Homeworld 3 brazenly flouts RTS tradition with units that talk to each other instead of you, their esteemed invisible commander

This is a tough call to make: Should RTS units cycle through the comforting traditional acknowledgments when you click on them—”ready,” “awaiting orders,” that kind of thing—or should unit barks finally evolve past the generic assertions of Command & Conquer and Warcraft? For the upcoming Homeworld 3, Blackbird Interactive is taking the latter position, saying that it’s innovating on unit barks and that “the scale of chatter design” in the RTS is greater than the series has ever seen.

Those comments come from a new Homeworld 3 developer update which also teases the work Blackbird has done on pre-rendered cutscenes and in-engine environment rendering. There’s some strong nebula work to admire near the bottom of the post, but the big section in the middle titled “No one can hear you scream” is what caught my attention, because I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered such a thorough breakdown of RTS unit bark theory.