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

Publisher Stardock is reviving the Star Control series with its own update called Star Control: Origins, which hits PC on September 20. This new take on the classic space-exploration adventure games is giving players a simulated universe to discover while maintaining the story-driven gameplay that made so many people fall in love with Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters.

I recently spoke with Star Control: Origins lead producer Patrick Shaw about the game and how Stardock is approaching development. Shaw explained Origins’ relationship to the original and how it is expanding on the ideas from the nearly 30-year-old franchise.

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“Our game is inspired by the classics,” Shaw said. “We’ve taken the same beats and some of the same themes, both in gameplay and story, and then updated them for a modern audience.”

One of those modernizing elements includes 3D gameplay when landing on a planet. Those lander sections were in 2D in the early games, and now Stardock is using the power of today’s PCs to re-create that experience as something more dynamic.

“But the most important thing that we’re excited to bring to this is the idea of a complete simulated universe,” said Shaw. “While I’m on the planet, I can look up in the sky. I can see my mothership orbiting the planet. If I’m on Europa, I can see Jupiter and all of its moons in the distance. I can go out into the solar system. In the solar system I can see alien ships flying back and forth, going between trading posts, maybe engaging in battles.”

And each of those alien ships has their own motivations and character traits.

“Some of them are interested in me. Some of them aren’t. Some are scared. Some are really angry at me,” Shaw explained. “This entire universe is being simulated all the time while I’m on my adventure. Even while I’m on the planet picking up resources, there’s a Scrye battlecruiser out in the solar system patrolling, looking for trouble.”

Shaw acknowledges that may sound like No Man’s Sky, but he thinks Origins is fundamentally different because it is focused on that story-driven experience. You can explore however you want, but you are likely doing so because the story drove you to a certain planet. And that is what Origins is all about.

And we’ll get a chance to see that for ourselves as summer turns to fall and Star Control: Origins debuts. Until then, you can read my entire interview with Shaw in the full transcript below:

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GamesBeat: Tell me about yourself and the game.

Patrick Shaw: I’ve been in the gaming industry for almost 20 years now. I’ve worked on Star Wars games. Serious games as well. I’ve been a lead producer here at Stardock for coming up on three years now. I’m the lead producer on Star Control. So, Star Control is an open universe action-RPG. It’s a story-driven open universe, which means I can go anywhere, 100 light-years in any direction, and chart hundreds of stars, explore thousands of planets, interact with dozens of aliens, and basically choose my own path through the story. It’s also an action game, so I can go down to a planet. I can drive my lander around. I can shoot alien critters. I can pick up resources and interact with aliens on the surface. Also, I can fly out into space, fight against other ships, and—lastly it’s an RPG, so you collect resources to buy bonuses for your ship, upgrade your ship to improve it, so you can fight bigger battles and land on planets you couldn’t land on before. Throughout this, we’re working through a mystery in order to save the Earth.

GamesBeat: This is a follow-up from the original games. They had a lot of these ideas, a lot of these concepts, just represented differently than how you’ll be representing them in this game?

Patrick Shaw: Sure. Our game is inspired by the classics. We’ve taken the same beats and some of the same themes, both in gameplay and story, and then updated them for a modern audience. For example, in the original games, the lander gameplay was 2D. Now we’re on a 3D planet. But the most important thing that we’re excited to bring to this is the idea of a complete simulated universe. While I’m on the planet, I can look up in the sky. I can see my mothership orbiting the planet. If I’m on Europa I can see Jupiter and all of its moons in the distance. I can go out into the solar system. In the solar system I can see alien ships flying back and forth, going between trading posts, maybe engaging in battles. Some of them are interested in me. Some of them aren’t. Some are scared. Some are really angry at me. This entire universe is being simulated all the time while I’m on my adventure. Even while I’m on the planet picking up resources, there’s a Scrye battlecruiser out in the solar system patrolling, looking for trouble.

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GamesBeat: Tell me more about how that simulation works. Is this going to be something where it’s very intensive, all of my actions affected, or is it going to be so big that my actions only affect a small part of it?

Patrick Shaw: It’s a pretty big simulation. We have hundreds if not thousands of ships running around right now in our current version of the game. They’re following their own AI, their own plan. As I interact with the game over time, I start having a larger and larger ripple effect on how the ships behave and how they respond to me.

GamesBeat: What would make them want to respond to you? You said you’re exploring these planets. You’re unraveling this mystery. Is it when you do illegal actions, things that might piss off some authority? Or is that as you get close to the end of this mystery, powers want to stop you? How does that work?

Patrick Shaw: At one point in the story, midway through the game, you have a choice as to whether to take a shortcut to save Earth, but that choice will involve the genocide of another alien species, wiping out their homeworld. If you do that, all those ships will suddenly go from being friendly to being hostile.

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GamesBeat: I would imagine so.

Patrick Shaw: Exactly. Before, you’d be flying around and you’d encounter these aliens. They’d be friendly to you. They might give you stuff. But then once you piss them off by killing their homeworld, they become hostile and they become an obstacle to your general progression in the game.

GamesBeat: I hear something like that and I think—I love it when stuff like that is in a game, but I’ll never do it. I have to be the good guy. Do you find ways to make even something like planetary genocide a shade of gray, where you give me compelling reasons to consider that as an option? Or is that definitely the dark path? You could do this, but you’ll be the bad guy.

Patrick Shaw: We’re definitely—we have several different themed paths through the game, themed choices. We definitely try to go for more of the shades of gray throughout the game. As I said, you’re under pressure to save the Earth. One of the obvious choices is genocide. Do you choose your own homeworld, or do you choose this other alien homeworld to survive?

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GamesBeat: How do you make sure something like that stays interesting? I would imagine most people, even beyond wanting to be the good guy, would find diplomatic solutions to be maybe more interesting, if they could find ways around that. What can you add to a path like that that keeps people considering these drastic options that almost seem too simplistic?

Patrick Shaw: The advantage of staying on the good side of people is you can find more allies. One of the parts of the gameplay is the fleet battles. As I’m going through the game I accumulate ships in my fleet, like characters in your party. The more ships I have, the better I’m going to be in combat, and the more friends I make, the more ships I’ll have to choose from.

GamesBeat: Killing a planet, is that the endgame, or would the game continue after that? Is there a point where the story ends, I guess?

Patrick Shaw: For that particular example, the game keeps going. The story keeps moving.

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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.

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.