The Homeworld franchise, created by Relic Entertainment in 1999, has always been a unique entry in the Real-Time Strategy genre – not just for its 3-dimensional starship combat, but its hauntingly beautiful aesthetic of an ancient galaxy. From the start, Homeworld’s cosmic visuals were built on the backs of its concept artists, who created beautiful illustrations that referenced classic sci-fi covers and emphasized the vastness of the cosmos. As Homeworld 3, fresh off a successful fundraiser on Fig, moves into its production phase, players can use the concept art pieces released by Blackbird Interactive to get a closer look at their creative vision… and get some hints of the gameplay innovations they wish to introduce.
Attack Fighters dance in combat like flocking sparrows, their engines leaving ethereal trails of light in their wake. Battle lines of sturdy frigates exchange ion cannon volleys with the distant enemy, the light of the galactic core burning in the background. These gameplay visuals, established in Homeworld 1 and refined in Homeworld: Cataclysm and Homeworld 2, added a sense of melancholy and grandeur to the RTS cycle of "gather resources, build units, and send them to attack". As the player clicked on ships and ordered them across the game map, the size of the map and the smallness of their fleet drove home the beautiful vastness of space.
By the same token, though, these large spaces had few obstacles or chokepoints players could use to make interesting maneuvers. Released concept art suggests Blackbird Interactive is looking to expand tactical options in Homeworld 3 by adding big objects to their open space environments.
How Homeworld 3 Can Expand on Homeworld 1 and 2's Gameplay
Homeworld 1 and 2 compensated for the ‘empty space map’ problem by including phenomena like gas clouds, asteroid fields, space station fragments, and floating minefields, but truly large phenomena like planets, moons, or Dyson Sphere fragments were beyond the limit of early 2000s graphics technology. Looking through Homeworld 3’s concept art, users can see hints of new map features that will have tangible effects on classic Homeworld gameplay: ancient, broken megastructures that spaceships can enter, harvest and hide in. Battle Fleets clash over the surface of the sun, an environmental hazard that can damage fleets with coronal mass ejections. Fighters and frigates weave between truly immense starships, behemoths that are too big to manufacture and too thick to be destroyed using standard weapons.
These art concepts, if they are implemented into the final release of Homeworld 3, would expand the tactical options of players, letting them destroy larger fleets by exploiting natural chokepoints and maneuvering them into environmental traps.
A painting of spaceships floating over a cloud-draped city also suggests another new mechanic, wildly ambitious but groundbreaking if it can be implemented: the ability to invade planets, moving from the vacuum of space into a world’s atmosphere. It’s possible that Blackbird Interactive’s Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, a prequel game showing how the Kushan people escaped their dying desert world, was a proof of concept. By making this more traditional, planet-bound RTS, they built up the game code and experience they’d need to unify space and land-based real-time strategy.
There’s a long span between a production’s initial concept art and its final release (the development art of Star Wars is an excellent example). Too often, ambitious features and innovative game ideas are consigned to the dustbin, so that developers can release a polished game with a few new ideas instead of a broken game with many new ideas. If Blackbird Interactive and Gearbox Software can make a game with even half the features suggested by their concept art, then the upcoming Homeworld 3 will truly live up to the franchise’s narrative theme of "exploration, redemption, and exodus" among the vastness of the stars.
Sources: Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Fig