Star Trek Is Officially Replacing Picard In New Next Generation-Era Shadow Frontier

Published Sep 28, 2026, 8:34 AM EDT

Nicholas Becher is a gaming journalist with an MFA in Creative Writing from FAU. With extensive experience playing video games, he covers all forms of gaming content at Screen Rant, from breaking news to the latest fan theories. Most-played games range from Clair Obscur to Civ to Elden Ring to Halo 2 and beyond. 

The 60th Anniversary of Star Trek has been an eventful one for longtime fans of the franchise, especially for The Next Generation. The yearlong celebration has stretched well beyond television, with Star Trek receiving everything from its first major LEGO collaboration and new WEBTOON stories to anniversary events, collectibles, and even a dedicated 60th Anniversary cruise featuring several franchise veterans, including Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, and John de Lancie.

Further, characters, ships, and iconic moments from The Next Generation series are also being featured as part of the massive Magic: The Gathering x Star Trek crossover arriving November 13 in Universes Beyond, while anniversary merchandise and other releases continue to celebrate the Enterprise-D era alongside the rest of the franchise's history.

However, one of the most intriguing upcoming releases tied to The Next Generation era will move beyond celebrating the past, and instead make a major change by replacing Jean-Luc Picard as captain and putting another beloved returning character in the spotlight.

Picard's Replacement Is A Next Generation Fan-Favorite

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For much of The Next Generation, Jean-Luc Picard was the unquestioned central figure aboard the Enterprise-D. Even stories centered on other crew members ultimately unfolded under his command. However, Star Trek: Shadow Frontier will make a major departure from that familiar setup by removing Picard from the spotlight entirely and making former Enterprise officer Ro Laren its protagonist instead.

Michelle Forbes is returning to voice Ro, who first appeared in The Next Generation before resurfacing decades later in Star Trek: Picard. In Shadow Frontier, however, she is no longer a supporting character operating within Picard's story. Ro becomes the franchise's lead as she answers a distress call, crash-lands on an uncharted planet, and finds herself trapped within what is effectively a graveyard of starships.

Bloober Team is elevating one of Picard's former officers into the starring role and giving her an adventure entirely her own, diving deeper into the character's background in the process. The planet's mysterious consciousness will even weaponize Ro's memories against her, allowing the game to explore her troubled history and unresolved past in ways The Next Generation never had the opportunity to do.

Shadow Frontier Takes The Franchise In A Bold New Direction

While Star Trek has dabbled in the horror and survival genres before, it's never gone full-throttle with a survival-horror video game until Bloober Team's upcoming Shadow Frontier. The franchise has certainly produced some unsettling stories over the decades, particularly The Next Generation episodes such as "Night Terrors," "Schisms," "Frame of Mind," and "Genesis," which leaned into hallucinations, alien experimentation, body horror, and psychological uncertainty. Even First Contact pushed the Borg closer to outright horror than most Star Trek stories.

Still, those were ultimately individual horror-flavored stories within a much broader science-fiction franchise. Shadow Frontier is being built around those ideas from the ground up, with Ro Laren crash-landing on an uncharted planet filled with wrecked starships, hostile creatures, a corrupted ecosystem, and a mysterious entity capable of attacking both her body and mind. Bloober Team is also leaning heavily into psychological horror, with Ro's memories and perception becoming part of the terror itself.

Star Trek: Shadow Frontier is the franchise's first dedicated attempt at sustaining a full survival-horror experience from beginning to end, and it's coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC sometime in 2027.

Star Trek: Shadow Frontier

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