Star Trek: Infinite Review (Letande)
It's a fa-a-a-a-a-a-a-ake!
~Senator Vreenak
What's the easiest way to make money from popular name? To monetize the license. That's exactly the reason why we have Avengers on every corner. You have small business that makes cheap slippers? Share some of your income with MARVEL and boom! Those are not crappy slippers anymore. Those are Iron Man slippers. Which instantly makes 'em, like, a million time cooler. You can do the same with video games. Angry Birds, Scribblenauts... Even the Bridge Constructor did that. And so did many others. Take already existing game, make quick re-skin and here's your Angry Birds: Star Wars, Scribblenauts Unmasked, or, God forbid, Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead. Been there, saw dat. Our today's story is a little bit more interesting than that, though.
Back in 2016, Paradox Interactive released Stellaris. 4X strategy game in space. Can't say it was the best thing ever and, as usual with Paradox, it suffered a lot from overpriced DLCs, poor optimization and many other things, but still, it was a nice game. Niche, like most of the names in the genre, but nice. There was one thing about it I absolutely hated, though. The thing was – the game felt like a bloody rip-off. Design, lore, even some of the actual lines were stolen from Star Trek franchise, which added a cheap and unpleasant aftertaste. Again and again I wanted to scream “You idiots! These are not them! You've captured their stunt doubles!” No idea why Paradox did that, but they did. And you know what's even more crazy? Years later, the same exact Paradox re-skinned their game and sold it as a real Star Trek product. Ba-dum-ts-s-s...
No, seriously. Imagine one of those big superhero crossover movies. You're in a theater. All popcorn and excitement. Dramatic music starts playing. Lightning strikes. The Flash appears... A-a-and it's Dan Aykroyd. Like I said. WHAT?! It may sound like I'm exaggerating or something, but no, I'm not. What we have here is the same exact Stellaris game all over again. Same UI, same gameplay, same... Well, everything, really. Only worse. You can actually stop reading right here, but in case you want details? Here come some.
First, you can't change the map size. Technically, it's completely understandable. Star Trek universe comes with its own lore and therefore auto-generated map is no-no. Earth and Vulcan should always be in Beta quadrant, while Cardassia and Bajor belong to Alpha one. That's just how things are. Qo'noS, Andoria, Risa... We all know where exactly those are located. Thanks to that, we end up with pre-made medium-sized map on our hands. There's nothing you can do about that. Star Trek Infinite is just one pre-made medium map and that's it. No other option. Knowing Paradox, they'll probably add Delta Quadrant and the Dominion as DLC, but for now it's just Alpha and Beta quadrants with Feds, Romulans, Klingons and Cardassians as playable factions. That's all you get. And naturally, having a bigger game scaled down to something like this feels more like a mod. More of that later. For now, let's talk about setting. That's what this all about right?
The game begins in 2346. Bajor is under Cardassian occupation for years and Federation is about to get into war after the attack on Setlik III. Don't expect much accuracy, though, since, despite scaling down the game in order to fit the original lore, Nimble Giant (which was assigned to produce this game) still failed to make timeline look realistic. Victory condition check happens in 2646 (again, can't be changed in settings), which doesn't make any sense whatsoever even if we'll consider Battle of Procyon V being negated. Did NG try to make things look properly? Yep. Not sure if it's possible to make Cardassians withdraw from Bajor in 2369, but launching the Enterprise in 2364, like in the original TNG show? Yeah, sure. Unfortunately, while not being tied to real timeline properly, the game begins to feel more and more like a mod the more you play it. The iconic characters like Benjamin Sisko and Kathryn Janeway will keep popping up, while being tied to time factor (like in Stellaris, characters age with time), but if you expect game to spawn some historical events in corresponding time (like Battle of Wolf 359 in 2367), then don't. Again, knowing Paradox, I won't be surprised if that kind of stuff will be added as DLC (after all, that's exactly what they did in Stellaris, which also felt pretty empty at start), but still, trusting the lore here is a bad idea. Well, as usual, right?
All that brings a very important question. Did it worth butchering Stellaris? No matter how you look at it, Star Trek Infinite doesn't feel like it was designed to fit in the world of Star Trek. Even though Stellaris tried to imitate its setting, gameplay-wise it's just... Well, I don't think I need to explain mods to you. You can make Morrowind to look like Star Wars and call it Starwind, but deep inside it'll still be Morrowind. Same exact thing here. Deep inside? It's still Stellaris. With many features removed, with some minor things changed (often to worse, since for example, I think that UI here became less comfortable), with tons of Star Trek on top and even a cute new “mission tree” system, which will ask you to do things in game for rewards (for example, Feds will be asked to control demilitarized zone for buff), but still, it's only Stellaris. Personally, I won't be surprised to see something like this on Nexus Mods, called “Stellaris total conversion”.
Visuals don't help with the problem either. Those aren't exactly bad, it's just... Let's just say that the game looks suspiciously like Star Trek Timelines. Feed some photos to AI, ask it to draw pictures and here comes another f2p app for mobiles. Seeing familiar faces is sure nice, but... Let's just say it's one of those cases, in which visuals look both nice and cheap. Which somehow does make sense nowadays.
So... A commercial mod for Stellaris. For $29.99. Yes or no? *Sigh* You know what? It breaks my heart, but no. I can't recommend this game. Because, let's just ask ourselves a question – what's the point in all this? Everything you can get here is already in Stellaris. And more. Sure, Stellaris is a bit more expensive (much more if we'll count DLCs), but replayability is way, way better there. Agreeing to worse? Just because of the official Star Trek license? Let's just say we don't do that on Vulcan. Because it's a very illogical thing to do. 4X audience can skip this game right away, while Trekkies... As long as you're not one of completely crazy ones (like yours truly, who actually paid for things like D·A·C and Timelines), there isn't much for you here either. It's still a very niche experience. Often rough too. Even though the game was dumbed down a bit, if you never played such games before, you'll still be very confused now and then, while story-wise, there's almost nothing for you here. Victory happens automatically after enough time passes. The faction with better score wins. The end. The story elements are just some tiny injections.
In other words, the game isn't casual and / or interesting story-wise for casual audience, while gameplay-wise Stellaris is way superior. Comes with the mod support too. And guess what? There are unofficial Star Trek mods for it. No matter how you look at it, there's no real need for Star Trek Infinite to exist. That's all. Live long and prosper.