For as long as Star Trek: Voyager has been around, there has been much debate about if Captain Janeway made the right decisions navigating her crew’s journey home across years of travel from an unexplored corner of the galaxy with little to no support from Starfleet. Should she have killed Tuvix to save the lives of two crewmembers? Should she have been hyperevolved into an amphibian and had sex with one of her senior, also-currently-a-hyperevolved-amphibian officers? Should she have deleted that wife?
Well, there’s good news. You might soon be able to make those kinds of decisions in the Voyager captain’s chair yourself.
Announced today at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, by publisher Daedalic Entertainment, Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown will cast players in the role of the titular ship’s captain after it is shunted 70,000 light-years from the Alpha Quadrant and into the unexplored Delta Quadrant. A “story-driven survival game,” Across the Unknown will see players have to balance repairing the ship after its bumpy journey to the Delta Quadrant, acquiring and maintaining resources, and going on away missions as you and your crew explore the Delta Quadrant and chart a voyage home.
Aside from letting players rebuild Voyager‘s internal systems and research ways to adapt Delta Quadrant technology to sustain its journey and manage crew morale (including even using Borg technology, should you dare), Across the Unknown will have players making key decisions inspired by Voyager‘s TV adventures, engaging in ship combat and team management for away missions and ship duties, and rogue-like elements to see how long or how far you can take Voyager as her captain.
Star Trek has often been a franchise that struggles to adapt to the world of video gaming, in spite of the long and rich video gaming legacy that it has fostered regardless of that struggle. But even in an early glimpse, the potential of Across the Unknown seems to be incredible. This is a pitch-perfect way to take a beloved Star Trek premise (one that the show itself often strained to really match thanks to its approach to episodic storytelling) and marry it with video game mechanics that have you engaging with the things that make Star Trek what it is in the first place: tough decisions and systems management that will only occasionally result in a phasering or two. Or more, if you want it to.
You’ll be able to out-Janeway Janeway herself when Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown comes to PC in the future. The game is available to wishlist on Steam now, but currently has no release date.
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