The Mandalore review is up, he shits on it and the story to the point of being glad he stopped playing it
Of course, the fun part is all the people pointing out DEI consulting forms and all the commies being mad people are noticing
Saw the pop-up when i was in work, i just watched it full. Damn, Mandy took some sweet time with this one.
I was afraid he would go easy on it, but he rightfully pointed out all the problems the game have: the retarded story (i liked the comment about the narrative being at a level of a shitty VN), ship scaling problems (which STILL doesn't work properly), design flaws (Mothership being faster then the rest of the fleet, Battlecrusiers being weak, no modules and strong points, no unit abilities toggle), technical issues (pathfinding is STILL a problem, especially with the changes to the formation and stances, inability to change elevation) as well as, and I was gratefull that he pointed that out, because, apart from the few negative comments on Steam, no one seems to noticed it: the music is way more ambient, without any instrumental leads, which makes it lethargic, uninspiring and unremarkable, making it blend with the battle sounds. And it is quite baffling, because this, coupled with the fact, that at least half of the HW3 Soundtrack is composed of remixes of earlier HW tracks - especially from Deserts of Kharack - points out to the fact that Ruskay either had no time to create a brand, new soundtrack, or stopped caring along the way, which is even more distressful, when you watch this
Adagio for Homeworld video, from two years ago, when he speaks all passionately about recreating the iconic track for HW3 and how music is so important to this series (fun fact - the new version of Adagio for the Strings - slightly different from the one from the first gameplay trailer - is NOT part of the official HW3 soundtrack due to the copyright issues lol). Was he lying through his teeth back then, or did he lost the will or inspiration somewhere, during those two years?
With the datamining (mentioned earlier) finding the traces of the original, campaign video files, being completely different from the shitshow we got and the confirmation of the SBI like consultation groups being part of the project, it is safe to say that the entire story has been rewritten in 80-90% at least a year before the launch, to accomodate the stunning and brave ideas of moden storywriting - incessant repetitions of already stated informations and some "profound" statements, without proper explanation what they mean, things happening out of blue without proper explanation, being forgotten after mission or two, main antagonist being a spergy, whiny bitch, failing completely at trying to be this intimidating, all-powerful antagonist, with unexplained control over hyperspace, telepathically calling Imogen for emotional gorl-talks.
Mandy also points out to the relation between Imogen and Karan, how it is strange and out of place - a mythical, immortal messiah-figure, which is Karan, chilling on the planet's surface with "some" grandaughter of S'Jet Kith'Sa - especially that Homeworld mobile established that Karan became sort of a recluse after HW2 and it was extremely difficult to get in touch with her.
Also, previous Homeworld titles implied, that becoming Unbound was a one way ticket - you couldn't just disconnect and reconnect from being a living CPU, that is why becoming one was called a sacrafice and why the other Unbound - the Bentusi, were so afraid of the Beast - because they were bound to their ships and they couldn't just disconnect and run away.
As if it wasn't obvious enough, the people who wrote HW3 story had not played any of the games before and just read the wiki - hence the passing analogy to the Incarnate fanaticism mirroring that of the Galsien.
Very telling that HW3 didn't had a lead writer, just this loose group of progressive tards, which David J. Williams - lead writer for DoK, failed miserably to wrangle.
Shame on you David, you signed your name under this project and i hope it will haunt you for the rest of your life.
And with that, I end my autistic sperging. This game wonderfully encapsulates most problems with the modern gamedev and shows that old series, especially from the less-popular genres, should be left the fuck alone, lest they will be
twisted and warped beyond recognition adopted to modern standards.
I sincerly hope this game will ultimately flop and become a financial burden for Gearbox way down the line. Even if Blackbird will be closed down because of this, at this point, it won't be a big loss - Hardspace: Shipbreaker situation showed that the rot settled in much earlier and Homeworld 3 simply confirmed that whatever is left of creative talent in the studio, it has no say in the final design.
