from that but I'd like there to at least be some decent branching.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'll say what everyone's thinking. Sacrifice this game and bring back Stage-9 as a commercial product.

ffs I watched this and thought this was what the thread was about then read your comment
fucking

just saw something about this and remembered this post


why aren't we allowed to have anything nice

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

https://www.startrek-resurgence.com

>follow orders
>disobey
worse than a dialog wheel lol

And what's with the weird fake federation ship design? There are GalCiv lego ships that look more like Star Trek ships than these new abominations in these cashgrabs.

Also, was that a Nimoy impersonator, or an AI recreation?

 

[gurugeorge]

https://www.startrek-resurgence.com

>follow orders
>disobey
worse than a dialog wheel lol

And what's with the weird fake federation ship design? There are GalCiv lego ships that look more like Star Trek ships than these new abominations in these cashgrabs.

Also, was that a Nimoy impersonator, or an AI recreation?

I'm sure they won't ever let poor Leonard rest. He'll be dragged out in ghastly AI form to endorse whatever the ideology du jour is forever. It's like some kind of peculiar virtual hell.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Also, was that a Nimoy impersonator, or an AI recreation?

They had Nimoy do a ton of dialogue for Star Trek Online, not all of it made it ingame or has been used... Yet. Would be interesting if they recycled some of that.
They actually removed some missions at one point with his VOs and the playerbase freaked out iirc.

 

[mindx2]

I'll say what everyone's thinking. Sacrifice this game and bring back Stage-9 as a commercial product.

That is pretty darn cool! I would love to walk around the entire Enterprise D and could see myself wasting many hours doing just that! I never knew that existed. It was never released as it seems complete?

 

[Tom Selleck]

And what's with the weird fake federation ship design? There are GalCiv lego ships that look more like Star Trek ships than these new abominations in these cashgrabs.

The Centaur-type is actually from a Deep Space Nine episode "Behind Enemy Lines" and was a kitbash of Excelsior and Miranda parts, for what it's worth. The registry of this ship is bizarrely high, though. (The original is NCC-42043 and this is a five digit one that starts in 9xxxx - likely a reference to the 90s birthday of someone on the development team.)

 

[RobotSquirrel]

It was never released as it seems complete?

it was there's a build you can download https://web.archive.org/web/2018032...o.uk/downloads/Stage9-Windows-v10.exe.torrent
I have read online there might be an issue with the game starting its only 1.8GB

That link works, very cool. Shocked at how fast the game runs seems really optimized. It plays just like Voyager Elite Force. Lol I died on the holodeck yeah be careful accessing the door.

 

[Infinitron]

Delayed to April 2023:

 

[rusty_shackleford]

It's like that thing Rusty talks about.