Star Trek Online Preview

VideoGamer.com: Another game I saw at gamescom, which I had seen before, was Star Wars: The Old Republic. By all accounts it'll be releasing in the same year as Star Trek Online. Firstly, from what you've seen, what do you think?

CZ: To me it looks like a pretty exciting game. I think that in the end the two games will end up being vastly different experiences. Star Wars: The Old Republic right now looks cool and I'm excited to play it, but it also looks a little bit more like a standard MMO - to me, at least - whereas at Cryptic we are trying to push the bounds of the moment to moment gameplay. You've seen what we did with Champions. Within Star Trek, with space combat, with ground combat, it is not standard MMO. We're looking for gameplay that breaks that mould. That said, I think it's pretty interesting some of the things The Old Republic's doing.

VideoGamer.com: One of the things BioWare's been keen to push is the fact that they're doing things with story we're not used to seeing in the MMO genre. In particular it'll be a fully voice acted game, in multiple languages, which seems quite incredible. What's your take on that? Is it overkill for an MMO, or is it a valid feature that's worth the effort?

CZ: We'll have to see what happens. You put voice over in the game and the very first thing players want is the ability to skip through and get back to the action. Whether or not they have any mechanics like that - whether or not it feels good in the game, or whether or not it ends up breaking up the action, whether or not it breaks up what's going on to a point where people don't like it - it'll be interesting to see how that pans out. It adds something to the game, but I don't think that VO-ing all of your text provides for that big a bang for the buck in terms of immersion. What we want to make sure we do is be able to have a pipeline, is be able to make content and get that content out to the player as soon as possible after launch, and continue to update the game and continue to do things to the game. Putting that big huge VO section right in that pipeline makes things a little bit more difficult in terms of getting content out.

VideoGamer.com: When will the closed beta begin?

CZ: The closed beta is really just right around the corner. I think that there's a press release that's going to go out in just a couple of days.

VideoGamer.com: I've read that you've said the game will be released early 2010. Are we talking January, February, March? Or are we talking the first half of 2010?

CZ: Without giving you the date, which I'm not allowed to give out or else the marketing people will come and smack me in the back of the head, I can tell you that the game will be out the first quarter of 2010.

VideoGamer.com: You're an experienced MMO developer, and Cryptic's made quite a few of them. Would you say Star Trek Online will be Cryptic's best MMO?

CZ: I'm not going to say it will be Cryptic's best MMO. I will say that it is my favourite MMO that I've got to work on so far, that Cryptic has done. Space combat is brand new, refreshing and totally different from what's out there. I love the idea of bridge officers that you level up and become pets. For me, definitely hands down this is my favourite game that I've got to develop here at Cryptic.

Check back on Thursday for the final part of our Star Trek Online interview, where Craig answers questions from the great VideoGamer.com community!