Just a few short years ago, the Star Trek license was considered to be a curse, as numerous games carrying the Star Trek name fell well short of expectations. But the trend has slowly started to change with some of the more recent Star Trek games such as Starfleet Command, Star Trek Armada, and Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force. Hoping to capitalize on the recent success of the license, Totally Games--famous for its work on the Star Wars X-Wing series--is currently developing its own Star Trek game, aptly named Star Trek: Bridge Commander. Bridge Commander gives you an opportunity to take the captain's chair of various Federation ships from which you dispense orders to other members of your crew while traveling through the vast depths of space and engaging enemy craft. We had a chance to speak with Totally Games' Larry Holland to find out what kind of experience Star Trek fans can expect from this latest game.

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GameSpot: With its history firmly behind Star Wars games, why did Totally Games decide to produce a Star Trek game?

Larry Holland: Activision approached Totally Games near the end of X-Wing Alliance stating [that] they wanted a top-notch developer of space sims to create a game based on the Star Trek license they had acquired. We looked at the sales figures of past games, read all the existing reviews, and then we played all the existing Star Trek games released over the years. The X-Wing team members were looking for a new challenge, and after eight great years working on the same license, most seemed to be wanting to try something a little different. When looking at the very big picture, we saw a good opportunity and had a motivated core group of people who had a vision for a truly unique Trek game. We pitched our idea, and a few months later we signed to do the title.

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GS: How similar is Bridge Commander to previous games in the Star Trek series, particularly Starfleet Academy?

LH: Not that similar actually...Star Trek Bridge Commander is closer to the Harpoon (Submarine) series of games than it is to any previous Star Trek or Star Wars titles. The vision for Bridge Commander is, "You have the conn." You are seated in the captain's chair on the most powerful starship in the galaxy. From this chair, you will command and control your ship via a crew, by issuing orders in a point-and-click interface (hard-core gamers have the option of taking direct control of the tactical station). As far as gameplay itself: We have slowed things down, made combat much more strategic, and made the crew your main interface to the ship.

GS: What are the benefits to using the NetImmerse engine for this type of game?

LH: It allowed us to leave our past legacy X-Wing game engine behind and start fresh, while not losing six months of production time. People should know that buying a graphics rendering engine is very different from buying a full-fledged game engine. A rendering engine is basically a plug-in that you build around--below are the game systems and game logic (different for every title) and layered on top are innovative features like our new dynamic damage modeling system.