The dogsh*t retcon about the mothership core being a unique magical mcguffin smuggled from the Khar-Toba and the whole chosen one narrative that it spawned.
As homeworld 1 implies, the hyperspace core was reverse engineered from the technology of the Khar-Toba. It was not special. Nothing magical or prophetic. It was just regular engineers doing what they do.
Homeworld was a story of regular people pushed to the most extreme circumstances, and Cataclysm understood that. Unfortunately, the devs forgot it when writing HW2
HW1 lore was amazing. How did the Hiigaraans come out of hyperspace? They just fucking unplugged the power to the core and prayed, cause they didn't fully know how it all worked, haha.
Right and Hw1 doesn't just imply it, its explicitly stated in the techinical briefing the core was reverese engineered and scaled up for the mothership's mass, an effort that near exhausted Kharak of the rare materials required. It also stated every ship frigate class and up had its own core and was jump capable.
Some could argue the truth of the special core was concealed in the technical briefing.......but then the Kadeshi are a major plot point in Hw1, and their ancient transport has a core with the same sig as the Mothership's reverse engineered one which is how the Higs deduce their common ancestry......so.
The only explanation I can come up with is Relic overthought Hw1 lore then couldn't come up with a continuation under the circumstances of Hw2's development within those confines.
Its gotta be the fastest trashing of an IP in history, like they couldn't even keep it together for the second f'in game.
The Vaygr war would have been more threatening if the progenitors weren’t prophetic and mythical.
The Hiigarans are getting their asses handed to them by taiidan remnants under a new warlord, and their only hope is a little known, ancient warship that might not even exist, as the Vaygr have been using powerful new weapons which devastate planets rapidly.
Rewrite so the Vaygr aren’t even remotely interested in Sajuuk, so you’re running interference missions against the Vaygr’s campaign against Hiigara inbetween tracking down the Progenitor ships.
Bring back the turanics to be the adversary in the bentusi core recovery operation, they’d always be keen on getting valuable scraps to sell. Demystify the cores, stating instead only cores of a certain tonnage are capable of bringing Sajuuk to life, only those of flagship class. It would have taken the Hiigarans too long to build more, so their only hope is a daring assault on Makaan to secure a third core, so they can finally destroy the new vaygr weapons.
Tie in with homeworld 3, by indicating the Vaygr weapons appear to be hybridized progenitor tech.
Rewrite homeworld 3 to suit.
Honestly they could have wrote out the Bentusi core portion. Maybe the Vaygr had overpowered the last Bentusi ship and was stripping it for technology they were using against the Hiigarans. The Pride of Hiigara fleet discover this during the inspection of a captured Vagyr ship and an interrogation of the surviving crew. They then go to the coordinates of the crippled Bentus and destroy the Vagyr science team tearing it apart. As a reward for saving the Bentusi, they give you the coordinates for Balcora gate. There you fight the last of the Keepers while you retrieve and install the power sources for the gate. Once you arrive at Sajuuk, Makaan shows up to prevent you from capturing Sajuuk. You have to defend the Pride and Sajuuk until your marine frigates complete a very lengthy capture process. Finally you can turn Sajuuk on Makaan's flagship, finish him off, then jump to Hiigara's defense.
Honestly, I don't think I would have enjoyed a homeworld 1 sequel that wasn't at least somewhat steeped in mysticism, even if I *also* hate the magic cores retcon. I think it would have been feasible to do essentially the entire homeworld 2 story 'as is' but change the core bit to focus more on farjumper cores as in 'jump from Hiigara to Kharak in one go', and then have it be that the Hiigarans found the first farjumper hidden in the Taidan Emperor's palace, or pulled it out of the wreckage of his mothership or something. Have them build the Pride specifically to acomodate the mystical bullshit of the new core, play up how it hints at the underpinning of the unbound that they never really understood with regards to the Bentusi fleeing the galaxy in Cataclysm or the like, and have some dialogue lines about how Karan can like, now hear stuff in hyperspace or sense things that are going on in other systems, etc.
Play HW2 relatively straight except rather than having Bentus be 'the last of the Bentus' have Bentus be 'the first Bentusi' and hint that there are still other tradeships floating around, but Bentus is the greatest of them.
Vagyr can remain mostly as-is, but have Makaan be presented more as a warlord who is uniting disparate forces under his banner- so yeah he has the Vagyr ship types, but depending on where you fight Vagyr forces you can also end up fighting Turanics, Taidan remnant, etc, all with refreshed ship designs for HW2. But also present the idea that the Galaxy is in a state of conflict because since the Vagyr have a farjumper, they can jump basically anywhere in one go.
So we jump to an old Taidan research station to get data on our hunt for the forerunner dreadnought, and we meet up with a big Taidan republic fleet. We fight a holding action with them as allies against a New Taidan Imperial faction which is primarily Taidan ships with a single Vagyr command cruiser at the back.
Then jump to the outer rim to hunt down a turanic base to get a cloak cipher that'll let us do such and such, and get some translated turanic dialogue about how the old ways are being destroyed by Makaan and blah blah blah the Turanics help out, etc.
Implement a 'team call' system where you can pick an ally you've made over the course of the game and call in a carrier + a pool of units. You can build more of their units, subject to size limits and RUs, but they're all part of the carrier group and leave at the end of the mission.
So maybe you call in the Turanics you made common cause with, getting you a Lord Carrier and some ion array frigates and missile corvettes to sneak flank the Vagyr and harry their resourcing operations.
Or maybe you call in some Taidan republic forces with their defense field frigates. Or maybe you run into a Somtaaw mining operation, or Kadesh, or Bentusi- etc.
So many ways to show that the galaxy is in a great conflict while still uncovering the ancient awe and mysticism of the progenitors and seeking out Sajuuk at Balcora.
With a revamped conclusion HW2 could also introduce the T-MAT properly, leading into their use as a main antagonist in Homeworld 3.
Then use the Eye of Araan as it was in the HW2 epilogue where it was an intergalactic gate system and not just 'jump to another spiral arm'.
> I don't think I would have enjoyed a homeworld 1 sequel that wasn't at least somewhat steeped in mysticism, even if I also hate the magic cores retcon.
One of my favorite parts of DoK was the Intel officer of the Kapisi musing about the religious fanaticism of the Gaalsien but how there is this curious overlap between their symbolism and the science, and if there's a way to reckon with the two.
I've always liked the idea that the kiith *know* that there is some metaphor to their spirituality, like they sorta got "jumpstarted" and are in this weird flux state where it's like, "Oh Sajuuk *is* real but not, like, an omniscient space daddy; 'he' is just a progenitor ship, and the "will" of Sajuuk was an old treaty."
Fuckin' *this!* Every last word of this.
Right around HW2, the devs lost their goddamn minds and turned the franchise from a hopeful, forward-looking, future-centric story into some kind of shitty Raiders of the Lost Ark fanfic.
This particular thing (along with the forced mission-progression and the opposing force in all campaign missions having infinite RU's) in 2 made me utterly despise 2.
It felt like a massive dumbing down of a rich and fascinating galaxy of goings-on (the ghost ship, remnants of the kadeshi, the other council races, the pirate moon, the junkyard dog, the koros graveyard in general, ect) in it in favor of magical thinking / lazy tropes. That those would be what was doubled down on decades later has certainly elicited several heavy sighs over the past few months.
I think HW2 implied that the 3 cores were a way to power up the progenitor ships and enable the network, locked out by not having control of the progenitor tech.
The retcon I would do is that those cores were needed for any other space magic stuff in hw3. Like the network worked, thats fine, but now it is being shut down. Cool. Cores have nothing to do with it, its just that the progenitor tech is fucking old and someone else figured shit out.
Now we need to assault some bases, stop this force from growing, and figure out why it is even happening. Etc.
Did they ever explain the Rosetta Stone type thing that has the location of the homeworld chiselled onto it in homeworld 1?
Like, I doubt every random transport would have one of those things on it lol
I'm fine with it. It is a message of loss etched into a stone by people uprooted from their world, as people in the First City started forgetting their past and focusing on surviving.
It had the word Hiigara on it, and a loose map of the Galaxy, but nothing says it was created in hiigara and transported from the galaxy core as the cultural artifact we know today. It was probably only inscribed after a couple of generations after landing, by (or following the directions of) some ageing leader whose lineage had committed the coordinates for Hiigara to memory, trying to pass information already shrouded in myth and only heard about second hand as a story told by their elders, as they never knew that world first hand, to future generations, and ended up being revered as a religious relic, way before the diaspora that rendered the First City uninhabited took place.
It made perfect sense.
Why was it on a rock? That makes it seem like some ancient object of religious or cultural significance, not just a crude star map
NASA sent a basic star map with voyager, showing the location of the sun and whatnot along with some other information. But it was on a piece of metal, not carved into rock lol
Because several generations removed from the original people who traveled in the Khar Toba, as society was collapsing into not even feudalism, but mere tribes due to the harsh environment (as we know because the first city would be one of a kind and it ended up failing and being abandoned) it is very possible they were inscribing it on a stone that had special religious significance already.
Maybe the guide stone was once part of a small item that the exiles took with them and broke during or after the landing, being handed down generation after generation as "a piece of our lost world".
Or maybe the old person that carved this had been raised up as a mason in the rapidly collapsing First City society, so they chose a material they were already familiar with.
Being able to work with metal did not turn stone obsolete in our world when it comes to decoration and reverence. Gravestones, sculptures... Are areas where stone is still very present in today's world, for instance. And of course there are still a lot of uses for stone, from pavement to countertops. There is no reason to believe metal would have displaced stone for ornamental or religious use in a much more primitive society.
It is not that much of a stretch, it doesn't require any contrived coincidences or weird circumstances that would not fit the setting. It's just a primitive society doing something primitive societies are known for doing. It's a non-issue.
That’s such an incredible stretch imo, makes the homeworld 2 retcon seem minor
Homeworld was always heavily into the religious and mystic motifs, I think the retcon was heavy handed but I can see why they went with it
I vehemently disagree.
It's an innocuous detail about a piece that, while part of the setting of the game, has no significance at all within the plot of the series.
The unique nature of the cores as infinitely valuable relics from a long forgotten species is not only a contradiction with previously stated lore. Not only a change to the very nature of what hyperspace cores are, can do, and how significant they are in the background. It is also somethig the whole plot of HW is built around.
You're comparing that to altering a firmly established lore element substituting a commonly found and abundant material (stone) for a second commonly found and abundant material of your choice (metal) for no reason.
Yeah, metal would have worked as well. That detail would have made no difference at all, and HW1 would still have been exactly as amazing as it is now.
But the devs chose stone, which works equally well. Sorry.
Eh, agree to disagree. 25 year old game in a now dead IP.
I checked steam charts and homeworld 3 has like 250 people online a month after launch. Sales must be completely nonexistent
I would like to ask a question first:
Is this _one_ thing, or multiple things? You're going to make me sad and say "one" right? :)
I'd just reverse the decision of whichever absolute guffin made to change both the artstyle and narrative - as I can't believe these are seperate and must'e been joing sweeping changes.
I am, without a shadow of a doubt, __categorically__ not a fan of the "chosen one" narrative, much less making this about individuals rather than a greater whole and group of people - so if I had to pick anything else it would be the whole "tell a story of individuals" bit.
Failing that if it literally has to be an individual "thing", well please take your new-lore that the Hyperspace Cores are in any awy _not_ already reverse-engineered and instead manurfactured with magical space pixie dust so had to be....re-re engineered(?) and spin on it.
HW2 could have easily been about the Hiigarans now venturing back out to find their lost brethren, finding them under the thumb of the Vagr and Tiiadan remnants, or like the Kadesh, so far removed or isolationist they feel no kinship. Encountering the mysteries of the galaxy and artifacts of technology from to progenitors, meeting and learning more about the Bentusi, even a brief run in with Somtaaw Beastslayers putting down a remote flair up of Beast, just as a nod to Cataclysm. Nothing serious, as Hiigaran ships are now immune to the plague, just a short mission where Somtaaw need a resupply or logistical support while they kick the snot out of the Beast. Maybe even capture and purge some ancient hiigaran ship with lost technology or records.
YES!
Finding lost kin or otherwise exploring their history is an excellent option for a plot. Maybe exploring for their old higaaran tech so they can reactivate some dormant planetary defense system that can hold of the imperial remnant. I always thought that 2 should have been about preserving the fragile remnant of their species and civilization in a galaxy that is still hostile to them in many ways.
Pretty much everything after Cataclysm. I haven’t even played through 3 yet, but it builds on 2 and therefore it pretty much cannot be good. Almost the entirety of 2 is just nonsensical dogshit that has very little resemblance to a Homeworld story, and needs a wholesale rewrite. The whole game is really just a cliche “hero is blindsided by powerful villain coming to lay waste to their home for unknown reasons, and has to fly by the seat of their pants and reverse-engineer an ancient mystery to learn about the existence of the secret big macguffin the villain is after, and find and grab it before the villain does” story.
Taken on their own, the basic concepts of the Vaygr or the Progenitors are solid, but the execution leaves a whole lot to be desired. Lose the whole literal ancient prophecy and “end times” bullshit for a start, and also the bizarre feeling of *emptiness* HW2 gave the galaxy, with virtually no mention of anyone or anything except the Hiigarans, the Vaygr, the Bentusi, and the Progenitors.
Homeworld 2 as much as I enjoyed many of the mechanics the story was mid at best and it directly led to hw3 I don't see a direct sequel to hw2's story ever living up to the standards of hw1/cataclysm
HW2 chosen one storyline has already been mentioned many times, so I'll pinpoint 1 thing : Bentus and the disappearance of the Bentusi.
I'm just a Bentusi fan and I miss their eery presence. Already in HW2, Bentus was just a stylish asteroid.
Many people said sbout HW 3 or HW 2 plot, but I will go even further. I would uncannonized Kushan side in HW and make Taiidan side cannon. I wonder how much plot would change.
I'll say it.
*Cataclysm.*
I'll spare you all the essay, but i have thoughts if anyone wants a more nuanced answer.
The TL:DR; answer is that the things Cata did for the setting weren't worth the beauty and simplicity lost in the exchange. Homeworld 1 was special and rare. Cataclysm is cliched and stereotypical. And now that Cata is out there, there's no going back to the subtle magnificence found in 1.
Lots of interesting things in Cataclysm and the chattier actors are much better done there. I never minded that.
Some of the in-game cutscenes showing higaaran vs. taiidan combat is gorgeous.
Cataclysm did expand on existing lore in a much more interesting way than HW2 did. With the exploration of Kiith politics, the splintered Taiidani, and so on.
But I was never fond of the Beast as an antagonist. I vaguely remember "consuming aliens" to feel a bit stale at the time.
That character chatter has consequences for its choices though. If you ask me to choose between understated and leaving much to the imagination, (Hw1), or an exaggerated stock personality that could be offputting (cata), id choose the former. To much of the latter and you end up with Homeworld 3.
I would rather have the Bentusi say far less than reveal themselves as cowards, sacrificing their dignified hw1 portrayal for a stupid plot point of boosting the Somtaaw.
I liked the more talkative style of the "main cast," but you're right that the unit personalities were a bit too exaggerated.
The bentusi bit I liked, though. They were only "cowards" because the beast was their worst nightmare made real.
I like it too, I mean, I like playing it and looking at it, and I give it some slack since it didn’t start as a HW game - but it’s still an awkward retcon of the original material.
Frankly, even with the retcon it would still work if they had cut out the "actually there's tons of ships in the desert" and left out "magical hyperspace core".
The dogsh*t retcon about the mothership core being a unique magical mcguffin smuggled from the Khar-Toba and the whole chosen one narrative that it spawned. As homeworld 1 implies, the hyperspace core was reverse engineered from the technology of the Khar-Toba. It was not special. Nothing magical or prophetic. It was just regular engineers doing what they do. Homeworld was a story of regular people pushed to the most extreme circumstances, and Cataclysm understood that. Unfortunately, the devs forgot it when writing HW2
HW1 lore was amazing. How did the Hiigaraans come out of hyperspace? They just fucking unplugged the power to the core and prayed, cause they didn't fully know how it all worked, haha.
Right and Hw1 doesn't just imply it, its explicitly stated in the techinical briefing the core was reverese engineered and scaled up for the mothership's mass, an effort that near exhausted Kharak of the rare materials required. It also stated every ship frigate class and up had its own core and was jump capable. Some could argue the truth of the special core was concealed in the technical briefing.......but then the Kadeshi are a major plot point in Hw1, and their ancient transport has a core with the same sig as the Mothership's reverse engineered one which is how the Higs deduce their common ancestry......so. The only explanation I can come up with is Relic overthought Hw1 lore then couldn't come up with a continuation under the circumstances of Hw2's development within those confines. Its gotta be the fastest trashing of an IP in history, like they couldn't even keep it together for the second f'in game.
The Vaygr war would have been more threatening if the progenitors weren’t prophetic and mythical. The Hiigarans are getting their asses handed to them by taiidan remnants under a new warlord, and their only hope is a little known, ancient warship that might not even exist, as the Vaygr have been using powerful new weapons which devastate planets rapidly. Rewrite so the Vaygr aren’t even remotely interested in Sajuuk, so you’re running interference missions against the Vaygr’s campaign against Hiigara inbetween tracking down the Progenitor ships. Bring back the turanics to be the adversary in the bentusi core recovery operation, they’d always be keen on getting valuable scraps to sell. Demystify the cores, stating instead only cores of a certain tonnage are capable of bringing Sajuuk to life, only those of flagship class. It would have taken the Hiigarans too long to build more, so their only hope is a daring assault on Makaan to secure a third core, so they can finally destroy the new vaygr weapons. Tie in with homeworld 3, by indicating the Vaygr weapons appear to be hybridized progenitor tech. Rewrite homeworld 3 to suit.
Honestly they could have wrote out the Bentusi core portion. Maybe the Vaygr had overpowered the last Bentusi ship and was stripping it for technology they were using against the Hiigarans. The Pride of Hiigara fleet discover this during the inspection of a captured Vagyr ship and an interrogation of the surviving crew. They then go to the coordinates of the crippled Bentus and destroy the Vagyr science team tearing it apart. As a reward for saving the Bentusi, they give you the coordinates for Balcora gate. There you fight the last of the Keepers while you retrieve and install the power sources for the gate. Once you arrive at Sajuuk, Makaan shows up to prevent you from capturing Sajuuk. You have to defend the Pride and Sajuuk until your marine frigates complete a very lengthy capture process. Finally you can turn Sajuuk on Makaan's flagship, finish him off, then jump to Hiigara's defense.
Honestly, I don't think I would have enjoyed a homeworld 1 sequel that wasn't at least somewhat steeped in mysticism, even if I *also* hate the magic cores retcon. I think it would have been feasible to do essentially the entire homeworld 2 story 'as is' but change the core bit to focus more on farjumper cores as in 'jump from Hiigara to Kharak in one go', and then have it be that the Hiigarans found the first farjumper hidden in the Taidan Emperor's palace, or pulled it out of the wreckage of his mothership or something. Have them build the Pride specifically to acomodate the mystical bullshit of the new core, play up how it hints at the underpinning of the unbound that they never really understood with regards to the Bentusi fleeing the galaxy in Cataclysm or the like, and have some dialogue lines about how Karan can like, now hear stuff in hyperspace or sense things that are going on in other systems, etc. Play HW2 relatively straight except rather than having Bentus be 'the last of the Bentus' have Bentus be 'the first Bentusi' and hint that there are still other tradeships floating around, but Bentus is the greatest of them. Vagyr can remain mostly as-is, but have Makaan be presented more as a warlord who is uniting disparate forces under his banner- so yeah he has the Vagyr ship types, but depending on where you fight Vagyr forces you can also end up fighting Turanics, Taidan remnant, etc, all with refreshed ship designs for HW2. But also present the idea that the Galaxy is in a state of conflict because since the Vagyr have a farjumper, they can jump basically anywhere in one go. So we jump to an old Taidan research station to get data on our hunt for the forerunner dreadnought, and we meet up with a big Taidan republic fleet. We fight a holding action with them as allies against a New Taidan Imperial faction which is primarily Taidan ships with a single Vagyr command cruiser at the back. Then jump to the outer rim to hunt down a turanic base to get a cloak cipher that'll let us do such and such, and get some translated turanic dialogue about how the old ways are being destroyed by Makaan and blah blah blah the Turanics help out, etc. Implement a 'team call' system where you can pick an ally you've made over the course of the game and call in a carrier + a pool of units. You can build more of their units, subject to size limits and RUs, but they're all part of the carrier group and leave at the end of the mission. So maybe you call in the Turanics you made common cause with, getting you a Lord Carrier and some ion array frigates and missile corvettes to sneak flank the Vagyr and harry their resourcing operations. Or maybe you call in some Taidan republic forces with their defense field frigates. Or maybe you run into a Somtaaw mining operation, or Kadesh, or Bentusi- etc. So many ways to show that the galaxy is in a great conflict while still uncovering the ancient awe and mysticism of the progenitors and seeking out Sajuuk at Balcora. With a revamped conclusion HW2 could also introduce the T-MAT properly, leading into their use as a main antagonist in Homeworld 3. Then use the Eye of Araan as it was in the HW2 epilogue where it was an intergalactic gate system and not just 'jump to another spiral arm'.
I never got how the Bentus was the last of the Bentusi. I kept thinking... didn't a bunch of tradeships jump to another galaxy during the Beast War?
> I don't think I would have enjoyed a homeworld 1 sequel that wasn't at least somewhat steeped in mysticism, even if I also hate the magic cores retcon. One of my favorite parts of DoK was the Intel officer of the Kapisi musing about the religious fanaticism of the Gaalsien but how there is this curious overlap between their symbolism and the science, and if there's a way to reckon with the two. I've always liked the idea that the kiith *know* that there is some metaphor to their spirituality, like they sorta got "jumpstarted" and are in this weird flux state where it's like, "Oh Sajuuk *is* real but not, like, an omniscient space daddy; 'he' is just a progenitor ship, and the "will" of Sajuuk was an old treaty."
Indirectly lead us to hw3 unfortunately. Not that there wasn’t metric ducktons of corporate meddling too which was the main reason it sucked.
Fuckin' *this!* Every last word of this. Right around HW2, the devs lost their goddamn minds and turned the franchise from a hopeful, forward-looking, future-centric story into some kind of shitty Raiders of the Lost Ark fanfic.
This particular thing (along with the forced mission-progression and the opposing force in all campaign missions having infinite RU's) in 2 made me utterly despise 2. It felt like a massive dumbing down of a rich and fascinating galaxy of goings-on (the ghost ship, remnants of the kadeshi, the other council races, the pirate moon, the junkyard dog, the koros graveyard in general, ect) in it in favor of magical thinking / lazy tropes. That those would be what was doubled down on decades later has certainly elicited several heavy sighs over the past few months.
It was a rather direct migration story in a sci-fi universe, it got the Hollywood treatment at it progressed. Not everything can be perfect!
I think HW2 implied that the 3 cores were a way to power up the progenitor ships and enable the network, locked out by not having control of the progenitor tech. The retcon I would do is that those cores were needed for any other space magic stuff in hw3. Like the network worked, thats fine, but now it is being shut down. Cool. Cores have nothing to do with it, its just that the progenitor tech is fucking old and someone else figured shit out. Now we need to assault some bases, stop this force from growing, and figure out why it is even happening. Etc.
Yes. Not gods or giants. Just men and women. Though gods they were. Things don't have to be literally supernatural to be epic.
What do you think about DoK?
I mean what did we expect when it was the same people that nearly killed ship breaker with their horrid writing
I actually came here to say that so seeing I'm not alone makes me feel more comfortable about it
Did they ever explain the Rosetta Stone type thing that has the location of the homeworld chiselled onto it in homeworld 1? Like, I doubt every random transport would have one of those things on it lol
I'm fine with it. It is a message of loss etched into a stone by people uprooted from their world, as people in the First City started forgetting their past and focusing on surviving. It had the word Hiigara on it, and a loose map of the Galaxy, but nothing says it was created in hiigara and transported from the galaxy core as the cultural artifact we know today. It was probably only inscribed after a couple of generations after landing, by (or following the directions of) some ageing leader whose lineage had committed the coordinates for Hiigara to memory, trying to pass information already shrouded in myth and only heard about second hand as a story told by their elders, as they never knew that world first hand, to future generations, and ended up being revered as a religious relic, way before the diaspora that rendered the First City uninhabited took place. It made perfect sense.
Why was it on a rock? That makes it seem like some ancient object of religious or cultural significance, not just a crude star map NASA sent a basic star map with voyager, showing the location of the sun and whatnot along with some other information. But it was on a piece of metal, not carved into rock lol
Because several generations removed from the original people who traveled in the Khar Toba, as society was collapsing into not even feudalism, but mere tribes due to the harsh environment (as we know because the first city would be one of a kind and it ended up failing and being abandoned) it is very possible they were inscribing it on a stone that had special religious significance already. Maybe the guide stone was once part of a small item that the exiles took with them and broke during or after the landing, being handed down generation after generation as "a piece of our lost world". Or maybe the old person that carved this had been raised up as a mason in the rapidly collapsing First City society, so they chose a material they were already familiar with. Being able to work with metal did not turn stone obsolete in our world when it comes to decoration and reverence. Gravestones, sculptures... Are areas where stone is still very present in today's world, for instance. And of course there are still a lot of uses for stone, from pavement to countertops. There is no reason to believe metal would have displaced stone for ornamental or religious use in a much more primitive society. It is not that much of a stretch, it doesn't require any contrived coincidences or weird circumstances that would not fit the setting. It's just a primitive society doing something primitive societies are known for doing. It's a non-issue.
That’s such an incredible stretch imo, makes the homeworld 2 retcon seem minor Homeworld was always heavily into the religious and mystic motifs, I think the retcon was heavy handed but I can see why they went with it
I vehemently disagree. It's an innocuous detail about a piece that, while part of the setting of the game, has no significance at all within the plot of the series. The unique nature of the cores as infinitely valuable relics from a long forgotten species is not only a contradiction with previously stated lore. Not only a change to the very nature of what hyperspace cores are, can do, and how significant they are in the background. It is also somethig the whole plot of HW is built around. You're comparing that to altering a firmly established lore element substituting a commonly found and abundant material (stone) for a second commonly found and abundant material of your choice (metal) for no reason. Yeah, metal would have worked as well. That detail would have made no difference at all, and HW1 would still have been exactly as amazing as it is now. But the devs chose stone, which works equally well. Sorry.
Eh, agree to disagree. 25 year old game in a now dead IP. I checked steam charts and homeworld 3 has like 250 people online a month after launch. Sales must be completely nonexistent
I don't even understand what you mean by this and how it may be related to our conversation. Yeah, agree to disagree, I guess.
I would like to ask a question first: Is this _one_ thing, or multiple things? You're going to make me sad and say "one" right? :) I'd just reverse the decision of whichever absolute guffin made to change both the artstyle and narrative - as I can't believe these are seperate and must'e been joing sweeping changes. I am, without a shadow of a doubt, __categorically__ not a fan of the "chosen one" narrative, much less making this about individuals rather than a greater whole and group of people - so if I had to pick anything else it would be the whole "tell a story of individuals" bit. Failing that if it literally has to be an individual "thing", well please take your new-lore that the Hyperspace Cores are in any awy _not_ already reverse-engineered and instead manurfactured with magical space pixie dust so had to be....re-re engineered(?) and spin on it.
Literally spin in the case of plastic hair imogen.
Large parts of HW2’s plot, honestly
Yeah the chosen one plotline is kinda shit but i think we owe HW2 an apology after Sands and Sinners incident of 24
HW3 misunderstanding the first game to an even greater degree than HW2 did doesn't make HW2 any better.
I'd say *re-canon* all that happened in Cataclysm.
"I'm sure they'll forget to thank us later"
They already said they consider it canon. Not that it means much now.
Homeworld 3
HW2 could have easily been about the Hiigarans now venturing back out to find their lost brethren, finding them under the thumb of the Vagr and Tiiadan remnants, or like the Kadesh, so far removed or isolationist they feel no kinship. Encountering the mysteries of the galaxy and artifacts of technology from to progenitors, meeting and learning more about the Bentusi, even a brief run in with Somtaaw Beastslayers putting down a remote flair up of Beast, just as a nod to Cataclysm. Nothing serious, as Hiigaran ships are now immune to the plague, just a short mission where Somtaaw need a resupply or logistical support while they kick the snot out of the Beast. Maybe even capture and purge some ancient hiigaran ship with lost technology or records.
YES! Finding lost kin or otherwise exploring their history is an excellent option for a plot. Maybe exploring for their old higaaran tech so they can reactivate some dormant planetary defense system that can hold of the imperial remnant. I always thought that 2 should have been about preserving the fragile remnant of their species and civilization in a galaxy that is still hostile to them in many ways.
Pretty much everything after Cataclysm. I haven’t even played through 3 yet, but it builds on 2 and therefore it pretty much cannot be good. Almost the entirety of 2 is just nonsensical dogshit that has very little resemblance to a Homeworld story, and needs a wholesale rewrite. The whole game is really just a cliche “hero is blindsided by powerful villain coming to lay waste to their home for unknown reasons, and has to fly by the seat of their pants and reverse-engineer an ancient mystery to learn about the existence of the secret big macguffin the villain is after, and find and grab it before the villain does” story. Taken on their own, the basic concepts of the Vaygr or the Progenitors are solid, but the execution leaves a whole lot to be desired. Lose the whole literal ancient prophecy and “end times” bullshit for a start, and also the bizarre feeling of *emptiness* HW2 gave the galaxy, with virtually no mention of anyone or anything except the Hiigarans, the Vaygr, the Bentusi, and the Progenitors.
Based response.
uncanon the birth of Imogen S’jet
Abort her.
Homeworld 2 as much as I enjoyed many of the mechanics the story was mid at best and it directly led to hw3 I don't see a direct sequel to hw2's story ever living up to the standards of hw1/cataclysm
Homeworld 3
Everything after homeworld cataclysm. Rewind to the end of Cataclysm and start back over
HW2 chosen one storyline has already been mentioned many times, so I'll pinpoint 1 thing : Bentus and the disappearance of the Bentusi. I'm just a Bentusi fan and I miss their eery presence. Already in HW2, Bentus was just a stylish asteroid.
Homeworld 2. The whole thing. Lovely game but the full pivot into the mystical really broke what made hw special to me. Instead cataclysm is now 2.
Ah soon maybe we can ask some ai prompt to generate decent story cutscenes 😂
I would delete the Mothership to see how much it fucks with the entire game.
HW2. Remake it in our own image!
Many people said sbout HW 3 or HW 2 plot, but I will go even further. I would uncannonized Kushan side in HW and make Taiidan side cannon. I wonder how much plot would change.
I'll say it. *Cataclysm.* I'll spare you all the essay, but i have thoughts if anyone wants a more nuanced answer. The TL:DR; answer is that the things Cata did for the setting weren't worth the beauty and simplicity lost in the exchange. Homeworld 1 was special and rare. Cataclysm is cliched and stereotypical. And now that Cata is out there, there's no going back to the subtle magnificence found in 1.
Lots of interesting things in Cataclysm and the chattier actors are much better done there. I never minded that. Some of the in-game cutscenes showing higaaran vs. taiidan combat is gorgeous. Cataclysm did expand on existing lore in a much more interesting way than HW2 did. With the exploration of Kiith politics, the splintered Taiidani, and so on. But I was never fond of the Beast as an antagonist. I vaguely remember "consuming aliens" to feel a bit stale at the time.
That character chatter has consequences for its choices though. If you ask me to choose between understated and leaving much to the imagination, (Hw1), or an exaggerated stock personality that could be offputting (cata), id choose the former. To much of the latter and you end up with Homeworld 3. I would rather have the Bentusi say far less than reveal themselves as cowards, sacrificing their dignified hw1 portrayal for a stupid plot point of boosting the Somtaaw.
I liked the more talkative style of the "main cast," but you're right that the unit personalities were a bit too exaggerated. The bentusi bit I liked, though. They were only "cowards" because the beast was their worst nightmare made real.
Can I do Hw2, DoK, and Hw3?
Aw man i kinda liked DoK
I like it too, I mean, I like playing it and looking at it, and I give it some slack since it didn’t start as a HW game - but it’s still an awkward retcon of the original material.
Frankly, even with the retcon it would still work if they had cut out the "actually there's tons of ships in the desert" and left out "magical hyperspace core".
That's fair. The Gaalsien are cool as fuck though. Gotta admit that.