A History of Homeworld Part 7: The Beast War

In this series celebrating the franchise's twentieth anniversary (and the recent announcement of Homeworld 3), I look at the background lore of the critically-acclaimed Homeworld series of video games.

The following is classified at the highest order of Hiigaran planetary security. Only the New Daiamid can permit access to these records in light of the disturbing implications they raise.
Approximately fifteen years after the return of the Exiles to Hiigara, an event took place that cost tens of thousands of lives and involved fleet actions consisting of Hiigaran, Turanic, Taiidan and Bentusi forces. Despite this, the full scale of the events involved have never been publicly revealed by the Daiamid, to the point where some doubt they took place at all. Certainly plenty of eyewitness accounts of the conflict leaked out in the subsequent decades, but they were so apocalyptic and bleak that even hardened conspiracy theorists had a hard time accepting that they could be real.

Kiith Somtaaw mining vessel Kuun-Lan.

Unleashing the Beast
The chain of events in question began in 15 AHL when a Taiidan Imperial fleet launched an assault on Hiigara. The Naabal carrier Veer-Rak was charged with the defence of the Hiigaran system and called in every ship in range to help. Dozens of ships from numerous kiith responded and the Taiidan fleet was forced to retreat after sustaining heavy losses. During the battle, unexpected help arrived in the form of the Kuun-Lan, one of Kiith Somtaaw’s mining vessels. Although not a warship as such, the Kuun-Lan’s support forces and fighter squadrons were enough to help tip the tide of battle. Kiith Somtaaw’s presence at the battle was initially unrecorded, but the records were later amended to give a glowing account of how the Somtaaw warriors comported themselves in battle.

The Kuun-Lan then jumped to the outer edge of the system to investigate the disappearance of a Kiith Manaan destroyer, the Bushan-Re. The Somtaaw found the ship, repaired it and set it on its way, but not before picking up an automated signal from a derelict probe of unknown origin. The probe was recovered, but the Kunn-Lan’s research team were baffled by it. The ship jumped to the nearby Coruc-Tel system to rendezvous with the research vessel Clee-San, only to find it under attack by Turanic forces. The Kunn-Lan drove off the Turanic Raiders and liberated the Clee-San.

The Clee-San crew prepared to inspect the alien probe, but before they could do so some kind of organism left the probe and began to infect the Kunn-Lan’s systems. The entire lower hanger module was compromised, forcing the rest of the ship to jettison it. The Clee-San pursued and discovered that the module had been overrun by a biogenic organism which could subvert both mechanical and organic systems. Before more could be learned, the Clee-San was also infected and subverted by the same organism. The Kunn-Lan attempted to engage and destroy the infection before it could spread further, but a Turanic fleet jumped into the system and was immediately subverted. Heavily outgunned, the Kunn-Lan jumped to the nearby Aiowa system to ask for help from the Bentusi. The subverted ships pursued and attacked the Bentusi trade ship. Although the Bentusi were able to defend themselves from the enemy’s weapons, they were vulnerable to the subversion beam. Rather than be taken over by an alien force, the Bentusi ship chose to self-destruct. The Kunn-Lan was able to take evasive action and flee the system, along with a Kiith Manaan carrier, the Caal-Shto, that had arrived to help.

Whilst the Caal-Shto returned to Hiigara for reinforcements, the Kunn-Lan continued to investigate the new threat. Analysis of the alien data pod confirmed that it was over a million years old and was part of a ship called the Naggarok, which had travelled from another galaxy. An extremely prolonged period in hyperspace had resulted the Naggarok being infected by an alien organism, dubbed “The Beast.” The Beast was able to absorb and take control of organic and inorganic matter to improve itself. The Somtaaw realised with horror that the Beast could spread exponentially and overrun this part of the galaxy within weeks unless stopped.

A fleet of carriers near Hiigara.

The Counter-Attack
The Kunn-Lan crew learned that the Imperial Taiidan outpost on Gozan IV had been conducting research into the Beast. It slipped a commando team onto the planet to steal the data and then conducted an emergency hyperspace jump to a nearby debris field, where the crew salvaged an immense siege cannon. They were found by the pursuing Taiidan forces, but also the Beast mothership which had grown out of the captured Kunn-Lan hanger module. The siege cannon destroyed most of the Taiidan forces, but the Beast was able to regenerate quickly after the attack. The Kunn-Lan jumped to rendezvous with its sister ship, the Fal-Corum, and helped fend off another Beast attack. The Somtaaw crews discussed the intelligence and realised that a viable strategy would be to recover a piece of the Beast from the original Naggarok and then use it to adjust the siege cannon beam to a frequency which the Beast would not be able to recover from.

Using astrogation data from a Turanic starbase, the Somtaaw located the Naggarok only to find that the Beast had gotten there ahead of them, and formed an alliance with a Taiidan Imperial force to help repair the command ship. The Somtaaw recovered a sample of the Naggarok and hyperspaced to a Bentusi system to ask for their help in fine-tuning the Siege Cannon. However, they found the Bentusi in a blind panic over the threat of the Beast: the Bentusi had spent thousands of years as an “Unbound” race, having become one with their starships and not restricted to existing solely on the surface of planets. The Beast threatened to imprison and constrain the Bentusi within their ships, turning them into slaves or prisoners. As a result, the Bentusi had triggered a failsafe: a hyperspace gate (presumably built with the assistance of the First Core) which could carry them out of the galaxy altogether.

In a desperate gambit, the Kuun-Lan disabled the hyperspace gate and tried to force the Bentsui to see reason: after a brief stand-off, the Bentusi agreed to provide assistance. They fine-tuned the siege cannon. The Kuun-Lan then used the cannon to destroy the Clee-San and the Beast mothership which had formed around their old hanger module. The Somtaaw then hunted down the repaired Naggarok, which was attacking a massive Taiidan Republican military installation, the Nomad Moon. A pitched battle resulted, complicated by the Beast taking over the Moon. Bentusi reinforcements proved critical and the Kuun-Lan was able to disable the Moon and then stopped the Naggarok by disabling it with a powerful EMP charge. A colossal amount of fire directed at the Naggarok disintegrated it, along with any last remaining traces of the Beast.

The Beast mothership, formed out of the hanger module of the Kuun-Lan.

Aftermath

The so-called Beast War was a significant military conflict, spanning several systems and entailing a high number of casualties. However, the conflict was carried out by ships exclusively using Short Jump drives, severely limiting the area over which the damage was spread. In addition, the conflict did not take place in proximity to an inhabited, major world (apart from Hiigara, which was far too well-defended for the Beast to risk an attack), severely preventing the number of ships and people who could be subverted by the Beast. This also prevented news of the Beast and the level of threat it represented from spreading, preventing a major panic.

In the aftermath of the conflict, it was classified at the highest levels of both the New Daiamid and the Galactic Council. The Bentusi did not want the rest of the galaxy to know about their weakness to the Beast. In addition, although all traces of the Beast had been apparently destroyed, there was always the marginal risk of additional debris or pieces of Beast-infected ships being found and starting the infection over again. Prohibiting the information from spreading was seen as a more effective way of keeping the events of the war as secret as possible. The Taiidan Republic also agreed to this stipulation.

The reasons for the Taiidan Imperials keeping quiet are less clear, but the fact that they were defeated by the Beast several times and then treated like fools by it suggests it was a matter they wished to forget as soon as possible.

One outcome of the conflict that was made public was the honour of Kiith Somtaaw. For their triumph in “a clandestine military campaign against Taiidan Imperial forces,” the Somtaaw were elevated to the rank of an honoured warrior kiith and given a new symbol and nickname: the “Beastslayers.” The technological improvements gained during the conflict were integrated into Hiigaran forces as a whole.

Of course, more than a century after the alleged events it is now rather difficult to confirm if they did indeed take place; certainly, some experts in the field do not believe a word of it.

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Developers tease new HOMEWORLD project

Blackbird Interactive and Gearbox have teased a new project set in the Homeworld universe.

Relic Entertainment originally released the pioneering 3D real-time strategy game Homeworld in 1999. It was followed by stand-alone expansion Homeworld: Cataclysm (from Relic and Barking Dog Studios) in 2000 and Homeworld 2 (from Relic alone) in 2003.

After a lengthy period where the rights to the IP were in flux, Gearbox purchased the rights in 2015 and issued Homeworld Remastered, a huge and fundamental updating of Homeworld and Homeworld 2 to modern standards. Blackbird Interactive, a new developer made up of many of the original Relic team who developed the first two game, released the well-received, ground-based RTS prequel Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak in 2016.

The source code for Homeworld: Cataclysm has been lost, preventing a similar updating, but GoG have reissued the game with patches to help it work on modern systems under the name Homeworld: Emergence.

Based on the single promo image issued (a shot of the galactic core of the Homeworld galaxy), the new project appears to be space-based and may be the long, long-rumoured Homeworld 3. Further information is expected to be unveiled at the PAX event on 30 August, where Gearbox will have a presentation which will also reveal more information on their forthcoming game, Borderlands 3.

Wertzone Classics: Homeworld Remastered

Over sixty years ago, the Kushan people of the desert planet Kharak made a remarkable discovery: a vast, wrecked starship in the desert, and around it the ruins of a four thousand-year-old city. The Kushan confirmed what their scientists and geneticists had long suspected: they were not native to Kharak. They had come from somewhere else in the galaxy. Using technology reverse-engineered from the wreck, a hyperspace core located in its ruins and a Guidestone emblazoned with a curious map, the Kushan have built a vast starship. Their mission is simple: to find their true homeworld.

Originally released in 1999 as the debut title from Relic Entertainment, Homeworld was a video game way ahead of its time. Featuring a remarkable 3D, real-time graphics engine and a gripping storyline, the game told the story of an entire people racing to find their way home, hounded by enemies they don't understand and accused of crimes their ancestors committed millennia earlier. It was followed by two successors, Homeworld: Cataclysm (2000) and Homeworld 2 (2003), but Relic was bought out by Sega and switched to making Warhammer 40,000 games (namely the popular Dawn of War series) and, later, the WWII Company of Heroes series. The Homeworld IP, left behind with dying publisher THQ, was forgotten about.

Or so it seemed. By 2015 THQ had gone bust and the Homeworld IP had been bought by FPS titans Gearbox, several members of whom were massive fans of the original game. Helpfully, many of the team who made Homeworld and Homeworld 2 had left Relic to set up their own studio, Blackbird Interactive, and had begun making their own strategy game which was basically as close to Homeworld as they could get without violating copyright. Gearbox teamed up with Blackbird to retool that game as an official Homeworld game - the excellent Deserts of Kharak - and also fully remaster the original games into a new package, fit for modern gamers.

Homeworld Remastered is the result. This re-release combines Homeworld and Homeworld 2 into one package and significantly updates both titles. Homeworld has been moved into the superior Homeworld 2 engine, given a massive graphical face-lift and had its user interface revamped. The result is nothing short of a revelation: a game that plays identically to how it did in 1999 but with cutting-edge graphics. Pushed to the maximum and played on a 4K monitor and graphics card, it's possible that Homeworld Remastered is the most graphically jaw-dropping game currently in existence. Not bad for a franchise not far off from entering its third decade.

If you haven't played any of the Homeworld games before, an in-depth tutorial explains the basics. Your Mothership is your headquarters and base (stationary in the first game, mobile in the second one), from where you build fighters, capital ships, probes and asteroid-mining craft. Your resource gatherers mine asteroids and gas clouds for resources allowing you to build ships and research new technologies.

The game is controlled from a 3D perspective, with you giving ships orders on where to move and how to engage the enemy. Your ships can move in all directions, including attacking from above or below to surprise the enemy, and several story missions in fact depend on you attacking from outside the usual plane. You can amass your fleet in strike groups of mixed types of craft: the AI is good enough that when you click on an enemy fleet, your ships will engage the appropriate enemy craft (so fighters will target bombers, bombers will target heavy capital ships, battlecruisers will target everyone etc). You can also pause the game and issue orders whilst paused if the action gets too hectic (as it invariably does).

The fleet you build is persistent through the game, so all the units that survive one mission will automatically show up at the beginning of the next one. Your resources are also persistent, so you start each mission with the resources collected from the last one. Slightly controversially, the remaster also automatically harvests up remaining resources from the last mission, allowing you to move on rather than having to sit around and wait for your miners to do their thing (which on some missions took an hour or more after the objectives were met) but also meaning that mining becomes a bit pointless as the game continues, since you automatically just hoover up everything and start each successive missions with more money than you can ever spend.

The real meat of the game, though, is space combat. Your fleets consist of several ship types: fighters, bombers, corvettes, frigates and heavy capital ships. As the game continues the enemy improve their ships so you have to as well, gradually building more versatile and fiercer fleets.

The single-player storyline is excellent, unfolding with unmatched atmosphere. The Homeworld games have some of the best music ever created for video games and the game's use of Adagio for Strings is particularly fantastic. The voice acting is also exceptional, with a special word of appreciation for the late Campbell Lane, whose role as both the main narrator and the Bentusi is superb. RIP, sir. Some people will find the game's lack of any recognisable characters - the cut scenes take place either using the in-game engine so only showing the ships, or in 2D black-and-white cut scenes - a bit weird, but it also allows your imagination to run riot.

The game's art design and direction remain unparalleled. Heavily influenced by 1970s SF artist titans Chris Foss and Peter Elson, Homeworld's ship designs are among the best ever conceived for video games, with clunky, retro designs and excellent use of colours. Watching space light up with a furious fusillade of ion beams remains as awe-inspiring now as it was eighteen years ago.

The package contains two games, and it should be noted that Homeworld and Homeworld 2 are somewhat different games in tone: the first game is more rooted in survival and the nitty-gritty of building alliances with the races you encounter, destroying enemy forces in a pragmatic manner and pressing on to the homeworld. The second game is a bit more mystical, diving into the Kushan religion and revealing it has a basis in an actual mysterious alien race who left strange artefacts around the galaxy, artefacts which may hold the key to defeating an invading alien force. The second game is still very good, but the number of missions revolving around finding the Sacred Key of Maguffin to unlock the Portal of Exposition is a bit on the high side and doesn't entirely feel in keeping with the tone of the first game. Weirdly, since Homeworld 2 came out before the rebooted series even started, the games mirror the two halves of the Battlestar Galactica remake (although Homeworld 2's ending is excellent, unlike Battlestar Galactica's).

There aren't too many other downsides: Homeworld is perhaps a little too easy and Homeworld 2 isn't going to put too many veterans of the first game off, although it does have some notable difficulty spikes (the most infamous have been nerfed through patches over the years, thankfully). There were also some teething problems with Homeworld being moved into the HW2 engine, particularly the fact that formations didn't work properly. This was fixed some time ago, fortunately. The biggest problem is one not really in the developers' control: since the original source code was lost years ago, it wasn't possible to remake Homeworld: Cataclysm in the same manner, so it isn't in the package. Fortunately, GoG have been able to resurrect the game and re-release it in a compatible format for modern PCs. Due to World of WarCraft copyright-related reasons, however, they've had to rename it Homeworld: Emergence. This is slightly frustrating as, although it has a far cheesier plot, Cataclysm/Emergence arguably has the best gameplay of the series.

What you get with Homeworld Remastered are two of the very finest space-set real-time strategy games of all time, spruced up to the maximum with their classic gameplay and unmatched atmosphere left completely unchanged. Frequently available very cheaply in Steam sales, I would argue it's a required purchase for any lover of science fiction or strategy gaming.

Homeworld Remastered (*****) is available via Steam now. Gearbox and Blackbird have mooted making Homeworld 3, but this will depend on the sales of Homeworld Remastered and Deserts of Kharak.

HOMEWORLD: DESERTS OF KHARAK gets a big discount and update

Blackbird Interactive's excellent real-time strategy game Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak has gotten a substantial update and a steep discount for the Steam Autumn Sale.

Deserts of Kharak is a prequel to the classic Homeworld series of real-time strategy games (Homeworld, Homeworld: Cataclysm - recently renamed Emergence due to copyright issues, and Homeworld 2). Although made by a new company, Blackbird Interactive was founded by ex-developers from Relic Entertainment and includes many veterans who worked on the original games.

The new update fixes some rare but annoying bugs in the original game and adds a "tactical pause" feature, allowing orders to be given to units whilst the game is paused. This feature was present in the original Homeworld and its sequels but was missing from Deserts of Kharak due to time pressures during development.

Deserts of Kharak has also been heavily discounted to £8.99 during the Steam sale. It is an absolute no-brainer for that price. Homeworld Remastered, the spruced-up and re-released version of Homeworld and Homeworld 2 - has also been discounted for the sale and if buy both games together you get a further saving.

Blackbird and publishers Gearbox have also said that the Homeworld franchise will continue - hopefully with a full Homeworld 3 set in space to pick up on the slightly odd ending to Homeworld 2 - if sales of Deserts of Kharak and Homeworld Remastered are strong enough, so if you were thinking of picking up the games but hadn't gotten round to them yet, now is a good time for it.

HOMEWORLD: CATACLYSM re-released with a new name

The classic, era-defining Homeworld and Homeworld 2 got an impressive re-release in 2015 in the Homeworld Remastered collection, followed last year by a splendid (if low-key) prequel game, Deserts of Kharak. Missing from these celebrated events was Homeworld: Cataclysm, the stand-alone expansion for the original game.

Developed by Barking Dog Studios and released in 2000, Cataclysm has widely been praised as the best game in the series, with a tense, escalating storyline seeing the galaxy consumed by a cybernetic terror known as the Beast and the crew of a single mining ship desperately trying to find a way of defeating it. The game expanded on the original title's mechanics, introducing much-needed timeskip features and a lot of new ship designs. Homeworld 2 (2003) ignored many of the developments in the game, with a feeling among fans that the original designers at Relic (now at Blackbird Interactive) didn't really consider Cataclysm part of the official Homeworld canon.

Remastering Cataclysm proved impossible as the original source files had been lost, with the alternative - rebuilding the game from the ground up in the Homeworld 2 engine - considered too complex and time-consuming for what would probably be a limited return. Instead, Blackbird and Homeworld IP owners Gearbox have focused on getting the original game compatible with modern PCs and overcoming a major legal hurdle, namely that Blizzard bought the trademark on the Cataclysm name for a World of WarCraft expansion. The technical stuff done, the game is now available on GoG under the name Homeworld: Emergence to overcome the legal hurdles.

As one of the very best space strategy games ever made, I strongly recommend it.

Gearbox lifts the lid on HOMEWORLD REMASTERED

Gearbox have expanded on their plans for re-releasing Homeworld and Homeworld 2 later this year. The developers bought the rights to the Homeworld franchise last year when the previous company to hold them, THQ, went bust. Since then Gearbox have been working alongside the original developers (formerly at Relic, now at Blackbird Entertainment) to bring the games back to life for a new generation of gamers.

The most exciting part of this plan is the release of a brand new game, Homeworld: Shipbreakers, which will serve as a prequel to the series. That still seems a way off, however, with Gearbox's immediate focus being on re-releasing the original games. This project is now called Homeworld Remastered, as the work they are doing goes beyond a paint-and-touch-up job. There will be expanded game systems, whole new (and far more detailed) models and textures, upgraded audio and completely redone cut scenes by the original artists. However, for those fearing for the purity of the originals, the original, untouched versions will also be included with the Remastered editions, just brought up to compatibility with modern operating systems.

The games will be released digitally, but Gearbox are also planning a limited edition which will include an art book, the original game manuals, keychains and possibly a map of the Whirlpool Galaxy (where the games are set). Fans are being asked for their input on the Gearbox forums (so far, most are also asking for a soundtrack CD). Most notable is a replica of the Mothership from the game, with a 12" model with internal LED lighting being mooted. Generally I am immune to this sort of merchandising appeal, but frankly I'd sell a kidney for one of these.

Originally released by Relic Entertainment and Vivendi in 1999, Homeworld was the very first real-time strategy game to be set in full, 3D space with movement possible on all planes. It depicted the flight of a few tens of thousands of refugees from the destruction of their planet and the discovery that their true homeworld, Hiigara, lies halfway across the galaxy with enemies harrying them all the way. The game was noted for its atmosphere, vivid setting, awesome music and cutting-edge visuals (inspired by the art of SF cover artists Chris Foss and Peter Elson), as well as its sublime gameplay. A stand-alone spin-off game, Homeworld: Cataclysm, was released in 2000, followed by a full sequel, Homeworld 2, in 2003. Unfortunately, the original code and assets for Cataclysm have gone missing over the years, so at the moment only Homeworld and Homeworld 2 are being updated.

Most of the team involved in the creation of the franchise left Relic after 2006 to found a new studio, Blackbird Entertainment. After working on ports and supporting other projects, they began work on Shipbreakers, a new 3D RTS game, in 2010. Last year Gearbox rescued the game rights to the Homeworld series and teamed up with Blackbird to relaunch the franchise. Shipbreakers was retooled as a Homeworld prequel and is hoped for release in 2014 or 2015.

RIP Campbell Lane

Canadian actor Campbell Lane passed away on 30 January at the age of 79. SFF fans may not recognise the name, but they'll be familiar with some of his work.

Homeworld's classic opening cinematic, narrated by Campbell Lane.

Lane is best-known as the narrator of the Homeworld series of games. He also played the voice of the Bentusi species and appeared in all three games released to date (Homeworld, Homeworld: Cataclysm and Homeworld 2). Fans were hoping he would return for the upcoming prequel, Homeworld: Shipbreakers but clearly this will not now happen.

Lane's other genre credits include playing the First Hybrid in the Battlestar Galactica TV movie Razor and playing the voice of Rampage on the Transformers: Beast Wars animated series. He played three different roles on The X-Files (including the recurring role of the Committee Chairman) and also appeared on First Wave.

Campbell Lane as the First Hybrid on BSG. He was the go-to actor for distinctive and foreboding voice-overs.

His other voice work included playing the English-language narrator for Gundam Wing, Mastermind on X-Men: Evolution and Skeletor on The New Adventures of He-Man.

Lane had a highly distinctive, gravelly voice which was immediately recognisable. An accomplished voice actor, his tones will be missed from Homeworld: Shipbreaker and other potential projects.

New HOMEWORLD game confirmed

Gearbox and Blackbird Interactive have announced a deal to bring out a new title in the Homeworld series of space-based real-time strategy games. Blackbird (founded by many of the team who made the original Homeworld games) are re-purposing their in-development game Hardware: Shipbreakers - which they had been already treating as a 'spiritual prequel' - as a an actual prequel to the original Homeworld. Gearbox also confirmed that they would be releasing both 'straight' versions of the original Homeworld and Homeworld 2 and HD remakes on PC and other devices, including tablets.

Homeworld was developed by Relic, published by Sierra/Vivendi and released in 1999. It broke new ground for the real-time strategy genre, with a persistent military force that you built up from mission to mission, as well as resources you kept between missions. The game allowed full 3D movement of spacecraft, from lumbering dreadnoughts and carriers to small, nimble fighters and bombers. The game was noted for its fantastic music (a mixture of original tunes and classical music), its sombre atmosphere and its rich storyline.

The game, set in the Whirlpool Galaxy and not involving Earth at all, opened with the people of the desert planet Kharak discovering the wreck of an ancient starship, the Khar-Toba. Inside the ship they found an intact Hyperspace Core, allowing them to travel faster than light, and also a guidestone showing a route across the galaxy to another planet. The people of Kharak realised they were descended from settlers from another planet, Hiigara, their true homeworld. They constructed a massive Mothership to find Hiigara but during its testing run Kharak was obliterated in an alien attack. With the population reduced to half a million settlers (most of them in cryo-sleep), the crew of the Mothership had to guide the survivors of their race to their true home, discovering all sorts of secrets about the galaxy along the way.

A stand-alone expansion, Homeworld: Cataclysm (developed by Barking Dog Studios) was released in 2000. The game, set 15 years after Homeworld, saw a small mining clan forced into a desperate battle with an alien force called the Beast. The game was even more critically acclaimed than its forebear. Sadly, Homeworld: Cataclysm's source code has apparently been lost for good, making a re-release or HD remake unlikely.

A capital ship blowing up in Homeworld 2, yesterday. Or, more accurately, ten years ago.

Homeworld 2, released in 2003, was set 100 years after the events of Cataclysm. A new Mothership, the Pride of Hiigara, has been built to defend against an encroaching alien threat and locate two other missing Hyperspace Cores. If the three Cores can be reunited, it will allegedly usher in a new golden age for the galaxy. However, the alien Vaygr are also after the Cores.

After Homeworld 2's release, Relic was sold to THQ and developed the Dawn of War and Company of Heroes franchises. THQ bought the Homeworld IP from Vivendi in 2007, but failed to do anything with it. Around this time a number of personnel left Relic and set up Blackbird Interactive. In 2010 Blackbird began developing Hardware: Shipbreakers, a spiritual prequel to Homeworld using much of the same art style, music style and even voice actors and fonts. Blackbird apparently hoped to turn the game into a Homeworld prequel early on, and made approaches to THQ which were apparently ignored. They continued development of the game as a separate and new IP.

Earlier this year, THQ went bust and its assets were sold off. Relic were sold to Sega whilst Gearbox, best-known for creating the Brothers in Arms and Borderlands franchises, bought the Homeworld IP rights. Blackbird had made an offer for the IP but it was too low. After the sale Blackbird congratulated Gearbox and worked with them to recover the assets to the Homeworld games to allow them to be re-released. With two new games in development for next-gen systems and no expertise in the RTS genre, Gearbox realised they needed some expertise to make a new Homeworld game and entered negotiations with Blackbird. The deal was signed live on-stage at PAX Dev last month. As well as publishing the new game and allowing it to be set in the Homeworld universe, Gearbox will co-fund and help publish the game.

Hardware: Shipbreakers was formerly set on a desert planet called LM-27 and saw a number of mercenary groups competing to loot crashed spaceships from the planet's surface. It was originally a free-to-play, multiplayer-focused game, but Blackbird had hinted that there would be a narrative. A gameplay footage demo released earlier this year showed some of this and also demonstrated the game's very Homeworld-esque aesthetics in action.

The transition into being a Homeworld game seems to be pretty straightforward. LM-27 will probably now become Kharak, the desert planet the Hiigarans have been exiled to, and it's likely the game will now focus on different kiith (clans/ethnic groups) fighting one another for resources. Whether these will remain the many crashed spaceships of Hardware remains to be seen. It is likely that the new game will culminate in the discovery of the Khar-Toba and the Hyperspace Core that leads to the construction of the Mothership in the original Homeworld. I also suspect that, if successful, a 'proper' Homeworld 3 will follow at a later date.

This is excellent news, though some elements need to be clarified. In particular, if the free-to-play, multiplayer aspect which was extremely lukewarmly received will now be joined by a proper single-player campaign (the previous core of the Homeworld experience).

Map of the HOMEWORLD galaxy

Deviant Art user Norsehound has created this excellent map of the Homeworld galaxy, from the games Homeworld, Homeworld: Cataclysm and Homeworld 2.

Check out the high resolution version of the map here.


Players of the game will know that the Homeworld series takes place in Messier 51, better-known as the Whirlpool Galaxy, located 23 million light-years away in the constellation of Canes Venatici. The game opens with the inhabitants of the desert world of Kharak discovering they are not native to their world and excavating the spacecraft which brought them there thousands of years earlier. The people of Kharak recover the spacecraft's hyperspace core and use it to power an expedition to discover their true homeworld. Unfortunately this act triggers an attack by alien forces which leaves Kharak burning and a few thousand survivors have to make their way across a hostile galaxy to safety.

Gearbox Software recently bought the rights to the Homeworld IP and have indicated that they are planning to bring the existing games to modern digital platforms as well as at least exploring the possibility of making a fourth game in the series.

HOMEWORLD IP bought by Gearbox

Redoubtable shooter developers Gearbox have, for reasons still not yet adequately explained, bought the rights to the Homeworld series of space-based strategy games for a cool $1.35 million. They outbid strategy specialists Stardock and Paradox to get the rights. Given Gearbox's recent mishandling of the Alien licence and their release of the terrible Duke Nuke'Em Forever, the news generated the following reaction amongst the Homeworld fanbase:

Once the initial shock wore off, it appeared that Gearbox are primarily interested in updating the existing games for re-release on modern PCs (and possibly other formats). Whilst the money spent indicates they will be pursuing a fourth game in the series, they have also indicated a willingness to talk to other companies about it. There is some hope that they might talk to Blackbird Interactive, where quite a few of the original Homeworld developers ended up to work on a new strategy game called Hardware. Another company, Team Pixel, had also put a lot of work into a possible iOS-based version of the game, which I imagine Gearbox would be very interested in.

Confusingly, the purchase only includes the rights to Homeworld and Homeworld 2. The fate of the rights to Homeworld: Cataclysm (the best of the three games in the series) seems to be unknown at present.

Update: The original Homeworld creators at Blackbird have congratulated Gearbox and released some unseen concept art about the game. Blackbird also indicated they would be open to talking to Gearbox about any future project. Gearbox outsourcing a Homeworld 3 to Blackbird (the same way that Bethesda outsourced Fallout: New Vegas to Obsidian, where most of the original Fallout creators had ended up) would be a very smart move indeed.

Wertzone Classics: Homeworld Cataclysm

Fifteen years have passed since the Exiles returned from their four-millennia sojourn on the desert world of Kharak and reclaimed their homeworld, Hiigara. Their return sparked the fall of the decadent and corrupt Taiidani Empire and the death of the immortal Emperor, plunging the Galaxy into a time of strife and chaos it is only now, and rather shakily, recovering from. A new Taiidani Republic, allied to the Hiigarans, has arisen to replace the old empire. Meanwhile, the Exiles have split into their former political and familial groupings, the Kiith. Kiith Somtaaw are among the smallest of the clans, specialised in mining operations. After a time of political controversy amidst the Kiith, Somtaaw has become a mobile group based around two large, modular mining ships, the Kuun-Lan and the Faal-Corum.


When an Imperialist Taiidani strike group breaks through the defensive lines around Hiigara, the Hiigarans scramble a response. The Kuun-Lan plays a key role in defeating the Taiidan force but, as usual, the Somtaaw go unthanked for their efforts. Whilst helping in the recovery of a warship on the outer edges of the system, the miners stumble across an ancient beacon of some kind, more than a million years old. Attempts to analyse the beacon soon become problematic when the organic residue coating the beacon suddenly spreads and overruns the lower decks of the Kuun-Lan, which are jettisoned. Kiith Somtaaw has inadvertently unleashed a bio-mechanical virus which subverts both technology and organic beings into a rapacious and growing threat, code-named 'The Beast', a threat which cows even the powerful Bentusi. Spreading at an exponential rate, the Beast will overrun and destroy civilised space in a matter of months. With little choice, Somtaaw rebuilds the Kuun-Lan as a warship and takes the fight to the enemy.

Cataclysm started life as an expansion for Homeworld that got bigger and more ambitious, and eventually became a 'stand-alone expansion', although that's doing it a disservice. It's actually bigger and longer than Homeworld itself with two brand-new factions sporting new fleets and units (although the Beast fleet consists mainly of altered ship models already existing from Homeworld), not to mention significant improvements to the game interface. The result is a game which successfully improves upon the existing, winning formula. This is all the more impressive given that the game was created by Barking Dog Studios rather than the original team at Relic, although Relic did provide assistance and advice.

The first and most notable difference is how your mothership operates. Your new command ship, the Kuun-Lan, is a versatile and powerful ship in its own right which can now, thankfully, move around the map (the Homeworld Mothership, somewhat daftly, couldn't). As the game progresses you can upgrade the command ship with new modules, research posts, weapons and defences, so by the final mission the vessel sports forcefields, repair drones and some pretty lethal weaponry. In most other respects the game operates in a similar way to the original, but a lot of the micro-managing elements have been streamlined or removed. Ships are now more versatile: the Somtaaw destroyers have both beam and missile weapons, whilst in Homeworld you had to choose between building beam destroyers or missile ones, whilst the new resourcers can also carry out repair and salvage operations, whilst again the first game had separate repair, salvage and resource ships. The interface has also seen the vital addition of a time-skip facility, which is both vital when your fleet has to cover vast distances around the map and also for the end-of-mission harvesting-every-thing-on-the-map-before-moving-on phase. The absence of this feature from the original game, even after patches, is the sole reason I docked it half a star.

Cataclysm, as the title suggests, is considerably more violent than the first game. Missions are usually more action-packed and feature rapidly shifting and changing objectives that require readjustment of tactics on the fly, at least considerably more than was required in Homeworld itself. The game is also more frugal with the more powerful units, holding back on the ion cannon warships until mission seven or eight, whilst in the original game you got them on the fifth mission. This makes the game tougher than the original. The fact that the enemy you are facing has the supremely annoying ability to take over your vessels and turn them against you if you aren't careful also contributes to this more challenging difficulty level.

The story is excellent, tense and well-depicted in between-mission cut scenes and in-game cinematics. Although sporting some similarities to the Borg, the Beast is a formidable and threatening foe that is considerably more daunting than the Taiidani of the original game. The fact that Kith Somtaaw is a mining family lacking heavy weaponry during the early stages of the game adds to the desperate feel of the game. However, the narrative is slightly incongruous when compared to the mythology-heavy stories of Homeworld and Homeworld 2, and given the sheer scale of the war against the Beast its complete lack of referencing in Homeworld 2 is unusual. Also, part of Homeworld's success was down to its slower, less frantic pace, with its majestic depiction of space travel and combat. Cataclysm does away with this in favour of more epic, intense battles. Cataclysm's soundtrack is also less satisfying than Homeworld's, and doesn't replicate the original game's excellent use of classical music at appropriate moments.

Homeworld: Cataclysm (****½) is a superior RTS that is a more than worthy follow-up to the original Homeworld. It fixes a number of issues with the first game's interface and is more tactically challenging, making for a slightly superior gaming experience. However, the writing, music and generally more epic 'feel' of the first game is still more impressive. As a result the two games come out even. Both are excellent, both will run on even the lowliest modern laptop, and both are available, with some difficulties, in both the UK and USA. Check them out if you haven't already.

Next up, Homeworld 2, which isn't quite as great as its forebears but still worth a look.