Star Trek needs an RPG, deep character development, and a story.
The reason most Star Trek games fail is that the game developers and publishers don’t recognize what makes Star Trek Star Trek.
Star Trek has action, and ideas, and morality lessons. But more than that it has great characters that interact and form friendships and bonds. Star Trek relies more on these than its action. Think of the interplay between Kirk, Spock and McCoy in the first series. Think of the relationship between Picard and Beverly Crusher, his mentorship of Data, the friendship between Geordi and Data in The Next Generation. In Deep Space Nine Sisko and Dax were old friends, and O’Brien and Bashir became friends as well. Over the course of the series we often came to care as much for these characters as they cared for each other.
Now look at a game like Mass Effect. Through three games we came to care for some of the characters that accompany Commander Shepard on the Commander’s adventures. That’s part of what people cited as reasons for disliking the end of the third game, they didn’t see enough of what happened to their companions at the end.
The idea of having an interactive story and characters to explore in the Star Trek universe is enticing, though unlikely. And I think that’s a loss for gamers.
Dispatches from Obscurity 