Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters: Why you should install Soul Reaver’s Voice Fix Mods

If you play “Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters” with voices turned on, it will be missing key dialogue for three aliens (the Mycon, Melnorme and Syreen) that provide the player with information that is extremely useful or even critical for them to finish the game. This dialogue was present in the original (text only) PC version of the game but never made it into the voiced dialogue.

The only way to finish the game without this information is to randomly explore the (huge) open-world universe in the hope of chancing across what you’re looking for, or referring to a guide.

Some mods can be used to fix this, though doing so will replace the original voices of the Syreen and Melnorme with new ones. The mods are hosted here:
http://www.warpstormstudios.com/uqmmod/

Read the rest of this guide for more details.

“Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters” has a complicated history. The original version of this game was actually called “Star Control II”, and was released for PC in 1992.

“Star Control II” has a large, open universe but was elegantly designed with a ‘breadcrumb trail’ plot, where following all the leads given to you in the dialogue with the various aliens you meet will guide you to the next plot point. As long as you take note of the leads you’re given and pay attention to the dialogue, it’s possible to play the PC version of the game from start to successful end without ever needing to explore randomly (or reading a guide) to find a specific plot-critical place, alien, or object.

“Star Control II” was re-released in 1994 for the 3DO console. The 3DO version had some new features that the PC version didn’t have – most significantly, the aliens’ dialogue was now voice-acted. However, there was a problem with this change: some of the dialogue that was present in the original PC version of the game was simply not included in the 3DO version. And some of that missing dialogue wasn’t just flavour: it broke the ‘breadcrumb trail’ set up in the PC version, depriving the player of information that they needed to finish the game.

In 2002, the source code for the 3DO version of “Star Control II” was released publicly and was used to make “The Ur-Quan Masters” (due to legal reasons, it could not use the name “Star Control” in the title). “The Ur-Quan Masters” is the same game as the 3DO “Star Control II”, modified so it would run on modern PCs, and later given various quality-of-life improvements (like various graphical and interface settings).

“Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters” is the same thing as “The Ur-Quan Masters”, just on Steam and released by the company that founded by the original creators of “Star Control II”.

Since “Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters” is based on the code of the 3DO version of “Star Control II” and uses the same audio for the alien dialogues, it shares the same problem: the voiced dialogue misses out key information that player absolutely needs to finish the game.

You have two options to fix the missing dialogue.

The first option is to turn off the voice acting in the settings. I believe that doing so reverts the text-only dialogue to the original PC script, which retains the required information (if I’m wrong about this, someone please correct me in the comments).

The second option is to use Soul Reaver’s voice fix mods. There are two ways to do this:

1. Instead of playing the version of “Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters” here on Steam, download and install Serosis’ “The Ur-Quan Masters Megamod” and play that instead. You can find a link to its Sourceforge page here:
https://uqm-mods.sourceforge.net/Download
The Megamod already ‘bakes in’ the Mycon voice fix mod, and offers the Melnorme and Syreen voice fix mods as options in its installer, making them really easy to install.

The Megamod is, in my opinion, a superior version of “The Ur-Quan Masters”. It includes improved HD graphics and a slew of other quality of life options… and since all of it is optional, you can control how close to ‘vanilla’ you’d like your install to be (and, as said, it makes installing the voice mods easy).

The Megamod is also the only version that fully re-implements some of the PC dialogue behaviour of the Syreen – this isn’t a critical plot point but does change how one of the key characters comes across, personality-wise, to the player.

2. Install “Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters” and then install the voice mods you’d like. They can be downloaded from http://www.warpstormstudios.com/uqmmod/
The mods are offered in ‘addon’ and ‘manual install’ format – download whichever one you’d like (‘addon’ is probably easier for most players). The downloads include a readme that explains how to install and activate them. Any reference in the readme to “The Ur-Quan Masters” applies to “Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters” as well.

For “Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters”, the install location (which you’ll need to know in order to follow the instructions in the readme) is by default:
[YOUR STEAM FOLDER]\steamapps\common\Free Stars The Ur-Quan Masters\

The stated goals of the voice fix mods were (in order of importance):
1. Restore plot/game-critical information from the PC version of “Star Control II”
2. Ensure dialogue is consistent with in-game lore
3. Keep as many jokes in as possible
4. Restore PC dialogue if it is different from 3DO dialogue

The Mycon mod makes minimal changes – it simply re-adds one additional line of dialogue that was in the PC version. The voice acting and FX applied to it closely mimic the 3DO voice acting. While it isn’t quite perfect, it is hard to notice unless you’re looking for it. Plus lore-wise, the nature of the Mycon as having collective memory of numerous past individuals helps explain any minor discrepancy anyway.

The Melnorme and Syreen mods are more drastic – the entire script (with the changes that re-added the missing PC dialogue) for these two characters was entirely re-recorded by new voice actors. This means that installing the mods will completely replace the 3DO voice acting with new, different voice acting. This was done because there was no way to imitate the original voice actors (and the FX applied to their voices) closely enough that it wouldn’t seem inconsistent.

Note that the bitrate of all the modded dialogue is kept low so that it fits in the original low-bitrate voice samples. Consistency was a key consideration in the mods.

Some examples of PC dialogue that is re-added via the voice fix mod are given below (if you’re a first time player and not already familiar with the game, I recommend not revealing the spoilers):

Mycon:
– The Mycon will now tell you where their homeworld is if you attack the massive fleet at Beta Brahe I. You need this information to finish the game and this is the only place you can find this out, and it’s actually pretty hard to figure out any other way that Beta Brahe I is not their homeworld, since it looks exactly like one (having an infinite swarm of ships around it when you first find it)

Melnorme:
– Added the missing lines about the Metachron, which reveal to the player they are on a time limit and roughly how long they have to finish the game. This is the only place anyone explicitly tells you this. See this YouTube link for a video of this dialogue in action.
– Added the missing lines that tell you that you can use a Hyperwave ‘Caster in Hyperspace to summon the Melnorme. This is the only place anyone tells you this.
– Added the missing lines where the Melnorme reveal that they can sell you technology that will protect your Planet Landers from environmental conditions. Otherwise they don’t tell you this in advance.
– Corrected ‘General’ to ‘Admiral’ ZEX.
– The cost of finding out why the Melnorme’s bridge turns purple was NOT changed. It’s still 12,000,000, as per the 3DO version. This higher number makes it clear you can’t actually buy this info, and it’s funnier if it’s higher.
– Some minor changes so the script more closely matches the original PC version’s script.

Syreen:
– Added the missing lines where Talana tells you the actual location of Syra. This is needed to finish the game and nobody else tells you this.
– In the Megamod version of the fix, on finding out the Mycon destroyed their homeworld, Talana now commits to some fact-checking first before sending her people to war, rather than just taking your word for it. You need to return to her for again for her to confirm that you were right. This portrays the character in a better light, making her seem like a more capable commander and not someone who will just jump to conclusions based on very little evidence.. Note that only the Megamod version has this fix, as other versions (including “Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters”) lack the necessary trigger for this dialogue to occur. See this YouTube link for a video of this dialogue in action in the Megamod.
– A mildly suggestive/seductive line has been re-added from the PC version.
– Some minor changes so the script more closely matches the original PC version’s script.

If you are a nostalgic fan and looking to get your “Star Control II” hit the exact way you remember it from the 3DO, then by all means feel free to skip my mods.

But if you’re a fan of the original PC version (like myself) that feels like playing it with voices turned on, a newcomer to the game who has never played it before and wants to go in blind, or a 3DO fan wanting to play the game in a plot-wise complete state, then I do strongly recommend installing them – and indeed, installing them via installing Serosis’ Megamod[uqm-mods.sourceforge.net].

Whether you do install them or not, thank you for reading, and I hope this guide has been informative either way.