Greetings, fellow Trekkers, -ies, -ites, and -ezians!

I'm Mike Stemmle, Glen's new "story lead" on Star Trek Online. Some of you may recognize my name from my fourteen-year tenure at LucasArts, where I poured blood, sweat, tears, and other various bodily fluids into games like Sam and Max Hit the Road, Star Wars: Jedi Outcast, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. If you recognize my name from Afterlife, then you have my sincerest apologies.

These days, Perpetual is paying me actual real American money to sit at a desk bouncing story ideas off of Glen's head until he sees something he likes. Speaking as a lifelong Trek fan raised in an extended family of Trek fans, I have to say this gig is sweeter than a sack full of jumja sticks.

But enough about me and my fantastically lucky life

Today I thought I'd tease y'all with a little bit of info about STO's initial "state of the galaxy." One of the (many dozens of) challenges inherent in setting STO "20 years in the future's future" is extrapolating the state of the various great forces in the Star Trek universe in way that feels both dramatically "right" for the story we wish to tell, and "right" for Star Trek in general. As such, we've already spilled a great deal of ink (and slurped down a lot of smoothies) thinking about the "future" of just about ALL of the major Star Trek races (and quite a few of the minor ones). Today we'll be taking a brief look at three of the Federation's most high-profile historical adversaries, followed by a quick peek into the state of the Federation itself.

Before we begin, excuse me for a sec while I slip into my "storyteller" voice...check, check...sibilance, sibilance...alrighty then..

Here's a brief summary of the latest happenings within the STO development team: The engineering and art teams have been working together to see how close we can get to photo-realistic, real time ship interior renders. They've started with the TNG era Galaxy class since it is so iconic and also happens to be the setting for at least one major hub. For this particular exercise, they modeling and rendering a hallway, turbolift, and the observation lounge and rendering it all in real-time with next-generation lighting & material effects. Their results are stunning. Once we've completed look development for our other two environment types (space & ground), we'll release some screenshots - figure sometime before summer...