Aug 29 - Retro Review: Hero Worship A young boy who is the sole survivor of a disaster that killed his parents decides to emulate Data.
Aug 21 - Retro Review: New Ground Worf's human mother brings his son Alexander on board, insisting that she can no longer raise the boy.
Aug 14 - Retro Review: A Matter of Time When a visitor from a future era arrives on the ship, Picard asks for assistance about how to save a dying planet.
July 31 - Retro Review: Unification, Part Two Picard learns the reason for Spock's visit to Romulus: an attempted reunification of the Vulcan and Romulan races.
July 17 - Retro Review: Unification, Part One Shocked to learn that Spock may have defected to the Romulans, Picard and Data cross the Neutral Zone in to find him.
July 10 - Retro Review: The Game When an interactive game becomes addictive to the crew, Wesley Crusher and his new girlfriend must save the day.
June 20 - Retro Review: Disaster Troi must take command of the ship while Picard struggles to work with three children and Worf delivers Keiko's baby.
June 6 - Retro Review: Silicon Avatar A scientist pursuing the Crystalline Entity discovers that Data's brain holds her son's memories.
May 30 - Retro Review: Ensign Ro A court-martialed Starfleet officer from occupied Bajor is sent to help locate a terrorist leader.
May 23 - Retro Review: Darmok Picard is exiled with the leader of an alien race who speaks in incomprehensible metaphors.
May 9 - Retro Review: Redemption, Part One When Picard is asked as Arbiter of Succession to oversee Gowron's installation, Worf resigns from Starfleet to fight against the Duras family.
Apr 24 - Retro Review: The Mind's Eye LaForge is kidnapped and altered by Romulans to take part in an assassination plot against a Klingon governor.
By Jeff 'Koganuts' Koga
Posted at July 7, 2000 - 10:23 PM GMT
'Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force' -
An Interview With Steve Elwell
The Trek Nation - "Can you give me your name and position?"
Steve Elwell - "Sure, I'm Steve Elwell, associate producer for Activision and
all the Raven stuff, basically."
TN - "And can you tell me a little bit about this game?"
SE - "This is 'Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force.' It's using the 'Quake III'
engine, heavily modified by Raven Software, who is just coming off their big
hit 'Soldier of Fortune.' So this is their follow-up and the game's looking
fantastic. You'll have 30-plus single player levels, plus 10-15 multiplayer
levels, with hopefully one type of unique multiplayer game, called
'Assimilation,' where it's Borg against Federation, Borg against Klingon, etc.,
etc., where if you die they add a bot to their team so their numbers will just
keep growing if you keep losing."
SE - "This game has a 700-page script so it's a huge single player game, which
is quite a bit different from 'Quake III' in its origins. But the basic story
behind it all is that you're on Voyager, you're still in the Delta Quadrant,
seven years away from home, when you respond to a distress signal. You
respond, and they fire upon you, and you're engulfed in an energy sphere, which
takes you to this ship graveyard. And there you try to find your way out,
[and] the mysterious force that's holding all these ships here."
[Demonstrating...]
SE - "And this is actually the first ship that you visit, [which] is basically
alive. It's Etherian. So if you destroy anything, you have these little
'fireflies' that'll come and fix them, which makes for some really clever
puzzle stuff later on. You can use them in the puzzles."
[Demonstrating...]
SE - "Those are the Etherians. I need more firepower for them. This is the
Etherian weapon, the stasis weapon that you actually get on this level a little
bit later."
TN - "How much of the game has been completed?"
SE - "We're beta right now. It's basically all complete. We just need to put
some polish on it, [and] work on the N.P.C. command system. Because you'll be
able to tell your teammates to fall back or stay forward or proceed or
whatever. And that's mainly what we're going to be working on."
TN - "Multiplayer is all set then?"
SE - "Multiplayer is basically all set. We need to do the new game type,
'Assimilation,' we need to do a little programming for that, but besides that,
it's just polishing this one, and then localizing it for all the other
versions and stuff."
TN - "I was here at E3 last year, and this game has obviously progressed quite
a bit from where you were before."
SE - "Yeah, well it's a huge game, absolutely. Besides just the 30 levels we
have all that dialogue that goes with it. The voiceover was a huge job by
itself, so we're really happy with the way it came out though, because with a
game with this much dialogue the audio had better be good or the game is just
going to be so annoying by the time you're five minutes into it."
TN - "So I was hearing that in terms of voiceovers you have all the cast except
Seven of Nine."
SE - "That's true."
TN - "Why couldn't you get Jeri Ryan?"
SE - "She was not available."
[Laughter]
TN - "Yeah, I had heard something about that. Anyways, obviously all the sound
effects are there."
SE - "Yeah."
TN - "How much of the 'Quake' engine has been modified? What percentage would
you say?"
SE - "Just because we have scripted events now basically, I'd say probably a
good 40-50% has been modified... Just modifying the save game alone is a huge
programming task when you think about what 'Quake III' really needs to save as
compared to a game like this. They've also added a skeletal system to the
game, which allows this many models to be running around in 1024 and 32-bit
with the textures all the way up. So they've modified it quite heavily
actually. They're redoing the A.I. too because all this N.P.C.-pathing is new.
I mean because there was basically no pathing for 'Quake III.' You had bot
logic but not N.P.C.-pathing."
[Demonstrating...]
SE - "[The curved surfaces are] an amazing feat right there. It's almost all
curved surfaces, [and there] aren't any levels like that in 'Quake III.' You
have them here and there but nothing like this where it's tied in."
TN - "How long has the game been in development now?"
SE - "Closing in on two [years], which is not unusual at all for a game this
size anymore. That's what it takes, [if not] longer. If you want a AAA title
you're going to have to keep it [going], so... and we've made that commitment
though, which I'm very happy about... to give this the chance and now we have
it."
Special thanks to Steve Elwell for the interview!
Read our other two 'Voyager: Elite Force' articles:
Jeff 'Koganuts' Koga is a regular contributor to the Trek Nation, as well
as webmaster of unofficial fan sites for John Woo, Chow Yun-Fat, and Garrett Wang.
Want to react to this article? Please direct all questions, comments, and flames to feedback@treknation.com, and you might even see them published in our mailbag!
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