Star Trek: Voyager - Across The Unknown FIRST IMPRESSIONS

hello and welcome to trek culture we have a video game video for you guys today yay as you can tell

sean is not here because he hasn't played a video game since 1996 the year i was born sorry you two

um uh i am joined today with brie and clive our resident video game experts i'm just going to

make out you guys know everything there is video games so you can feel really embarrassed

excellent i i'm here because i have at least played a video game unlike sean so hopefully

i can guide us through this little discussion of the latest star trek game star trek voyager

across the unknown so you guys have played the demo question mark if you just want to let us know

your initial thoughts what was the demo like how did you get on etc i i liked it um i think

it's got a lot of potential it sounds like it's very cliche this doesn't it um the the graphics

let's let one thing that is is the graphics are amazing and and voyager has never looked

quite as good as it does in this i think you know you go back to the 90s and the

and the cg that using in voyager and the models even it looks beautiful um i would say upgrade

your graphics card because when i put mine on and i played it the first time it looked like all the

crew were in pvc uniforms um but after i realized that my graphics card was a little bit out of date

it did look a lot better after that right looking for a vpn well we've got a great deal from nord

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no i agree i think the graphics kind of surprised me because i'm not really sure what i was expecting

i went into the game pretty blind because i hadn't played the game that uh you guys said it

was similar to um i'm mostly an mmo or hero shooter first person shooter so i really liked it

it was my first experience with this game genre i loved the art i thought like you said the art

blew me away i my graphics card always has to be up to date so i immediately was just like wow this

is really nice um this also i've learned gives me anxiety like i didn't realize resource management

games were going to give me that much anxiety but i have adhd so i'd be like doing one thing and then

it's like i'd be like oh let me explore all the planets and then one of the quests is like

collect resources i'm like but i just collected all the resources i went a little too quick i i

did that thing where you do something before they give you the instructions you did that too that's

all right i did that yeah so i'm like i i got a little off track but thankfully they don't like

lock you out of the story or anything if you do that um you just lose some crew yeah i lost a

I lost a couple. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good point. Because you start getting into it and kind of exploring the story

Because the basics of it, it's kind of, the demo is effectively caretaker

It'll be interesting to see if when it goes into it, they pick particular episodes. I think there is a Tubics kind of link coming in somewhere they have noted in the future

And it depends what they can have been interesting to see what episodes they decide to kind of focus on and where they go with that

but yeah the whole decisions thing was was certainly different and then the kind of building

the ship as you're going along as well um yeah so definitely different from some of the other

games that have been out recently i've played civilization 5 um and obviously you have also the

age of empires games and stuff like that so is it is in that realm where it's like you know

you need wood you need gold you need food is it that kind of thing no in a way like in the in the

same vein that any game requires that you have resources to do stuff but no this is a lot more

because i played civilization and stuff it's very that one's top down you're just kind of building

in one location this is it's a mix between a story game where it's a choose your own adventure

exploration game because like mass effect you're going like planet to planet scanning the planets

and stuff the build comes in when you can choose the option to like go to the ship and the ship

gets cut like bisected and so because there's no power you have to start by essentially repairing

the ship i think uh what was the game that was referenced to was it vault vault something fall

out shelter fallout shelter that's what it was yes it's very much fallout shelter style and i

didn't play fallout shelter um i played new vegas and and three uh but yeah it's i learned very

quickly that resource management heightens my anxiety i don't know why i think it was just the

stress of like oh i'm i'm constantly like but that's me like you know i'm constantly stressing

about having enough or too much or not enough and then like i like doing perfect runs of games so

losing crewman i was like i'm about to restart this game this demo already like i but it's so

much it's fun it's fun as long as you're okay with a game that stresses you know can give you

stress but that's that's fun to you know like a boring game you know again that gives you no stress

or no urgency I mean that's animal crossing which is fun too but it's this is a this is fun this is

a fun game and like you said the graphics have kind of blown me away one thing I say and I don know if it permanent is the placeholder cards i noticed in the beginning they were like cg render full rendered placeholder cards and then they started

getting hand drawn look i loved the hand drawn look personally i hope to god that they actually

keep putting hand drawn cards in there because i personally liked the hand drawn cards so much more

It felt like it gave this game character. It made it unique standing out from like your other games graphics

That's the best way I can explain it. It felt, it felt very like personable. I do wish they could do voiceover

even if it's not the actors, just any amount of like someone with a good impression

someone who can do a good Janeway impression or a good Tuvok impression. Yeah

Because I will say without voice of any kind, it did feel a little more like a phone game

like a phone game that was put on the computer because there's zero voice acting, none

no words spoken the entire five hour demo that I played. And I know that's going to be the case

And I saw when I went into the comments, I saw there was a few people that felt the same way

And I was like, I mean, yeah, maybe if they could just get like, even a base voiceover would be better than like nothing

it's very um without the voiceover as well you kind of have that background music which is very

quiet and you kind of and with it being pc we haven't clearly we haven't seen the playstation

version or the xbox version yet so we kind of don't know what the controls are going to be like for those but it's very you're clicking you're reading you're clicking and you're going well

i kind of know the story to some degree right um with it being with it being care effectively

caretaker is the story um but yeah it's all about um fallout shelter because you've got that msd

split where you get the kind of the look through of the ship and it is very similar to that but

with with fallout shelter being a mobile game from memory i think it's the one i'm thinking of

um it does feel like you're right it kind of feels like it's a mobile game and then they've

kind of gone let's put some extra bits into it with the with the choice the decision trees and

the bits that you go down there but i did find on occasion that some of those decision trees were

more kind of giving you more extra information about background than they were helping you

progress the story so you got kind of diverted to go down a particular route that really sort of

told caretaker anyway and didn't give too many variations on on what we saw on screen there was

like you could send different people on your away teams which is great because you could pick

particular skills which reminded me a bit of timelines if people play that on on mobile gaming

um but yeah it still kind of forced me down a particular a particular road so it'd be interesting

and see if they do kind of vary that when they come into other episodes. I think it's interesting about the voiceover stuff as well

because I've just started, and I've now forgotten it, I've just started playing a game, a very popular game on Steam

that didn't have voiceover, and then they added voiceover in, into like a newer version

It's really annoying me, I can't remember what it was called. And I just avoided the game for ages

because I'm someone who, when it comes to video games, if I have to read, I get very, very annoyed

because I'm like, I want to read my books. I want to play my games. I don't want to have to read

Not everyone's like that. And I think for these types of games as well, you kind of have to get used to reading

and looking at menu screens and figuring out what goes where. But yeah, I do understand the want of

well, if there was a version with voices, it would just add a little bit of something to it

It's a bit of depth, isn't it? it's a bit of depth and a bit of that Voyager feel. I think it visually looks great

I think we all agree it visually looks fantastic. Yes. That voice just, and the fact that it is a lot of the information

and because you're a fan of it as well, you sort of know what you're going to be reading in regards to this

And that voiceover would have just given it that bit more ethos, legendary status

I think it would have just given that bit more weight to the sort of legacy of Voyager

not to take anything away from it. I think it's a great game to play through

I really am excited to see what they do and where they go with it. I will be buying it

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And there's different bits in there. I think you've got your away teams

the space combat bit right at the end. And there's different elements to it

And then that core kind of piece which brings back the ship where you're building the bits in and emptying the rooms

and building your crew quarters. And then you've got to remember to build morale up

because if you don't build morale up, then your crew are going to be unhappy. and then you've got another piece that comes and again as you say you kind of hang on a minute i've

got about three or four things i need to be doing but i can't do all these because i've only got four cycles to do them in and suddenly you've missed about three things and you have to yeah

that's where my anxiety was peaking as i was like i don't have enough time it's it's like real life

when i've postponed too much and then i'm like hounded by way too many things to do it one in

like four cycles yeah i've got to build a cargo bay but i can't i haven't got the time to do that

now because I've got to do this. That happened to me. Yes, that's all right

I feel bad because I didn't build it. I didn't do that

Did you have the Star Trek vibes while playing it and did it feel like any other kind of It did feel like Star Trek It felt like people who it did feel like a very almost one for one Like one for one if you were given a few choices And like you said I wish maybe it the fact that Mass Effect was a key game in my life

but I like the ability to make more choices. Like, I wish I had timed it

I wish I had. But the amount of time between when you start the game and you make your first decision is so long

So long. In Mass Effect, it starts like, I mean, you're loading up your character and you've already made decisions

So, like, I think it would benefit from either adding just a few more decisions or adding, like, an earlier decision

Just to get the player understanding that decisions are, you know, a key part of the game

because yeah I think it had to have been maybe 15 minutes 20 minutes maybe even longer before you

ever actually make your first decision and I did feel like that maybe held it back a little bit

but I'm also you know it's again we're all talking about this in the terms of it's a demo like it's

it's pre-alpha demo yeah this is so like that's what I'm saying and we're we're talking with all

the love because this is a game that I think could have so much potential

that I could see myself playing for days like non-stop as long as

you know the progress they're making continues because if this is the demo

I think it's only going to get better like this this is already

really good there's just a few things that need you know a little bit of

polish here and there like one thing I noticed Neelix showed up

as like a helper when I was making some mistakes before he ever

actually showed up on the ship if you were someone who's never played voyager like never

seen voyager and you were like oh you know i'll play this game you know someone actually said it's

good because it does tell you the story even if you've never played it you're gonna have this

person who's like oh this is my helper character and then they're gonna show up on a ship 15 minutes

later and you're like wait i thought they were on the ship and then my immediate i wrote this down

because i was like oh they could have just had another character to fill this role well they do

A few minutes later, there's the crewman in the back that's in the very beginning

I can't remember her name from like the actual original Starfleet that she shows up after the fact

Whereas I think it might have been like, I don't know if it's a coding error, but she should have been in the beginning

And Neelix was in the beginning. Like, you know what I'm saying? I know it's a little bit confusing if you've never played it, but your helper character that's helping you through it is a character that hasn't even showed up in the game yet

but then when that character has shown up in the game Neelix the other girl is still being the

helper character here and there and it's like no now I think isn't it is it Torres at the back

it's not Torres it's a character that looks a lot like her but it's it's like a human it's like

Torres if she was just human and I someone said her name in here like the crewman and she might

not even have a name but she's just a one-off yeah she stands in the back and it's the first episode

but he gets like flip-flopped between like when she should be dead she's speaking and when she

should be speaking it's neelix so that's what i'm saying there's just like little tiny like

uh just like polish that needs to happen in and the demo would be perfect you know i'm saying so

if this is the out of the pre-alpha yeah i i only have the greatest hopes because my my complaints

are little things like that there was nothing i ran into that was game breaking there was nothing

that i ran into that was like oh you know this right here could destroy someone's playthrough

or anything like that all my complaints are like oh if they just polished a little bit here it'd

be better or a little bit there so i think this is it's on track really well yeah yeah i wonder

if it's like uh you get them in a lot of sonic games do this for some reason where it's like

it's almost like they put the tutorial level later on in the game so you're playing the game

It felt like that. And CSI, the tutorial. You got quite a way through, and then suddenly it went

we're going to drop all these tutorials on you now. And you're going, hang on a minute. These should have been five minutes ago when I kind of

not necessarily needed what they would have been a good lead in, especially with the, and the one I kind of think of is the space combat one

I like the way they've done the combat piece. I really like the way that you get each character has their own particular maneuver

Again, felt very Star Trek timelines in the way that they built that, that each person has a particular skill and ability

and you can put them in the ship in particular areas, buried timelines as the original idea was um but it was you kind of try to do space the combat piece

and suddenly you're getting all these tutorials that are coming up and you're going well hang on a minute you paused it now i just i could have done with this a minute ago to tell me what i was

going to do and then i'm stilted through this this quite nice little combat piece where i'm kind of

using the maneuvers and the different abilities and i wanted it just to be fluid but again as you

said we are so far from the finished kind of product and it was very evident that there were

kind of bits that were missing and there'll be bits that will definitely come later um but to

see it and them to be quite willing to put a demo out at this point is amazing to do and then very

not obviously not as a risk possibly but it goes you know you're going to hopefully see that they

are going to advance quite far with the way that the demo comes on to be the full game and we see the whole end result and maybe you know we saying about you know this being caretaker maybe they are going to go down an episodic route and do you know we know we know the two things i

mentioned it already but are they going to do offshoots and do new stories and new lines

again we we really don't know anything on that line but yeah i mean it's a great first it's a

great first impression of something that that really can hopefully bring some life and think

about the expansion possibilities. There's so many, from the start of this, there's so many options that you go, you

build on packs and build extra bits. And I loved on the MSD that they had the aero shuttle in the hangar

And when you drop down, it was a nice 3D image through, sorry, little things like that, which were just beautiful to see

The thing about voiceover is you can still get away with doing little to no voiceover. A great example is Final

Fantasy XIV. They use very sparse voiceover. It happens during cutscenes. All the rest of it you read

And it took me a long time to get used to that, where you're reading. It's basically like a visual novel is what people would call it

But broken up in that are cut scenes where there is full voice acting

If this, this all might, all this might need is something like that

where instead of full voiceover, you have like intro narration. And then like a major event happens, like them having an inner

like an interaction with the Kazon or something. and there's just like a few second conversation that's all it needs to give it just enough

of that flavor to avoid like the the walls of text that we were talking about but would you

would you drop that in as um over the top of graphics or would you it's it's how would you

how would you get that as well because i think of the style of it at the moment with the hand drawn images and things like that it flows really it's just yeah you're right how do you get that in

right and i i think a good way to do that would be instead of full cut scenes like they do is in

moments where like yeah you make a decision perhaps like where you get like oh this is where

that screen pops up and you get like your your decision points or like where like who you can

pick to increase your skills things like that where it's just like you can tell this moment

has some kind of impact have them have some kind of like voice over in that lead up or something

Whereas all the filler stuff and like, oh, hey, are things down

Or, oh, we need more resources or, oh, this and that. Like none of that really needs to be voiceover

You know, just like the intro sequence, that would have been perfect for voiceover where the ship like the ship is coming in

Nothing would need to change. None of that. But having someone like do a Janeway voice just in that intro would be enough to hold it over all the way up until like your first decision 20 minutes later, you know, and just read the text in between

because I think Final Fantasy, as much as people complain it's a hell of a lot of reading, they

do it right. Like, you get used to the reading after a while because you know there's

going to be a treat of a voice here and there. Or, if

you want to do it cheaply, you do like a Banjo and Kazooie and just get everyone to go

when they speak. I think that would work. You could do that kind of thing

No, sure. Just do the Charlie Brown. to end off big recommendation from you guys yes yeah yeah absolutely i think it's yeah i think

you've got it you've got to go and play the demo totally i wouldn't be tearing it apart this much

if i didn't think it had a extreme chance at being a really great game like the only reason

like if i thought it was a crappy game i'd be like i don't know it was fine and like it's probably

not going to go anywhere you know i i talk a lot and and criticize games that i love a lot because

i feel like that's the best way to like look at something and improve it so i could not recommend

this game enough i made my fiance play the demo too and he loved it so i i yeah 10 out of 10

recommend i'm the same with my friends will be like i'll read this book and we'll both love the

book and i'll reply being like love the book now let me tell you about the one thing i hated it

but yes so there you go guys pick up the demo and if you know once the game's out and you guys

enjoyed this kind of conversation maybe we'll come back and discuss the game as a whole see

where it went see if they improved on certain things see if the demo uh and the full game

are different or if those glitches or those strange things still exist who knows but until

then thank you guys for listening you can you can subscribe if you'd like

to and you can hit that like button and all that kind of stuff follow us along on all our

social medias, I'm on twitter etc, Tom C Finn, Tom Roberts Finn, T.C. Roberts Finn, etc

etc, Clive Bree, where can they find you guys Clive I frequent Facebook

my page is some kind of Star Trek I sometimes go on

Twitter at Scost otherwise I'm on Facebook as many there you go

cool Brie and what culture obviously yes I'm just on Blue Sky and Instagram

Trekkie Brie lovely oh and I have books as well go read them if you like thank you everybody goodbye