2 years ago, after playing both Star Trek: Resurgence and Star Trek: Infinite, I started thinking about how the ludic genres of "point-and-click"-style adventure games and grand strategy games are both very good ludic genres for the Star Trek IP. I had originally planned on creating a short, 20-30 minute video talking about these 2 games, specifically, and how they manage to faithfully adapt the source material. And I wanted to contrast these 2 games against a few other Star Trek games in other ludic genres, such as Elite Force (a first-person shooter), and some of the old starship operation games like Starfleet Command.

However, as I worked on the script, I kept wanting to talk about more and more Star Trek video games, and I kept reading about other Star Trek games that I had never played. So I expanded the scope of that original project to start to include more examples of adventure and strategy games, as well as to talk about Star Trek games in other genres. I bought some games to try out, and fell into a rabbit hole of playing every Star Trek game that I could get my hands on, and watching let's plays of all the games that I couldn't play.

Before long, that 20-30 minute project had ballooned to over an hour of script. At that point, I decided that this was too much for a single video, and I decided to do 2 things:

1. I would split the video up into multiple parts (originally, I expected 3 or 4 parts),
2. I would make each video be about games in a particular ludic genre (such as adventure games, shooters, strategy games, etc.).

This necessitated more research, and more play-time with other games in other genres. Eventually, after 2 years of on-again-off-again work, I ended up with over 2 hours of videos talking about the different ludic genres into which Star Trek had been adapted. I talk about which ones work, which ones don't work as well, and also what I would like to see from Star Trek games in the future.

In the meantime, just as I was getting ready to finally release this epic project, 2 new Star Trek games were announced: Voyager: Across the Unknown (not to be confused with a Star Trek tabletop game called "Into the Unknown"), and Star Trek: Infection. So I may talk about those games in a future update video. Infection, in particular represents an entirely new ludic genre for Star Trek games, since it's a VR horror game -- the first true horror game that I've ever seen for the Star Trek IP.

The first part of my retrospective series is now available on YouTube, after a short period of Patreon-exclusivity:

The other 4 parts are already available to Patreons at the following link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/exploring-new-of-137678510. I will be releasing each new episode every few weeks, but Patreons are able to view all 5 episodes now.

When Infinite was first announced, I (and many others) had assumed that it would just be an official release of the New Horizons total conversion mod for Stellaris. That mod was huge, offering tons of factions and covering the entire breadth of Star Trek canon from the Original Series all the way through Discovery (and even some Kelvin-verse-inspired content). Unfortunately, that ended up not being the case, and Star Trek: Infinite proves to be a major downgrade from New Horizons.

The "New Horizons" mod for Stellaris included all eras of Star Trek.

Despite its title, Star Trek: Infinite is surprisingly scaled back in scope. It only includes the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, and only 4 playable factions: the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians. I understand not including factions like the Dominion and Borg as playable factions. They actually make more sense as a form of "final boss" that invades the Alpha or Beta Quadrants to provide a late-game challenge that could help make the end-game of a 4-x strategy less tedious, less easy, and more interesting. And I also understand not including smaller, "alien-of-the-week" factions like the Gorn, Tholian, or Sheliak as playable factions. Although I wish more of them would show up as NPC factions. But I really think that factions like the Ferengi Alliance and maybe even the Breen should have been included. The Federation is peaceful and diplomatic, while the other 3 factions are (broadly speaking) different flavors of militaristic. The mercantile, yet exploitative trade-based play style of the Ferengi would have been a good change of pace from the other factions.

Worse yet, however, is that Infinite doesn't cover the breadth of Star Trek history that I had hoped it would. The game begins with the Romulan attack on Khitomer, for which Worf's father was framed, and shortly after the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. And [spoiler alert!] the Borg start appearing at the fringes of Federation and Romulan space within an hour or 2 of starting a new game. It takes place entirely within the scope of The Next Generation, and does not contain any content from Enterprise, The Original Series, or the "lost era" between The Undiscovered Country and Next Generation.

Star Trek: Infinite is limited in scope,
taking place entirely within TNG era, and having only 4 playable factions.

Unfortunately, Paradox killed support for this game prematurely, and it will not be seeing any additional updates or DLC. Initially, I had expected to see a lot of DLC that would fill in the gaps, because Paradox has always been known for the ridiculous amount of DLC that they always sell for their games. I expected to see DLC packs that would push the start of the game back to the 22nd or 23rd centuries and include Enterprise, Original Series, and "Lost Era" ships and storylines. I thought maybe we would see factions like the Ferengi, Gorn, Tholians, Kzinti, Xindi, Sheliak, and maybe even the Vulcans and Andorians show up as playable factions. And I had also anticipated expansions that might add Gamma and Delta Quadrant content, such as playable Dominion, Breen, Kazon, Vidiian, Krenim, Hirogen, and maybe even Borg factions, while also expanding the size of the galaxy.

But now, none of that is going to happen, and the only way Infinite will see any new content is if modders decide to take on these tasks. It would be cool if the "New Horizons" modders would move some (or all) of their content into Star Trek: Infinite, as it might give this game a new life, and help it live up to its true potential as an era-spanning Star Trek grand strategy game.