Murder Trek Online
Close your eyes and picture the following episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. I suppose you’ll have to leave your eyes open to read this, oh well. Uhura intercepts a distress call from a local group of colonists claiming that they’re under attack from a party of Gorn soldiers. The situation is desperate. Kirk and Spock discuss their options while Bones complains that this isn’t going to turn out well. Kirk decides to help the colonists and Chekov plots a course for the colony.
Upon arriving at the planet, the colonists reach out again and reiterate their dire situation. Kirk personally leads an away team mission with his senior officers to help the colonists. They head to the transporter room and Scotty beams them down to the planet. Once they are on the surface, they see a group of Gorn and Kirk approaches to open dialo.. oh. Kirk just shot the Gorn Officer in the back. Now the whole away team has opened fire on the Gorn and wiped out the Gorn squad.
They now proceed through the colony and wipe out every single Gorn they find. Looting gear from the fallen Gorn soldiers. Once the entire Gorn raiding party has been dispatched, Kirk finds the colonist leader and fills them in on the death and destruction the crew of the Enterprise just brought to their colony. A thankful colonial leader gives Kirk a few credits for their trouble and sends them on their way.
This is how every ground combat mission in Star Trek Online plays out. Land on the planet. Kill everyone you find. Get credit for the mission. Head out to space and move on to the next death arena. There’s plenty of depth in the ground missions and lots of varied and interesting locales. Allowing these away missions to be solo or group PvE encounters or PvP encounters is a very cool addition to the game. Still, I can’t help but think something is amiss in a Star Trek game that requires you to solve all problems militarily instead of peacefully and diplomatically.
Space combat is sublime in Star Trek Online. Multiple weapon types. Tons of skills to help shape the battle. Massive wide open areas of space to travel participate in epic ship to ship battles. The space combat is by far my most enjoyable component of the game. I will continue to play the game because of the space combat and the space exploration components of the game.
Over time, I expect that the more and varied mission types and mission resolutions will become available in Star Trek Online. Hopefully, we’ll start to move away from murder everyone in sight, but if not I’m ok with that too. It’s a staple of MMO questing that I can’t really argue with. The game has skills and options galore that I can’t wait to be explored and fleshed out. Hopefully Cryptic continues to grow and build the game without trying to neuter a game that has so far been enjoyable and I’d rather never live through another game change like I did with Star Wars Galaxies.
If you happen to join Star Trek Online and want a crowd to tool around the galaxy with, look me up at wilsyn@siraim or look up the Totally Rad Fleet.
