The latest look at Homeworld 3 beats out past (opens in new tab) eyefuls of gameplay by about three minutes, which I like quite a bit. You know why? It has lots more nice sweeping space ships and gravelly radio comms chatter and ancient, arcane megastructures.
The trailer, called Kesura Oasis, outlines a conflict in the Homeworld 3 campaign where a force of enemy raiders ambushes a resource-collecting and repair mission headed up by a mothership. (“It’s a new design, a sort of flat croissant rather than the huge upright banana of past motherships in the series,” I said in our everything we know about Homeworld 3 (opens in new tab) piece.)
In the trailer we’re shown maneuvering around terrain, and how that can give ships an advantage against their supposed counters. There’s also spotlights on the importance of gathering resources to build new ships, as well as using those same resource extractors to capture and convert disabled enemy vessels.
The big centerpiece of the trailer is all about showing off a conflict between the mothership and a raider carrier with escorts. The carrier jumps in, launching waves of enemies and threatening with its larger escort frigates. In response, the mothership has to deploy more fighters to screen their resource income while bombers and assault frigates are produced to take out the larger enemy ships.
Our Phil Savage recently got his hands on Homeworld 3, and his impression (opens in new tab) was that it was a space RTS all about terrain.
“The environmental artistry that Homeworld is known for—the grandeur of space, its asteroid fields and derelict ships, is no longer just part of the skybox. It’s now an active part of each mission—an aspect of terrain to strategise around,” he said.
Homeworld 3 will be released in 2023, following a delay in June. (opens in new tab) For more, check out everything we know about Homeworld 3 (opens in new tab) which I know I linked earlier but am absolutely going to link again for those people who read the first and last paragraphs exclusively.
You can find Homeworld 3 on official website homeworlduniverse.com (opens in new tab), and you can see its Epic Games Store (opens in new tab) or Steam (opens in new tab) page ahead of release. It’ll be the latest in the space RTS series that first brought three dimensional combat to the genre—the first mainline release since Homeworld 2 released in 2003, and seven years since spinoff Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak (opens in new tab) released in 2016.
