I’ve played a lot of old PC Titles. Baldur’s Gate, Wasteland, the list goes on. One of the games I remember playing that hasn’t seen anything new in quite some time is Homeworld. And it was looking like things were going to stay quit on that front. But Gearbox poked its head up to say that it did, indeed, acquire the rights to the Homeworld franchise.
While I’m happy that Homeworld will finally get some new life breathed into it, it comes with a cost. I’ve never been a fan of Gearbox too much. Borderlands 1 and 2 were just not my type of game. And more recently, there was the train wreck that was Aliens Colonial Marines. A botched job that may have had mismanaged funding, Aliens was a disappointment to all.
What’s wrong with Gearbox?
Well, if you want it bluntly. I don’t like their practices. Everything from Season passes, to DLC out the butt, to bland and unoriginal writing. And I fear the same thing happening to Homeworld. With the way things have been going for reboots, Homeworld will come out nothing like the original games, being heavily streamlined to the point of over-simplicity, and will most likely bomb.
Why would it Bomb?
Well, Dev’s these days have a weird way of rebooting classic franchises. They like to take everything that made the original game unique and remove it, and replace it with features and mechanics from more popular and more recent titles. From a business perspective this kind of makes sense. You might end up alienating the original fans, but some might buy your game just out of happiness to see one of their old favorites making a resurgence.
But it hardly ever works like that. Instead, when you market it to people who have never heard about the game, and ignore the original fanbase, you tend to have no one interested. Looking at the new Devil May Cry title and its performance, this is obviously apparent. Citing old Dante as “uncool”, Ninja Theory re-created Dante as a young unlikeable individual. The game sold poorly, and old fans of the series mocked NT and their game.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I would rather see Homeworld stay dormant. Watching it fall into the hands of a dev I don’t like, and seeing it changed it so many ways to appeal to a new crowd that most likely doesn’t know about the franchise, or doesn’t even care, would break my heart.
