A Thorough Look at Homeworld

Oh we're gonna be talking about the games in terms of their story and in terms of their gameplay and also in terms of their impact on gaming at large and at the end I'm going to tell you how to install Cataclysm on Windows 8 that sounds like good deal to you let's get started there's a balance that every science-fiction story has to strike between its technology and its emotional story time each author will value these things differently truly talented authors bridge between the two constantly underlining technical complexities with characters who shoulder the consequences of that complexity or broadening the depth of relationships between characters with imaginative complications in the world-building homeworld on paper sounds as if it would be a straightforward hard sci-fi tale of fleets and the destiny of worlds on the technical side of the equation as a game it would have a particular emphasis on the technical and structural elements of the story and 3d fleet to Fleet combat and a truly enormous tactical scale hadn't been attempted yet when the game came out in 1999 it would have meant a good sci-fi title innovative well positioned in gaming history to stand out but people don't see homeworld that simply it's widely considered to be one of the greatest strategy titles ever made and one of the most lasting contributions of gaming to the broader legacy of science fiction in general the leap from experimental RTS to beloved classic is wholly on account of the game's storytelling and the way the game lets the player experience the scope of the story on a deeply personal level even within the mechanics the story is genuinely fantastic itself easily worthy of being a novel when the game shipped it even came with a novella of sorts to back it up the homeworld manual is notable for being this thick beautifully designed volume that contains a 40-plus page history of karach the desert planet where the game opens it tells the tribe slowly radiating out in the habitable zones the planet developing an intricate tribal culture with individual tribes called kits and how an ancient discovery would unite them all the guide stone buried in the starship older than all the tribes contains a star map whose destination is common in every kif's language Higuera home no tribe is native to crack so over 80 years in countless lives and resources are poured into building the mothership and this is where the game opens the triumphant conclusion of an our planets decades-long hopes and efforts it is a new era of possibility backed by a choral arrangement of Adagio for Strings you're watching footage right now with a remastered version of homeworld and we'll talk about the remastering process a little later for now it's very important to note that back in 99 this was one of the classiest openings ever put in a game remastered version of homeworld changes no dial a dialogue or cutscenes besides updating the textures and overall sharpness of the graphical assets what you see is what people in 99 saw in terms of content it was jaw-dropping been science fiction has always been a cornerstone of game design since the very beginning but this was something new and bold and entirely beautiful I remember buying the game when it first came out one of the most expensive expensive purchases of my middle school life at that point I couldn't believe they wanted you to have a separate 8 megabyte graphics card for it did they think I was made of money was it worth upgrading an entire computer to play this game it was this game has been lodged in my imagination for 16 years and I'm hardly alone in that home world's hook is so good because they start you off with the optimistic flavor of golden age sci fi in the very first level preparing for a galaxy of adventure all you need to do is test the hyperdrive and meet the kharsa lemma support vessel which had traveled for years the edge of the system on conventional drives to meet you it isn't responding to hails so you send a probe to investigate it's a nice slow build up full of tension in the bleeding out of the first levels optimism then this you you Oh this is just the first of many moments of loss and regret that occur throughout the campaign the second mission has a perfect rhythm to it after the tense opener you have to weather an assault from the mysterious strike craft and the dogfights are visually spectacular when we talk about the next game Cataclysm you'll have a chance to see the original game engine in action but whichever game engine you have the game running on the exhaust trail is a fighter craft as they dip we fight and die is mesmerising genuinely a good sci-fi author can describe a great battle a good sci-fi show can show you a great battle only a game can generate one on demand from scratch only homeworld desert in such an understated and aesthetically intricate way there's a sense of momentum and agency to all the units from the largest to the smallest they all behave in ways that look gorgeously realistic if not on account of the graphics and on account of their rhythms and movements its ballistic ballet in space helluva hook that's the thing about combat in homeworld every tactical situation has a story-driven context and deeply immersive elements but it is visually thrilling and complex even and perhaps especially when the stakes are highest in the situation is desperate the mothership returns to crack Caracas on fire the entire planet everyone who ever helped build the mothership and dreamt of what ho Gaara might look like is dead all that's left is six trays of a hundred thousand colonists under fire from warships of unknown design when you capture one of the warships the truth comes out you are all indeed from huh Gaara you're exiled thousands of years ago and from biddin from using hyperspace technology that was reverse engineered into the mothership when you jumped to the edge of the system this fleet committed the genocide of your people to enforce this ancient treaty the tide an as they're called sit comfortably with Ho Gaya as the seat of their vast and corrupt Empire there's no going back for the people from Caracas Caracas husk the only choice the exiles have now is to move deeper and deeper into a galaxy that is as novel as it is hostile at its heart homeworld is a very traditional underdog story but the beats that the story hits the richness and understated beauty of its presentation that's all very unique it's easy to say a story about a fleet of dwindling survivors backed by a vaguely Middle Eastern influence soundtrack that's not original i watch Battlestar Galactica well the reboot of BSG debuted in 2003 this was a finished product in 1999 I have no idea of home world had any influence whatsoever on the new Galactica but if it did that's the way the influence would flow not vice-versa this setup allows some unique can bold game design choices to play out the most significant and well considered which is the persistent fleet since the mothership and its fleet represents the totality of your civilization you don't bounce around between locales and conflicts like other RTS games any ships you build or capture will carry from one level into the next along with any resources you collect anything you lose or spend carries over your journey from mission division is essentially continuous only the hyperspace jumps break it up and give the game a chance to let its black-and-white hand-drawn cutscenes play out these cutscenes set up the mission to come and expand on events outside the immediate concerns of Fleet command it really enhances the elements of prophecy and destiny as well these moments of storytelling take on a mythic quality in the black and white they're treated with immediacy and the canned concerned the events of the plot sequentially but the cutscenes have the flavor of an illustrated retelling many years after the events themselves the whole arc of the game moves towards epic and mythical dimensions with the fantastic patience only slowly does the journey of the exiles from Caracas shape even slower before it becomes practically possible to complete the journey in the process a lot of amazing science fiction will transpire you'll meet the bentusi a mysterious and fascinating race who welcome you back to the spacefaring world because of Fleet command Caryn's jet one of the mothership sleeve designers she was incorporated into the systems of the mothership themselves as their living brain but the bentusi call unbound their race that's completely unbound they acknowledge Karen and the mothership as appear and they know of a prophecy that is foretold the exiles return so they help you prepare for the path ahead with ion cannon technology and priceless priceless exposition the bentusi are a great idea and they're executed in a really unique way after tracking down and taking revenge on the fleet the destroyed croc you enter a nebula even the bentusi fear nothing returns there you're greeted by its inhabitants who invite you to join them permanently in the nebula or die deeper into the nebula you discover a ship that is an exact match for the one that the exiles discovered the guide stone in after two missions a pitched battle after destroying all their ships and killing most of them the truth comes out these nebula dwellers are exiles as well splintered from the group who never made it to crack and instead hid in the nebula from the tide n none may leave so that the tide end never discovered them you've just killed all the family however distant you're ever likely to connect with again it is such an incredible balance of melancholy revelation grand sci-fi world building and gorgeous fleet de fleet combat everything works in a complementary way building towards a genuinely multifaceted sci-fi experience it's very traditional sci-fi in many way but it's done with confidence and creativity it feels fresh even after 15 years and it will continue to feel fresh in another 15 the elements of static storytelling are constructed so well that they're almost timeless static expository storytelling isn't the only kind going on though the story of your fleet it's specific composition and its triumphs and defeats are influenced much more by player agency and how a player engages the game tactically in the mechanics than the story itself although the story provides all the context it's not only that you have a persistent fleet of your own units the players affection for their fleet is significantly increased by the inclusion of the salvage curve at a small brilliant unit that in cooperation with up to three other Salvage Corvettes conceives an enemy capital ship bring it back to the mothership and have it filled with your pilots to fly your colors it's a little tricky to accomplish a salvage day I will target the Yorker vets they know it's up with them so you have to have a successful distraction going on and take ships when they're on escorted or captured them all at once in a clump since this is a significant triumph that can grow your fleet out past its supply limit you remember these ships that you capture and as the game progresses and they stay with you for mission to mission they become a living record of your accomplishments as a strategist when you finally bring ion array frigates you captured in the first few missions into orbit around the homeworld at last the breadth of your journey is made vividly present it's much more meaningful than building a new base every time like most other RTS titles you develop a real lasting personal investment in specific ships in your fleet when they take heavy damage and begin to cry out in distress you worry for them and when they break apart and explode in the bright blue pop you know you failed them on an equally personal level units are so disposable in Mostar ts games that you never have any sensation of the emotional weight of command it's a game and there's a lot of satisfaction in mastering a game but you don't feel sympathy for pieces on a chess board homeworld inspires that sympathy and without the salvage mechanic it wouldn't be nearly as pronounced once you get past a certain mission and region of a galaxy you're through you'll never see many of those ship designs again so they're not as disposable is the units that you can rebuild it will plus the look of them moving in formation is no joke pretty damn majestic the understated sound design very much reinforces this emotional investment all the radio chatter is very conversational except when things get desperate and then a nervousness creeps into the dialogue not yelling and screaming but instead of trying to maintain their professional composure but no longer managing to do so quite so well it's a major part of why sound design is so remarkable in homeworld all the dialogue really from cutscenes to carrier selection have an understated sense of emotional authenticity it contributes significantly to the player investment in the battle it's not enough to win at all costs the cost is reflected in the calm confident voices who follow your every command there's a significant and important gameplay aspect to emotionally investing in their fleet as well without hoarding some resources without being miserly with your ships you might not be able to win the last couple of missions the level of opposition you encounter is approached agarra in the heart of the tide and Empire is appropriately intense mistakes can be completely fatal and if you suffer tremendous losses before you reach vegara the Titanic Home Guard will wipe the floor with you you need a massive massive counter for what's tossed at you in the last mission it's pretty amazing example of tying together the story with the mechanics of the game and they're tied together on a lot of levels too in the pacing of the story and the necessity of careful resource management across every single mission in the way that the player considers their tactical options before engaging every time it happens the capability of your fleet is always expanded just enough to tackle the difficulties the next mission go No More you're never really overpowered unless you capture every last ion cannon frigate in the sphere in mission 14 but that's almost the end of the game anyway you'll still need those frigates homeworld is a difficult game and the difficulty curve has always been very steep the challenge though is a meaningful part of player investment in the story and I'm actually glad that there's no sliding scale difficulty a satisfying underdog story requires the protagonist to legitimately overcome insurmountable odds through their own conviction and craft an easy difficulty setting and an easy journey undermines what it means to take this story to its conclusion this is part of what I mean by the parallel narratives of the static plot in the persistent fleet mechanics they tell the same story two different ways at the same time in perfect harmony it's what makes homeworld such a vivid piece of science fiction media in a cross format way it draws on decades of traditional science fiction and crafts its presentation in ways that highlight and magnify what's engaging and wonderful about science fiction is a broad genre homeworld isn't just a virtual board game about blowing up ships it's a great science fiction story and a story that's told uniquely in many ways to each player whose story unfolds through their own ingenuity as much as the written dialogue there never was another game quite like homeworld not even its sequels it's a singular achievement in game design there others who followed in the true 3d space strategy format like Nexus and hegemony but they were both much more awkwardly designed in the mechanics department and never motely hit the same kind of engaging plot notes that homeworld did so as a genuine cause for celebration the gearbox spent so much time and effort with homeworld remastered the HD re-release from earlier this year that all of his footage is from near box has a spotty track record of in-house rehabs of old series having soured a lot of people's expectations with Duke Nukem Forever and colonial Marines homeworld is different they had a lot of respect for the source material and left everything important intact and untouched the cutscenes were jazzed up considerably but retained the feel of the original ones it's a successful update well see the original style of cutscenes next when we look at Cataclysm but I think you'll agree that what happened in the remasters was a positive change another positive change is automatically harvesting remaining resources for you once you've completed all your objectives in the original game you'd have to wait around for a frustratingly long time after the official end of levels for your harvesters to tap out a map remember the resources available across all missions are finite you need them all this change eliminates the only flat spot of original games pacing really there's only one change from the 1999 game that the 2015 re-release should have had steer formation for your ships there a release uses the same engine that homeworld - does and homeworld - had also eliminated sphere formation but that's because in that game you have squadrons of strike craft and not individual ones sphere is a useful formation for home rule 1 and its absence was conspicious but if that is the only complaint I can come up with that is an unfathomably glowing recommendation of the new version it's wonderful and it includes versions of the original games on the original engines for free you don't even have to play the new version if you buy the remaster you can play the optimized old ones they've even added a remastered version of a Lost Irkut level from the first game where you fight at ranek carrier fleet above their own homeworld the only thing they don't have is the middle game in the home world series the standalone expansion home world Cataclysm the people behind the remaster gearbox say that the source code no longer exists and it infamously refuses to run on newer versions of Windows there's a workaround for that as it turns out there's an appendix on this video with instructions on how to get Cataclysm to run on Windows 8 if you do get it to run you'll find that it's more than an expansion home world Cataclysm is a full-fledged sequel with a completely unique take on home worlds many successes Cataclysm is remarkable because it uses plot elements that were present in the original game manuals novella to build an incredibly vivid portrait of agarra after the return of the Exiles in ways not explored by the original game and then it introduces exciting new complications unlike anything seen in the previous title cataclysm tells another underdog story but one that's really novel exploring the same rhythms of storytelling from the original game without hitting any of the exact same notes instead of the mighty mothership the apex of your civilizations ambitions to escape crack you control a lowly mining vessel the [ __ ] lon as the lure goes after the return of the homeworld the survivors reorganized and their traditional tribal kits who compete fiercely with one another for scientific and economic advantages gifts some tow is one of the more minor gifts and the [ __ ] LAN is about as fancy as it gets for them they are desperate for an advantage meanwhile the old tide an empire is fragmented into potato and Republic friends of the exiles and Imperial remnants who still control tremendous military might in the outer reaches of their former Inn the first level saves you defending agarra from an incursion by Imperial remnants but this battle just serves to underline how dismissive the more powerful kif's using the warships of the original game feel towards the some top no one respects the mining kith so within the opening level you've not only got a satisfactory expansion of lore from the first game's climax you have the game completely reframe the focus from the success of the Kushan as the exiles are more broadly called to the more specific concerns of the somme talk if and it's done almost effortlessly some tile units are industrial designs we purpose to fill combat roles they have none of the elegance of the original ship designs they are deliberately workman like and ugly it's brilliant especially when you capture fancier ships the disparity in cultural values between the sum toe and the tide a knee and even the rest of the Kushan is delightfully evident what is it immediately evident is where the plot of cataclysm might go after the first two missions the homeworld is secured the Titan and pyre has waned almost completely Cataclysm doesn't have a grand prophecy to fulfill if we're going to tell an underdog story you need an appropriately difficult obstacle to overcome the game does deliver in a way completely unlike the first homeworld instead of home worlds elegant but straightforward sci-fi Cataclysm aims to be the first and only survival horror 3d real-time strategy game and it scores a phenomenal bullseye the trouble begins with a beacon of unknown design as it so often does what makes it vivid is how competent the set up is there's an intense amount political pressure on the [ __ ] lon to make discovery that will force the hey Garen Council to take the some talk if seriously Santa wants their full slice of the homeworld so they'll take a little bit of a risk to really analyze the beacon the Kunlun rescues Assam to Science Vessel to Cleese on from Raiders then disaster strikes a residue in the beacon turns out to not be inert after all it grows exponentially and consumes the lower decks of the Kulin in seconds and everyone aboard the entire lower deck section must be jettisoned to save the rest of the ship the mission begins with you down half a starship the lower decks tumbling away in a burst of agonized screams and then equally agonizing silence when you track down with a Cleese on the lower decks infects the Cleese on and it's escorts as well who immediately reverse direction and attack you quietly their pilots reduced to a guru that seeps out through the panel's of the ships the graphics are as I'm sure you've noticed the prettiest big step backwards from the last footage but in 2000 this was freely cutting-edge presentation there's two things that carry over from homeworld that allow it to effortlessly include survival horror elements once the plot introduces a monstrous antagonist persistent fleet and finite resources across the board reflecting the limited inventory of more traditional survival horror titles and the sense of hopeless isolation made manifest by the emptiness of space nothing stands between you and the monster but your fleets you're constantly in mortal peril with no chance of receiving help the same way a survival horror game would connive it but in a strategic context it's a genius reframing of well-established gameplay tropes from an entirely different gameplay genre and it's a reframing that dovetails with the rhythms of storytelling and mechanics of gameplay that were so distinctive to the original homeworld the crew of the Kulin realized that they're the only ones who are in any position to close the Pandora's Box they opened with the beacon they have to have the courage to face the thing they've unleashed even though they are hopelessly outmatched and unequipped in a way dead space can be seen as ray appropriating for the survival horror genre the horror aesthetic of Cataclysm macgyvering tools to use as weapons against a foe that can weave your flesh to its own purposes with a deep contrast between the hastily engineered brutally brilliant means of defense and the monsters horrifying seemingly unstoppable based nature but here it's on a fleet-wide instead of an individual scale not only does this let Cataclysm qualify as its own underdog story completely distinct from homeworld it's one with a reluctant hero trope thrown in on top of it but just because it's a trope doesn't mean they aren't clever and how they use it it's a shame that this game gets labeled as an expansion and not a real sequel because it's just as long as the original homeworld if not a little longer the horror elements slowly ratchet up alongside the Cullens capabilities critically the game reinforces its survival horror omens by lowering your supply cap decidedly under the fleet sizes of the original aim and doesn't diversify your fleet with capital ships for an unexpectedly long time it's confident pacing decision though you're a mining vessel you're not meant to sustain an entire fleet around you so you can't until circumstances force you to engineer ways to expand the infection is a biomechanical creature called the Beast it can use both electronic and biological systems to its own ends using flesh to form its own circuits on top of a ship's existing ones it came from the in-between areas of hyperspace when a vessel from outside the galaxy used an immensely powerful hyperspace Drive to make the millions upon millions of light-years jump in that transition the Beast found when they realize what happened they scuttled the drives but a distress beacon was launched with a tiny portion of the Beast writhing inside last for a million years until you find it it's a great setup and it's a horror story telling is really brilliantly done a particular standout is defending a civilian refugee colony as the beast fires swarms and missiles to infect them each infected ship will use the flesh of its crew to create new missiles and fire them at nearby ships if there's a way to save everyone I haven't found it it's genuinely disconcerting and very effectively creepy well the game never has scares and doesn't operate on a scale that really permits scares it is unbelievably good at creating moods of dread and apprehension and in that way it really succeeds at its horror when the Beast starts learning to talk and starts imitating ships he once knew it is spooky as hell like the first game sound design is really outstanding the voice acting is particularly notable for how good it is everybody puts in a really heartfelt performance and even though there's no big names in the cast everyone makes the absolute most of their lines in some cases they managed to pull off difficult feats of video game storytelling the best example in the game is one of the last missions where the bentusi are fleeing the galaxy and the kun LUN tries to prevent them from leaving they refuse and when you destroy their gate they swear to annihilate you for your interference this is so out of character for the bentusi but it's made clear that they're lashing out from fear a greater fear than they've felt in millennia so the crew of the Kulin lashes out and returned with and over the communications array shaming the bentusi for what they doing shaming their fears shaming their brutality this is all delivered to be a candid I log from pixelated chipped pixelated ship but the voice actor puts enough genuine rage into his delivery of speech such fantastic bitterness that it is tremendously effective I'm far from the only person blown away by the game pulling off this moment Stu Shearer has a great article on The Escapist about just this level and you can find a link to it in my video description in the early levels the voice acting and the way the kun LAN engages the beast is nervous and tentative in over their heads and very aware of it by the time you get to the bentusi Exodus you are the only ones who can end the threat before it reaches the homeworld it's all or nothing and it is heartbreaking really heartbreaking to witness the mission veers so far towards nothing before the bentusi back down it's highly effective video game storytelling an extremely competent science fiction world building so why isn't Cataclysm as well regarded as home world if it's so similar in quality ultimately I think it boils down to Cataclysm being a much Messier freewheeling title than the original game home world the first benefits from extreme focus in its plot pacing and delivery and makes it very clear early on where things will eventually end up then paints the journey in between as vividly and creatively as possible cataclysm it is less scruple and it has some gameplay tweaks and additions that are fun but more obviously gamified than the original title like big purple space crystals that contain tremendous bonus resources and a new class of vessel called micro ships most trips also have upgrades and bonus abilities making engagements more chaotic and colourful than before which is not always the absolute best thing in a game so heavily focused on strategic resource management other mechanics like fighters that linked together to form fat Corvettes are much more fun in practice in terms of ship design though it's a little silly there's a serious elegance to the ships of the original homeworld and while the some thar are different by narrative design their ships come across as more goofy than industrial maybe one time out of four that's one time out of four more than the original game though so it certainly contributes the game being regarded as not quite as good then of course there's the fact that it was billed as a standalone not a full sequel people at the time just didn't realize how massive and well-designed a game this was and it didn't do well enough commercially to stay in the spotlight for long enough to correct that impression since its source code is m.i.a the future of the game is uncertain for fans the series it's pretty categorically a can't-miss title but since it was only available as a retail product once 15 years ago and then never again the world conspires to make you miss it anyway you can still track down used copies but you'll pay a bit 20 to 30 dollars for a jewel case it's a collector's item now but with no digital rights management those just those discs will work fine if they come with unique CD key and if you is the utility program I talked about at the end of video for some reason and I genuinely don't understand why not even Relic would support cataclysms creative playful vision for the franchise homeworld 2 would make no mention of any of the events in Cataclysm and it's canonicity is frustratingly vague homeworld 2 ignores quite a bit about its predecessors to the point where it feels like a game out of focus vaguely resembling the gamer looking for it but indistinct and unsatisfying homeworld 2 is in a bad game it just loses touch with many of the things that made the first two titles so uniquely memorable and engaging homeworld 2 is an average plotting Lea deliberate hard sci-fi title the franchise might have been better off if the sequel had been truly terrible there would have been some kind of outcry about it instead you'll get a technically accomplished creatively deficient title that engages neither a player's imagination nor a player's anger it is maddeningly bland and it highlights just how much of the first game success is on account of its writing and how it frames the players journey home row 2 takes place nearly a hundred years after the first game when a bandit warlord named makaan invades her Garen space with a massive navy of Marauders called the Vega within the first two levels Makana has seized her Gaara your only hope rests with the new mothership which looks almost exactly like the old mothership and is also controlled by a carriage at having transferred from the first mothership there's a brand new ancient prophecy one about a trio of powerful and possibly mystical hyperspace cores one that who traveled with the exiles to crack one in the bentusi harbor ship of ventus and one in Mekons massive flag ship obviously you've got to collect all three these will unlock an ancient ship you can use to reclaim your destiny and take back huh Gaara in blurb description this all sounds pretty cool in practice not much more is actually explained than I just relayed to you both previous games provided fascinating and concrete answers to questions the players might have about the plot homeworld 2 is comfortable in a fog of mystical space opera nonsense no mention of any kind of kith politics or Hungarian cultures it might have changed in 100 years is given the gaff and time only means that there have been radical ship redesigns since the garden space is under total lockdown for 90% of the plot your missions have you gallivanting around the rural galaxy fiddling around with ancient prophecy in derelict warships completely ignoring the plot threads and world building accomplished by the previous two games this essential disconnection from things the previous games had maybe you care about is a devastating two-player investment worse the game even appropriates mission design and plot elements from both previous titles recycled so blatantly that it feels like deja vu the impression it leaves is vague as deja vu - why should a direct sequel to one of the real masterpieces of game design struggle so much for distinctiveness the answer begins to surface when delving into some of homeworld twos alterations the game mechanics and structure of classic homeworld gameplay like meta game sequels homeworld 2 has the idea that bigger is better that being epic is the primary quality that a game should strive towards we have talked a little about how that outlook impacted the plot its influence in the mechanics is equally disappointing instead of individual strike craft you build squadrons of three to five who you can reinforce if they get partially destroyed it adds to the visual spectacle you'll generally see more strike craft and any given engagement than in previous games but it takes away from the sense of individual unit identity you don't think of them as pilots and ships anymore you think of them as a tactical unit on the board the salvage mechanic is intact but significantly altered instead of using Salvage Corvettes or workers to swarm an enemy capital ship and drag them away from the engagement you have marine frigates these frigates pull up alongside during an encounter and begin a countdown timer if they can stay hook to the other ship until the counter runs down that ship is yours on the spot multiple marine frigates make the timer go faster and it makes more sense in a way you're literally sending in troops to seize the bridge of the enemy vessel but it is not as charming and the slow-moving frigates take up valuable supply points and are easily destroyed those enemy ships can still fight while the seizure attempt is being made both tactically and in terms of visual charm having salvage unit swarm and Holloway an enemy ship was so much more satisfying even if workers were destroyed enroute to turn in the enemy ship in previous games the ship was still partially disabled and moved away from the combat I barely ended up salvaging anything at all in homeworld two I didn't want to sacrifice the frigate supply slots and I knew that my marine frigates would be destroyed without getting to complete their job overall homeworld to actually discourages the kind of personal emotional investment in your fleet for the other two games did such a good job of fostering frigates have paper-thin armor and have to be rebuilt so constantly that you sometimes go through multiple reproductions for your entire frigate lineup and a single mission towards the end of the game but there is no bigger culprit in sabotaging a player's personal investment in their fleet than the difficulty system Cataclysm is the only homeworld with a difficulty slider and in that game it can certainly make the game outrageously easy if you slide it in that direction the higher the difficulty of the greater the satisfaction for both homeworld and homeworld Cataclysm a lot of that though was how the difficulty magnified the underdog triumphs going on in the plot homeworld 2 goes back to having only one default difficulty setting but it's an adaptive system that skews towards the legitimately unfair more often than not at the beginning of every mission the composition of your fleet is analyzed by the AI and their fleet is constructed on the spot as a direct counter to hero ships with a much higher supply limit you are at a complete disadvantage each and every level no matter how well you did in the previous mission in fact the better you do the more ships that the enemy will spawn if you Salvage each and everything that you can in the mission the enemy will still always have enough power firepower to destroy your entire fleet this doesn't become hugely obvious until the last few missions and then it is crushing Leon fair you can have enough supply for two battle cruisers the heavy the heaviest ship you can build when the enemy sends five of their battle cruisers at once at you you're probably going to have to replay the mission until you figure out how to draw em off one by one somehow which is not likely the other option I am NOT getting about this is to retire all or most of your ships at the end of the previous mission and then build a new force from scratch at the beginning of the level you're trying to beat this will trip up the AI and cause it to spawn only a manageable amount of units it is the only way to compensate for the adaptive difficulty in this game love of your fleet is one of the fundamental cornerstones the first game success to go from considering the personal battle history of individual frigates to retiring your entire fleet on mass and a desperate attempt to get past the level you're not even that into in the first place illustrate vividly how delicate the balance the first game's design is to be so memorable how easily that balance is upset by design elements that seem bold at the time but hold up about as well as cardboard in the rain the negative changes in the mechanics dovetail in a frustrating way with the negative changes in the storytelling they both seem to think they're making improvements while only serving to distance the game from what's so lovable and distinctive about the first two when talking about the first game I talked about how other strategy games do a poor job of expressing the weight of command of connecting you enough with your forces to feel sympathy for them that without emotional identification these are just pieces on a chess board I feel like that might actually be a deliberate design decision on relics part with homeworld 2 this game is much more focused on its internal mechanics and its self identity as a game than on its plot and it's self identity is a science fiction story the parts of homeworld 2 that relates solely to its presentation as a realtime strategy game are comparatively quite competent during mastered versions of homeworld 1 and 2 both of you is a jazzed up version of homeworld two's original game engine 12 years later it's still an excellent technical foundation to build a game off of the amount of articulation on the ships themselves large and small is quite impressive and both of Aegir and high Garen ships have beautiful designs in terms of aesthetics though not internal consistency I actually prefer the vigor of the the game tries to set up its plot moments like a kind of greatest hits of home world mission design and tending to create interesting tactical situations where it fails to create compelling characterizations and motivations for example the movers function and look almost exactly like the swarmers do in the first games nebula missions even featuring them at about the same point in the story that the first game introduced the swarmers there's an escort mission where you have to protect cryo trays with fighter escorts a half and a half blend of a third mission of the original game the convoy defense mission and Cataclysm when you acquire the dread-nots in homeworld 2 you can fire its main cannon only once before it overheats and ceases and you have to deal with it exactly what happens to the siege cannon and Cataclysm and then there is homeworld two's use of the bentusi the Mateusz II simply don't make a lot of sense in this game it is in the only indirect nod to Cataclysm in the entirety of homeworld 2 there's one remaining vent Uzi ship in the entire galaxy their oldest one a great harbor ship of Bentleys they swing by to drop some vague mystical prophecy nonsense unites the three hyperspace cores have special powers and when you see them next they drop some bizarre backstory about being partially responsible for the exile being exiled over conflict regarding the hyperspace core and so out of some kind of weird guilt they blow themselves up to destroy the ancient progenitor seeker Guardians that have been pursuing you since you acquired the dread-nots poof no more bentusi after a few lines were stilted info dumping so where homeworld 2 is in derivative it has no real idea how to use the plot elements so lovingly crafted by previous titles it also features an excessively far ranging happy ending when you unite three cores you find deus ex machina that opens up a whole network of hyperspace gates and usher ins a new era of cooperation prosperity and peace with karyn's jet is the immortal Cedric Carr benevolently overseeing it all this all happens in a 90-second cutscene after the last level which I don't have footage of because I'm completely jammed up on the thought of Saban on account of the adaptive difficulty in my dislike of the game a link to the ending cinematic is available in the video description but those 90 seconds don't leave the plot with much room to setup sequal even if they wanted to it is a happy ending so widen scope it's like a fairy tale the galaxy lives happily ever after the end and it sure was the end of homeworld for over a decade studio shutdowns legal shuffling and an incredibly lukewarm reception of homeworld two all conspired to keep the series at a constantly receding point of memory in gaming culture Windows 7 runs the original home world's badly and when those eight struggles to run them at all so the HD remaster is kind of a big big deal for a number of reasons one it puts the series back in the spotlight an incredibly positive way to is that it demonstrates the commercial demand for a true 3d space RTS and thirdly it holds a good and a bad example of homeworld design right next to each other their contrasting successes and failures a package deal for players to experience it shows homeworld in the best possible light a brilliant game made obscure before its time by the rise of console gaming changing technology and a disappointing sequel it shows the potential developer of a new homeworld game what works and what doesn't and then user reviews of the remastered version will reflect what series fans might like or dislike about a future title it's the start of a serious conversation about a homeworld 3 and the start of a serious conversation about why a game from 1999 could feel so much more cohesive brilliant and fresh than many brand-new titles in a contemporary games market that consistently ignores and minimizes the thrill of a real-time strategy games homeworld makes a powerful statement there was a time when everyone seemed to be saying that adventure games were permanently done for but now look at telltale the new dreamfall chapters and how that sub-genre completely turned around all it takes is creativity and confidence homeworlds been vividly demonstrating those traits for 16 years straight and I'm very excited for what the attention being paid to it could mean for the RTS sub-genre as a whole all in all there's a lyric and song that prog rock band yes did for the original games credits that I feel sums up what homeworld means to gaming at large the history of the future was surely made thanks for watching so now on to the subject of how to get Cataclysm to run on Windows 8 the main challenge is that only one compatibility mode works for Cataclysm Windows NT compatibility in Windows 8 does not offer Windows NT is a compatibility option however there is utility an official Microsoft utility called a compatibility tool kit installed Cataclysm from disk and updated and then installed the toolkit links for both are provided in the video description the disc you'll need yourself then start a new compatibility database with new then select fix and direct it to the Cataclysm exe click next select Windows NT from the compatibility options and also check off all the run as admin permissions boxes then click straight on through the next two screens then select run while the toolkit is still open this is important if you don't launch Cataclysm from within the compatibility toolkit you'll see no results from what you do you might even have to hit run twice I often do for some reason but it launches the second time quite reliably then you'll want to switch from rendering with direct3d to OpenGL with from within the options menu of Cataclysm you can force higher resolutions by editing the config file but so long as you're able to use OpenGL you should experience no significant problems if you are only able to use direct3d you are not in Windows NT compatibility mode enjoy this important piece of gaming history you this video this channel and pretty much everything you see from me is currently crowd funded by website called patreon where viewers like you can contribute to help me make these sorts of videos I'd like to take the time to thank by name the people who are currently donating at the $10 or more a month or more level these people would include Cassie bear Christian Zechariah Anson Sahib chic hat hey Gary Pettis white 0s Ben Stein's Nunes Ervin Williams schewe Hartnett Oliver a hand leakin Joe wolf Kim oh hi Conan Stephan parison richard stephenson jonah sniffs akane la lu junus rock stephen lark preston Alan Daniels ooks Sigma Jensen Ken young Dalton Siler nobody Jonathan flaky nur sill sang gusta Ryan kunst Brad Wallace Connor blow coumarin vegan chocolate cake an axe a Rhodes Niels Bach Frommer Spiro Sedaris Kevin DeBolt Rob Clarke Matthew Langdon Harley McAvoy Valentin solez Nia Jared Lee Miller Michael Gilles Brandon Carl Gleason Tim Marsh Richard Williams Jack pointer tiser of akarin join Yoon Dan reader Jared Mayer Justin Hughes Aidan Kennedy Florence abow Chris Josh sparks Ivan Marin off Jake Brennan Brad car Colin Lara's Ingvar Anderson Andrea's Larson Finn Spencer Adam Shelley Devin no Martin scanning Brett Giano garlic Chris Russell dough Andrew volts Martin Kirsten Seth downing and Pavel maximov thanks again for watching

Channel: Noah Caldwell-Gervais

Views: 158,175

Rating: 4.9292769 out of 5

Keywords: Homeworld (Video Game), Homeworld: Remastered, Homeworld 2 (Video Game), Homeworld: Cataclysm (Video Game), Retrospective, Review, Critique, Trilogy, Analysis, Video Game (Industry), Real-time Strategy (Media Genre), Reviews, Classic

Id: SALZWWPMKIA

Length: 43min 13sec (2593 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 03 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/flipper_gv]

Wow, this guy is productive. These are long videos.

I don't know if he does that full time, but still, quite impressive.

[u/chaoslongshot]

This is probably one of the most beautifully produced reviews of Homeworld, the way he tackles and offers historical context on why the game had X or Y stuff in it is great.

For instance I always thought that the game was released post reimagined BSG, having that extra context, or why X feature wasn't around offers insight that adds value, especially for younger generations of gamers that are willing to play good games from different eras.

Finishing the review with an appropiate quote from the ending credits theme was also very solid. I'm seriously thinking about supporting this guy as much as possible.

[u/d_kr]

Even without ever playing homeworld I enjoyed the video.

Hopefully the next "A Thorough Look ..." will digging in EA's graveyard: The Command and Conquer series (See the Renegade icons on the desktop middle right corner)

[u/AbusiveDave]

Love this guy's videos. I remember I started watching his Half Life video at about 2:00 AM one night and said to myself: There's no way I'm going to finish it. Next thing I know it's three o' clock and I finished it.

[u/Fredfredbug4]

This guy is absolutely great. I just subbed and I hope he gets more popularity because he definitely deserves it.

As for Homeworld, it's a must play for anyone who is a fan of both strategy games and sci-fi. My only real issue with the game is that the pacing is rather slow.

[u/[deleted]]

Homeworld is still one of my favourite games. It still stings a little that I can't play online with people anymore. Sierra Online shut down the master servers.

Edit: The random Yes song in the credits was a nice surprise as a kid.

[u/bitbot]

This guy is great, he seems genuine and is not as annoyingly pretentious as for example the Errant Signal guy.

[u/TengenToppa]

I get that he hated Homeworld 2, but he said the reception was "lukewarm" while I remember (and google will back me up) that the reception was quite good. I remember it winning some RTS Game of the Year awards back then.

Overall it was a good video, but it felt like he was way too harsh on Homeworld 2.

[u/Spoonfeedme]

I enjoyed the video, but his reviews are missing a critical component of the games, and that is multiplayer.

While there is no doubt that HW2's story was inferior to both HW1 and Cataclysm, the multiplayer aspects were simply superior in every way. Squad based mechanics, ideas that relic would re-use in future titles like DoW and CoH, are simply much better for multiplayer games, for example. Sure, you feel less attached to each fighter, but managing 30 fighters in HW1 was simply daunting and imprecise by nature, whereas doing so in HW2 allowed greater microing for the average player. The same is true of the change with salvage, a greatly over-used component in HW1 multiplayer.

In short, HW2's problem was that they took the HW1 system and redesigned it with multiplayer in mind, and then created the story to match it. But at that time, RTS games were really one of the key MP markets, and thus building a game with MP success in mind was clearly the preferred design choice.