Star Trek Online Previews & Video Inteview

Cryptic Studios' Star Trek Online appears to be drumming up some excitement, with a couple more previews hitting the web this week.

First in line is GamePro:
Players begin their cosmic adventure in typical MMO fashion by creating customized characters from the ground up. In step with past Cryptic endeavors, there's an enormous assortment of modifiable features to be found in Star Trek Online, and the option to create not only your own avatar, but also your own species? You'll be lucky if you stop tweaking the sliders long enough to even jump into the game! One of the absolute coolest innovations has to be the game's Genesis Engine, which allows players to not only create new forms of life, but enlist them into Starfleet. That bug-eyed green guy with the inverted forehead you whipped up before work? You take the right steps and you might just see him strutting around in someone else's landing party before too long.

While the other article comes at us from Destructoid:
Star Trek Online is split between two different play modes. The first is the actual space combat, where players control their Starfleet or Klingon-based ship and enter battle. Space battles are a slow affair. Instead of dog fights, ships are slow lumbering things, with shields placed in quadrants over the ship. Players are going to focus on balancing energy between the four shield quadrants, the energy for the phasers, the directions of the photon cannons, engines, and all that jazz. It's a tactical affair, where getting in the right spot in relation to your opponents is paramount.

There's a video interview with executive producer Craig Zinkievich embedded in the GamePro article above, so be sure to check that out, as well.