Two decades is a long time to wait for something, especially if it doesn’t live up to expectations. As each day, week, month, and year passes your assumptions shift, and it can be hard for whatever you were waiting for to be as life-changing as you hoped. Earlier in 2024 Homeworld 3 finally came out after 21 years, and it’s safe to say it wasn’t the game we space RTS fans were expecting. The post-launch roadmap still awaits, but now we’re going to be getting everything at once, instead of it running into 2025.
With 4,500 Steam user reviews sitting at ‘mostly negative’ (just 38% of them being positive), the reception to Homeworld 3 has been rough. Decades after Relic Entertainment was done with the RTS game series, Blackbird Interactive and Gearbox’s third entry came out to little fanfare. At launch earlier this year players bemoaned lackluster writing, shallow gameplay, and gutted mechanics compared to previous entries. Blackbird has been steadily making changes, but now the Homeworld 3 roadmap has undergone a seismic shift.
Instead of spreading out the free and premium content drops across the end of the year and throughout 2025, Blackbird Interactive is releasing everything at once. Come November 2024 the rest of Homeworld 3’s roadmap will drop, as Blackbird says it wants to deliver “the most complete Homeworld 3 experience, and many of your requested changes, sooner.”
Blackbird explains that “those of you who purchased the Year One Pass will be getting everything we’ve previously promised,” adding, “we’ve made modifications to our plans to include elements requested by the community.” This means free player-requested features like Hyperspace Jumping in Skirmish mode and the ability to choose when you move to the next campaign mission are on the way.
Blackbird adds that “Too often players weren’t required to make strategic decisions about which ships to research or build, because they had the resources to do everything,” with the November update looking to change that. The team notes that the strategy present in previous Homeworld games vanished, but now, after careful consideration, it’s being added back in.
“To restore this strategic depth, we made several adjustments: Resourcing rates are reduced by a meaningful amount, starting resources in Skirmish are lowered to drive early-game decision-making, and the cost of Resource Controllers is significantly increased to make them a riskier, more meaningful investment,” Blackbird writes. “These changes aim to reintroduce the tension and rewards of economic decision-making.”
Every player will also get more than 40 artifacts and nine challenges for free, alongside more campaign missions, and the aforementioned Hyperspace function in the Skirmish mode. Players paying for DLC will also get new factions for the War Games mode (featuring new ships, challenges, and artifacts), with each pack offering two fleets each.
Despite the mixed response, we were generally favorable in our Homeworld 3 review. We said that while it “isn’t perfect, it’s authentically Homeworld,” adding that it’s “a welcome return for one of strategy gaming’s most revered series.”
Since then Blackbird Interactive dropped a huge Homeworld 3 update filled with bug fixes and more content, but this didn’t completely right the ship. Instead, player sentiment around the disappointing narrative, streamlined mechanics, and lesser combat still remains.
Blackbird Interactive makes no mention of plans for Homeworld 3 after November 2024, so there’s no telling what’s next for the RTS.
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