"The pirates are hiding in a nearby nebula," a fleet officer tells us. "We can either explore them one at a time, but run the risk of abandoning the convoy, or we can send probes into each one – but that will definitely alert the pirates to our presence.
Or we could just proceed to the rendez-vous and hope we're not ambushed."We're standing on the bridge of the USC Havock. More accurately, we're under a railway arch near Vauxhall in London – the home of Bridge Command, an immersive experience run by interactive shows firm Parabolic Theatre that puts groups of visitors in charge of a Star Trek-style starship.The strategies laid out before us come near the end of our mission.
Unlike so many video game story choices that commit players to a specific path, we could pivot at any moment pivot. We could stop sending probes and venture into the nebulas ourselves.
We could send out our shuttle crew, with their mini-bridge set, in order to cover more ground. My friend, who had been assigned as chief engineer, yelled in the middle of the inevitable battle: "If you lot don't get your act together, I'll hit the self-destruct button." Almost anything is an option.It might sound easy to allow this sort of agency in an immersive theatre experience; after all, human actors, like our fleet officer, can improvise and adapt far more creatively than a computer can.
But here's a secret: strip away the sets, the flashing lights, the sound of the alarm, and the NASA-style jumpsuits we're all wearing, and Bridge Command is essentially a video game.All of the touchscreen bridge stations – helm, weapon control, navigation, and so on – are running on a modified version of EmptyEpsilon, a bridge simulator readily available on Steam.