Gearbox has now added a few extra status indicators and management screens to ease the complexity of building and researching.

Aside from the graphics, the only other real tweaks to the game are in the interface. For fans of detail, Gearbox has also gone back and used Heidi Ernest (voice of the original Fleet Command for Homeworld) to voice Fleet Command in Homeworld 2 as well, something she was unable to do due to pregnancy when the sequel originally launched.īut the most important thing here is the game-or games-and what your $32.89 gets you is Homeworld one and two in shiny new remastered editions, as well as the original games, now compatible with a modern Windows OS. Sound is also a big winner here, as the original game needed to fit on CDs, but now the voice acting, music and audio effects have been given a big bump up to lossless audio and sound much richer and fuller than they ever have. The polygon counts may be similar but textures are incredibly detailed, the lighting is new and beautiful, and modern visual nuances like depth of field focus and motion blur are in full effect for PCs that can handle the game with all the bells and whistles. Like many remasters, Homeworld really benefits from a side-by-side comparison, as seeing the new game in action might prompt older gamers-with nostalgia goggles set to “full”-to remark “That looks the way I remember it.” It doesn’t. It’s also looking much more palatable to an audience that is now used to a world of HD and 4K resolutions. It’s a spare, minimal story that leaves much to the imagination of the player, and what worked brilliantly in 1999, still works today. As the fleet fights, survives, grows and learns about the greater galactic community around them, they take a stand and make history. Homeworld is the story of a small battle fleet that finds itself in a desperate struggle for survival in the wake of the annihilation of their home planet. Anyone that plays Homeworld and says “This is just a rip off of new Battlestar Galactica” has inadvertently admitted they don’t remember-or are simply too young to know-their history.

Homeworld remastered collection