When Gearbox Software originally announced their intent to bring back Homeworld, they were met with more than just a little skepticism. This past weekend at PAX South, in San Antonio, Texas, I was able to put hands onto Homeworld Remastered in order to let you know that Gearbox is heading in the right direction.

The side-by-side comparison doesn’t grab me as I first sit down. Then, my brain slowly wrapped around the opening cinematic as the Remastered on the left and the original on the right are presented to me in 4K. The story is still being told as it was 15 years ago, but with finer detail. As I’m led through the tutorial, I hear about the intent of keeping to original vision.

That’s really the point I want to focus on. I could easily go on and on regarding how absolutely stunning this game looks – especially in 4K – and the amount of detail in the ships and the environments. And those are all there, but that’s not what makes fans of the original skeptical of this undertaking. Talking with the developers there, this is obviously a labor of love for them and not a cash-in. Gearbox has involved a lot of the original folks from Relic when remastering this game. They “went to the source” for art direction and sound; in many cases, asking for the original vision of the creators and building today, what was only in the imagined eye of 15 years ago.

Homeworld Remastered will release on February 25, 2015 on PC and will include Homeworld 1 Remastered, Homeworld 2 Remastered, Homeworld 1 Original (just updated enough to work on modern operating systems), Homeworld 2 Original and get you into the Homeworld Remastered Multiplayer Beta. I didn’t get to see the multiplayer in action, but I’m interested in how Gearbox is going to pull off combining all the fleets and factions from both Homeworld 1 and 2 and figure out the balancing aspect on top of completely rewriting the netcode as Homeworld multiplayer was built on the old Gamespy platform.

So, if you’re a fan of the original series or love real time strategy games, I think you should definitely be on the lookout for Homeworld Remastered when it releases next month.

Homeworld Remastered Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzqN5Eqg0Rc