Star Trek: Bridge Crew, Ubisoft’s latest foray into VR, is poised to throw you into a number of command roles aboard the U.S.S. Aegis (NX-1787), a newly created star ship built on the aesthetic of J.J. Abrams directed franchise reboot. If you’re into role play, get out your Vulcan ears boys and girls, because Star Trek: Bridge Crew is ripe with possibilities.
The Road to VR team piled into the Nvidia booth at E3 to try out an alpha build of the newly revealed online multiplayer space sim. Given an Oculus Rift, a pair of Touch controllers and the choice between three positions aboard the bridge; tactical, helmsman, or engineering – explained to us initially with the question: “Do you want to shoot, steer, or…uh…. do engineering?” we were left to decide amongst ourselves. Being a long-time fan of the franchise, I wanted to finally sit in the captain’s chair and condescend to everyone aboard the ship with Shatner-esque swagger. No dice. For this particular build, command is still an unspecified role filled by our gracious Ubisoft-employed captain. Once we divvied up the duties, we sat through a short explanation of our respective command consoles.
As a tactical officer, it was my job was to raise and lower shields, target and scan objects, and shoot the ever-living shit out of whatever after locking on with my photon torpedoes and phasers.
Familiarizing ourselves with the controls, our captain first took us through a research and rescue scenario of some escape pods that we happened upon (always a good sign). Scanning the teeny vessels, we learned there were life signs aboard. “Tactical, lower shields. Engineering, beam them up on my mark. Energize,” our captain ordered us. “There’s another pod on the starboard side, Helmsman. That’s the right side,” he clarified.
Collecting all the stranded passengers, we were ordered to warp the hell out of there, effectively ending our humanitarian mission. Reducing to impulse speed, we happened upon a Klingon battlecruiser. Without a single measly hail, we were fired upon.
What came next was a flurry of orders. “Tactical, shields up! Lock on and fire at will! Helmsman, keep them in sight! Engineering, reroute power to phasers!”
And then another Klingon cruiser dropped out warp. No good. We were outgunned and already suffering serious hull damage, evidenced by a few exploding console panels and some pretty alarming fire seeping into the ship’s bridge.
Road to VR‘s Frank He took the helm of the U.S.S. Aegis, remarking about the real world effects of the virtual responsibility of steering the crew to safety:
I thought the game was very fun, utilizing social elements in combination with game mechanics that required teamwork. At the end of the session, I was even sweating a bit as I felt the pressure and responsibility of being the person who flies us out of sticky situations and making sure everyone had good sight of what they were doing. The Tactical Officer for example needs a good angle of any enemies they’re targeting so I had to keep the ship aligned to any enemy ships circling around us. One thing I could imagine that would improve the experience would be if you had a good armrest on the real life chair you’re sitting on, as the touch panels in the game are interacted with by holding your hands slightly in the air sometimes, and as the Helmsman who steers the ship with quite an analog sort of touch interface, accuracy can be tricky sometimes without something to brace your hand on. Even better might be if you placed a real life table in the same position as the touch panel for true haptic feedback!
Star Trek: Bridge Crew is headed to Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PSVR in fall 2016, although Ubisoft hasn’t officially confirmed cross compatibility yet. Integration of Touch felt very well done, and the game made sure that your hands didn’t clip through control panels and that sliding the UI was smooth and simple. In fact, the only physical buttons you needed on Touch were the trigger for activating console sliders and the ‘X’ button to toggle a more cinematic view from outside the ship.
On top of a campaign mode, the game also promises to deliver a procedurally generated missions for both co-op and solo play, a mission style that uses bots to fill the roles of the other crew members.
Conclusion
Born and raised a Star Trek fan, I’m the sort of curmudgeon who’s still on the fence about the new Star Trek films. On one hand, I’m glad to see interest come back to a series that I grew up with and love, but at the same time lament the fact that it has to be full of good-looking people doing actiony things. To me, Star Trek isn’t supposed to be an action-packed space epic, but rather a generational treatise on universal exploration.
This however doesn’t take away from the awesomeness of really stepping foot aboard the bridge of a Federation vessel, and assuming the role of a crew member in perpetual crisis. While we weren’t really afforded much else than a vertical slice of combat, I’m still holding out for the chance to do a little peaceful exploring and inter-species negotiations to further peace in Federation space. Either way it goes – be it a simple combat sim or a fully featured Star Trek experience – I still desperately want to be captain.