Paramount GamesSince day one, one of the biggest draws of the Star Trek franchise has been the eclectic cast of characters we meet within the Federation, as well as across the pantheon of various alien species they come in contact with. There are, of course, the iconic captains (Kirk, Picard, Janeway, Sisko, and more) and multiple ruthless villains (Khan Noonien Singh, the Borg, the Dominion, etc.), but many of the franchise’s most beloved characters belong to the crews of the various Federation starships we follow across each series. And for hardcore fans, some of the underdog characters are the most beloved and most missed. And now, 35 years after her initial introduction in the 1991 episode “Ensign Ro,” Ro Laren, as played by actress Michelle Forbes, is back. But not in the way anyone might have expected. Debuting back in the third episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s fifth season, Ro Laren is a member of the oppressed Bajoran species who joins the crew of the Enterprise-D after being court martialed for a mistake that left members of her original crew deceased. Despite Captain Picard’s initial reluctance, she rises through the ranks of the crew to become Lieutenant, only to abandon Starfleet after becoming sympathetic to the plight of the Maquis, an anti-Federation resistance group she’s tasked with infiltrating. The character returned as a Starfleet Commander in the third season of Star Trek: Picard, making amends with her former captain before dying in a heroic sacrifice, which was her last appearance in the franchise…until now.Recently announced at this year’s Summer Games Fest — and reported by outlets including TrekMovie — Star Trek: Shadow Frontier is a mysterious new triple-A adventure game developed by Bloober Team, the developers behind 2019’s Blair Witch game as well as the 2024 remake of the survival horror classic Silent Hill 2. The dev team makes perfect sense, as the announcement trailer for Shadow Frontier makes it pretty clear that the game will be a darker, more horror-inspired vision of the Star Trek universe, with Shawn Kittelsen (the Senior Vice President and Head of Creative & Production at Paramount Games Studio) telling IGN that the game is a “psychological thriller.” The change in atmosphere isn’t the only intriguing aspect of the announcement, though, as the trailer also reveals that the main character of the upcoming game will be none other than Commander Ro Laren herself, with Michelle Forbes returning to the role.Plot details are incredibly scarce, including where in the Star Trek timeline the game takes place, but we do know it involves Ro being lured and stranded on an undiscovered planet littered with abandoned spaceships, prompting her to investigate what happened there and why. Based on the style of her combadge, there’s a good sense that this probably takes place sometime in the timeframe of TNG, prior to Ro’s defection to the Michelle Forbes as Ro in Picard Season 3. The new game will surely take place before this. | Paramount+According to Kittelsen, a big part of the psychological element of the game will be delving into Ro’s complex backstory and the darkness in her past, and the reveal trailer also shows off some sort of planetary fungal growth that looks like something one might find in a Dead Space game.Star Trek has dipped its toes into the horror genre a few times before, notably in The Original Series with the episodes “Catspaw” and “Wolf in the Fold,” both penned by Psycho author Robert Bloch. In 2018, the legendary Jonathan Frakes, director of First Contact, told Inverse that: “I always thought First Contact was kind of a horror movie in many ways.”For the most part, though, the franchise has always focused more on the adventure and wonder of space exploration, separating itself from other sci-fi series more attuned to action and conflict. Hopefully, Shadow Frontier won’t just be the gateway for more uncanny and frightening storytelling in the universe, but also the beginning of a new triple-A renaissance for the franchise in gaming when it arrives sometime in 2027.Star Trek: Shadow Frontier will arrive on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC in 2027.