Star Trek: Resurgence – A great Trek in a lousy coat

When someone mentions Star Trek, few people immediately think of a video game. But believe it or not, there are plenty of them! In 2023, the list including titles like Star Trek Online, Bridge Commander, Armada, and Away Team grew with a new adventure game: Star Trek: Resurgence, developed by Dramatic Labs. It promises a strong narrative experience where your choices truly matter.

Neutral Zone

In Star Trek: Resurgence, you take on the roles of two officers: Commander Jara Rydek (Krizia Bajos), a half-Kobliad who takes the position of First Officer on the USS Resolute, and Engineering Petty Officer Carter Diaz (Josh Keaton). The crew of the Resolute recently went through a rather stressful experience (the prequel comics by Andrew Grant tell you more about that), and Captain Zachary Solano’s (Jim Meskimen) authority and career are hanging by a thread. The narrative follows two distinct paths. First, Jara’s, who must constantly resist distrust and doubt, and second, Carter’s, whose ordinary petty officer life is upended as he becomes a key player in the broader plot.

The game is built primarily on the story experience. Dialogue options, puzzles, stealth, and even shooting are all part of ST: Resurgence. Failed sequences can be restarted from a checkpoint in a sort of "safe" story mode to save you some frustration. However, there is no option to go back to previous chapters to make different choices. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. While the story hooked me, the very, very poor controls and game design flaws—the kind even beginner books warn against—absolutely kill the experience.

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Yellow Alert!

If you want to play the game and judge it for yourself, stop reading now. The following paragraphs are full of spoilers. Furthermore, this isn't a neutral review, but a purely subjective commentary from the perspective of a Trekkie, an author, and a part-time student of game writing and game design.

Raise shields, Red Alert!

Star Trek: Resurgence is great. And I mean that sincerely. Regarding the story, its complexity, and its connection to Star Trek in general (Spock and Riker) as well as a specific episode of The Next Generation (specifically S01E05: The Last Outpost), I have little to complain about (more on that later). Sure, there’s a boring passage here and there, but that doesn't change the overall story experience much.

From the beginning, in the shoes of Jara Rydek, you feel the resentment of the original USS Resolute crew. Anyone who has watched Star Trek knows it’s largely built on the personal stories of the crew, and any change or personnel swap is rarely met with open arms. Even though it should be. In Trek, we all love each other, right? But it’s not like that.

Since the game claims that choices matter, I chose to act based on my own moral compass, forged by years of watching Star Trek (and no, I don't count Discovery). My clearly defined principles were: Respect the Prime Directive and respect life in all its forms. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. The ship always comes first, and you should trust the captain until they do something completely idiotic. More or less, I wanted to be something like "Riker minus the drama-queen" act, since he was really insufferable in The Best of Both Worlds.

Jara is young, she has good results from the Academy (…obviously), and Solano picks her as his First Officer, believing she will be loyal. Based on the crew’s reactions to any agreement with Captain Solano, it’s clear that a Damocles sword labeled "mutiny" hangs over the USS Resolute. And it was in these moments that my first "wait, what?" reactions appeared.

Being a First Officer is a huge responsibility. You often make unpopular decisions. But… even though the Federation isn't a military organization in the traditional sense, the chain of command has always had fairly clear rules, and respect is an important aspect of that relationship.

So… is the ship’s doctor really insulting me and questioning my technical procedure decisions?

Is the science officer really pestering me and complaining that I didn't choose him as First Officer after, um… the captain was relieved of duty?

Is the security chief really yelling at me while trying to justify (!!!) the genocide of an entire race, even though the risks to the crew and ship are actually negligible?

I get it. Gradation is a natural process in writing. Drama is conflict. Without conflict, a "happily ever after" story is brutally boring. The story authors put you in situations where you have to react under pressure and then face the consequences. But for my taste, there should be more grounding responses. I handled the doctor, and eventually the security chief, but I don't know why the game didn't allow me one corrective line for the science officer, too. Such strange emotional diarrhea didn't fit an experienced officer like Commander Ben Westbrook (Keith Silverstein) at all.

Fortunately, I don't have much to comment on regarding Diaz’s path. Diaz is a petty officer; his decisions are often on a personal level. Through him, you get a break from the "everyone-hates-me" story, and you only really try to please your Vulcan boss. It’s a shame that in the path I played, while Diaz saves a lot of people, he can't help himself, and at the end of the game on the Resolute bridge, you meet Diaz’s whiny colleague Nili (she really got on my nerves).

All hands, brace for impact!

Star Trek: Resurgence has received a lot of… mixed feedback from critics.

On one hand, the story is praised to the skies, and I agree with that claim. The story is great. But I would have enjoyed it a hundred times more if it functioned just as a dialogue RPG (I recently finished Stray Gods for the second time, and I really enjoy this type of game).

The game constantly tries to make you feel like you aren't losing control. Probably so you don't get bored behind the controller. So… you walk five meters. And then a ten-minute dialogue cutscene starts again. Running is completely pointless, and you’ll realistically use it once in the game. And thanks to the safe story mode, it’s not even necessary. Which leads me to the sentence said right at the beginning.

Once you fail a mission, you start over. Either classically or in safe story mode. But every failed mission starts with a cutscene. Always. Over and over. And as far as I know, you can't skip it.

In the book The Ultimate Guide To Video Game Writing And Design from 2008, this is explicitly labeled as very bad game design that irritates players. I’ll sign off on that. Some cutscenes last 2-3 minutes, and that’s a lot of wasted time in game time, sitting with your finger hovering over a button.

You constantly have to use buttons. But not logically, rather… as mentioned, so you wouldn't get bored behind the controller. You want to press a button on a door – click. You want to transport someone? About 10 clicks on various things that you primarily don't know what they do or why. A shootout awaits you? The camera moves so much that it doesn't even let you target the enemy.

I’m not a very good console player, but my husband is, and even he admitted the controls are a disaster. I don't know if it would be different on PC, but according to available reviews, probably not.

The game also tries to create a sense of tension through a countdown for dialogue responses. But it’s a deception. If you do nothing, the screen turns gray and the game pauses. I admit it’s suitable for those who need a little more time to think in English. Otherwise, it’s a completely unnecessary feature, and I soon started abusing it when I wanted to think about a decision "in peace" regardless of how many consoles were exploding in my face.

Another very poorly solved setting was the sound control. Maybe it was correct for a super-duper sound system that surrounds you from all sides, but for me, the music very often blended with the characters' voices. I could lower the volume of sound effects and music as much as I wanted, but the only thing that had a real effect was the Master volume, and that contained absolutely all sounds. If it weren't for the subtitles, I probably wouldn't have figured out what someone was whispering in my ear through the escalating orgy of a string quartet.

My final sigh regarding the technical side of the game will be the graphics.

The game was released for PC, PS4, PS5, and Xbox. And although the promo images look a bit stylized, yet nice, the in-game visuals themselves try to evoke a sense of reality and are often completely off. It’s obvious that the facial expressions are programmed (no mo-cap), and the characters often look more like they are from The Sims 3 than real people. When you can see all of Diaz’s teeth in his mouth during a dialogue, you can't help but remember the Robin Williams meme.

Crew Evaluation

In the final assessment, I must say that even though the technical execution of Star Trek: Resurgence left a lot of bitter impressions in my mind, the story made up for it all. I enjoyed every decision in the role of Jara Rydek (Diaz, not so much… you know, the lower decks 😄), even those that threatened individuals but gave the ship a better chance of survival. I bought the game mainly because I wanted to meet my favorite captain, William T. Riker. In ST: Resurgence, he is played once again by his actor, Jonathan Frakes.

Yes, that guy from Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction.

I wouldn't mind if the story of the USS Resolute continued. With better graphics, much friendlier controls, and above all – a more consistently thinking crew.

I don't know if I could have saved Carter Diaz if I had chosen a different reaction in one of the critical scenes at the end. But within the story, there are now several people in the galaxy whose personalities were forcibly suppressed by other beings. And it might be interesting to find out if the crew of the USS Resolute, led by Captain Jara Rydek, can help them in any way.

author Eva Lassler