All rely heavily on fetch quests as the basis of their game loop, and all of them are flavored fetch quests. I played Generation Zero and got sick of it quick, and it quickly became apparent as I played Rage 2 that this is most of the experience.
I’ve been playing it and I feel like its not quite the 80/100 I expected. Its probably closer to a 70/100 to me. Which isn’t bad, its just not reaching the highs Cataclysm/Emergence did. Its better than HW2, which had a pretty lazy heroes journey bs story. That’s not an accomplishment though.
The megalith combat is really great. Its more interesting than just deep space combat that the franchise is known for. The story teeters between compelling and boring. The ship designs are amazing, and the fact I can see the elements of Sajuuk present in the Incarnate is compelling worldbuilding.
I am outright confused why they are using CGI cutscenes over the drawn cutscenes Homeworld is known for. The combat feels pretty basic, its not as smart as HWR Players Patch. This was a problem with DOK as well. I fear it will share DOK’s other problem: it stops being interesting the moment the campaign ends, and i’ll never touch it again.
Homeworld 3 was never going to move numbers, i’m worried Gearbox set this up to fail. I really think this franchise should branch out beyond RTS and give us games to explore the universe that, at times, feels as huge as its ambitions. I’m reminded of a one-off Kiith from the Cata manual, where they lost everything on Kharak – their family, their other Kiithid; so they stole a freighter and a crusade against the Taiidan Remnant became all they lived for. As the bodies were stacked, their Kiith grew once more. That would be a badass game to play, a space sim like Freelancer where I am taking out the trash.
I felt like the decision to make jumping and mobility more a factor in Eternal hurt it a lot. Jumping puzzles and jumping mechanics in FPS games don’t really work for a lot of reasons (see: Half-Life) and it made the levels feel much more linear than 2016, the arenas much more smaller and less mobile. id did invent this genre, and even they can’t make it work. What does that tell you?
Also the changing of the ammo metaelements to prioritize chainsawing felt dumb. Having to pinata every so often was the most obvious thing that felt straight up wrong compared to 2016, and that’s a sign of a garbage core loop.
The writing was pretty good, but I have the attention span of a summer ant when I play Doom.
It may be but the engine team is mostly Ex-Crytek folks carrying over from Carmack’s work with OpenGL. Even the Raytracing support is just a Vulkan Extension. They could change gears.