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PC Gamer: MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries hands-on & screens

L

Lime

Member
Much more at the link: http://www.pcgamer.com/mechwarrior-5-mercenaries-hands-on-the-series-goes-back-to-its-roots/

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"There's a huge contingent of fans that have been wanting a singleplayer MechWarrior 5 for years," Bullock tells me as we walk through the Piranha Games office. "Of course we wanted to make one, but being a smaller developer we had say, 'Okay first things first, we need to succeed with MechWarrior Online and that will allow us to make a singleplayer game.' And it took a while—a lot longer than we thought—but we're doing it."
Click to expand...

Instead of a series of linear missions, MechWarrior 5 puts you in command of a mercenary unit and gives you the freedom to either rise to mythic status or crash and burn along the way. Around 300 planets of the Inner Sphere will be open for business, letting you travel between the Great Houses while taking increasingly demanding contracts and building reputation with each faction as you also manage your lances of warriors and supporting technicians.
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It's one part MechWarrior and one part Football Manager, Russ tells me. Every bullet you fire and every mech you lose will have a cost, and it'll be up to you to make sure you're bringing in enough dough to keep your mercs on the payroll and their mechs in fighting condition. As you progress in prestige, the timeline also moves forward. Great Houses rise and fall according to the lore, new technologies are invented and sold, and eventually the ominous Clans come rampaging through the Inner Sphere like Genghis Khan and his Mongol horde.

Leveraging an ambitious dynamic free market economy, stunning destructibility, and the kind of freedom and scale that hasn't been seen since the first MechWarrior in 1989, Bullock is working to make MechWarrior 5 the ultimate realisation of BattleTech lore.
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When you begin a new campaign, your mercenary company is in a sorry state. With only a weak mech at your disposal, you'll be scraping by and taking low-level missions from the periphery states of the Great Houses to keep money coming in. Little by little your business will grow, but it will be up to you to decide how.

"The free market is probably one of the biggest components of MechWarrior 5," Bullock tells me. Mechs, pilots, technicians, weapon systems—everything you need to form a mercenary unit will have to be purchased from MechWarrior 5's market. "The market is totally dynamic based on what year it is. In the year 3015, for example, they didn't have any pulse lasers or Ferro-Fibrous armour as all of that technology comes in later. And it's also going to depend where you are in the Inner Sphere. If you are in one Great House's space, you'll see mechs common among that house. That's going to provide a whole level of flavour to your play experience each time you start a new campaign."
Click to expand...

To that end, MechWarrior 5 will feature an unprecedented number of mechs to choose from. "Most MechWarrior games have had maybe 12 to 15 different mech chassis," Bullock explains. ”We're looking at having upwards of 60 chassis with 300 to 400 variants. You could probably play the game multiple times within just one Great House's space and see different combinations on the free market."

But mechs are only as good as the warriors piloting them. Players will also need to be mindful of their mercs and technicians, who each have their own skills and specialties. Likewise, different manufacturers will make variations of weapon systems, giving players granular control over every aspect of their mechs. Profits made from mercenary contracts will be quickly eaten away by repairs, resupply, and the ever-present cost of replacing slain comrades. It's a huge amount of freedom but also an equally large responsibility if you're reckless on the field of battle.
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One thing MechWarrior fans will love is that damage modelling has been taken to a whole new level over MechWarrior Online. Each component now has multiple stages of disrepair, making brawls even more visceral as armour peels back after barrages to reveal the delicate mechanical skeletons underneath

"Mechs aren't just these paper tigers," Bullock says. "You don't just one-shot things. It's all about a battle of attrition, of using the hills, rocks, and trees for cover and making sure that when you get your chance to shoot, you make it count. You manage your heat, your ammo, and your positioning and you win that battle."
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Any veteran MechWarrior player knows that it isn't just about how well you're able to shoot, but also how you use the terrain to your advantage. And with 300 planets, each needing their own battlefield that feels distinct, Bullock says finding a way to generate fun but unique terrain was easily one of Piranha Games' biggest challenges. "We needed to create a level generator system that wouldn't be overly complex," Bullock explains, adding that since MW5's announcement the team has dedicated much of its time to solving this one complex riddle.

What they devised is an elegant system that takes ingredients, like different military bases, and places them together with various groupings of terrain. It's like playing an instrument: you have several notes to work with, but how you arrange them can create vastly different songs. After my demo, Piranha Games' senior game designer David Forsey give me an opportunity to peek behind the curtain at the development back end of MechWarrior 5 to toy around with making different kinds of maps.

Similar to creating a new map in Civilization, MechWarrior 5's map tool lets you dictate the density of foliage, terrain patterns, weather, time of day and more. Now, all of these might not sound like they matter, but in the brutally strategic world of MechWarrior, they absolutely do. Wind storms on a Mars-like planet might blind you, forcing you to rely purely on thermal vision to see enemy mechs through the tempest. Likewise, dense forests can now cover the battlefield since Piranha Games doesn't have to account for all the challenges of syncing up 24 different players over the internet like in MechWarrior Online.
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http://www.pcgamer.com/mechwarrior-5-mercenaries-hands-on-the-series-goes-back-to-its-roots/
 
K

KTallguy

Banned
Big MW2 fan, didn't really enjoy online too much or the later outings.

I'm hoping that there's a central plot in this game and that it's not just a dry simulation. I enjoy simulations but I like having a central theme or goal to keep me engaged, ala Jagged Alliance 2, Xcom, Starcraft.
 
B

bchan555

Member
Lime said:
7 replies to this thread :/

GAF is a bit surprising when it comes to PC series
Click to expand...

From what I can tell GAF is majority console gamers? If Switch threads are to be believed it seems like there's also a ton of older people who don't really do non-portable gaming anymore.
 
Q

QFNS

Unconfirmed Member
This looks rad, but I'm still more excited for Battletech than MW5. Though I'm definitely going to play both.
 
G

-Gozer-

Member
Group fire engaged
Heat level critical
Shutdown sequence initiated
Shutdown sequence overridden
Internal ammo explosion detected

Worth it.
 
R

RenegadeXV8

Banned
As someone who played MechWarrior Online for 2 years... don't trust anything Piranha (the developer) says.

Their mismanagement of MWO is legendary.

Wait until the game is actually out before you get excited.
 
C

Cameron122

Member
I’m excited for this Battletech, I loved Mechwarrior 4 and Mechcommander 2 but MWO wasn’t for me. Hopefully if these two games do well we will get the Battletech noble house simulator I’ve always wanted.
 
L

Lime

Member
epmode said:
I mean, I'm hopeful that it'll evoke a similar atmosphere as Mechwarrior 2 but I'm skeptical.
Click to expand...

Top 5 of all time for me, so I know I won't ever see the magic again.

Given the engine and the mech designs, I'll take this for the experience in itself after 15 years of silence and Microsoft sitting on the tomb. Their cockpit design is also pretty groundbreaking (imo) and the singleplayer is the important aspect.

I unfortunately still have lower expectations and they seem to outsource the writing to Randal Bills from Catalyst Labs instead of hiring a narrative designer. We will see, but beggars can't be choosers.
 
B

Banderdash

Member
I was wondering where id seen this info before... and it turns out it was printed here and on Reddit in September.
PC Gamer must wait a month to put their print stuff online.
http://m.neogaf.com/showpost.php?p=248859257


Bring on December though... it's supposed to be playable at MechCon.


EDIT: i really hope they get the Thug into this game.... more designs in general really.
 
L

Laiza

Member
Cautiously optimistic. For all of PGI's faults in their handling of MWO, the core gameplay is not one of those faults. If nothing else, the game should be a blast to play.

pretty done said:
Which is weird because PC seems to be the most popular platform on this site right now, Switch fanboy hype threads aside.
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Based on what metric?

All the biggest threads are either for PS4 exclusives or multiplat games. PC-exclusive threads rarely ever break the 100-page mark.
 
F

Fragamemnon

Member
Lime said:
7 replies to this thread :/

GAF is a bit surprising when it comes to PC series
Click to expand...

it's been like this for nearly 20 years, it's just the way of things.

Going back to MW5, sounds like they are taking some riffs off of games like Mount and Blade in order to give the game a dynamic campaign. That's way better than scripted nonsense, so I hope that's how they are planning it out.
 
StereoVsn

StereoVsn

Member
I don't trust Piranha much but certainly interested in this game. Loved MW2 back in the day. Let's see how this turns out.
 
A

Akoi

Member
I really hope they pull this off.. Mechwarrior 2 was one of the first games I played endlessly on PC in the 90s.

I hope this game gets VR Support too.
 
S

Sendero

Member
Think the information was already known.

Either way, they are saying all the right things, but as much as I love the freedom of having your own team, and tackling missions at your own pace, I do hope they reconsider and add a main threat + basic storyline to hold the whole experience together. It doesn't have to be too elaborated. Just an overarching objective and 3 or so properly staged missions.

Otherwise, I'm afraid the game will feel inconsequential and a bit hollow.
 
S

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
No new info but the graphics are nice.

I seriously hope this is good, I love Mechwarrior, but with Piranha at the helm i'm definitely skeptical.
 
T

ThreePiMatt

Member
I really liked MechWarrior Online, so I assume this largely being a singleplayer-derivative of the work they did on that is good to me.
 
B

Banderdash

Member
Sendero said:
Think the information was already known.

Either way, they are saying all the right things, but as much as I love the freedom of having your own team, and tackling missions at your own pace, I do hope they reconsider and add a main threat + basic storyline to hold the whole experience together. It doesn't have to be too elaborated. Just an overarching objective and 3 or so properly staged missions.

Otherwise, I'm afraid the game will feel inconsequential and a bit hollow.
Click to expand...

It'll propably be like Mechwarrior 2 mercenaries campaign.
Time progresses, & more of your missions take on a clan focus... till that's all that's left, until you run through Twycross, Wolcott, Luthien, & maybe Tukkayid.
 
Stiler

Stiler

Member
I really hope you can leg people in this game and they really go all out with the physics for the game when it comes to the environment, etc.

That was something I hated about Mechwarrior Online, it legit felt like a step back compared to the older single player games because you couldn't even do dmg like you could in those games.
 
S

Soar

Member
Yes instant buy with VR, otherwise I'm skeptical, got burnt by MWO where it felt like you were giving each other acidic body paints instead of gritty punchy action.
 
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