Homeworld was the first RTS to concern itself with the epic,” says narrative director Martin Cirulis, who seems like he could talk about Homeworld for days. He has, after all, been writing its stories for two decades now, in the original, its prequel Deserts of Kharak and now Homeworld 3. As a grizzled writer of RTS unit barks, though, he knows sometimes a few words are all you need. “The theme of Homeworld 1 is primarily survival, and destiny. By the end of it, they have found their true place,” he says. “Homeworld 3 is: What are you willing to do in the face of someone else’s destiny?”
Can you hear it, when you close your eyes and think of Homeworld? Can you hear Adagio for Strings, the awe and hope and mourning in the voices of the choir as the Mothership leaves orbit over Kharak in search of a better life?
There was a grandeur to Homeworld that other real-time strategy games weren’t attempting in 1999. The year’s big hit, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, leaned into dark satire and FMV camp. Age of Empires II’s century-spanning historical campaigns may have been epic in scope, but Homeworld—Homeworld echoed the timelessness of myth.
“When I joined Homeworld 1, Kharak burned offscreen,” Cirulis says, referring to the razing of your home planet in the original campaign. “It was a radio transmission. We sat down and went, ‘no, this is a cinematic piece as well as a wargame. We have to go back to Kharak. We have to be there while she’s burning and rescue people’. That’s part of what made Homeworld epic; that acknowledgment that it’s not just killing the pixels.”
So then. How do you make a sequel to a’s campaign, I’ve surmised that Blackbird Interactive has come up with a bold, even innovative strategy: making a new videogame.
