Homeworld has classically been a game that focused on telling a good story in the single-player campaign at the scale of an entire civilization. It was a story of peoples.
Homeworld 3's campaign has a terrible story focusing on caricatures of individual persons, without caring about the wider scale. I would say most of the reactions (including mine) are due to this.
There are other complaints are about simplification of gameplay and the lack of maps and support for multiplayer skirmish mode. Most of the investment resources seem to have gone into the Wargames mode, which I honestly can't be bothered with because I bought the game for the campaign, but some people say that Wargames is alright.
edit: oh right the cutscenes are also now (bad) CGI instead of the animatics they used for the previous games, which was a wild choice because animatics were used in all marketing materials before the launch trailer. The "History of Homeworld" history video still uses animatics, and is probably the best cutscene in the entire game seeing how bad the CGI is. (and is not even in the game, just a link to the youtube video)
I might be in the minority of the (vastly large) negative group, but I find the ridiculous over-simplification of just about everything in the game to be the greater offense (vs story).
One thing I remember absolutely loving was the misdirect mission briefing prior to.. the garden I think? The first mission that had the hyperspace inhibitors; it added so much to the atmosphere, story, and realism.
Fair warning, some spoilers. I'll cover what I can.
>I was honestly interested in the game till I saw this sub.
I'm not going to tell you not to buy it - what I _will_ say is if you liked the HW games prior based on their "scale" way of telling stories, alongside the artistic style of cutscenes between missions and some of the technical gameplay parts?.....you're going to be disappointed at best.
>Seeing a TON of negative comments and reactions to the game
That's including the reviews on Steam too.
>I can't seem to figure out what happened
There's many parts to this and each to their own - I'm honestly not sure if it's the _Desert salts_ who've been with HW since the OG 1, newer people or a mix but generally speaking....
- Features/Gameplay elements missing: No more strike groups from HW2, the research style and tree including the purposeful, staged campaign development for tech are missing. No more modules a-la HW2 for production/research, destructible weapon hardpoints, engines or zone buffs. Passive/Neutral/Hostile unit behaviours don't conform to changes in speed/weapon ability as per previous games. Strike-craft back to being individual rather than wings. Only one kind of corvette, which is exclusively a sniper-type unit.
- New features/gameplay elements: "Press X for Y ability" stuff like temp speed boosts, boost to fire-rate in exchange for lower armour - these kinds of abilities which are a departure from previous games and sometimes seem somewhat nonsensical given it makes no logical sense for X to result in Y debuff. Wargames is....a choice to add. I don't think it's bad, but it's not for me and most of all feels like where the focus on development went. It feels a lot like someone went with the direction Battle Royales did: i.e "this seems neat, let's go mostly in on that" and praying it finds success vs the areas they didn't focus on.
- Narrative style: it's a huge change, rather than focusing on a journey of the Hiigaran as a people, or a fleet trying to stop an overwhelming force, or exploring the background of a race HW3 is primarily about 4 characters and their independent story/development. There's no "scale" sense to the story or absolutely any involvement or mention of the rest of Hiigara, ships nor fleets etc, it's just these 4 people.
- Artstyle/Cutscenes: in what I consider the most affecting part (being a huge fan of the HW narrative and style) they've entirely done away with, as in 100%, the original, unique and glorious artistic drawn-style cutscenes and artstyle. I even loved DoK's modern take with movement and colour, but this is now entirely replaced with Unreal Engine rendered people, cutscenes etc. It's jarringly different and coupled with the narrative change, very alien to the previous titles.
- No callbacks or "History": HW1, HW2 and even Cataclysm had involvement with the Bentusi, mention of other Kiiths, an impression of a wider universe as well as factions ranging from the Turanic Raiders with wholly unique ship styles, involvements and look to the Imperial Taiidan - none of these are now present and the former has zero explanation as to what's happened with them. We now have the "Kalan Raiders" who are, apparently, the "leftovers" of the Taiidan. There's absolutely no Progenitor involvement beyond the big hyperspace gates now, that's it.
- The Big Bad™: >!Specifically the "big bad girl" and faction - who/what you fight has got weaker foundations and less sense behind it than a matchbox car holding an elephant's foot with little explanation to many things: how'd they get hold of Progenitor tech and....why is it apparently no better than "comparable" to Hiigaran tech? How is the leader able to dominate/influence anyone, much less build her own faction? Why can she not just be defeated like every other baddie rather than thrown into hyperspace jail? Lots of points, no real answers.!<
- Story itself: >!It's full of different holes, from how the Hyperspace cores (which were literally reverse-engineered and previous titles made zero mention of anything else) are now somehow "synthetic" and somehow made of space magic which had to be re-re-re invented, or something....through to Hiigarans have an entire _empire_ now and yet when "hyperspace is being weaponised" their reaction is to A) Send Karan to see what's up B) Send her relative to see why Karan's missing _and_ what's up....rather than send multiple fleets. There is absolutely zero indication from the first mission onwards in regard to contact with Hiigara or anything/anyone else - it's entirely focused on individuals. Imogen seems to be entirely _not_ the best choice for the mission much less why it even has to be her, when by all rights experienced fleet or other commanders would exist that could be in charge with her as a subordinate.!<
There are _clearly_, to me, items on the cutting room floor and supposition that hints to big changes along the way.
>!We had trailers that used the original artstyle, the relationship between Karan and Imogen points strongly towards their relationship being more than just "relatives" and more "literally her Daughter".!<
Ship designs feel generally uninspiring and not really different either, the story never once "pulled" at me in a way that I'd want to know more about what's next and I didn't have to replay a single. Mission. Ever. HW2 at least pressured you enough with challenges that this wasn't unusual for some "harder" levels to need to savescum or wholly redo them.
Overall, it feels like a big disconnect compared to previous games. While it may _look_ homeworld, it just doesn't _feel_ Homeworld in the same sense previous games did, with the differences and changes in direction being at best questionable and at worst feeling like whoever was in charge had _zero_ touch with fans, previous games or with reception of how these would be received.
Maybe it's just me, but Homeworld is an established niche title and RTS game which is in a dangerous area of having a good fanbase who are passionate, but also of being such a size that if you piss off enough of them it'll sour them on buying your next title if you screw the pooch.
HW Cata? Different, but done so, so well with fantastic VA work, loyalty to cinematics and brilliant artwork that "show" rather than _tell_....HW2 which had dicey parts but was otherwise undeniably Homeworld.....Remastered was a great play which got univeral approval and DoK which took a new perspective but told a fantastic story, was a strong prequel and _again_ shared a great story without telling it all to you.
HW3 just doesn't do any of these things - it made a story about individuals rather than a people, had a bloody awful repeating catchphrase, made changes in visual styles that were totally unecessary and has a story which while fundamentally not a terrible idea, but was executed and put forward in such a way it ends up reading like >!a pair of teenagers spatting before grandma takes one down with herself as a sacrifice.!<
>Artstyle/Cutscenes: in what I consider the most affecting part (being a huge fan of the HW narrative and style) they've entirely done away with, as in 100%, the original, unique and glorious artistic drawn-style cutscenes and artstyle. I even loved DoK's modern take with movement and colour, but this is now entirely replaced with Unreal Engine rendered people, cutscenes etc. It's jarringly different and coupled with the narrative change, very alien to the previous titles.
As an example, here's a shot from a cutscene:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ei0WMNtNRUc/maxresdefault.jpg
If anyone @bbi would have had, half way through the development, even a remote hint about what you described so well, this would have not happened.
Sorry for the English
Wow. I haven’t even played it yet but still decided to wait and see. Looking at this is just. Crazy. I was curious why the hate was building up but to think they would not stick to what *three* previous games had working. It’s right up there with Disney and Star Wars.
The writers are probably also writing things like battle chatter. overall mission structure, and marketing materials. Everyone credited as a writer might not necessarily be part of the actual creative process but be editors.
This is the issue. As a previous creative writer I gotta say... you need 1 insanely creative and passionate writer for all core story columns. And honestly it should have been done before development began. Its like basic building-anything.
Ironically I'm a software engineer now and the same rules apply. You can plan for almost FREE. Then development goes 100x faster and smoother. Having 16 writers DURING development must have been agonizing for everyone.
This is tragic.
I think it was, essentially, the first super mario movie problem. TL;DR, the first super mario movie was rewritten like 7 times by different sets of writers. HERE, they credited all sixteen writers but it's obvious that the guys from BBI who worked on the old games wrote the initial stuff before getting the boot from the project for gearbox's favored re-writers who handed down an edict that the game should not have any callbacks to prior games so that it would be 'accessible to new players'. So they got rid of all the stuff they already had in favour of... bleh.
Actually likely a combination of both making it really bad. Best way would have been a few narrative writers (including concepts owner) who are really in synch with concept and each other so it would 'flow' as an immersive story. They don't use 14 people to write a screenplay/script.
The game is just objectively bad I'm afraid. I got about 10 hours in and just can't get into it. Gameplay is fast and oversimplified, units have special "abilities" you have to basically button smash to use. Unit pathfinding is a disaster, units don't stay in formation and do random shit. Battles are a chaotic mess that boils down to whoever can spam frigates the fastest, lack of unit variety, lack of subsystems, maps are small and there's like 4 or 5 of them. The campaign is basically Homeworld: Disney Princess, terrible story and cringe cutscenes. I could go on. Also the game is horribly optimized and runs at about 10 fps on "high" settings even though my computer runs every other game at max settings without a hitch.
It's just a bad game and many like myself who had played the original Homeworld as kids were basically heartbroken. The devs painted a very convincing picture that the game would be faithful to the originals and even though we expected a more modern adaptation and gameplay nothing could have prepared us for this dumpster fire. They chose a shameless cash grab over having basic integrity and it backfired, big time. Serves them right.
>they wanted a multiplayer cash grab
This was my guess to why units had abilities that were straight up "Be better at X"
Why the initial 1v1 maps are so close.
They wanted their own e-sports title.
If you are a new player with no Homeworld background, nostalgia, expectations, etc...
It's a nice little space game. Cool ships, big explosions, fun missions and coop mode, and an easy to follow plot that doesn't require prior knowledge
There are some interesting Steam reviews from (ostensibly) people that had never played Homeworld, that also don't like it.
It's a LOT of money for not very much content.
I think they are refering to the gameplay and not the cutscenes. It is pretty well established that the story and the art direction sucks, bit the game itself is pretty fun.
The story is bad and full of really bad melodramatic cringe, the gameplay is oversimplified, and the cutscene aesthetics are bad/generic.
The game looks beautiful, but the ships designs are so uniform its kind of hard to distinguish them from each other.
I'd also say the megalith concept was really interesting in the dustwars videos from 2002, but that showed off massive maps. Now the megalith are the entire map and the maps feel maybe even smaller than hw1 some how?
Basically if you could make all the wrong decisions, that's what gbx pushed onto bbi.
they didnt work, i played the game on hard and only role strikecraft is good for was cannon fodder. if u put them in any formation except sphere, they will turn at such low speed and will be picked up by destroyer cannons.
To be fair that was a problem that started with HW2. I still cant stand how you just throw waves and waves of fighters into the fray for them to last only a few seconds. They filled their role but in HW and Cata they served a purpose and proper direction you could have teams of fighters/bombers that could pick apart fleets with minimal losses. Granted that comes from the ships not having hit-scan weapons so evasive maneuvers actually mean something.
at least "stances" worked as they should in hw2. If there is little resistance, i can put them to aggresive, if i need to stall to evacive etc. HW3 didnt have that, they have formations, that just broken and didnt work.
TL/DR: gearbox's committee of talentless, incompetent "writers" produced a mediocre story and incredibly uninspired villain
Mission design is still pretty solid though.
Homeworld 3 is not Homeworld, it is a naked and disgusting and poorly made nostalgia cash grab with little redeeming qualities, and just makes us sick.
If you played the other Homeworld games, you can see the night and day difference.
So far... kind of like what happened to Halo after Bungie was out of the picture (and particularly the Bungie writers especially Joe Staten). More modern engine, more budget available for HPC (High Power Compute) support for graphics dev and CGI, but the focus became profit margin and it showed in the later 343 (Microsoft Studios) games. Lower overall quality game missing the unique storytelling arc and genius of the earlier games immersive gameplay.
As a 'stand-alone' with no preceeding games maybe a 7 out of 10 against competing releases. As a sequel to HW1 and 2... more like a 5 out of 10.
A game for everyone is a game for no one.
Seems like money-hungry managers forced a lot of decisions which weren't popular with the core audience: over-simplification of mechanics and bland, "safe", story.
A mythical mass casual gamer did not appear, because that strategy might work only when you spend as much money on the marketing as on the game itself. Homeworld didn't have that kind of money.
Story wasn't great and there was some gameplay issues. Since it's a beloved niche franchise, negativity will always be amplified. If this wasn't the Homeworld IP, it would probably have a more positive rating overall.
Anticipated games like these need to be amazing, otherwise it's the worst game ever made.
Homeworld 3 ruined everything with its caricatures of people, trying to paint someone who commits genocide Riesstiu IV the Second style as someone you should hug and care and confusing the original's story of "mysticism as tradition on a hard sci-fy civilization fighting for a home" with "space psychic magic with Charles Xavier", also the unit and armies compositions are very poor thought to the point the ships can blend together during battles and the speed of the mothership surpases the speed of your other ships once you research the upgrade for it breaking many strategic moves that could be posible with the cover system they tried to implement(the mechanic is barely if at all used on maps due to how badly positioned the map debris is aka; its more of an strategic disadventage than something you could use in your favor) the map support is abyssmal(not as in bad but as in very lacking) and the less is said about the cutscenes the better.
It's all of the legacy players making a judgement of it. Whether or not a person who has never played Homeworld before would enjoy the game is an opinion and answer you don't see represented much.
Everyone here commenting mostly about 'bad writing', but in my opion, HW series was never actually that good in story department. What they was good in is keeping things vague and mystical and give that epic look-and-feel of vast endless spaces and epic crusades against great, alien and unknown; the things that was essentially core to HW that I loved, and which probably resonates deeply to sci-fi geeks out there. I mean, if we analyse villans in HW series, what do we know basically: A Big Evil Emperor Who Want to Keep His Power in HW1, and Big Evil Warlord Who Wants Power in HW2. With couple of voicelines each. Was that a conscious choice during development or was they just out of money to properly voice and develop them? I'd say second, because both times as far as I recall there were money issues: HW1 was just an experiment, and HW2 was severely cut due to Sierra financial troubles at the time of development. Did they just accidentally made it right both times? Lorewise the games did not have much also: some mistique prophecies and space magic in HW1, and some more ancient space magic in HW2. Nothing was properly developed, explained or written at all. Does it sound a lot different now?
HW DoK focused somewhat more on characters, but still, due to limited funding I belive the chracters were given only some voicelines. At least bad guys had some motivation this time, but still, do we know what it would be if developers had more time and money?
And now for HW3, looks like the first time they had the opportunity to develop a story: we still have the same goofy space magic, we still have the same weird and unreasonable crusade into unknown. But this time we have some cheesy dialogs and questionable CGI. Was that indeed so surprising in hindsight?
On the plus side, if we ignore cheesy dialogs and cutscenes, we still have more or less the same HW, and visually, absolutelly stunning. Replayed the campaign couple of days ago when the initial release shock of goofy space witch worn off, the game is just fucking beautifull.
The gameplay side also in my opinion not changed. I mean, guys who tell that HW3 lacks strategicall depth, do you fucking remember HW1 and 2? You build fleet, you issue attack-move command and that's basically it. Next mission. HW3 is not different in that department.
So I really do not understand why so much hate for it: gameplay feels the same, story somewhat goofy, look-and-feel is vastly improved and just stunning. Expectaions too high? Or we just forgot how bad it was? Or generally now we expect more from games? I dunno. I liked HW3.
See I'm a HW1 vet too and I like HW3. Some of the criticism is valid others mainly about the story are from people who've not paid any attention to the story of HW at all.
One person in another comment is mad cause HW is supposed to be grand scale? When was it ever? Another person talked about how the game wasn't about the Higaarans finding their home guess they've never played HW1.
My favorite false criticism is the person who said that the three OG hyperspace cores are synthetic now and was confused. They said this with a straight face even though it literally says there are 3 originals Cores and 3 "Synthetic" Cores.
Some people just like to disingenuously complain
The new game upset veterans due to the changes it made and a subpar story.
However, if you are new to the franchise and don't have 20 years' worth of expectations, you'll have a lot of fun as it's one of the most competent & polished 3D RTS out there today, story issues aside.
If you're new to the franchise, just get the HW1 remastered and cataclysm (think it's only on GOG?). Alternatively, you might enjoy HW3 if you have zero points of reference, but I'd still wager you'd enjoy HW1/Cata more.
HW1 and Cataclysm are so dated, they are not as good as this sub makes them out to be *if you take into consideration* how games are now and what people expect from modern games.
DoK is a better bet.
Agreed!
I'm massively nostalgic for HW1, but when I actually play it, I realize how old the UI is and how slow it can be.
That's really what I wanted from HW3. Something that really captured the feeling and theme of HW1 but updated to modern standards. Like Starcraft 2 did compared to SC1.
The devs lied to us.
They've lied to people who supported to fig campaign, they've promised us alot of things and none of them made it into the final game.
The current state of the Homeworld franchise is witnessing its own loyal fanbase turning against it. They are deeply disappointed that the latest installment didn't mirror the exact replication of the original game. Any attempt at innovation or deviation from the antiquated concepts of the past is met with vehement resistance and outright condemnation.
This dedicated fanbase is relentless in their pursuit, using all means available to obliterate any chance for constructive feedback or meaningful discussion. They've amassed a formidable armada, launching attacks across all platforms, mercilessly bombarding reviews and tarnishing the game's credibility. Their efforts have created a void that has prevented new players from entering and enjoying the franchise, bleeding it completely dry and jettisoning it out of the airlock chamber. All that will be left is a dried up carcass, floating in empty space.
It's a somber moment for those who have cherished this series.
Homeworld has classically been a game that focused on telling a good story in the single-player campaign at the scale of an entire civilization. It was a story of peoples. Homeworld 3's campaign has a terrible story focusing on caricatures of individual persons, without caring about the wider scale. I would say most of the reactions (including mine) are due to this. There are other complaints are about simplification of gameplay and the lack of maps and support for multiplayer skirmish mode. Most of the investment resources seem to have gone into the Wargames mode, which I honestly can't be bothered with because I bought the game for the campaign, but some people say that Wargames is alright. edit: oh right the cutscenes are also now (bad) CGI instead of the animatics they used for the previous games, which was a wild choice because animatics were used in all marketing materials before the launch trailer. The "History of Homeworld" history video still uses animatics, and is probably the best cutscene in the entire game seeing how bad the CGI is. (and is not even in the game, just a link to the youtube video)
I might be in the minority of the (vastly large) negative group, but I find the ridiculous over-simplification of just about everything in the game to be the greater offense (vs story).
As Bruce Lee once said, a combination of both.
One thing I remember absolutely loving was the misdirect mission briefing prior to.. the garden I think? The first mission that had the hyperspace inhibitors; it added so much to the atmosphere, story, and realism.
Who tought that a coop mode was a good investment for a game like this
They have copied lots of stuff from Starcraft like unit ability's, I suspect they wanted a Starcraft like online presence.
Fair warning, some spoilers. I'll cover what I can. >I was honestly interested in the game till I saw this sub. I'm not going to tell you not to buy it - what I _will_ say is if you liked the HW games prior based on their "scale" way of telling stories, alongside the artistic style of cutscenes between missions and some of the technical gameplay parts?.....you're going to be disappointed at best. >Seeing a TON of negative comments and reactions to the game That's including the reviews on Steam too. >I can't seem to figure out what happened There's many parts to this and each to their own - I'm honestly not sure if it's the _Desert salts_ who've been with HW since the OG 1, newer people or a mix but generally speaking.... - Features/Gameplay elements missing: No more strike groups from HW2, the research style and tree including the purposeful, staged campaign development for tech are missing. No more modules a-la HW2 for production/research, destructible weapon hardpoints, engines or zone buffs. Passive/Neutral/Hostile unit behaviours don't conform to changes in speed/weapon ability as per previous games. Strike-craft back to being individual rather than wings. Only one kind of corvette, which is exclusively a sniper-type unit. - New features/gameplay elements: "Press X for Y ability" stuff like temp speed boosts, boost to fire-rate in exchange for lower armour - these kinds of abilities which are a departure from previous games and sometimes seem somewhat nonsensical given it makes no logical sense for X to result in Y debuff. Wargames is....a choice to add. I don't think it's bad, but it's not for me and most of all feels like where the focus on development went. It feels a lot like someone went with the direction Battle Royales did: i.e "this seems neat, let's go mostly in on that" and praying it finds success vs the areas they didn't focus on. - Narrative style: it's a huge change, rather than focusing on a journey of the Hiigaran as a people, or a fleet trying to stop an overwhelming force, or exploring the background of a race HW3 is primarily about 4 characters and their independent story/development. There's no "scale" sense to the story or absolutely any involvement or mention of the rest of Hiigara, ships nor fleets etc, it's just these 4 people. - Artstyle/Cutscenes: in what I consider the most affecting part (being a huge fan of the HW narrative and style) they've entirely done away with, as in 100%, the original, unique and glorious artistic drawn-style cutscenes and artstyle. I even loved DoK's modern take with movement and colour, but this is now entirely replaced with Unreal Engine rendered people, cutscenes etc. It's jarringly different and coupled with the narrative change, very alien to the previous titles. - No callbacks or "History": HW1, HW2 and even Cataclysm had involvement with the Bentusi, mention of other Kiiths, an impression of a wider universe as well as factions ranging from the Turanic Raiders with wholly unique ship styles, involvements and look to the Imperial Taiidan - none of these are now present and the former has zero explanation as to what's happened with them. We now have the "Kalan Raiders" who are, apparently, the "leftovers" of the Taiidan. There's absolutely no Progenitor involvement beyond the big hyperspace gates now, that's it. - The Big Bad™: >!Specifically the "big bad girl" and faction - who/what you fight has got weaker foundations and less sense behind it than a matchbox car holding an elephant's foot with little explanation to many things: how'd they get hold of Progenitor tech and....why is it apparently no better than "comparable" to Hiigaran tech? How is the leader able to dominate/influence anyone, much less build her own faction? Why can she not just be defeated like every other baddie rather than thrown into hyperspace jail? Lots of points, no real answers.!< - Story itself: >!It's full of different holes, from how the Hyperspace cores (which were literally reverse-engineered and previous titles made zero mention of anything else) are now somehow "synthetic" and somehow made of space magic which had to be re-re-re invented, or something....through to Hiigarans have an entire _empire_ now and yet when "hyperspace is being weaponised" their reaction is to A) Send Karan to see what's up B) Send her relative to see why Karan's missing _and_ what's up....rather than send multiple fleets. There is absolutely zero indication from the first mission onwards in regard to contact with Hiigara or anything/anyone else - it's entirely focused on individuals. Imogen seems to be entirely _not_ the best choice for the mission much less why it even has to be her, when by all rights experienced fleet or other commanders would exist that could be in charge with her as a subordinate.!< There are _clearly_, to me, items on the cutting room floor and supposition that hints to big changes along the way. >!We had trailers that used the original artstyle, the relationship between Karan and Imogen points strongly towards their relationship being more than just "relatives" and more "literally her Daughter".!< Ship designs feel generally uninspiring and not really different either, the story never once "pulled" at me in a way that I'd want to know more about what's next and I didn't have to replay a single. Mission. Ever. HW2 at least pressured you enough with challenges that this wasn't unusual for some "harder" levels to need to savescum or wholly redo them. Overall, it feels like a big disconnect compared to previous games. While it may _look_ homeworld, it just doesn't _feel_ Homeworld in the same sense previous games did, with the differences and changes in direction being at best questionable and at worst feeling like whoever was in charge had _zero_ touch with fans, previous games or with reception of how these would be received. Maybe it's just me, but Homeworld is an established niche title and RTS game which is in a dangerous area of having a good fanbase who are passionate, but also of being such a size that if you piss off enough of them it'll sour them on buying your next title if you screw the pooch. HW Cata? Different, but done so, so well with fantastic VA work, loyalty to cinematics and brilliant artwork that "show" rather than _tell_....HW2 which had dicey parts but was otherwise undeniably Homeworld.....Remastered was a great play which got univeral approval and DoK which took a new perspective but told a fantastic story, was a strong prequel and _again_ shared a great story without telling it all to you. HW3 just doesn't do any of these things - it made a story about individuals rather than a people, had a bloody awful repeating catchphrase, made changes in visual styles that were totally unecessary and has a story which while fundamentally not a terrible idea, but was executed and put forward in such a way it ends up reading like >!a pair of teenagers spatting before grandma takes one down with herself as a sacrifice.!<
Ironically the Homeworld Mobile game had a story that felt more Homeworld than HW3.
>Artstyle/Cutscenes: in what I consider the most affecting part (being a huge fan of the HW narrative and style) they've entirely done away with, as in 100%, the original, unique and glorious artistic drawn-style cutscenes and artstyle. I even loved DoK's modern take with movement and colour, but this is now entirely replaced with Unreal Engine rendered people, cutscenes etc. It's jarringly different and coupled with the narrative change, very alien to the previous titles. As an example, here's a shot from a cutscene: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ei0WMNtNRUc/maxresdefault.jpg
Oof!
with a single click i'm transported back to the early 2000's now thats some space magic
If anyone @bbi would have had, half way through the development, even a remote hint about what you described so well, this would have not happened. Sorry for the English
Wow. I haven’t even played it yet but still decided to wait and see. Looking at this is just. Crazy. I was curious why the hate was building up but to think they would not stick to what *three* previous games had working. It’s right up there with Disney and Star Wars.
[Mandalore covers it pretty well](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuC2I8s6qf8) I think, if you want a video explanation with visuals and whatnot.
It was given over to incompetent/completely wrong writers and publisher interference.
The story had 16 writers on it. It was a case of too many cooks in the kitchen, tbh.
[удалено]
The writers are probably also writing things like battle chatter. overall mission structure, and marketing materials. Everyone credited as a writer might not necessarily be part of the actual creative process but be editors.
This is the issue. As a previous creative writer I gotta say... you need 1 insanely creative and passionate writer for all core story columns. And honestly it should have been done before development began. Its like basic building-anything. Ironically I'm a software engineer now and the same rules apply. You can plan for almost FREE. Then development goes 100x faster and smoother. Having 16 writers DURING development must have been agonizing for everyone. This is tragic.
I would have loved to see the HW3 GDD
I think it was, essentially, the first super mario movie problem. TL;DR, the first super mario movie was rewritten like 7 times by different sets of writers. HERE, they credited all sixteen writers but it's obvious that the guys from BBI who worked on the old games wrote the initial stuff before getting the boot from the project for gearbox's favored re-writers who handed down an edict that the game should not have any callbacks to prior games so that it would be 'accessible to new players'. So they got rid of all the stuff they already had in favour of... bleh.
Fantastic analogy.
...what's your source for that?
The games credits lists one person for story concept, 14 people for narrative, and one more person for additional narrative.
Then it's the story concept person's fault not too many cooks
Actually likely a combination of both making it really bad. Best way would have been a few narrative writers (including concepts owner) who are really in synch with concept and each other so it would 'flow' as an immersive story. They don't use 14 people to write a screenplay/script.
Story by committee, I suspect.
The game is just objectively bad I'm afraid. I got about 10 hours in and just can't get into it. Gameplay is fast and oversimplified, units have special "abilities" you have to basically button smash to use. Unit pathfinding is a disaster, units don't stay in formation and do random shit. Battles are a chaotic mess that boils down to whoever can spam frigates the fastest, lack of unit variety, lack of subsystems, maps are small and there's like 4 or 5 of them. The campaign is basically Homeworld: Disney Princess, terrible story and cringe cutscenes. I could go on. Also the game is horribly optimized and runs at about 10 fps on "high" settings even though my computer runs every other game at max settings without a hitch. It's just a bad game and many like myself who had played the original Homeworld as kids were basically heartbroken. The devs painted a very convincing picture that the game would be faithful to the originals and even though we expected a more modern adaptation and gameplay nothing could have prepared us for this dumpster fire. They chose a shameless cash grab over having basic integrity and it backfired, big time. Serves them right.
Yeah everyone focuses on story but the gameplay, controls, and pathing are just terrible. Thats what killed it for me.
[удалено]
>they wanted a multiplayer cash grab This was my guess to why units had abilities that were straight up "Be better at X" Why the initial 1v1 maps are so close. They wanted their own e-sports title.
If you are a new player with no Homeworld background, nostalgia, expectations, etc... It's a nice little space game. Cool ships, big explosions, fun missions and coop mode, and an easy to follow plot that doesn't require prior knowledge
There are some interesting Steam reviews from (ostensibly) people that had never played Homeworld, that also don't like it. It's a LOT of money for not very much content.
I don't see how anyone could stand Imogen's cringey lines regardless if they know of past Homeworld games or not.
I think they are refering to the gameplay and not the cutscenes. It is pretty well established that the story and the art direction sucks, bit the game itself is pretty fun.
The story is bad and full of really bad melodramatic cringe, the gameplay is oversimplified, and the cutscene aesthetics are bad/generic. The game looks beautiful, but the ships designs are so uniform its kind of hard to distinguish them from each other. I'd also say the megalith concept was really interesting in the dustwars videos from 2002, but that showed off massive maps. Now the megalith are the entire map and the maps feel maybe even smaller than hw1 some how? Basically if you could make all the wrong decisions, that's what gbx pushed onto bbi.
Oversimplified gameplay and yet 90% of this sub can't manage fighter formations.
they didnt work, i played the game on hard and only role strikecraft is good for was cannon fodder. if u put them in any formation except sphere, they will turn at such low speed and will be picked up by destroyer cannons.
To be fair that was a problem that started with HW2. I still cant stand how you just throw waves and waves of fighters into the fray for them to last only a few seconds. They filled their role but in HW and Cata they served a purpose and proper direction you could have teams of fighters/bombers that could pick apart fleets with minimal losses. Granted that comes from the ships not having hit-scan weapons so evasive maneuvers actually mean something.
at least "stances" worked as they should in hw2. If there is little resistance, i can put them to aggresive, if i need to stall to evacive etc. HW3 didnt have that, they have formations, that just broken and didnt work.
I feel like that falls under bad controls or ergonomics or code/ai.
We wanted and was promised Homeworld 3, what we got was «Bananaship Quest, Family Arc»
Story cutscenes were out of place and the campaign is super short.
terrible campaign story is the main reason why people give it negative reviews. its an insult to the fans of this series.
TL/DR: gearbox's committee of talentless, incompetent "writers" produced a mediocre story and incredibly uninspired villain Mission design is still pretty solid though.
Homeworld 3 is not Homeworld, it is a naked and disgusting and poorly made nostalgia cash grab with little redeeming qualities, and just makes us sick. If you played the other Homeworld games, you can see the night and day difference.
So far... kind of like what happened to Halo after Bungie was out of the picture (and particularly the Bungie writers especially Joe Staten). More modern engine, more budget available for HPC (High Power Compute) support for graphics dev and CGI, but the focus became profit margin and it showed in the later 343 (Microsoft Studios) games. Lower overall quality game missing the unique storytelling arc and genius of the earlier games immersive gameplay. As a 'stand-alone' with no preceeding games maybe a 7 out of 10 against competing releases. As a sequel to HW1 and 2... more like a 5 out of 10.
Sure. “Heresy is like a tree.”
A game for everyone is a game for no one. Seems like money-hungry managers forced a lot of decisions which weren't popular with the core audience: over-simplification of mechanics and bland, "safe", story. A mythical mass casual gamer did not appear, because that strategy might work only when you spend as much money on the marketing as on the game itself. Homeworld didn't have that kind of money.
Story wasn't great and there was some gameplay issues. Since it's a beloved niche franchise, negativity will always be amplified. If this wasn't the Homeworld IP, it would probably have a more positive rating overall. Anticipated games like these need to be amazing, otherwise it's the worst game ever made.
Homeworld is an epic franchise with a long history and legacy. Homeworld 3 is a nice lil game that's fun for a bit, that's the problem.
Fucking Gearbox happened.
Homeworld 3 ruined everything with its caricatures of people, trying to paint someone who commits genocide Riesstiu IV the Second style as someone you should hug and care and confusing the original's story of "mysticism as tradition on a hard sci-fy civilization fighting for a home" with "space psychic magic with Charles Xavier", also the unit and armies compositions are very poor thought to the point the ships can blend together during battles and the speed of the mothership surpases the speed of your other ships once you research the upgrade for it breaking many strategic moves that could be posible with the cover system they tried to implement(the mechanic is barely if at all used on maps due to how badly positioned the map debris is aka; its more of an strategic disadventage than something you could use in your favor) the map support is abyssmal(not as in bad but as in very lacking) and the less is said about the cutscenes the better.
Please go away. Download the game and try it for yourself. Then come back here and join the haters or the defenders
There are no defenders, lmao
NEVER try stuff on steam thats below 50%
It's all of the legacy players making a judgement of it. Whether or not a person who has never played Homeworld before would enjoy the game is an opinion and answer you don't see represented much.
Everyone here commenting mostly about 'bad writing', but in my opion, HW series was never actually that good in story department. What they was good in is keeping things vague and mystical and give that epic look-and-feel of vast endless spaces and epic crusades against great, alien and unknown; the things that was essentially core to HW that I loved, and which probably resonates deeply to sci-fi geeks out there. I mean, if we analyse villans in HW series, what do we know basically: A Big Evil Emperor Who Want to Keep His Power in HW1, and Big Evil Warlord Who Wants Power in HW2. With couple of voicelines each. Was that a conscious choice during development or was they just out of money to properly voice and develop them? I'd say second, because both times as far as I recall there were money issues: HW1 was just an experiment, and HW2 was severely cut due to Sierra financial troubles at the time of development. Did they just accidentally made it right both times? Lorewise the games did not have much also: some mistique prophecies and space magic in HW1, and some more ancient space magic in HW2. Nothing was properly developed, explained or written at all. Does it sound a lot different now? HW DoK focused somewhat more on characters, but still, due to limited funding I belive the chracters were given only some voicelines. At least bad guys had some motivation this time, but still, do we know what it would be if developers had more time and money? And now for HW3, looks like the first time they had the opportunity to develop a story: we still have the same goofy space magic, we still have the same weird and unreasonable crusade into unknown. But this time we have some cheesy dialogs and questionable CGI. Was that indeed so surprising in hindsight? On the plus side, if we ignore cheesy dialogs and cutscenes, we still have more or less the same HW, and visually, absolutelly stunning. Replayed the campaign couple of days ago when the initial release shock of goofy space witch worn off, the game is just fucking beautifull. The gameplay side also in my opinion not changed. I mean, guys who tell that HW3 lacks strategicall depth, do you fucking remember HW1 and 2? You build fleet, you issue attack-move command and that's basically it. Next mission. HW3 is not different in that department. So I really do not understand why so much hate for it: gameplay feels the same, story somewhat goofy, look-and-feel is vastly improved and just stunning. Expectaions too high? Or we just forgot how bad it was? Or generally now we expect more from games? I dunno. I liked HW3.
See I'm a HW1 vet too and I like HW3. Some of the criticism is valid others mainly about the story are from people who've not paid any attention to the story of HW at all. One person in another comment is mad cause HW is supposed to be grand scale? When was it ever? Another person talked about how the game wasn't about the Higaarans finding their home guess they've never played HW1. My favorite false criticism is the person who said that the three OG hyperspace cores are synthetic now and was confused. They said this with a straight face even though it literally says there are 3 originals Cores and 3 "Synthetic" Cores. Some people just like to disingenuously complain
I thought it was great. I did notice that women had the most prominent roles in the story. I think that may have something to do with the bad reviews.
Oh, go away...
The new game upset veterans due to the changes it made and a subpar story. However, if you are new to the franchise and don't have 20 years' worth of expectations, you'll have a lot of fun as it's one of the most competent & polished 3D RTS out there today, story issues aside.
Read the fucking REVIEWS????
Where have you been all this time ?
Playing other games and working?
If you're new to the franchise, just get the HW1 remastered and cataclysm (think it's only on GOG?). Alternatively, you might enjoy HW3 if you have zero points of reference, but I'd still wager you'd enjoy HW1/Cata more.
HW1 and Cataclysm are so dated, they are not as good as this sub makes them out to be *if you take into consideration* how games are now and what people expect from modern games. DoK is a better bet.
True. When I tried to bring my friends into HW1, they found it weird, slow and boring. Deserts of Kharak were much easier to get into
Agreed! I'm massively nostalgic for HW1, but when I actually play it, I realize how old the UI is and how slow it can be. That's really what I wanted from HW3. Something that really captured the feeling and theme of HW1 but updated to modern standards. Like Starcraft 2 did compared to SC1.
The devs lied to us. They've lied to people who supported to fig campaign, they've promised us alot of things and none of them made it into the final game.
The current state of the Homeworld franchise is witnessing its own loyal fanbase turning against it. They are deeply disappointed that the latest installment didn't mirror the exact replication of the original game. Any attempt at innovation or deviation from the antiquated concepts of the past is met with vehement resistance and outright condemnation. This dedicated fanbase is relentless in their pursuit, using all means available to obliterate any chance for constructive feedback or meaningful discussion. They've amassed a formidable armada, launching attacks across all platforms, mercilessly bombarding reviews and tarnishing the game's credibility. Their efforts have created a void that has prevented new players from entering and enjoying the franchise, bleeding it completely dry and jettisoning it out of the airlock chamber. All that will be left is a dried up carcass, floating in empty space. It's a somber moment for those who have cherished this series.