J.J. Abrams' Film Reboot Influenced Star Trek Online Expansion

Sarah LeBoeuf

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J.J. Abrams' Film Reboot Influenced Star Trek Online Expansion



The fate of the MMO's versions of Romulus and Remus was determined by the 2009 Star Trek film.

Tomorrow, Star Trek Online will get its first major expansion since the MMO launched in 2010. Legacy of Romulus adds the Romulan Republic as a playable faction, and a WarCry interview [http://www.warcry.com/news/view/124101-Interview-How-JJ-Abrams-Star-Trek-Reboot-Impacted-Star-Trek-Online] with producer Daniel Stahl revealed the impact that J.J. Abrams' polarizing film reboot had on the game. According to Stahl, because Romulus and Remus were destroyed in 2009's Star Trek, "we simply had no choice but to keep the planets destroyed in our game."

Of course, that doesn't apply for every plot point in Star Trek and Star Trek: Into Darkness; only changes to the Prime timeline will appear in Star Trek Online. As Stahl points out, "Vulcan still exists in our game and in the Prime timeline even though it was destroyed in the Star Trek reboot timeline."

The destruction of Romulus in the Prime timeline was a pretty big part of the 2009 movie, and it's interesting to see how those story choices are being integrated into Star Trek Online. "Romulans have a much more personal story and their missions and gameplay reflect the challenge they face to survive in a hostile galaxy," Stahl said of the expansion's gameplay. "Creating a Romulan and playing through their first episodes is a vastly improved experience than what it was like creating a Federation captain back at launch."

Legacy of Romulus is set to launch tomorrow, May 21. For more on Star Trek Online's first expansion, check out the full interview [http://www.warcry.com/news/view/124101-Interview-How-JJ-Abrams-Star-Trek-Reboot-Impacted-Star-Trek-Online].

Source: WarCry [http://www.warcry.com/news/view/124101-Interview-How-JJ-Abrams-Star-Trek-Reboot-Impacted-Star-Trek-Online]

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endtherapture

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DVS BSTrD said:
So why keep Vulcan then? When exactly is this set in the timeline anyway?
Adam Jensen said:
They had no choice? They could have just ignored the reboot.
The needs of the money outweigh the needs of the true. Or the fun.
No it makes sense. Doesnt Romulus get destroyed in the original timeline (with TOS, TNG, DS9 etc. ) which is why Nero goes back in time to try and save it/take revenge or something which causes the Star Trek 09 timeline to happen from the original timeline.

But in the original timeline, with TOS, TNG, DS9 etc. Vulcan didn't get destroyed like it did in the 09 film so it's all okay?
 

LordMonty

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endtherapture said:
DVS BSTrD said:
So why keep Vulcan then? When exactly is this set in the timeline anyway?
Adam Jensen said:
They had no choice? They could have just ignored the reboot.
The needs of the money outweigh the needs of the true. Or the fun.
No it makes sense. Doesnt Romulus get destroyed in the original timeline (with TOS, TNG, DS9 etc. ) which is why Nero goes back in time to try and save it/take revenge or something which causes the Star Trek 09 timeline to happen from the original timeline.

But in the original timeline, with TOS, TNG, DS9 etc. Vulcan didn't get destroyed like it did in the 09 film so it's all okay?
Yea dude if the MMO was set in the new JJ Film universe then Vulcan being dust would make sense but its not that universe. Its the prime which follows the start of the film as it affects the prime universe which tbh is still very cool with the destruction of an empire's palnetary capital... yea you could ignore that but come on its a great story point to follow and totally ignore JJverse otherwise :p
 

Jaegerwolf

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DVS BSTrD said:
So why keep Vulcan then? When exactly is this set in the timeline anyway?
Adam Jensen said:
They had no choice? They could have just ignored the reboot.
The needs of the money outweigh the needs of the true. Or the fun.
STO follows the hard canon of the Prime universe, which in this case counts as the tv show and movies, but sets the action in 2409 so they can move forward with plotlines. CBS has been pretty loose in letting them down what they want, but since Cryptic has decided to stick to Prime universe canon and Romulus going boom is now film canon they had to follow along to be consistent.
 

The_Darkness

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CriticKitten said:
According to Stahl, because Romulus and Remus were destroyed in 2009's Star Trek, "we simply had no choice but to keep the planets destroyed in our game."
Oh, I understand. You just HAD to do it! You had no other way! You were forced into a corner by Abrams, with the gun pointed at your head and in a moment of weakness you cried out....

As Stahl points out, "Vulcan still exists in our game and in the Prime timeline even though it was destroyed in the Star Trek reboot timeline."
....oh.

So I guess you're just full of shit and only 'had to do it' because you felt like it, then. Stop lying to your customers.
No, it makes sense. Two timelines. Romulus blew up in one, Vulcan blew up in the other. Star Trek: Online is following the Prime timeline, where Vulcan is intact, while JJ Abrams' films are following the new timeline, which is where Old Spock ended up. Just think of them as parallel realities - one of which has a heck of a lot more lens flare and seems to have substantially faster Warp Travel.

OT: One of these days, I might actually get into Star Trek Online. It looks like it's come a long way since when it first started. Unfortunately, I already find myself spending too much time gaming, and also I just don't trust any sort of gaming experience that requires servers beyond my control to keep running and never be closed down...
 

nomaner

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News about them using the Romulus destruction idea from Star Trek 09 has been in the game's story since launch, so that news is old. Right now they are adding a new box that can give you ships based off of the one from that movie, http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=893831. Besides, I think the only reason why is so that NEW fans for the NEW movies can get into the game while not knowing much about the rest of the franchise then go backwards from it to see what lead to it.
 

RicoADF

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Adam Jensen said:
They had no choice? They could have just ignored the reboot.
I wish they had, the whole destroying romulas was stupid and lame. I was looking forward to romulans becoming fed allies facing the borg, not a bunch of refugees holding a stupid grudge against the federarion for what they did to themselves :-S
 

Crazie_Guy

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CriticKitten said:
The_Darkness said:
No, it makes sense. Two timelines. Romulus blew up in one, Vulcan blew up in the other. Star Trek: Online is following the Prime timeline, where Vulcan is intact, while JJ Abrams' films are following the new timeline, which is where Old Spock ended up. Just think of them as parallel realities - one of which has a heck of a lot more lens flare and seems to have substantially faster Warp Travel.
Except that's just it: the fact that it has to be explained away with "different timelines" is precisely why it didn't make sense in the 2009 movie and why it still doesn't make a damn lick of sense now.

It's really, really preposterously bad writing to take all of your old established canon and throw it down a garbage chute just so that you can do whatever you want without consequence.

Or maybe I'm the only one who still cares how colossally stupid this sort of thing really is.

Looks like this one failed his Time Travel and Paradoxes Theory introduction course. If you can't wrap your head around time travel and the generation of alternate timelines it can create, just trust us that STO has accurately incorporated the correct set of plot points that should exist in the original timeline given the events of the 2009 movie.
 

Sonic Doctor

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Jan 9, 2010
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DVS BSTrD said:
So why keep Vulcan then? When exactly is this set in the timeline anyway?
Adam Jensen said:
They had no choice? They could have just ignored the reboot.
The needs of the money outweigh the needs of the true. Or the fun.
Considering how many people I've seen cruising around in the specialized ships with the specialized uniforms and weapons and whatnot, they could have totally ignored the Abrams drivel and been absolutely fine.

STO was one of the points I like to use on one of my "sort of trekkie" friends(he likes Star Trek, but he is only big on the original series and all the movies, and hasn't watched too much of all the other series). He's one of those people that actually like the first new Star Trek movie, which I of course abhor. He kept harping on me saying, "Your complaints don't have much merit since it is an alternate universe, so it doesn't effect the original time line." He quieted down a bit after I told him that STO which is suppose to be in the canon universe, is effected by the JJ sickness because it acknowledges the new movie with the destruction of Romulus and Remus, not to mention that the vanilla STO cover art with the uniform the guy is wearing looks like a take from the new movie(looking almost exactly like the guy that plays alternate Kirk) than something in relation to the canon universe.

On to your questions, STO is set in 2409, basically 30 years after the movie Star Trek: Nemesis.

Because they kept Vulcan, I'm going to have to say that I'm going to take STO as a non-canon universe, really, I'm going to take anything that links to Abrams' stuff as non-canon. I've already decided that the old Spock in the first new movie isn't the canon universe Spock. Abrams' is a blight to the Star Trek universe and fandom.

----------------------

I might get back in on STO, not really for the story, because that leads me to have to play ground combat and I can't stand that. I'll just do it for the space combat, because that is some of the most fun a trekkie can have with a game. The sound, look, and feel of the space combat is phenomenal.

Edit: Argh, I think what has people confused is that Vulcan is still around in the canon universe, but got destroyed in the new movie. Romulus and Remus are what got destroyed in the canon universe. But whatever, still don't consider it canon since it links it to the Abrams abomination.
 

RicoADF

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Jun 2, 2009
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Crazie_Guy said:
CriticKitten said:
The_Darkness said:
No, it makes sense. Two timelines. Romulus blew up in one, Vulcan blew up in the other. Star Trek: Online is following the Prime timeline, where Vulcan is intact, while JJ Abrams' films are following the new timeline, which is where Old Spock ended up. Just think of them as parallel realities - one of which has a heck of a lot more lens flare and seems to have substantially faster Warp Travel.
Except that's just it: the fact that it has to be explained away with "different timelines" is precisely why it didn't make sense in the 2009 movie and why it still doesn't make a damn lick of sense now.

It's really, really preposterously bad writing to take all of your old established canon and throw it down a garbage chute just so that you can do whatever you want without consequence.

Or maybe I'm the only one who still cares how colossally stupid this sort of thing really is.

Looks like this one failed his Time Travel and Paradoxes Theory introduction course. If you can't wrap your head around time travel and the generation of alternate timelines it can create, just trust us that STO has accurately incorporated the correct set of plot points that should exist in the original timeline given the events of the 2009 movie.
You are correct, it has incorporated the original timeline true to the films and does a good job at explaining what happened (which makes more sense than the vague crap the movie had). It's rather ironic that Romulus was destroyed by an experiment the Romulans were conducting, but frustrating that they blame the federation for their stuff ups. Then again it was a Tal'Shiar experiment so not exactly common knowledge....
 

kailus13

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Why can't they bring themselves to simply say "We thought doing it this way would be more interesting"? Saying they had no choice just makes them seem like bad storytellers.
 

Sonic Doctor

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Jan 9, 2010
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CriticKitten said:
Except that's just it: the fact that it has to be explained away with "different timelines" is precisely why it didn't make sense in the 2009 movie and why it still doesn't make a damn lick of sense now.

It's really, really preposterously bad writing to take all of your old established canon and throw it down a garbage chute just so that you can do whatever you want without consequence.

Or maybe I'm the only one who still cares how colossally stupid this sort of thing really is.
Nope, you are not alone. The Abrams atrocity has put a huge cluster-fuck blemish on the Star Trek franchise.

Really, if you think about it(my opinion):

The proper canon universe stuff that came before is the high end material that makes you think and reach out to want to be a part of that future for many reasons. People that are for this think, "Wouldn't it be grand to live in such a time where, while there still is tension and wars, for the most part it is peaceful and societies work together to better themselves. Plus, the icing on the cake of having the cool science stuff like food replicators, holodecks, and powerful and advanced starships."

The Abrams crazy crap is the lowbrow schlock for the commoner masses that doesn't like to think. People that like that seem to think more along the lines of, "The future is awesome bro, it has explosions and shit." Every person I've seen that likes and tries to defend the new movies always bring up points about special effects and awesome action. When I ask them to remove that, and just point out a proper explanation of how they could like the lack of characterization and story(the most important part for anything that wants to be taken seriously as part of the Star Trek universe), or how they could like and acknowledge the minimal of those to points, they just say, "well I like this character", "Scotty was funny", "Cumber-whatever-his-name is an awesome villain".

They explain their likes on those points on very shallow terms, they never bring me a deep explanation of the characters they like, or how they like the story.

What they don't realize is that they can't do it, because Abrams and whoever else worked on the new "Schlock Trek" didn't create proper characterization and story. Characters are only made up of what they express on the surface, with criminally minimal back stories, with criminally shallow back story for the movie plots and current movie action.

New "Schlock Trek" is about action and that is it. Action driven action with more action, with the story and characterization in spacesuits looking in the ship's window crying and begging to be let in.

The Star Trek franchise is not about action, there is action, but it is deep story driven action.
 

Crazie_Guy

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CriticKitten said:
Crazie_Guy said:
Looks like this one failed his Time Travel and Paradoxes Theory introduction course. If you can't wrap your head around time travel and the generation of alternate timelines it can create, just trust us that STO has accurately incorporated the correct set of plot points that should exist in the original timeline given the events of the 2009 movie.
Not hardly. I probably know more about the concept of parallel universes than you do, having been exposed to it through multiple mediums: as an academic, as an (admittedly low knowledge) fan of comics, and as a gamer (both D&D and video games) who also has done game development writing in a game that uses alternate timelines and universes as a core concept. So yeah, you're doing your adorable little measuring contest with the wrong guy, bro.

But just because it's a theoretical possibility doesn't mean that it's always the best tool for writing your reboots, and when it's done poorly, it suggests little more than you not being willing to read up on your literature. It's generally *not* good to reboot your universe by starting in a new timeline whilst simultaneously screwing up portions of the old one, all in a poor attempt to raise the stakes.

Because the whole planet-destroying thing was never explored in a previous popular sci-fi series, right? You forget, Abrams was a Star Wars fan and knew little to nada of Star Trek canon by his own admission when making the first film, which it very clearly illustrates in its writing. The whole basis of the '09 film was him copying a popular concept of Star Wars, not being ingenious or clever. He chose a reboot primarily so he could operate in his own timeline and do whatever he wanted (and new film shows him taking some pretty big liberties with established canon), not out of any sort of respect for the original canon.

His goal (and this is, again, by his own admission) was to distance himself from the massive amount of Trekkie canon so he could create his own universe that was "less Trekkie" so that it could appeal to the much broader action-flick audiences. I'm not sure what can encapsulate pure contempt for the original stories, intentions, and settings of a franchise better than that sentiment.

Just because he correctly establishes the concept of an alternate universe (which I'd actually argue he did not, but w/e) doesn't mean it was well executed (it wasn't) and it certainly doesn't mean it's well written (it wasn't). For STO to willfully choose to accept Abrams's changes as canon in their game....and that's exactly what it is, a choice, they were not FORCED as they pretend they were....is to essentially say "we want to keep appealing to the hardcore Trekkies while still trying to draw in the fans of the new movies who want lots of lens flare and flashy explosion-filled battles".

They had a choice, and they made their choice. They chose money. If you agree with that choice, fair enough, but let's be intellectually honest here and stop pretending it was anything other than their own choice. It is an outright lie for them to state that they "had no choice".
Wasn't really playing a measuring game, though I suppose that's an impressive set of credentials you were eager to spill at the slightest provocation.

On topic, though, you are letting your hatred for the Abrams movie get in the way of the topic at hand, which is the inclusion of the destruction of Romulus in STO. STO follows canon, and all movies are included as canon in Star Trek, so they were expected to incorporate the events that occurred to the original timeline.

I find it interesting that you say it was poorly executed and written. The movie may well have been... but here we are only concerned with the one event that remains in the first timeline, the destruction of romulus. It's hard to say this is badly written because, well, it wasn't really written at all. It was just an event that established the setting of the movie, with little to none of the circumstances and aftermath shown in the movie. You are too preoccupied with the remainder of the movie, which is irrelevant to STO.

What this means is that STO had simply an event to work with. The destruction of Romulus in the prime universe. Unpainted with bias against the movie and looking at it from a writer's perspective, taking this event and being tasked with building an entire story around it is extremely interesting. Forget the movie; if you want to speak on this subject, what you need to be familiar with is STO and what it has built from the event.
 

RicoADF

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Jun 2, 2009
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Crazie_Guy said:
Wasn't really playing a measuring game, though I suppose that's an impressive set of credentials you were eager to spill at the slightest provocation.

On topic, though, you are letting your hatred for the Abrams movie get in the way of the topic at hand, which is the inclusion of the destruction of Romulus in STO. STO follows canon, and all movies are included as canon in Star Trek, so they were expected to incorporate the events that occurred to the original timeline.

I find it interesting that you say it was poorly executed and written. The movie may well have been... but here we are only concerned with the one event that remains in the first timeline, the destruction of romulus. It's hard to say this is badly written because, well, it wasn't really written at all. It was just an event that established the setting of the movie, with little to none of the circumstances and aftermath shown in the movie. You are too preoccupied with the remainder of the movie, which is irrelevant to STO.

What this means is that STO had simply an event to work with. The destruction of Romulus in the prime universe. Unpainted with bias against the movie and looking at it from a writer's perspective, taking this event and being tasked with building an entire story around it is extremely interesting. Forget the movie; if you want to speak on this subject, what you need to be familiar with is STO and what it has built from the event.
You are 100% correct, CriticKitten seems to be basing his/her argument over what the topic title says (and the 2009 movie story) and not what's in STO. It's not hard to get your head around either.

Prime Timeline - All the movies and series beforehand -> New Romulas is destroyed and Nero goes back in time -> STO deals with the aftermath of Romulas being destroyed. Vulcan is intact and a story around the aftermath is created by Cryptic, which was quite good considering the material they were left with.

JJ Trek Timeline - Nero arrives and screws up the timeline creating the alternate JJ universe, Vulcan's destruction and everything since he arrives has no bearing on the original timeline or STO at all.

CriticKitten said:
*snip for sanity*
I'm no fan of JJ's trek either, its rather insulting in some areas with plot holes all over the place, however STO isn't set in JJ's universe, the only part of the movie that's recognized is that Romulas/Remus is destroyed, and they would have been required by CBS as part of their contract to keep the franchise consistent. The game covers alot of the origional star trek stories, including stories/references from ToS, TNG, DS9, ENT and the movies.