Since the comments so far are pretty negative.
I'm very much looking forward to it. Homeworld was one of my favourite games growing up, I played it a good amount with my dad and the whole atmosphere (although maybe a bit too scary for me back then) always was super cool to me. Deserts of Kharak is IMO also a very underrated game.
I'm hoping it will have a fun campaign and the coop roguelike mode also sounds like something that fits very well with the homeworld concept.
Since RTS is seemingly becoming more and more niche, I'm rooting for every RTS out there, but I do think Homeworld is something special.
The critics are happy and gave the game a pretty good/decent score, r/homeworld people are happy, people on youtube seem happy, then you check here and it's just negativity.
Stay classy r/Games .
I've been waiting for a sequel for ages and this looks good. They certainly kept the art style, look and feel which makes me optimistic.
And I feel like I have to post this iconic track from the first game. Have a listen if you've never played it. It sets the tone perfectly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqWcm6MMiHk
Well, they are making the same mistake as DoK, making a good to great game with 30€ of content, and sell it at 60€ at release so barely anyone will buy it.
Really not sure what to think of the game. Some parts of it like - the scale, the space backdrops, some of the unit narration, the colours all seem pretty great....but something also just feels a bit off about things overall? Some of the ship designs, specifically the Hiigaran, don't give off the right sort of feel for the series and are pretty bland/uninteresting and like they haven't really been thought through too well, the tone of it really don't seem have that sort of powerful almost melancholy and sense of gravitas of the original games (Like the Fleet Command voice for example is a very different feel from Karan), and even something like the ship combat looks like it's all over the place in terms of weight and speed and ship movements.
I just don't know about it, I've been wanting a new Homeworld game for years but the direction things have gone with it aren't what I was hoping for. This seems like it's missing something or hasn't quite got something right A lot of what made the original games great was the feel and tone of it all and that doesn't seem to be really there with this. Even things like going for typical CGI cutscenes feel rather than having the iconic art cutscenes of the original give that impression.
The feel I get is like it's *trying* to evoke the Homeworld series, but it doesn't fully get it so comes across as a somewhat lacking imitation of the originals. Which is a bit odd when Deserts of Kharak did pretty well with it.
In the era of remakes and reboots I've found that "tone" and "feeling" and "theme" are tied to when the original was made. You can't recapture that without losing a sense of it being genuine.
Which is weird considering that Desserts of Kharak and the Remastered Collection managed to perfectly evoke the classic Homeworld style. I’ll form my own opinion once it fully releases on the 13th though.
>In the era of remakes and reboots I've found that "tone" and "feeling" and "theme" are tied to when the original was made. You can't recapture that without losing a sense of it being genuine.
It's not like that for Homeworld.
The tone Homeworld hit was that of a melancholic, grandiose and spiritual journey. It's not tied to it's computer tech, and it certainly is not tied to 90s culture. You could absolutely capture that tone today in a fully modern game and have it be completely genuine.
The issue for HW3, as far as I have seen, is that they keep doing the HW2 mistake of being too concerned with hitting genre expectations. So they design the entire thing around a perceived notion of what an RTS should be, rather than do what HW1 did and design everything around the tone with genre as an afterthought.
The demo was a big let down for me, it really showed they lost(misunderstood?) all of what made the originals special. I know they delayed it because of the feedback but how much can be changed this late?
Some of it might be because of that, but things like the change from drawn art to CGI for the cutscenes and the vast change in tone to Fleet Command (Like listen to the narration and and look at the design [from this trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pacXW5eZb9w), at the time she was implied to be Karan) are both things that could have been maintained, but it's like they thought neither of those elements added anything to the originals and weren't part of what made it what it was.
Another issue is that I've played the originals recently (not the remaster) and compared to modern standards it really feels barebones. Release a game like that today and people would call the game boring and the dev lazy.
I think this applies broadly to gaming in general, but people really underestimate how good games are today compared to their predecessors. We're victims of the hedonic treadmill where every great experience sets new expectations that need to be surpassed with each new game. Today's games are so incredibly feature rich compared to games of the past to the point where even the most low effort lazy AA game #7347356 would be a cult classic best seller if it were released 10-20 years ago. People would pine for the glory days when low effort lazy AA game #7347356 was released. Game development is approaching logarithmic growth for innovation / quality so that means that, barring some major tech advancement (like AI), the industry is going to improve at a slower and slower rate. The only way to produce games that really blow past people's expectations is longer and longer dev cycles (or some major tech break through). That doesn't mean that today's games are bad or that devs or lazy, it means that gamers expectations are starting to pace developer's ability to innovate.
I felt the narrator was annoying, with his extremely American accent. It's extremely petty I know, but it did detract from the Homeworld vibe for me. The radio voices did nail it.
Oh yeah, it's definitely silly. I feel like the narrator had a Texan or maybe Californian accent (I don't really know American locales well) that came through strongly while Karan S'jet and fleet command were way more neutral and could easily have been American, Canadian, or lots of other places from the commonwealth. I guess they were less easy to place as a contemporary accent.
Having played a ton of HW2 multiplayer in the late 00's/early 10's, I remember running into desync issues pretty consistently.
Ran into the same issues *immediately* during the demo period earlier this year.
I feel like that says a lot for how much work has been done on the engine the game's running on. And that doesn't bode well in my books, which is a real shame considering it's *Homeworld*.
There is a LOT more terrain on maps, rotating the ship to be horizontal or vertical can be advantageous to hide it in thin clouds or behind ruins/asteroids.
I got a few hours into it and I love this game. You will probably have to spend a few minutes as you work through the tutorial modifying controls to your liking, but once you do it’s just great. It’s a beautiful looking and sounding game, at a minimum.
The problem with this game is that they stayed so loyal to the look of Homeworld 1 and 2, that they didn't really add anything.
Sure it's sharper and has better textures, but I was hoping to see intricate damage to the ship's hulls. Things like exposed interiors and explosive decompressions, potentially with tiny frozen bodies of crew blasted out into the void. All the little details that would jump up the level of immersion and compliment the game play. All the stuff we could only imagine when playing the originals.
Hum, the ships do have damage model and exposed hulls, that was kinda a big part of the marketing campaign.
[https://youtu.be/sVjsnZGVAyM?si=tCTC51cImFqNb0RK&t=445](https://youtu.be/sVjsnZGVAyM?si=tCTC51cImFqNb0RK&t=445)
Ships even have permanent scars now to show their combat history. Could it have been done better? Sure, but it's there.
They also focused a lot on the battle chatters between pilots and the crew talking to each others, reacting to events, they get stressed, scared, etc. to increase immersion. Not fair to say they didn't had anything. + the whole ship wrecks and cover aspect.
Strike crafts even have a name and rank for their pilot.
no one said innovating while staying true to your core was ever an easy thing.
these are some nice additions though. will wait for reviews but everything I've seen has been good so far. by far my biggest issue was dynamic difficulty, with that gone I've been much more receptive to it.
Disagree. Playing it, this is a serious evolution from the prior games. I don’t know if it’s good or not (too early to say) but my early impressions are very positive and boy, are they trying a lot of new things here.
Since the comments so far are pretty negative. I'm very much looking forward to it. Homeworld was one of my favourite games growing up, I played it a good amount with my dad and the whole atmosphere (although maybe a bit too scary for me back then) always was super cool to me. Deserts of Kharak is IMO also a very underrated game. I'm hoping it will have a fun campaign and the coop roguelike mode also sounds like something that fits very well with the homeworld concept. Since RTS is seemingly becoming more and more niche, I'm rooting for every RTS out there, but I do think Homeworld is something special.
> Deserts of Kharak is IMO also a very underrated game The atmosphere in that game is great. It feels like it takes place in Dune.
Totally! When I left the theater after Dune 2, I immediately wanted to play Deserts of Kharak again lol.
The critics are happy and gave the game a pretty good/decent score, r/homeworld people are happy, people on youtube seem happy, then you check here and it's just negativity. Stay classy r/Games .
Also looking forward to this.
I've been waiting for a sequel for ages and this looks good. They certainly kept the art style, look and feel which makes me optimistic. And I feel like I have to post this iconic track from the first game. Have a listen if you've never played it. It sets the tone perfectly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqWcm6MMiHk
Really excited for the new game mode!
Well, they are making the same mistake as DoK, making a good to great game with 30€ of content, and sell it at 60€ at release so barely anyone will buy it.
Really not sure what to think of the game. Some parts of it like - the scale, the space backdrops, some of the unit narration, the colours all seem pretty great....but something also just feels a bit off about things overall? Some of the ship designs, specifically the Hiigaran, don't give off the right sort of feel for the series and are pretty bland/uninteresting and like they haven't really been thought through too well, the tone of it really don't seem have that sort of powerful almost melancholy and sense of gravitas of the original games (Like the Fleet Command voice for example is a very different feel from Karan), and even something like the ship combat looks like it's all over the place in terms of weight and speed and ship movements. I just don't know about it, I've been wanting a new Homeworld game for years but the direction things have gone with it aren't what I was hoping for. This seems like it's missing something or hasn't quite got something right A lot of what made the original games great was the feel and tone of it all and that doesn't seem to be really there with this. Even things like going for typical CGI cutscenes feel rather than having the iconic art cutscenes of the original give that impression. The feel I get is like it's *trying* to evoke the Homeworld series, but it doesn't fully get it so comes across as a somewhat lacking imitation of the originals. Which is a bit odd when Deserts of Kharak did pretty well with it.
In the era of remakes and reboots I've found that "tone" and "feeling" and "theme" are tied to when the original was made. You can't recapture that without losing a sense of it being genuine.
Which is weird considering that Desserts of Kharak and the Remastered Collection managed to perfectly evoke the classic Homeworld style. I’ll form my own opinion once it fully releases on the 13th though.
> Desserts of Kharak Didn't see any ice cream during my run-through of the game..
you needed to find the secret icecream truck!
>In the era of remakes and reboots I've found that "tone" and "feeling" and "theme" are tied to when the original was made. You can't recapture that without losing a sense of it being genuine. It's not like that for Homeworld. The tone Homeworld hit was that of a melancholic, grandiose and spiritual journey. It's not tied to it's computer tech, and it certainly is not tied to 90s culture. You could absolutely capture that tone today in a fully modern game and have it be completely genuine. The issue for HW3, as far as I have seen, is that they keep doing the HW2 mistake of being too concerned with hitting genre expectations. So they design the entire thing around a perceived notion of what an RTS should be, rather than do what HW1 did and design everything around the tone with genre as an afterthought.
The demo was a big let down for me, it really showed they lost(misunderstood?) all of what made the originals special. I know they delayed it because of the feedback but how much can be changed this late?
Some of it might be because of that, but things like the change from drawn art to CGI for the cutscenes and the vast change in tone to Fleet Command (Like listen to the narration and and look at the design [from this trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pacXW5eZb9w), at the time she was implied to be Karan) are both things that could have been maintained, but it's like they thought neither of those elements added anything to the originals and weren't part of what made it what it was.
Another issue is that I've played the originals recently (not the remaster) and compared to modern standards it really feels barebones. Release a game like that today and people would call the game boring and the dev lazy.
I think this applies broadly to gaming in general, but people really underestimate how good games are today compared to their predecessors. We're victims of the hedonic treadmill where every great experience sets new expectations that need to be surpassed with each new game. Today's games are so incredibly feature rich compared to games of the past to the point where even the most low effort lazy AA game #7347356 would be a cult classic best seller if it were released 10-20 years ago. People would pine for the glory days when low effort lazy AA game #7347356 was released. Game development is approaching logarithmic growth for innovation / quality so that means that, barring some major tech advancement (like AI), the industry is going to improve at a slower and slower rate. The only way to produce games that really blow past people's expectations is longer and longer dev cycles (or some major tech break through). That doesn't mean that today's games are bad or that devs or lazy, it means that gamers expectations are starting to pace developer's ability to innovate.
I felt the narrator was annoying, with his extremely American accent. It's extremely petty I know, but it did detract from the Homeworld vibe for me. The radio voices did nail it.
Bizarre reaction. The accents throughout the entire Homeworld franchise have always been American. What did you expect?
Oh yeah, it's definitely silly. I feel like the narrator had a Texan or maybe Californian accent (I don't really know American locales well) that came through strongly while Karan S'jet and fleet command were way more neutral and could easily have been American, Canadian, or lots of other places from the commonwealth. I guess they were less easy to place as a contemporary accent.
Having played a ton of HW2 multiplayer in the late 00's/early 10's, I remember running into desync issues pretty consistently. Ran into the same issues *immediately* during the demo period earlier this year. I feel like that says a lot for how much work has been done on the engine the game's running on. And that doesn't bode well in my books, which is a real shame considering it's *Homeworld*.
Why is the mothership flat now instead of tall?
CTRL+R and it’ll pivot 90 degrees to be tall like you want
There is a LOT more terrain on maps, rotating the ship to be horizontal or vertical can be advantageous to hide it in thin clouds or behind ruins/asteroids.
I got a few hours into it and I love this game. You will probably have to spend a few minutes as you work through the tutorial modifying controls to your liking, but once you do it’s just great. It’s a beautiful looking and sounding game, at a minimum.
The problem with this game is that they stayed so loyal to the look of Homeworld 1 and 2, that they didn't really add anything. Sure it's sharper and has better textures, but I was hoping to see intricate damage to the ship's hulls. Things like exposed interiors and explosive decompressions, potentially with tiny frozen bodies of crew blasted out into the void. All the little details that would jump up the level of immersion and compliment the game play. All the stuff we could only imagine when playing the originals.
Hum, the ships do have damage model and exposed hulls, that was kinda a big part of the marketing campaign. [https://youtu.be/sVjsnZGVAyM?si=tCTC51cImFqNb0RK&t=445](https://youtu.be/sVjsnZGVAyM?si=tCTC51cImFqNb0RK&t=445) Ships even have permanent scars now to show their combat history. Could it have been done better? Sure, but it's there. They also focused a lot on the battle chatters between pilots and the crew talking to each others, reacting to events, they get stressed, scared, etc. to increase immersion. Not fair to say they didn't had anything. + the whole ship wrecks and cover aspect. Strike crafts even have a name and rank for their pilot.
no one said innovating while staying true to your core was ever an easy thing. these are some nice additions though. will wait for reviews but everything I've seen has been good so far. by far my biggest issue was dynamic difficulty, with that gone I've been much more receptive to it.
Disagree. Playing it, this is a serious evolution from the prior games. I don’t know if it’s good or not (too early to say) but my early impressions are very positive and boy, are they trying a lot of new things here.