With Mechwarrior 5: Clans, MechWarrior is so extremely back (again)

After 15 years of drought, the BattleTech floodgates opened again and mechs poured forth late last decade. Now a new flood of classic 1980s mechs is coming to PC with MechWarrior 5: Clans, putting us back into the cooling suit of a genetically engineered warrior ready to conquer the worlds of humankind from the cockpit of a 25-100 ton war machine. This is not just a minor expansion, but a standalone game. Clans is a confident leap over 2019’s MechWarrior 5, with a much deeper story and new-to-the-series emphasis on narrative cinematics while losing none of its focus on the simulator-like experience of piloting a mech knock-down, drag-out armored brawls.

The subtitle is a lot more meaningful than it might sound. In the world of MechWarrior, the Clans are militaristic invaders from outside of known civilization with advanced technology and a strict, almost alien caste system. They use genetic engineering to create warriors rather than have them born as natural “freebirths”—a category of person their ruling military caste generally looks down on. They see themselves as not just a superior society, but the true inheritors of human civilization and rightful posessors of Earth (and every other human world).

Mechwarrior 5: Clans’ biggest step up from previous games by Piranha is a huge emphasis on narrative. My quite harsh critique of the original Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries was that “the characters are shallow and forgettable caricatures and the plot a paint-by-numbers revenge story.” That, and how the characters themselves never grappled or spoke of the terrible things they had to do as soldiers.

I’m happy to say that in the first hours of Clans this studio is clearly taking their weaknesses to heart and improving on them. (To be clear I’d flatter myself to think I had anything to do with the choice—this is just what most self-respecting game developers would do with more time and a bigger budget.) The characters I’ve encountered have at least some personality, even development, among not just the main cast but also a few side figures. A gruff and hateful training commander, for example, is eventually forced to show grudging respect for and eventually address a trainee as his superior. Cliché? Maybe, but it’s at least a novel story to see in this world from this perspective.

What a perspective that is, by the way. The Clans are bad people, as warmongers generally are, and their society is structured in a way that makes people do bad things. This is a game where, in many ways, you’re the baddies. You’re also a culture very alien to present-day humans with its own patterns of speech (no contractions!), concepts of honor, and ways of thinking about right and wrong. I think that’ll come off as almost disorienting to many players, but I found it a refreshing bit of sci-fi in the same vein as the bizarre religious mindset of the protagonists in recently-released Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2.

Though your characters were definitely raised in an environment that indoctrinated them, the writing I saw did well to remember that they’re still human with their own quirks and aspirations buried beneath their repressive upbringing. 

The clutch of bioengineered warriors that you grew up with and fight alongside, your Sibko, are the closest thing you have to a family. They stuck around for my whole preview—about seven hours of game and a dozen missions—fighting in the same five-mech Star formation. Alongside your immediate commanding superiors they’re the primary cast and have a variety of voice lines during and between missions. It’s cool then that your characters all gain experience over time that they can invest in categories of pilot skills unique to each character. Mia, for example, is set up to be a ballistic weapons specialist. None of these characters feel disposable or blankly interchangeable, making their roles in the squad evoke a BattleTech novel more than the prior MechWarrior games.

It’s also great that you can swap between the characters mid-mission to make use of whatever specialties you’ve given them. You can also open a battlefield view from a top-down perspective and control your Star’s mechs almost like you’re playing an RTS. It doesn’t quite compensate for the pilot AI fighting in weird ways, like charging at enemies they shouldn’t, but it’s awesome to be able to quickly tell your long-ranged warriors to take a hilltop while you and the other brawlers fly into melee… or vice-versa.

Going with the new narrative focus are a lot of cinematics of your characters’ lives. Sometimes just talking to each other when off-duty, even. It’s a huge boost to how engaging this game is to play because I’m properly invested in not just keeping these people alive but fighting alongside them. There was also at least one big cinematic I saw of narrative “heavy hitters” from BattleTech’s storied history acting out a major event: The ilKhan of the Clans Leo Showers declaring the Clan Invasion of the Inner Sphere to the gathered council of other Clan Khans. Maybe you had to be there, but take my word for it: This is top shelf BattleTech geek wish fulfillment shit.

There’s also a big break from prior MechWarrior games in that you’re not just salvaging or buying tech to get new, cool stuff. The Clans have real proper scientists and engineers doing real, proper work to advance, adjust, and fine-tune your gear. Your squad of warriors have their own cadre of science personnel and technicians whose jobs it is to repair and rearm their mechs but also fine-tune the equipment to eke out new levels of performance from it, letting you unlock new universal upgrades for categories of weapons—or even perks for every mech you’ve got, like improved heat capacity or cooling.

Clan tech was such an exciting part of what I played because these are some of the most iconic mechs out there to non-BattleTech-experts… and they haven’t properly shown up in a game for 20 years. The box art of MechWarrior 2 with the Timber Wolf / Mad Cat on it is famous for a reason, but an entire generation of videogame fans have only seen Inner Sphere mechs in BattleTech (2018) and Mechwarrior 5. So it’s awesome to get to stomp around in these mechs again and have that really satisfying feeling of knowing your mech is one the baddest, most advanced pieces of equipment on whatever barbarian world you’re invading this week.

(Image credit: Piranha Games)

To that end, I felt like the gameplay in Clans was a gradual step up from the previous MechWarrior 5 releases. The new engine—Unreal 5—is doing a lot of favors for the visuals and physics of stompy robots. The new audio cues and effects for lasers and the like are also above par for the series. I’m extremely optimistic and now very much looking forward to this one when it releases on October 16.

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