As part of the 50th anniversary celebrations, Star Trek Online released their latest expansion, Agents of Yesterday; the tale of a 23rd century officer making their way to captain as they get caught up in a time travel adventure as part of the temporal cold war.
I’ll admit, I wasn’t thrilled by the concept at first, especially knowing that Enterprise’s Agent Daniels would return to hold the player hand through the missions, but I have to hold my hands up and say; Thank you Cryptic for reviving the 23rd century origins of Trek in a wonderful way.
Throwing you right back into the original series, recreating scenes and importing dialogue from various episodes including Journey to Babel, there’s been a huge effort to bring the details of the original series to life, with a wonderful colourful environment that brings the original series to life and guest stars spread throughout the tale including Walter Koenig as Admiral Chekov supervising the time travel exploits from the future and Matt Winston as Daniels.
In a not so surprising turn, acclaimed voice actor and creator of the Star Trek Continues fan film Vic Mignonia joins the team as a 23rd century Admiral, while fellow Continues star and son of the original Mr Scott, Chris Doohan comes aboard to reprise the role made famous by his father.
The story is a simple one that mirrors the usual STO logic. You’re an officer in Starfleet, you’re given command of a ship and off you go to explore the universe! The big difference is obviously that you’re in the 23rd century. Which does have it’s limitations. For one, you’re bound to only a handful of species. For another, once the story is over and your ship is recorded as lost, Daniels swipes you from the time line and takes you forward to the 25th century to join the rest of the game.
While the jump forward is a little disappointing, cutting you off from the 23rd century until the missions crop up to return there, getting there is a lot of fun and brings back a lot of fun memories by revisiting a bunch of classic episodes.
There’s also great care to create a different environment and experience, not just in the recreations of the 60’s sets and costumes, but you’re weapons both on ground and ship mirror the same style and special effects and there’s even been a special film grain, faction unique effects and minimised sector map to fit with the original series styles.
Read more about Agents of Yesterday and the Kelvin Lockbox in the latets edition of Comms, available now to all members of SFC Quadrant 2!
Logged in users can read or download here or if you’re not a member of SFC you can click here to join for free to gain access to our quarterly members exclusive publications, as well as gain access to our downloads library, members forum and social groups and much more!
The full article was first published in our September 2016 Anniversary issue of SFC Q2 Comms featuring a look at the best of the Original series, profiles the man behind it all, our members spotlight and much more including a review of Beyond and a preview of everything we know so far about Discovery!