Debate it: The Taiidan were the original canonical race

Homeworld Remastered Collection Remastered Discussion
#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.

#118

Kushan ship stories were also written as if they are the exiles. It is ambiguous.

#119

You are leading the evidence here because those Kharakian names for Taiidan ships were introduced by the writers in Cataclysm in which the Kushan are the exiles.

They are military codenames given to the ships by Hiigaran intelligence.

The Cataclysm manual even says so:

#120

The problem is that those blurbs were available before cataclysm, in the Homeworld 1 unit viewer application, and had no such notice. Some of them were quite explicitly written as exile’s ships, referring to their relationship to the mothership’s construction or to Kharakid individuals or whatnot. Cata did some retconning to make the taiidani-as-empire story work, but in the original HW1 release and attendant materials, it was very strongly ambiguous.

The best example, from the entry on the Taiidani salvage corvette:

[quote]When plans were being drawn up for the grand expedition core-ward, Fleet Intelligence put in a request for a corvette-sized vessel capable of capturing and analyzing any damaged alien vessels that might be encountered–possibly under combat conditions. The answer from Fleet Command was a plan to convert the Klaar class fleet tugs, used in constructing the scaffolding and Mothership, into heavily armored, combat-capable vessels that would be able to survive long enough in a firefight to gather important information from enemy wreckage. This revised corvette design was called the Tiirshak, and advanced computers embodying AI-driven decryption and virus routines were also installed to give these vessels the ability to subvert and over-ride another ship’s command systems. While these subversion routines will probably only work on badly damaged ships, it should give a Tiirshak the ability to tow in enemy ships to be studied and retro-fitted for Taiidani use.

The ship is named for Tiirshak Sjet, the famous Taiidani scholar who turned his back not only on his Kith but on his entire race, in order to wander the deserts in search of insight.[/quote]

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#121

It’s the same as how all soviet aircraft are known by codenames given to them by NATO.

What Americans know as the “Hind” is called the Mi-24 by the Russian military, and “Crocodile” “Flying Tank” or “Drinking Glass” by it’s pilots. The NATO reporting name is selected because it starts with H which stands for “Helicopter.”

That said, the exact same can be said for the names of the Kushani units. Is the Qwaar-Jet named after the Kharak God of Pain and Enslavement because the exiles were afraid of it, or because they wanted their enemies to fear it?

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#122

I find it amazing how people keeps having this conversation 15 years later.

We used to have this debate on the old Sierra forums after Cataclysm went out. People took it very personal when Cata selected the Kushan as the official exile race. And the debate rages on today…

Back then, some of us came to the conclusion that the game (Homeworld) was just so emotive, so narratively brilliant, that players became attached to the race they first played with. So players who chose Taiidan considered them the original exiles. Myself, I chose kushan the first time I played. Then made another full campaign with the Taiidan, but it just wasn’t the same.

So, I completely believe it’s all about the attachment you feel to the very first time you play HW1.

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