In the long lineage of Trek video games, Star Trek: Elite Force 2 is one of the most beloved. A sequel to the original Elite Force, the second game served as a sequel to Star Trek: Nemesis and moved further into the FPS/puzzle mixture that fans already loved.
Speaking to FRVR, Elite Force 2 lead scriptor and level designer Benson Russell explained that the decision to double down on puzzling was due to his love of System Shock.
“We added some stuff. System Shock 1 is one of my favourite games ever. It’s probably my favourite game—in terms of ranking, it’s probably my favourite game of all time,” Russell, who went on to design Uncharted and The Last of Us, told us.
While Star Trek wasn’t known for bombastic action at the time, although it definitely is now following the Kelvin timeline and the recent TV slant, merging Trek and FPS combat wasn’t too weird. “At the time, you’re just like bring it on. You wanna make a shooter out of Star Trek? We’ll find a way to do it.”
While the action focus was fine for the needs of adapting Trek to games, Russell recalls that the game did need to be heavily altered during development. In the final game, after working as a teacher at Starfleet Academy, protagonist Alexander Munro is recruited by Jean-Luc Picard to reform Hazard Team on the USS Enterprise. However, that was not the original intention. Instead, the Academy was set to be the victim of a brutal terror attack.
“I remember, we were making Elite Force 2 and 9/11 happened at that time”, Russell explained. “One of the original scenes was, when you were at Starfleet Academy, it was supposed to get an attack and we actually had a shuttle fly into a building and stuff like that. Well, that was a no-no for understandable reasons, of course.”
Furthermore, the sequel was supposed to have more of the bridge crew from The Next Generation, but the team couldn’t stretch the budget that far. “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,” they recalled.
In the end, they “dumped all of that” into grabbing Patrick Stewart and filled out the cast with tertiary characters such as Reginald Barclay. “Luckily, we found a lot of other actors that were in Star Trek episodes and we had them play various characters in it or revisit a character that they did before,” he said.
Following Elite Force 2, Russell would go onto design the original Uncharted trilogy and The Last of Us at Naughty Dog before starting his consultancy company, Unhandled Exceptions.
To this day, Star Trek: Elite Force 2 is a beloved game, and some developers have ideas for a follow-up. With that said, Trek itself is currently seeing a resurgence of sorts in the video game medium with a brand-new game from Bloober Team, a VR title, and more. There’s seemingly always another Trek game around the corner, but that’s the power of IP!
