Star Trek Online's most recent update adds content from the world of Star Trek: Discovery, the incredibly popular and critically acclaimed CBS television series that has reinvigorated interest in the franchise. Star Trek: Discovery recently enjoyed a spell as the most popular streaming show in the world during its season 2 run in April, and the series continues to build momentum as one of the finer takes on a property that has had no shortage of inspired adaptations.
Star Trek Online is set in the 25th century, roughly 30 years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis, and was the first MMORPG set within the Star Trek universe. It originally launched in 2010, but was later re-released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2016, and has since continued to remain a popular free-to-play title for fans of the property. The game positions each player as the captain of their own ship, controlling its engineering, tactical, and science systems while also beaming down into various settings with access to weapons and combat. Star Trek Online is a remarkably deep adaptation of the franchise, especially given that it's free-to-play, and that depth will go even further now with the addition of Star Trek: Discovery-themed content.
The new update, which went live yesterday, will feature several references to Star Trek: Discovery. Star Trek Online will add two new featured episodes for every faction in the game, titled "The Plausibility of the Possible" and featuring Captain Gabriel Lorca and Commander Ellen Landry, and "Impossibility of Reason," which will feature an unsettling distress call and a frozen ice moon setting. On top of that, the new Rise of Discovery update features voice acting from Jason Isaacs and Rekha Sharma, reprising their roles in Star Trek: Discovery for the MMORPG.
The update doesn't stop there, with more content coming in the form of new reputation, introducing Tier 6 to the system. Tier 6 will allow players to earn new Star Trek: Discovery rewards, and all Discovery Task Force Operations will now featured Advanced and Elite versions that have been converted to support the new reputation system. On top of this, Star Trek Online will remove level restrictions on Tier 6 starships across all platforms, allowing players to fly premium ships that scale to their level for the first time in the game's history.
Overall, it's a robust update for Star Trek Online, a game that could benefit from the property's resurgent pop culture status. Star Trek: Discovery is so good it might be able to single-handedly liberate Star Trek Online from one of the genre's also-rans to a legitimate, if-not-popular-then-niche title that could see a healthy inflation of its playerbase as a result of its newest content.