Ur-Quan

The Ur-Quan are the main antagonists in Star Control and Star Control II, a science fiction video game series created by Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford.

Ur-Quan
Star Control character
First gameStar Control (1990)
Created byPaul Reiche III, Fred Ford[1]
Designed byPaul Reiche III, Fred Ford
Voiced byLarry Zee, David Bryce[2]
In-universe information
AliasUr-Quan Kzer-Za, Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah

The Ur-Quan are introduced in Star Control as an intelligent race of giant predatory caterpillars, and the leader of a hierarchy of battle thralls. Their story is developed much further in the sequel, with a traumatic past leading them to fiercely seek their own security. The Ur-Quan's military doctrine becomes a subject of intense internal conflict, leading to a civil war. In Star Control 3, developed by a different team, they ally with the player against a different antagonist and their role is scaled back.

The Ur-Quan's role in Star Control II has earned acclaim among the best game villains of all time. Besides their menacing and threatening persona, they are praised for their surprising depth and humanity.

Background
The Ur-Quan speaking to the player in The Ur-Quan Masters, the open-source remake of Star Control II.

The Ur-Quan are an alien race of giant predatory caterpillars, who evolved from a fiercely territorial species into a spacefaring civilization.[3] Prior to the events of the games, they were discovered by an evil psychic race called the Dnyarri, who enslaved the Ur-Quan and compelled them to dominate the rest of known space. Using genetic engineering, the Dnyarri separated the original brown Ur-Quan into two sub-species. The green Ur-Quan became the Dnyarri's favored administrators and researchers, and the black Ur-Quan became their designated soldiers.[4]

The Ur-Quan eventually freed themselves, and formed a galactic empire of their own. The green Ur-Quan were renamed the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za in honor of the Ur-Quan scientist who freed them all. The Kzer-Za moved forward with the 'Path of Now and Forever', a policy of security through enslaving all non-Ur-Quan sentient life, controlling them as either battle thralls, or forever imprisoning them on their home worlds under impenetrable force-fields. The Black Ur-Quan, renamed the Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah after their new leader, felt that they could only be safe with the utter annihilation of all non-Ur-Quan life, an ideology they called the 'Eternal Doctrine'.[5] The differing doctrines of the two fiercely territorial species escalated into a civil war.[6] After devastating losses, the Kzer-Za eventually triumphed through the discovery of an enormous ancient battleship created by a lost alien civilization called the Precursors.[7]

By the time of the games, the Ur-Quan form a Hierarchy of enslaved races,[3] and travel the galaxy enforcing their doctrine of security through slavery.[8] At the climax of Star Control II, the Ur-Quan are defeated when a bomb destroys their ancient Precursor battleship.[9] At the start of Star Control 3, the Ur-Quan join an alliance with the player,[10] but are ultimately undermined by another civil war with the Kohr-Ah.[11]

Development
Star Control developers Paul Reiche III (left) and Fred Ford (middle) at GDC 2015

Creators Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford first conceived of the Ur-Quan for the original Star Control.[1] Reiche describes their character creation process, "I know it probably sounds weird, but when I design a game like this, I make drawings of the characters and stare at them. I hold little conversations with them. 'What do you guys do?' And they tell me."[12] Reiche and Ford began with paper illustrations, which led them to implement ships with special abilities, with each character concept inspired by each ship's unique look-and-feel.[13] One large ship had the ability to launch fighters, which led the designers to a creative conclusion - these aliens seemed to have a commanding personality, and they would be an ancient race that plays the role of the main antagonist.[14] Reiche and Ford felt that the word "Ur-" had ancient connotations, and liked the sound of "Quan", and thus the Ur-Quan were created.[14]

Though the first Star Control had minimal story and lore compared to the sequel,[15] the original Star Control described the Ur-Quan's story as founders of an evil Hierarchy, a "rigid union of the ancient Ur-Quan slavers and their minions".[16] Reiche and Ford wrote the Ur-Quan's motivations for galactic dominance as their desire for slaves, and designed the Ur-Quan's appearance based on a National Geographic image of a predatory caterpillar dangling over its prey.[12]

When it came time to write the story for Star Control II, Reiche and Ford started by using the first game's characters and ships to tell simple visual stories about their fictional conflicts.[13] The Ur-Quan were already understood as a race of slavers in Star Control, so the writers developed their motivation by imagining them as former slaves themselves.[12] Reiche attempted to humanize the Ur-Quan, based on his own "relationships with people who had experienced significant childhood abuse and how those traumas produced distinctly odd behaviors in adults. [The Ur-Quan's] doctrines were the overtly crazy but internally reasonable responses to their treatment by the Dnyarri, and the pain they had to endure to win their freedom from slavery."[17] The team describes this writing process as imagining justifications for past creative decisions, building logically on details about story, artwork, and game abilities.[1]

The 3DO version of Star Control II features the voice of Larry Zee for the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za, and David Bryce for the Ur-Quan Kohr Ah.[18] The Ur-Quan theme music for Star Control II was created by fantasy artist Erol Otus, who first composed the song on a synthesizer before it was re-sampled and exported to MOD file format.[1]

Reception

The Ur-Quan have been described by gaming publications among the best science fiction races ever created.[19] GameSpot ranked the Ur-Quan as the best computer game villain in 1999, explaining how their "masochistic and truly sad history makes the Ur-Quan one of the very best villains. Even now, we are hard-pressed to find a race of adversaries as complex and three-dimensional as the Ur-Quan."[20] This followed their reader-voted list, where fans chose the Ur-Quan as the 4th greatest game villains ever.[21]

Describing Star Control II as a masterpiece, AllGame proclaims that "nothing compares to the horrible plight of the Ur-Quan, ostensibly the major villains in the game. By the time you learn about the millennia of enslavement and mind-control they've had to endure in the past, not to mention the self-inflicted excruciating torments they underwent to gain freedom, the Ur-Quan become more sympathetic than most of the friendly-but-fluttery allies populating your own fleet. This is a rare and praiseworthy design achievement."[22] Retro Gamer applauds the voice acting and dialog for the Ur-Quan, including the "absolute dread caused by hearing in-depth explanations of what it's like to wear a 'pain excruciator'".[23] Praising the complexity of the Ur-Quan, Rock, Paper, Shotgun explains that "part of Star Control II is slowly learning that the Ur-Quan aren't actually as bad as they seem", and declares the Ur-Quan a "galactic threat better than basically any science fiction role-playing video game that came after".[8]

Star Control 3 was developed and written by a different team. Hardcore Gaming 101 lamented the Ur-Quan's new allied role in the third game, explaining that "as menacing as the Ur-Quan were in Star Control II, and how cool it is that they're on your side in this game, they barely do anything here."[10]

References
  1. Fred Ford & Paul Reiche III (June 30, 2015). "Classic Game Postmortem: Star Control". Game Developers Conference.
  2. "Star Control II Credits (3DO)". MobyGames. 2020-05-04.
  3. Paula Polley, Paul Reiche III, Dick Moran (November 17, 1992). "Star Control II Manual". Accolade.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. Paul Reiche III & Fred Ford (1992). Star Control II (PC). Accolade. Ur-Quan: It was on a routine planetfall that one of our Milieu scoutships first met the Dnyarri. They were evilly intelligent creatures who could control the minds of others. They wanted to rule the universe. We could not resist them. For thousands of years, we were unthinking slaves to the Dnyarri. The Dnyarri had a special liking for us Ur-Quan so they began to tinker with our genes. They built two Ur-Quan sub-races one Green, the thinkers and planners the other Black, the warriors and laborers.
  5. Paul Reiche III & Fred Ford (1992). Star Control II (PC). Accolade. Ur-Quan: When the martyred genius Kzer-Za gave us the secret to defeating the Dnyarri, we destroyed them. Then we decided that we would never again be slaves. We would follow the Path of Now and Forever. We decided to enslave or imprison all other intelligent life in the galaxy. We had slave-shielded one world, when we learned that the Black Ur-Quan under a new leader, Kohr-Ah, had devised the Eternal Doctrine which called for the `cleansing', the annihilation, of all non-Ur-Quan sentient life.
  6. Paul Reiche III & Fred Ford (1992). Star Control II (PC). Accolade. Melnorme: The followers of Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah were all on the brink of madness but neither side would submit, and so they fought a bloody civil war.
  7. Paul Reiche III & Fred Ford (1992). Star Control II (PC). Accolade. Melnorme: The civil war between the Green Ur-Quan, the followers of Kzer-Za and their opponents, the death-dealing Kohr-Ah, lasted for decades. It is likely that they would have annihilated each other were it not for a chance discovery by a Kzer-Za -- a Precursor Battleship! The vessel was huge, many times the size of the Ur-Quan's vessels. The Precursor ship sliced through the Kohr-Ah forces in days -- the Kohr-Ah were defeated.
  8. Richard Corbett (February 15, 2016). "The RPG Scrollbars: Praise The Ur-Quan Masters". Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
  9. GameSpot Staff (March 2, 2000). "GameSpot Ten Best Endings - Star Control II". GameSpot. Archived from the original on February 19, 2005.
  10. Kurt Kalata (September 11, 2018). "Star Control 3". Hardcore Gaming 101.
  11. Jason Parks (July 30, 1996). "GameSpot Strategy Guide - Star Control 3". GameSpot. Archived from the original on June 1, 2009.
  12. Rusel DeMaria (December 7, 2018). High Score! Expanded: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games 3rd Edition. CRC Press. ISBN 978-0-429-77139-2.
  13. Matt Barton (April 19, 2016). Honoring the Code: Conversations with Great Game Designers. CRC Press. pp. 203–. ISBN 978-1-4665-6754-2.
  14. Ars Technica Staff (October 23, 2018). "War Stories: How Star Control II Was Almost TOO Realistic". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on October 23, 2018.
  15. Kurt Kalata (September 11, 2018). "Star Control". Hardcore Gaming 101.
  16. Larry Hall (1990). "Star Control Manual" (PDF). Accolade.
  17. John Szczepaniak (January 24, 2006). "Late 1980s and Beyond!". The Escapist.
  18. "Star Control II Credits (3DO)". MobyGames. May 4, 2020.
  19. Paul Potvin (August 2012). "Star Control II - The Fair Shake". 1MoreCastle.
  20. GameSpot Staff (October 13, 1999). "The Ten Best Computer Game Villains - The Ur Quan". GameSpot. Archived from the original on August 8, 2002.
  21. GameSpot Staff (October 12, 1999). "Reader's Choice: Best Villains - Villains 5-1". GameSpot. Archived from the original on October 12, 1999.
  22. Francois Laramee (November 15, 2014). "Star Control II - Review - allgame". AllGame. Retrieved June 16, 2020.
  23. Retro Gamer Staff (June 2005). "Control & Conquer" (PDF). Retro Gamer. pp. 85–87.
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