Ancient Relics: Homeworld HD Now Homeworld Remastered

We learned last year that Gearbox were planning to re-release the enormously loved Homeworld games. Having plucked the license from the THQ jumble sale, apparently because their Chief Creative Officer Brian Martel has maximum love for the series, they made clear their intentions to release an HD version of the first two games. They're upping their terminology now, from "HD" to "Remastered".

The Homeworld games are held in a particular reverence with fans, and are unquestionably responsible for an awful lot of successful Kickstarters for promising to simply be like the series. And yet, likely due to a muddy of licensing, they're not available to buy from places like GOG or Steam. Gearbox are looking to fix that, releasing not just the remastered versions of both Homeworld and Homeworld 2, but also their original versions alongside them. They explain, with typical Gearbox enthusiasm,

"Previously, we'd been referring to this effort as Homeworld HD but as work progressed it became clear that title didn't properly communicate the scope of the work. This is more than a simple re-release or up-res - given the input we've received from fans, mod makers and series veterans, the result is full-fledged remastering of nearly all aspects alongside the archival Classic versions."

So now the Relic games will be rebuilt to work on our new-fangled PC boxes, with new models, textures, and effects, going all the way up to 4K resolutions. They also say they've had the original audio and video artists recreate "cinematic scenes in high fidelity."

They're also redesigning the multiplayer, although their definition is a touch ambiguous: "Multiplayer for both games has been combined into one centralized mode that will allow you to interact with other players like never before."

Of course, there's also Blackbird Interactive's new Homeworld: Shipbreakers game in development, from some of the original Relic team, granted use of the official title from Gearbox. Swooshy space lights will be all over the place, it seems.

Gearbox are conducting a survey on their Remastered website, to see what cuckoo-crazy fans would be willing to fork out for in a collector's edition. And it seems from this that they're aiming to have the games out by Autumn this year.