Homeworld 3
When there are dozens of expendable units on screen, often presented from a bird’s-eye view, how do you ensure that the player feels invested in the stories they have to tell? 1999’s Homeworld solved this problem by making the central character equivalent to the largest unit in the game – Karan S’jet became Fleet Command for the now-iconic Mothership, effectively erasing the boundaries between her and her vessel. Karan’s arc was likewise elevated to a galactic scale. The Mothership discovered her home planet Kharak burning, the majority of the population dead, the only hope of survival an exodus to find the survivors’ ancestral homeworld Hiigara. It’s a bold move, then, to go in the opposite direction in Homeworld 3.
The threat of The Anomaly, a phenomenon disrupting hyperspace travel, is as large as anything the Hiigarans have ever faced. But Homeworld 3’s story is a more intimate examination of the relationship between Fleet Command Imogen S’jet (Karan’s descendant) and her Intel Officer Isaac Paktu, her burden as the new Mothership’s navigator, and later the fraught bond with their main antagonist.