Thinking back, I easily recall how my initial experience with Homeworld 1 was. It was a rainy, grey day and I was looking for a game to play back in 1999 so I looked up on Gamespot on my 56k modem and saw they had rated this game called Homeworld a 9.0. I figured the game must be really great to get such a high score, so I took the money that I had scrapped together and got a ride to the store to get that nice, big box they used to do for PC games at the time. I remember waiting in the car for my brother while the box in my hand and reading the manual while the rain was splashing on the car windows. I think I spend my time reading the entire manual before even installing the game while I immersed myself in the lore, reading up on the different Kiiths, the story of Kharak, and the different ship categories, Karen Sjet, and them finding the Guide Stone. So when I finally installed and booted up Homeworld and saw that intro cinematic and the mothership launch I felt like I was coming from the same point of reference as the civilizations exodus to their homeworld (I had (thankfully) never seen Platoon at the time so it was also the first time I heard Agnus Dei). Since then Ive always been about the Homeworld series, with Cataclysm and Homeworld 2. Cataclysm felt different and fresh (I remember people talking about whether it should count as a standalone title or an expansion, because the latter was much more prevalent than the former), while Homeworld 2 had a more streamlined design that unfortunately suffered from publisher meddling with Relic, so the experience ended up feeling more disjointed, calculated and rushed (its still a great game, it just isnt as cohesive as the first one).
Since the rise of digital distribution around 2005 or 6, I've been clamoring for a digital release of Homeworld 1 and 2 (and Cataclysm) for what feels like forever. With Sierra going down many years ago and the games industry contracting by dumping the RTS genre and moving to console development, as well as Relic becoming a Games Workshop studio, I was seriously beyond despair in terms of thinking the series would be lost to time through lack of both exposure and availability.
When some inklings of THQ secretly acquiring the Homeworld license surfaced, my heart skipped a beat. But after much silence and little to no action in regards to doing anything with the license besides sitting on it, I felt once more that Homeworld would fade into obscurity (these were the hardest times, knowing that Relic and THQ did absolutely nothing with the old games). Then THQ went down under and I remember being excited about anyone acquiring the HW license (even some amateur programmer wanted to buy it with crowdfunded money). Then Gearbox bought it and I figured I might as well kick back and wait to see what they did with the license - I was already accustomed to the series being left alone and even forgotten by its original developers, so my expectations were already low.
But looking at this whole process, Gearbox really did an admirable job with respecting the series and its legacy, although with their own design flaws here and there as it stands right now (itll hopefully get patched a lot). They paid a lot of money just to get the license, then they got in touch with ex-Relic members who worked on Relic, then they decided to overhaul the engine, repaint the textures faithful to the art style, re-do the multiplayer section of both games, redo all the cinematics, help Rob Cunninghams (Blackbird Interactive) Shipbreakers, release a large collectors edition for long-time fans, get Paul Ruskay on board to remaster the entire audio side of both games (and holy shit what a great job hes done), help publish a hardcover artbook, and even hand out extra keys to people who had to wait for their collectors edition to arrive. I think this Remastered collection is a really great one all things considered. It could have been a lot worse and consider the things that were actually improved.
