Fred
Retired Staff
During my teenage years, there were 286, 386 and 486 computers. To a young mind of that era of computer gaming, there was one game I held in esteem over all others.
Star Control II.
A successor to a strategy game/spacewars-inspired ship-to-ship arcade combat, it used the first game's weak story of the Alliance of Free Stars resisting the enslaving encroachment of the Ur-Quans and their hierarchy of battle thralls to establish the sequel which isolates a science expedition investigating old alien factory ruins by having the good guys lose the war. So, a generation later, your character commands a barebones ship reverse engineered from the factory's alien tech and begins a journey to free humankind and friends from the tyranny of the Ur-Quan, all the while investigating for resources, allies and clues on how to topple the monolithic opposition.
It was a great, much lauded game that eventually was followed by a much more mediocre sequel made by different people, a sequel many fans prefer to consider never existed.
I was pretty enamored with that universe. during a significant portion of my teenage years, my cousin and I actually built ourselves a homebrewed tabletop RPG set in the Star Control universe and we spent years delving in it, turning it into a pretty deep roleplaying game with tactical combat over an hexagon-patterned map.
Years later, the Ur-Quan Masters project made it possible to uprate the old Star Control II PC game to some of the scaling technology used in Star Control 3 combat, along with media assets that were introduced in the 3DO version of the game. The Ur-Quan Masters project is available to play for free, here:
http://sc2.sourceforge.net/
Otherwise, near to 25 years have passed without a real successor to the Star Control IP. That is, until recently.
In the beginnings of 2017, Stardocks (the company that did the Galactic Civilizations game as well as Sins of a Solar Empire) announced that a new Star Control game was in the works. Essentially a reimaginings of Humankind's first involvements in a wider galaxy while offering similar adventure moments as Star Control 2 offered, Star Control: Origins would be an alternate universe reboot of the series to breathe new life into the IP while not making the same mistakes done in Star control 3 and letting the creators of the original game, Fred and Paul, have their previous stories to return to non-hijacked if they ever wanted to continue from the loose threads in Star Control II's story.
Just recently, Destructoid announced further development on Star Control: Origins. This is when I actually learned the game existed and visited the website starcontrol.com to learn more on what was going on before pre-ordering as a Founder (something I learned was just about the end).
Bear in mind Star Control: Origins has been in development for 3 years and likely won't release before Q4 2017. An adamant stance to not retread the old storyline out of respect for the original developers of Star Control II actually seemed to pay off, as Activision gave Fred and Paul the green flag to start working on a sequel for the Ur-Quan Masters. As outlined on this blogpost, development on Ghosts of the Precursors has just begun.
So, it's a great time to be a Star Control fan! For players both old and new, Star Control: Origins offers a whole new adventure... and old fans get long-awaited continuity with Ghosts of the Precursors.
I got into Star Control: Origins happy to have -anykind- of Star Control after 25 years. But with Ghosts of the Precursors announced, it looks like I can have my cake and eat it. I'm pretty happy about this and thought I'd share.
Star Control II.
A successor to a strategy game/spacewars-inspired ship-to-ship arcade combat, it used the first game's weak story of the Alliance of Free Stars resisting the enslaving encroachment of the Ur-Quans and their hierarchy of battle thralls to establish the sequel which isolates a science expedition investigating old alien factory ruins by having the good guys lose the war. So, a generation later, your character commands a barebones ship reverse engineered from the factory's alien tech and begins a journey to free humankind and friends from the tyranny of the Ur-Quan, all the while investigating for resources, allies and clues on how to topple the monolithic opposition.
It was a great, much lauded game that eventually was followed by a much more mediocre sequel made by different people, a sequel many fans prefer to consider never existed.
I was pretty enamored with that universe. during a significant portion of my teenage years, my cousin and I actually built ourselves a homebrewed tabletop RPG set in the Star Control universe and we spent years delving in it, turning it into a pretty deep roleplaying game with tactical combat over an hexagon-patterned map.
Years later, the Ur-Quan Masters project made it possible to uprate the old Star Control II PC game to some of the scaling technology used in Star Control 3 combat, along with media assets that were introduced in the 3DO version of the game. The Ur-Quan Masters project is available to play for free, here:
http://sc2.sourceforge.net/
Otherwise, near to 25 years have passed without a real successor to the Star Control IP. That is, until recently.
In the beginnings of 2017, Stardocks (the company that did the Galactic Civilizations game as well as Sins of a Solar Empire) announced that a new Star Control game was in the works. Essentially a reimaginings of Humankind's first involvements in a wider galaxy while offering similar adventure moments as Star Control 2 offered, Star Control: Origins would be an alternate universe reboot of the series to breathe new life into the IP while not making the same mistakes done in Star control 3 and letting the creators of the original game, Fred and Paul, have their previous stories to return to non-hijacked if they ever wanted to continue from the loose threads in Star Control II's story.
Just recently, Destructoid announced further development on Star Control: Origins. This is when I actually learned the game existed and visited the website starcontrol.com to learn more on what was going on before pre-ordering as a Founder (something I learned was just about the end).
Bear in mind Star Control: Origins has been in development for 3 years and likely won't release before Q4 2017. An adamant stance to not retread the old storyline out of respect for the original developers of Star Control II actually seemed to pay off, as Activision gave Fred and Paul the green flag to start working on a sequel for the Ur-Quan Masters. As outlined on this blogpost, development on Ghosts of the Precursors has just begun.
So, it's a great time to be a Star Control fan! For players both old and new, Star Control: Origins offers a whole new adventure... and old fans get long-awaited continuity with Ghosts of the Precursors.
I got into Star Control: Origins happy to have -anykind- of Star Control after 25 years. But with Ghosts of the Precursors announced, it looks like I can have my cake and eat it. I'm pretty happy about this and thought I'd share.
