I did a playthrough of Star Trek Online. I was prompted to try it again by Rusty's comments on the first page (about it being a decent single-player game when you ignore the MMO aspects, and it being a continuation of classic Star Trek after Nemesis). We never had a real single-player Star Trek RPG sadly, so this is the closest fans ever got. The playthrough was purely to assess it on single player story content. The last time I played, years back, I didn't continue to the end of the Iconian War; I was also unhappy about it's attitude to lore and historical periodisation. The game's story has been edited in the intervening years. This playthrough ignored Star Trek: Discovery content, for obvious reasons. Instead, I stuck to the original over-arching plot regarding the return of the Iconians.
The portion of the
Federation's story I completed was:
- - Tutorial: Graduation Day
- - Story Arc 01: Klingon War
- - Story Arc 02: Romulan Mystery
- - Story Arc 03: Cardassian Struggle
- - Story Arc 04: Borg Advance
- - Story Arc 05: New Romulus
- - Story Arc 06: Solanae Dyson Sphere
- - Story Arc 07: Delta Quadrant
- - Story Arc 08: Iconian War
The portion of the
Klingon story I completed was:
- - Tutorial: End of Watch
- - Story Arc 01: Empire
- - Story Arc 02: Warzone
- - Story Arc 03: Vigilance
- - Story Arc 04: Fek'Ihri Return
The portion of the
Romulan story I completed was:
- - Tutorial: A Day on the Farm
- - Story Arc 01: From the Ashes
- - Story Arc 02: Allies
- - Story Arc 03: In Shadows
- - Story Arc 04: Wasteland
- - Story Arc 05: Vengeance
- - Story Arc 06: Freedom
Judging Star Trek Online for it's story missions
Throwing aside all the many criticisms I have of MMORPGs, and the choice of making this game an MMORPG, I will judge the game's story in isolation. Star Trek Online isn't the best Star Trek story in a video game, that would probably go to something like Judgment Rites, A Final Unity, or Klingon Academy. However it is probably the best single-player story I have experienced in an MMO, being far superior to something comparable like Star Wars: The Old Republic in many ways.
In particular the plot structure of missions is sometimes quite cinematic and dynamic in ways no TOR mission is. There are scene changes showing events on entirely different planets, or missions that change the game's genre unexpectedly. It benefits from appearances by still-living actors playing their characters, and a suprising fidelity to TV storylines.
The quality however varies badly. Some of the story arcs are very disappointing, then suddenly for a mission or two, you find some of the best plot development since DS9. Sometimes, fleetingly, you get some of the most idyllic and pastoral views of Star Trek's planets (e.g. visiting Bajor or Virinat or New Romulus). The Romulan Mystery arc was very interesting. The Delta Quadrant arc by comparison was stuffed with repetitive filler missions involving absurd levels of combat, bigger battles than Wolf 359, over trivial things like someone not wanting to give up their cargo for inspection.
You could argue that being the best story in an MMORPG, is not a high bar, given the reputation of the genre, but it can be genuinely surprising at times. Laying out the missions as episodes was beneficial, and makes each arc feel like a short season of television. Although cameos can be taken to absurd levels at times, with three TV characters turning up in the tutorial, of all places, this might be the only MMORPG that can poach actual living cast members from a live-action source. The equivalent would be LOTRO using Viggo Mortensen, Elijah Wood, John Rys Davies, and Sean Bean as cameos or something.
It has fidelity to the procedural feel of Star Trek, for all it's problems. Making your character's starship just a different avatar of your player, that controls exactly the same as someone on foot, was a stroke of good game design. Ship combat feels similar to a reasonable Star Trek tactical game, along the lines of 2006's Star Trek: Legacy. Compare this to Star Wars: The Old Republic, where space missions are an ackward piece of side content, in a franchise where half the action is in space. Missions often feel like something Starfleet would really do; rendering humanitarian aid, or defending an ally.
The story is, at best, sometimes a logical extension of the events seen in the 1990s or Rick Berman era of Star Trek. Set in 2409, it represents one possible way Star Trek's history might have extended into the 25th century, after 'Star Trek: Nemesis', prior to CBS/Paramount producing 'Star Trek: Picard'. The Romulan Mystery, for example, picks up plot threads regarding Commander Sela, Commander Taris, and the ancient Iconian Empire, seen in episodes of TNG like "Contagion", in a quite satisfying way. If anything it picks up too many loose threads, especially later during Starfleet's return to the Delta Quadrant, where you have races from across Voyager's 70,000 light-year journey all turning up.
One big criticism I have long directed at events however, is Star Trek Online's tendancy to close off and explain every lingering plot thread, such as mysterious archeological or historical cultures mentioned in famous episodes. This closes down the scope of Star Trek's vast canvas. It would have been better, in many cases, to have left the past alone. To give one prominent example, the Fek'ihri, a demon from Klingon mythology, are portrayed as an ancient alien race, returning from history in the Klingon character's story arc, like the Goa'uld being Earth's pagan gods in Stargate SG-1. The Klingons aren't permitted have a mythology of their own, like thousands of human cultures; their myths must be made materialistic. Not to mention it feels a little too much like high fantasy to have a race of demons return from slumber.
Thankfully, STO is not official canon, no video games are. Unfortunate narrative descisions can be ignored, if it pleases you. Post-2017 Star Trek has used some starship designs originally intended for STO; the first significant crossover from secondary canon into a show, in Star Trek's history. It remains to be seen whether this will also extend to some of the more unfortunate plot ideas presented in the game. Being the only game many younger fans ever knew about, various YouTubers treat STO like some sort of official source, leading to a lot of bullshit seeping into people's perceptions of the franchise over the last decade and a half. Overall however I would have to say that I didn't regret experiencing STO, I just regretted the pain of it's worst moments, which brings us to the next evalutation; gameplay.
Judging Star Trek Online as a game or MMORPG
Now, where I have largely praised the story, I can't praise Star Trek Online similarily as a game. MMORPGs are fundamentally designed to monetise gaming into a service. It's nice that they made it free-to-play eventually, but it was fundamentally created to force 'live services' onto people, whether they wanted that or not in a Star Trek game. A single player game would have been a better experience in 99% of scenarios. MMOs are full of forced choices; they often have artificial conflicts in which the front lines never change, to emulate the Horde vs Alliance PvP of World of Warcraft.
The worst symptom of MMO culture, is how the game breaks Star Trek's previous meticulous periodisation of it's history or technology, with 250-year old warships, long retired to scrapyards, somehow returning to service, just to capitalise on a casual fan's credulity or complete ignorance of how real-world arms races happen, or to monetise them for real money on the marketplace. Sometimes the game will attempt to explain this in a completely implausiable way, such as claiming that a pragmatic military created an exact replica, down to the finest details, of an ancient outdated warship.
It is not all bad, a lot of the game is enjoyable, even quite imaginative in places (with shuttlecraft-based missions and rappelling down caves using ziplines); but then you get sections of the game that just waste your time, such as throwing endless waves of ships at you in a space battle, mission after mission. A few minutes of combat against fewer ships would have sufficed. Twenty ships is padding, contradicts Star Trek canon, and goes on way past the point of bad taste. You will also many times fight vessels that quite obviously out-match you in real canon; a Scimitar class warbird or Borg cube could canonically one-shot something like scout ship or light cruiser, yet you are often seen fighting dreadnought sized warships single handedly.
For reasons I won't go into, I elected to play the console version, which is significantly laden with errors that reappear time and again with new patches. At the time I began, no phasers in the game were making any sound; an error that has apparently happened several times in the past. Opening up the GUI for the first time is like rainbow vomit; way too much stuff going on, 95% of which you thankfully can ignore. Important dialogue is spoken over other dialogue. The PC version is probably in better state, but I wouldn't expect it will change things like plot or dialogue errors that have crept in. People are out of position in cutscenes, or invisible, or inside the floor. In many ways STO is broken because it is built on an ancient game engine nobody probably knows how to fix, and has been extensively messed with over decades. It has something like six separate currencies; which you can thankfully ignore; credits, dilithium, fleet tokens, faction tokens, zen, etc. I urge you not to get sucked into this whale-poaching bollocks, i.e. the zen market, where people can buy absurdly inappropriate ships from different factions and eras.
That is not to say that Star Trek Online does not still suprise you with good ideas. Like I said, having the starship you command essentially be another avatar, and making the combat similar to something like Starfleet Command, works really well. Here you actually feel like you are commanding a starship; because in Star Trek the ship is as important a character as the crew. You also get neat suprises like missions set entirely inside the dreamscape induced by a telepathic Vulcan mind-meld.
The issue of removed content and altering story
Over the years, a lot of story content, often entire mission arcs, have been removed or cut down in STO. Cameo appearances by famous cast members of the show are often written into old missions, as the actor joined the STO cast. Sometimes TV actors are even written out. This raises some serious questions about canonicity; what kind of precedent does it set to completely re-tool an artistic work, whenever a corporation wants? How about two players, a decade apart, getting different plot? That does not sit well we me. From a perspective of video game preservation for example, those removed missions are just gone for anyone who might want to experience them again.
Check out this list of removed missions:
Sometimes, these changes may have been positive from the perspective of narrative bloat. It reduces filler. However there are hints everywhere that old episodes are missing. Characters inexplicably referencing events that you have never seen. Characters suddently having their briefing replaced by a new character and voice actor, so they could re-write the mission without re-hiring say Kate Mulgrew or Tim Russ.
In conclusion
For all it's problems, Star Trek Online was worth playing, in order to experience one possible future that Star Trek could have taken from 2379 to 2409. I would recommend fans play the top ten classics, before they played STO, because they represent better, more faithful, simulations. However, some of the story arcs in STO are solid. It's a little too much like fan fiction in places, but generally quite believable as a Star Trek story.
The main over-arching plot arc revolves around the return of the Iconian Empire, from 200,000 years ago, who's ancient civilization, based upon a network of star-spanning gateways, was mentioned in two episodes spanning TNG and DS9. They employ other mysterious races mentioned in Star Trek as proxy servitors, and attempt to subvert the entire galaxy for much of the game before launching their own invasion. What a fan should be conscious of is STO's reputation for excess, and of damaging historical periodisation. This can mostly be avoided by just sticking to story missions, and picking believable free ships. Expect to endure repetition in places, but soak in those moments when it felt like a real continuation of the TNG era.
I think some people wouldn't like that it's a Telltale-style game, as those type of games are not everyone's cup of tea. Some people find them tedious, but I appreciate that at least they attempted to create a new genuine Star Trek story, rather than something offensive like a mobile game. Also I appreciate that they chose a format that Star Trek hasn't previously used - an in-engine interactive movie - arguably there is a lot of potential for Telltale-style Star Trek stories, depending on interest. For a higher budget you could even animate stories with the original casts; unlikely as it is. I would say it is worth playing for fans, but perhaps one playthrough is enough, once you know the story.
