Source: GameSpot
Throughout the past several months, the Star Trek license has steadily increased in popularity among both developers and fans as a number of high-quality Star Trek games have stormed store shelves. However, most of these games focus on the Star Trek series\' mainstay, the Federation, and some of the other popular races are left out entirely. The development team at Cyberlore Studios is taking a distinctly different approach to its Star Trek game by not only selecting the Borg as its featured race but also by creating the first empire-building game set within the Star Trek universe. We had a chance to speak with marketing manager Jan Adan, producer Jon Clark, art director Seth Spaulding, and engine architect Ken Grey to discuss Star Trek Borg Assimilator and to learn more about how the game plays, what kind of units are involved, and what the overall objectives are.
GameSpot: Can you tell us a little about the development team at Cyberlore Studios? How did the company come together, and what projects has it worked on?
Jay Adan: Cyberlore was started by Lester Humphreys, Herb Perez, and Ken Grey in 1992. Lester and Ken helped to create the last gold box SSI game, The Dark Queen of Krynn. Cyberlore\'s first project was Al-Qadim: The Genie\'s Curse--another SSI Dungeons & Dragons title. Cyberlore has averaged about one new title a year since the beginning, but most folks are familiar with us because of our work on Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal and our latest title, Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim.
GS: What was the inspiration for creating a game based on one of Star Trek\'s most dominant races?
Jon Clark: Borg Assimilator is a wonderful way to explore the Borg in ways that haven\'t been done before. There is little question that the Borg are the most thrilling antagonists in the Star Trek Universe. They are quite different [from] any previous Star Trek villains. Their collective consciousness warranted a special approach as far as game development was concerned. The Borg have only been seen, through movies and the shows, out in space. We haven\'t seen them working planet-side, which really opens the doors for designing and expanding our knowledge of them. The opportunity to flesh them out certainly is exciting.
GS: How much freedom were you given in terms of creating the Borg universe? Are we going to see things we\'ve never seen from the Borg before?
Jon: Cyberlore has been given a huge amount of freedom in the design and development of the Borg Colonies. Activision and Paramount have been incredibly open to the designs and art that we have come up with. This has really given the team the ability to push the envelope.
To address the second part of your questions, it is almost all new. You will see some familiar sights, like Regeneration Alcoves, Borg Cubes, and Spheres. The Assimilation Chambers are buildings where the drones bring individuals for assimilation, but there has never been any "place," outside of a Borg Cube Interior, where we have seen anything like this from the Borg. So to be more specific, yes, the player will see lots of things they\'ve never seen before. We are using the Borg Queen to help build that transitional bridge from what the player knows about the Borg and what there is to learn from Borg Assimilator.
