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Elder Scrolls Developer Holds Star Trek License
Gamasutra reports that Bethesda Softworks will have the rights to make Star Trek games on all the platforms available. From the article: "The move follows the high profile legal confrontation between previous license holder Activision and Viacom, in which Activision accused Viacom of letting 'the once proud Star Trek franchise stagnate and decay.' The disagreement was apparently brought to an amicable conclusion in March of last year, at which time it was implied that Activision would retain the license until 2009. However, following Bethesda's unveiling of new game Star Trek: Legacy, from Empire Earth II and Star Trek: Armada II developer Mad Doc Software, Bethesda has now confirmed it owns the game license for all television and movie incarnations of the science fiction series."
Does this affect Star Trek : Online already under development by Prepetual?
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
Up to this date, I'd always thought of Bethesda as just "the guys who made the TES series", but this is really pretty cool and will, I hope, push Bethesda even higher in the ranks of the developers.
This is also good news for me because, honestly, I haven't been particularly pleased with Activision's ST games. They can blame Viacom, but they can't exempt their own developers... like in Star Trek: Bridge Commander; in one mission, your chief engineer suggests by tweaking the matter/antimatter intermix ratio to do some kind of super warp jump. Of course, if you watched enough TNG, you know that there's only one proper intermix ratio, 1:1, and otherwise should have destroyed your ship.
I think the technical manual hedges it by saying the 1:1 ratio only applies to Warp 8 and above.
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
I thought that was kind of interesting, when linking from the main page to this article, that there were 7 of 9 comments on an article with a Star Trek subject.
Having seen some of the screenshots, I'd have to guess (or hope) they're at an early alpha stage, seeing as there's no shadows being cast and some of the texturing looks rather dated. While I acknowledge that great graphics do not always make for great games, I'd expect that a company like Bethesda or Mad Doc (who is doing the actual work on the Legacy title) wouldn't skimp in the graphics department, either. Of course, I'm probably spoilt by the gorgeousness found in EVE Online.
That said, Legacy looks like it'll be a fun title. Large-scale combat in a 'Trek game can be fun; I just wish Birth of the Federation wasn't so poorly made as to make such conflicts nigh impossible. Speaking of which, that game is in sore need of a remake (hint, hint, Bethesda).
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Bethesda has now confirmed it owns the game license for all television and movie incarnations of the science fiction series.
So the game license for stage incarnations is still up for grabs?
Star Trek: The Interactive Musical !
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
The excellent Star Fleet Command game circa about 1999 was a very faithful reproduction of SFB. It's still available on e-bay and is well worth checking out if you missed it back then. I used to play SFB in high school with my buddies, when we discovered SFC we were overjoyed. I recently bought my third copy of the game to replace worn-out media..
I think it's likely that Bethesda will hire Patrick Stewart for voice work on some of the games. After all, he's just worked for them on the upcoming game Oblivion (http://www.elderscrolls.com/news/press_093005.htm ).
If anyone can revive that shoddy franchise, it's Bethesda. They made the only good game based on the Terminator license back when T2 was big, so this is good news indeed :)
Did anyone else read the subject of the parent post with the Farnsworth voice saying it in their head?
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This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
Speaking of the original board game...
.)
For those not informed, Star Fleet Battles was based on the original Star Trek series (with some changes . .
Such as the inclusion of the cat-like Kzin from Larry Niven's 'Known Space', among other decidedly non-Trek items. I can deal with minor techno-babble inconsistancies, that's par for the course (and rather entertaining in its own right), but something like introducing a race from a completely unrelated fictional universe always seemed absurd to me. Don't get me wrong, I like the Kzin, even read three Man-Kzin Wars novels, but I still have to wonder... why?
Sorry, end of rant.
The Kzinti were in the Star Trek cartoon series. They also made cameos in some of the movies that were based on the original series (although they were never referred to by name in the movies, and I forget which movies offhand -- I believe they appeared in two of them, though). They also served to explain why Klingon ships were described in Trek literature as being heavily outfitted with drone defenses when the Federation et al weren't described as using drones -- the solution was to make the Kzinti ships heavily armed with drones.
Keep in mind I'm saying this as a Dr. Who fan who used to play SFB -- I'm sure a Trek fan could provide more (and better) details.
You're right of course about the animated series, I'd forgotten all about that - never saw it, but read about it and of the appearance of the Kzinti in that series. But still...
:)
They also made cameos in some of the movies that were based on the original series...
I'm a (formerly) VERY avid Trek fan, having seen all the movies multiple times (especially those based on TOS characters), and I don't ever recall seeing a Kzin or heavily Kzin-like character in any of the films, unless it was a very bit part and it went right by me (unlikely, but certainly possible). If anyone can point out the film and time index of this appearance(s), or at least the specific scene in which it occured, I'd greatly appreciate it. And remember -- webbed ears, ratlike tail; not just any feline humanoid species will suffice.
Thanks in advance.
AFAIR they are "blink and you'll miss it" appearances. I recall watching a scene from one of the movies (although I now forget which) just because a fellow SFB player told me that he had read somewhere that they had put a Kzinti in it as a nod to the animated series, and because of the link with SFB.
Remember though the Kzinti of SFB aren't 100% the Kzin of Niven; they're based on them but they did have some changes along the way (probably in part due to legal issues, and in part due to the regular changing of details as a message gets passed from one person to the next). You have to compare against the Kzinti pictures in the various SFB materials, not the pictures of Niven's Kzin. The Kzinti in the movies are based on the ones in the cartoon series and SFB, not the ones in Niven's books.