14 DAY TRIAL // The Inside Gearbox Software panel from PAX Prime last week revealed a ton more information regarding the upcoming remaster of the cult classic space strategy game Homeworld.
The game takes place in deep space, following several factions' race to the center of the galaxy, following the discovery of an ancient starship containing the mysterious coordinates of a "home" planet.
The old
It allows unrestricted movement in all three directions in space, and involves a lot of grand-scale battles, offering a unique tactical experience different from what any two-dimensional strategy games has to offer.
Homeworld also had a pretty robust interface, making giving complex commands in three dimensions intuitive, and using context menus to deploy orders such as moving or assuming certain unit formations.
The game also featured a novel concept, introducing a persistent fleet, with a player's ships and resources carrying over from one mission to the next. Homeworld also includes resource management, the research of new technologies and trading.
The space strategy title was universally acclaimed back in 1999, being seen as a compelling and innovative entry in the genre, and many of its old players are pretty excited to get a chance to revisit the game in its upcoming modernized veneer.
The new
The developer released a video covering the work it's doing on Homeworld, revealing that that game will be released with greatly enhanced visuals and audio tracks, explaining how much work they're actually putting into the game, and why it's taking so long.
The video offers a side-by-side comparison of the HD cutscenes, with overhauled visuals as well as audio tracks, showing how good the game will end up looking and feeling.
Unfortunately, we still don't get to see any gameplay, which is what most people are actually looking for when it comes to these types of reveals.
Hopefully, the team will manage to keep the real-time strategy game's soul intact. In any case, Homeworld Remastered Collection is said to include the original versions of both the first and second game, so anyone not liking the work Gearbox is doing can simply choose to see how things were back in 1999 and 2003.
Gearbox acquired the rights to the franchise back in April 2013, after original owner THQ went bankrupt, and the games will ship with high-resolution textures and models, and are said to include multiplayer, unified between both games, enabling old rivalries to rekindle once again.
