Kotaku link
Surprise, Mechwarrior fans! That teaser from yesterday was indeed for a new Mechwarrior title, which is in development at Piranha Games, who worked on the latest Transformers title.
So at least you know they have experience with giant robots! Then again, it also means they have experience with making crummy games based on giant robots.
Though, let's give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. They only helped develop Revenge of the Fallen. And being a movie tie-in, it had a deadline to meet. Something they won't have to worry about with Mechwarrior, what with Battletech being 25 years old and all.
This new game is called simply MechWarrior, and will serve as a reboot of sorts for the franchise. You'll still be piloting mechs, but the developers reckon that current console technology will for the first time let you feel like you're really behind the sticks of a giant fighting robot.
They're also shooting for a "dynamic battlefield", and rather than feature a food chain of mechs, instead want to let players choose a ****of mech and then upgrade that to suit their tastes as they progress through the game.
MechWarrior is coming to the PC and Xbox 360, with no details yet on either a publisher or a release timeframe.
To see the full debut trailer, click below. Looks like GRAW with giant robots. Which is a real good place to start.
Rock Paper Shotgun link
It's back after a seven year hiatus. IGN has the full scoop, and they report that developers Piranha Games have some ambitious plans, including 4-player co-op.
They're also going to try and make the full range of mechs significant within the game via recon and intelligence missions: "it's not just a race to the heaviest, most powerful mechs. The designers want to reward you for picking a mech and sticking with it - you will gain experience and become better at piloting your chosen mech, and that will translate into better accuracy and damage with weapon systems.
This way, a player could specialize in a light mech throughout the entire game if they choose. It also means there are multiple playthroughs with different mechs." No release date as yet.
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**** YEAH!
Have been waiting a very long while for a new MW game.
edit*
On cross platform development; as taking the series to the 360 is going to be of interests to quite a few people.....
From the large IGN interview
IGN: That actually brings me to my next question. As far as PC gamers were concerned, part of the appeal of controlling your mech in the MechWarrior franchise was feeling like you were in control of your mech, having access to multiple cockpit commands at one time with your keyboard and your mouse. How are you planning to keep this ****c control scheme feel, and will you be adding any new elements for your mechs, especially now that you want to create this full cockpit experience?
Russ Bullock: First and foremost, in this day and age and this time, we've all played the PC games in the past and absolutely loved them. But certainly going forward, just out of necessity and because we think we can, we're definitely very focused also on the Xbox 360. So we're very focused on the console standpoint moving forward. Now, we still need to work out a lot with our chosen publishing partner, so some of these questions will become answered, but I think that Jordan and I are in agreement that we want to make a MechWarrior game.
The MechAssault games were interesting in the role they played inside the universe for the consoles at the time, but we feel the technology is there that we can make a true MechWarrior game, a MechWarrior experience on both the Xbox 360 and the PC and not lose anything from that true MechWarrior feeling. We feel confident obviously in the PC and its control scheme that can be realized because it's been done before. But for the Xbox 360, we've spent a lot of thought and a lot of time in playing around with the controller and finding ways to give the same level of control in the way that you throttle, in the way that you turn and move, use your jump jets, and everything that gives you that MechWarrior experience that doesn't turn it into a power-up pickup sort of arcade ****game. So that is something that we're spending a lot of time on - all the answers aren't there yet, but we want to make a MechWarrior experience and we feel like we can do it both on the 360 and the PC.
Jordan Weisman: Yeah, if you look at the 360 controller, I think that if we empower the player to assign functionality to what is frankly an intimidating number of buttons on that controller, there's a lot of options that we can offer the player in terms of how to chain weapons, assign coolant or other components of the information warrior part to different parts on the controller as well as making the controller modal if we need to. I think the key thing is having a ramp where a more casual player isn't overwhelmed with the control surfaces and unable to have a great time playing this thing. It's really got to go from arcade level controls to simulation level controls in an elegant unfolding of functionality. When people start, they need an entry point to be successful and have a great time without needing to have memorized lots of different controls, but you need to have it unfold for advanced players who want to micromanage.
IGN: Right, so there was definitely no discussion to having a more arcade-like feel for the console? There was always a decision to keep it as a balance of action and simulation for both platforms?
Jordan Weisman: Yeah, I think that MechWarrior was kind of the PC's first big action title, and even if you go back to MechWarrior 2, it certainly had sim aspects, but the sim component wasn't so overwhelming that it became inaccessible. We want to walk that line as well, that it's an action sim as you said, not a sim with action.
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