Debate it: The Taiidan were the original canonical race

Homeworld Remastered Collection Remastered Discussion
#98

Considering the way some people consider the Canonical status of Cataclysm as being iffy.
Using it as a firm footing for debunking the notion that the Taiidan’s were the exiles will lesson your argument to a certain extent. though the same point works just as well when you swap Cataclysm for HW2.

Heck for all we know the next instalment of Homeworld could turn every thing on its head writing the last two games out of existence. lets face it there pretty much making this up as they go :smile:

Take that back you rotter !! :grimacing: :smile:

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#99
  1. People are capable of changing their minds. In fact since it’s extremely ambigious in the context of HW1, changing of minds is pretty required at least once for either of them to be originally intended as canonical. Also, not everyone involved in HW1 worked on HWC.
  2. Alphabetical order is a possible cause.
  3. There is art of Taiidani ships in the manual.
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#100
  1. No, but someone in charge of the Homeworld property had to sign off on them being used in HW:C
  2. That’s possible but if they wanted Taiidan as the “true” exiles I imagine it would be the other way.
  3. Yes, there’s concept art of both but the actual screenshots (Describing formations, movement etc.) is all Kushan.

Actually, could you pick the race for the tutorial missions?[quote=“jim1, post:98, topic:93329”]
Take that back you rotter !!
[/quote]

That was a little bit of an exaggeration. I do prefer the Kushan corvettes though.

Now the Taiidan Icon Cannon Frigate is amazing. I’d pay large sums of money to get a nice die-cast model of that thing.

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#101

I don’t think you understand how Intellectual property works in the context of a commercially developed game. It’s owned by a company and written by a bunch of different writers. The company says they want a game made using this IP, and a bunch of writers, artists, and programers get paid to produce something that looks vaguely homeworld shaped.
Sometimes these are people who worked on the first game, sometimes they aren’t. And even when they are, they might all have different ideas.

Some franchises have style bibles to enforce cohesion, but they aren’t necessary and there is no indication that homeworld has any one lore-master or creator…

…which is a shame really because if it did, Homeworld 2 would have had a better plot.

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#102

From what I understand HW2 Did have a better plot…Its just a shame they never got a chance to use it :smile:

Now that you’ve mentioned it I wonder if Gearbox will put together some kind of lore Bible ?

what with their interest in expanding and continuing the franchise I’m quite interested to see how Shipbreakers gets slotted into what we already know about the Homeworld timeline. How much Control/influence will they hold over the direction of that game ?

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#103

I don’t think you understand how Intellectual property works in the context of a commercially developed game. If you are contracted to make a game based on an existing property the people who contracted you have a say in what gets made.

If Barking Dog wanted to make HW:C about how the Bentusi were a race of Blueberry muffins out to destroy the universe’s supply of chocolate chips someone in charge at Sierra/Relic would have probably told them no. Similarly if someone in charge at Sierra/Relic disagreed with making the Kushan the exiles they would have said so. The fact that they didn’t meant that someone in charge thought they were the canonical exiles or at least thought they were acceptable as the canonical exiles.

Now yes, there’s a difference between what management thinks and what the original designers thought. Not being one of the original designers I can’t speak for them. It’s just that if the general consensus at Relic was that the Taiidan were the canonical race I imagine that would have come up somewhere.

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#104

That’s really a false equivalency there. It was ambiguous in the first game, thus picking a single race for the next game is a non-controversial choice that won’t be objected to by the IP holders.

#105

I think the only one I’d trust to have executive control over Homeworld lore is @norsehound at this point ;p

#106

It’s still a choice someone made and others agreed with.

#107

Or a choice someone made and an executive at Sierra who wouldn’t know a Kushan ship from a Mimbari ship didn’t care about. There’s a lot of potential scenarios here.

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#108

I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if the only constraint Sierra had on Barking Dog’s limitations was “Make us a cool game”. After all some of us think the very concept of the beast is as bad as a race of blueberry muffins, except with raspberry instead.

I don’t think Sierra/Barking dog saw the Homeworld series being more than just a run-of-the-mill space sci-fi game. That’s why they amped up the special powers and ran with some pretty common science fiction cliches in the story.

Relic (And Blackbird by extension), putting more love and care into their universe, decided not to say anything about Cataclysm and kept going with the sequel they wanted to make. By not answering Cataclsym one way or another, the Cata fans could hold on and imagine Cataclysm was a proper homeworld title. It’s only a decade later, when fewer care, that we can hear BBI/Relic did not consider Cataclysm canon.

Personally I feel Cataclysm is apocryphal. Though it’s not a canonical game according to the original creators there are elements of it that might persist. Like the Star Wars Legends, BBI/GBx will re-use elements they want to in future titles and abandon the rest.

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#109

Was Homeworld 2 really the game they wated to make though? Or was it more the outcome of a serious time constraint they had put upon them combined with whatever other technically issues they were having with the original story ?

I wonder how much of that alternate story arc I’ve seen floating around they would they have liked to incorporate into the game if they had been given the time to do so ?

and how it would have impacted upon all these discussions of True canon.

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#110

It’s both.

By Relic, the next Homeworld installment was supposed to be the Dust Wars. It featured things like the Nalthorians, T-Mat, the cores, derelict interaction… and more. Most of what you see of that alternate story is what Relic had intended for Homeworld 2.

There were a few development documents passed around on Relicnews, one of which was a development document dated 11/16/99 (Specifically “Homeworld 2 Story Progress 10 pager Final_bullets”). The “Veyger” are mentioned in it as well. There is no sign of the beast, Somtaaw, or any of the Cataclysm trappings. There are several documents that happened after this to shape Homeworld development… according to Homeworld shipyards, Vijil managed to get a hold of these documents. They seem to be the same ones hosted on Assam Kiith’sid

The biggest and most vibrant shred of this story is their 2001 E3 Trailer:

There are other concept documents out there, which are mostly outlines and plans. From my angle there are several concept maps talking about various things like the Tobari, the core locations, and so on.

For some reason, Sierra contracted Barking Dog to do the Homeworld sequel instead. I don’t know why- my supposition is something between time investment or it was cheaper to do BD instead of Relic. Either way, Relic did have plans for Homeworld 2 but the reins were passed to an outside party. As far as I know Rob and some of the key creatives who made Homeworld happen were not involved with Cataclysm.

I do see something about Sierra cutting Relic’s funding, which may be the point where Relic passed the game to Barking Dog.

Presently, I think BBI still feels the Cataclysm changes to the story were too radical to continue with. I think if there’s gonna be another Homeworld game, as long as BBI has some control over the story content, you’d see it more like the Dust Wars and less like Cataclysm.

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#111

True, very true. I’m not saying it’s absolute proof. It’s just a mark in the Kushan column.

Are you sure? I’ve never seen anything saying Homeworld 2 was made by anyone but Relic. I’ve heard the development was rushed but not outsourced.

#112

Oh, I didn’t mean Homeworld 2 as a game. I meant a Homeworld sequel.

Instead of Relic’s Homeworld 2 we got Barking Dog’s Cataclysm because Sierra passed the reins.

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#113

I don’t think Cataclysm was meant to replace Relic’s sequel. It was a “Hey, we need another game, you guys go make us another game” kind of thing. Since Relic did go on to make Homeworld 2 I’m not sure what you’re saying.

Standalone expansions man, they’re like sequels except less.

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#114

If the old Relic team now involved with Gearbox decide the best way forward is to put Homeworld back on the track they originally intended. HW2 could find it self as equally side-lined as Cataclysm seems to be.
Unless they choose to shoe horn HW3 somewhere in the years between HW1 and HW2. there going to have plot issues with the superweapons that have snuck out of the woodwork :slight_smile:

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#115

All we know is that BBI is doing a Homeworld Prequel. It will be interesting to see what they cover… there’s a lot of material in the Homeworld 1 manual describing the Kiiths of Kharak. Since we see what look like Base Runners from Hardware in the Homeworld 2 cut scenes, i’d say its a good guess Hardware is supposed to cover some period surrounding the expedition to the Khar-Toba.

I don’t think the events there would make Homeworld 2 moot, but they might try to cover some of the discrepancies created with the rushed Homeworld 2 literature (like finding the core versus reverse engineering it). Who knows? Maybe Somtaaw will show up as well. They are mentioned in the Homeworld 1 manual briefly after all.

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#116

I’d like to see Dust wars replace HW2. I think the technological limitations (pathfinding inside megastructures) could be solved more easily using modern hardware. A good Dijkstra’s algorithm/A Star implementation is relatively cheap for modern processors, even in three dimensions.

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#117

Taiidan were the original good guys. Notice all their ships are named after animals that live on Kharak. See for yourself. Read the explanations to the names of each Taiidani ship.