Star Trek Bridge Commander Designer Diary #2

By , GameSpotPosted Feb 5, 2002 4:09 pm PT

Totally Games' David Litwin recaps the steps that his team took to create and shape the story of Star Trek Bridge Commander.

Entry #2 - 02/05/02

By David Litwin
Director of Technology and Project Lead, Totally Games

The difficult part about talking about our story development is that at its heart the story of Bridge Commander is a mystery. This means to really describe the process I'd have to give away part of what makes it interesting. So I'll do what I can and just leave the rest for those who buy the game.

It's your turn to sit in the captain's chair.

The creation of a story for a large and complex game at Totally Games is never a small effort. Our games have been known for their depth and detail, and what we were trying for in Bridge Commander would require no less. The game style of Bridge Commander was designed to have no discernable individual missions but instead a smooth flow from beginning to end. We were also creating a game where direct interaction with characters was a major interface. Our history, the game design, and the license of Star Trek make a large and detailed story a given.

For a number of weeks the team brainstormed and discussed myriad story ideas. We had to keep in mind the license (Star Trek: The Next Generation), the time period (just after the Dominion war), and the characters from the license we intended to use. We narrowed it down fairly quickly to Picard and Data, and possibly Worf. Sure, it would have been nice to use the entire cast, but when designing a game where you assume the role of captain, it's hard to closely integrate all the cast of the Enterprise without you being on that ship. And having you take over the Enterprise just wasn't realistic. Our decisions on characters were also driven by character popularity and how we might be able to work them into the story ideas we had.

After reducing our long list of ideas to a small few, we began to merge the remaining contenders and flesh them out. At this stage we began moving past simple opinion and to many issues that involved all disciplines of development for their expertise. It was crucial to have the artists involved to make sure the opening, ending, and other cutscene moments of the story could be properly and dramatically told. Story on paper may not work well visually. The designers need to consider scenarios and how they fit into the arc of the story. The programmers need to make sure that everything in the story can be technically realized.

The end result of this process was a great story that was grounded in a cataclysmic event, the search and gradual discovery of the cause, coalition building (diplomacy), and a strong finale, all sprinkled with lots of stuff blowing up along the way. Kind of what we have in the story now, but with some fundamental differences--our original plot (and this gives nothing away, as we changed it) involved the Borg and Romulans as major forces in the story.

To digress for a bit, I've never found Superman to be an interesting superhero (I was always a big Iron Man collector). The problem I had with Superman was that his powers were just too convenient. He could do anything. There was always some new power that could be whipped up to solve any problem that came about. Ice breath? Heat rays from his eyes? Walk through walls (from the '50s TV show, I'll admit)? No problem! He was also basically completely invulnerable, with only a Kryptonite veto.

For the same reason, I was very troubled about having the Borg in our game. Like Superman, the Borg are an interesting force to deal with. They are all-powerful and can adapt to anything, yet they always seem to lose in the end. Great stuff for books, TV, movies, and any other form of entertainment where there is no interaction. Throw the player into the mix, and suddenly you have a problem--how are you supposed to win? The Borg will "adapt" to whatever you do. And if you can fight them and have a chance at winning, how can that possibly feel like the desperate fear portrayed by the shows when the Borg show up? Since the player was never made into Locutus, they won't know where to tell the fleet to target like Picard did (unless we create a "win game by targeting properly" button).

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1 Comments

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jakeboudville
Posted Sep 21, 2006 7:22 pm PT

kinda impressive
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