Star Control: Origins lead producer explains how the reboot updates the classic series

GamesBeat: Is the main consequence there, the species that’s still alive, that have ships out in space, they’d start chasing you? Or does it have more wide-reaching consequences?

Patrick Shaw: In that specific story beat, it’s just that one faction you piss off and they’re out to get you now.

GamesBeat: What are some other examples of ways I can influence this universe? The simulation does sound like it has a lot of potential, based on what you’ve said. How varied are you trying to make this universe and the way it reacts?

Patrick Shaw: We’re putting a lot of effort into creating a lot of variety. The most obvious things will be how the ships in the solar system and hyperspace react to you. But there will be quests that open or close based on your choices, which can impact what sort of ship components you get, what ships you can access throughout the game.

GamesBeat: What are some other major features that you’re excited about?

Patrick Shaw: One thing that I’m really excited about is the ability to mod the game. Right now we have a built-in ship editor, so we give you a bunch of parts and you can assemble them, Lego brick style, to create your own ship. We have a stand-alone version of ship-to-ship combat called fleet battles. If you just want to have a quick five-minute experience, blowing up somebody else, you can do that. We ship the game with 20 ships, but then you can use the custom ship builder to build your own ships, put your own weapons on, make the starship Enterprise and Klingons to fight it. You can do local and online multiplayer. We’ll also allow you to customize planets, create your own galaxy, and write your own quests with stories and characters.

GamesBeat: Speaking of characters and player agency, how do I express myself in the universe? Is it mostly through my actions? Are there ship upgrades … hats? How does that work?

Patrick Shaw: There are ship upgrades. You have a flagship that you can attach different components to that unlock new capabilities. You can upgrade your lander. The mothership sends out a lander to explore the planet, and there are upgrades for that as well. If you want to land on Venus you have to add heat shields, because Venus is a very hot planet. You can also add crew members to your flagship. Those crew members will provide feedback, unlock new capabilities for your ship, and so on. You can also add new ships to your fleet, like adding party members to your game in a traditional RPG. We’ll let you choose your own portrait, name your own character, and have your own representation within the game.

Above: Origins maintains some of the lighthearted writing of the early games, but we’ll have to see how it approaches some of its more serious elements.

GamesBeat: What else has you excited about the game?

Patrick Shaw: One thing that’s really exciting about this game is we’re modeling our local solar neighborhood. It’s cool to me that we have ice geysers on Triton. Triton is the coldest moon in the solar system and actually has cryogenic geysers. Uranus is tilted on its side, so that’s something we put into the game as a little detail, as a nod to reality, to sort of ground it. It’s a science fiction story, but grounded a bit in reality. Fleet battles are a lot of fun. When I came on to this project I was surprised at how fun it was to just go around and blow people up. We do weekly matchups on the team, where we have brackets and every week we do elimination rounds. Today I got eliminated in round one, so I’m a little sad. Got beaten at my own game. I really love the ship designer. I’m looking forward to seeing some of the ship designs people come up with. We expect people to do the Enterprise first off, but—are you familiar with the old game R-Type?

GamesBeat: Oh, yeah.

Patrick Shaw: Somebody did a kickass R-Type ship. I just saw that this morning. It happens—one of the cool things about fleet battles is that we have a huge variety of different weapons to put on your ship, and they all play very differently. There’s a really cool metagame. If I have a ship with a shield and a big laser cannon, what are the good components to counter that? Figuring out what that meta is, that’s a lot of fun for me as a producer and designer on the project. Hey, the Scrye battlecruiser is a real pain in the ass, unless you pick this other ship, in which case they’re a total paper tiger. Learning things like–I’m fighting against Kevin, and I know what Kevin’s choice is typically, so I’ll try to customize my fleet to fight again him. Sorry, Kevin.

GamesBeat: Is this a separate mode or part of the core game?

Patrick Shaw: It’s a little bit of both. It’s part of the core gameplay. When you’re flying around the solar system and you come across an enemy ship, you enter this fleet battle mode, so to speak. It turned out to be so much fun that we spun it off into its separate game mode. When you start up the game you can choose fleet battles, and pick single-player, local multiplayer, or custom matches, where you can set up how many asteroids there are, how big the fleets are that you can bring into battle, and so on.

GamesBeat: What am I specifically controlling in the fleet battle? Do I control multiple ships at once, or am I just controlling my ship and then issuing commands to other vessels? How does that work?

Patrick Shaw: All the battles are one on one. The winner fights the next ship. Let me put it this way. When I lose, I choose the next ship to go against the last ship, but that last ship doesn’t get healed. Even if it’s a ship that’s pretty powerful, it can get worn down over time.

GamesBeat: So it’s like Pokémon. You have to take them to the Center after a while and get them all healed up.

Patrick Shaw: In the adventure mode, yes. But in the fleet battle mode, these are quick matches, five-minute matches. I fight against Kevin, we battle it out, hopefully I beat Kevin, and then we mix it up and try again.

GamesBeat: One thing that comes to mind when you’re talking about this, and I’m sure you get this every time you talk to anyone, but I have to ask. No Man’s Sky made some similar promises. I’m not one of the people that had a lot of problems with that game. I enjoyed my time with it. I guess—let’s ask this first. How are you managing expectations? Or do you find you don’t necessarily have to do that, because people have already set them appropriately?

Patrick Shaw: Sure. No Man’s Sky is a great game. But I think we’re going for a different experience. Our promises are different. No Man’s Sky is very much an exploration game, whereas we’re more of a story-driven experience. We do have these thousands of planets in the game. We don’t expect you to actually visit all of them, although it would be cool if you did. There are different branches in the story, different choices. It’s more about experiencing this interesting story, poking at the corners of the story, learning about the lore, learning about the characters, the aliens, having some great action-adventure moments. It’s a different experience that we’re promising.

GamesBeat: Do you find that people are getting that, coming to terms with the story you’re telling around this game?

Patrick Shaw: Yes, the response from the fans—we interact with our fans quite often. We interact with them on Discord, on the forums. We’ve been incorporating their feedback into gameplay. They’re all for this story-driven experience.

GamesBeat: The only other thing would be you guys’ beef with the other Star Control guys, but my editor Jason talked to Brad about this yesterday a little bit, so we got some pretty good info there. What’s your perspective on that, though?

Stardock PR: It doesn’t affect this game at all. It doesn’t affect Star Control at all. We can’t comment on it too much because it’s ongoing litigation.