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."

Comments

MMO.

[FalconZero]

Does this affect Star Trek : Online already under development by Prepetual?

Re:MMO.

[faloi]

From TFA:
Though not specifically mentioned, it appears that Bethesda's acquisition of the license will have no effect on Perpetual Entertainment's currently in development Star Trek Online massively multiplayer role-playing game. Many multiformat media licensors, such as Marvel, have treated massively multiplayer online games as a separate issue in the past.

So it looks like probably not. It sounds like Bethesda will have plenty on their plate without it. I just hope the games are worth something.

Impressive

[mendaliv]

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.

7 of 9 comments

[A Brand of Fire]

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).

Incarnations

[HTH NE1]

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 !

Good news everyone

[Jarlsberg]

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 :)