How Picard’s Return Brought Some Surprising Starships to Star Trek Canon

io9: Obviously, STO has digital assets of these vessels, but there’s a difference between what works for an MMO designed to run on various scales of hardware and the sort of intense VFX detail we know goes into a show like Picard. What was it like preparing to take the game’s designs and re-imagine them in the sort of detail needed for a big-budget streaming series?

Marrone: This ended up being a great excuse for us. When I found out these were the ships that were going to be in Picard, I spent a lot of time remastering those ships to STO’s quality bar. Some of the models were four to five years old, so it meant doubling the triangles and some of the details. This actually worked out anyways because STO was about to start its Terran storyline, which meant we would need those ship models anyways and it was a good confluence of resources because we could add a lot of quality to these Starfleet ships. The Sutherland, Reliant, and Gagarin, those all need a pretty good facelift, but it’s still the same model for the game. I updated the model and sent it to the Picard VFX team. The curves were smoother and there were a lot of details. Because our in-game models are so detailed, they can hold up on screen at a certain amount of distance.

Blass: I think people think there’s some hard drive that says Star Trek on the side that has every model that has ever been used (There isn’t). The reason why TNG featured ships like the Bird of Prey so often is because they had the physical model and were able to re-use it. It was ancient technology. Whatever worked back then doesn’t exist anymore. Everything had to be re-done but STO allowed us a bridge to get the older ships like the Akira class and bring them into the new world. I can’t wait to see what the fans think. I tweeted all of our credits and put Thomas and Hector from Cryptic and people were like “OMG.” It’s improving the situation from season one, where we used a lot of the same ships. The fans didn’t like that and so we solved the problem and we did it in such a way that now fans will have all these new ships. People who have never played Star Trek Online will look at these ships and say “Wow, what a great ship. I didn’t know these existed.” And those who play the game will recognize the ships and to fans, that’s what matters. To realize that the ship you fly in the game is a real Star Trek ship, it’s going to be a big thing for these fans.

io9: STO also has aesthetic differences to consider. What were the biggest challenges in adapting the visual feel of these ships into the aesthetic for vessels we’ve seen in the current Trek series like Discovery and Picard?

Blass: Thomas sent me this giant packet of ships. There were tons. I would flip through them and find ones that matched the cohesive world of the Stargazer. We had four nacelles so we didn’t want another one with four in the wide shot. What do fans want to see that are popular? What are people going to be excited about? We wanted to pick things that felt like they were in the same fleet visually. There were so many to pick from—it felt like a kid walking into a candy store. It worked out amazingly. When we had the trailer a few weeks ago, the fans already noticed the Nova class and Steamrunner. My Twitter will be very busy and it’s so great that we can finally share the news. Thomas and I have been working on this for almost two years now. It’s definitely something we’ve been holding onto.

io9: STO has had such a huge legacy the past decade telling its own story for Star Trek’s 24th century future. What does it mean to see some recognition of that work playing out on screen now, especially in a show as nostalgically connected to Trek’s past as Picard?

Marrone: It’s a realization of our greatest hope, in a way. As Star Trek fans who worked on this license for a while, we’re still really proud of the art and of the story that we make. To see that being recognized by Picard, it’s very fulfilling and it’s a validation of how much we care and how much of our own fandom we put into our work. So many people who work on Star Trek Online are huge Star Trek fans and are dedicated to getting everything right and continuing that legacy forward, especially as a continuation from TNG to DS9 and Voyager then to the 25th century. For STO, our goal was to feel like the show never stopped, like you’ve never stopped watching Star Trek. To see that come to fruition with Picard, it feels incredible. It’s such a fulfillment of my wildest hopes and dreams for what we can do with Star Trek Online.

Star Trek: Picard is streaming now on Paramount+.

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