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GameSpot's Homeworld: Cataclysm Preview

Page 2 of 7

A Beastly Affair

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Again, the cutscenes are a mix of black-and-white drawings and in-game cinematics. The original mothership is now a historic relic.
Although we only played the first few scenarios in the campaign, they drew us in more than the original Homeworld scenarios did. The game begins 15 years after the conclusion of Homeworld. The Kushan now occupy Hiigara and have divided themselves into the same factions described in the original Homeworld manual. The various factions specialize in different tasks and have their own unique styles in ship design. Some have to buy ships from the Bentusi or use designs created by other factions.

Your faction, or Kiith, is the Somtaaw, and your role in society lies on the periphery of the new empire, mining minerals in deep space to make a living. Your Somtaaw mining ship starts out on a mining mission when it answers a distress signal from a Kushan ship under attack by Taiidani vessels. The Taiidan, the main villains from the previous game, are a lot like the Empire in the Star Wars novels written by Timothy Zahn. That is, the Taiidan are nothing more than fractured bands of ships that mill around and randomly ambush the Kushan. At the start of the game, the ship under attack has asked you for assistance, and you are rushing to the fray.

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Well, here you are to the rescue and about to embark on a journey that will pit you against the nasty Beast.
The first few missions involve maintaining the peace; that is, helping the other Kushan faction fight off more incoming Taiidani craft. This bout of cleanup takes a turn when you are asked to look for a missing Kushan frigate.

It turns out that the frigate was attacked by something alien, and you salvage an odd artifact from the wreckage. Research into this artifact leads to technology that no other alien race possesses. Because of the political power struggle within the Kushan culture itself, the Somtaaw leaders decide to keep this discovery a secret.

Soon, however, the discovery starts "infecting" your mothership. The mothership disengages the infected portion of itself, and that's where the beta ends.

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Uh oh, that's a pretty nasty growth on your ship. Yet, that's only the beginning of your troubles....
These events occur in the first few missions, but if you read our earlier preview of Cataclysm, you can guess that the mothership came in contact with a fragment of the Beast.

The Beast is essentially a massive space virus; it infects and takes over anything mechanical that it touches. The Beast is the antagonist of the single-player campaign, but you can opt to be the Beast in multiplayer skirmishes. This allowance fixes a criticism of the original Homeworld: that the two competing races were too similar.

The Beast can be considered as the sum total of all other Homeworld races, simply because it steals everything from everyone else and amalgamates it into one massive, distorted, and cosmopolitan fleet. Take any ship from the previous game, and add pulsating flesh pieces to it. That's a typical Beast craft. The Beast's infestation weapon means that instead of having to research new ships, it can simply infest and absorb the technology of any victim. Players who are sneaky will appreciate playing as the Beast in multiplayer skirmishes.

Next: Details on the new mothership