Homeworld 3 art8/6/2023 “They showed this feature and they ended up cutting it later,” McGuire said. They weren’t able to make it work technically, and when we started talking about Homeworld 3, we were inspired by that idea, but were also inspired by what we were doing on Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak.” “This idea of space terrain and this idea of these massive large-scale megaliths that a player could interact with. Released in 2016, Deserts of Kharak has been a fixture on Polygon’s list of the best modern PC games, in large part because of its clever use of terrain. The game takes place in a vast desert, with four-wheeled attack vehicles, aircraft, and large land-based carriers doing battle across vast swaths of land. But the game uses subtle hills and rock formations the way other games might use vast mountain ranges: as screens for deadly ambushes and chokepoints for deadly confrontations. “The terrain featured pretty prominently in that game,” McGuire said. Image: Blackbird Interactive/Gearbox Publishing And so that original inspiration of Homeworld 2, with what we were starting to really scratch the surface of in Deserts of Kharak, we felt like, What if we go full-on into this?” “I heard from a number of fans that they felt that Deserts of Kharak was more 3D than a lot of the Homeworld games, because of the way the terrain worked. One of the most complex elements of any real-time strategy game is called “pathing” - that is, making units intelligent enough to get from point A to point B on their own. The big problem with pathing is that mobs of units can look more like a pile of debris rolling down a hill than ranks of trained combatants marching shoulder to shoulder. Additionally, sometimes they can get hung up on, say, a gigantic megalith sitting in the middle of the road. The movement of the tiny fighter ships that I witnessed during the demo felt natural, almost organic. Without setting any waypoints, my wings of tiny fighters were orbiting their targets, using these floating space structures for cover - darting out to make attacks, then retreating while their weapons recharged. I was even able to subtly augment their formations and their dispositions, causing them to be more or less offensive or defensive as needed. They reminded me a lot of schools of fish. The observation made former lead gameplay designer, now associate game director, Kat Neale break into a wide grin. “We always love to refer back to this idea of coral reefs,” Neale said with a laugh. “In the previous Homeworld games, it’s sort of this huge pool that you’re just moving around in and engaging in combat. And it has interesting play spaces, and interesting points of interest that you’re focused on, but really it’s this huge expanse.
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