When Cryptic passed the mantle to us folks here at DECA, one of the things we discussed internally and something we felt, and continue to feel, very strongly about was the importance of continuing their legacy - and this means concluding the current story arc in such a way as to remain true to Al Rivera and Paul Reed’s vision of what that story was about. Fortunately, we’ve benefitted from a continuing collaboration with the remaining Cryptic staff, utter professionals like Thomas Marrone and Jeremy Randall (and many others!), who have been indispensable in ensuring we understood what that previous vision was and the primary beats required to do it justice.

The fundamental challenge here was, of course, to get our heads around a game with such a deep, intricate and long-lived history, with so much STO-specific lore. So lots of research and lots of discussions to tease out the nuanced detail. The only significant change we made was to introduce one additional episode into the current arc, which we felt was required to fully explore the epic story arc that we have inherited.