A developer who worked on 2003 first-person shooter Star Trek: Elite Force 2 says it had to be rewritten because of the attacks on New York on September 11, 2001.
Released on PC in 2003, Star Trek: Elite Force II was published by Activision and developed by Ritual Entertainment, which had previously worked on SiN.
The game has players taking on the role of Starfleet lieutenant Alexander Munro, who is made leader of a newly created Hazard Team by Captain Picard.
Munro, often assisted by other Hazard Team members, has to take on a series of linear missions as directed by Picard. This wasn’t the original plan for the game, however, according to level designer and lead scripter Benson Russell.
In an interview with FRVR, Russell – who went on to join Naughty Dog and worked as a game designer on Uncharted 1-3 and The Last of Us – explained that the game’s plot was originally supposed to be about a terror attack on Starfleet Academy, before real-world events forced a redesign.
“I remember we were making Elite Force 2, and 9/11 happened at that time,” Russell recalled. “One of the original scenes was, when you were at Starfleet Academy, it was supposed to get an attack.
“We actually had a shuttle fly into a building and stuff like that. Well, that was a no-no, for understandable reasons, of course.”
Russell also explained why the game mainly focused on minor characters from the Star Trek series rather than the main cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, saying the actors’ contracts meant it was essentially an ‘all or nothing’ deal that the game’s budget couldn’t accommodate.
“They had an equal pay – all of them on their contracts had an equal pay thing, so if one person got paid X amount, they all got paid X amount,” he explained. Instead, the studio “dumped all of that” in favour of only securing Patrick Stewart as Picard and filling the rest of the game’s cast with less well-known characters.
Star Trek: Elite Force 2 sold poorly, resulting in a messy lawsuit with Activision and Star Trek IP owner Viacom, with Activision claiming that Viacom had left Star Trek in “stagnation” leading to a lack of interest in the game.
Viacom counter-sued and the parties settled, with the Star Trek game rights moving to other publishers such as Bethesda (Star Trek: Legacy), Atari (Star Trek Online) and Paramount Digital Entertainment (Star Trek DAC).
Silent Hill 2 remake studio Bloober Team is currently working on Star Trek: Shadow Frontier, a “psychological thriller” Star Trek game starring Ro Laren, the character played by Michelle Forbes in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Picard.
