Sending players on a mission to save the future by killing the past, or saving the past in the future? Days of future past? It’s all very confusing, but that’s what happened when Star Trek Online released its Agents of Yesterday expansion seven years ago. Or today. Stupid time.
Bringing elements of The Original Series into the post-Voyager timeline of the massively multiplayer online game, Agents of Yesterday allows players to create their own Kirk-era captain, piloting a classic starship through classic encounters. Meanwhile, top-level characters will be recruited to become Temporal Agents in order to save the past from the future imperfect? Again, time is confusing. All I know is Crewman Daniels from Enterprise is involved, indicating that it’s been a long time, getting from there to here.
I hate him so much.
Perhaps a bullet list of new features will help:
- New Episodes — Players can access the new tutorial section to start their journey as a Captain from Star Trek: The Original Series and experience over a dozen new missions.
- New Starships — Agents of Yesterday includes over a dozen new starships from every era, from the famous 23rd Century Constitution-class Cruiser to the 31st Century Chronos-class Temporal Dreadnought.
- New Specialisation Tree — After becoming a Temporal Agent, players can manipulate time to ensure the timeline is protected against those trying to destroy the past.
- New Special Task Force Missions — This new feature allows Captains to team up with other members of the community to take on all-new challenges in space and on ground.
- An All-Trek Cast — The expansion features Chekov, Daniels and more characters straight from the TV shows and movies voiced by the original actors.
- New Universe to Explore — Agents of Yesterday features content, actors and themes from the Kelvin Timeline, the universe which the 2009 and 2013 Star Trek films are based on.
The future! Or the past! Next Tuesday! What does it matter anymore?
The expansion launched for PC on whatever passes for today these days. Star Trek Online is coming to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this spring, bringing all of this craziness with it.
Comments
8 responses to “Star Trek Online Throws Temporal Physics Out The Airlock”
The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner’s Time Traveler’s Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it.
The event will be descibed differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.
Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later editions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.
This is the hoopiest thing I have read all day.
Douglas Adams approves.
He certainly knows where his towel is.
Just played the first two TOS missions, they’ve done an amazing feeling capturing the feeling of the era. The campy outfits and weird boops and beeps, it’s all there. Fundamentally the game is still Star Trek Online which is either just fine (if you’re like me and have played it for countless hours) or a broken mess of an ancient game (if you have more modern, non-MMO tastes). They’ve done a fantastic job with what they’ve got imo. And man, the Gorn, the Gorn… so good.
That TOS Connie (and it’s TMP refit) has been a part of the game since 2010!
In a related question, does this expansion give the game new life / make it worth investing time in again? I played it back when it wasn’t “free” and enjoyed it, but fell out. Tried it again once it went FTP but was underwhelmed in the changes.
Just gotta jump on with friends. More than any other MMO, STO lends itself well to roleplaying with mates. the game doesn’t really punish you for just jumping on to fuck around with mates and forget about pursuing “end game”. The gold is in the story and getting immersed with the trekkiest bits.