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Star Trek: ResurgencePREVIEW
I had theoppositeexperience whenI
played a new 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 “10,0 00
teradynes per second” while he
stared out a viewport. Twenty
minutes later and the senior officers
were sitting acrossa table from
Ambassador Spock,talking about their
mission tonegotiatepeace between two
alien races. Diplomacywas the obvious
answer, but what type of diplomacy? A
polite debate ensued. Good or bad, this is
definitely my kind of Star Trek.
Resurgencegives off big TNGvibes,
and not just because it’s set a couple
years after Nemesis, the final TNG film. A
Telltale-style adventure seems like a
perfect mould for StarTrek: the best
episodes of the TV shows are about
characters solving problems together,
grappling with their own weaknesses, or
solving somequirkysci-fimystery.
Character drama, lots of dialogue, puzzle
solving – yep, that’san adventure game.The demo was just 30 minutes, which
covered 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 orRenegade. If you appreciated
the rangeof emotions Jean-Luc Picard
could express with a frown, you’llalso vibe
with how much Resurgenceis focused on
capturing the nuances of Star Trek chat.ALL TALK
The developers told me that the full game
will have some actiony bitstoo, but in the
demo I didn’t do much more thanwalk a
few feet. I hopethere’s more opportunity
to explore the ship in thefull game, which
sounds like it’ll be equivalent to a full
Telltale season, which the dev equated to
a Trek miniseriesin length.
Though Resurgence’s tone is exactly
what I want out of Star Trek, I’m worried
the developer isn’t goingto have quite the
time or budget it deserves here.
Dramatic Labs is using Unreal Engineand
opted for a realistic art style that
stumbles into the uncannyvalley.
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 arealistic gamethan in the comic
book style Telltale usedfor so many years.
Resurgenceisn’t finished, of course,
and there’s time leftto smooth outthe
most noticeable flaws. Butthe developers
said the animation is close to where they
want it to be, so I’mnot expecting a
dramatic transformation between now
and release later this year. I can look past
some goofy moments if the rest of
Resurgenceis as promising as it seems,
though – even TheNextGeneration open
palm slammedthe silliness button every
few episodes. TVStar Trek may nolonger
feel likethe ’90s Trek I loved, but
Resurgenceis doing its best to warp
headfirst into thatvoid.
Wes FenlonH
alfway through Discovery’s first season, I
accepted that it wasn’t my kind of Star
Trek. The modern series’ grim war felt
tonally off for a series that’s always been
about exploration and humanity, and when it did
spend time on its crew, the melodrama dial was
stuck at 1 1. Good or bad, it wasn’t my Trek.The diplomatic heart of ’ 90 s Trekfinally makes a comebackSTAR TREK:
RESURGENCE
A TELLTALE-STYLE ADVENTURE
SEEMS LIKE A PERFECT MOULD
FOR STARTREK
RELEASE
2022
DEVELOPER
Dramatic LabsPUBLISHER
Epic GamesLINK
startrek-resurgence.comNEED TO KNOW
PLAYED
IT
The voice actor does an
uncanny Spock – I bet even
Nimoy would’ve been fooled.