Homeworld 2: Post-Game Analysis with MASSIVE SPOILERS

Ambush Bug · Post by **Ambush Bug** » Thu Oct 02, 2003 1:11 am

Yes, there are huge-ass spoilers for the plot and missions of Homeworld 2 in this post. And there are spoilers for HW1 and Cataclysm, too, also huge and game-covering. You have been warned. ------ I'm not kidding, stop reading if you haven't beat the game. <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)"> ------ Well, I've finally beaten the game. I had to cut-and-paste in a Dreadnaught into one of the earlier mission's starting fleets to get past a sticky point that was givng me fits, but once I got past that point, I pretty much tackled the game like normal. (Said sticky point being mission 7, where one gets assaulted by radiation-immune Vagyr ships en masse.) Oddly enough, the game was easier than both HW1 and Cataclysm. I blew through the last five missions or so without hardly breaking a sweat. Oh, I burned through my entire unit-cap's worth of ships a couple of times deep in the heart of Balcora (how, pray tell, am I limited to 2 BC's while Makaan gets SEVEN and enough frigates to wallpaper Hiigara?), but I eventually got hold of Sajuuk and made it home in time to save the world. Thank goodness for auto-harvest--I picked up something like 130K+ RU's after Balcora thanks to that. Having finished the game, I don't know who to be pissed at. Relic for letting themselves be bullied into releasing this game before it was ready or Sierra/Vivendi for being the jerks who decided that profits are better than happy gamers and word-of-mouth. Basically, my gripes go like this: the muliplayer rocks, but the singleplayer was a complete and total disappointment for me. I love the new interactions and the ship-types and the strike groups and all those little things that make the multiplayer tactically interesting. It's really cool, and I can't wait to get a few 2v2 or 3v3 games going with my fellow XMEN. HW2 is worth the money just for that. But for crying out loud, the singleplayer doesn't hold together AT ALL. To illustrate my point, I'll make a few comparisons to HW1 and Cataclysm. The plot itself: HW1: You find a hyperspace engine and a guidestone deep in the deserts of your home planet, which turns out NOT to be your home planet. Your entire population decides to see if they can get to 'Hiigara', and they work together and build a mothership to do just that, not knowing what dangers lie ahead of them. Many trials and tribulations later, the mothership fleet arrives home, kicks the ass of the Taiidan emperor, and settles in. Cataclysm: You are now part of the Somtaaw, who were to the poor bastages running the resource collectors in HW1. Since HW1, the Kiith have grown a little apart, and you and your fellow 'taaw are scrounging for tech and resources. While out and about one fine day in space, you stumble across an old derelict. Your Kiith leader wants you to keep it secret, but that fails miserably when the derelict turns out to be infected with the Beast, which promptly takes over a big hunk of your ship and starts making merry hell for everyone. After much trials and tribulations, the Beast is dead (at least what parts of it are in realspace) and you and your fellow 'taaw don't get kicked around by the other Kiith any more. HW2: Forget everything you knew or saw in HW1. The hyperspace engine your folks found on Kharak? Well, it's not just a piece of tech now, like it was in HW1. Nope, it's a part of a Trinity of Far-Jumpers, mystical artifacts that, when possesed, make the race that holds them uber-powerful. Mmmm-hmmm. Nobody mentioned this in the first game, and my goodness, hyperspace cores were freaking EVERYWHERE in HW1. Frigates had them, even. Now in HW2 only your huge supercaps have them and everyone else has to ride along with them in order to jump. That's the biggest change that ticks me off, really. Then there's the lack of backstory. If you played the game without buying the strategy guide along with it, you will be completely fricking lost by the time you get halfway through the game. Seriously. The in-game cutscenes and movies and so on are very nicely done, but they don't hang together. For instance, at the end of the Balcora missions, the entire crew of the mothership hops off and transfers to Sajuuk. Then they leave the mothership in Balcora, where it will presumably be pulled into one of the black holes and crunched to tiny kibbles. The thing is, there's no explanation of this--when you kill off the last Vagyr and trigger the end of the mission, it just all of a sudden starts going on about transferring the crew, without explaining why this is being done. Also problematic is the lack of explanation of just what the three Cores allow one to do. You see, you have to use a gate to get INTO Balcora, since there are these huge black holes screwing up regular hyperspace. Now, after reading the forums and the strat guide, it becomes apparent that with all three Cores in one ship, one can forgo the use of the Gate and just jump right out of Balcora with no problems. I can buy that. But the game never says a damn word about it. This is unlike the other two games, where practically everything was explained to you as it happened, and you got a real reason for caring about your objectives and your ships. Or, even better, the mission leading up into Balcora. The situation is that Makaan wants to activate Sajuuk. To do that, he needs all three Cores. He KNOWS the Hiigarans have the other two. He is also aware that in order to get to Sajuuk, one has to use the Balcora gate--no other way is possible. So why in the nine hells does he order his fleet to destroy the gate after he goes through? Why not jump all of them through the gate and lure the Hiigarans into a massive trap instead, where he would have a much better chance of actually retrieving the other two Cores? Instead, he leaves a big hunk of his fleet behind to destroy the Hiigarans (good), but to also destroy the gate (bad). If they'd completed both of their objectives, he'd have the three Cores but have no way of uniting them, since he'd be stuck in Balcora and his fleet couldn't send the other two through the now-dead Gate. This was the mission where I really started going 'WTF?!?' with the plots. I don't mind big sweeping space-operatic plots, but I certainly do mind it with the bad guys (or the good guys) are so mind-numbingly stupid that they forget the 'Five-Year-Old' rule. (Said rule being: Any plan in which a normal five-year-old can poke holes, we will not use.) Generally, there just isn't a whole lot to inform the player of what's actually going on aside from objectives. There's no emotional grab other than 'hurry hurry hurry, the planet it under siege and we gotta get Sajuuk!'. And the whole business of practically having to have the Prima guide to make any real sense of the story really pisses me off. Boo. And for such a bad-ass universe-touching ship, Sajuuk is pretty damn fragile. Other things: You get tech as you progress, but with no stated reason for them, which is completely unlike the first two games, where practically every tech or upgrade had a cutscene or voice-over to explain why you got it or needed it. For example, in HW1, you got a lot of your tech by stealing and reverse-engineering stuff you'd salvaged. In Cata, your crack team of mining engineers would often propose a new idea as a response to a problem currently at hand. In HW2...you get new tech. Period. No explanation (save for three or four specific items like EMP and the defense field) at all, even when you finally get the ability to build Battlecruisers. This goes totally contrary to the last two games, for when you got supercaps in Cata and HW1, there was much rejoicing and spraying of bubbly. HW2? Not even a voice-over, save for 'new research available'. Pah. I should expect the fleet crew to be going nuts at that point, since they'd already taken a few painful beatings at the hands of Vagyr supercaps by that point in the game. Cata had a couple of missions where you got upgrades without a major peep from Fleet Intelligence, but as I recall, every major ground-breaking piece of tech had a firm reason behind it. The Manual: Compared to both Cata and HW1, HW2's manual, in a single word, sucks. HW1: You got this thick paper-back manual that was practically 8.5"x11" in size, something like a hundred pages, and it covered the backstory extensively as well as gave you ship information and history, a great explanation of the game controls, and various strategies you could try in the form of recorded arguments between admirals. If you read that thing cover-to-cover, you were completely prepared to play the game. Cataclysm: Similar to HW1. Not quite as huge, but just as thick. Same deal, too--lots of backstory, TONS of ship history and information, a wonderful explanation of the controls. I used to like just reading it for the hell of it, it was so well-put-together. HW2: Fits in a DVD jewel case. Only ~64 pages of useful information, most of which is ship information, and a lot of which is straight-up cut-n-paste from other parts of the manual. Little to no backstory information. (It's been 85 years since Cataclysm, what the hell's been going on, man?) Bad pictures of the game: black and white, bad contrast, little detail visible, as opposed to the HW1/Cata B&W pics, which were pretty crisp. Overall, just informative enough so that you'll get your ass handed to you the first time you play the game for real. THEN the real education starts. (First of which being: "Avoid the right-click when you want precise control of your ships.") A real disappointment, IMO. Other Bad Things: If you saw my other post in Gambit's 'shipped' thread, you know my complaints with the voice-acting. Blaaah. The player needs an explanation about the Bentusi. Are they ALL dead, or are the ones that jumped into another galaxy in Cataclsym still around? Relic said there would be 'nods' to Cataclysm in the game. There aren't. I've been looking. It would have been nice, for instance, to see the Kuun-Lan (or it's successor) in the 'defend the planet!' brawl in mission 15. Just in the background, even. Speaking of the 'taaw', where's the Siege Cannon? Mission 15 is a perfect situation for it--massed enemy fleets. Where's all the neat tech the 'taaw developed for themselves? Multibeam frigates? Damn, I sure coulda used some of those. Ramming frigates would have been a boon, too. So the mothership can build Movers. Why then, leave the Mover tech behind in Balcora to be eaten by the nearby black holes? Why not take the Mover contruction facility and put it on the Shipyard? I mean, we're talking about corvette-sized ships that can hyperspace by themselves, for crying out loud. That right there is worth saving by itself, not to mention the ridiculous power-to-size ratio on the Movers. Bad S'jet! No cookie for you! Having a game with an 'there's a sequel coming!' ending is one thing. Having a game with such an ending after such atrocious story execution in the singleplayer makes one feel gypped. "You want the plot? Buy the expansion!" is the first thought that went through my end when I saw the ending movie. That was in poor taste, Relic. Good Stuff With all this griping I'm doing, you're probably wondering why I haven't just returned the game. That's because the multiplayer rocks. Strike Groups should have been in the first game. You don't have to micromanage so much stuff, so you can take the time to actually make quasi-strategic moves on the map. There aren't any maps yet big enough for 'real' strategy, IMO. Once they get some maps where you start at least 300+ KM away from the other players, then we'll see some real interesting moves, I think. (ie: How do I defend so much space and all the avenues of approach with my limited resources?) The Vagyr are a damn fun bunch of guys to play as. I've been experimenting with both Hiigaran and Vagyr fleets as of late, and it's been quite fun and interesting as the two make for a completely different game. Mixed fleets just plain rule when it comes to ripping up other fleets. Concentrate on one ship-type too hard and you'll get owned. Having AI allies is a big improvement from the first two games. And the concentrated resource pockets are pretty cool, too--they certainly make deciding where and when to attack or defend more interesting. I'm not quite totally happy with the per-unit-cap, but I see why Relic did it. If they went with SU's like Cataclysm, players would pick a ship-type and stick with it. (Remember throwing 216 some-odd recons at the computer in Cataclsym?) And that would result in some serious problems in muliplayer in the form of single-unit rush tactics. The per-unit-cap forces people to diversify their fleets and it also reduces the strike-power of any one type of unit. It must not have been an easy decision to make. Really, the multiplayer is just all-around good. I'm curious to see what the first patch or expansion will add to it, despite my pissiness about the game's ending. Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub141.ezboard.com/bxmenclan.sho ... bug>Ambush Bug</A>  <IMG HEIGHT=10 WIDTH=10 SRC="http://www.xmenclan.org/images/x.gif" BORDER=0> at: 10/2/03 2:23 am

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Thu Oct 02, 2003 5:52 am

Bravo.

Homeworld 2: Post-Game Analysis with MASSIVE SPOILERS

Homeworld 2: Post-Game Analysis with MASSIVE SPOILERS

Re: Homeworld 2: Post-Game Analysis with MASSIVE SPOILERS