

(written from a Production point of view Real World article

Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury Publisher: Interplay Developer: Tribal Dreams Released: Unreleased Stardate: Unknown (Unknown) Platform(s):

Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury is a 1999 unreleased PC game from Interplay. It was written by D.C. Fontana and featured the voice of William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig, and Nichelle Nichols in their original roles. The game used motion-capture and voxel technology, priding itself on attention to detail. Developers bragged about getting DeForest Kelley's forehead bump in 3D, as well as the accurate reproduction of Leonard Nimoy's "5 o'clock shadow" on his shaved eyebrows.

Three different non-interactive demos were released; the first two (Autumn 1997 and Winter 1998) demos are essentially identical except the latter has a Tribal Dreams intro screen and some screens describing the game's features. The third demo is different, and features a voice over by James Doohan.

According to D.C. Fontana, the game had become expensive due to its complexity and size and the publisher, Interplay, pulled it from the schedule due to cost.

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Story

Centering on the Romulan/Vulcan split that occurred thousands of years ago, the Vulcans used a space station called "Fury" to destroy the Romulan fleets. The station drew its power from the twin planets and a Vulcan would have to mind meld with the station to use the weapon. The surviving Romulans fled to settle several planets and later establish the Romulan Star Empire.

It emerges that in the game the Romulans are trying to establish peace with Vulcan, and the USS Enterprise is sent to provide security. The peace conference, however, is a ruse for the Romulans to try and find the Fury space station and use it on the Vulcan people.

Structure

The story for SoVF was to be divided into six chapters or episodes (initially to be eight) divided into three arcs, with each chapter focusing on a different male main character from Star Trek: The Original Series. The first arc dealt with internal strife on Vulcan. In McCoy's episode, McCoy had to investigate the death of a Romulan ambassador that was participating in the peace talks. The Romulans are actually behind the murder and blame it on a Tellarite in hopes of starting a new war. Kirk and company are held in Vulcan custody under suspicion of murder.

The following two chapters uncovered the dark secrets of the Vulcan/Romulan wars of eons past, which are more Scotty and Sulu based; Scotty specifically has to deal with a sabotage event on the Enterprise. The final arc involved a Romulan attack or war on the Federation when the Federation came to the aid of Vulcan (a Kirk/Chekov story arc).

Trivia