Announced at MechCon 2016, Piranha Games is taking MechWarrior back to its singleplayer roots with MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. Slated for a 2018 release, Piranha Games president Russ Bullock took the stage to reveal the first footage of MechWarrior 5, which is being developed using Unreal Engine 4. You can watch that demo in the video above and head over to MW5mercs.com for more info.
Though details are scarce, what we do know is that MechWarrior 5 is a completely standalone singleplayer game being developed by Piranha Games using a separate team than the one currently supporting MechWarrior Online, its multiplayer-only CryEngine game that went into open beta in 2012. MechWarrior 5 will feature “intense PvE ‘Mech combat in an immersive, career-based Mercenary campaign driven by player choice.”
This looks great, though I am much more excited for the Battletech strategy game thats coming next year. Running around shooting mechs is fun, but I’ve been very impressed with Harebrained Studios Shadowrun games and am excited to see their take on the Battletech universe. Piranha, on the other hand, has been a mixed bag with Mechwarrior Online.
I am much in the same boat. I prefer Battletech as a strategy game over an action game. A well played game of Battletech is akin to playing a complex chess match and understanding both you and your opponents’ strengths and weaknesses.
I am also the same geek who recently purchased many older Battletech manuals including a full set of the House Books on Ebay.
I’m not getting excited until it’s released, although I’m cautiously optimistic. Piranha Games is okay at making reasonably good stompy mech combat, but they’re terrible at making a game where you feel like you’re making progress. (I did the math somewhere. In MW: Online, if you want one mech of each type with the skills properly maxed—like you need to be fully combat effective—it’ll take you about 1200 games and 9-12 different mechs total.)
Me too. When MW:O was announced I said that you’d have to try really hard to make a mech game I won’t play, but it turns out I really underestimated Piranha.
Looks cheap (because it probably is) and glacially paced. I hope starting her up is a bit quicker than that each time. Or at least if it’s going to be slow, let me flip some switches or something, give me some rivets to count. :)
That aside, there’s currently a world shortage on Giant Robot Driving Simulators so I’ll buy this - after reading the reviews. Fingers crossed for VR support.
Yeah, I’m a huge BT fan but MW:O just never could get its hooks into me. I haven’t played it in a year and I still have thousands of whatever of their premium credit things are floating around.
MWO was not a bad game, it was the lag and price structure that stopped me from playing it much. I can’t wait for the TBS too but one of my fav games ever was MW4: Mercenaries, I am so happy to hear the news and will probably preorder whatever happens.
