Star Control 3 - The Pages of Now and Forever (2025)

Star Control 3 - The Pages of Now and Forever (1)

The third instalment in the SC saga was released in 1996 forDosand Macintosh. This game was designed by a completely differentdeveloper called Legend Entertainment, a decision that has causedsome controversy. Toys for Bob who created the original gameswere not interested in developing a new game for Accolade underthe terms they offered. The game structure was superficiallysimilar to SC II, consisting of an adventure game and aHyperMelee.

Adventure game

The SC3 adventure game differs significantly from SCII, eventhough the base idea is the same. You still travel the stars,meeting aliens and fighting enemies. While conversing with aliensworks as before, both navigating in a solar system and betweensystems is much more automated. In system, you navigate betweendifferent planets simply by clicking them by mouse. There is nolander subgame, but instead you can place colonies on planets.You then rely on colony production for fuel, ships and currency.For travelling between stars, the 3D map from SC1 has beenbrought back in a larger scale. The map can be rotated or keptstill and different display modes can be turned on and off. Thesewill help the player by showing fuel storages, colonies and otherfacts about certain star systems. Navigating is again done with aclick and is instantaneous.


Star Control 3 - The Pages of Now and Forever (2)

Navigating within a star system. Simply use yourmouse to click on the planet you wish to visit.

Star Control 3 - The Pages of Now and Forever (3) Star Control 3 - The Pages of Now and Forever (4)

First the planet view., then acolony placed on planet, generating fuel,resources, crew and ships.

Story wise, the plot casts the captain from SC2 leading amissionto another quadrant. The overall goal is to stop a mysteriousforce known as the Eternal Ones, hell bent on destroying all lifein the universe. Because of the collapse of Hyperspace, a newflagship capable of Warp Bubble travel has been built. The playerbrings with him members from 10 races from the previous game, whoat the beginning are scattered and must be found. The new KessariQuadrant also has a slew of both indigenous and foreign races,who must be dealt with while the Captain searches for clues onhow to defeat the Eternal Ones.

Hyper Melee

Hypermelee once again allows the player to fight ship battleswithout bothering with the adventure mode. It features ships fromall new races and the old races included in the story mode. Italso features two vision modes, the traditional top down mode anda pseudo3D mode.

Star Control 3 - The Pages of Now and Forever (5)

A view of the melee in pseudo3D where an Ur-QuanDreadnought has just incinerated an enemy ship.

Criticisms and controversies

SC3 has been criticised on numerous occasions for a slew ofvarying reasons. First and foremost among these is that the teamwriting the story and creating the game did not contain theoriginal creators Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford. The story has ingeneral been said to borrow conversation trees from SC2 tooheavily and resolve too many of the original questions leftbehind by SC1. Many specific grievances have been brought up aswell, ranging from rewriting and partially ignoring the end of SCII to having a rather unfulfilling ending sequence.

The game was also criticised for its change in appearance. Thesplashes of colour seen in SC2 had been turned into a much darkerand greyer palette. The conversation screens had been redone withanimated puppets, to the horror of many fans. Many races, such asthe Syreen and Pkunk, bore only a slight resemblance to theirappearance in SC2.

Star Control 3 - The Pages of Now and Forever (6)

The syreen puppet from the SC3 conversation screenupset manyfans of Talana.

The reduction of space travel to the click of a mouse was notunanimously welcomed, nor was the colony subgame which was seenas boring and impractical. There were also complaints regardingthe very large 3D map, since the large amount of stars could makenavigation challenging.

Another major point of criticism in the game was its scriptingsystem. If tasks were done in an unexpected order it wouldsometimes break down, leaving the player waiting for some keyevent that failed to materialise. Many players were unable tocomplete the game without first finding a walkthrough so thatthey could finish their tasks in the correct order.

Melee wise, the pseudo3D system was not very popular, butsinceit could be turned off it wasn’t a big problem either. Muchworse were the facts that half of the SC2 ships had been leftout, the other half had been rebalanced and the new racesintroduced often had unbalanced ships. This made melee a lessenjoyable experience to most players.

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Star Control 3 - The Pages of Now and Forever (2025)
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