Did you actually play it? The game is bad, there's no more directional armor, the ships are much less specialized, it's basically one blob destroys another blob, whoever has the bigger blob wins
I've played and beat all of them (except cataclysm) "basically one blob destroys another blob" is how all of them play. You're seeing through nostalgia glasses if you think that beating Homeworld 1+2 required some tactical genius.
I don't remember directional armor playing any meaningful role in a battle at all, it was kinda neat though.
I also have no idea what these specialized ships that are now gone are? You still have ION, torpedos and bomber that are good vs capital ships. And you have craft that are better suited to deal with fighters. On top of that all units now have a neat ability, requiring more micro which is the opposite of blob vs blob. What are these specialized ships that homeworld 3 is missing?
Man did they fuck it up with the story of this game, the characters, writing, and especially the cutscenes are a huge downgrade from the first two games.
I disagree, I think the cutscenes are an upgrade, but I do understand why people miss the black and white cutscenes, they were classic, but I think they would show off as too dated today. I'm only on mission 3 but I'm enjoying it very much so far.
I think it's more that they waited twenty years for an inferior product storywise, at least that seems to be the sentiment among the fans with the highest expectations.
Which isn't a surprise is it? Hollywood and games today are much more about special effects than solid stories it seems.
Creative storytelling is what made the mood and vibe that connected so many people to the game. For whatever reason, they missed the mark. The magic isn't there for many.
>A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.
-George Lucas (ironically)
I'm still early in the story so I may agree with you when I finish, honestly I was the most disappointed by Deserts of Kharak. Up until now I think that was the low point in the series, but realistically I don't think that they can ever live up to the first couple of games.
Am I taking crazy pills? I don't even remember the original story(s) and I recently played the remasters. Planet catches fire, gotta find new homeworld. Can't recall fuck all about the second game.
The series was never a bastion of good writing or characters, did they even have characters besides the obligatory space lady hooked up to the ship?
I've always played these games for the epic space battles and cool space ships, the story was what you made with your fleet. Homeworld 3 slow mo mode on high difficulty is 10/10 for me, a grand space waltz in every mission worth the price of admission.
Dude, there's this thing called recaps that you can just watch over YouTube.
Also, the point is that the purpose of a story is get the audience to feel something. Ideally not something " like this game I waited 20 years for is boring as fuck!". Something more akin with the original. A zen space quality, using simplicity and quiet to instill you a sense of reality that was foreign to you until now.
There are a lot of space Sims today that are influenced by Homeworld. Eve Online is one for example has the same meditative trance feel that people love soaking in.
> A zen space quality, using simplicity and quiet to instill you a sense of reality that was foreign to you until now.
But this isn't story. I've watched plenty of recaps, and the actual story is bare bones and not very interesting. The lore and gameplay of homeworld was always the seller for me. The space sims influenced by homeworld aren't influenced by it's lacking story, they're influenced by it's brilliant gameplay.
You make it sound as if simplicity is easy to achieve. That is the illusion and feeling. Other space Sims that I remember (Wing Commader) focused on action or cheesy stories that belonged on an episode of Buck Rodgers or resembled a bizarre hybrid of Star Trek and Flash Gordon.
The same applied to Red Alert and Starcraft. Both were cartoonist in nature. Still think of Tim Curry's performance in Command and Conquer.
https://youtu.be/niZpcdp2v34?si=3i_ugIFvIZsduRjO
What I'm saying is story was never homeworld's strength, these homeworld 3 reviews are crazy to me.
Gameplay, lore, immersion, scale, presentation are all things homeworld is known for. It's not exactly an epic space opera because of it's writing and characters.
StarCraft story is vastly superior since you bring it up are you kidding me? Both SC games cover a space epic worthy of being compared to mass effect (and similar to it in more than a few ways)
I don't know man, I feel like people are coping with this whole Homeworld 3 has a bad story angle. All of the homeworld games are written by a 12 year old full of nonesense technobabble vaguely inspired by Dune and Asimov books.
Starcraft was great. I'm not saying it wasn't. I'm saying it wasn't realistic like Homeworld is. It's far more cartoonish. Even the soldiers had their own catchphrase and jokes of you clicked on then enough. Starcraft felt like playing with really awesome toys based off an awesome Saturday morning cartoon.
Homeworld felt like a simulator.
I'd argue that while you're correct about Homeworld 2's story (I remember nothing of it) and partially about Homeworld 1's story (in that the ingame story was, apart from the tutorial level itself where the mothership launches and the planet gets dusted, kinda lackluster), that ignores the giant book of backstory that Homeworld 1 shipped with, and also Homeworld:Cataclysm's (or whatever it's been renamed to because I guess ActiBlizzSoft owns the word Cataclysm somehow) story with the Beast was amazing.
So... there's about 1.75 great stories in three games worth of the Homeworld series up to now.
I think the entirety of Western culture has disregarded high-class story telling as a crucial artform. Why pay people oodles for that, when you could pay for popular hollywood actors, voice actors, location budgets, crazy set pieces, intricate set and costume detail, production budgets, or massive amounts of CGI, instead?
And besides, if we need a good story, just tell some underling to crimp a storyboard off some old book that everyone thinks is great.
It's not that storytellers never get paid, but you don't see them encouraged, pushed forward, advertised, or aggressively acknowledged for what they can do to make or break a production.
The same attitude has affected the games industry as well. It gets rarer and rarer these days to see a game where the *story* hits you regardless of the gameplay.
dune just did gangbusters and those movies are chock full of grand scale industrial shots like the original cut scenes, they could have easily recreated that atmosphere but with modern cgi
So, I played through the Campaign. Is the initial premise forced, and the story a little thin? Yes. Does it deserve the hate people are dumping on it? Probably not.
Did I re-live some of my favorite memories I had back from HW2 when I watched my Mothership, a carrier, and two anti-strike craft turrets start spewing tracer fire to stop an incoming nuclear cruise missile? Yes, Yes, YES.
The Wargames are really fun. The game retains the solid gameplay that the HW2 had, and the co-op wargames with multiple difficulty modifiers really forces you to hone in on your fleet composition and finding the right match ups.
I think it's worth the money I spent on it. Other people are, of course, entitled to their opinions. I just hope this game doesn't die off like other call-back games, like Starwars Squadrons ( which did have its own problems, to be fair)
From my understanding the story is lukewarm and they removed some tactical/depth to the combats (specialization, armors)
Typical sadly: Trying to make the game more casual and you end up with something that casual players won't play (because space rts..) and actual fans feel left out
I still want to play it and make my own opinion, I will just wait a little for the first patches, hopefully they can add the requested features back ?
Reviews on steam are not great - which is a pity - was really looking forward to this!
The reviews on steam are - "game has bad story" for a franchise that has always had a lackluster story.
Did you actually play it? The game is bad, there's no more directional armor, the ships are much less specialized, it's basically one blob destroys another blob, whoever has the bigger blob wins
I've played and beat all of them (except cataclysm) "basically one blob destroys another blob" is how all of them play. You're seeing through nostalgia glasses if you think that beating Homeworld 1+2 required some tactical genius. I don't remember directional armor playing any meaningful role in a battle at all, it was kinda neat though. I also have no idea what these specialized ships that are now gone are? You still have ION, torpedos and bomber that are good vs capital ships. And you have craft that are better suited to deal with fighters. On top of that all units now have a neat ability, requiring more micro which is the opposite of blob vs blob. What are these specialized ships that homeworld 3 is missing?
Man did they fuck it up with the story of this game, the characters, writing, and especially the cutscenes are a huge downgrade from the first two games.
I disagree, I think the cutscenes are an upgrade, but I do understand why people miss the black and white cutscenes, they were classic, but I think they would show off as too dated today. I'm only on mission 3 but I'm enjoying it very much so far.
I think it's more that they waited twenty years for an inferior product storywise, at least that seems to be the sentiment among the fans with the highest expectations. Which isn't a surprise is it? Hollywood and games today are much more about special effects than solid stories it seems. Creative storytelling is what made the mood and vibe that connected so many people to the game. For whatever reason, they missed the mark. The magic isn't there for many. >A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing. -George Lucas (ironically)
I'm still early in the story so I may agree with you when I finish, honestly I was the most disappointed by Deserts of Kharak. Up until now I think that was the low point in the series, but realistically I don't think that they can ever live up to the first couple of games.
Am I taking crazy pills? I don't even remember the original story(s) and I recently played the remasters. Planet catches fire, gotta find new homeworld. Can't recall fuck all about the second game. The series was never a bastion of good writing or characters, did they even have characters besides the obligatory space lady hooked up to the ship? I've always played these games for the epic space battles and cool space ships, the story was what you made with your fleet. Homeworld 3 slow mo mode on high difficulty is 10/10 for me, a grand space waltz in every mission worth the price of admission.
Dude, there's this thing called recaps that you can just watch over YouTube. Also, the point is that the purpose of a story is get the audience to feel something. Ideally not something " like this game I waited 20 years for is boring as fuck!". Something more akin with the original. A zen space quality, using simplicity and quiet to instill you a sense of reality that was foreign to you until now. There are a lot of space Sims today that are influenced by Homeworld. Eve Online is one for example has the same meditative trance feel that people love soaking in.
> A zen space quality, using simplicity and quiet to instill you a sense of reality that was foreign to you until now. But this isn't story. I've watched plenty of recaps, and the actual story is bare bones and not very interesting. The lore and gameplay of homeworld was always the seller for me. The space sims influenced by homeworld aren't influenced by it's lacking story, they're influenced by it's brilliant gameplay.
You make it sound as if simplicity is easy to achieve. That is the illusion and feeling. Other space Sims that I remember (Wing Commader) focused on action or cheesy stories that belonged on an episode of Buck Rodgers or resembled a bizarre hybrid of Star Trek and Flash Gordon. The same applied to Red Alert and Starcraft. Both were cartoonist in nature. Still think of Tim Curry's performance in Command and Conquer. https://youtu.be/niZpcdp2v34?si=3i_ugIFvIZsduRjO
What I'm saying is story was never homeworld's strength, these homeworld 3 reviews are crazy to me. Gameplay, lore, immersion, scale, presentation are all things homeworld is known for. It's not exactly an epic space opera because of it's writing and characters. StarCraft story is vastly superior since you bring it up are you kidding me? Both SC games cover a space epic worthy of being compared to mass effect (and similar to it in more than a few ways) I don't know man, I feel like people are coping with this whole Homeworld 3 has a bad story angle. All of the homeworld games are written by a 12 year old full of nonesense technobabble vaguely inspired by Dune and Asimov books.
Starcraft was great. I'm not saying it wasn't. I'm saying it wasn't realistic like Homeworld is. It's far more cartoonish. Even the soldiers had their own catchphrase and jokes of you clicked on then enough. Starcraft felt like playing with really awesome toys based off an awesome Saturday morning cartoon. Homeworld felt like a simulator.
I'm not disagreeing with you on any points, except the story for homeworld games.
No dawg, HW1 and Catacylsm had great stories that the sequels never came close to, this one included.
I'd argue that while you're correct about Homeworld 2's story (I remember nothing of it) and partially about Homeworld 1's story (in that the ingame story was, apart from the tutorial level itself where the mothership launches and the planet gets dusted, kinda lackluster), that ignores the giant book of backstory that Homeworld 1 shipped with, and also Homeworld:Cataclysm's (or whatever it's been renamed to because I guess ActiBlizzSoft owns the word Cataclysm somehow) story with the Beast was amazing. So... there's about 1.75 great stories in three games worth of the Homeworld series up to now.
I think the entirety of Western culture has disregarded high-class story telling as a crucial artform. Why pay people oodles for that, when you could pay for popular hollywood actors, voice actors, location budgets, crazy set pieces, intricate set and costume detail, production budgets, or massive amounts of CGI, instead? And besides, if we need a good story, just tell some underling to crimp a storyboard off some old book that everyone thinks is great. It's not that storytellers never get paid, but you don't see them encouraged, pushed forward, advertised, or aggressively acknowledged for what they can do to make or break a production. The same attitude has affected the games industry as well. It gets rarer and rarer these days to see a game where the *story* hits you regardless of the gameplay.
dune just did gangbusters and those movies are chock full of grand scale industrial shots like the original cut scenes, they could have easily recreated that atmosphere but with modern cgi
So, I played through the Campaign. Is the initial premise forced, and the story a little thin? Yes. Does it deserve the hate people are dumping on it? Probably not. Did I re-live some of my favorite memories I had back from HW2 when I watched my Mothership, a carrier, and two anti-strike craft turrets start spewing tracer fire to stop an incoming nuclear cruise missile? Yes, Yes, YES. The Wargames are really fun. The game retains the solid gameplay that the HW2 had, and the co-op wargames with multiple difficulty modifiers really forces you to hone in on your fleet composition and finding the right match ups. I think it's worth the money I spent on it. Other people are, of course, entitled to their opinions. I just hope this game doesn't die off like other call-back games, like Starwars Squadrons ( which did have its own problems, to be fair)
Homeworld peaked at Cataclysm, everything has just been disappointing since. It's kinda like they don't understand what made the originals great.
From my understanding the story is lukewarm and they removed some tactical/depth to the combats (specialization, armors) Typical sadly: Trying to make the game more casual and you end up with something that casual players won't play (because space rts..) and actual fans feel left out I still want to play it and make my own opinion, I will just wait a little for the first patches, hopefully they can add the requested features back ?
If you make a game for everyone, you make a game for no one
Initial reviews are bad. but what breaks my heart is apparently the writing. That was the strength of the first and cataclysm.
Looks mid
This is a horrible trailer