Oops, playing catchup a little here, since I never got the chance to blog about the last few week’s missions in the new Devidian series in Star Trek Online.

Spin the Wheel was pretty short, but none-the-less a good setup episode, that set the scene nicely for what came next.   After being directed to Drozana Station to check in on a Section 31 informant, you find yourself having to fix the power grid for the station manager to get information on where to find her, and then you must play some Dabo to avoid raising suspicion when making contact.

As I say, on the surface, very short.  And was sure to disappoint some players with its complete lack of combat, but as I’ve said before I enjoy the change of pace they provide, and I feel this mission was an important stage, not necessarily for the storyline, but for introducing the setting of Drozana Station.

Existing in the Neutral Zone, it acts as a neutral trading station where both Federation and Klingon characters can stop off to access the Exchange, pick up some supplies, and play some Dabo.  And for the purpose of this storyline, its also a central point of activity for the Devidians.   For Klingon players, I imagine Drozana Station is a familiar haunt, however as a Federation player I must admit I’d never had the cause to visit there before, especially with Deep Space K7 so close by.  Drozana Station, by this mission is established as a 200+ year old station that’s not kept in particularly great state of repair, with many systems patched together.  This all becomes important in the next mission.

So, a short mission, but I think an important one.   The power grid puzzle was fun and, like the station, it also introduces the Dabo mini-game to those players who may not have been aware of it.  A nice way of advertising some of the non-mission content in the game I thought, as well as making use of existing game assets to help them meet the weekly deadline, which must be tough going sometimes.

However, with Drozana Station now introduced to the players, the next mission, What Lies Beneath, sees you heading back to it to investigate the Devidian’s appearances.  Specifically to search the lower maintenance decks for sign of where they might be gathering.

Now, to truly appreciate what Cryptic did here, you must remember this mission was released over Halloween weekend.  As you descend in the maintenance elevator, you get stopped on another deck part way down, and that’s where the fun really begins, as there’s more than Devidians hiding in the lower decks.

Atmosphere is key to this mission.  The idea of a centuries old station, kept in pretty poor repair is captured brilliantly.  The lighting is low and flickers constantly.  There are cables and debris scattered all over the place.  The setting is perfect as the spooky old space station, and its augmented nicely by the temporary torchlight drone you pick up (a great little power that).  The tension then is ratcheted up a notch when a maintenance technician is killed, and the comm channels fill up with the killer’s messages to you.

And what impact those messages have.  Voice overs are something not heavily employed by the game.  Outside of the tutorial they’re pretty rare, consisting mainly of Leonard Nimoy introducing new sectors and congratulating you on levelling up.  The STF I played also featured a little audio for the main villain, but throughout the majority of the game, voice overs are absent.  It just means that when they do appear, it really adds to the experience, and that was certainly the case here.  As the voice overs are so rare, you’re not expecting them, so when this haunting, menacing voice suddenly came through the speakers, it was a “jump out of your seat” moment.

The mission also starts to set the scene for the following week’s mission.  By the time you find the Devidian’s “nest”, you’ve encountered various Starfleet personnel in 23rd century (Classic Trek) uniforms, so the appearance of a time portal isn’t much of a surprise.  Next stop, the 23rd century.

A great pair of missions when taken together.  There’s some fun puzzles, and the atmosphere in What Lies Beneath really does make the mission.   There’s a lot of love and attention gone into this mission to make it, honestly, one of the best in the entire game.  These missions also demonstrate an element of trade off.  The shorter Spin the Wheel probably allowed the development team the time required to come up with all the textures and environmental effects necessary to make What Lies Beneath as good as it was.   I mentioned this before during the Breen missions, but these weeklies really do show off a strong new direction for the game, and I hope, as new weekly series are planned, we get even more great missions with the kind of immersion and detail as we’re seeing here.