By TRexx / 04:57, 20 February 2006 / Gaming

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The upcoming Star Trek: Legacy video game will place you in command of a task force of warships, testing your strategic and tactical skills with real-time combat, in a storyline that spans the entire Star Trek universe. After schmoozing with Bethesda Softworks PR ace Pete Hines (story), the intrepid reporters at Gamecloud probed Mad Doc founder Dr. Ian Lane Davis for further details. Here are excerpts from their Q&A...

Gamecloud: Star Trek: Legacy is being described as an action-strategy game. Why go for a hybrid game play instead of a full RTS title like the first two Armada titles?

Ian Davis: Star Trek: Legacy is the Star Trek game I've always wanted to make: the best possible gaming representation of Trek fleet combat. We started out asking, "How should Star Trek combat play out?" and built the game from there without pinning it into any one genre. We felt that tying it too closely to some predetermined genre's conceits would compromise the experience. If you say, "We're making an RTS game" then you're bound by RTS conventions that don't really make sense in Star Trek (e.g. you can't build a Sovereign Class starship in 30 seconds in Trek reality). When any game design question came up, we asked two questions: 1) Is this fun? and 2) is this Trek? Anything that didn't fit both of those categories was cut. Legacy is part squad shooter, part action game, part strategy game, but it's all Trek combat, all the time.

How would you describe the actual combat in Star Trek: Legacy?

I'd say it's "real-time, epic Starfleet battle at its best." Picture the coolest and most cinematic battles you've ever seen in any Star Trek footage -- then kick it up a few notches. Players will engage in large-scale combat in beautiful 3D -- where all the drama and power of your formidable fleet will come to bear against your sworn enemies. Set across the galaxy's most beautiful space environments (fully realized nebulas, wormholes, planets, and stars), Legacy's intuitive controls allow players to quickly select targets and destinations in this 3D world.

What can you tell us about the graphical features in Star Trek: Legacy?

We're truly breaking new ground in Legacy. We're bringing dynamic 3D battlefields to life on this one; the game's backdrop of beautifully rendered space environments, realized nebulas, wormholes, planets and stars is looking grand! Most importantly, we're adding in the kind of detail that really makes the gameplay come to life: detailed weapon effects and damage modeling (weapons searing with energy and charged shields that surge with every hit, ships with full damage modeling that break apart, strewing debris and sparks). I can't wait to see players' reactions when they get their first look at this. You will drool.

Read the complete Q&A with Ian Davis at Gamecloud.

Mad Doc's Star Trek: Armada II is available in the U.S.A., United Kingdom, and Deutschland.