Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force is a first-person shooter video game developed by Raven Software and published by Activision. The game was originally released on September 15, 2000 for Windows and Mac OS. A port for Mac OS developed by Westlake Interactive and published by Aspyr Media was released on November 20, 2002. Elite Force was ported to the PlayStation 2 by Pipe Dream Interactive and published by Majesco on December 11, 2001.
The game is set in the Star Trek universe, specifically relating to the fifth Star Trek television series, Star Trek: Voyager. The dates in the game place Elite Forces plot late in Voyagers sixth season. The player assumes the role of Ensign Alex Munro, a member of the Hazard Team, a new elite security section created to deal with particularly dangerous and hostile away missions. The game's plot focuses on the USS Voyager being trapped in a starship graveyard, heavily damaged and under attack from a variety of hostile factions. The Hazard Team is tasked with protecting Voyager as repairs are made, and investigating the cause of their entrapment.
Elite Force was one of several Star Trek games announced after Activision secured the license to Star Trek video games from Viacom in 1998. The game was one of the first to license id Tech 3, a game engine by id Software used by a number of video games during the early 2000s. Elite Force was a critical success, and is often praised as the first truly successful Star Trek video game, able to appeal to people who were not Star Trek fans. Raven Software released an expansion pack to the game in May 2001, while Wildstorm adapted the story for a short graphic novel in July 2000. A sequel developed by Ritual Entertainment, Star Trek: Elite Force II, was published in 2003. The game was one of six Star Trek titles re-released on GoG.com in celebration of the franchise's 55th anniversary in September 2021.
Gameplay
An example of the first-person shooter genre, Elite Force is based on gameplay conventions shared by multiple other games. The game is focused on story-driven combat within a 3D environment, with all activity viewed as if through the eyes of the game's protagonist. The player controls the movement of the player character through walking, crouching, jumping or interacting with the environment. The only exception to this is in cut scenes, where the player loses control of the character to a third-person view for scripted events. The player character possesses numerical values for their health and armor, which are displayed on the game's heads-up display. As the player character takes damage from non-player characters and certain aspects of the environment, both values will decrease; when the health value reaches zero, the player character will die. Armor lessens the impact to the player character's health from hostile action, but once depleted the player will be more susceptible to damage. However, both armor and health can be restored by using wall-mounted terminals or from receiving assistance from certain friendly non-player characters such as the Doctor.
Elite Force includes an arsenal of Star Trek–themed weapons, such as phasers and disruptors. The weapons vary in power, ammunition consumption and effectiveness in given situations. Usually, the player is equipped with a hand phaser, a low-damage weapon that automatically recharges ammunition, and a phaser compression rifle, a more powerful weapon with an optional sniper mode for long distance kills. Other weapons, acquired as the game progresses, include grenade launchers, stasis weaponry and pulse energy weapons. The player can restock on ammunition by using wall-mounted terminals that dispense weapon energy, or by picking up certain items in the game environment.
Single-player The game's single-player campaign consists of around 30 linear levels, divided up into eight distinct missions. Missions have different objectives, from retrieving a particular item and accessing computer systems, escorting a friendly character through hostile territory, or destroying vital ship and station components. Enemies come in multiple forms in the game, often as Star Trek species such as the Borg and the Klingons. Each group of enemies uses a different means of attacking: most humanoid enemies are armed with weapons similar to the player, and will use cover and squad tactics to attempt to kill the player character. The Borg differ from this in that, instead of using squad tactics, they eventually adapt their personal energy shields to most of the player's weapons, slowly rendering the player's attacks useless as they advance. Other enemies may attempt to swarm the player and eliminate them with melee attacks.
The player is usually accompanied by one or more friendly non-player characters, who will follow the player and provide assistance in combat against enemies. As they are often key to the story, friendly characters must not be killed in combat except during scripted events. In between combat missions, the player can move around the USS Voyager and interact with other members of its crew, often performing non-combat tasks to progress the story.
Multiplayer Elite Force was originally released with a 32-player multiplayer element, in which participants use the weaponry and characters from the single-player game to compete in several different game modes. Referred to as a "holomatch", the multiplayer is themed as though it were a holodeck experience. Players can compete against other players in local area network and Internet games, or play against bots, opponents that use the game's artificial intelligence. Each player can choose one of a variety of Star Trek characters as their aesthetic player character in multiplayer. The initial release contained multiplayer game modes shared by other multiplayer games in the genre. The standard "deathmatch" game mode involves each player moving around a level, collecting weaponry and killing the other players, with the first to reach a particular number of kills, winning. As player characters are killed, they respawn into the game after a short time. "Team deathmatch" follows the same principle, albeit grouping the players into teams to do so. Capture the flag involves two teams of players attempting to retrieve a flag within the other team's base and returning it to their own to score.
The Elite Force expansion pack added an additional five-game types. In an "assimilation" match, one team plays as Borg and must attempt to assimilate the other team; if a player is assimilated, they join the Borg team, gradually reducing the number of players on the other team. The "action hero" mode gives one player more weapons, health, and overall power than every other player, but when an opposing player kills this player they take these advantages. A further game type known as "elimination" is a deathmatch game except that players can't respawn. As player characters are killed, they sit out the remainder of the round until only one player is left alive. The "disintegration" mode gives every player a slow firing semi-automatic phaser rifle that will kill and vaporize an opposing player in one shot, thus requiring shots to be carefully aimed to ensure they hit. The final game mode, called "specialties," adds a class-based mode for team deathmatch and capture the flag modes, giving players the option to choose from one of six combat roles, such as a sniper, medic or infiltrator, each with different weapons, speeds and abilities.
Synopsis
Setting
Elite Force is based on the fourth Star Trek television series, Star Trek: Voyager. The series follows the adventures of the Starfleet vessel USS Voyager, which is stranded by an enigmatic alien power in the Delta Quadrant of the Milky Way galaxy. 70,000 light-years from Federation space, the series shows Voyagers effort to make the 75-year journey home. The stardate of 53854.7 given in the game places Elite Force in the latter parts of the sixth season of Star Trek: Voyager, in the year 2376. Significant parts of the game are set on Voyager itself, although much of the game takes place on away missions to other ships and space stations. The player interacts with several races from the series, such as the Borg, Hirogen and Malon, as well as new species created solely for the game.
Characters
Elite Force incorporates a large cast of characters, both original characters created for the game and characters from the television series. All nine of the core Voyager characters in the sixth season appear, such as Captain Kathryn Janeway and Lieutenant Commander Tuvok, each voiced by the appropriate cast member from the television series. The only exception to this is the character of Seven of Nine, who was voiced by Joan Buddenhagen in the initial release; however, actress Jeri Ryan retroactively replaced Buddenhagen's voice through a later patch and the expansion pack. The player takes on the role of Ensign Alex Munro; depending on the player's choice of gender, Alex is short for either Alexander or Alexandria. Munro is the second in command of an elite security force, the Hazard Team, a special unit created by Tuvok. Munro reports to Lieutenant Les Foster, the team's commanding officer. Although fourteen characters make up the Hazard Team, the player only interacts consistently with a limited number of these characters, among them Telsia Murphy, the team's scout and sharpshooter, Austin Chang, a demolitionist and good friend of Munro's, and Kendrick Biessman, a boisterous heavy weapons specialist. In addition, two core members of the Hazard Team are minor characters from the television series itself: Juliet Jurot, the team's combat medic and a telepath, is seen in the episode "Counterpoint", while Chell, the squad's technician, is an apprehensive Bolian character who appears in several Voyager episodes. Most character development, such as Munro's growing relationship with Murphy, takes place between missions, when the player has the chance to explore areas of the ship and interact with the crew.
Plot The game opens with the Hazard Team conducting a holodeck training exercise set on a Borg ship; however, the team fails the exercise as most get captured by the Borg, and Munro accidentally destroys the ship while trying to rescue them. Following the termination of the exercise, Voyager is attacked by an unidentified ship. Voyager manages to destroy the ship, but takes heavy damage in the battle. The hostile ship explodes, emitting a shockwave that teleports the now–crippled Voyager to an unknown location, surrounded by derelict ships. As the Voyager crew attempts repairs, the ship is boarded by scavengers, who steal some of Voyagers cargo supplies before being driven off. In an effort to establish where Voyager is, the Hazard Team is sent to a derelict ship where power is still functioning to download the derelict's database. The mission goes awry when aliens begin transporting in and attacking the team; however, the aliens, identifying themselves as Etherians, eventually manage to communicate with the team, and the ordeal is waved off as a misunderstanding, allowing the Hazard Team to access the Etherian database.