The past fifteen years have seen the birth of new possibilities … and the festering of old grudges.

Fifteen years ago, I released Slipstream: The Price of Freedom. It was the end of my teenage years, I was moving away from high school life, and departing onto the journey that would be my twenties. Slipstream was a proud monument to my consumption of early-to-mid 2000s culture, but also a sore spot as an unfinished labor of love. As the 2010s began, I believed the Homeworld franchise had run its course, only to be proven wrong when Gearbox remastered both Homeworld and Homeworld 2 in 2015, then followed up with a prequel, Deserts of Kharak, in 2016. The announcement of Homeworld 3 led me to believe that Homeworld would finally see a resurgence. I waited patiently, even creating the Requiem for Freedom mod to pass the time.

Homeworld 3 was a gigantic disappointment to me; I didn’t even finish the campaign, instead, finishing via a playthrough on Youtube. Though, with the abundance of failed soft-reboots, reimaginings, and other forms of nostalgia-bait that gets regurgitated out of publishers today, I’m hardly surprised. Failures of modernity aside, I had a realization: Homeworld 2 wasn’t nearly as good as Homeworld. Homeworld was colorful, stylized, and had a diversity of levels, environments, and enemies. Homeworld 2 had two colors, bright blue and boisterous beige, a nasty case of “oops all Vaygr”, magic MacGuffin hunts, and lackluster writing. From a technical standpoint, however, Homeworld 2 was vastly superior to its predecessor, allowing mods like PDS, TPOF, Complex, and others to thrive. Though, to me, Homeworld wasn’t really in need of a sequel, its story wraps up everything quite nicely.

Old Grudges

I am of the opinion that Homeworld: Cataclysm is the better sequel. Released in 2000 as a stand-alone expansion for Homeworld, Cataclysm, also known as Emergence due to some petty copyright dispute, retains much of what makes the original game great. It has a much richer setting, with a diverse and stylized cast of ships and environments; In contrast to Homeworld 2’s collection of dead wrecks and Vaygr hideouts. It also features mechanics we didn’t see in any of the other games: ship linking, mimics, asteroid belts, crystals, better drone frigates; Cataclysm feels like a progression of technology in both the gameplay and the story.

Imagine my shock when I realized Homeworld 2 and subsequent works completely shunned the entirety of Homeworld: Cataclysm, with only a brief mention of Kiith Somtaaw in 2016’s Deserts of Kharak. This strange decision divided the Homeworld community and fanbase; is Cataclysm canon? The question was never really answered directly, but even with all the nostalgia-baiting of Homeworld 3, the advancements made by Cataclysm were never seen again. I think I’ve heard all the arguments to be had over the past 25 years since its release, with “Homeworld 2 has a more serious tone that matches the first game” being the most prevalent, to which I reply with Bentusi concept art from the first game being more at-home in something like Borderlands, than their vision of what Homeworld should be.

I waited 20 years for Homeworld 3, just to watch it crash and burn straight into the fires of Kharak. I even donated a large chunk of change to the Fig campaign; I wanted to give back to the community that fostered my love of space and which allowed me to build a career atop. I feel betrayed, but then again, what did I expect? I wasn’t exactly happy with Homeworld 2’s campaign, nor the treatment of Cataclysm, and while laying the blame firmly at the feet of Gearbox seems to be the flavor of the day, this is not an isolated incident. The video game industry is just not what it was even a decade ago, let alone two decades. I’ve never seen myself as antiquated or stuck in the web of nostalgia, but sometimes you just get tired of the same disappointments over and over again.

I have also had my regrets with Slipstream. In the beginning, the plan was to create a total conversion that would see new ships, a new campaign, and a new universe. The initial team was between six and eight people, however, that quickly dwindled to three of us, with the bulk of the work left in my capable hands. Executing the vision was difficult, and I ended up cobbling together what I could with what was available at the time. The kitbashed nature and hand-waving that was needed to be immersed in The Price of Freedom’s lore left a rather sour taste in my mouth, even with a solid 8.6/10 rating on Moddb. However, some time later, I came to appreciate what we had built. Slipstream was a fun and engaging mod for Homeworld 2, and whatever it lacked in polish, it countered with presentation. A small community had formed around the mod and the anticipation of what would come next in the Slipstream universe. Clearly, regrets were unwarranted, but these are the things you realize as you travel through life.

New Possibilities

After Homeworld 3’s disappointment, I wanted something to fill the void left by all the hype. I replayed Homeworld: Remastered, Homeworld Classic, Cataclysm, and even Deserts of Kharak; however, I had no desire to play Homeworld 2’s campaign as my realizations that came about with Homeworld 3 were still fresh in my mind. I was left to wonder: How would Homeworld 2 be different if Cataclysm was accepted as canon to its writers? I let my thoughts stir for a few days and then started writing them down; at the same time, my thoughts drifted towards Slipstream and how it could be related to my current meditations. I revisited all the material that I had written for The Price of Freedom, including the many attempts at continuation. Once more, I embarked on a new journey through the Homeworld universe.

I wrote a brand new story for Slipstream, one that makes it an alternative timeline to Homeworld; where the in-game events of Homeworld, Deserts of Kharak, and Cataclysm/Emergence, along with the contents of their manuals, are considered canon, while other entries in the franchise, such as Homeworld 2, Homeworld 3, Homeworld Mobile, and other future entries, are not considered canon. In Slipstream, the galaxy has entered a long and dark age in the wake of The Beast infection, and the Vaygr and Hiigarans are locked in a political cold war with no end in sight. In my opinion, this new story feels like a natural continuation of the Homeworld universe after the events of Cataclysm, and creates a deeper story for fans of The Price of Freedom.

With a new story in hand, I set my sights on The Price of Freedom with fresh goals and new ideas. Certainly, I wasn’t the only one with grudges against Homeworld 3, and v4.0 is just what the doctor ordered. The last two releases of the mod were v3.0 and v3.1, which differed only slightly, but v3.1 made changes that would take the mod in a completely different direction, so I decided to start working with v3.0. After a few months of late evenings and weekends, I had reforged The Price of Freedom into a new and improved version. I was able to keep the original art style, introduce some new ideas, and return assets cut from prior versions. This newly created v4.0 satisfies my hype for Homeworld 3, and settles all the issues I had with Slipstream in general, making it a worthy successor to both Homeworld and Slipstream’s legacy.

The new release, v4.0, is available for download on Moddb and Steam. If you were subscribed to The Price of Freedom on Steam prior, you will need to re-subscribe, as something went wrong with the original Steam release years ago, and I’m still not sure what happened. v4.0 also requires Homeworld 2 v2.0 or higher, making the original Sierra CD release unsupported. Multiplayer has returned and has been tested as “working”, however the GoG and Steam versions might not be able to play with each other due to different version numbers. I recommend reading the included ReadMe.pdf that includes the new story, mod features, map descriptions, and much more. Welcome back to Slipstream: The Price of Freedom, I hope you enjoy this fresh take on both the mod and the Homeworld Universe, have fun!