I particularly like the various animations for wee ships deploying from larger ones. “Homeworld 3 is the realization of the vision of what we set out to create in the Homeworld series, with modern technology allowing us to push beyond our wildest dreams of large-scale dynamic space combat packed with emotional sci-fi storytelling,” said Blackbird Interactive CEO Rob Cunningham, who was art director on Homeworld 1 and 2. As before, Homeworld 3 is a real-time strategy game about leading a fleet of spaceships who persist across missions, carrying the scars (and absences) of past battles. Along with the campaign, it’ll offer competitive multiplayer modes and a co-op mode “with a roguelike twist”. The game is set generations after the original two, which were created by Relic Entertainment. A number of former Relic people founded Homeworld 3 studio Blackbird, who also made the 2016 planetbound prequel, Deserts Of Kharak (and the excellent, though unrelated, spaceship-dismantling sim Hardspace: Shipbreaker). But these days the series is owned by Gearbox, who bought it from the wreckage of THQ. Homeworld 3 is due to launch round the end of 2022, somewhere from October onwards. It’ll be on Steam and the Epic Games Store. “I’m not sure the Homeworld games were first built with the expectation that the’d stand the test of time like this,” Alec said, “but because there was so much care, because there’s been nothing quite like them since, and because the remastering has been sensitive, this package comes across as beautifully timeless, and as essential as real-time strategy gets. Actually, though I’ve been talking about Homeworld as if it were all Relic, the first game did get a standalone expansion by Barking Dog Studios (who later joined Rockstar and made Bully). In 2019, Edwin Evans-Thirlwell told us about its unsung horror potential. We stayed up late to cover the PC gaming news at the marketing extravaganza: hit our The Game Awards tag for everything, or skip to Every trailer at The Game Awards 2021.
