Written by: Kirok of L’Stok
Star Trek: Excalibur, a fan-produced game previously being developed on the old Star Trek Bridge Commander game engine has announced that they are going to create a completely new game based on NanoFX GE, a freestanding development team working on a next-gen game engine for use in all types of sci-fi related games. Don’t expect anything for two and a half years but when it breaks it will deliver graphics and a sophistication of gameplay not possible on older game engines.
Hailing Frequency, the Internet’s first podcast dedicated to Star Trek gaming (not to be confused with the Trek United newsletter of the same name), will be conducting an extensive thirty minute interview with Mark Ward, the games lead artist and publicist, in this weekend’s upcoming show.
Star Trek: Excalibur aims to take Star Trek gaming boldly where it has not gone before; with a stunning next generation game engine (NanoGE), it aims to be, not only a spiritual sequel to Star Trek Bridge Commander, but a whole lot more. Similarly to Bridge Commander, players will control a ship, the Excalibur, through a breathtaking single player campaign, choosing to fight using either the exterior third person ship view, or the interior bridge view, however this is where the similarities between the two games end.
Excalibur will allow players to move around the interior of their ship, with tasks and parts of missions taking place in many popular locations such as Engineering, Sickbay, and The Transporter Rooms – even leaving the ship in some cases to beam down to an alien world! Imagine a sequence of events where you are fighting the Klingons and they succeed in boarding your ship. Gamers will get the opportunity to leave the Bridge and fight off the invasion with a range of weapons.
Excalibur aims to include the best elements from a number of Star Trek Games, including Bridge Commander, Armada, Elite Force, Birth of the Federation, Legacy, A Final Unity, Starfleet Command, Klingon Academy and more, putting all of the best of these games into one single, ultimate Star Trek game.
To hear more about this exciting game, including the team’s concepts for a massively multiplayer, persistent online system, as well as several other exciting aspects of the game! Be sure to check out this interview when Hailing Frequency #45 becomes available. You can view their full announcement by following THIS LINK!
So, it’s called Excalibur, but no trace of Calhoun, or Shleby, or Burgoyne? Suck factor 12 dude.
I have an idea, make your own game, one less suckier than this one….