Bethesda recently acquired the rights to the popular Star Trek license and has begun to pump out games taking place in the popular and extremely complex universe.
Later this year they will release Star Trek: Legacy on Xbox 360 and PC, a game in which we just reported as having acquired Star Trek scriptwriter Dorothy “D.C.†Fontana (with her partner Derek Chester, whom have worked on numerous Star Trek episodes and sci-fi TV shows). Bethesda also has Star Trek: Tactical Assault in development, a strategy game that will be releasing for the portables: Nintendo DS and Sony PSP.
And now Bethesda has announced a third Star Trek game . . . that game would be Star Trek: Encounters for the PS2. The game will not be a port of Star Trek: Legacy but rather an all new Star Trek game.
Encounters is “an arcade-style space combat game” and is set to coincide with Star Trek franchise’s 40th anniversary.
Like Legacy, Encounters will cull from the popular sci-fi series’ storied history, specifically: Star Trek: Enterprise, The Original Series, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, for its game scenarios.
Other details are few and far between. The game’s official FAQ says Encounters features more than 60 ships and 11 races–the Borg, Cardassian, Federation, Ferengi, Kazon, Klingon, Romulan, Orion, Species 8472, Vulcan, and Xindi.
Encounters will include split-screen and cooperative, two-player multiplayer support. Two other, presumably single-player modes (skirmish and episode) supplement the multiplayer. The release date should be somewhere in the fourth quarter of 2006.