From Star Trek Game Information
[edit] Overview
The interview with Gary Conti starts at 17:24 minutes into the podcast. There is discussion about XBox360 achievements, multiplayer game types, fans, and more.
[edit] Transcript
Wayne Perry: Now it is time for this week's Game Focus segment. This week as I mentioned earlier in the show we are going to be talking about Star Trek Legacy. The great interview that I was able to get with Gary Conti, who is the Associate Producer for the title and we are going to roll that interview for you right now.
Wayne Perry: Bethesda Softworks' Star Trek Legacy is the subject of this week's Game Focus and joining me today is the Associate Producer from Mad Doc Software, the developer for the title, Mr. Gary Conti and he's going to give us a little bit of insight as to what this game is all about. I just want to say thanks for being with me today Gary and welcome to the Rabies Shot.
Gary Conti: It's great to be here.
Wayne Perry: Why don't you start by introducing yourself.
Gary: Like you said my name is Gary. I am the Associate Producer here at Mad Doc Software working on Star Trek title and just getting really excited about this game because it is really starting to come down to the last hour here. We're releasing this fall and things are starting to really come together really good. So I'm getting excited.
Wayne Perry: Now tell me and the rest of our listeners, what is Star Trek: Legacy exactly?
Gary Conti: Star Trek: Legacy is a space combat shooter game that we've been working on for some time now. It is kind of like a hybrid of genres we are looking towards. It's got a little bit of RTS element and also a little bit of a squad shooter element and all framed within this huge environment which is the entire history of Star Trek.
Wayne Perry: Now I've had a chance to see some of the screenshots and some of the videos from the game. They all look fantastic. How difficult was it for you to create such a phenomenal looking environment?
Gary Conti: It was easy cause, I mean I shouldn't say it was easy, but it came naturally for us because we were working on this title for quite some time and the technology is really starting to catch up with what we wanted to do and it's starting to come to the point where we were starting to look a lot better than the other shows, then the movies ever did. We found that we really catch a real cinematic quality to this game in both the sound quality and just the overwhelming visuals that we can achieve with the engine.
Wayne Perry: Now you mentioned for a while, when did production actually start on this?
Gary Conti: So production has been going since back in 03, We started working on this and it got to a point of completion and we decided to work on something else for a while and then we picked it back up early last year when Bethesda acquired the Star Trek license from Paramount and ever since then we've been cranking on it, getting it up to where we wanted to because it was a really good looking game back then and we wanted to make sure that it was not just an OK looking game now but we poured over 360 hardware, originally it was a PC title and now it is both PC and 360. We just cranked everything, put some really high power models in there and it's starting to look fantastic. We've been really cranking on it, full production over a year and one /2 now not including the original one.
Wayne Perry: Now the spacecraft that we see within the game, now these were all created to scale from the originals? Is that correct?
Gary Conti: Correct. We went ahead and just kind of compiled every possible research medium we could find. We have all the DVDs here in the office. They are all sitting on my desk. We did a lot of our homework looking through not just what was in the shows but also what was designed in other realms such as like some old school role playing games that Star Trek used to have. They had a lot of designs that were made, which we borrowed upon heavily in making our own designs. Then we had just some completely original creations because we had some artists that were really into Star Trek when we were making our models. It shows because we had the difficult task of flushing out fleets that were never really seen on any of the series or shows. Because you obviously saw a lot of the federation ships, because all the series focused on those but what you didn't see was, we wanted to get the big four races in this game so that's Romulan, Klingon, Borg and Federation and you don't see a lot of the other stuff and so we had to fill in the gaps. What we have done is we have taken some creative license, since we are granted full creative license on this and just really made this amazing group of ships. There's over 80 ships that are playable in the game with a fair amount distributed amongst the three races but also the three eras of those three races so there is Enterprise era which is Captain Archer, it's kind of like the prequel series and the original series with Kirk and next generation series with Picard for TNG, DS9 and Voyager.
Wayne Perry: Now with that in mind what was the reaction from the team when you guys discovered that you were going to have all five actors who portrayed those original captains on the TV series when they actually agreed to do the voice work?
Gary Conti: Yeah, we were ecstatic. It's something that we've been pursing for a long time. The guys at Bethesda really, really pushed hard and did a fantastic job. It was something we were ready to do without if we had to but we would have been really disappointed because like I mentioned before the cinematic quality of this game lends itself very well to being able to just sit back, relax and as you are watching the opening sequences of this stuff just listening. That's actually William Shatner, you know. That's actually Patrick Stewart. It's really an emergence level I never experienced in games. I may be biased, but.
Wayne Perry: Well, a credit to you, because it's the first time that all five of those actors have ever been brought together for a single project. That's my understanding. So certainly hats off for that. Now, since you've got obviously the full licensing and now the voice talent as well, do you think that Star Trek Legacy will actually encapsulate exactly what made that television series so special to its fans?
Gary Conti: I hope so. That's what we are really going for and a lot of what made Star Trek so special with its fans was the stories that were involved. There wasn't always action. There's a lot of story in it. Well this is a very action based game we went out and hired one of the original writers to make sure that our storyline was top notch and we feel that, a lot of people feel the connection because it is just an amazing story, very story driven game.
Wayne Perry: Now of course having the Trekkies on board doesn't hurt either obviously. They are holding you to a high standard as well. Now will Star Trek Legacy support multi layer online through Xbox Live?
Gary Conti: Absolutely, we are really excited about what Xbox Live is able to offer us. It's a very powerful multiplayer platform. What is has really allowed us to do is to support full features leader board, ranking and stuff like that and oddly enough just before we started this interview here we had been running an eight player game here in the office against our publisher's QA team. We rocked them by the way.
Wayne Perry: Excellent. Congratulations.
Gary Conti: It's really fun. [Laughter] It adds a lot of replay value. Our QA testers who had been playing the game for a long time, naturally they may be getting sick of the missions and stuff like that but they get on an Xbox live and they are screaming and yelling and having an awesome time so, I think that speaks volumes to how much fun people can have.
Wayne Perry: Absolutely. How is it actually looking on live?
Gary Conti: It looks great. We're still optimizing so performance isn't quite where we want it but Looks great definitely playable but it's looking good, definitely looking good and we get to talk smack because it's fully voice supported and everything. So it's really fun.
Wayne Perry: Any hints as to what some of the achievements might be that are included within the game?
Gary Conti: Yeah I can give a couple. Let's see. That's something we've been implementing over the last couple of weeks, the final polished rounds on it. There's going to be a lot of not necessarily progression based ones because I think those are boring. We did a lot studying on other games and what they do. There's a lot of games that do it right and a lot of them doing them wrong. We don't want to give an achievement for you'd be level one congratulations.
Wayne Perry: Right. Exactly.
Gary Conti: Hey you'd be Mission three you'd be mission four and that's all you get for the entire game. We have a lot of cool ones like going off of the beaten path going off of the golden path as they call it. So say in one of our missions, your task with protecting I believe, you are escorting a convoy and if you make it on that mission which is really hard to do to not let any of the people you are protecting get blown up, that's an achievement and that's really difficult and one of the missions let's say you started getting harassed by a Borg Cube at this point in the game you are not ready to take on the board all of a sudden they just show up and if you can actually take one of them out, that's an achievement. I think that would be really tough. That's one of them you brag to your friends about.
Wayne Perry: Right.
Gary Conti: I love the achievement system of Xbox I think it's a great way to garner interest in these games and replay value and stuff like that so.
Wayne Perry: Absolutely. Achievements as a whole have really added a whole new dimension to gaming.
Gary Conti: Absolutely.
Wayne Perry: At least for the Xbox 360 players and you are seeing more and more people are talking about what they have been able to accomplish. So many boards have their postings, what's the best achievement you have made. What's the hardest ones you've made? Obviously you are setting the benchmark pretty high as far as what the players are going to have to actually accomplish to get these.
Gary Conti: And they are not all ridiculous. A lot of them are reasonable thinking outside the box a little bit here and there and there achieving excellence. I guess you can say.
Wayne Perry: I agree with you. The linear achievements we've seen on a lot of titles kind of take the boasting factor out of it just because like you said if you make it to the 10 levels and you get 10 achievements for accomplishing that, that's not really, it's an accomplishment but it is more of a perseverance accomplishment then it is truly is a gaming accomplishment.
Gary Conti: I also don't believe in a lot of, some games do trophy issue achievements. So like be number one for one week on the worldwide leader board. That sucks because two people going to get that.
Wayne Perry: Absolutely yeah, on every leader board. I am in like the 30,000 and something category so I have no shot on any of those.
Gary Conti: One cool one that I have put in which is kind of funny because we like to do some which are kind of entertaining too. In some games I forget there was a first person shooter, if you just follow a really long distance and die, they give you an achievement Those are fun ways to throw in. We did one I think I called it antique collector where if during the third era, the TNG era, where you have all these cool ships like the Galaxy and Sovereign, if you manage to keep an enterprise era ship all the way through the game and actually complete a mission in the third era then I am going to give you an achievement. I think I called it the antique collector which I mentioned....That will be a tough one, to actually bring a ship without it being destroyed throughout the three eras.
Wayne Perry: It sounds good. You guys have bee very creative with it obviously.
Gary Conti: We try. We try to make it interesting.
Wayne Perry: Actually I want to back up because there was one question that I wanted to ask you about multiplayer when we were talking about that before. What type of game modes are set to go for multiplayer right now?
Gary Conti: Right now we have four really cool game modes. We are going to do obviously the death match which is a staple in any good multiplayer game. Also have a planet conquer, which involves occupying and owning planets kind of like a king of the hill type game type, if you have every played Halo, you try to capture a planet and hold it for a period of time, the more you hold it. the faster your timer goes down which is really fun because we have a capture planet mechanic and another type we have two scripted multiplayer game types which are Co-op Wave which is a co-op online game type and Escort which is also co-op which tasks you with escorting your quarry. Well you get attacked with waves of enemies.
Wayne Perry: OK so you actually had the best of both worlds, you have got heads up and co-op. Co-op seems to be taking off pretty good. I am seeing more and more of the games or at least the games that include Co-op are very popular.
Gary Conti: It's just that people like to play with other people. It's that simple.
Wayne Perry: Well sometimes it's nice to have that. You have the AI help and granted AI has come so, so far over these years, but it is still nice sometimes just to have a living breathing human being right along side you playing with true strategy in mind communication and so on and so forth.
Now you guys have a history Mad Doc has a history with Star Trek already You guys had a hugely successful run with Star Trek Armada II. What, I don't want to say what kind of pressure does that put on you guys with this title but obviously having that history it must affect the goals that you have with Star Trek legacy?
Gary Conti: It puts the bar pretty high but we kind of role with that. We are happy with that since Armada is a great game. It gave us a lot of experience to know what to expect from the fans.
Wayne Perry: Exactly.
Gary Conti: People say a lot about Trek fans, but we wouldn't be where we are today if it wasn't for them because they latch onto these games that come out and just do amazing things with them. The Armada community, I can't say enough about. They are just fantastic with what they can do with the games People still play Armada II. There are all these games that are out for years and people still play them. That's amazing shelf life for the game.
Wayne Perry: Yeah, very dedicated group of fans for sure. Now how's the, you mentioned that the relationship with Bethesda is relatively new. How's that been going so far?
Gary Conti: Great. We liked that they see eye to eye with us on the fact that they really care about the Star Trek license and want to release quality games. They are not just trying to run in, drop a game, make some bucks and get out of it. They are in it for the long haul They are very interested in revitalizing Star Trek gaming. Which you can see for apart from Legacy there's two other games that are going to released this year just with the Star Trek name on it which is amazing. There hasn't been anything for a while.
Wayne Perry: Now this game itself Legacy now that's going to focus exclusively on the television series. Is that correct? Movies are actually not part of this or is there a part of the movies that are actually...
Gary Conti: It's an entirely original story line but we draw from every element of Star Trek canon which involves movies and series. We've got all the ships from all the movies and series most and story line elements weave their way from every direction including the movies.
Wayne Perry: Are there going to be any specific battles that are going to appear that come from any of the shows or movies?
Gary We are not shipping it with any of the historical battles. E3 we showed historical battle like a demo to show what the game can do but we plan on focusing on single play element original storyline which we are really excited about. We are really excited about.
Wayne Perry: This game is set to release on or no firm date set yet.
Gary Conti: No firm date yet. We are talking fall right now. We have very firm internal goals but we are not ready to release those yet but going to be the fall. It's going to be this year.
Wayne Perry: OK Good luck to you on the rest of getting this thing put together. Obviously from what we've seen so far it looks fantastic. There's many of us, myself included who can't wait to see this thing actually come out and once again I appreciate your time here Gary..
Gary Conti: Thanks for having me.
Wayne Perry: Anytime you want to get back and talk just let me know.
Wayne Perry: I just want to say thank you once again to Gary for joining me for that interview I certainly appreciate him taking the time to talk to me for a bit. I also want to thank the folks over at Bethesda software as well for helping me put the whole interview together. Look forward to talking to those guys again, a bunch of great guys over there.
Before I wrap up this week's show, I just want to mention that I am currently in the process of trying to work out where we can get some listeners involved in the show. I had that request come in a few different times in feedback. It has been something that has been a goal of mine pretty much since I launched this show is wanting to get other people involved in it, get some listener feedback, as well as some of the staff members from the website and I am getting close. With every week I am able to accomplish more and more and I am happy about that. I am getting very close to where I am hoping to being able to get more people integrated into the show so you don't have to listen to me for a half hour 45 minutes each week So as this develops, I will be posting the information up at the totally360 website. So if you are interested in possibly being a participant in a future episode, keep your eyes open for that. I will also, of course, pass the information along here on the actual podcast and I look forward to that. I am hoping that is something I can get accomplished sooner than later.
But I want to thank everyone for joining me today. Obviously I appreciate that. I appreciate your time. I want to remind everyone once again that the show is hosted at totally360.com where we welcome you to come by and check out all the news and information that we have there for you. Check out our media content as well. We have some, like I mentioned before some great new reviews that are up on the site and stop by our forums join up. We would love to have you as a member there. For all the staff at totally360, I'm Wayne Perry and I'll see you online.
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