[oyakodon_khan]

I pray for the financial ruin of Bluepoint Games. A swift destruction would not be enough to mitigate its evil. The people that work at Bluepoint need to be subjected to some type of Pharaoh's curse where the circumstance of their end makes people weary of ever even mentioning them, instead of pitying their tragic fate. 
What keeps me up at night is the picture of wiggling normaggot masses, all begging for Bluepoint to butcher Bloodborne into little chunks and then vomit it into their open throats.

[cats]

"RTS" is a dead genre -- and for good reason -- that had a big new release only a few days ago: Homeworld 3. I clicked on a "Rimmy Downunder" (a tasteless, moronic pig who unfortunately contributes yet more evidence to the theory that Anthony is the only currently extant intelligent man on the Australian continent) video about it to see how it turned out, since it was something I had noted as potentially worth checking out, me being a fan of the original game and all. Let me put it to you this way: it's certainly not genre-reviving material.

I skipped into the middle of the video and was immediately greeted with this cutscene.


Remember the cool, professional fleet intelligence officer from the first game? He is now Mr. Star Wars nigger. Very cool, Gearbox! The original game was very conservative about attaching a face to any character; it was only done with Karan S'jet and the leader of the enemy empire, both portrayed via pleasantly-illustrated animatics with wildly different aesthetic sensibilities than the screenshot above (and both were White, for the record). Every other character was portrayed only through voice acting, which was excellently done. Gearbox have instead opted for the new Western sci-fi format where we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars rendering fifty trillion polygon nigger ape nostrils in cutscenes with a strange washed-out effect simulating old film, because leftists are retrograde and reactionary. The design here is all awful but that's better illustrated with the in-game screenshots I'll show off later on.

Mr. Star Wars nigger isn't the only character to get a face in cutscenes. We also have this Ogros de las Americanas, the queen of the enemy empire.



Not really anything I can say here. These screenshots speak for themselves. These aren't cherrypicked angles either -- the devs really love shoving this hideous womyn's face in your screen. One last thing I'll mention about the cutscenes is that they're obnoxiously self-referential, but do not understand the significance of what they are referencing. They play a bastardized version of 1999 Homeworld's beautiful rendition of "Adagio for Strings"... When you acquire a second mothership, for some reason. If you've played Homeworld 1, you'll certainly agree that that game's deployment of "Adagio for Strings" was far, far more appropriate and impactful.

As for the actual game...




If I had to describe Homeworld 3's appearance in one word, it would be "cluttered". Everything's so goddamn busy. Ship designs, background environments, the UI, everything. Some of the blurriness is because I'm screenshotting YouTube videos, admittedly, but a significant portion of the blurriness is the combination of UE5 glare, motion blur, god rays, and all these other superfluous visual effects that only serve to make the confusion worse. It's almost like the dev team doesn't want you to look at their game for too long. Unfortunately for them, dumping the entire FX library of UE5 on top of this game doesn't do much to cover up the fact that it's completely flaccid and unfun to play, if an educated observer is looking closely.

The best way to illustrate this may simply be an image comparison. Here's an image from the original 1999 Homeworld:


Note that this is actual gameplay. For the most part, this would be all the UI you'd see. It is minimalist, clean, and stays out of your way as you watch the physically simulated space battles between functional but beautiful spacecraft unfold. It is a truly modern game in its aesthetic sensibilities.



I consider Homeworld to be of the same Harvard artfag tradition that would ultimately achieve its peak in Halo: Combat Evolved. The best praise I can give it is that, despite the fact that they are radically different games, I regularly mix up details between the two; I remember confusing Anthony in private conversation because I mentioned a Halo OST track named "Bridge of Sighs" -- that didn't exist, because it was actually a track from the Homeworld OST. It suffers from Game Design™ syndrome where levels become unreasonably hard for no good reason very quickly, but it's still a game I'd strongly recommend playing, especially since you can now play it in your browser (unfortunately, the cutscenes do not work, but they aren't a tremendous loss). Homeworld sits alongside Myth and Rome: Total War as the only "RTS" games that are actually interesting to me.

Needless to say, this makes the sting of the state of Homeworld 3 all the worse. That this was all very predictable doesn't do much to soothe the pain. Why was this predictable, you ask? Because this isn't the first time Gearbox has gotten their terrible poz-mitts on Homeworld.



Behold: the Homeworld "remaster"! Unfortunately for Gearbox, there was no vegetation in 1999's Homeworld; if there had been, they almost certainly would have smothered every surface with ferns. Not only did Gearbox fatten up and greeble to all hell the sleek designs of the original, they also completely gutted it mechanically: Homeworld Remastered uses the same droll dice roll ability-popping combat of Homeworld 2, instead of the physical simulation present in the original. A Rome vs. Rome 2 situation, if you recall that drama. Apparently, Homeworld 3 returned to the ballistics simulation of the original, but the gameplay I saw on YouTube seems to suggest otherwise.

Anyway, what was Gearbox's reward for completely butchering Homeworld in this manner? A glowing review from none other than the king of 4chan Guatemalans himself, Mandalore. He has nothing but positive things to say about this remaster. In his review of Homeworld: Cataclysm (which was built on the first game's engine), he even laments that the game doesn't have the "improved visuals" of the remaster. Tlatoani Mandalore's word is final for the terrible seething masses of gamerdom, and so the remaster will be considered superior to the original until the end of time.

I don't wish to place undue importance on Mandalore -- Gearbox's team could not create a game as aesthetically pleasing as the original Homeworld if they tried -- but is it any surprise that we got the Homeworld 3 we got with this sort of positive reinforcement? Pigs like Rimmy Downunder will clap like seals at their new "RTS" garbage, 4squatemalans will call anybody who points out how ugly the game is a contrarian, Mandalore will review it as a "good but flawed game" with a few caveats about "bad mechanics" in five years time, and the "RTS" genre will be as dead as ever.

"There's nothing left for us here... Let's go."


P.S.: A knock-on effect of Mandalore's video is that it is nigh impossible to find footage or images of the original Homeworld. You have to scroll and scroll to find images that aren't from the awful remaster if you ever put "Homeworld" into a search engine.

[Guest]

I consider Homeworld to be of the same Harvard artfag tradition that would ultimately achieve its peak in Halo: Combat Evolved.

Fuck you idiot

[anthony]

I consider Homeworld to be of the same Harvard artfag tradition that would ultimately achieve its peak in Halo: Combat Evolved.

Fuck you idiot

I consider it unsporting to do this when your own beliefs aren't already established for those with the sense to understand.

[Guest]

Behold: the Homeworld "remaster"!

Wrong. That's from Homeworld 2 Remastered. Homeworld Remastered was actually quite faithful to the designs of the original game. Your comment still applies to Homeworld 2, but you actually have to demonstrate why it's a problem; you can't just copy and paste Anthony Arguments that were designed for one context and expect them to perform just as well in a different one.

4squatemalans will call anybody who points out how ugly the game is a contrarian

Also wrong. The 4chan consensus toward the remasters, and that forming around the new game, are negative for same reasons you will encounter here. /vst/ in particular are huge proponents of the classic game. This strawmanning of 4chan is just ritual. It serves to purge resentments rather than represent truths and as a result will frequently deliver false positives—as it has here.

The rest of your comment is agreeable. Homeworld made ingenious use of those elements that were later hypostatized as "Real Time Strategy" to recount what is essentially the national epic and founding myth of a fictional civilization (the game is quite heavy-handed in its reference to Exodus). Homeworld 3's conflation of characters—which in Homeworld, as in world culture's founding myths, were superpersonalities—with human individuals represents the final forgetting of this raison d'être. The appearance of highly formalized elements such as arbitrary APM burdens—"gookclickery"—are only the epiphenomenal consequences of this (mis)realignment of esthetic intent.

[cats]

Wrong. That's from Homeworld 2 Remastered. Homeworld Remastered was actually quite faithful to the designs of the original game. Your comment still applies to Homeworld 2, but you actually have to demonstrate why it's a problem; you can't just copy and paste Anthony Arguments that were designed for one context and expect them to perform just as well in a different one.

I didn't bother distinguishing the two because they both look essentially the same. They were both done by the same team at the same time.





I have to presume anybody that looks at these side-by-sides and thinks one is indistinguishable from the other besides polygon count is blind. Over-greebled, weird Obama blue sci-fi filter, overly bright space backdrop, needless saturation and bloom, terrible busy UI; that they have confined themselves to the basic shapes of the original design is completely unimportant. It's tasteless and awful.  I can readily "copy and paste Anthony Arguments" because this and the MCC are of the same era and have almost the exact same aesthetic. You could put the remastered Mothership in the remastered Halo and it wouldn't look out of place. The same cannot be said for the originals.

I am not "strawmanning" 4chan, either. Their opinions of the remaster and remasters like it (excepting the MCC's remaster of Halo CE) were exactly what I had stated when I actually browsed the site -- which, admittedly, was some time ago. I've never browsed /vst/ and I never will. "RTS" games should all be put out of their misery.

[anthony]

"RTS" games should all be put out of their misery.

The idea of making an "RTS" for the sake of enjoying the fixed form some more is so psychotic to me. I mentioned GiantGrantGames' video on Company of Heroes 3 in the other thread. He was about as sane as one can be about the subject while still believing that making more RTS is a good idea. The part I found absurd was him talking about how the fixed non-skirmish levels were still exciting to him. It's iterations of stuff we've been doing since Age of Empires. Or at least CoH1. Line of units blow away incoming attackers until they're exhausted. Throw units into a defensive position until they're all dead. Command limited numbers in a level full of enemies. How the fuck does this excite me? What are the appeals of doing this beyond a fixed and static appreciation of "RTS", doing things like this is just something you do. Like an old person doing crosswords in the paper but millions of times more expensive to produce.

People who still want to play these retarded vestigial "boomer" games over and over again should just wheel themselves off to the retirement home and just play their old fucking games over and over again. Demanding that living studios with potential kill themselves on this sacrificial pyre is insane. It's a sacrifice to the vanity of oldfaggots. Paying respects to the genres. To the hardcore. To the true gamers. How many studios are dead for this?

RTS really needs to fucking die. There's no excuse.



Look at this shit. This is a 27 year old game remade in the Unreal Engine so we can have ferns, 3D models, and weird fucked up lighting effects that bloat the filesize 1000x over. There is no new appeal here. This is a vanity project for oldfaggots. This whole "genre" is that. Just maintain the games that mindslaved weirdos compete in and that's it. Nothing else makes sense.

[Guest]

I can readily "copy and paste Anthony Arguments"

No, you can't. Anthony's critique targeted the MCC's failure to realize or even recognize CE's esthetic vision; Halo's humanity is a spartan people to whom ornamentation would be alien. But Homeworld's Kushan are not Halo's humanity. As words like "Kushan" and "Hiigara" suggest, they are inspired by Near Eastern and Central Asian peoples; they are desert-dwelling, nomadic, tribal, and somewhat superstitious; they undertake an exodus led by a cybernetic shamanka in the belly of their crescent-shaped mothership to a land of milk and honey. This does not sound like a people to whom ornamentation, both intentional or otherwise, would be alien.

which, admittedly, was some time ago. I've never browsed /vst/ and I never will

What purpose do such statements serve then, when you yourself admit that they most likely don't capture reality? It's just ooga booga.

[anthony]

I want to participate in this discussion so I suppose I have to download the game(s). If I get that GOG collection thing am I set for all of it?

[NotImportant]

Second Guest isn't me (the "fuck you" guy). I don't have much time left in this world and I will not be wasting it explaining to some faggot Jew (Death to Palestine, Death to Israel) why they're wrong. Just want you to know that greebles (bad because Amarna faggot said so) were created by George Lucas.

[Guest]

If I get that GOG collection thing am I set for all of it?

It doesn't include Deserts of Kharak, which I'm quite fond of, but it has everything else. To get Homeworld Classic (not the remaster) running smoothly you might need to run a hardware compatibility patch or launch it with some openGL parameters https://www.reddit.com/r/homeworld/comme...cs_issues/

Some also recommend the Homeworld Splendor mod, but I've never tried it.

The manual is good reading https://sierrachest.com/gfx/games/Homewo...manual.pdf

[IsImportant]

Second Guest isn't me (the "fuck you" guy). I don't have much time left in this world and I will not be wasting it explaining to some faggot Jew (Death to Palestine, Death to Israel) why they're wrong. Just want you to know that greebles (bad because Amarna faggot said so) were created by George Lucas.

Greebles good because George Lucas said so.

[anthony]

Second Guest isn't me (the "fuck you" guy). I don't have much time left in this world and I will not be wasting it explaining to some faggot Jew (Death to Palestine, Death to Israel) why they're wrong. Just want you to know that greebles (bad because Amarna faggot said so) were created by George Lucas.

I prefer not to say "greebling", though I might sometimes, because the effect is very different when working with physical constructions as opposed to virtual renders. And of course, film as opposed to video games. Like many other issues that are reduced to a word, it's helpful to talk about what's going on without that word.

George Lucas (or his team, I don't know how much modelling and construction work he personally did or oversaw) needed small physical puppet-props to feel real. When working with physical things at this scale (small) the detail served to make the thing look like it had its own sense, purpose, and history rather than being a little piece of plastic, metal, or painted wood being moved in front of a screen. This was film. Everything analog and physical. The problem they were trying to work around was things looking too dumb and simple.

In rendering, nothing is real. The impressions we're going for and the effect of certain elements is completely different case to case. "Realism" is something that has been discussed plenty in video games, but nothing of use or interest is left to us from all of that. What is actually accomplished when you add superfluous details of the kind I generally dislike in video games? Ferns, shrubs, little rocks, all of which are functionally holograms in that their existence is solely visual in the world of the game. "Realism" I don't think is really a thing in video games. What these things did have going for them was that they were impressive, once. They were a novelty feature. A very expensive one that I don't think was worth the costs. And the novelty has worn off but this has still become a standard expectation in many games. I think that this does catastrophic damage simply on the level of scaling production costs. But even beyond that there's the question of whether there is even a good use for such tools. I believe that there is, but I believe that most uses are in fact not good at all. At least some of the outrage over ugly fat faced lesbians in western video games is I believe misplaced general distaste for how weird trying to do ultra high fidelity human faces looks. It's a stupid, pointless endeavour.

As I've said before, I believe that Death Stranding made worthwhile use of both high fidelity motion captured virtual actors and performances and of ferns and small incidental world details. And the reason why is because these things were used towards clear purposes. Not any incidental questions of quality of tech or realisation.

It can make sense to add more detail to how something looks. Even cluttery nonsense-detail. But generally, I believe that this kind of thing is poorly done. Especially in video games. I might even go further and say that generally when working with physical props and sets it's a good idea and works well. I haven't thought at length about this yet, but the examples I can bring to my mind of nonsense-clutter in physical works I like while in virtual ones I generally don't approve.

I don't think you need world class George Lucas production values and talent to effectively cluttermaxx your visuals. Think of something like Richard Stanley's Hardware. The film's robot antagonist himself is made of junk. The protagonist is wearing and partially made of junk. They live in a junk world. And the film looks cool. It also cost 100,000 dollars to make, according to Stanley.



Also note the desert shots used in this music video. The film uses space and restraint for effect as well.