Homeworld Remastered Collection on GOG - gog.la/BananaShipQuest Player Patch - www.moddb.com/mods/homeworld-remastered-players-patch More Homeworld to come, though the start of next year is looking packed so we'll see how things roll out.
LInk doesn't work :( EDIT: It does work (thanks Mandalore!), I just had to delete most of the URL after opening the link, so only the gog part was left.
For all the people pointing the whole "no sound in space" thing , the game actually accounts for that and in the setting menu you have the option do drag the master volume to 0. It's very immersive and enhances the experience, i assure you.
If my games doesn't simulate the every day of a deaf person then I am not immersed. On a serious note screw those people I want to hear the guns and the engines.
they probably already do that, the only times they bitch about it is in movies where they don't have the option. i hardly ever find people whine about it about games though.
The thing that really got me about Homeworld is that you can zoom all the way into a resource collector and listen to them give status reports and chatter about their work.
@@esoopthederp7672 Either Shogun 2, which doesn't have that feature but has kick ass battle animation, or Attila. Shogun 2 is a fan favorite and is more noob friendly but really lacks content and variety, to the point of arguably only have two or three unique campaign experiences out of the dozen or so playable factions with the standouts (Ikko Ikki and Otomo) being paid DLC. Attila is a balls to the wall clusterfuck that assumes you've played the previous historical Total War games and gotten a little bored of the old formula. It's great but will kick your ass and few of the factions are noob friendly. If you pick it up and don't have any experience with the other titles try playing the Franks or Saxons first because they have the only "normal" early game experience.
@@remembertotakeshowerspleas355 Some memorable banter from Rome II: *unit runs out of javelins* „Guess the only thing we can hurl now are insults“ „Shut your mouth or I‘ll hurl you! „They are fighting back!“ „Aye, enemies tend to do that.“ „Bah, the smell of enemies, it always upsets my digestion“ „What about the general, shouldn‘t we have seen him?“ „Don‘t worry about generals, they don‘t worry about YOU!“ „Why does everyone always try to kill us?“ „Or sell us their sister!“ *said by a roman auxiliary unit* „A roman yesterday said to me that what we do today shall echo in eternity…“ „HA, typical roman nonsense!“
I always played the game exclusively in the sonar/ tactical view within the ship, I greatly enjoyed the atmospherics of its from the relative silence and the bits and pieces of chatter,sound and such.
True that. I've never played Homeworld at all, and that reveal still blew me away. I feel like we should have more games like Homeworld, on top of getting that new Homeworld. The notion of a space RTS where you travel across the galaxy in a massive colonial mothership is worth having more settings built around.
I've..never played the game. My first introduction to it was a Homeworld trailer with the same soundtrack as when the burning takes place and the ships fighting.. I didn't have a clue how it got there on the computer (i was 6 ) and i just watched how the ships fought with the " Sad" music playing and i just wept.. Yea..might be the time to actually download and play it.
The thing where different control groups actually state their group number in the voicelines was so handy for keeping track of things in hectic situations and I wish more games did it.
“Group 7 reports enemy contact.” [Double taps 7] Oh, it’s just a resource collector, ok. [30 seconds later] “Group 7, destroyed.” A resource collector escorted by the entire enemy fleet, ok.
"They were defeated, they didn't abandon ship, they didn't signal surrender. They knew not to expect mercy from us. We kept firing until our gun barrels deformed under the heat. We fired until our last projectile had left our ammo holds. She... didn't say anything. I think in that moment she envied us."
"Then they were upon us. A deadly hail of bullets thinned our ranks. A flight of our most experienced pilots was gone within seconds. Kareph took a direct hit in the cockpit. I took lead of the formation. Aalir died in the second wave. A flash of light and a pained crackle across the squadron frequency. I swore a bitter oath of vengeance, and the gods saw fit to grant me this favor."
One of my fondest memories of the Homeworld manual was the section on fleet tactics where two officers argued about fleet composition. One arguing for mainly capital ships supported by fighter screens while the other argued for wings of strike craft with logistical capital ships allowing the wings to cycle out damaged craft and refuel near the front lines. Both heavily criticized each other and pointed out flaws in their strategy from the complicated logistics and management of fighter wings to the prohibitively costly nature of capital ships, all in character. Homeworld really was something and at the end of the journey it finishes on a song by Yes as the final icing on the cake. I don't think I'll ever forget my time with that game.
Right? Remember the whole section of that amazing song playing (The Ladder by Yes) with incredible concept art rolling in the background? That was truly amazing.
the simulation aspect really sets it apart from the lazy modern game design aka gun has 70% accuracy vs small ships -> misses 30% of its shots with the small ship parked right in front of the gun
Yeah the fleet composition argument was great, one guy mentions the age of his opponent and that he might no longer be up to handle all the little fighters at once. My brother and I actually played a match testing the fighters vs battleships concepts. My capitals just focused down on his mothership while he was fiddeling with his corvettes. So that was settled then.
There's an oldish game called Starsector that's a bit like a single player top down version of EVE. Ship customization, salvaging parts and ships from enemies BattleTech style, ferrying goods (drugs usually) back and forth in a dynamically changing economy, exploring the depths of space for ancient technology to put on your ships, hunting pirates, even a base building element. I think Sseth did a review of it. I dumped hundreds of hours into that game. The combat can take some getting used to but once you do it feels so satisfying to blow up enemy ships, or have your carrier's bombers swarm them. The game can be genuinely terrifying when you enter an unknown system only to wake up *something* that starts blowing up your radar and getting closer. You might wanna check that out if "single player EVE" appeals to you. Lots of mods for it as well.
@@anthonyhall4170 No it is not. Sadly the gameplay of the remaster is really bad compared to the original, even with the patch. Not trying to be a weirdo purist or confrontational. Its a fact.
I remember playing this blind and the sequence where you arrive back at Kharak to find the place wiped out hit me like a tonne of bricks. There's a small but genius design choice there where when you hyperspace in the camera facing away from the planet, so you don't see it until you actually start looking around. It's tiny and subtle but totally makes that scene work.
There's a really good scene in Return of the Obra Dinn like that. You've just gotten used to having a time-travelling pocket watch and magic notebook then WHAM.
I had spent the time waiting for the game to install reading the manual, and got enthralled by the worldbuilding such that I delayed starting the game by about an hour. "Tonne of bricks" doesn't begin to cover my reaction to the Adagio. Once I finished the mission I had to log off and go touch grass because I was so upset by all the destruction.
Absotely agree, you shouldve seen my face bro I played the games in chronological order and... man that hurt. After seeing how Kharaks people got united under a common cause to them gettin wiped out of existence was painful.
Man, Homeworld was the game that turned me into a cross-country runner. My school was farther from home than my younger brother's, and I got out *just* enough earlier that if I ran the whole way (mostly uphill) right after school, I got home first and could park myself on the family computer. No game before or since has motivated me to run 5 miles (with a full bookbag!) just to play it. When Gearbox released the remastered collection, I was giddy. I even went with classic mode because it didn't feel like the real thing without the interface jank. And I cried even harder than when I was a kid when I heard the King's College choir singing Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings when returning to Kharak after the hyperdrive test.
Homeworld unknown? I was under the impression it was one of the four games that layed the very fundation of the genre, and one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time.
Like how one guy uses it to justify how unrealistic elite dangerous is, as if you being able to fly through the vastness of space on a shitty little spacecraft and also get super close to a star without dying wasn’t already a sign of where the game’s main attention went to
Something I really love about Homeworld 1 is how the campaign really feels like a journey through the universe, rather than a typical RTS campaign. There aren't that many regular "destroy the enemy" RTS missions, and a surprisingly high number of missions where you don't fight the Taidan, the main antagonists. Instead you come across all sorts of unique situations, like journeying through an asteroid field where the only enemies are the asteroids. There's the Gardens of Kadesh, full of the religious zealot swarmers. You find a million year old spaceship controlled by an AI that can mind control your capital ships if they get to close. There's even that ship graveyard mission, where hostile junkyard ships try and grab your capital ships to steal them away forever (this mission was so infuriating to me as a kid that I outright had nightmares about it). I think this is something both Homeworld 2 and Deserts of Kharak lack, since both those games have missions that feel more like standard RTS "destroy the enemy" fare.
I didn't even knew they could capture your ships until I purposely tried to engage this mission in a tradicional way XD... First time that I did it, when I heard that I only needed to dock a fighter there and I just unlocked the cloacked fighter. First thing that came into my mind was to send an small squad stealtly from bellow, sadly some didnt managed to return, as the turrrets detect you even if cloaked. But still, was an worthy sacrifice only losing 5 out of 15 fighters from the mission. I found soo cool how almost every mission had an optimal way to do it that wasn't all that clear for you at first, and as you said, this was kindda lost in the newer games, even tho I preffer the engagements from Homeworld 2 that require way more strategy and tactical thinking, it begins to wear down after an whole campaign of just doing that. I really hope Homeworld 3 brings back those more "one of a kind" puzzle missions from Homeworld 1. At least from what I saw in the trailer there was one with a ship shooting asteroids so it might mean something...
@@olivierrodriguesneto5995 I just marathoned the game today and it turns out the Junkyard Dog is killable, though it has quite a lot of health. Also you can recover the ships it steals, since they will sometimes re-appear as enemy units and can be captured via salvage. As a kid I recall getting past the Junkyard Dog by just having my units skirt around the sides of the debris field. For some reason if I went far enough way, it wouldn't seem to follow.
@@Henskelion I swear it was possible to just grab the Junkyard Dog with salvage corvettes, you can't capture it but I thought it would freeze it in place for the whole mission. I know I froze it somehow, but can't remember for sure how, so this may not be entirely correct.
I adore how the first few missions go from optimism to fear to despair to determined resolve. The first 3 missions of Homeworld are the benchmark in how strategy games should set the stage and prepare the atmosphere.
The sound design was on point too. A squadron of fighters flatly saying "we're not gonna win this" or matter-of-factly stating with military detachment that "we have the advantage" is far superior than screaming "YEEEE-HAAAAW!" whenever there's some action on screen.
Homeworld 2 actually does have a lore book as well. The "History of Hiigara: Prelude to the End Times" pdf was included with the original Homeworld 2 CD, but was never officially printed like the original book. It added a wealth of information on the transition from Homeworld 1 to 2, the Hiigaran's lost history prior to exile, and did a lot to elevate the story IMO. They really should have re-released it for the Remaster.
@@1987CRER back the. The cd release of Hoemworld 2 had a thick manual. Thick thick thick. You had the different ships shown. With stats listed. Story that could have been a nocel itself. The manual is something I miss from games nowadays.
WHAT. THIS IS WILD. When I bought Homeworld 2 as a kid, I was SO PSYCHED because HW1 and Cataclysm both had the extensive lore in their manuals that fleshed out the universe and backstory in ways that enriched the entire gaming experience for me beyond what I had ever encountered in any other game. When I brought HW2 home with me and opened the manual to find the one, dinky little page of story exposition, I was so disappointed that I never actually played the game. It felt like straight-up betrayal! This changes everything!
Another great thing about Homeworld is the end credits song, called Homeworld (The Ladder) made by Yes, the prog-rock band. Jon Anderson and the band were in Vancouver to record their new album when he heard about Homeworld and he was always interested in doing a song for a videogame. He actually wrote the lyrics to fit the story of the game, it's a great song.
Every story I hear about Yes they just get cooler. How is that possible? They deserve the world, if not for JoJo and Roundabout then they deserve it for this.
My dad was a big Yes fan and I remember us both enjoying the album. The CD was PC compatible and included a small but fun making of video with the band with some comments by Anderson. Good memories.
"We don't have to put up with it. Let's just kill them!" From MandaloreGaming is one of the funniest lines I've ever heard. The normal, pleasant reviewer voice saying something so outrageous totally got me.
I used tobe obsessed with Homeworld, even ordered an ORIGINAL copy of HW2 on release and barely anyone bought legit games in my country back in the day. I only had ones from magazines and Gothic 2. Anyway you inspired me to play this again
"The subject did not survive interrogation..." such a chilling line that says so much more. This "dumb little space rts" has such great and subtle writing.
You can really _feel_ that after they dragged everything he knew out of him, they threw him to the crew and just let them reduce him to something that can no-longer be recognisable as human(Taiidan) with nothing but their bare hands.
@@MandaloreGaming I always thought the screeching about Cataclysm was always because it's story was far more "stable" than 2's. Like you were always looking for things in Catalysm, but that's because you were literally trying to figure out what was even going on for more than the first half of the game.
@@MandaloreGaming Cataclysm is still canon, as far as I know. Kiith Somtaaw is mentioned in 2 as still fighting the Vagyr with Kiith Soban after the rest of the Defense Fleet has basically collapsed, IIRC. Either way, Kiith Somtaaw wouldn't be fighting at all unless Cataclysm had happened since HW1 only refers to them as a Mining (and formerly Religious) Kiith. The Beast War made them a Warrior Kiith. (The feel of hearing "This is the Kiith Somtaaw Warship Kunn Lann." in the last mission.) The whole problem with Cataclysm is that the source code is completely lost. You can't do a remaster because you'd have to reverse engineer the code from scratch. (And here we see I wrote this before the end of the video. Sorry.)
I'm so glad Mandalore mentioned the voice acting. I never played the original, but almost immediately when I played the remastered I knew why it was seared into some of my friends brains. The swelling music, and the dead pan voice of the narrators that is still somehow dripping with emotion they're announcing everything is dead is such good acting and elevates it to such heights.
“The subject did not survive the interrogation”. It’s one of the coldest and most brutal lines I have ever heard in a game. It’s how you say a lot while also saying very little.
I remember being very young when I heard that line, with the faint screams in the background my blood went cold. Homeworld is so much of "Less is More".
@@Thurokiir1 Sorry mate, but someone have to: There are no faint screams in the background (just checked both original and remastered because I believed you and thought that I might have missed a cool detail in one of my all time favourites). My guess is, that a younger you misinterpreted a repeating, wailing samples which were indeed a part of the ambient "music" playing throughout that cinematic. And then it burned in your memory for eternity. Maybe because of how "fitting" to Fleet Intelligence's powerfully deadpan delivery it was?
I remember there was a strategy pirate game I played as a kid and there was an option to cut out somebodies tongue so I clicked it out of curiosity. Then it showed a cut scene of a bearded man lifting a knife off of a table and it was one of the most disturbing things I have seen up to that point. I Cant for the life of me remember anything else about the game. I was 7.
When that first game came out, even looking at screenshots in Pc Gamer and stuff, it just didn't seem 'possible.' Such an incredible look that game has.
I remember my brother and I capturing as many Kadesh ships as possible in HW1, then keeping them alive through the rest of the game. We felt the loss of every one if they were destroyed.
I remember Homeworld 2 the first time you run into Battlecruisers. Lost no less than 8 Marine Frigates trying to take one but boy that ship carried some of the toughest mid-game missions. Then Makaan's Dreadnought melted it :(
@@MarvinT0606 Huh, as I've only ever captured a destroyer or some frigates - now that's an interesting challenge to revisit the game. Vaygr BC is my absolute favorite.
@@Desolator84 As far as the campaign goes, you can capture most ships except carriers, shipyards. Vaygr BCs are totally worth all the Marines you're gonna lose trying to capture one. Oh yeah, you can also capture Makaan's Dreadnought so by the last mission you have two of those things banging away at the Vaygr fleet.
I guess I'm far from being only one who'd say that, but: about space changing as you move through campaign of Homeworld: Kharak is in the far reaches of the galaxy, while Hiigara lays close to it's core. Thus, as you move closer to it, density of stars around increases, and space becomes brighter. Might not be exactly how it would look, but still is a good idea. Plus, it indeed helps to make it sensible how you are moving into new and unknown places.
This detail is even more important in Homeworld 2: you start at the gloomy far end of the galaxy where the Mothership was built in secret. Then you fight your way to the bright center of the galaxy to pick up Sajuuk.
" Hiigara. Our home." man just hearing that line still gives me chills and makes me tear up a bit. Just the concept of finding a map to you ancestral home that no one living today has even seen is just so mindboggling and emotional, and that line delivery... mmmmh its so good. I so cant wait for homeworld 3, between that and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 its like the little 16 year old in my soul is getting a present just for them.
HW1 was an epic journey across the galaxy with many unknowns. HWC had you playing as outcasts with a pretty good story about defeating 'the Borg'. HW2 was a plot about 'the chosen one', retconning the origins of the Kushan core, killing off the last of the Bentusi and having a crap ending. The original HW2 was supposed to focus on individual characters. The script is still available online and it sounds boring. DOK was full of foreshadowing that made absolutely no sense and Rachel's brother was a completely unnecessary plot point. It's almost as if they tried to focus on individual characters, but didn't commit to it fully and instead tried to cater to fans of the original HW. The story of HW has gotten worse with every game since Cataclysm and the remasters are worse than the originals in many aspects, so I don't see what all the hype is all about.
One thing I would like to say about the voices being monotone (with them showing emotion through certain lines and not stating obvious pintless fact) is that typically that's how people communicate through radio in the military, as showing extreme emotions can make pilots distressed and not perform their jobs to their peak ability
I loved cataclysm too, the moment the space gypsies refuse to be corrupted and instead do suicide was really a emotional experience, man I loved those mystical guys. At the black market in stpetersburg the clerk said "this is the best game to ever exist" as he sold me a russian ripped copy of homeworld, omg he was right.
I personally felt that they could have woven the cataclysm story and lore into the main series. I didn't really think it clashed with HW2 given that in part it tells the story of how the Taiidan empire has been damaged and is in political turmoil after the events of HW1.
@@danielskinner1796 Cataclysm even explored elements of the reformed Taiidan / former rebels (a small plotline from Homeworld 1) working alongside you to confront The Beast, which was really cool. The enemy really felt like a galaxy-shaking threat, and your scrappy little "mothership" was sufficiently different from the H1 mothership that the campaign played totally differently. Contrast that with Homeworld 2, where we're just repeating elements from the first game for... reasons. I was obsessed with H1 as a kid and I must have played through it half a dozen times, but every time I try to play H2 I lose interest around the third mission (the Vaygr are mind-numbingly boring and the huge hyperspace core retcon does them no favors). Cataclysm added a lot more meaningful depth to the universe and was a blast to play. I hope it doesn't get completely written out of the series, but unfortunately since the source code is lost I don't think Gearbox is going to go the extra mile to rebuild it anytime soon. I still have the printed manuals for both H1 and Cataclysm and they're unironically some of my favorite things lol
@@imoons It seems Deserts of Kharak considered all the backstory of Somtaaw and its logo (both introduced in Cataclysm) to be canon. And Homeworld Revelations also mentions Homeworld Cataclysm. And the Mobile game lets you play as Somtaaw. So I would say its canon. Let's hope we see some cataclysm reference in Homeworld 3.
"Can you draw her giving birth" hit me completely out of left field. This might be my favourite out of all your dry humour quips of all time. I gotta lay down for a while now
I've had the privilige of playing the recent prequel Homeworld: Deserts of kharak first without any prior experience with the franchise, and i must say after the whole game pumping your whole race up to the challange of building the mothership, the Homeworld Remastered tutorial hits even deeper...
Too bad the enemy AI was pretty primitive in Kharak. Other then that the new Dune movie and the original book is also very fitting for capturing a similar feel.
@@ujbx So was the AI in HW, but mission scripting did a good job at hiding it. Many of these scripts are broken in the Remaster. This and the messed up balance made Remastered a joke in terms of difficulty.
@@fonesrphunny7242 Its a shame BBI can't go back and make some fixes to Remastered since they're busy with HW3. Did the fan-patches even fix the messed up balances?
The Homeworld series is so underrated. The former and Cataclysm deserve to be alongside Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid, and other games from the video game hall of fame. They did so many new things and they did it so well.
Ahahahaa, underrated he says. When someone thinks "rts in space" first game that comes to mind is Homeworld, they defined this kind of game, control system and camera system.
@@recoverhealth2062 The fact that there are only a handful of Homeworld games and few if any games that even try to mimic it's gameplay means that yes, it is underrated.
@@recoverhealth2062 Appreciated as RTS, yes. But I mean as a video game in general. It seems to me that Homeworld 1 deserves to be on all those lists of the best video games in history and everyone should play it whether you like RTS or not.
@@recoverhealth2062 yes, but I bet there are a lot of people just knowing the name, but they never have experienced the game. Just like people talking about Ultima or Wing Commander. Let's be honest: games like Ocarina of Time or Metal Gear Solid are part of successful franchises that are still making money and games (except MG, they technically killed it firing Kojima), but Homeworld was forgotten during 15 years. RTS isn't that mainstream 😔
One more thing - something I will always appreciate is how the game *continually* makes sure you don't get too cocky, either with the actual gameplay, set dressing or voice acting. One of my favorite examples included the high of meeting a Taiidani rebel, being promised a path through the empire, and entering a ship graveyard *with carcasses so large they literally become portions of the skybox.* Something as impressive as the Mothership, a craft bigger than an entire research station, which took nearly all of the resources of a planet and a century to build, made to look absolutely *miniscule* by something that was *thrown away* It's hard not to feel a touch of humility after seeing something like that, no matter how large your fleet was
The game was an unapologetic and imperfect masterpiece. When this came out in 1999 it probably killed the genre for being too intimidating to compete against, and Imperium Galactica 2.
its really weird how I can't really deny that its actually not a good RTS, and yet I love it, it basically grabbed entirely through atmosphere and narrative. I mean, even the story is really simple. and yet, its amazing and I don't think there is any other media that could convey the story of this game in the same way.
Wow, someone actually remembers Imperium Galactica 2? It's one of the few really good games developed in my country (Hungary), and I thought it was completely forgotten by now.
Considering the Sentinelese track record of *extreme* hostility towards anyone who isn't them, the idea of them suddenly becoming a power armor clad nuclear power is genuinely terrifying.
Which is funny, considering the shitshow on Kharak that was the prelude to the discovery of the hyperspace core, or the even bigger shitshow that got Hiigarans thrown out of their own planet, and got them slapped with that treaty.
Iirc they actually actively trade with locals nearby, they're just extremely wary of contact beyond that considering what's happened to their neighbours cause of colonialism, so they've course corrected to just being hostile by default
@@katarjin Yes, I think the Homeworld 2 lore is that the Hiigarans found a hyperspace core and become mega aggressive. I think they are depicted as being worse than the Taidan of the first game. In the end all the great civilisations work together to defeat them and their punishment is to give up all space travel and live on a inhospitable desert rock. So it gives a picture that they Hiigarans were almost unstoppable powerful and have wreaked havoc on all the other galactic races. I really think that the idea is that they are equivalent of Germany after the WW1 or Japan after WW2. The Galactic empires turn around and say that they must never ever be able to have anything nice in case they become a threat again. In this case the pre-exiles did some really really bad things. HW1 and HW2 paint the picture that certain factions (like Germany between WW1 and WW2) decide that perhaps completely destroying the Hiigaran culture, and depriving them of everything to the point they can only just barely survive, was a tad too far. But it also paints the picture that the Taidan destroy Kharak out of fear because of house dangerous the Hiigarans were the past.
Can really take you out of a game when you have a mass of combined arms and all you hear is voice lines from the single scout group that decided they were in charge
@@panzalinopanzultimate4796 I think cataclysm did it differently cause I only remember the Kuun-lann commander saying "come in, group 2" and other calls.
The idea that *after* HW: Cataclysm a Hiigaran ship and crew would willingly look for and enter an ancient derelict alien ship has always been funny to me. They just had to make Cataclysm not canon for HW 2 to make sense. To this day when the team finally finds the Mc Guffin and turns it on, I can't help to expect, for a half second, to hear "We... Live..."
The issue with HW2's scaling in HM1 is that if you play well enough, than the last mission becomes literally unbeatable; the enemy fleet becomes so huge that it destroys the Mothership even before your fleet can finish the spawn animation- and half of your fleet spawns out of bounds.
Also doesn't help that most of the ships at the start of the final mission are Ion cannons and they go straight for your mothership. Hope you have a lot of support frigates.
10:10 That was the first, and most emotional moment ever that i experienced in a game. The music, the subtle but unmistakable tremors of emotion in their usually professional monotones. And at the end when they say "There's nothing left for us here". Still brings tears to my eyes today, no matter how many times i see it.
In case anyone missed it, the voice of the Bentusi is played by the same actor who was the hybrid in BSG: Razor (Campbell Lane). His voice is so amazing and distinctive that I recognized it instantly when I first saw Razor. More evidence to support the theory that there were Homeworld fans on the BSG staff.
The Devs of Homeworld was originally trying for a BSG game, but couldn't get the rights and permissions so they just made their own setting. Rest in Peace Campbell. Amazing narration voice.
@@Razgriz_01 And where did you hear this apart from "your ass?" Homeworld released in 1999, it was developed over the course of 1998-99. The new BSG mini-series was released in 2003, five years later, and didn't become a full series until 2004 (and there isn't much of Homeworld in BSG until the main series really). Apart from the core premise of "ships flee planet A to get to home on planet B" which was in the original 1980 BSG, there's almost no similarities between Homeworld and the original like there are similarities between it and the 2003-4 remake (music, tone, voice actors et cetera). And that core premise is also the exact same premise as Exodus in the Bible, just in space, so it's EXTREMELY not new. So again, what's your source on that, apart from those I'm sure unflappable cheeks?
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe I mean. He was likely referring to the original 1980 Battlestar Galactica in the first place, dude. And while you're right that it's a somewhat dubious claim to make without citation, I think you need to calm all the way down because you seem really, really angry about this for little apparent reason.
now that I look back, Homeworld 1 is shockingly well written and presented, I still remembered back when I was young (around 5 -6 years old when I first play HW 1), not understanding a single line of English and yet "Kharaak is burning" hits me like a truck back then. The setup, composition, music and the voice delivery alone made be feels powerful emotion without the need to understand the language. Honestly without Homeword 1, I probably won't discover my love for Dune later on in life.
One thing that Homeworld 1 and cataclysm had than 2 didnt, and I hoped the remastered had, it was pilot view. Being able to watch a space battle from the front seat of any ship was just an awesome experience.
Okay it's been over two decades since I played the original, but I very don't remember that. Might have to go find it to see myself. Also for that original flavor experience
It always struck me how much effort they put into the story - like with Cataclysm's demo ships, crewed by those survivors who lost everything at Kharak.
I really love a particular line from after you leave the burning kharak with a prisoner taken off an enemy ship. After all the description of why your world got destroyed, the clinical way in which the guy says "The subject did not survive interrogation" speaks so much about the violence and rage that went on in that prison cell, fury over the destruction of your entire civilization boiling over on the one poor bastard who got caught. The line itself is delivered very deadpan, but the implications it carries have serious weight.
"What they don't have is Adagia for Strings." Small correction, it's actually the vocal version Agnus Dei by the same composer, Samuel Barber, that they used for the theme.
I haven't even touched Homeworld- always wanted to- but the Burning of Kharak always makes me sob. It's such an incredibly powerful moment that cannot be undersold and the level that goes along with it is phenomenal. People say narrative serves no purpose in games, but an engaging and investing story can really elevate the gameplay on a moment to moment basis. When your objective is "gather the resources" who cares, but when your objective is "gather the last cryogenically frozen remains of your recently genocided race as every man, woman and child left planetside burns to death" makes things way more interesting on a moment-to-moment basis.
Homeworld Cataclysm had such an impact on me growing up. It was my first introduction to Homeworld. It was so haunting and outright scary at times. I still get chills going back and watching playthroughs and cutscenes, hearing the terrified screams of the crew of ships getting infected and taken over by The Beast. Not often you find an RTS that is outright scary at times.
It's crazy how ahead of its time Homeworld was. And one of the first games that convinced me of the importance of a good soundscape. Might even have more impact than good graphics.
Something about these older RTS, or similarly less graphically-blessed as some more contemporary games always seems to inspire some weird gems of amazingly wonderful story that you don't expect- there's nothing like picking up a game twice your age and still feeling emotional about the story. I guess it's because with less graphical fidelity, a lot of worldbuilding and mood needs to go into putting the player into this world; it's a sort of "tell, not show" mentality that these games end up using to keep them on par even decades later. And there's always something in me that loves the voice acting in these- the game may have been limited by its technology at the time, but the performances of the actors are timeless, for better or worse. That and the writing really remind you that the game was made by people, humans- the kind of nostalgic connection that you just can't help but feel like we're losing in a lot of big, modern day titles. Here's hoping Halo Infinite can capture that sort of feeling- I really hope it can break out and people will end up looking at it as fondly as the previous titles, even through the rose-tinted nostalgia goggles.
This game isn’t old (well it is but it’s still in development), but dwarf fortress is a really good example of how attached you can get to little pixel men. The procedurally generated worlds have so much lore and every individual dwarf has their own life story. It’s crazy.
15:39 ... "no space for personal drama". Excellent choice of words there Mandalore. It's such a brilliant choice to put the player into Karan's shoes. She's responsible for the last ~500.000 of her people, leading them across half the galaxy, guided by a piece of rock. She doesn't know what to expect and neither does the player. Venturing into the unknown, in my opinion, is what HW really excells at ... on top of the full 3D gameplay.
There was another... Called "far gate." The very few memories I have of my father playing it included living vessels, Eaton other ships, and having a horror theme behind it, like you were lost in space, in a very, VERY, inhospitable place. Good memories, if you ever stumble upon that game, pls notify us/me, I would love to play it again.
I bought Homeworld when it came out, and prob last played it about 7 years ago. Wonderful and tense game. I think it was 2000 when my dad bought a new monitor for the computer and the first thing my parents said was show us what Homeworld looks like on the big screen! (It was bigger than the old screen but still small! :))
Homeworld is a master class in how you don't need over acting or complexity to tell a good emotional story. The right tone, the right inflection and the right music at the right time will hit those feels like a Somtaaw Siege Canon.
Love the remastered, but Cataclysm still holds a special place in my heart that will never be filled. I still get chills from some of the FMV sequences on subsequent replays. _WE WILL _*_NOT_*_ BE _*_BOUND._*
Oh no, F that game, I played that game when I was 7. First few missions were cool, but then the Beast got introduced. The screams of crew on that small research ship. Nah man, that game left me scarred for life
Homeworld 1 had some great horror elements, like the ghost ship, Cataclysm just took that and ran with it. Crazy they managed to do it in an RTS so effectively.
I found a sweet spot with the scaling multiplier. About .25 to .35 gives a sense that the lumbering Empire is mobilising more forces against you, but are so large and bloated they're taking longer to get those ships into place.
I remember watching my older brother play these games when I was a kid and sucked at games. Used to take tons of screenshots and poorly redraw them. Then about a year ago I downloaded them. Homeworld is incredibly nostalgic for me. The soundtrack still gives me goosebumps. Thanks for the faithful review!
Kharak burning brings literal tears to my eyes every time. It really doesn't help that as a kid I played HW2, then came back for Deserts of Kharak as a teen before picking up the remastered collection to see kharak burn is like seeing an old friend in pain.
There's no way that some portion of the 2003 BSG's production team wasn't inspired by Homeworld, their overall stories are way too similar to not have. And having the Hybrid in Razor be the same person as the Bentusi's VA was just icing on the cake. I also started sweating when it sounded like you were gearing up to defend the fuel system. You couldn't have put how it felt to be rid of it any better. Or about 2 taking away 1's strategy of "hippity hoppity, your ship is my property". Plus, I feel like 2's story existed primarily to set up Homeworld 3. Though, fun fact, you can yoink Makaan's dreadnought in the second-to-last mission and roll into the final mission with Sajuuk and both dreadnoughts.
It’s actually implied In the game that makaan got his dreadnought in the same place the hiigarans did. As there’s an empty dock similar to the one where you get your primogenitor dreadnought
I don't think it is even possible to beat that mission without that, it really was an life saver for me, as I was easily dispatching them because of that. Also separating your fleet is the key to beat that mission, use your fighters to exclusively hold of the missiles (especially if you want a flawless run) and spread your stronger ships like BCs, Dreadnoughs and destroyers to the map with the only purpose of holding of the attention of the main enemy ships, as it is the last mission all the loses on your fleet are completely valid and worth it, so you can be a LOT more liberal over how do you use those expensive ships
Homeworld is a game where you play as a shipgirl. Jokes aside, I completed this game this past summer and I'm still in withdrawal. It just has this beautiful and somber feel you can't get anywhere else in gaming.
Homeworld was the first game I got REALLY into; while future games caught my interest, nothing ever made me obsess over its lore and aesthetics like Homeworld did.
I would also recommend Ground Control 1, which released around the same period as Homeworld. There is no unit building or anything in that, what you bring to the battle is what you get, so it focuses more on unit formations and micro managing special abilities. Although the terrible AI path finding constantly requires handholding from the player.
I remember Ground Control, it was such a neat idea - you have this many units to accomplish this objective and no more. It reminded me of those missions in Starcraft where you start off with a handful of units, no base, and no SCVs.
@@Tuikkal It adds more weight to choosing the unit composition that you bring to to mission. But I have to agree that it's a bummer to replay a 30 minute mission from scratch if you fail at the final moments.
The secret to the Support Frigate is that you can use them to jump fighters in the early game. If you dock 8 fighters to a support ship and then jump the support frigate, it takes the fighters with you. You can use this for surprise attacks relatively early in the multiplayer game. Not a great tactic, but something that's fun.
plenty of stories have the players home destroyed by an invading force, but an entire planet getting glassed while an epic score plays is on a whole new level. instant chills
That probably has something to do with how if you play his vidoes backwards, you get instructions on either how to summon the devil, or make a delecious pie. Except for the E.Y.E review, which tells you how to make a delecious pie in a way that also summons the devil. Efficency good! :)
The soundscape of HW2 is absolutely unreal. It sounds like war. The visuals absolutely are up to par. Iff a ship gets hit with a big round, there's a corresponding scar there.
I remember when I was much younger, my dad used to play this on his PC in the dark, and sometimes I’d sit next to him in the living room and play Colony Wars on the PS1. It felt like I was a part of his fleet.
This brings back so many memories. I literally went through the majority of my first playthrough by yoinking enemy capital ships and hoarding my money. Also screaming "I just wanna go home damn it" in a few frustrating moments. This game was so ahead of its time it's mind boggling
I was really surprised that you didnt talk more about the technical difficulties the GOG version has. The Remaster version of the game doesnt launch right from Galaxy for many users, me included. Had to do some digging on forums and add certain launch arguments as suggested by the makers of the players patch for it to run the version of the game that lets you play campaign. Other than that, cool video. Always love to watch.
Crazy the love that went into this from the devs, and it really shows! while im bias as a person who wants to work in games, its stuff like this that i always point too when people call devs lazy when products are forced out, as give them time an the stuff they can do is insane.
After watching the new Dune movie, I realised that I have to get back to this game and especially to Deserts of Kharak. Mostly because of the feeling, and even though Dune's designs were weird on their own, they were unique and awesome too and Homeworld got that right too
This is one of the best examples of voice acting AND voice lines I've ever seen! They feel so natural and say things that, in most games nowadays, would have been added in the first place...they radio chatter feels so natural!
The return to kharak still hits me every time I watch that cutscene. Usually "everybody is dead" just doesn't work for me because it's just too big to matter but it works for homeworld.
It's because they fixate less on those that died...and more on those who can still be saved. "Hey, there are maybe a million of your people left, total. Get your ass in gear or there will be NONE of them left."
Rewatching this i notice how much the voice acting and ambient added to the atmosphere. The units voices sounded mostly routine aside from death- or other special soundpieces. Like someone doing their routine space-job instead of excited overacting like they're in space for the first time.
Man, starting your video with the goosebump-inducing Garden of Kadesh scene is the equivalent of a "pro gamer move" among youtubers! Its mind blowing how an old-old space strategy have more uniquely conveyed yet memorable emotional scenes than most of modern entertainment today.
Homeworld is one of those great scifi stories. The scale. The underplayed emotion. The music. The radio chatter. Lol. ... And the original credits music was phenomenal. Say "yes" to Yes.
Fun fact. In the game files for HW2, squadrons are a set number of ships, and that number can be whatever you want it to be, including one, so there was no excuse for them not being that at release. It was a design decision, not a limitation of the engine.
Homeworld 1 was one of those games that came with a big manual that contained a ton of lore. I still have mine from 1999. Classic game. Thanks for the review Mandalore.
'Our home,' still gives me chills every time I rewatch the cinematic. The slow creeping in of the letterbox and muting of the sound effects that signify a change in a mission's situation elicits in me a pavlovian response of 'pay attention' no other game have managed to instill. Homeworld games have a lot to them that other developers really should've been ripping off from day one, particularly where control interface, presentation and pacing are concerned. That more games don't bothers me in a way that I cannot express. You've covered the issue of formation and unit behaviour with the remaster of the first game, but it goes even deeper than that, to the very basics of the building blocks of gameplay. Homeworld 2 calculates hits and misses for projectile attacks with dice rolls, heavily specialising units in the process with the hit probability tables against different ship classes. It is no longer possible, for example, to stack enough firepower in a given stretch of space to be able to hit small and nimble targets even with guns not specifically designed for the task, making stuff like large ship point defense weapons in general and assault frigates in particular thoroughly useless in practice, and stuff like bombers the most useful unit in the game, bar none. The overall enforcement of rock-paper-scissors hard counters results in there being only one correct solution to any given problem, with the player being severely punished for attempting anything else. There is also no real use for the vertical movement capability in Homeworld 2. The directional armor, contrary to the statement in the video, either does not exist or is so diminished as to leave essentially zero impact on gameplay. What you may actually use it for is to bypass the beam attacks of certain enemy ship types that are strangely hardcoded to their elevation. Showing an enemy missile cruiser group some of your own to draw their attention and then flanking them with ion frigates to kill them fast enough to be able to intercept the other enemy group approaching your mothership from the opposite direction? That kind of rts goodness only exists in the original Homeworld 1, unfortunately. Hopefully 3 will revisit the concept. As for the Homeworld 2's story... I've happened to binge watch most of Space Battleship Yamato over the course of the last year, and if one were to put them side by side with the Homeworld games, some interesting parallels can be seen. A lot of what made both the original series and Homeworld 1 so memorable is quite similar in its approach to tone, atmosphere and pacing. And a lot of in what both Homeworld 2 and Yamato's multiple continuations were lacking look like stepping on the same set of rakes. For all that Cataclysm had its own issues, it did not try to reinvent the wheel and have the mothership attempt another desperate journey across the galaxy for reasons that longer made sense. 2 still has its mermorable moments ('we meet in the shadow of the angel moon' for me), but the loss of the story's grounding elements and their replacement with handwaving platitudes to not think about it too much made the narrative so much weaker than it could be. (Also I'm not sure if this was sarcasm or not, so I'll type it here just in case: Homeworld Emergence exists and it's a functional digital re-release of Cataclysm. It doesn't have the level of cosmetic polish of the other remaster, but what can you do.)
But nobody uses homeworld 1 special features in campaing. Fuel is a shi* decision. thats why STEAL SPAM EXIST. to just kill enemy with superiour firepower and dont care about the rest... The best homeworld game in therms of gameplay - HOM DOK. Even with superior air and artillery.
I rocked that bad boy on my ATI Rage 3D 4MB card back in the day. It worked until my fleet got too big. Then I upgraded to the 3DFX Voodoo3 2000 16MB card and it was a beauty. I remember too many odd things.
I distinctly remember playing the Hyperspace Inhibitor mission in original HW1 and salvaging every. single. Ion. Frigate. It was a death-stack beyond imagination - putting them in a single wall formation & it still wouldn't render all at once.
Deserts of Kharak was amazing take on modern land based strategy games. More like skirmish type rts. And story was masterfully integrated in prequel of homeworld series, giving not only same atmosphere, but lore which fits perfectly even with couple additions.
The voice work in this game is great. I can think of no better example than Fleet Intelligence saying on Level 1, "There's nothing left for us here. (breath) Let's go."
Did the QA for the remaster before the first patch. Didn't even know about the series but I fell in love with the lore and sense of atmosphere and scale. Really looking forward to 3
Homeworld Remastered Collection on GOG - gog.la/BananaShipQuest
Player Patch - www.moddb.com/mods/homeworld-remastered-players-patch
More Homeworld to come, though the start of next year is looking packed so we'll see how things roll out.
Thanks daddy 😚
Bless you Mandy, I hope the Coyotes never return
Yes..this will do nicely
Thanks for the holyday Boner mandalore
LInk doesn't work :(
EDIT: It does work (thanks Mandalore!), I just had to delete most of the URL after opening the link, so only the gog part was left.
For all the people pointing the whole "no sound in space" thing , the game actually accounts for that and in the setting menu you have the option do drag the master volume to 0. It's very immersive and enhances the experience, i assure you.
If my games doesn't simulate the every day of a deaf person then I am not immersed.
On a serious note screw those people I want to hear the guns and the engines.
they probably already do that, the only times they bitch about it is in movies where they don't have the option.
i hardly ever find people whine about it about games though.
You can even simulate playing far away from a star by turning off the monitor! No screen, or sound, just like devs intended game to be played!
I SEEE what you did there 🤣😅
I love how Mandalore just opts for the murder option.
"There is Homeworld 3 to keep an eye on."
Past Mandalore was so hopeful. So innocent.
=(
Why must hope always be a lie ):
Vicious girl
Another sweet baby casualty
@@dretchlord873 it isn't, it's just that we remember it best when it is
The thing that really got me about Homeworld is that you can zoom all the way into a resource collector and listen to them give status reports and chatter about their work.
You’d love some of the Total War games.
@@remembertotakeshowerspleas355 which is your favorite, besides any fantasy ones
@@esoopthederp7672 Either Shogun 2, which doesn't have that feature but has kick ass battle animation, or Attila. Shogun 2 is a fan favorite and is more noob friendly but really lacks content and variety, to the point of arguably only have two or three unique campaign experiences out of the dozen or so playable factions with the standouts (Ikko Ikki and Otomo) being paid DLC.
Attila is a balls to the wall clusterfuck that assumes you've played the previous historical Total War games and gotten a little bored of the old formula. It's great but will kick your ass and few of the factions are noob friendly. If you pick it up and don't have any experience with the other titles try playing the Franks or Saxons first because they have the only "normal" early game experience.
@@remembertotakeshowerspleas355 Some memorable banter from Rome II:
*unit runs out of javelins* „Guess the only thing we can hurl now are insults“ „Shut your mouth or I‘ll hurl you!
„They are fighting back!“ „Aye, enemies tend to do that.“
„Bah, the smell of enemies, it always upsets my digestion“
„What about the general, shouldn‘t we have seen him?“ „Don‘t worry about generals, they don‘t worry about YOU!“
„Why does everyone always try to kill us?“ „Or sell us their sister!“
*said by a roman auxiliary unit* „A roman yesterday said to me that what we do today shall echo in eternity…“ „HA, typical roman nonsense!“
I always played the game exclusively in the sonar/ tactical view within the ship, I greatly enjoyed the atmospherics of its from the relative silence and the bits and pieces of chatter,sound and such.
"No one is left... Everything is gone... Kharak is Burning" that shit still hits like a stone even 22 years later
Long range scans are detecting a significant debris ring in low kharak orbit.
"The subject did not survive interrogation."
True that. I've never played Homeworld at all, and that reveal still blew me away.
I feel like we should have more games like Homeworld, on top of getting that new Homeworld. The notion of a space RTS where you travel across the galaxy in a massive colonial mothership is worth having more settings built around.
Yeah man, that moment with adagio of strings sounding in the background, one of the most emotional videogame moments.
I've..never played the game.
My first introduction to it was a Homeworld trailer with the same soundtrack as when the burning takes place and the ships fighting..
I didn't have a clue how it got there on the computer (i was 6 ) and i just watched how the ships fought with the " Sad" music playing and i just wept..
Yea..might be the time to actually download and play it.
The thing where different control groups actually state their group number in the voicelines was so handy for keeping track of things in hectic situations and I wish more games did it.
The chatter is so immersive, the dread when a ship gets destroyed actually made me quit the game because it was getting on my nerves too much
"Group 2 reports victory"
Makes me smile every time 😀
@@augustday9483 Unless they just blew up the one your salvage corvettes almost had!
“Group 7 reports enemy contact.”
[Double taps 7]
Oh, it’s just a resource collector, ok.
[30 seconds later]
“Group 7, destroyed.”
A resource collector escorted by the entire enemy fleet, ok.
Sacrifice did it.
"Group 1."
"AYE!"
"Moov!"
"A-HA!"
"They were defeated, they didn't abandon ship, they didn't signal surrender. They knew not to expect mercy from us. We kept firing until our gun barrels deformed under the heat. We fired until our last projectile had left our ammo holds. She... didn't say anything. I think in that moment she envied us."
"Then they were upon us. A deadly hail of bullets thinned our ranks. A flight of our most experienced pilots was gone within seconds. Kareph took a direct hit in the cockpit. I took lead of the formation. Aalir died in the second wave. A flash of light and a pained crackle across the squadron frequency. I swore a bitter oath of vengeance, and the gods saw fit to grant me this favor."
Woah that’s some strong writing, is that in the manual?
What's the source of this?
@@KILLRAIN42 Manual of Homeworld
I have not read these words in over two decades.
One of my fondest memories of the Homeworld manual was the section on fleet tactics where two officers argued about fleet composition. One arguing for mainly capital ships supported by fighter screens while the other argued for wings of strike craft with logistical capital ships allowing the wings to cycle out damaged craft and refuel near the front lines. Both heavily criticized each other and pointed out flaws in their strategy from the complicated logistics and management of fighter wings to the prohibitively costly nature of capital ships, all in character. Homeworld really was something and at the end of the journey it finishes on a song by Yes as the final icing on the cake.
I don't think I'll ever forget my time with that game.
Right? Remember the whole section of that amazing song playing (The Ladder by Yes) with incredible concept art rolling in the background? That was truly amazing.
@@LordBurek shame they took it out...but licenses are a bitch.
the simulation aspect really sets it apart from the lazy modern game design aka gun has 70% accuracy vs small ships -> misses 30% of its shots with the small ship parked right in front of the gun
Yeah the fleet composition argument was great, one guy mentions the age of his opponent and that he might no longer be up to handle all the little fighters at once. My brother and I actually played a match testing the fighters vs battleships concepts. My capitals just focused down on his mothership while he was fiddeling with his corvettes. So that was settled then.
Reminds me of the Battleship vs Carriers debate in WW2
holy shit THIS is homeworld? All these years and no one told me my dream game of EVE offline already existed
That's precisely why it appealed to me so much when I saw the trailers for this
Yeah just dont play the remaster, play the original. The remaster is utter trash gameplay wise. And the 1999 og does not look that bad.
There's an oldish game called Starsector that's a bit like a single player top down version of EVE. Ship customization, salvaging parts and ships from enemies BattleTech style, ferrying goods (drugs usually) back and forth in a dynamically changing economy, exploring the depths of space for ancient technology to put on your ships, hunting pirates, even a base building element. I think Sseth did a review of it.
I dumped hundreds of hours into that game. The combat can take some getting used to but once you do it feels so satisfying to blow up enemy ships, or have your carrier's bombers swarm them. The game can be genuinely terrifying when you enter an unknown system only to wake up *something* that starts blowing up your radar and getting closer.
You might wanna check that out if "single player EVE" appeals to you. Lots of mods for it as well.
@@Atrahasis7 is this a joke
@@anthonyhall4170 No it is not. Sadly the gameplay of the remaster is really bad compared to the original, even with the patch. Not trying to be a weirdo purist or confrontational. Its a fact.
I remember playing this blind and the sequence where you arrive back at Kharak to find the place wiped out hit me like a tonne of bricks. There's a small but genius design choice there where when you hyperspace in the camera facing away from the planet, so you don't see it until you actually start looking around. It's tiny and subtle but totally makes that scene work.
There's a really good scene in Return of the Obra Dinn like that.
You've just gotten used to having a time-travelling pocket watch and magic notebook then WHAM.
@@awkwardcultism It blew me away, that moment in the Obra Dinn.
Both moments are now etched on my memories permanently.
I had spent the time waiting for the game to install reading the manual, and got enthralled by the worldbuilding such that I delayed starting the game by about an hour.
"Tonne of bricks" doesn't begin to cover my reaction to the Adagio. Once I finished the mission I had to log off and go touch grass because I was so upset by all the destruction.
Absotely agree, you shouldve seen my face bro
I played the games in chronological order and... man that hurt.
After seeing how Kharaks people got united under a common cause to them gettin wiped out of existence was painful.
Man, Homeworld was the game that turned me into a cross-country runner. My school was farther from home than my younger brother's, and I got out *just* enough earlier that if I ran the whole way (mostly uphill) right after school, I got home first and could park myself on the family computer. No game before or since has motivated me to run 5 miles (with a full bookbag!) just to play it. When Gearbox released the remastered collection, I was giddy. I even went with classic mode because it didn't feel like the real thing without the interface jank.
And I cried even harder than when I was a kid when I heard the King's College choir singing Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings when returning to Kharak after the hyperdrive test.
What a trooper. You won the internet today, sir.
This is what all game developers aspire their games to become.
Homeworld male grindset
A sci-fi RTS from the 90s with iconic dialogue that's generally ambitious and unknown. Now this is what I would call a prime Mandalore Gaming video.
Homeworld unknown? I was under the impression it was one of the four games that layed the very fundation of the genre, and one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 it's anything but unknown.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 it has been forgotten :(
Uneducated is calling Homeworld “unknown”
It's the hugest game in a relatively small pond so a weird situation.
Well, coming back after the Homeworld 3 video
same. What a shame.
@@dimas3829 I don’t anticipate there’s gonna be a Homeworld 4
Oh Mandalore, how hopeful you were here
I've never heard Mandalore have as much emotion in his voice as when he said we should kill the people who say there's no sound in space
Glad this pug isn't the only one done with those kinds of people.
It is completely correct. There are more of us than them.
Why? It’s just true. Does it need to be changed though? Probably not, would make the game a lot more boring
Like how one guy uses it to justify how unrealistic elite dangerous is, as if you being able to fly through the vastness of space on a shitty little spacecraft and also get super close to a star without dying wasn’t already a sign of where the game’s main attention went to
@@Icetea-2000 Because you can tell how smug some of these people are, they know people know but feel the need to say it just to feel fucking superior
Something I really love about Homeworld 1 is how the campaign really feels like a journey through the universe, rather than a typical RTS campaign. There aren't that many regular "destroy the enemy" RTS missions, and a surprisingly high number of missions where you don't fight the Taidan, the main antagonists. Instead you come across all sorts of unique situations, like journeying through an asteroid field where the only enemies are the asteroids. There's the Gardens of Kadesh, full of the religious zealot swarmers. You find a million year old spaceship controlled by an AI that can mind control your capital ships if they get to close. There's even that ship graveyard mission, where hostile junkyard ships try and grab your capital ships to steal them away forever (this mission was so infuriating to me as a kid that I outright had nightmares about it). I think this is something both Homeworld 2 and Deserts of Kharak lack, since both those games have missions that feel more like standard RTS "destroy the enemy" fare.
I didn't even knew they could capture your ships until I purposely tried to engage this mission in a tradicional way XD... First time that I did it, when I heard that I only needed to dock a fighter there and I just unlocked the cloacked fighter. First thing that came into my mind was to send an small squad stealtly from bellow, sadly some didnt managed to return, as the turrrets detect you even if cloaked. But still, was an worthy sacrifice only losing 5 out of 15 fighters from the mission. I found soo cool how almost every mission had an optimal way to do it that wasn't all that clear for you at first, and as you said, this was kindda lost in the newer games, even tho I preffer the engagements from Homeworld 2 that require way more strategy and tactical thinking, it begins to wear down after an whole campaign of just doing that. I really hope Homeworld 3 brings back those more "one of a kind" puzzle missions from Homeworld 1. At least from what I saw in the trailer there was one with a ship shooting asteroids so it might mean something...
@@olivierrodriguesneto5995 I just marathoned the game today and it turns out the Junkyard Dog is killable, though it has quite a lot of health. Also you can recover the ships it steals, since they will sometimes re-appear as enemy units and can be captured via salvage.
As a kid I recall getting past the Junkyard Dog by just having my units skirt around the sides of the debris field. For some reason if I went far enough way, it wouldn't seem to follow.
You should try Homeworld Cataclysm. It also has a great variety of missions. Even more than Homeworld 1.
@@Henskelion I swear it was possible to just grab the Junkyard Dog with salvage corvettes, you can't capture it but I thought it would freeze it in place for the whole mission. I know I froze it somehow, but can't remember for sure how, so this may not be entirely correct.
It's got such strong Dune vibes, somehow. It's probably the focus on tribes and desert traditions.
I adore how the first few missions go from optimism to fear to despair to determined resolve.
The first 3 missions of Homeworld are the benchmark in how strategy games should set the stage and prepare the atmosphere.
The sound design was on point too.
A squadron of fighters flatly saying "we're not gonna win this" or matter-of-factly stating with military detachment that "we have the advantage" is far superior than screaming "YEEEE-HAAAAW!" whenever there's some action on screen.
Homeworld 2 actually does have a lore book as well. The "History of Hiigara: Prelude to the End Times" pdf was included with the original Homeworld 2 CD, but was never officially printed like the original book. It added a wealth of information on the transition from Homeworld 1 to 2, the Hiigaran's lost history prior to exile, and did a lot to elevate the story IMO.
They really should have re-released it for the Remaster.
I still kick myself to this day for not keeping the original booklet.
@@1987CRER back the. The cd release of Hoemworld 2 had a thick manual. Thick thick thick.
You had the different ships shown. With stats listed. Story that could have been a nocel itself. The manual is something I miss from games nowadays.
WHAT. THIS IS WILD.
When I bought Homeworld 2 as a kid, I was SO PSYCHED because HW1 and Cataclysm both had the extensive lore in their manuals that fleshed out the universe and backstory in ways that enriched the entire gaming experience for me beyond what I had ever encountered in any other game. When I brought HW2 home with me and opened the manual to find the one, dinky little page of story exposition, I was so disappointed that I never actually played the game. It felt like straight-up betrayal!
This changes everything!
i had no idea about this
Homeworld 2 had a physical collector’s edition that was published in China and the lore book was a physical book. But sadly I can’t find it anymore.
Another great thing about Homeworld is the end credits song, called Homeworld (The Ladder) made by Yes, the prog-rock band. Jon Anderson and the band were in Vancouver to record their new album when he heard about Homeworld and he was always interested in doing a song for a videogame. He actually wrote the lyrics to fit the story of the game, it's a great song.
Too bad it's not part of the remaster. Have to mod it in.
wait what?? that's incredible, i love that
Every story I hear about Yes they just get cooler. How is that possible?
They deserve the world, if not for JoJo and Roundabout then they deserve it for this.
My dad was a big Yes fan and I remember us both enjoying the album. The CD was PC compatible and included a small but fun making of video with the band with some comments by Anderson.
Good memories.
Double dip on this comment if you bought thier CD it had the games ship customizer on the disk if you put it in your pc.
Man, the tone of the story between this and Homeworld 3 is night and day.
I felt like that crying guy from walking dead meme after I found out about homeworld 3 story
Fast-forward, and Mandy's review is out now.
3's story gave him psychic damage.
Everything woke goes to shit
"We don't have to put up with it. Let's just kill them!" From MandaloreGaming is one of the funniest lines I've ever heard. The normal, pleasant reviewer voice saying something so outrageous totally got me.
"Outrageous". Hah, yeah, sure.
That's just the "other" personality coming out every once in a while.
hey hey subhumans
I burst out laughing.
Very rare that a youtube video gets an audible laugh from me.
I used tobe obsessed with Homeworld, even ordered an ORIGINAL copy of HW2 on release and barely anyone bought legit games in my country back in the day. I only had ones from magazines and Gothic 2. Anyway you inspired me to play this again
Omg! Show a few skirmish in your channel! Btw, love your content
just watched your hoi4 Lithuanian vid and see you here, what a pleasant coincidence :)
Gothic 2. Good game!
Pleasant surprise seeing you here!
Yeah please show something from it, maybe not a whole length video but some shorts would be so cool
"We don't have to put up with it. Let's just kill them." Is gonna be printed in that motivational "live laugh love" text over my computer.
"The subject did not survive interrogation..." such a chilling line that says so much more. This "dumb little space rts" has such great and subtle writing.
Who ever called this a "dumb little space rts" though?
@@popnorbert8465 and what about that is subtle
@@sinisterwombat3128 this comment section is a mess of lads experiencing emotions for the first time and badly summarising the writing of the game lol
You can really _feel_ that after they dragged everything he knew out of him, they threw him to the crew and just let them reduce him to something that can no-longer be recognisable as human(Taiidan) with nothing but their bare hands.
@IntrepidTit get what?
Oh and its spelt cunt with a C
I'm hoping you'll talk about the Homeworld Cataclysm expansion as well, effectively merging survival horror in a space rts. Its great. And horrifying.
ruclips.net/video/cLmw5kJMT3s/видео.html
goddamit Cataclysm had this best dialogue writing of maybe any RTS ever.
It's a better follow up than 2 was story wise for sure.
@@MandaloreGaming Because by the same story writers, unlike HW2 !
ruclips.net/video/XXmfcXz-dZM/видео.html
@@MandaloreGaming I always thought the screeching about Cataclysm was always because it's story was far more "stable" than 2's. Like you were always looking for things in Catalysm, but that's because you were literally trying to figure out what was even going on for more than the first half of the game.
@@MandaloreGaming Cataclysm is still canon, as far as I know. Kiith Somtaaw is mentioned in 2 as still fighting the Vagyr with Kiith Soban after the rest of the Defense Fleet has basically collapsed, IIRC. Either way, Kiith Somtaaw wouldn't be fighting at all unless Cataclysm had happened since HW1 only refers to them as a Mining (and formerly Religious) Kiith. The Beast War made them a Warrior Kiith. (The feel of hearing "This is the Kiith Somtaaw Warship Kunn Lann." in the last mission.)
The whole problem with Cataclysm is that the source code is completely lost. You can't do a remaster because you'd have to reverse engineer the code from scratch. (And here we see I wrote this before the end of the video. Sorry.)
I'm so glad Mandalore mentioned the voice acting. I never played the original, but almost immediately when I played the remastered I knew why it was seared into some of my friends brains. The swelling music, and the dead pan voice of the narrators that is still somehow dripping with emotion they're announcing everything is dead is such good acting and elevates it to such heights.
“The subject did not survive the interrogation”. It’s one of the coldest and most brutal lines I have ever heard in a game. It’s how you say a lot while also saying very little.
I remember being very young when I heard that line, with the faint screams in the background my blood went cold.
Homeworld is so much of "Less is More".
@@Thurokiir1 Sorry mate, but someone have to:
There are no faint screams in the background (just checked both original and remastered because I believed you and thought that I might have missed a cool detail in one of my all time favourites). My guess is, that a younger you misinterpreted a repeating, wailing samples which were indeed a part of the ambient "music" playing throughout that cinematic.
And then it burned in your memory for eternity. Maybe because of how "fitting" to Fleet Intelligence's powerfully deadpan delivery it was?
@@milczyciel maybe he is remembering cataclysm.
Screams. Oh yes.
@@trazyntheinfinite9895 The cataclysm screams still scare me
I remember there was a strategy pirate game I played as a kid and there was an option to cut out somebodies tongue so I clicked it out of curiosity.
Then it showed a cut scene of a bearded man lifting a knife off of a table and it was one of the most disturbing things I have seen up to that point.
I Cant for the life of me remember anything else about the game. I was 7.
Homeworld is still probably the most atmospheric RTS game ever made.
some amazing mods as well
ironic cause you never fight in an atmosphere
When that first game came out, even looking at screenshots in Pc Gamer and stuff, it just didn't seem 'possible.' Such an incredible look that game has.
I don't think I could name another "atmospheric RTS" outside of the homeworld games
The only game I would put ahead of it would be the first MYTH game. Even thinking about the mission briefings in that game gives me shivers.
I remember my brother and I capturing as many Kadesh ships as possible in HW1, then keeping them alive through the rest of the game. We felt the loss of every one if they were destroyed.
I remember Homeworld 2 the first time you run into Battlecruisers. Lost no less than 8 Marine Frigates trying to take one but boy that ship carried some of the toughest mid-game missions. Then Makaan's Dreadnought melted it :(
@@MarvinT0606 Huh, as I've only ever captured a destroyer or some frigates - now that's an interesting challenge to revisit the game. Vaygr BC is my absolute favorite.
@@Desolator84 As far as the campaign goes, you can capture most ships except carriers, shipyards. Vaygr BCs are totally worth all the Marines you're gonna lose trying to capture one. Oh yeah, you can also capture Makaan's Dreadnought so by the last mission you have two of those things banging away at the Vaygr fleet.
@@MarvinT0606 you can get the other Dreadnaut?? I just played it yesterday and tried that but it didn’t work after the bar filled.
@@All_Mighty672 must have been playing with mods then but I remember capturing Makaan's dreadnought after I lost mine at mission 14
I guess I'm far from being only one who'd say that, but: about space changing as you move through campaign of Homeworld: Kharak is in the far reaches of the galaxy, while Hiigara lays close to it's core. Thus, as you move closer to it, density of stars around increases, and space becomes brighter. Might not be exactly how it would look, but still is a good idea. Plus, it indeed helps to make it sensible how you are moving into new and unknown places.
This detail is even more important in Homeworld 2: you start at the gloomy far end of the galaxy where the Mothership was built in secret. Then you fight your way to the bright center of the galaxy to pick up Sajuuk.
" Hiigara. Our home." man just hearing that line still gives me chills and makes me tear up a bit.
Just the concept of finding a map to you ancestral home that no one living today has even seen is just so mindboggling and emotional, and that line delivery... mmmmh its so good.
I so cant wait for homeworld 3, between that and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 its like the little 16 year old in my soul is getting a present just for them.
Speaking of stalker 2 thank fuck the devs stepped down from adding NFTs to the game.
About S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 I heard that they were going to shoehorn NFT's into it so I would hold my breath before the game launches.
HW1 was an epic journey across the galaxy with many unknowns.
HWC had you playing as outcasts with a pretty good story about defeating 'the Borg'.
HW2 was a plot about 'the chosen one', retconning the origins of the Kushan core, killing off the last of the Bentusi and having a crap ending. The original HW2 was supposed to focus on individual characters. The script is still available online and it sounds boring.
DOK was full of foreshadowing that made absolutely no sense and Rachel's brother was a completely unnecessary plot point. It's almost as if they tried to focus on individual characters, but didn't commit to it fully and instead tried to cater to fans of the original HW.
The story of HW has gotten worse with every game since Cataclysm and the remasters are worse than the originals in many aspects, so I don't see what all the hype is all about.
How the fuck would that even work? And why?
@@fonesrphunny7242 I guess watching Mandaloregaming video doesn't matter. Since gaming taste is completely subjective
One thing I would like to say about the voices being monotone (with them showing emotion through certain lines and not stating obvious pintless fact) is that typically that's how people communicate through radio in the military, as showing extreme emotions can make pilots distressed and not perform their jobs to their peak ability
I loved cataclysm too, the moment the space gypsies refuse to be corrupted and instead do suicide was really a emotional experience, man I loved those mystical guys. At the black market in stpetersburg the clerk said "this is the best game to ever exist" as he sold me a russian ripped copy of homeworld, omg he was right.
We will not be bound!
I personally felt that they could have woven the cataclysm story and lore into the main series. I didn't really think it clashed with HW2 given that in part it tells the story of how the Taiidan empire has been damaged and is in political turmoil after the events of HW1.
@@danielskinner1796 Cataclysm even explored elements of the reformed Taiidan / former rebels (a small plotline from Homeworld 1) working alongside you to confront The Beast, which was really cool. The enemy really felt like a galaxy-shaking threat, and your scrappy little "mothership" was sufficiently different from the H1 mothership that the campaign played totally differently.
Contrast that with Homeworld 2, where we're just repeating elements from the first game for... reasons. I was obsessed with H1 as a kid and I must have played through it half a dozen times, but every time I try to play H2 I lose interest around the third mission (the Vaygr are mind-numbingly boring and the huge hyperspace core retcon does them no favors).
Cataclysm added a lot more meaningful depth to the universe and was a blast to play. I hope it doesn't get completely written out of the series, but unfortunately since the source code is lost I don't think Gearbox is going to go the extra mile to rebuild it anytime soon. I still have the printed manuals for both H1 and Cataclysm and they're unironically some of my favorite things lol
@@imoons It seems Deserts of Kharak considered all the backstory of Somtaaw and its logo (both introduced in Cataclysm) to be canon. And Homeworld Revelations also mentions Homeworld Cataclysm. And the Mobile game lets you play as Somtaaw. So I would say its canon.
Let's hope we see some cataclysm reference in Homeworld 3.
@@igorokinamujika2073 That's awesome! I had no idea either of those were in development, really good to hear
"Could you draw her giving bi-"
I definitely did not expect that.
Well done.
Then the follow up
"Please don't draw her giving birth, she already does"
This line was sponsored by the Merchants Guild.
We need to order some new smut for Homeworld from Manda... khm i mean Sseth.
now draw her getting an education
@@corwincori861 Forever appreciate sseth for introducing me to lobotomy corp.
"Can you draw her giving birth" hit me completely out of left field.
This might be my favourite out of all your dry humour quips of all time.
I gotta lay down for a while now
Can you tho?
Where?
@@Flamme-Sanabi 12:02
@@Sneed1488v2 Yes I am sure he heard the line somewhere else first and thought it was funny and at a later point decided to put it in this video.
I've had the privilige of playing the recent prequel Homeworld: Deserts of kharak first without any prior experience with the franchise, and i must say after the whole game pumping your whole race up to the challange of building the mothership, the Homeworld Remastered tutorial hits even deeper...
Too bad the enemy AI was pretty primitive in Kharak. Other then that the new Dune movie and the original book is also very fitting for capturing a similar feel.
Everything is better when you have a good story to it. And Homeworld had it. They even managed to make a decent game out of it.
@@ujbx So was the AI in HW, but mission scripting did a good job at hiding it. Many of these scripts are broken in the Remaster. This and the messed up balance made Remastered a joke in terms of difficulty.
@@fonesrphunny7242 Its a shame BBI can't go back and make some fixes to Remastered since they're busy with HW3. Did the fan-patches even fix the messed up balances?
Love that
The Homeworld series is so underrated. The former and Cataclysm deserve to be alongside Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid, and other games from the video game hall of fame. They did so many new things and they did it so well.
Ahahahaa, underrated he says.
When someone thinks "rts in space" first game that comes to mind is Homeworld, they defined this kind of game, control system and camera system.
And the reason why it’s not is because it’s a pc game before steam. Very good game but it’s exposure was limited
@@recoverhealth2062 The fact that there are only a handful of Homeworld games and few if any games that even try to mimic it's gameplay means that yes, it is underrated.
@@recoverhealth2062 Appreciated as RTS, yes. But I mean as a video game in general. It seems to me that Homeworld 1 deserves to be on all those lists of the best video games in history and everyone should play it whether you like RTS or not.
@@recoverhealth2062 yes, but I bet there are a lot of people just knowing the name, but they never have experienced the game. Just like people talking about Ultima or Wing Commander.
Let's be honest: games like Ocarina of Time or Metal Gear Solid are part of successful franchises that are still making money and games (except MG, they technically killed it firing Kojima), but Homeworld was forgotten during 15 years. RTS isn't that mainstream 😔
One more thing - something I will always appreciate is how the game *continually* makes sure you don't get too cocky, either with the actual gameplay, set dressing or voice acting.
One of my favorite examples included the high of meeting a Taiidani rebel, being promised a path through the empire, and entering a ship graveyard *with carcasses so large they literally become portions of the skybox.*
Something as impressive as the Mothership, a craft bigger than an entire research station, which took nearly all of the resources of a planet and a century to build, made to look absolutely *miniscule* by something that was *thrown away*
It's hard not to feel a touch of humility after seeing something like that, no matter how large your fleet was
The game was an unapologetic and imperfect masterpiece. When this came out in 1999 it probably killed the genre for being too intimidating to compete against, and Imperium Galactica 2.
its really weird how I can't really deny that its actually not a good RTS, and yet I love it, it basically grabbed entirely through atmosphere and narrative. I mean, even the story is really simple. and yet, its amazing and I don't think there is any other media that could convey the story of this game in the same way.
I maintain that Relic peaked with the first Homeworld and they still haven't made a game this good ever again.
Wow, someone actually remembers Imperium Galactica 2? It's one of the few really good games developed in my country (Hungary), and I thought it was completely forgotten by now.
Considering the Sentinelese track record of *extreme* hostility towards anyone who isn't them, the idea of them suddenly becoming a power armor clad nuclear power is genuinely terrifying.
Which is funny, considering the shitshow on Kharak that was the prelude to the discovery of the hyperspace core, or the even bigger shitshow that got Hiigarans thrown out of their own planet, and got them slapped with that treaty.
@@Psytinker yeah it's actually a pretty good comparison lol
Iirc they actually actively trade with locals nearby, they're just extremely wary of contact beyond that considering what's happened to their neighbours cause of colonialism, so they've course corrected to just being hostile by default
@@Psytinker Pre-exile Hiigarans were a bit on the bad guy side....if I remember right.
@@katarjin Yes, I think the Homeworld 2 lore is that the Hiigarans found a hyperspace core and become mega aggressive. I think they are depicted as being worse than the Taidan of the first game. In the end all the great civilisations work together to defeat them and their punishment is to give up all space travel and live on a inhospitable desert rock. So it gives a picture that they Hiigarans were almost unstoppable powerful and have wreaked havoc on all the other galactic races.
I really think that the idea is that they are equivalent of Germany after the WW1 or Japan after WW2. The Galactic empires turn around and say that they must never ever be able to have anything nice in case they become a threat again. In this case the pre-exiles did some really really bad things. HW1 and HW2 paint the picture that certain factions (like Germany between WW1 and WW2) decide that perhaps completely destroying the Hiigaran culture, and depriving them of everything to the point they can only just barely survive, was a tad too far.
But it also paints the picture that the Taidan destroy Kharak out of fear because of house dangerous the Hiigarans were the past.
The way that selection groups actually say their group number when you select them is so cool. I wonder why more RTS games don't do this.
Can really take you out of a game when you have a mass of combined arms and all you hear is voice lines from the single scout group that decided they were in charge
@@panzalinopanzultimate4796 I think cataclysm did it differently cause I only remember the Kuun-lann commander saying "come in, group 2" and other calls.
"Group 2 reports victory"
YEEEEEEAH GOOD SHIT GROUP 2
The idea that *after* HW: Cataclysm a Hiigaran ship and crew would willingly look for and enter an ancient derelict alien ship has always been funny to me. They just had to make Cataclysm not canon for HW 2 to make sense. To this day when the team finally finds the Mc Guffin and turns it on, I can't help to expect, for a half second, to hear "We... Live..."
That would be a fucking hit to the stomach
The issue with HW2's scaling in HM1 is that if you play well enough, than the last mission becomes literally unbeatable; the enemy fleet becomes so huge that it destroys the Mothership even before your fleet can finish the spawn animation- and half of your fleet spawns out of bounds.
Is that what happens?! I never could figure out why I got so stomped so hard. It was annoying and ruined it for me
Also doesn't help that most of the ships at the start of the final mission are Ion cannons and they go straight for your mothership. Hope you have a lot of support frigates.
@@Razgriz_01 Well, no, but I do have 300 taidani ion cannon frigates, all freshly repainted...
so just play worse is what you are saying, right?
It was jarring as someone like me who is a turtle player and likes overdoing it fleet wise in RTS.
10:10
That was the first, and most emotional moment ever that i experienced in a game. The music, the subtle but unmistakable tremors of emotion in their usually professional monotones. And at the end when they say "There's nothing left for us here".
Still brings tears to my eyes today, no matter how many times i see it.
In case anyone missed it, the voice of the Bentusi is played by the same actor who was the hybrid in BSG: Razor (Campbell Lane). His voice is so amazing and distinctive that I recognized it instantly when I first saw Razor. More evidence to support the theory that there were Homeworld fans on the BSG staff.
The fact that he won't be involved in HW3 is (and yes I know how absolutely unfair this is) going to be a huge detriment to the game.
The Devs of Homeworld was originally trying for a BSG game, but couldn't get the rights and permissions so they just made their own setting.
Rest in Peace Campbell. Amazing narration voice.
@@Razgriz_01 And where did you hear this apart from "your ass?"
Homeworld released in 1999, it was developed over the course of 1998-99. The new BSG mini-series was released in 2003, five years later, and didn't become a full series until 2004 (and there isn't much of Homeworld in BSG until the main series really). Apart from the core premise of "ships flee planet A to get to home on planet B" which was in the original 1980 BSG, there's almost no similarities between Homeworld and the original like there are similarities between it and the 2003-4 remake (music, tone, voice actors et cetera). And that core premise is also the exact same premise as Exodus in the Bible, just in space, so it's EXTREMELY not new.
So again, what's your source on that, apart from those I'm sure unflappable cheeks?
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe I mean. He was likely referring to the original 1980 Battlestar Galactica in the first place, dude. And while you're right that it's a somewhat dubious claim to make without citation, I think you need to calm all the way down because you seem really, really angry about this for little apparent reason.
@@GM_Head Lol I'm not angry I'm just pointing out that he's full of it. You don't need to be angry at all to do that.
now that I look back, Homeworld 1 is shockingly well written and presented, I still remembered back when I was young (around 5 -6 years old when I first play HW 1), not understanding a single line of English and yet "Kharaak is burning" hits me like a truck back then. The setup, composition, music and the voice delivery alone made be feels powerful emotion without the need to understand the language. Honestly without Homeword 1, I probably won't discover my love for Dune later on in life.
One thing that Homeworld 1 and cataclysm had than 2 didnt, and I hoped the remastered had, it was pilot view. Being able to watch a space battle from the front seat of any ship was just an awesome experience.
Okay it's been over two decades since I played the original, but I very don't remember that. Might have to go find it to see myself. Also for that original flavor experience
It always struck me how much effort they put into the story - like with Cataclysm's demo ships, crewed by those survivors who lost everything at Kharak.
I really love a particular line from after you leave the burning kharak with a prisoner taken off an enemy ship. After all the description of why your world got destroyed, the clinical way in which the guy says "The subject did not survive interrogation" speaks so much about the violence and rage that went on in that prison cell, fury over the destruction of your entire civilization boiling over on the one poor bastard who got caught. The line itself is delivered very deadpan, but the implications it carries have serious weight.
There is no withdrawal from the garten of kadesh
This is where I watched Bittergiggle die, Human.
@@manofthehour8945At least he died of laughter
"What they don't have is Adagia for Strings."
Small correction, it's actually the vocal version Agnus Dei by the same composer, Samuel Barber, that they used for the theme.
5:04 there’s actually a mod on the steam workshop that fixes a lot of those issues and added fuel back in to HW1RM as well.
Would you mind telling me what it's called? Because it's not the player's patch afaik.
I'm also putting a reply in here so I hopefully get notified if you ever respond.
Is that not the player patch he mentions at the end of that section?
Also hoping to hear which mod this is
Ok guys Hang on. I’m not by my computer yet. Once I get back, I’ll let you guys know the name of the mod. Maybe even link it for you all.
"Third Impact Confirmed!"
*Komm Susser Tod starts playing*
That got a chuckle out of me.
I haven't even touched Homeworld- always wanted to- but the Burning of Kharak always makes me sob. It's such an incredibly powerful moment that cannot be undersold and the level that goes along with it is phenomenal.
People say narrative serves no purpose in games, but an engaging and investing story can really elevate the gameplay on a moment to moment basis. When your objective is "gather the resources" who cares, but when your objective is "gather the last cryogenically frozen remains of your recently genocided race as every man, woman and child left planetside burns to death" makes things way more interesting on a moment-to-moment basis.
Thankfully, games like Planescape Torment and more recently Disco Elysium have proven that sentiment of "narrative serves no purpose in games" wrong.
Who tf says narrative suits no purpose in games
Literally WHO has ever said that?
*"Mandalore, mind telling us what are you doing?"*
Mandy : *"Sir, **-bringing the golden days of RTS back-** finishing Homeworld's review"*
Mandy can't totally pull it off unless he also gets to resurrect Westwood entirely.
Billy: HAHUHAHAHUHAA
I think you're like botting your own comments
@@jackmak2980 you're part of the bot patrol
@@jackmak2980 Its pretty obvious.
Homeworld Cataclysm had such an impact on me growing up. It was my first introduction to Homeworld. It was so haunting and outright scary at times. I still get chills going back and watching playthroughs and cutscenes, hearing the terrified screams of the crew of ships getting infected and taken over by The Beast. Not often you find an RTS that is outright scary at times.
It's crazy how ahead of its time Homeworld was. And one of the first games that convinced me of the importance of a good soundscape. Might even have more impact than good graphics.
@@DrTiggy666 Indeed, Company of Heroes! I should play BC2 one day. People keep repeating how good the sound design is in that game.
Something about these older RTS, or similarly less graphically-blessed as some more contemporary games always seems to inspire some weird gems of amazingly wonderful story that you don't expect- there's nothing like picking up a game twice your age and still feeling emotional about the story. I guess it's because with less graphical fidelity, a lot of worldbuilding and mood needs to go into putting the player into this world; it's a sort of "tell, not show" mentality that these games end up using to keep them on par even decades later.
And there's always something in me that loves the voice acting in these- the game may have been limited by its technology at the time, but the performances of the actors are timeless, for better or worse. That and the writing really remind you that the game was made by people, humans- the kind of nostalgic connection that you just can't help but feel like we're losing in a lot of big, modern day titles.
Here's hoping Halo Infinite can capture that sort of feeling- I really hope it can break out and people will end up looking at it as fondly as the previous titles, even through the rose-tinted nostalgia goggles.
This game isn’t old (well it is but it’s still in development), but dwarf fortress is a really good example of how attached you can get to little pixel men. The procedurally generated worlds have so much lore and every individual dwarf has their own life story. It’s crazy.
15:39 ... "no space for personal drama". Excellent choice of words there Mandalore.
It's such a brilliant choice to put the player into Karan's shoes. She's responsible for the last ~500.000 of her people, leading them across half the galaxy, guided by a piece of rock. She doesn't know what to expect and neither does the player. Venturing into the unknown, in my opinion, is what HW really excells at ... on top of the full 3D gameplay.
There was another... Called "far gate."
The very few memories I have of my father playing it included living vessels, Eaton other ships, and having a horror theme behind it, like you were lost in space, in a very, VERY, inhospitable place.
Good memories, if you ever stumble upon that game, pls notify us/me, I would love to play it again.
I bought Homeworld when it came out, and prob last played it about 7 years ago. Wonderful and tense game. I think it was 2000 when my dad bought a new monitor for the computer and the first thing my parents said was show us what Homeworld looks like on the big screen! (It was bigger than the old screen but still small! :))
I appreciate your wholesome comment.
Homeworld is a master class in how you don't need over acting or complexity to tell a good emotional story. The right tone, the right inflection and the right music at the right time will hit those feels like a Somtaaw Siege Canon.
I forgot about this, but the moment the Motheship jumped back I remembered the words..
"Kharak is burning."
And then the radio kicked in. "We didn't start the Fire!"
@@trazyntheinfinite9895 Quiet.
Love the remastered, but Cataclysm still holds a special place in my heart that will never be filled. I still get chills from some of the FMV sequences on subsequent replays.
_WE WILL _*_NOT_*_ BE _*_BOUND._*
Cataclysm is gone (in name) but Emergence takes it's place.
Oh no, F that game, I played that game when I was 7. First few missions were cool, but then the Beast got introduced. The screams of crew on that small research ship. Nah man, that game left me scarred for life
Cataclysm manages to make such a stupid idea as zombie spaceships work and even be terrifying.
Homeworld 1 had some great horror elements, like the ghost ship, Cataclysm just took that and ran with it. Crazy they managed to do it in an RTS so effectively.
"You're worse than the beast! At least the beast doesn't pretend to be righteous!!" Coldest burn in space.
I found a sweet spot with the scaling multiplier.
About .25 to .35 gives a sense that the lumbering Empire is mobilising more forces against you, but are so large and bloated they're taking longer to get those ships into place.
I remember watching my older brother play these games when I was a kid and sucked at games. Used to take tons of screenshots and poorly redraw them. Then about a year ago I downloaded them. Homeworld is incredibly nostalgic for me. The soundtrack still gives me goosebumps. Thanks for the faithful review!
Kharak burning brings literal tears to my eyes every time. It really doesn't help that as a kid I played HW2, then came back for Deserts of Kharak as a teen before picking up the remastered collection to see kharak burn is like seeing an old friend in pain.
There's no way that some portion of the 2003 BSG's production team wasn't inspired by Homeworld, their overall stories are way too similar to not have. And having the Hybrid in Razor be the same person as the Bentusi's VA was just icing on the cake.
I also started sweating when it sounded like you were gearing up to defend the fuel system. You couldn't have put how it felt to be rid of it any better. Or about 2 taking away 1's strategy of "hippity hoppity, your ship is my property". Plus, I feel like 2's story existed primarily to set up Homeworld 3. Though, fun fact, you can yoink Makaan's dreadnought in the second-to-last mission and roll into the final mission with Sajuuk and both dreadnoughts.
36:23 *"Third impact confirmed"*
**Plays Komm Susser Todd*
Perfection 😂
Happy holiday to you, Mandy. All of you too!
It’s actually implied In the game that makaan got his dreadnought in the same place the hiigarans did. As there’s an empty dock similar to the one where you get your primogenitor dreadnought
It went from this to a Disney movie about a Marysue teaching the Galaxy the values of Friendship & Love
Or something
Just a tip the Sajuuk has a hyper drive you can use in the last mission to get around faster. Great Review. :)
loved your last review, keep it up!
BRING SAJUUK TO BEAR
BRING SAJUUK TO BEAR
BRING SAJUUK TO BEAR
I don't think it is even possible to beat that mission without that, it really was an life saver for me, as I was easily dispatching them because of that. Also separating your fleet is the key to beat that mission, use your fighters to exclusively hold of the missiles (especially if you want a flawless run) and spread your stronger ships like BCs, Dreadnoughs and destroyers to the map with the only purpose of holding of the attention of the main enemy ships, as it is the last mission all the loses on your fleet are completely valid and worth it, so you can be a LOT more liberal over how do you use those expensive ships
@@olivierrodriguesneto5995 It is possible, just requires multiply tries and maybe your sanity.
@@philipcreamer4 Now there is a old meme
Homeworld is a game where you play as a shipgirl.
Jokes aside, I completed this game this past summer and I'm still in withdrawal. It just has this beautiful and somber feel you can't get anywhere else in gaming.
Best thing about it, is that it lets you imagination go wild and you just crave more of it.
It is my assertion that you play as _best_ shipgirl. I am aware others may object to this, and my response will be bringing Sajuuk to bare.
@@Sorain1 Bring Sajuuk to BEAR
Homeworld was the first game I got REALLY into; while future games caught my interest, nothing ever made me obsess over its lore and aesthetics like Homeworld did.
I would also recommend Ground Control 1, which released around the same period as Homeworld. There is no unit building or anything in that, what you bring to the battle is what you get, so it focuses more on unit formations and micro managing special abilities. Although the terrible AI path finding constantly requires handholding from the player.
And no saving during a mission which is a big bummer.
I remember Ground Control, it was such a neat idea - you have this many units to accomplish this objective and no more. It reminded me of those missions in Starcraft where you start off with a handful of units, no base, and no SCVs.
@@stevepittman3770 That genre is called RTT. Real-Time Tactics. Commandos, Desperados, Sudden Strike, Ground Control, ...
@@Tuikkal It adds more weight to choosing the unit composition that you bring to to mission. But I have to agree that it's a bummer to replay a 30 minute mission from scratch if you fail at the final moments.
@@5chneemensch138 There is also the Soldiers Heroes Of WW2 + Men of War series as well
I liked seeing the homeworld 1 physics engine. Seeing ships start to tilt due to different types of weapons fired at them was neat.
Honestly hw is just so fucking good I can't bring myself to play the remaster
Had to come back here after the depressing HW3 review.
The secret to the Support Frigate is that you can use them to jump fighters in the early game.
If you dock 8 fighters to a support ship and then jump the support frigate, it takes the fighters with you. You can use this for surprise attacks relatively early in the multiplayer game. Not a great tactic, but something that's fun.
I have no idea what is going on, but the ships all look so pretty and the story sounds amazing.
Play it, you won't regret it!
plenty of stories have the players home destroyed by an invading force, but an entire planet getting glassed while an epic score plays is on a whole new level. instant chills
I am always so stupidly excited for long Mandalore videos. truly some of the best content on RUclips
Can't agree enough
So true
Here here!
Top notch content
That probably has something to do with how if you play his vidoes backwards, you get instructions on either how to summon the devil, or make a delecious pie. Except for the E.Y.E review, which tells you how to make a delecious pie in a way that also summons the devil. Efficency good! :)
The soundscape of HW2 is absolutely unreal. It sounds like war. The visuals absolutely are up to par. Iff a ship gets hit with a big round, there's a corresponding scar there.
I remember when I was much younger, my dad used to play this on his PC in the dark, and sometimes I’d sit next to him in the living room and play Colony Wars on the PS1. It felt like I was a part of his fleet.
This brings back so many memories. I literally went through the majority of my first playthrough by yoinking enemy capital ships and hoarding my money. Also screaming "I just wanna go home damn it" in a few frustrating moments. This game was so ahead of its time it's mind boggling
I was really surprised that you didnt talk more about the technical difficulties the GOG version has. The Remaster version of the game doesnt launch right from Galaxy for many users, me included. Had to do some digging on forums and add certain launch arguments as suggested by the makers of the players patch for it to run the version of the game that lets you play campaign.
Other than that, cool video. Always love to watch.
Crazy the love that went into this from the devs, and it really shows! while im bias as a person who wants to work in games, its stuff like this that i always point too when people call devs lazy when products are forced out, as give them time an the stuff they can do is insane.
After watching the new Dune movie, I realised that I have to get back to this game and especially to Deserts of Kharak. Mostly because of the feeling, and even though Dune's designs were weird on their own, they were unique and awesome too and Homeworld got that right too
The wide desert with Arabic instruments playing really gives off a Dune vibe that's inseparable
This is one of the best examples of voice acting AND voice lines I've ever seen!
They feel so natural and say things that, in most games nowadays, would have been added in the first place...they radio chatter feels so natural!
The return to kharak still hits me every time I watch that cutscene. Usually "everybody is dead" just doesn't work for me because it's just too big to matter but it works for homeworld.
It's because they fixate less on those that died...and more on those who can still be saved. "Hey, there are maybe a million of your people left, total. Get your ass in gear or there will be NONE of them left."
Rewatching this i notice how much the voice acting and ambient added to the atmosphere. The units voices sounded mostly routine aside from death- or other special soundpieces. Like someone doing their routine space-job instead of excited overacting like they're in space for the first time.
That "all orbital facilities destroyed" line is forever etched on to my brain
Man, starting your video with the goosebump-inducing Garden of Kadesh scene is the equivalent of a "pro gamer move" among youtubers!
Its mind blowing how an old-old space strategy have more uniquely conveyed yet memorable emotional scenes than most of modern entertainment today.
Homeworld is one of those great scifi stories.
The scale. The underplayed emotion. The music. The radio chatter. Lol. ...
And the original credits music was phenomenal. Say "yes" to Yes.
Fun fact. In the game files for HW2, squadrons are a set number of ships, and that number can be whatever you want it to be, including one, so there was no excuse for them not being that at release. It was a design decision, not a limitation of the engine.
Homeworld 1 was one of those games that came with a big manual that contained a ton of lore. I still have mine from 1999. Classic game. Thanks for the review Mandalore.
'Our home,' still gives me chills every time I rewatch the cinematic. The slow creeping in of the letterbox and muting of the sound effects that signify a change in a mission's situation elicits in me a pavlovian response of 'pay attention' no other game have managed to instill. Homeworld games have a lot to them that other developers really should've been ripping off from day one, particularly where control interface, presentation and pacing are concerned. That more games don't bothers me in a way that I cannot express.
You've covered the issue of formation and unit behaviour with the remaster of the first game, but it goes even deeper than that, to the very basics of the building blocks of gameplay. Homeworld 2 calculates hits and misses for projectile attacks with dice rolls, heavily specialising units in the process with the hit probability tables against different ship classes.
It is no longer possible, for example, to stack enough firepower in a given stretch of space to be able to hit small and nimble targets even with guns not specifically designed for the task, making stuff like large ship point defense weapons in general and assault frigates in particular thoroughly useless in practice, and stuff like bombers the most useful unit in the game, bar none. The overall enforcement of rock-paper-scissors hard counters results in there being only one correct solution to any given problem, with the player being severely punished for attempting anything else.
There is also no real use for the vertical movement capability in Homeworld 2. The directional armor, contrary to the statement in the video, either does not exist or is so diminished as to leave essentially zero impact on gameplay. What you may actually use it for is to bypass the beam attacks of certain enemy ship types that are strangely hardcoded to their elevation. Showing an enemy missile cruiser group some of your own to draw their attention and then flanking them with ion frigates to kill them fast enough to be able to intercept the other enemy group approaching your mothership from the opposite direction? That kind of rts goodness only exists in the original Homeworld 1, unfortunately. Hopefully 3 will revisit the concept.
As for the Homeworld 2's story... I've happened to binge watch most of Space Battleship Yamato over the course of the last year, and if one were to put them side by side with the Homeworld games, some interesting parallels can be seen. A lot of what made both the original series and Homeworld 1 so memorable is quite similar in its approach to tone, atmosphere and pacing. And a lot of in what both Homeworld 2 and Yamato's multiple continuations were lacking look like stepping on the same set of rakes. For all that Cataclysm had its own issues, it did not try to reinvent the wheel and have the mothership attempt another desperate journey across the galaxy for reasons that longer made sense. 2 still has its mermorable moments ('we meet in the shadow of the angel moon' for me), but the loss of the story's grounding elements and their replacement with handwaving platitudes to not think about it too much made the narrative so much weaker than it could be.
(Also I'm not sure if this was sarcasm or not, so I'll type it here just in case: Homeworld Emergence exists and it's a functional digital re-release of Cataclysm. It doesn't have the level of cosmetic polish of the other remaster, but what can you do.)
But nobody uses homeworld 1 special features in campaing. Fuel is a shi* decision. thats why STEAL SPAM EXIST. to just kill enemy with superiour firepower and dont care about the rest... The best homeworld game in therms of gameplay - HOM DOK. Even with superior air and artillery.
I rocked that bad boy on my ATI Rage 3D 4MB card back in the day. It worked until my fleet got too big. Then I upgraded to the 3DFX Voodoo3 2000 16MB card and it was a beauty. I remember too many odd things.
I distinctly remember playing the Hyperspace Inhibitor mission in original HW1 and salvaging every. single. Ion. Frigate.
It was a death-stack beyond imagination - putting them in a single wall formation & it still wouldn't render all at once.
Deserts of Kharak was amazing take on modern land based strategy games. More like skirmish type rts.
And story was masterfully integrated in prequel of homeworld series, giving not only same atmosphere, but lore which fits perfectly even with couple additions.
The voice work in this game is great. I can think of no better example than Fleet Intelligence saying on Level 1, "There's nothing left for us here. (breath) Let's go."
Did the QA for the remaster before the first patch. Didn't even know about the series but I fell in love with the lore and sense of atmosphere and scale. Really looking forward to 3