Need to Know
What is it? A single-player choice-driven action story set in the post-TNG era.
Release date May 23, 2023
Expect to pay $39.99/£35
Developer Dramatic Labs
Publisher Bruner House
Reviewed on Intel i7-9700F, RTX 2070 Super, 32GB RAM
Steam Deck Unverified
Link Official site
“The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth” is one of Captain Picard’s most iconic lines, and the team at Dramatic Labs—a bunch of self-confessed diehard Trekkies—have embodied that mantra in their Telltale-esque adventure, Star Trek: Resurgence. The story is the perfect mix of everything Star Trek and Telltale’s classic choice-based narrative: silly humour, gentle moments that focus on care and affection, and dramatic phaser fights with lots of unnecessary diving around.
The Telltale formula of a strong narrative combined with morally ambiguous decision-making—and plenty of QTEs—seems to fit the Star Trek storytelling style perfectly. But Dramatic Labs offers something more: complicated puzzles, stealth sequences, time-sensitive exploration objectives, better cinematics, and an overall departure from the Telltale default of feeling like you’re watching an interactive movie. Resurgence isn’t an episodic tale, at least not in the traditional Telltale sense. Rather than having five distinct acts or episodes that arrive separately, you’ll get to play it all at once as you swap between the two player characters, who each get their own uniquely titled episodes, much like you’d see in The Next Generation.
Star Trek: Resurgence is meant to represent roughly three full-length films and ties in nicely to the post-TNG era series and movies. It’s set in 2380, right after the events of Nemesis and 16 years after the beginning of The Next Generation. Also, everyone is wearing DS9-style uniforms, so you know it’s going to be good. It brings together a balanced mix of bridge crew antics—a well-established Star Trek approach—and the inspiring, comic-relief side of the lower decks, which we’ve seen in the newest animated series. Only, the lower decks characters become the real heroes and villains in this story, showing that wearing three pins on your uniform isn’t the be-and end-all.
I have principles
(Image credit: Dramatic Labs)
Disappointingly, there are no real options to set up Resurgence to your own liking. There are no accessibility options—not even sensitivity as I mentioned—and screen resolution options are extremely limited. There’s no option to rebind controls or turn off the motion blur which, at times, gave me a little motion sickness at times, and neither is there an option to unlock frame rate. While past Telltale games also had this lack of personalisation and accessibility options, it’s frustrating to see that Dramatic Labs chose not to include these as it would have made the experience that much better.
The complement of the USS Resolute may not be the finest crew in Starfleet—not when Captain Riker is out there commanding the Titan—but Carter especially is now one of my most-loved Trek characters. It would have been easy to have you roleplaying as a well-established captain or officer, but in focusing on new characters and lower decks antics, Dramatic Labs have created something special. Resurgence takes the best of Telltale’s flavour, makes it better and smashes it together with an excellent Star Trek story to create something that’s fresh. Yes, characters unavoidably die and the story takes a few hours to really take off, but it’s worth it—I haven’t cried as much at a Star Trek story since Data sacrificed himself in Nemesis, so read into that what you will.
