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''Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters'' is a 1992 video game, the sequel to '' Star Control''. It was developed by Toys for Bob ( Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III) and originally published by Accolade in 1992 for MS-DOS. This game features exoplanet-abundant star systems, hyperspace travel, extraterrestrial life, and interstellar diplomacy, with the game featuring 25 different alien races with which communication is possible.

Released to critical acclaim, ''Star Control II'' is widely viewed today as one of the greatest PC games ever made, and has appeared on numerous publications lists of the greatest video games of all time.

The game was ported to the 3DO by Crystal Dynamics in 1994 with an enhanced multimedia presentation, allowed by the CD technology. The source code of the 3DO port was licensed under GPL-2.0-or-later in 2002, the game content under CC-BY-NC-SA-2.5. The 3DO code was ported to PC as ''The Ur-Quan Masters''. A sequel, ''Star Control 3'', was released back in 1996.

Gameplay

''Star Control II'' is an action-adventure science fiction game, set in an open universe. It features ship-to-ship combat based on the original '' Star Control'', but removes the first game's strategy gameplay to focus on story and dialog, as seen in other adventure games. The player's goal is to free Earth from the evil Ur-Quan, by recruiting aliens to help. The main gameplay elements are exploring the galaxy, gathering resources, building a fleet, defeating enemy ships, and conversing with aliens.

One-on-one spaceship battles take place in real-time, based on the core gameplay of the original ''Star Control''. Each ship has unique weapons, maneuvers, and secondary abilities, and winning a battle requires a combination of ship selection and skill. This combat mode can be played separately in a two-player battle mode called Super Melee. In the story mode, the player is limited to the ships they can gain from sympathetic alien races, whereas Super Melee includes every ship in both ''Star Control'' games. The only ship unique to the story mode is the player's capital ship, which is upgraded as the player gains new technology and resources.

After a brief opening sequence, the player is given near total freedom to explore the galaxy at large. Exploration often involves travelling to stars, landing on planets, and gathering resources. The player navigates their star map, with over 500 stars and 3800 planets to potentially visit. Players must manage their risk as they explore, as planets with more dangerous hazards usually feature more valuable resources, which are vital to upgrade the player's fleet. More rarely, a planet will feature an interactive alien race, who the player can engage with as a potential friend or foe. The interactive dialog options help advance the story, with branching conversations similar to other adventure games. These conversations also reveal secrets and information about the galaxy. The game vastly expands on the characters and backstory from the first game, with each species having their own characteristic conversational quirks, music, and even display fonts.

Plot

Whereas the first ''Star Control'' stores most of its lore in the instruction manual, ''Star Control II'' continues the story with a rich in-game experience, playing through events after the Alliance is defeated by the Hierarchy. In the last phase of the war between the Alliance of Free Stars and the Hierarchy of Battle Thralls, an Earthling ship discovered an ancient Precursor subterranean installation in the Vela star system. A massive Hierarchy offensive forced the Alliance fleets to retreat beyond Vela, stranding the science expedition, who went in to hiding. Decades later, with the help of a genius child born on the planet, the colonists activated the Precursor machinery and found out that it was programmed to build a highly advanced but unfinished starship, which could be piloted only by the now grown genius child, who alone could interact with the Precursor central computer. The new ship set out to Sol to make contact with Earth, but shortly before reaching Sol the little fleet was attacked by an unknown probe; The expedition commander, captaining the expedition's Earthling Cruiser, intercepted the alien ship before it could damage the defenseless Precursor starship, but was killed in the short fight, leaving the genius young man in command.

The player begins the game as the commander of the Precursor starship, who returns to Earth to find it enslaved by the Ur-Quan. The Captain gains the support of the skeleton crew of Earth's caretaker starbase and ventures out to contact the other races to find out what's happened since the end of the war and try to recruit allies in to a New Alliance of Free Stars against the Ur-Quan. The Captain quickly discovers that the rest of the humans' allies in the war against the Ur-Quan have either been eradicated, put under slave shields, or put into service as Ur-Quan battle thralls. As the player progresses, it is revealed that the Ur-Quan are fighting an internecine war with the Kohr-Ah, a subspecies of Ur-Quan who believe in eradicating all life in the galaxy, as opposed to enslaving it. The winner of this war will gain access to the Sa-Matra, a Precursor battle platform of unparalleled power. The player must take advantage of the Ur-Quans' distraction to contact and recruit alien races into a new alliance, gather resources and build a fleet, and find a way to destroy the invincible Sa-Matra, before the Ur-Quan finish their war and become unstoppable.

The Captain resolves issues several of the races are facing, or exploits their weaknesses, to get them on their side. Notably the Captain finds the Chenjesu and Mmrnmhrm on Procyon undergoing their own plan to merge in to a composite species powerful enough to defeat the Ur-Quan, and captures a psychic alien Dnyarri, which the Captain discovers is a member of the race that brutally enslaved the galaxy millennia ago, causing the Ur-Quan's hegemonic and genocidal rampage around the galaxy. The Captain uses a Precursor Sun Device to accelerate the merging of the Chenjesu and Mmrnmhrm to create the Chmmr, who amplify a Precursor terraforming bomb, allowing the Captain to sacrifice his ship to destroy the Sa-Matra and defeat the Ur-Quan.

Development

Concept

''Star Control II'' began as a more ambitious project than the original ''Star Control'', with Reiche and Ford hoping to go beyond ship combat to develop a "science fiction adventure role-playing game". The team credits the pre-existing combat from the original ''Star Control'' with giving them a strong core to build a larger game around. The sequel would develop into a much more detailed adventure than the first edition. Ford explains that the original ''Star Control'' had "some story there, but it was mostly in the manual. In ''Star Control II'', we made a conscious decision to tell more of a story". The duo would downplay the scale of the game when pitching it to their publisher Accolade, and the game's development would eventually go over schedule.

Reiche and Ford drew inspiration from many science-fiction authors, as well as peers in the game industry. A few years earlier, Reiche had been friends with Greg Johnson during the creation of ''Starflight'', inspiring Reiche to offer creative input on Johnson's expansive science fiction game. Once Reiche and Ford conceived ''Star Control 2'', they would draw large inspiration from ''Starflight''. This friendship and mutual admiration even led to hiring Greg Johnson, whom they credit as "one of the most significant contributors to ''Star Control II''". Ford also cites their shared love of author Jack Vance from their childhood, and were intrigued by the idea of exaggerated societies taken to their extremes, and intelligent characters committed to an interesting agenda. Reiche would cite the influence of numerous fiction authors over the ''Star Control'' series, including Jack Vance, Orson Scott Card, Robert Heinlein, David Brin. David Brin

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