IGN has just exclusively revealed that there’s a brand new MechWarrior game in the works, the first in seven long years (or five years, if you consider MechAssault a part of the franchise). Rather than call it MechWarrior 5 they’re going along with the current, meaningless trend to reboot the franchise and call it simply MechWarrior. It somewhat makes sense for film, but for games?
Regardless, it’s currently being made at Smith and Tinker and Pirahna Games. Pirahna knows their way around giant robots, as they just handled the new Transformers: Rise of the Fallen game, which has just completely surprised me by being fairly decent.
Check out the MechWarrior teaser trailer, apparently comprised of all in-game footage-
So you can definitely see what they’re going for. The robots feel a helluva lot bigger this time and the damage they can inflict to each other and the world around them is pretty impressive. There’s no word on how many mechs will be in the game but they’re promising that it won’t just be all about the biggest, baddest mechs this time.
The little guys will have more of a chance, since as you play through the game you’ll gain experience and be better at piloting your choice of robotic monster. Small mechs can take advantage of hiding behind buildings in an attempt to make the different classes have a fair fight. Which is good, because you’re going to be playing with other people a lot- even in co-op.
Says Russ Bullock, president of Piranha “…there’s some great dynamics there for single-player there that we’ve discussed, and we’ve also talked about how great that would fall in line with co-op. Co-op campaigns are so popular nowadays, and some games have really great ones. We can’t imagine hardly a better property for it: when you think of a lance as four mechs, we have an opportunity here to have a four-player lance, all with player controlled mechs and utilizing all four classes of the mechs in the universe from light, medium, heavy, and assault. So, it really does play out really well for the universe to, for the first time, take advantage of some of these big features like co-op, etc. Then again, for multiplayer, too – it’s hard to imagine a better environment to create a progressive experience based system of multiplayer that really lasts and prolongs the playtime for the game.”
Check IGN’s interview with the developers for more, especially if you’re interested in all the geeky details of the story.
There’s no publisher yet, but the game’s being developed for Xbox 360 and PC. Expect it to get snatched up soon.