It’s the first Star Trek game to appear on a next-generation videogame platform. It’s the first Star Trek game to cover all applicable eras as crafted through the various television and movie iterations. And it’s the first Star Trek game to secure the vocal performances of all five historic Star Trek captains.

In short, it’s a strategic real-time Star Trek legacy in so much more than its title. Recently GamerSquad has been lucky enough to beam over to creators Mad Doc Software, where we ran a developmental Q&A diagnostic over the production, scanned for its gameplay strengths, probed the hidden depths of its content, and subsequently came away mollified thanks to the game’s phasers being set to stunning—sorry couldn’t resist the pun.

Star Trek: Legacy, developed by Mad Doc Software and published by Bethesda Softworks will be released for the Xbox 360 and Games for Windows on 05 December (US) and 15 December (UK).

Before we get under way, could you check your phaser at the door and let our readers know your name, StarFleet rank designation on the Star Trek: Legacy project, and—for the sake of ensuing credibility—favourite Star Trek movie moment?

Name: Gary Conti

Rank Designation: Associate Producer, Mad Doc Software

Favourite Trek moment… is a tie—between the Wrath of Khan scene when Khan self-destructs his ship, or the various glorious fire fights during the Dominion War (such as the battle of Chin’toka).

Mad Doc Software obviously has an established track record with the videogame arm of the Star Trek franchise, which obviously provides a decent grounding, but did publisher Bethesda motivate the studio to push beyond its own experience with particular aspects of Legacy?

Legacy was a game that Mad Doc had envisioned making for years. We were ready to finally start making a Trek game from the ground up that captured the very essence of what Trek combat was all about—slugging it out with the big ships in glorious 3D. Bethesda loved our vision for the game—that is why we’re working together on this title.

Conversely, was Mad Doc’s amassed experience a central reason for its position as developer on Legacy, and how was that experience channelled back into the game based on the studio’s prior Star Trek accomplishments?

Absolutely. It takes a special breed of developer to deal with such highly valued IP and turn it into an engaging gameplay experience. Our experience working within the established canon of Star Trek gave us a leg up on designing a fun game around such well-established lore.

Can you give our readers an explanatory rundown of the mission structure and variety on offer throughout Legacy’s single-player campaign, and perhaps also outline the fleet/squad-based battle mechanic in relation to those missions?

Missions are typically structured such that your initial goals are explained via cinematic cutscenes. You’re fleet has been selected, and you drop into system with your objectives in sight. Once in mission, it is up to you to assess your tactical and strategic situation, and act accordingly while trying to balance the survival of your fleet with your mission objectives. Often, as tasks are completed, new situations arise that will require you to go above and beyond in your endless duty as a Starfleet captain.

Typical mission objectives range from escorting fleeing refugees, to defending besieged starbases, to flat-out battles that require you to wipe your enemy from the galaxy for good. The fleet/squad mechanic in the game will require you to make tough decisions on how best to tackle your objectives. Do you send a scout out to draw fire while your battleships and destroyers lay waiting outside sensor range? Do you split your fleet to draw the enemy away from helpless civilians? Do you assign all your ships to the same target so you can overwhelm their shields as quickly as possible? The opportunities are many and vary by your play style. It gives missions high replayability, as there are many ways to skin a targ.

In a recent Q&A with Gamersinfo.net, you mention that the single-player campaign takes the player on quests that include the “origins, consequences, or results of events” that first happened in the Star Trek TV shows and movies. Can you elaborate on that and provide one or two examples by way of whetting appetites?

No! Well ok. There’s one mission that has you tasked to investigate the strange disappearance of some new experimental craft… This craft, piloted by a young officer that goes by the name of Sisko, is apparently of vital importance to the federation…

The 40-year chronological ambition of Legacy’s content is really rather staggering, was it especially difficult to cram everything in there—ships, races, characters, etc—and did any personal favourites hit the cutting room floor for the sake of balance?

The most difficult part was fleshing out fleets for all 4 races during 3 distinct eras. You don’t get to see many TOS era [The Original Series] Romulan ships, or ENT era [Enterprise] Borg craft. A lot of dev time was spent on making sure that craft we filled the gaps in with fit well into their eras, were balanced, and looked cool. This was difficult, but also very rewarding. We’re very proud of our ship list of over 80 ships, and how well they seamlessly mix it up with established canon ships. It’s almost as if they were there all along.

All of my personal favorites made it in (see if you can find the USS Conti in the game!), and I wound up getting a few new favorite ships that our artists put together.

How exactly do Legacy’s five Star Trek TV iterations segue together during gameplay, or do they exist as separate narrative sections that make up a galactic whole?

The campaign progresses through the different eras, and as it does so, story elements and characters are woven into the experience as you move along. It all winds up turning into a large, cohesive gameplay journey deserving of the Star Trek title.

Securing all five of the Hollywood actors that portrayed the TV Star Trek captains (Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and Archer) was somewhat of a coup for Legacy. Who signed on first, and exactly how influential in terms of game time are the actors’ character contributions?

While Bethesda would be the ones to ask this, I believe all 5 captains were signed simultaneously. To us, they are each as important as the next, and have each greatly contributed to the game experience. As for total game time, I believe that Archer, Picard, and Kirk are tied for first, reason being that they each narrate their own respective era. Janeway and Sisko are a close second, as they have integral roles in some of the later missions.

Did the recording sessions of Shatner, Stewart, Brooks, Mulgrew, and Bakula spawn any anecdotal highlights that you can recount for GamerSquad’s readers…and did any of them particularly embrace the performance opportunity?

I didn’t wind up making the trip out to LA (we’re in Boston, kind of a haul) for the recording sessions. I hear that they were all a hoot to work with, and were very enthusiastic. It was a very exciting day when we got the sound files in from the studio. I pulled them off of our FTP and was like “We got the VO!!!” We handed them off to our designers to drop in game, and all sat around and listened. At one of our company meetings, we played all of Shatner’s lines to much applause from all the Mad Doc folks.

Speaking of vocal performances, will Legacy showcase authentic subtitled Klingon and Romulan, or is everything strictly English-only for the sake of unsullied immersion?

As a purist, I would have loved to recorded lines in their native languages—but the logistics for such didn’t really work out. Honestly, I think it’s better we use good ol’ English this time around. This game is for everybody, not just the trekkies.

Did your rather obvious love of Star Trek and sci-fi in general, and especially with the notable claim that William Shatner is a “god amongst men”, make it difficult to keep his (your) bubbling inner geek in check during recording?

I could imagine my fanboy-ness would have been a detriment to the recording session… No wonder they didn’t ask for me to be there…

Can players also look forward to interacting with other leading and peripheral characters from the Star Trek universe while progressing through Legacy?

You’ll be hearing a lot of original captains and crew members as you build your fleet and fight alongside other crews.

Could you briefly outline the structure of Legacy’s multiplayer component and whether Mad Doc and Bethesda plan on introducing extra expansion content to increase the longevity of both single and multiplayer modes?

Multiplayer on STL will be a great way to duke it out with your favorite ships against all manner of fleet and era configurations, whether playing team deathmatches, free for all, or co-op wave games… No word right now on expansion content.

Sadly, the monumental space battle between Kirk (USS Enterprise) and Kahn (USS Reliant), which was showcased at E3 2006, won’t be in the final game, but will it be made available as a download perhaps, or as an unlockable extra? Please, pretty please!

Nothing on scanners, captain. Sorry, I don’t have any info on DLC at this time.

Xbox 360 achievements, while largely useless, are often awarded for banal game aspects and seldom inspire much in the way of motivation. What does Star Trek: Legacy offer up on the subject of gaining achievements and what’s the percentage balance between single-player and multiplayer achievements?

There’s nothing useless about achievements! At Mad Doc we’re huge fans of the achievement system, and deplore irresponsible awarding of gamerscores. Achievements shouldn’t be something automatically earned for playing the game like you normally would (although some progression achievements are ok). We largely award achievements for being inventive, overly thorough, or going above and beyond during the missions and accomplishing something significant. We avoid “trophy” achievements, such as “be number one in the world at STL” because those would be almost impossible to achieve and a disservice to players who want to get everything out of the game that they can. That said, I’d say that most of our achievements are single-player based, as multiplayer has its own reward system (trueskill, rankings, leaderboards, etc…) which does a great job of keeping players interested.

With a wealth of Star Trek: Legacy Q&A interviews already on offer through Bethesda’s official website, we’ve tried to provide a selection of ‘different’ questions from the norm, but if we’ve missed anything integral then please feel free to fill us in…

Yes, we enjoy playing the game. The whole team plays games on Xbox Live regularly. No, I’m not married. Yes, I’ll be available to play online matches once the game ships. Yes, we’re a bunch of geeks.

Many thanks Gary for taking the time to tackle GamerSquad’s Q&A, and we wish you all the very best with Star Trek: Legacy; though, based on the stunning trailers, gameplay clips, and other promotional media, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll need it.

Thanks for the kind words, and for all the great questions.