- cross-posted to:
- music
- cross-posted to:
- music
Write me 1500 words on how 1999's Homeworld and 2001's Halo:CE, having similar overall settings and plot structures, used their groundbreaking scores to tell very different stories.
Then I'll accord you the right to have an opinion about... idk... Secrets of the Magic Crystal.
Track in link is the choral version of Samuel Barber's Angus Dei - Adagio for Stings as prepared for Homeworld. Arguably one of the most iconic tracks in the history of gaming. Gamers of a certain age will still feel their spine tingle and their throat close up...
Well you see, Homeworld was about the victims of an omnicidal religious cult trying to rebuild after a disaster, while Halo was propaganda produced by an omnicidal religious cult (America) that glorified the war they were fighting at that moment.
By all accounts, the ancient Higarans did have it coming. Apparently whatever they did when they ruled the galaxy was so heinous that the galactic community considered perpetual exile to a backwater shithole to be the merciful option.
This is one of my favorite elements of the story in Homeworld that isn't on the surface. Really made me think about perspectives in history as a wee lad trying to understand the middle east during the bush era. Whatever their past was, I was on the contemporary Higaran's side, because I'd gone through loss and displacement with them. Made the universe of Homeworld seem that much more real to me back then.
Yeah I remember cracking open the box and reading the manual (really dating myself here) and seeing all the deep lore about the Kiithid and history of Kharak only to see the whole planet go down in flames by mission 3.
Relic really put their heart and soul into world building for HW1 and it shows. Such as shame that they basically gave up doing that for HW2 and we got "uhhhh the Vagyr are... baddies from... somewhere... and they want... ummm.... the magic hyperspace core for... reasons."
I started with Homeworld 2, loved it, and had no idea at first how much sloppier the story was compared to the first one.
HW2 is still a great game in many ways, single player balance issues aside.
Personally I felt like the HW2 story was a lot more hand-wavey and mystical whereas HW's story felt a little mystical only in the sense that your whole people are completely out of your depth regarding galactic history.
One sentence is not an essay. Get outta here!
This is the closest to an actual answer, though. Come on, what about the music? Two games, similar settings, similar themes, scores unlike anything else in gaming. But there's more to it than that. Come on.
I'll come back to this topic in the form of a six hour youtube video.