{"id":7917,"date":"2009-12-04T21:57:36","date_gmt":"2009-12-05T05:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/?p=7917"},"modified":"2009-12-04T21:57:36","modified_gmt":"2009-12-05T05:57:36","slug":"star-trek-online-evolving-the-borg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/2009\/12\/star-trek-online-evolving-the-borg\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Trek Online: Evolving The Borg"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lead character artist <strong>Matt Highison<\/strong> explains how the Borg have been recreated for <em>Star Trek: Online<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>With <em>Star Trek: Online <\/em>being set approximately thirty years after canon Trek, it&#8217;s much easier to write stories without running into problems. &#8220;&#8230;it allows us to use all of the rich history of the franchise that leads up to this point in the story while also respecting what has come before,&#8221; explained Highison. &#8220;No jumping into the middle of the established <em>Star Trek<\/em> timeline and mucking with things.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->&#8220;The second advantage of having <em>Star Trek: Online<\/em> set in 2409 is that it allows us to evolve and expand the franchise beyond what was possible on TV or in the films,&#8221; said Highison.<\/p>\n<p>In the case of the Borg on the televised series, &#8220;The costume designers did an awesome job with what they had to work with,&#8221; said Highison. &#8220;And yet due to the constraints of the show at the time, all this control and mechanical enhancement was still just portrayed as a guy in a suit. Picard could be rescued from the Borg with little physical damage; Seven of Nine looked like she just got back from a decade-long spa treatment.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In <em>Star Trek: Online<\/em>, once assimilated, always assimilated. &#8220;we wanted to be sure our new Borg had evolved and adapted from their war with the Federation,&#8221; said Highison. &#8220;When you see a new Borg drone in <em>Star Trek: Online<\/em>, it will be obvious there is no coming back from assimilation. Instead of adding a gun attachment to an arm, they have removed the whole limb and replaced it with an enhanced synthetic weapon. Much of the torso has been converted to a more efficient cybernetic construct. Why would a drone need a stomach if it gets all its energy from regeneration cycles in a Borg alcove? Our awesome concept art team and our art director, <strong>Lee Dotson<\/strong>, helped push the concepts of &#8216;no-return&#8217; and &#8216;machine fully integrated into flesh.&#8217; <strong>Jeremy Mattson<\/strong>, one of our principal character artists, brought this alternate vision of the Borg to life. They really are scary to go up against!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7918\" title=\"120409EB\" src=\"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/120409EB.gif\" alt=\"120409EB\" width=\"250\" height=\"140\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lead character artist Matt Highison explains how the Borg have been recreated for Star Trek:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2443],"tags":[2823,2482],"class_list":["post-7917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-merchandise","tag-borg","tag-star-trek-online"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","newsphere-slider-full":"","newsphere-featured":"","newsphere-medium":""},"author_info":{"display_name":"T&#39;Bonz","author_link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/author\/tbonz\/"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/categories\/merchandise\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Merchandise<\/a>","tag_info":"Merchandise","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7919,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7917\/revisions\/7919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}