Homeworld: Emergence - The Lost Game About A Lost Homeworld 

First Mission: This is Kiith Somtaaw Mining Vessel Kuun-Lan! Last Mission: This is Kiith Somtaaw Warship Kuun-Lan! Still gives me chills.

Cataclysm was the perfect 'sequel' to Homeworld. It took a whole different direction (not a warship, but a mining vessel), different styles of fighting (more drones, more dirty weapons). It's missions weren't about might, they were about desperation. On the hardest difficulty level there were missions where if you made it out with more than a handful of ships you would be happy. Missions didn't feel linear and played out, they got turned around mid-way, kept fresh. Now you're in an asteroid field with moving asteroids! Now you're defending a defence perimeter! Now you're trying not to be found! Now you're stealing military codes! Missions had ships coming in from all directions, abusing the 3d space to spread you thin. The great variety of ships, the body horror of the beast, the excellent voice acting and the excellent writing (clearly inspired by Babylon 5) was just great. Homeworld was great for being now, but Cataclysm just turned it all up. (And then after that, the other Homeworld games turned it back down into tacky commonplace stuff.)

The visual design of the Kuun-Lan was brilliant. It was boxy, aggressively industrial, and filled with purpose. Nothing on it felt superfluous, each element had a reason to be there. And as the story went on and the ship itself changed and was rebuilt by the miners to meet new challenges, the Kuun-Lan became their avatar. The ship had personality, and it was easy to love by the time you had the endgame weapons.

Truely a shame the source was lost for cataclysm. Was one of the most amazing blends of RTS and a classic story in my long gaming experience. "so the miners are now warriors? you have come far." still remember that final showdown.

This game has one of those moments that I still remember years later..."WE WILL NOT BE BOUND!" *kaboom*.

Cataclysm was most definitely better than Homeworld 2. I was so disappointed by the HW2 story back when I played it, but the story from Cataclysm still sticks with me. So many good voice lines and lore too. (I wore out my manual reading it so much) I think this is still both my top RTS of all time and best space setting game of all time.

I loved this one. Fighting something truly alien was so much scarier.

*"We'll send you all that we've got, but be advised... This is a mining vessel."*

The voice acting for this game for it's time was epic

I love all the Homeworld titles, but IMO Cataclysm (or Emergence now) has some of the best music. Also Cataclysm has more a dark tone than the other HW titles, which makes it stand out.

IMO the best Homeworld game by far. That's not to say the first one or even the new Shipbreakers are bad by any means, but this one was able to implement assymetric factions and begin to explore the universe and scratch the surface of it's complicated politics. I also think the voice acting involved had much better nuanced emotion displayed throughout the story scenes. HW2 kind of capped things off from exploring the future (while also being kind of bland), but there is tons of potential in exploring the events between Shipbreakers and 2... for instance, exploring the emergence of the Vagyr, the fate of the Taiidan Republic, perhaps exploring the Higaarans interactions with other spacefaring races, there is literally hundreds of years of time and space to explore... and being able to integrate ground and space combat together into a single campaign with different missions offering a different perspective on things (trying to evacuate VIPs from a populated city on a planet in the middle of revolt, you first have to capture an orbital facility overhead to open a breach to infiltrate the city below. Next mission involves the deployment of ground forces into the city and exfiltration of the VIPs to a spaceport you must also take control of. Next you go to space, where your space forces receive the VIPs, but are assaulted by enemy forces. You may leave at any point, but the longer you maintain control of the orbital facility, the more ground forces you are able to recover for later use.) I desperately hope that they continue work on this series in some form, even if it was a bit more simple than past installments, Shipbreakers was a nice return to the series with the heart and soul of the universe on full display... here's to hoping...

Cataclysm is one of the few games I shouted at out of emotional investment. The invective rage at the Bentusi for their decision led me to throw WAY more resources at them than what a (clearly scripted) event would pragmatically justify. If I was going to die regardless, I chose to die at the Bentusi's cowardly door step.

The Beast is perhaps the most terrifying monstrosity of sci-fi games. I mean when you really think about it past the gameplay and dig into their lore.

"So the minerrrrrrrssss are now warriorsssssss." I still have my original disc but it's great to see this gem available once again.

I love the game. I'm not a really fan of a horror movies or games, but homeworld cataclysm was giving me a really unforgettable sense of suspense in a homeworld setting. I've almost shiver every time when I'm hear an infecting ray "roar".

Scott, holding down control lets you issue attack orders on multiple enemies at once. And it filters non-friendlies from friendlies too, so you can just drag a box around an entire battle and not worry about attacking allies.

Man, this brings back a lot of memories. I still have my copy of Cataclysm now, and I sometimes play multiplayer with friends. Still love the time my buddy somehow blew his own mothership when firing the siege cannon.

I Still have the original CDs. This game is better than the remasters

Best thing about this game is the upgrading of the "mothership".

I love the look of the Archangel dreadnought. Borrowed from the Bentusi, it has a vaguely similar shape but loaded for bear: heavy energy cannons, ion turrets, missile launchers, and a repeller field.

CUT US LOOSE!!!!!!

Group 1 designated. Group 1 lost.

we LIVE! *shudders*

"One ancient monster is a good as another!" This one line was seared into my memory, and I was not sorry at all to see the last of the Bentusi go in HW2.

One of my ALL TIME favorite series by far. Lets our imagination run wild building off of the stories they give us.

You know when you remember some old games and after years you try it again and you get that shock how shit it looks.... well, this does not apply here, This game looks very close to how I remember it. Great game, thx for bringing up memories,

Cataclysm was my first Homeworld game actually. Found it in a bargain bin for 5 bucks and I had never even heard of the first one. Loved it. Still have the original disk.

Voice acting still gives me the chills. Amazing quality...really. They were able to extend the original Homeworld experience while keeping the vibe of the original.

ohh old good cataclysm... the war between the beast and kushaan... it was a good game, i would love to see the continuation of this. like, who, and why created the beast. how are they tied to bentusi and the the progenitors

This game so different but had me from the start. Was totally surprised by the story and new units.

17:22 The original Cataclysm has a pilot view I remember. It also supports time acceleration. I still have this game in my bedroom. I just hope its remastered version is currently under development.

This game was my introduction to the homeworld series. LOVED IT. Tried playing the other homeworlds, never got into them as much.

This game is Epic, I will never forget the feeling it gave , awesome nerative and gameplay

Easily the most compelling of all the games. I've always said that the art, story, and music of the first one showed off the majesty and wonder of space and how awesome it can be. The stark utilitarian design of the underdog Somtaaw ships and the superb musical score and voice acting of Cataclysm showed just how cold, unrelenting, and terrifying the void could be, and oh did it ever work. The lines were delivered with so much more conviction, from a terrified "CUT US LOOSE!", the Bentusi being supremely obstinate (and later uncharacteristically fearful), and above all, Fleet Command, particularly when he's tearing the Bentusi a new one...just incredible stuff.

This was my favorite homeworld game, I'm so glad it was rereleased. The beast is such a creepy villian. "YOU ARE ALL FOOD!"

Just tried launching my old version of Cataclysm.. works perfectly on my windows 10/ Nvidia1070 machine. I guess I'll have to play through the entire campaign again as its been quite a few years :)

YES! I've been waiting for this for a long time!

The Acolyte fighters are actually one of my favorite space fighter designs ever. They get the ability to link up two and two to form heavy fighters, which means you don't need to rebuild your fightercraft when you reach that level of tech, and eventually they get energy cannons which turn them into an absolutely lethal threat. In fact, whenever I played Beast I used to try and infest one of these JUST so I could get the energy cannon tech for myself.

Everything about Cataclysm took ship designs in a different direction--in a good way. From the fact that Workers could do ALL the support jobs (healing/repair, mining, and salvage/capture) in one handy unit, to the fact the Processor was not only a mobile resourcing point but also had healing beams, a mining beam, and 4 slots for docking workers at once over the ONE of the old Resource Controller, to the uniqueness of the Acolyte combining the best of Interceptors, Defenders and Bombers in ONE ship---everything was an upgrade. You could even switch to Cockpit view on individual ships to watch the battlefield from that perspective. And while Somtaaw was weak initially in frigate to frigate combat, it was unrivaled in strike craft battles right from the get go. Just so many things to love about the direction this game went from the original.

Everything about this game is perfect, the music especially is amazing

music, the voice-acting in homeworld always gave me chills... and that map zoom in/out effect "boom/voom" :D

I love Cataclysm it had some very interesting concepts and the story was fantastic. I honestly was never able to complete it

Good ol Games are freakin amazing! Thanks for resurrecting this ^^

This was actually my favorite iteration of Homeworld, and was very sad to see the source code being lost.

Man, almost 20 years and still have fun plays this one... I love this game... Homeworld 1 and Cataclysm along Urban Assault are my favorite games on PC... I still have my original copies working.

Cataclysm is awesome and still my favorite homeworld game.

Thanks Scott for alerting me to this! Now I know what I'll waste my time today doing.

The music still gives me chills

Does anyone remember how in Homeworld 1 you could play the campaign as Taiidan, with the Kushan being the evil villain Empire? Then they made it canon in Homeworld 2 that the Kushan were the exiles and still they ignored the Cataclysm lore even though it fit fine.

one of the best games ever...true 3D space strategy.

used to love the siege gun.

FUCK. This has been out for almost two weeks? _FUCK._ I need this IMMEDIATELY. Thanks Scott Manley. I probably would have missed this for months if you hadn't posted a video on it. You're the MAN.

Cataclysm was my favorite game for years. I was frustrated because most of my friends couldn't understand why I liked it so much, so I didn't get to play multiplayer much, usually against the computer. It's like chess in space, with LOTS of pieces. I like that it was multiplayer or you could play against computer, as well as play the game scenario. I also liked that you could record your games and watch them later (some of the battles are awesome). I liked that you can command any ship and view from any perspective, even while watching a recording. You can also save your games, so you could go back and try something else if you suffered an unacceptable loss. I still have the old install somewhere.

Been playing this game since the first releases, an epic game series imo.

Oh I just love the sounddesign of homeworld in general.

I loved Cataclysm much

Best Homeworld game. Found it as a kid, not terribly long after it came out, marked down to $5 or $10 in a store I no longer remember. It was an amazing adventure at 10 years old and it still stands up today. Wish so badly that we would get a remaster. I'd pay full price for it.

A lot of the "bad performance" in this game is just because the games simulation runs at a fairly low framerate IIRC I think I had good FPS and the ships still move kinda choppy for example.

Cataclysm! This was my favourite part of Homeworld. The smaller scale and tighter storytelling really made it special.

I remember this game when I was 15 years old. Great story, nice colorful appearance, and lots of interesting things to do.

My favorite part of Homeworld franchise, the story is way more interesting then 1 or 2. Really love interactions with other clans or Bentusi. It is a damn shame that there will no be a remaster of this masterpiece.

I profoundly remember some of the music from Cataclysm. I remember some of the tunes (OST 3 "Coruc Tel", OST 14 "Galactic Rim" in particular, read this while listening, you'll thank me later) to be extremely sad and depressing... As if you were sitting on some cold, forlorn planet in a dying universe that is already one foot in a grave but, for some twisted reason, still alive and tormenting you with its mere, degenerate existence. Dim light, nobody around you. You feel like all your friends and family have vanished millions of years ago despite clearly remembering talking to some of them, just a few weeks ago. But... you suddenly realize that you just made that up. That you have never met anyone or talked with anybody. That these are just your EXPECTATIONS and not past events. That you and this demonically silent world is all there has ever been to reality. And then you finally accept the fact that you will spend eternity on this wasteland. Forever confused. And that you don't even have a razor to... You shut your eyes so firmly it hurts. Clench teeth, cover face with your hands...

Oh, I do love this game. Some great emotional moments in the story.

Oh... these feelings...

I love that this game makes you feel so invested in the well-being of your ships, with how they gain experience and each having a vital role to play in your fleet. Even the basic Acolytes (their Missiles kill Ramming Frigates like crazy) and ACVs (EMP to disable enemy ships) are extremely useful until the very last mission, unlike in other games where you replace all your starting units in the endgame because they are obsolete.

If you have the original Homeworld Cataclysm CD, You DON'T get them lines (or graphical glitch) in the cut scenes like what we can see from Scott Manley video. Thank you for the upload I'm going to check my gog ver on the game again.

If you like space strategy games, check out Sword of the Stars. That game also has plenty of lore behind it. For those who don’t know, it’s a mix of turn-based and real-time. Galactic map mode is turn-based, but battles are real-time. Now the battles are actually 2D, although ships may fly over one another to try to avoid collision (doesn’t always work). The base game has humans (or SolForce), Hivers (bugs), Tarka (a cross between a lizard and a gorilla), and Liir (psychic dolphins). Ships are beautifully designed and can be customized. Humans fly boxy utilitarian designs, Hiver ships have an insect pod feel, Tarka ships look like they have scales, and Liir ships look like graceful sea creatures. The unique feature of the game is that each race has its own means of interstellar travel. Humans use the node drive, which functions like hyperspace in Stellaris (uses preset pathways), but ships can also be force-moved at STL. Hivers move at sublight but can set up gates upon arrival, at which point you can move across the galaxy in a single game turn. Tarka use a hyperdrive which functions like Trek’s warp. Liir teleport millions of times a second a tiny distance, giving the illusion of Newtonian movement (their ships are full of water after all). Expansions add Zuul, genetically-engineered psychic marsupials whose ships look like cobbled together from spare parts (the lore says that’s exactly what they do). They use a modified human FTL method, but they have to make their own pathways that eventually collapse with time and use. They also constantly use up their planetary resources, forcing them to expand. And their diplomatic means are limited, as they can’t coexist with any other race. They can capture slaves though. The Morrigi are ancient feathered serpents who are the cause of many dragon and angel myths across the galaxy. Their FTL drive is the least explained but seems to involve a large warp bubble that is generated by a single ship for the entire fleet and is powered by all the ships in the fleet. Their fleets aren’t slowed down by older, obsolete ships. On the contrary, every ship in the fleet boosts their speed. They also prefer drone fighting. The second game I haven’t been able to play much. It keeps crashing for me, even after a year of constant patching. It was clearly rushed out the door. The only DLC for the second game introduces the Loa, a faction of escaped AIs who have struck out on their own. They use slingshot-type gates that accelerate ships to FTL but slow down to STL after a certain distance. You can daisy chain these for an interstellar highway of sorts. Their fleets are also highly versatile and exist as “cubes” until it’s necessary to configure them into necessary vessels.

2002 my girlfriend at the time not even knowing I played homeworld goes into a store similar to big lots and buys me this game. I had never heard of it. She had no idea how pumped I was. I have an old pc that still works. I believe this game was made for Windows me?

Hmm, intrestingly, when this was released it was not clear there would be a homeworld 2. So I was so stoked to see this. It also has so many improvments over the original homeworld, like modular ships, ships linking and such. o'yea and 'Dreadnoughts' - first appeared in homeworld in this game and there fantastic looking. nice review btw.

This was the sequel that Homeworld deserved. An original story with a diverse set of events, character development, and interesting units. You could even retrofit the Kuun-lan with a giant artillery cannon. The fighter pilot dialog is incredible (you can hear the terror in their voice as they die). My only caveat was that the new battlecruiser (the dreadnaught) was shaped like a pie and the generally shorter ships.

Thank you. Missed this game so much. So sad that it won't get the remastered treatment.

One of my favorite games. Music is just awesome. Atmoshpere and mission scenarios.. all is awesome. Too bad no one made modern version of it.

Cataclysm!! The best one of them All! i have missed that game and it is still the reason why i play the game (Homeworld) till this day

Anyone remember reading the fan-fiction Homeworld legacies? Today I found a CD I lost (Hidden away for a keepsake about 15 years ago). My first 3D models, coding and textures. Got mods and tools with game files that are original. Fan-fictions from relic's forums... and also gearbox's. I have all three games still, as it was this gem that got me prodding and poking at building a custom PC out of whatever I could lay my hands on to overclock it. For full scale madness of the complex mod mixed in with cataclysm and my own fledgling custom fleet inspired by Chrome's Homeworld Legacies. From that I have been messing around with 3d printers the last few years, which I'm thankful to those that gave me some awesome memories 🙂👍

13:20 - Cataclysm lets you pause the game and even issue orders while the game is paused.

You can pause and give commands. Better than unrealistic turn based stuff.

The amount of time I spent on this game in my early high school years could be considered an addiction. God I used read and write fan fiction! 56k dial up on Won from Friday to Sunday without sleep. Rip BDU, Kiith Paktu and Skaal Tel Armada.

playing the intro and first mission is a great way to show the game. The sound and vocals are better than I remember

Best of the 3 for sure. I'm going to put my Cataclyslm cd in a display.

Heh here's one more CD game I can put to rest and go digital. Glad to see they finally got this working!

The most mysterious and otherworldly of the entire Homeworld franchise. Naggarok million years old, intergalactic lore sh*ts over the hundreds of thousand years old legend of the Progenitors. The Beast... something older, something from the Outside! For the first time... the fearless, First Core inheritor, galactic-ruling Bentusi felt fear...

Oh god how I liked this game. It was so dark and for a space RTS so claustrophobic. The mining ship Kun-Lan against The Beast, suicide fighters and Bentusi... (redacted for spoilers reasons, just will say that kanon of Homeworld 2 will be shaken but still makes sense). Looking forward to replay it!!!

Here is the good design in "Homeworld: Cataclysm" that is not found in other Homeworld series: 1) it use no RNG mechanic, meaning you can micro-manage your fighters to keep them alive for very long time! 2) it use no "armor" mechanic, meaning your units deal an expected damage and there is no magical reason that a tiny fighter couldn't sting a ship of different class. 3) It uses "selection box" in its UI, meaning you can click-and-draw-selection to tell a bunch of units to attack a bunch of target easily. 4) it implement a not-broken ship-formation, meaning your ships will fly in group of sphere, arrow, or claw and it does so like a spaceship and not like airplane, and nor does an attack-run broke this formation. 5) it adopt a real sci-fi story, meaning it touch futuristic ideas in the plot, unlike other Homeworld series which is not sci-fi at all. 6) it implement Star Wars' Hammerhead corvette, 7) collision & collision damage is implemented in the game and you can Kamikaze your fighters. 8) it implement innovative weapons; eg: gravity well, repulsor, fighter's torpedo, cloaking, mimicry, shield grids, drones & leeches, ect.

so it has the same performance on a modern high end gpu+cpu as back in those days on a voodoo banshee with a 650MHz processor I loved the ship joining, creating e.g. a large shield bubble.

I love that you are covering this. This game was truly special for me to play. The story is a true horror story where they, in my opinion, successfully give you the feel of being on your heels for most of the game. The voice acting and music is fantastic as well!

I would love a remastered version of this one too.

the music still gives me chills after all this time

Top 5 games I've ever played of all time Also IIRC based on an old Homeworld veteran's opinion on this regarding canonicity of Cataclysm, some hardcore fans dislike it based on the Beast. They saw the Beast as a generic horror that took away from the feel of the original Homeworld by making the game into a horror RTS and that the universe had become more "Star Wars-y". Fans supporting Homeworld Cataclysm would say the universe has always been Star Wars-y with the Taiidan and the mysterious ghost vessels, ancient tech etc. They would also say it has a stronger story, because the original Homeworld was really good at selling an environment, emotion and setting, not so much the story which played out like "you fight enemies here as you get closer to Hiigara, deal with it". Cataclysm has faceless characters but become familiar and eventually you get to grow on them by their voices and reactions to how they are being stressed to the limit by the Beast. Fans that prefer Homeworld 1 would also say "it wasn't Barking Dog's authority to mess around the canon from the original developers in such a huge way like this" saying that it intrudes on creator's original vision. This is a valid point to make, which is why Homeworld 2 ignores Cataclysm (either this or they listened to the hardcore fans at the time, I think it's more of the former). They do acknowledge Kiith Somtaaw as existing in Homeworld 2 though, as a homage. Lots of Cataclysm fans still want the Beast to return as well, more so after Homeworld 2 kinda didn't do so well (it was again selling a setting rather than a story but it lacked emotional and plot hooks). AFAIK there wasn't any outright "dissing" of one side or the other but just respect if you preferred any.

Gwad, I miss this version of Homeworld. To me, it was faaaaar better than Homeworld 3. It's a shame that the cut scenes are corrupted. Thank you very much for this video. Good news like this is rare...

this is so freakimg awesome, the transformation from minership kuun-lan to mothership kuun-lan is great. it's alao the scariest enemy to fight. the skirmish/mp is also fantastic. the way you operate the build/research/etc screen while the game keeps on going in the background really adds to the tention. it's so much better than the hw2 management screen. Beast slayer!

I absolutely loved this game, a game of genuine emotion and consequences that were felt. Beautiful music writing and voice acting. If they remastered this game I would buy it in a heart beat.

I dont know why anyone in their right mind would consider cataclysm not canon because homeworld 2 doesn't reference it. First off, it takes place 115 years after cataclysm. It doesn't need to reference it at all.

Ironically I still have the disc

10:50 streamlined and simpler is not always better. The Original UI gives the Game more the feeling of being in an actual command stand, rather than playing a Videogame.

I still own the disc version and will buy the GOG version soon. I always felt this game was better than one and two. I loved the story, ships, music and gameplay. The levels are great. You could go through wormholes, lightning in the background, and the ships all had different voices. Skirmish mode is fantastic. I loved that you can watch all the ships in first person. I had hours of fun playing this game.

Thats very good news indeed! I was waiting for a release of this version of Homeworld. Emergence (Cataclysm) has a special support system which you can create various types of different fleet combinations. You can have full fleet of fighters or full set of capital class gang. There are also very interesting units such as Ramming Frigate, Hive Frigate, Sentinels and even Leeches. Storyline is also very interesting. I hope you play all the scenario on your channel

The original Homeworld works in widescreen resolution (either via a registry tweak, or specifying the resolution via the command line to launch the program - don't remember which offhand), the only issue is that the "backgrounds" (the star fields & nebulae that are visible beyond the playable map area) are distorted somewhat, since it looks like they were built for only 4:3 & get stretched at 16:9.

The same narrator for Toonami's Gundam Wing back in 99'. My heart!

This masterpiece is THE REASON why I bought H:DoK in prerelease!

The narration is totally enthralling.