Mechwarrior 5: Clans Preview
You know, it’s been a pretty good few years for mecha game fans. There was Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries in 2019, Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon in 2023, Gundam Breaker 4 last month, and now Mechwarrior 5: Clans is slowly approaching. If you enjoy virtually piloting a high-story walking death machine, you must be feeling the love. I got a chance to check out a portion of Mechwarrior 5: Clans and came away impressed and a little surprised.
Listen, Commander
Mechwarrior 5: Clans is neither DLC nor a sequel. Think of it as a companion to Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries, the yin to Clans’ yang or something. It’s a standalone game. Clans follows in the tradition of Mechwarrior 2 and 4, which both had Mercenaries and Clans ports. When developer Piranha Games was given the chance to make the next numbered Mechwarrior game, they created a procedurally generated open-world sandbox experience called Mercenaries. Following tradition, the next game simply had to be Mechwarriors 5: Clans.
MechWarrior 5: Clans is a linear, narrative-driven experience that, like all MechWarrior games, takes place within the BattleTech universe. BattleTech was born in the 1980s when the Cold War was still raging, and began as a board game before making the jump to the digital world (not to mention movies, TV shows, and novels). The majority of BattleTech and MechWarrior are set in a sci-fi future a millennium or more away from our own. While BattleTech does incorporate some common sci-fi tropes, such as lasers, energy weapons, and the ability to travel faster than light, aliens only make rare appearances. In the BattleTech universe, humans are still fighting humans for control.
Fasten your seatbelt
The mechs in Gundam and Armored Core look like walking tanks, but they're fast and agile. In the Gundam games in particular, they're controlled simply like action RPG characters in mecha suits with the ability to dodge, block, and parry. In contrast, MechWarrior's mechs feel absolutely massive, and their movements are deliberate and weighty. Translating that reality has always been at the core of MechWarrior.
In MechWarrior 5: Clans, you play as Jayden, a relatively inexperienced Smoke Jaguar pilot from the clan. Upon conclusion of the tutorial chapter, you are promoted to a leadership role. As a star commander, Jayden leads a quintet of pilots, each with a strong identity. Soon after, your group is sent to another planet to provide tactical support for a larger mission, and the campaign begins. The campaign can be played solo or in co-op multiplayer. While Jayden can control his squad and give orders from the strategic overhead view of the battlefield, he can instantly jump into any of the mechs. Even when Jayden didn’t give direct orders, the AI squad did a good job.
I’ve only played a small portion of the campaign, which is filled with jargon and cutscenes we’ve seen in countless war movies. I wouldn’t say the narrative and dialogue are cliché, but I hope the campaign develops a bit more of an identity. From what I’ve played, the voice work and writing are generally effective, though of varying quality. Anyone unfamiliar with the BattleTech or MechWarrior universe may be confused by the context. After all, Clans is asking players to get involved in the story. All that said, fans of the BattleTech world will find it authentically translated.
40 tons of steel
Story aside, the power fantasy of piloting a walking tank with arms, opposable thumbs, and battleship-equivalent weaponry remains intact. Controlling a mech is still somewhere between piloting a helicopter and captaining a battleship, and it feels great. There are ways to tweak the controls and difficulty. This is MechWarrior, and complexity is part of the equation, but even newbies should be able to find a comfortable level between simulation-level challenge and arcade-style action.
Between battles, Jayden and his team return to headquarters. There, the player upgrades and assigns weapons, armor, and makes cosmetic changes to the squad's mechs. Pretty standard stuff for the franchise and the genre. I say that, but the level of depth in this part of the game is impressive. Anyone who delves into the stats and options of an RPG will be thrilled. The player can thoroughly equip a large number of mechs, balancing basic aspects like weight, armor, and weaponry, but upgrading the stats of the squad members. It's a lot.
I've never found the MechWarrior games to be great graphical examples, but from what I've seen so far, things are looking good. There's a lot of detail in the mechs and the way they take damage. The environments in the demo were varied and offered plenty of options during combat. The characters and human faces are perhaps a bit below state-of-the-art, but they're not so bad that they're distracting. I had some concerns about the synth-heavy soundtrack. It didn't seem like it added much to the energy of the action sequences. The game is still being polished, so we'll wait to see if the audio has a bit more punch in the final version.
Jump into the cockpit
I’ve always appreciated how faithfully MechWarrior represents the mech piloting experience (I assume), and I liked MechWarrior 5: Clans’ shift toward a story-focused format. It probably doesn’t represent a permanent change in direction, but that’s okay. MechWarrior 5: Clans does an excellent job of balancing narrative, combat, and an incredibly deep level of customization. I had a lot of fun destroying enemy mechs and playing around with loadouts. I look forward to the game’s final release on October 16, 2024.
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