These days people are talking a lot about Bethesda software, mainly because of the recent release of their stellar fantasy RPG game “Oblivion”. Bethesda’s known for the Elder Scrolls series but they don’t merely publish fantasy games. They publish a variety of titles: horse racing to horror to drag racing to pirates. (In my opinion there should be a whole genre dedicated exclusively to games about pirates but that’s me.) With “Star Trek Legacy”, Bethesda broadens its range even further by creating a sci-fi tactical combat game that will have Star Trek fans frothing at the mouth.

The game encompasses all of the Star Trek universe and is coming out Fall 2006 on PC and Xbox 360 just in time to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Star Trek. With 60 ships and four playable races, players can fly every famous ship from every incarnation of the Star Trek IP: the Original Series, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. Players can choose from single player campaign mode or multiplayer mode via Xbox Live and can engage in small scale one-on-one skirmishes or large scale wars between entire fleets.

Bethesda’s taken great pains to make beautiful backdrops for tactical combat. Planets, space stations, nebulae, asteroid fields – all manner of space terrain is represented and rendered in eye-popping color and detail. Ships too are as realistic and detailed as possible and players can man their ships with many famous Star Trek characters.

In the demo I saw, characters are represented only by voiceovers and aren’t seen even as onscreen portraits. Bethesda’s intention is to get as many of the original actors to do the voice work as possible and while that’s cool, (The bit of the game I saw was a fun recreation of the battle between Captain Kirk and the megalomaniacal Khan Noonien Singh. Who wouldn’t enjoy campy tete a tete’s between those two?) it’s a little disappointing to think there might not be any visual incarnation of these beloved characters.

Tactical combat is in real time and ships are fully maneuverable in 3D space. Fleets can be placed and reinforcements brought in strategically using an RTS-like overhead map. Combat itself is as yet not quite interesting enough though. Ships maneuver sluggishly, which might be accurate as far as lore goes, but feels like watching an air show in slow motion replay. When ships attack one another, phasers aren’t dynamic and look like static neon tubes. When there’s a whole group of ships firing upon one another, gameplay tends to look extremely static, like fleets are hanging in space, with a network of neon bulbs connecting them all.

The game’s headed in the right direction and it’s sure that die-hard Star Trek fans will be anxious to get their hands on it. However, at this stage of development, it has a ways to go before it has something to offer a broader audience. The adherence to Star Trek history, the detailed ships, beautiful environments and authentic VO are great, but as far as dynamic gameplay and visual excitement, the developers have their work cut out for them.