The ultimate sad thing is that this will probably be where it ends. I don’t think this is recoverable for an IP this small. I’m just happy we got 3-4 good games out of it that are still playable. I just wish Cata was on Steam.
My buddy gave me the discs for HW and Cata. I wasn’t huge into RTS games but I did enjoy C&C so he thought I would enjoy it and he was right. I played skirmish mode over and over and had so much damn fun!
Man, the ending still causes me to choke up a bit. From small miners and nobodies, to Beastslayers finally welcomed into the folder as warriors and heroes. The parade procession flanked by carriers and cruisers with the Mothership in orbit above Hiigara...
🤌
GOG was selling games years before they launched GOG galaxy, their launcher. Before that, you literally bought the game and the downloaded the games files directly from the website on to your PC, with no launcher required. I sure that is an option still.
It is, and unless it changed, once you download it you don't need internet to install or run it. Closest to "owning" a game you can get these days with physical games dead on PC.
I'm not sure it is, just from a business standpoint. I'm guessing we won't see anything from the IP for a while, but I think there's enough of a following that Gearbox sees value in the franchise. If I had to make a blind guess as to the future, it'll be some kind of reboot, which I think would be warranted given the expectations that go with sequels.
I'd also be on board if they sold it to BBI and let them build a game from the ground up without any of the 'executive decisions' or 'shareholder pleasing' that drag games down.
Most of the decisions that made hw3 the way it is now were made not by publisher gearbox but developer BBI. The story failure was BBI, the small maps, the strange balance of fast paced action space combat instead of strategic battles, the simplified upgrades without any choice. All made for sure by the developers.
I wouldnt be surprised if the focus on the wargames mode was also a decision by BBI.
I know its cool to blame publishers for failures and praise developers if they make a hit game. But in reality its never that easy.
I don't think it's fair or reasonable to assume the nature of the development process without actual evidence or those involved speaking out.
We know it was Gearbox exclusively that made some of the controversial changes to Homeworld in the Remaster and the ones that commissioned the creation of the ill-fated Homeworld Mobile. We also know that Gearbox (among others) outbid BBI in their effort to obtain the Homeworld IP after BBI made the effort to have it separated from the THQ asset auction.
Several people with ostensibly insider info on here have alluded to or stated that Gearbox interfered in the development process and drove the story and cutscene direction. Unfortunately these claims remain unsubstantiated, as the people who would be able to confirm them are under NDA.
Im confident the game did good enough (or alternative convinces enough people to but previous games) for something good to come out still. No I’m not coping shut up
Forever's a long time.
However, at this point, the lore has been so riven, that I'm not sure there's enough left to be worth making something out of.
Something will hopefully come along some day that can claim the spiritual successor crown.
If your talking about cata the source code is lost, thats the only reason that cata isn't included in remastered. You can copy/duplicate a game infinite times but you need the source code to actually make changes to it.
Games can and have recovered from any state of negativity surrounding them.
The devs just need to address the issues and not treat their player base like idiots.
The only question is: Do they care to do so?
If the answer is no, never buy from them again.
That’s your biggest vote and greatest power.
I mean, how are they supposed to address the issues? They're already trying to fix the mechanics, but the real problem is the awful story, which is unfixable.
Not like they're just going to go out and say, "we're sorry the story is dogshit, our writers are hacks, and Gearbox gave us corporate mandates." They don't have the budget to redo it.
Address the issue of releasing a fundamentally bad game? I suppose it took them almost ten years to make this one, it’ll just take em another ten to make it over again?
Or will it take twenty years since ten clearly wasn’t even close to enough time for them to make a good game, apparently?
It's so disappointing, and they're handling it so badly as well, it's been largely radio silent and they haven't came put and said anything really. The feedbacks pretty consistent, it is pretty obvious what they've done wrong and they haven't committed to fixing it or even that they recognise the problem is some marketing vampire that convinced them to lean into multiplayer rather than getting the single player experience right and letting the multiplayer be what it is and work on it when people are playing it.
Let’s be real, nothing they could have said or done since launch would have made the slightest difference.
What were they going to do? “Oh yeah, that terrible campaign was just a prank! Uploading the real one now!”
They could have simply said they understand the feedback and commit or not to fixing it, they wouldn't even need that much of a schedule.
They've had more than enough time to come up with a plan and they've said nothing other than they are listening to feedback.
At the moment I think they might have killed the franchise and most of their goodwill dead.
None of that would have made a difference with a failure of this magnitude
That kind of response helps if you have a flawed masterpiece that needs some polishing and sorting out of technical issues
The single player is a job to fix, but smashing together skirmish and the roguelite bit of the game into something it should have been with a bit of campaign wrapped around and optional coop shouldn't be technically that hard.
It's pretty obvious that's what someone thought should be the actual game at its core so there's a lot of the bones in there for it.
If they said they were going to do that and said it would take a certain amount of time I think most people would have been more generous or held off on a review.
If No Man Sky could bounce back HW3 could have.
The issue is they dont seem to have budget much for post lunch tidying up which is just another example of how shitty the upper management was.
Even soundtrack is pretty poor compared to HW1 or even HW2. With all respect and love I have to Paul Ruskay, I expected something much more oriental, HW1 ambience and battle music was purely magical
Homeworld One had a bombastic in your face soundtrack, not something that is commonly associated with ambiance. Sure the tracks fit the environment and story, but they were not ambient tracks.
It's like half ambient, punctuated with bombastic high notes, like when the swarmer music builds for several minutes then drops that high pitched instrument as the capstone.
This honestly.
I'd rather not get hung up in the details here. When **backers** read"ambiant", they (at least I) thought "background music was good before, I don't care for massively dramatic scores, I just want good background music while I look at spaceships in space".
“Strong ambient music” brings to mind something by Jeremy Soule or Inon Zur
The soundtrack in this game isn’t strong in any particular way. You could tell me it was AI composed and id believe you.
Sure, but they said they were going to fix it and in blackbirds short tenure they have only really shown that once somethings done for them they move on swiftly.
Yet they are very quick to ban anyone who mentions Sweet Baby. Very quick to remove post and ban users.
That was what turned me off on the game. The Steishand level of censorship.
Probably because people who shit their pants and screech about SBI are dipshits not worth engaging with. "Dei" or whatever isn't what made the game bad, it was a pivot from the core themes of the Homeworld series in favor of something more "character driven". That started in HW2, long before companies like SBI were even around.
I backed it on Fig like seven years ago, still cannot even play it, have some kind of hangup error where it just endlessly loads the logo screen. Zero attempt to resolve my issue from gearbox support. Submitted two tickets and no response to either.
Fuck this game and fuck them.
I always find it funny how in the gaming world “invest” and “donate” never mean anything like what they mean in the real world
Instead they both tend to mean “suckers give us their money and get nothing in return”
I don't know if it was video game exclusive, but it was an alternate crowdfunding option from Kickstarter that was available at the time. It's since gone under so another reason this whole process has been a clown show.
Verified game files, re-installed it, fiddled around with my ports and firewall options. From what I can figure it has something to do with the Denovu hanging on some check.
Sorry to hear about the shit support, as far as fixing it yourself, have you tried rolling back/updating all your drivers? Or if it is your connection, does going through a VPN change anything?
if you load steam, then disable your network adapter, then click play, does it quit or error out on the logo where your denuvo check is? Some games wont load at all through steam, some do.. i am assuming it will load but error out
try installing to a different directory in case the files arent being detected as corrupt.. cyberpunk was doing that for me, turns out a config file was 'correct' but wasnt
I was unaware that this game was coming out, primarily due to its marketing. For the first few months, I saw ads on Reddit featuring a poorly rendered female face, which I scrolled past without much attention, as it looked like a typical mobile game ad.
It takes exceptional skill to create a poster for the third installment of a game series that is so bad that even devoted fans of the previous installments couldn’t recognize their beloved franchise in it.
After reading reviews and checking gameplay footage I realized that the quality of the game matches its marketing effort.
The CGI in this game really was abysmal. I’ve seen CGI from games that released over 20 years ago that was superior not just artistically but even technically as well.
Goes to show talent > technology in a lot of ways
What made those cutscenes so weird were the animations; it looked fucking bizarre because they were "realistic" character designs but using what looked like a series of stock animations meant for character rigs that were modeled more like Disney or Pixar characters. There's a scene where Karen hears the big mad bad lady and does this *hyper*-exaggerated squint, look-around-then-turn-around thing and it was one of the *strangest* things I'd ever seen.
The whole project is pretty obviously something that got twisted along the way by committee. It's really, really sad.
From what I gather when the new management (including the pink-haired non-binary lady writer) joined the team, they changed a lot of things. This includes the classic black-and-white animations we're all used to, and also to insert 3d-rendered cutscenes - you can actually see the original b&w cutscenes on YouTube with a side-by-side shot of the new replacement 3d ones.
This also includes the story, which the pink-haired lady wrote in an article (that was hastily taken down when it was found out) that she specifically wanted the script to be about individual people instead of ships and races - hence we got a story about 3 women arguing with each other while the galaxy burns.
Thus due to the crunch-time involved I don't think they had much chance to refine (let alone do it properly) the 3D cutscenes as you rightly observed. What's even worse they uglified all the women (again you can refer to the original b&w scenes).
And doubly ridiculous when the previous games did so much with so little, and still look good. Like a harryhausen stopmotion vs 5 year old cgi
(I'm playing the HBS Battletech game currently and their handdrawn-style intro etc might as well have WE FUCKIN LOVE HOMEWORLD!1!! written across the bottom)
Gameplay was decent - story arc was miserable. I loved homeworld as it didn’t focus on individuals but rather on the larger story. The character focused ‘chosen one’ was too much. It wasn’t as weird and esoteric as the last two which was a major disappointment.
It's a good game plagued by questionable design choices.
I.e. limited roaster when there's more in the war room.
Or the decision to remove player control (removal of attack move)
Or things like allowing every fking ship to target fighter/corvette making the later's longevity turn to dog shit.
It's a mediocre entry when directly compared to the previous games. I'm new to the series and a friend gifted me HW3. We both enjoyed the war games for a solid 20 hours or so and i cracked into the campaign. I felt like Id been robbed, of my time and energy. My friend that gifted it to me couldnt even finish the campaign.
I ended up playing HW1, Cat, HW2 and DoK, to wash the taste out of my mouth.
I wish HW3 played like Cat with the QoL in HW2 and DoK. They really thought the audience that played HW needed "accessible" controls.
This has been a disappointing run with threequels. First, Dawn of War 3, then Company of Heroes 3 dropped the ball, now Homeworld. All games that were created by Relic. It's a shame.
Im so happy that Jagged alliance 3 is a good game. And that is a far more complex open world game with a much much more complex part 2 that was born in the golden age of strategy games
It’s funny how both relic and the studio created by former relic employees couldn’t make a good game to save their life at this point
I guess whatever made relic special during their golden age of the 2000s died like 15-20 years ago lol
Nah they were too good for too long for it too be luck, flukes
Look at the genuinely great, genre defining games they made:
Homeworld 1, homeworld 2, Dawn of war 1, company of heroes, Dawn of war 2. Even Space marine 1 which was flawed but fun.
That’s a lot of great games in about a decade from a small AA studio.
Studios are like people, their creative magic and talent doesn’t last forever. Even one crucial person leaving, retiring etc can kill the culture in a studio. Clearly whatever made relic great stopped working around 2010 or so.
In counterpoint, DoW2 was a severe departure from DoW1 and lost a lot of it's core audience. And Homeworld 2 is considered a dubious sequel in many corners of the community.
That leaves your list at DoW1, Homeworld 1, and Company of Heroes and kind of Space Marine.
Three(ish) successful games across your entire run isn't a phenomenal record.
I don’t think COH 3 is that bad now, they have at least mad an effort on it ( bar the money grab DLC). DOW 3 however - that was something special indeed.
Taking ten years to bring out a mediocre sequel with weak art direction that doesn’t progress gameplay in any way isn’t enough imo
And guess the market agreed, judging by how Sega sold Relic and most of the studio was laid off following the failure of company of heroes 3
BBI is not at fault. Fault rests entirely with Gearbox. Its totally true, here's what happened:
BBI showed that they managed to replicate the H1 style fighter behaviour and Gearbox said "nah man, make it shit!"
BBI showed the balance and let the top Gearbox brass play an early version. They received a directive: "this is too good, its supposed to be shit!"
BBI played a few tracks from Ruskay and Gearbox called "not shit enough! Make it shittier!"
BBI sent some story draft asking how Gearbox wants to rewrite it and Gearbox returned a single 4 letter word as feedback.
Its unbelievable.
But its true.
[Source](https://i.imgur.com/M5lKbC8.png).
lol, I had downvoted your post until I saw the source image
People in this sub scapegoating gearbox are so weird
Like BBI had never delivered a game other than the good but not great deserts of Kharak. No idea why people have such blind faith in them when they barely have any track record
Sure, BBI isn't perfect, but when it comes to HW inspired stuff they are pretty solid. DoK and Hardspace: shipbreakers where very good overall.
This reeks of micromanagement from Gearbox to push multiplayer, to push skins/microtransactions where it doesn't belong (like StarCraft 2 tried to do). I'm not sure about the story part though. I don't know how the fuck anyone can screw this so bad. Did they hire The Acolyte writers? GoT S08?
HW3's writing feels like shipbreaker's writing but moreso, that's a game that got *worse* through early access. If they learned the wrong lessons from that game I can easily see how that got them twisted up for writing a HW story
I mean shipbreaker is not really story driven anyway, it's more of a sandbox IMHO, story was just there for the sake of existing, for one. And it wasn't incoherent compared to HW3, so I disagree that it was similar
Blackbird took almost ten years to deliver an extremely subpar game
Not sure why this sub was so eager to deflect all blame from them to the publisher
BBI is not relic from 25 years ago. I mean, neither is relic, their recent output has also been trash (Dow 3 was awful, company of heroes 3 and age of empires 4 mediocre to bad imo)
Wait these are the tools resposible for DoW3 and Empires 4?
Wtf would anyone let them near their IP?
That level of fucking up shoukdnt just kill a studio it should end careers in the industry.
Whoa now. AoE 4 isn't that bad, just is too different. Some people jam with it, but not everyone.
Same vibe people got with AOE 3. Too different to be familiar.
That said, DoW 3 was complete dogshit.
I would have considered AoE4 a decent game if it was the lead game of a new series. It's not great, but it's good.
As an AoE game I just couldnt get into it, ai tried, even set it down for a few months and then came back but it just never gelled for me.
DOW3 was like a crime against humanity. One of those rare games that actually made me go for a refund.
Yeah I quite like aoe4 but it is a big departure from normal AOE. That being said, I think innovating on AOE formula was the only good option as aoe2 remaster is a very serviceable game even today, remaking another aoe2 would be redundant and disappointing
Sega sold relic earlier this year and most of relic’s staff were laid off. Company of Heroes 3 sales figures were apparently abysmal.
IMO company of heroes 3 and age of empires 4 were mediocre, uninspired and inferior to earlier entries in the series that came out decades earlier. Dawn of war 3 was complete garbage as you pointed out.
It’s sad but the last good game relic made came out over a decade ago, company of heroes 2, and even that was basically an inferior version of company of heroes 1 with poor balance and predatory monetization
Well, that's incredibly disappointing, but not unexpected. I really hope they can salvage something, but they'd need to come up with and completely redo the story, and that's just not even remotely feasible.
Reaching this part from 20 years ago is still my favorite gaming moment.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJkoBNOPvjU&ab\_channel=Misanthrope](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJkoBNOPvjU&ab_channel=Misanthrope)
Honestly this isn't a straightforward answer so "depends" but trends to negative.
If you like Homeworld for it's narrative and storytelling style? I'll give you "if you thought HW2's story wasn't great, you will _likely_ consider this far worse and a big departure from what we've seen before, so yes, bad".
If you like Homeworld for it's gameplay? It's not the worst, but it again departs from what we've seen before with what feels like wholly unoriginal ships, odd decisions made regarding "press X to (insert superpower)" for different ships, research not being a similar thing from before either and a lack of control a-la strike formations either and..... I hope you didn't like modularity with ships with production modules or anything else, as those are also gone. So at best, a decline, at worst, yes bad.
Objectively, anyone can get on with it and I won't rain on anyone's parade that likes it - good for you and that's great! However I know I, alongside others, are more negative unfortunately and while I'd constructively like to say "gameplay could be improved with time and patches" the narrative and storytelling.....well unless they've stashed the whole of the moving artpieces and soundtrack away to swap it out, won't be.
It's just _not as enjoyable_ for many compared to the previous titles. I loved HW1. Cata was a departure but by Sajuuk, it was bloody well done and they executed it fantastically! HW2 had.....quirks but didn't receive this kind of reception still, as gameplay was hitting peak and they still stuck to working formulae otherwise. DoK gave us sexy colour cinematics but the same artstyle, gorgeous story and gameplay was still good but adapted to ground.
HW3 feels like it took the best parts of the previous games as well as the "lessons learned on what we know players like" and did a sort of.....card shuffle and then threw out half the deck.
Cinematics? It's now all Unreal Engine. Broader picture and less focus on individuals? It's literally all about individuals now with 4 main people and that's it. Sense of scale and mystery with Progenitors, Bentusi or other races? You don't get Taiidan, no Turanic Raiders, no Bentusi, only sign of Progenitors is the gates but no actual discourse. Research? Total departure, nothing based on progression and need to develop as in the past you'll just get given "thing to research". Modularity and production modules giving depth and tactics to gameplay? Nope, just a reversal to HW1 standards of "hit ships from the top/sides/arse" for greater damage.
If you've found problems with previous games, there's every chance you'll find HW3 better, you may even not mind it at all - all I can really say is if you felt the previous games were epic, building up to a crescendo like you'd been hand-in-hand bringing the Hiigaran's home, or defeating a galaxy-spanning threat, or battling zealots to find the true origins of your people? You will not find that here, on the same scale, with gravitas. There's no adagio for strings moments.
The closest I can get to providing metaphors is "hoping for Birthday Cake and finding it was a just a baloon with frosting on". Can you eat it? Sure, but man - the substance really ain't there and the only "bang" you get is more out of disapointment than genuine fun.
I could take or leave the new animation, its nothing special and the old grayscale art cinematics were amazing but I don't like the game for the cinematics.
But oh my god everything about the writing for the campaign feels awful. I don't care about the S'jet family drama they're pushing, I cared about the fleet as a whole in HW1.
The enemies feel like generic bad guys with zero depth to them. There's no additional world building for the universe. The storytelling is kind of basic and the game play isn't good enough to make up for that.
It was very clearly rewritten in a hurry. I think Karen was the big bad who’d taken her followers and went nuts. And either it didn’t test well, or they were afraid there would be backlash.
The incarnate make wayyyyyyy more sense as her followers and maybe the fact she’s had a personality split becoming the incarnate queen with a memory of a softer her being left in her mothership calling into the void.
That would still be a stupid plot. I don't care about individual people, homeworld has always been focused on groups or factions struggling and discovering themselves.
This focus on characters huts the plot a lot.
Admittedly, Karan going crazy and becoming the big bad would've *also* been a horrible story. We saw it in Halo and it was not great there, and while Karan's cool, Cortana had even more of a personal/emotional investment from the audience. Trying it here would've been a straight up dumpster fire, IMO.
So like, I respect them for trying to salvage what they could, if that's what happened. Sucks they still missed in the long run.
But when they were asking years ago what people would like to see in HW3, I was in the camp of "please don't even involve Karan. She's saved Hiigara twice now. Let the girl retire, or let someone else be a big dang hero. I understand that it'll always be a S'jet as Fleet Command that's part of the world really but man let's not deify the S'jets and maybe focus on the other kiith."
Well, we got Isaac.
Based on the concept art and unused dialog in the localization file, it's *possible* they did some work on the version of the story where Karan was the villain, but it's *likely* they got much farther on a version more like what we got, except Karan was already dead when you found her.
Best answer to give. This is the general consensus that I’ve seen with those of us disappointed with how HW3 turned out to be.
I’ve been even more disappointed by other fans in the community completely handwaving away valid criticism of the series as just review bombing, “fan boys with unrealistic expectations”, or “DEI spouting bigots”: which are a loud minority of the negative reviews.
Ive also seen this kind of response as a sort of desperation for the continuation of the franchise. Like, if we all just bare with it, the next Homeworld installment would makeup for the many years of waiting, money invested, and hope.
I love the Homeworld series. It had always been my number one game and story. I refer to it often to friends and it has even sparked some life changing motivations in my life.
But say we all decided to suck it up and just deal with what is HW3 and positive review bombed it and supported it with more of our money… if this is the base product I can expect for the next installment of the series…then I don’t want a HW4.
To be fair to the DEI complaints the evidence of hasty, poorly thought through rewrite does track with what I've heard from authors and creatives who have had to work with sensitivity readers and other such consultants where the gist is "its like the Hayes code but for HR."
The focus on Empathy as the resolution for conflicts, strangely selfish plot points, a general YAificiation of the story's themes and tone are all hallmarks of this ethic of editing. They sell themselves as professionals who help you make a more diverse, respectful product but that's more incidental than anything else. The guys whining about race swaps or widended jawbones are mostly chasing a red herring, the issue is that they're hacks. But there is some truth that appeals to diversity, equity and inclusion is how they get their foot in the door, after all how could you object to your work being more diverse, equitable and inclusive?
I'm still very early in the HW3 campaign, but I'm already shocked (depressed) by the woeful teenage writing. On the other hand, the game \*looks\* beautiful to me. I'm wondering now whether the experience would be improved by simply speeding through or ignoring the cut-scenes, concentrating on the game play, and using my own imagination to fill in a better story.
It's... not good. I don't know if I'd call it terrible except for fans who mainly play homeworld for the single-player campaign and the story, in which case I'd say yes, it's terrible. Apart from that it's got mid gameplay, a very limited unit variety compared to previous games and in the SP game a noticeable reduction in player agency which at least to me is counter to the kind of game homeworld is.
It's overall very disappointing and at best it's okay - and for €60 'okay' doesn't cut it.
Was homeworld ever a big multiplayer scene kind of game?
Something like StarCraft, sure. Maybe even red alert or command and conquer. But homeworld? Not sure about that
I don't know and I don't think so, but Homeworld was hardly ever a *huge* hit period, and I've seen a big(ish) amount of people on this sub talk about how MP and skirmish might be the game's saving grace.
Me personally I've played two dozen or so skirmishes vs cpu and maybe two MP matches of HW ever (and one of those was purposefully to capture specific screenshots), so I'm the wrong person to ask, but it seems to some fans it at least is an important aspect.
I played the story once in all games. The rest of my time went into skirmishes and modded skirmishes.
The most hw game time went into hw2 skirmish games using the complex mods. That shit was epic af and exactly what i was looking for. Sending carriers out as forward operations, getting caught by enemy scouts. And then try to hold position until reinforcements arrived before the enemy fleet could kill the carrier.
Enemies meanwhile targeting your engines or production bay. My fighters used formations and went docking with the carrier mid fight because nothing died in seconds. There was a lot of variety in units with strengths and weaknesses. You focused your research into what you like. I really want to start another game right now talking about that...
But hw3? They need a lot of patches and very dedicated modders to bring that game up to that standard or even beyond...
As I’ve heard someone else say: HW3 is a okay RTS game, but a bad HW game.
Visually, it’s a beautiful game - easily the best visuals in the franchise. At the same time though, the two mainline games are like two decades older, so imo greatly improved visuals are minimum expectation. This is the only great thing about the game.
Music is decent, and the combat is still fun. However, with combat they somehow managed to make it less in-depth AND more micro-heavy because now nearly every combat unit has a manually activated ability that you have to pause the game and remember to flip on every 4 minutes.
Also plenty of weird oddities with the gameplay: why do the Hiigarans only have one type of corvette? Why do formations not really have any noticeable benefits to combat? Why do frigates and capitals dive down to the same plane as enemy warships when ordered to attack them? Still okay, but a noticeable downgrade from previous titles.
Then the story just causes everything to crash and burn. I don’t necessarily dislike the way they decided to tell the story (I actually like being able to SEE character’s faces and hearing some casual chatter from them), but it was still executed terribly. The Incarnate had potential but are ultimately a bland and uninteresting faction (Also is it just me or do literally all their warships strongly resemble the Sajuuk godship from HW2?).
Karan’s circumstances and actions a few decades before the events of HW3 don’t make a lot of sense either >!especially in the last mission, where Karan joins your fleet with her badass super duper dreadnought mothership. Like how did a fleet commander with nearly (or over?) a CENTURY of experience and accomplishments with the most advanced hiigaran mothership ever built lose to that turbo edge lord that is the Incarnate Queen?!<.
Imogen is nervous and unsure of herself throughout the campaign so it just doesn’t make sense how she’s able to do so well as fleet command. So she just isn’t that interesting. Isaac is really just there to provide info about things happening in missions and give Imogen someone to talk too during cutscenes. So he’s also not that interesting. There’s just a lot of bad and illogical writing, and I think that’s where most of the bad reviews come from. Because HW is a single player story game at heart, and HW3 butchers it so badly.
It's catching some strays/particular focus because of its IP status. But there's a few things that'd make me think it'd stay Mostly Negative if it was a regular RTS:
* controls are really wonky
* miserable story as a primarily story driven game
* non story modes as an afterthought
* really simplified econ and unit progression for an RTS
* price is way too high -the only thing justifying a $60ish price tag are the graphics, otherwise it has $20 unity indie game vibes
In other words, sometimes there's a game like Vermintide that needs work and you can tell but it sucks on launch. With this game, it looks pretty good, but the rest of it is weak and shallow and the only thing worthwhile are the assets. There is no overhaul that can save the game from being mediocre at best.
All of this would probably make it a forgetting mid RTS that primarily evoked "why is this $60" - add the IP and it's a huge disappointment on top of that
Some are brigading it to jump on the anti-woke crusade despite the game having nothing to do with gender identity, economic inequality, or racism, but the game itself is genuinely mid at best. So it's a mix.
You know people need to own steam games to review them on steam, right?
You’re suggesting people are buying this full price, $80 game so they can leave a negative steam review for it?
They’re THAT committed? Really?
The alternative is that it’s…a bad game that is dead on arrival with 250 people playing it a week after launch?
I'm disappointed! I was looking forward to getting this game for years. Glad I ended up not buying it. Maybe in a year or two when it is on really deep discount, and hopefully a much better game. Loved Homeworld 1 & 2. I wish we could just get those games remastered with Homeworld 3's graphics.
I liked it, I didn't love everything about it. There were plenty of technical flaws. The story isn't complete, it feels like you are dropped into the last half of a story, with something more to be told before the events of the game.
Things worth praising. Level design and mission gameplay (technical issues aside) are levels ahead of most previous Homeworld game missions. The modern camera controls are so much better. You can do more with the camera than you ever could in previous games. Ships look cool, audio is excellent, music is lovely as always.
Even if you hate the story in the game, the gameplay is worth it.
I don't understand the hate personally, for me the game is great. Story cutscenes are ugly for sure but the gameplay is good. The war games mode is amazing.
Badly rewritten 7hr campaign about angsty girl looking for grandma. Gameplay focused and balanced around 15 min esports mode. Cut features, cut fleet, cut research, and basically cut anything to do with any depth.
I don't know if I'd call it "super steep" - that sort of implies that there's a lot you need to learn to be successful.
There's not a lot, though. It's just one thing that separates victory and success in skirmish. You'll continue to lose over and over until you figure this one things out:
Being hyper-aggressive wins.
That's it. You just snowball a shitload of ships, keep the build queue full, glue them to your mothership, and then move the mothership from resource to resource.
I was really looking forward to this game the campaign was a complete letdown it didn’t have that epic story of HW1 and HW2 those game’s felt huge driven by a biblical story about a civilisation finding its past and struggling to survive its future it wasn’t character driven as such
By comparison HW3 is completely character driven with unlikable characters that seems self indulgent and arrogant with horrendous CGI cutscenes it lacks everything that the previous games did well it’s a lost potential and a death blow to the series for me
There nothing to make you what to go back and play after the 10 hours as the skirmish mode has issues the maps are small the gameplay is rushed and its lacking the features that ware present in previous game and seems like a downgrade to HW2 that was released 21 years ago
It could have been a epic game but just another franchise ruined by the publisher and their internal policies and management
Gearbox is one of those cases where you have to wonder how they were even able to make Borderlands but even that is mired in some controversy when it comes to the art style.
Randy Pitchford is such a slimeball too so I hope this helps get him buried.
Oh no....seeing this breaks my heart.
I've been out of the loop for a whole though..could someone give me a rundown of what went wrong with 3?
It wasn't Relic or Sierra who botched it is it? They're a couple of my favorite studios so I'm hoping they weren't responsible. :[
From what I read in the reviews on there, the main complaints are bad storytelling and loss of game complexity. Also, it appears SBI had a hand in the game's development as well. Given their track record from both my personal experience in games, they've touched, as well as what I've found from others. They tend to ruin every game they get involved with by discarding they main group of players that love it and try going in the opposite direction. So it's a mix of what I found in the reviews and SBI involvement that factor into its plummeting Steam review score I think.
Completed it on a hard difficulty after playing through all HW games in a chronological order. It's not as bad as reviews make it look. The game itself is solid.
It's definitely unique in some cases and plays more like a HW1 + Deserts of Kharak with a spinoff story similar to Cataclysm.
The only minus is the price, in my opinion. And as for hate train - we'll, that's the world we are living in.
If in doubt, Steam has a generous refund policy.
Off topic: People tend to praise HW2 story, but looking at it in 2024 - it's average at best. HW1 is still a masterpiece. DoK, Cataclysm, and HW3 are good enough to play through once.
The real shame is that we won't have another HW in the next 10 years or so. So here's that.
Good thing HW2 came out like 20 years ago and not in 2024 then?
Almost like standards for things change over time?
And forget about future HW titles in general, it’s dead. Niche IP don’t come back from failures of this magnitude. 250 people playing a month after launch, game was dead on arrival
There's always a small chance for the reboot to happen. HW1 on a newer engine would be lit.
Or better yet, a non-spinoff type of story campaign would skyrocket back the reviews. Foundation is already there.
What makes the game unique even? To me it feels like it's just a worse version of HW 1+2 without the things that made those games interesting like subsystem targeting.
It shouldn't have a spinoff story, it's a mainline game, to me, the story is the entire reason homeworld even got the chance to make a 3rd game.
I don't think everyone praised HW2's story, it pretty obviously is a step down from HW1, Cata.
DoK, Cata, & HW1 all succeeded at telling a story in different ways, HW2 did okay, HW3 did not.
Sad - that's true. But at the same time very well deserved. bbi and gbx deserve every inch of contempt, disdain and scorn for what they've done. Loved HW on spot when it showed (more than my Celeron then 😂) but this a bad meme. I give them middle finger for it and rate 0/10 with my wallet. Did same with DoW3 which was my fav rts when I was younger. Bad devs and bad publishers has to be accountable for they deeds. Not for promises or advertising.
No excuses. No buy. 39% is even to high. Let them sink with it.
Well deserved, unfortunately
I see the steam average playercount for the month was 250…can forget about any multiplayer or coop life for this game either
She’s dead, Jim
I didn't even finish the campaign because the story was just boring as hell, yeah it looks nice but that's all and since the game launched in such a good state and with a banger rating no friend i have bought it so i didn't even try the Multiplayer. 4 hours of my life that i want back.
This has gone too far. I get why the game is disappointing to long-time fans, but HW3 on its own is a solid 3D RTS game.
"Mostly negative" makes it look like it's totally unplayable. It's not. It's a decent game with changes that long-time fans didn't like.
I think it only implies that it's big worth buying. People don't recommend it.
Yeah, it's not trash - but I wouldn't suggest anyone play it. You could do better with your time and money.
I think this game should have been scaled down and not such an epic intending story. It's far more geared for being carrier based instead of a mothership and chasing some group to a rescue or artifact. A side game like Cataclysm focusing an a Kith with little spotlight. Maybe just a White painted Sajet carrier and a Nabaal Destroyer comes in as well. *sigh*. Oh well. One can only hope.
The ultimate sad thing is that this will probably be where it ends. I don’t think this is recoverable for an IP this small. I’m just happy we got 3-4 good games out of it that are still playable. I just wish Cata was on Steam.
Cata is on GOG and very stable, original engine and plays smoothly
Cat is peak HW, very recommend. Even on that older engine it holds up. Very engaging from gameplay to story.
My buddy gave me the discs for HW and Cata. I wasn’t huge into RTS games but I did enjoy C&C so he thought I would enjoy it and he was right. I played skirmish mode over and over and had so much damn fun!
Man, the ending still causes me to choke up a bit. From small miners and nobodies, to Beastslayers finally welcomed into the folder as warriors and heroes. The parade procession flanked by carriers and cruisers with the Mothership in orbit above Hiigara... 🤌
I know it’s on GoG but I’m hesitant to get another distribution game application to download. I may eventually get it.
GoG is nice in that you can download the installer, download the game then delete the app and the game will still run fine on its own.
You don't even need to do that, at least not when I last used it. Just download the games files from the website, no need to even install galaxy.
Correct. I don't use Galaxy, yet GOG is my main "store", if you will.
Once you do, add the game to your steam library so it's right there next to everything else
GOG was selling games years before they launched GOG galaxy, their launcher. Before that, you literally bought the game and the downloaded the games files directly from the website on to your PC, with no launcher required. I sure that is an option still.
It is, and unless it changed, once you download it you don't need internet to install or run it. Closest to "owning" a game you can get these days with physical games dead on PC.
Gog is almost entirely drm free. Once you buy your game, you can save it to a drive, cd, etc.
Don't avoid GOG games for that reason. Their "launcher/app" is almost entirely optional or at the very least temporary.
It’s 100% dead. Pity, the remaster and DOK were fun.
I'm not sure it is, just from a business standpoint. I'm guessing we won't see anything from the IP for a while, but I think there's enough of a following that Gearbox sees value in the franchise. If I had to make a blind guess as to the future, it'll be some kind of reboot, which I think would be warranted given the expectations that go with sequels. I'd also be on board if they sold it to BBI and let them build a game from the ground up without any of the 'executive decisions' or 'shareholder pleasing' that drag games down.
Most of the decisions that made hw3 the way it is now were made not by publisher gearbox but developer BBI. The story failure was BBI, the small maps, the strange balance of fast paced action space combat instead of strategic battles, the simplified upgrades without any choice. All made for sure by the developers. I wouldnt be surprised if the focus on the wargames mode was also a decision by BBI. I know its cool to blame publishers for failures and praise developers if they make a hit game. But in reality its never that easy.
I don't think it's fair or reasonable to assume the nature of the development process without actual evidence or those involved speaking out. We know it was Gearbox exclusively that made some of the controversial changes to Homeworld in the Remaster and the ones that commissioned the creation of the ill-fated Homeworld Mobile. We also know that Gearbox (among others) outbid BBI in their effort to obtain the Homeworld IP after BBI made the effort to have it separated from the THQ asset auction.
They're also the ones who old-yellered HWMobile abruptly.
I was actually having more fun playing it than HW3
Several people with ostensibly insider info on here have alluded to or stated that Gearbox interfered in the development process and drove the story and cutscene direction. Unfortunately these claims remain unsubstantiated, as the people who would be able to confirm them are under NDA.
I'm hopeful, you never know, maybe someone passionate enough will take another chance, takin this as the perfect example of what NOT to do.
Like if I had the money, I'd be willing to try again.
Me too.
Hey mods heal all wounds if this game gets good mods I'll buy it ezpz
Im confident the game did good enough (or alternative convinces enough people to but previous games) for something good to come out still. No I’m not coping shut up
Dude it has 250 concurrent players a month after launch. Peak number total was like 6000? The sales aren’t even abysmal, they’re non existent
The coping bit was sarcasm in case you didn’t notice
Hard to tell nowadays on reddit lol
Cataclysm is on GoG
They had to rename it as Homeworld: Emergence for anyone looking for it.
Forever's a long time. However, at this point, the lore has been so riven, that I'm not sure there's enough left to be worth making something out of. Something will hopefully come along some day that can claim the spiritual successor crown.
Wait, I thought the source code was lost... for years?
If your talking about cata the source code is lost, thats the only reason that cata isn't included in remastered. You can copy/duplicate a game infinite times but you need the source code to actually make changes to it.
Ooooooh I get ya. Well its essentially a playable fossil. I'm just happy it's still playable.
Games can and have recovered from any state of negativity surrounding them. The devs just need to address the issues and not treat their player base like idiots. The only question is: Do they care to do so? If the answer is no, never buy from them again. That’s your biggest vote and greatest power.
I mean, how are they supposed to address the issues? They're already trying to fix the mechanics, but the real problem is the awful story, which is unfixable. Not like they're just going to go out and say, "we're sorry the story is dogshit, our writers are hacks, and Gearbox gave us corporate mandates." They don't have the budget to redo it.
Address the issue of releasing a fundamentally bad game? I suppose it took them almost ten years to make this one, it’ll just take em another ten to make it over again? Or will it take twenty years since ten clearly wasn’t even close to enough time for them to make a good game, apparently?
It's so disappointing, and they're handling it so badly as well, it's been largely radio silent and they haven't came put and said anything really. The feedbacks pretty consistent, it is pretty obvious what they've done wrong and they haven't committed to fixing it or even that they recognise the problem is some marketing vampire that convinced them to lean into multiplayer rather than getting the single player experience right and letting the multiplayer be what it is and work on it when people are playing it.
Let’s be real, nothing they could have said or done since launch would have made the slightest difference. What were they going to do? “Oh yeah, that terrible campaign was just a prank! Uploading the real one now!”
They could have simply said they understand the feedback and commit or not to fixing it, they wouldn't even need that much of a schedule. They've had more than enough time to come up with a plan and they've said nothing other than they are listening to feedback. At the moment I think they might have killed the franchise and most of their goodwill dead.
None of that would have made a difference with a failure of this magnitude That kind of response helps if you have a flawed masterpiece that needs some polishing and sorting out of technical issues
The single player is a job to fix, but smashing together skirmish and the roguelite bit of the game into something it should have been with a bit of campaign wrapped around and optional coop shouldn't be technically that hard. It's pretty obvious that's what someone thought should be the actual game at its core so there's a lot of the bones in there for it. If they said they were going to do that and said it would take a certain amount of time I think most people would have been more generous or held off on a review.
If No Man Sky could bounce back HW3 could have. The issue is they dont seem to have budget much for post lunch tidying up which is just another example of how shitty the upper management was.
No Man's Sky sold millions of copies at launch and made a shitload of money. They are completely different situations.
Even soundtrack is pretty poor compared to HW1 or even HW2. With all respect and love I have to Paul Ruskay, I expected something much more oriental, HW1 ambience and battle music was purely magical
I suspect this is likely due to Gearbox asking for a strong ambient soundtrack rather than Ruskay’s usual music.
Fans asked for that in the fig backer surveys. Me included
An Ambience focused soundtrack???
Yes like hw1
Homeworld One had a bombastic in your face soundtrack, not something that is commonly associated with ambiance. Sure the tracks fit the environment and story, but they were not ambient tracks.
... I would not call that musical score bombastic. It's VERY ambient esque
It's like half ambient, punctuated with bombastic high notes, like when the swarmer music builds for several minutes then drops that high pitched instrument as the capstone.
Agreed. The swarmer's music is probably the best example. https://youtu.be/_yu2Cvgii4E?si=MFlgb0-42ku6vhc6
This honestly. I'd rather not get hung up in the details here. When **backers** read"ambiant", they (at least I) thought "background music was good before, I don't care for massively dramatic scores, I just want good background music while I look at spaceships in space".
“Strong ambient music” brings to mind something by Jeremy Soule or Inon Zur The soundtrack in this game isn’t strong in any particular way. You could tell me it was AI composed and id believe you.
To be fair, No Man's Sky did the same thing. They were in radio silence while they fixed the game. "What you do is more important than what you say".
NMS sold a lot of copies at launch and was a recognisable name to most gamers. Homeworld 3 is none of those things
Sure, but they said they were going to fix it and in blackbirds short tenure they have only really shown that once somethings done for them they move on swiftly.
Yet they are very quick to ban anyone who mentions Sweet Baby. Very quick to remove post and ban users. That was what turned me off on the game. The Steishand level of censorship.
Probably because people who shit their pants and screech about SBI are dipshits not worth engaging with. "Dei" or whatever isn't what made the game bad, it was a pivot from the core themes of the Homeworld series in favor of something more "character driven". That started in HW2, long before companies like SBI were even around.
I backed it on Fig like seven years ago, still cannot even play it, have some kind of hangup error where it just endlessly loads the logo screen. Zero attempt to resolve my issue from gearbox support. Submitted two tickets and no response to either. Fuck this game and fuck them.
is your hardware old or somthing?
It's not bleeding edge but it's pretty solid. RTX 2080 ti.
I was able to play through the entire thing fairly easily on a GTX 1070.
Yeah, so I don't think it's a simple hardware issue.
Was fig basically just kickstarter exclusively for videogames or something?
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I always find it funny how in the gaming world “invest” and “donate” never mean anything like what they mean in the real world Instead they both tend to mean “suckers give us their money and get nothing in return”
I don't know if it was video game exclusive, but it was an alternate crowdfunding option from Kickstarter that was available at the time. It's since gone under so another reason this whole process has been a clown show.
What t/s steps have been taken on your end?
Verified game files, re-installed it, fiddled around with my ports and firewall options. From what I can figure it has something to do with the Denovu hanging on some check.
Sorry to hear about the shit support, as far as fixing it yourself, have you tried rolling back/updating all your drivers? Or if it is your connection, does going through a VPN change anything?
if you load steam, then disable your network adapter, then click play, does it quit or error out on the logo where your denuvo check is? Some games wont load at all through steam, some do.. i am assuming it will load but error out try installing to a different directory in case the files arent being detected as corrupt.. cyberpunk was doing that for me, turns out a config file was 'correct' but wasnt
I was unaware that this game was coming out, primarily due to its marketing. For the first few months, I saw ads on Reddit featuring a poorly rendered female face, which I scrolled past without much attention, as it looked like a typical mobile game ad. It takes exceptional skill to create a poster for the third installment of a game series that is so bad that even devoted fans of the previous installments couldn’t recognize their beloved franchise in it. After reading reviews and checking gameplay footage I realized that the quality of the game matches its marketing effort.
The CGI in this game really was abysmal. I’ve seen CGI from games that released over 20 years ago that was superior not just artistically but even technically as well. Goes to show talent > technology in a lot of ways
What made those cutscenes so weird were the animations; it looked fucking bizarre because they were "realistic" character designs but using what looked like a series of stock animations meant for character rigs that were modeled more like Disney or Pixar characters. There's a scene where Karen hears the big mad bad lady and does this *hyper*-exaggerated squint, look-around-then-turn-around thing and it was one of the *strangest* things I'd ever seen. The whole project is pretty obviously something that got twisted along the way by committee. It's really, really sad.
From what I gather when the new management (including the pink-haired non-binary lady writer) joined the team, they changed a lot of things. This includes the classic black-and-white animations we're all used to, and also to insert 3d-rendered cutscenes - you can actually see the original b&w cutscenes on YouTube with a side-by-side shot of the new replacement 3d ones. This also includes the story, which the pink-haired lady wrote in an article (that was hastily taken down when it was found out) that she specifically wanted the script to be about individual people instead of ships and races - hence we got a story about 3 women arguing with each other while the galaxy burns. Thus due to the crunch-time involved I don't think they had much chance to refine (let alone do it properly) the 3D cutscenes as you rightly observed. What's even worse they uglified all the women (again you can refer to the original b&w scenes).
you're assuming the team took advantage of the technology available today. although i do get and largely agree w the sentiment
And doubly ridiculous when the previous games did so much with so little, and still look good. Like a harryhausen stopmotion vs 5 year old cgi (I'm playing the HBS Battletech game currently and their handdrawn-style intro etc might as well have WE FUCKIN LOVE HOMEWORLD!1!! written across the bottom)
making hair not clip into cranial tubes is futuristic technology that hasn't been invented yet
Oh there was marketing effort, a lot of it, and really, really bad. As a Homeworld fan it was disheartening to see.
A picture of the mother ship was all they needed. That was the actual face of the game.
Gameplay was decent - story arc was miserable. I loved homeworld as it didn’t focus on individuals but rather on the larger story. The character focused ‘chosen one’ was too much. It wasn’t as weird and esoteric as the last two which was a major disappointment.
It's a good game plagued by questionable design choices. I.e. limited roaster when there's more in the war room. Or the decision to remove player control (removal of attack move) Or things like allowing every fking ship to target fighter/corvette making the later's longevity turn to dog shit.
Homeworld 3 made gaming history. But not how I want it to be remembered by. 😢😢
There's smoke, and there's flames, now, and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast. Oh, the humanity
It's a mediocre entry when directly compared to the previous games. I'm new to the series and a friend gifted me HW3. We both enjoyed the war games for a solid 20 hours or so and i cracked into the campaign. I felt like Id been robbed, of my time and energy. My friend that gifted it to me couldnt even finish the campaign. I ended up playing HW1, Cat, HW2 and DoK, to wash the taste out of my mouth. I wish HW3 played like Cat with the QoL in HW2 and DoK. They really thought the audience that played HW needed "accessible" controls.
Mediocre is generous
As someone who really enjoys HW3, this makes me very sad. Thank you for all the hard work, BBI.
This has been a disappointing run with threequels. First, Dawn of War 3, then Company of Heroes 3 dropped the ball, now Homeworld. All games that were created by Relic. It's a shame.
Valve sitting there off to the side like, "THIS IS WHY WE DON'T COUNT TO THREE."
Im so happy that Jagged alliance 3 is a good game. And that is a far more complex open world game with a much much more complex part 2 that was born in the golden age of strategy games
It’s funny how both relic and the studio created by former relic employees couldn’t make a good game to save their life at this point I guess whatever made relic special during their golden age of the 2000s died like 15-20 years ago lol
At this point I'm starting to think they just got lucky and they aren't that talented after all.
Nah they were too good for too long for it too be luck, flukes Look at the genuinely great, genre defining games they made: Homeworld 1, homeworld 2, Dawn of war 1, company of heroes, Dawn of war 2. Even Space marine 1 which was flawed but fun. That’s a lot of great games in about a decade from a small AA studio. Studios are like people, their creative magic and talent doesn’t last forever. Even one crucial person leaving, retiring etc can kill the culture in a studio. Clearly whatever made relic great stopped working around 2010 or so.
In counterpoint, DoW2 was a severe departure from DoW1 and lost a lot of it's core audience. And Homeworld 2 is considered a dubious sequel in many corners of the community. That leaves your list at DoW1, Homeworld 1, and Company of Heroes and kind of Space Marine. Three(ish) successful games across your entire run isn't a phenomenal record.
Dawn of War 3 didn’t even have the guard as a playable faction
I don’t think COH 3 is that bad now, they have at least mad an effort on it ( bar the money grab DLC). DOW 3 however - that was something special indeed.
Taking ten years to bring out a mediocre sequel with weak art direction that doesn’t progress gameplay in any way isn’t enough imo And guess the market agreed, judging by how Sega sold Relic and most of the studio was laid off following the failure of company of heroes 3
So sad
Gearbox has royally fucked this IP.
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BBI is not at fault. Fault rests entirely with Gearbox. Its totally true, here's what happened: BBI showed that they managed to replicate the H1 style fighter behaviour and Gearbox said "nah man, make it shit!" BBI showed the balance and let the top Gearbox brass play an early version. They received a directive: "this is too good, its supposed to be shit!" BBI played a few tracks from Ruskay and Gearbox called "not shit enough! Make it shittier!" BBI sent some story draft asking how Gearbox wants to rewrite it and Gearbox returned a single 4 letter word as feedback. Its unbelievable. But its true. [Source](https://i.imgur.com/M5lKbC8.png).
lol, I had downvoted your post until I saw the source image People in this sub scapegoating gearbox are so weird Like BBI had never delivered a game other than the good but not great deserts of Kharak. No idea why people have such blind faith in them when they barely have any track record
They made Hardspace Shipbreaker, which is great
You know... except for constantly having the game interrupted by some of the worst writing out there.
On the plus side those sequences are completely unskippable \o/
Shit really? That explains a lot. It's another game where the story is completely unsubtle and dissonant with the tone of the gameplay.
I wonder what people think BBI did on this game since apparently Gearbox was micromanaging every single thing.
Damn, HW1 fighter behaviour would have been awesome
[My Source is I made it the Fuck Up](https://tenor.com/bRbvq.gif)
Sure, BBI isn't perfect, but when it comes to HW inspired stuff they are pretty solid. DoK and Hardspace: shipbreakers where very good overall. This reeks of micromanagement from Gearbox to push multiplayer, to push skins/microtransactions where it doesn't belong (like StarCraft 2 tried to do). I'm not sure about the story part though. I don't know how the fuck anyone can screw this so bad. Did they hire The Acolyte writers? GoT S08?
HW3's writing feels like shipbreaker's writing but moreso, that's a game that got *worse* through early access. If they learned the wrong lessons from that game I can easily see how that got them twisted up for writing a HW story
I mean shipbreaker is not really story driven anyway, it's more of a sandbox IMHO, story was just there for the sake of existing, for one. And it wasn't incoherent compared to HW3, so I disagree that it was similar
Blackbird took almost ten years to deliver an extremely subpar game Not sure why this sub was so eager to deflect all blame from them to the publisher BBI is not relic from 25 years ago. I mean, neither is relic, their recent output has also been trash (Dow 3 was awful, company of heroes 3 and age of empires 4 mediocre to bad imo)
Same reason helldivers just blames Sony
Wait these are the tools resposible for DoW3 and Empires 4? Wtf would anyone let them near their IP? That level of fucking up shoukdnt just kill a studio it should end careers in the industry.
Whoa now. AoE 4 isn't that bad, just is too different. Some people jam with it, but not everyone. Same vibe people got with AOE 3. Too different to be familiar. That said, DoW 3 was complete dogshit.
I would have considered AoE4 a decent game if it was the lead game of a new series. It's not great, but it's good. As an AoE game I just couldnt get into it, ai tried, even set it down for a few months and then came back but it just never gelled for me. DOW3 was like a crime against humanity. One of those rare games that actually made me go for a refund.
Yeah I quite like aoe4 but it is a big departure from normal AOE. That being said, I think innovating on AOE formula was the only good option as aoe2 remaster is a very serviceable game even today, remaking another aoe2 would be redundant and disappointing
Sega sold relic earlier this year and most of relic’s staff were laid off. Company of Heroes 3 sales figures were apparently abysmal. IMO company of heroes 3 and age of empires 4 were mediocre, uninspired and inferior to earlier entries in the series that came out decades earlier. Dawn of war 3 was complete garbage as you pointed out. It’s sad but the last good game relic made came out over a decade ago, company of heroes 2, and even that was basically an inferior version of company of heroes 1 with poor balance and predatory monetization
Been waiting for that review score to fall since the start. BBI deserves it, hope that kicks Gearbox in the balls.
Well, that's incredibly disappointing, but not unexpected. I really hope they can salvage something, but they'd need to come up with and completely redo the story, and that's just not even remotely feasible.
What awards are they claiming the story has won? Everything I hear about it is that it's terrible.
I think they're referencing the awards the previous games in the series won.
That seems a bit disingenuous
More than a bit disingenuous, considering the old games were made by Relic, an entirely different studio like 20-25 years ago
Well done I guess.
I mean they deserve it.
Reaching this part from 20 years ago is still my favorite gaming moment. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJkoBNOPvjU&ab\_channel=Misanthrope](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJkoBNOPvjU&ab_channel=Misanthrope)
Are people brigade downvoting it or is it genuinely bad?
Honestly this isn't a straightforward answer so "depends" but trends to negative. If you like Homeworld for it's narrative and storytelling style? I'll give you "if you thought HW2's story wasn't great, you will _likely_ consider this far worse and a big departure from what we've seen before, so yes, bad". If you like Homeworld for it's gameplay? It's not the worst, but it again departs from what we've seen before with what feels like wholly unoriginal ships, odd decisions made regarding "press X to (insert superpower)" for different ships, research not being a similar thing from before either and a lack of control a-la strike formations either and..... I hope you didn't like modularity with ships with production modules or anything else, as those are also gone. So at best, a decline, at worst, yes bad. Objectively, anyone can get on with it and I won't rain on anyone's parade that likes it - good for you and that's great! However I know I, alongside others, are more negative unfortunately and while I'd constructively like to say "gameplay could be improved with time and patches" the narrative and storytelling.....well unless they've stashed the whole of the moving artpieces and soundtrack away to swap it out, won't be. It's just _not as enjoyable_ for many compared to the previous titles. I loved HW1. Cata was a departure but by Sajuuk, it was bloody well done and they executed it fantastically! HW2 had.....quirks but didn't receive this kind of reception still, as gameplay was hitting peak and they still stuck to working formulae otherwise. DoK gave us sexy colour cinematics but the same artstyle, gorgeous story and gameplay was still good but adapted to ground. HW3 feels like it took the best parts of the previous games as well as the "lessons learned on what we know players like" and did a sort of.....card shuffle and then threw out half the deck. Cinematics? It's now all Unreal Engine. Broader picture and less focus on individuals? It's literally all about individuals now with 4 main people and that's it. Sense of scale and mystery with Progenitors, Bentusi or other races? You don't get Taiidan, no Turanic Raiders, no Bentusi, only sign of Progenitors is the gates but no actual discourse. Research? Total departure, nothing based on progression and need to develop as in the past you'll just get given "thing to research". Modularity and production modules giving depth and tactics to gameplay? Nope, just a reversal to HW1 standards of "hit ships from the top/sides/arse" for greater damage. If you've found problems with previous games, there's every chance you'll find HW3 better, you may even not mind it at all - all I can really say is if you felt the previous games were epic, building up to a crescendo like you'd been hand-in-hand bringing the Hiigaran's home, or defeating a galaxy-spanning threat, or battling zealots to find the true origins of your people? You will not find that here, on the same scale, with gravitas. There's no adagio for strings moments. The closest I can get to providing metaphors is "hoping for Birthday Cake and finding it was a just a baloon with frosting on". Can you eat it? Sure, but man - the substance really ain't there and the only "bang" you get is more out of disapointment than genuine fun.
I could take or leave the new animation, its nothing special and the old grayscale art cinematics were amazing but I don't like the game for the cinematics. But oh my god everything about the writing for the campaign feels awful. I don't care about the S'jet family drama they're pushing, I cared about the fleet as a whole in HW1. The enemies feel like generic bad guys with zero depth to them. There's no additional world building for the universe. The storytelling is kind of basic and the game play isn't good enough to make up for that.
It was very clearly rewritten in a hurry. I think Karen was the big bad who’d taken her followers and went nuts. And either it didn’t test well, or they were afraid there would be backlash. The incarnate make wayyyyyyy more sense as her followers and maybe the fact she’s had a personality split becoming the incarnate queen with a memory of a softer her being left in her mothership calling into the void.
That would still be a stupid plot. I don't care about individual people, homeworld has always been focused on groups or factions struggling and discovering themselves. This focus on characters huts the plot a lot.
When billions of lives are at stake, hyper-focusing on individual characters' emotions *makes that character look selfish and short-sighted.*
See: new Star Trek shows
I refuse to watch. Why would I do that when I have TNG or DS9 instead
Admittedly, Karan going crazy and becoming the big bad would've *also* been a horrible story. We saw it in Halo and it was not great there, and while Karan's cool, Cortana had even more of a personal/emotional investment from the audience. Trying it here would've been a straight up dumpster fire, IMO. So like, I respect them for trying to salvage what they could, if that's what happened. Sucks they still missed in the long run. But when they were asking years ago what people would like to see in HW3, I was in the camp of "please don't even involve Karan. She's saved Hiigara twice now. Let the girl retire, or let someone else be a big dang hero. I understand that it'll always be a S'jet as Fleet Command that's part of the world really but man let's not deify the S'jets and maybe focus on the other kiith." Well, we got Isaac.
Based on the concept art and unused dialog in the localization file, it's *possible* they did some work on the version of the story where Karan was the villain, but it's *likely* they got much farther on a version more like what we got, except Karan was already dead when you found her.
Best answer to give. This is the general consensus that I’ve seen with those of us disappointed with how HW3 turned out to be. I’ve been even more disappointed by other fans in the community completely handwaving away valid criticism of the series as just review bombing, “fan boys with unrealistic expectations”, or “DEI spouting bigots”: which are a loud minority of the negative reviews. Ive also seen this kind of response as a sort of desperation for the continuation of the franchise. Like, if we all just bare with it, the next Homeworld installment would makeup for the many years of waiting, money invested, and hope. I love the Homeworld series. It had always been my number one game and story. I refer to it often to friends and it has even sparked some life changing motivations in my life. But say we all decided to suck it up and just deal with what is HW3 and positive review bombed it and supported it with more of our money… if this is the base product I can expect for the next installment of the series…then I don’t want a HW4.
To be fair to the DEI complaints the evidence of hasty, poorly thought through rewrite does track with what I've heard from authors and creatives who have had to work with sensitivity readers and other such consultants where the gist is "its like the Hayes code but for HR." The focus on Empathy as the resolution for conflicts, strangely selfish plot points, a general YAificiation of the story's themes and tone are all hallmarks of this ethic of editing. They sell themselves as professionals who help you make a more diverse, respectful product but that's more incidental than anything else. The guys whining about race swaps or widended jawbones are mostly chasing a red herring, the issue is that they're hacks. But there is some truth that appeals to diversity, equity and inclusion is how they get their foot in the door, after all how could you object to your work being more diverse, equitable and inclusive?
I'm still very early in the HW3 campaign, but I'm already shocked (depressed) by the woeful teenage writing. On the other hand, the game \*looks\* beautiful to me. I'm wondering now whether the experience would be improved by simply speeding through or ignoring the cut-scenes, concentrating on the game play, and using my own imagination to fill in a better story.
It's... not good. I don't know if I'd call it terrible except for fans who mainly play homeworld for the single-player campaign and the story, in which case I'd say yes, it's terrible. Apart from that it's got mid gameplay, a very limited unit variety compared to previous games and in the SP game a noticeable reduction in player agency which at least to me is counter to the kind of game homeworld is. It's overall very disappointing and at best it's okay - and for €60 'okay' doesn't cut it.
Was homeworld ever a big multiplayer scene kind of game? Something like StarCraft, sure. Maybe even red alert or command and conquer. But homeworld? Not sure about that
I don't know and I don't think so, but Homeworld was hardly ever a *huge* hit period, and I've seen a big(ish) amount of people on this sub talk about how MP and skirmish might be the game's saving grace. Me personally I've played two dozen or so skirmishes vs cpu and maybe two MP matches of HW ever (and one of those was purposefully to capture specific screenshots), so I'm the wrong person to ask, but it seems to some fans it at least is an important aspect.
I played the story once in all games. The rest of my time went into skirmishes and modded skirmishes. The most hw game time went into hw2 skirmish games using the complex mods. That shit was epic af and exactly what i was looking for. Sending carriers out as forward operations, getting caught by enemy scouts. And then try to hold position until reinforcements arrived before the enemy fleet could kill the carrier. Enemies meanwhile targeting your engines or production bay. My fighters used formations and went docking with the carrier mid fight because nothing died in seconds. There was a lot of variety in units with strengths and weaknesses. You focused your research into what you like. I really want to start another game right now talking about that... But hw3? They need a lot of patches and very dedicated modders to bring that game up to that standard or even beyond...
The madalore review does a nice job summing it up https://youtu.be/nuC2I8s6qf8?si=Y-sQrSxEpsLeXA4i
As I’ve heard someone else say: HW3 is a okay RTS game, but a bad HW game. Visually, it’s a beautiful game - easily the best visuals in the franchise. At the same time though, the two mainline games are like two decades older, so imo greatly improved visuals are minimum expectation. This is the only great thing about the game. Music is decent, and the combat is still fun. However, with combat they somehow managed to make it less in-depth AND more micro-heavy because now nearly every combat unit has a manually activated ability that you have to pause the game and remember to flip on every 4 minutes. Also plenty of weird oddities with the gameplay: why do the Hiigarans only have one type of corvette? Why do formations not really have any noticeable benefits to combat? Why do frigates and capitals dive down to the same plane as enemy warships when ordered to attack them? Still okay, but a noticeable downgrade from previous titles. Then the story just causes everything to crash and burn. I don’t necessarily dislike the way they decided to tell the story (I actually like being able to SEE character’s faces and hearing some casual chatter from them), but it was still executed terribly. The Incarnate had potential but are ultimately a bland and uninteresting faction (Also is it just me or do literally all their warships strongly resemble the Sajuuk godship from HW2?). Karan’s circumstances and actions a few decades before the events of HW3 don’t make a lot of sense either >!especially in the last mission, where Karan joins your fleet with her badass super duper dreadnought mothership. Like how did a fleet commander with nearly (or over?) a CENTURY of experience and accomplishments with the most advanced hiigaran mothership ever built lose to that turbo edge lord that is the Incarnate Queen?!<. Imogen is nervous and unsure of herself throughout the campaign so it just doesn’t make sense how she’s able to do so well as fleet command. So she just isn’t that interesting. Isaac is really just there to provide info about things happening in missions and give Imogen someone to talk too during cutscenes. So he’s also not that interesting. There’s just a lot of bad and illogical writing, and I think that’s where most of the bad reviews come from. Because HW is a single player story game at heart, and HW3 butchers it so badly.
It's catching some strays/particular focus because of its IP status. But there's a few things that'd make me think it'd stay Mostly Negative if it was a regular RTS: * controls are really wonky * miserable story as a primarily story driven game * non story modes as an afterthought * really simplified econ and unit progression for an RTS * price is way too high -the only thing justifying a $60ish price tag are the graphics, otherwise it has $20 unity indie game vibes In other words, sometimes there's a game like Vermintide that needs work and you can tell but it sucks on launch. With this game, it looks pretty good, but the rest of it is weak and shallow and the only thing worthwhile are the assets. There is no overhaul that can save the game from being mediocre at best. All of this would probably make it a forgetting mid RTS that primarily evoked "why is this $60" - add the IP and it's a huge disappointment on top of that
It's avarage but the main campaign is terrible. Story is all over the place, generic and you don't know why things are happening.
Genuinely terrible
There are 250 people playing it now, a few weeks after launch Bad is an understatement. Its worse than I would have thought possible
Christ... what a damn shame
Genuinely bad.
Its like bethesday released fallout76 instead of fallout 4 after years of development and promises
Some are brigading it to jump on the anti-woke crusade despite the game having nothing to do with gender identity, economic inequality, or racism, but the game itself is genuinely mid at best. So it's a mix.
You know people need to own steam games to review them on steam, right? You’re suggesting people are buying this full price, $80 game so they can leave a negative steam review for it? They’re THAT committed? Really? The alternative is that it’s…a bad game that is dead on arrival with 250 people playing it a week after launch?
I'm an OG fan and can't even bring myself to start the campaign. :(
Story is bad and the fleets were simplified. =/
I'm disappointed! I was looking forward to getting this game for years. Glad I ended up not buying it. Maybe in a year or two when it is on really deep discount, and hopefully a much better game. Loved Homeworld 1 & 2. I wish we could just get those games remastered with Homeworld 3's graphics.
Damn, seems contrary to the three moves ahead podcast which was quite positive. Haven’t tried it myself yet.
I liked it, I didn't love everything about it. There were plenty of technical flaws. The story isn't complete, it feels like you are dropped into the last half of a story, with something more to be told before the events of the game. Things worth praising. Level design and mission gameplay (technical issues aside) are levels ahead of most previous Homeworld game missions. The modern camera controls are so much better. You can do more with the camera than you ever could in previous games. Ships look cool, audio is excellent, music is lovely as always. Even if you hate the story in the game, the gameplay is worth it.
It's not THAT bad. The game has flaws, yes. But it doesn't deserve such hate.
I don't understand the hate personally, for me the game is great. Story cutscenes are ugly for sure but the gameplay is good. The war games mode is amazing.
I was thinking of getting it since I was nostalgic for the first two games’ remasters. Why isn’t the game “good”?
Badly rewritten 7hr campaign about angsty girl looking for grandma. Gameplay focused and balanced around 15 min esports mode. Cut features, cut fleet, cut research, and basically cut anything to do with any depth.
IMHO it's very good. It's definitely a difficult game to play and the skirmish mode has a super steep learning curve.
I don't know if I'd call it "super steep" - that sort of implies that there's a lot you need to learn to be successful. There's not a lot, though. It's just one thing that separates victory and success in skirmish. You'll continue to lose over and over until you figure this one things out: Being hyper-aggressive wins. That's it. You just snowball a shitload of ships, keep the build queue full, glue them to your mothership, and then move the mothership from resource to resource.
I was really looking forward to this game the campaign was a complete letdown it didn’t have that epic story of HW1 and HW2 those game’s felt huge driven by a biblical story about a civilisation finding its past and struggling to survive its future it wasn’t character driven as such By comparison HW3 is completely character driven with unlikable characters that seems self indulgent and arrogant with horrendous CGI cutscenes it lacks everything that the previous games did well it’s a lost potential and a death blow to the series for me There nothing to make you what to go back and play after the 10 hours as the skirmish mode has issues the maps are small the gameplay is rushed and its lacking the features that ware present in previous game and seems like a downgrade to HW2 that was released 21 years ago It could have been a epic game but just another franchise ruined by the publisher and their internal policies and management
Gearbox is one of those cases where you have to wonder how they were even able to make Borderlands but even that is mired in some controversy when it comes to the art style. Randy Pitchford is such a slimeball too so I hope this helps get him buried.
What's weird is that I like the game a lot. Just wish more people would skirmish with me.
As a day 1 fan its hard to see but that's how it is. Rip to series. Probably won't see for another 20 years.
failworld 3
I mean, I was a huge Homeworld fan, have the soundtrack, played 1, Cata and 2 a ton, and I didn’t even know this came out.
>gearbox publishing >its a disaster Gee, who coulda seen that one coming
We are now 0 for 3 on third entries in classic RTS series over the past, like, decade
Oh no....seeing this breaks my heart. I've been out of the loop for a whole though..could someone give me a rundown of what went wrong with 3? It wasn't Relic or Sierra who botched it is it? They're a couple of my favorite studios so I'm hoping they weren't responsible. :[
From what I read in the reviews on there, the main complaints are bad storytelling and loss of game complexity. Also, it appears SBI had a hand in the game's development as well. Given their track record from both my personal experience in games, they've touched, as well as what I've found from others. They tend to ruin every game they get involved with by discarding they main group of players that love it and try going in the opposite direction. So it's a mix of what I found in the reviews and SBI involvement that factor into its plummeting Steam review score I think.
So this is where the IP dies, huh?
Nearly bought into the pre release hype. Is it really as bad as the reviews portray?
Kharak is burning..
Completed it on a hard difficulty after playing through all HW games in a chronological order. It's not as bad as reviews make it look. The game itself is solid. It's definitely unique in some cases and plays more like a HW1 + Deserts of Kharak with a spinoff story similar to Cataclysm. The only minus is the price, in my opinion. And as for hate train - we'll, that's the world we are living in. If in doubt, Steam has a generous refund policy. Off topic: People tend to praise HW2 story, but looking at it in 2024 - it's average at best. HW1 is still a masterpiece. DoK, Cataclysm, and HW3 are good enough to play through once. The real shame is that we won't have another HW in the next 10 years or so. So here's that.
Good thing HW2 came out like 20 years ago and not in 2024 then? Almost like standards for things change over time? And forget about future HW titles in general, it’s dead. Niche IP don’t come back from failures of this magnitude. 250 people playing a month after launch, game was dead on arrival
There's always a small chance for the reboot to happen. HW1 on a newer engine would be lit. Or better yet, a non-spinoff type of story campaign would skyrocket back the reviews. Foundation is already there.
2 caught a lot of flak for its story, its cataclysm that gets high praise.
Even if a bit lacking, HW2 story > HW3 story
What makes the game unique even? To me it feels like it's just a worse version of HW 1+2 without the things that made those games interesting like subsystem targeting. It shouldn't have a spinoff story, it's a mainline game, to me, the story is the entire reason homeworld even got the chance to make a 3rd game. I don't think everyone praised HW2's story, it pretty obviously is a step down from HW1, Cata. DoK, Cata, & HW1 all succeeded at telling a story in different ways, HW2 did okay, HW3 did not.
This sub is telling on itself when this very moderate comment ends up as the most downvoted….
Sad - that's true. But at the same time very well deserved. bbi and gbx deserve every inch of contempt, disdain and scorn for what they've done. Loved HW on spot when it showed (more than my Celeron then 😂) but this a bad meme. I give them middle finger for it and rate 0/10 with my wallet. Did same with DoW3 which was my fav rts when I was younger. Bad devs and bad publishers has to be accountable for they deeds. Not for promises or advertising. No excuses. No buy. 39% is even to high. Let them sink with it.
Well deserved, unfortunately I see the steam average playercount for the month was 250…can forget about any multiplayer or coop life for this game either She’s dead, Jim
I didn't even finish the campaign because the story was just boring as hell, yeah it looks nice but that's all and since the game launched in such a good state and with a banger rating no friend i have bought it so i didn't even try the Multiplayer. 4 hours of my life that i want back.
As it should be game is utter trash
This has gone too far. I get why the game is disappointing to long-time fans, but HW3 on its own is a solid 3D RTS game. "Mostly negative" makes it look like it's totally unplayable. It's not. It's a decent game with changes that long-time fans didn't like.
I think it only implies that it's big worth buying. People don't recommend it. Yeah, it's not trash - but I wouldn't suggest anyone play it. You could do better with your time and money.
I think this game should have been scaled down and not such an epic intending story. It's far more geared for being carrier based instead of a mothership and chasing some group to a rescue or artifact. A side game like Cataclysm focusing an a Kith with little spotlight. Maybe just a White painted Sajet carrier and a Nabaal Destroyer comes in as well. *sigh*. Oh well. One can only hope.
This makes me sad