10 replies to this topic

[Kelvin Casing]

Given all the assets the devs are building for MWO, I'm fairly sure we will see a single player game ONE day.

But what should the story be? Should it be a remake of MW2 or MW3? Should it take one of the BT novels to the (small) screen? Or should it be something entirely new? What do you think?

Personally, I'd like to see something based on the novels, because that would give the devs a wealth of info and BT lore to draw on in-game.

I always thought that the Gray Death Saga could be a good one to adapt. It starts with the protagonist essentially on the run in a city, seeing the havoc that mechs cause from a human POV... crushing people underfoot, annihilating traditional defences, knocking down houses etc. At some point, you finally get hold of a Locust and then the fun begins as you take on and acquire larger chassis and attempt to fist the Draconis Combine. At this stage in BT lore, mechs are also rare and often cobbled together!

One thing that MWO never really gets across is how dangerous mechs are on the battlefield as a whole. They are insta-death to standard tanks and vehicles, and god forbid you try to take them on with poor bloody infantry. It would be great to experience mechs from both sides - from a human FPS perspective and then as a mech pilot.

The Gray Death story would also be an easy way into user generated content, because it leaves you as a Merc on Outreach. So other people could design new missions, expansions etc set on different worlds.

Edited by Kelvin Casing, 14 July 2014 - 12:40 PM.

[Egomane]

For a mechwarrior game, I'd always prefer original content over a book adaption. There is enough room in the lore to set the story as a sideline to already existing events.

[CeeKay Boques]

Egomane, on 14 July 2014 - 12:38 PM, said:

For a mechwarrior game, I'd always prefer original content over a book adaption. There is enough room in the lore to set the story as a sideline to already existing events.

Do we trust a new story to still talk to the Lore if we give them reigns? There is room for that, but you would really need to hire someone that loves the IP to write the story, not the "Game Dev" who's read 4 of the novels and played TT 4 times.

I say go back to the Clans, all the Clanners from now came from MW2 or TT, give the new breed a reason to get weird about eugenics.

[Egomane]

Technoviking, on 14 July 2014 - 12:42 PM, said:

I say go back to the Clans, all the Clanners from now came from MW2 or TT, give the new breed a reason to get weird about eugenics.

That would be interesting.

If I were to do such a thing it wouldn't be a single character campaign. I'd send the player through the timeline. How the clans came into existence, how their society formed, the first omni mechs, how it feels to be freeborn in clan society or to drop into a solahma unit, to be a ristar during the invasion until the inner sphere learns to fight back.

Basically he'd go through every step to understand cellbriggen. From its first conception, until it got scratches when it came into contact with the inner sphere. Being able to chose to win easily by ignoring the honor rules but getting low rewards in return, or to fight the hard battle and recieve better rewards. Maybe even make the AI companions of the player character start punishing him when he breaks cellbriggen.

[Heffay]

I would say create new lore based on a small portion of the IS around the time of the invasion. Part one could be the development of your pilot from an infantry soldier to an accomplished mech pilot. Part two (expansion pack) could be his involvement in defending his small slice of the IS against Clan mechs, including getting salvage and purchasing clan mechs on the black market.

I don't want a full RPG style open world game, as there are enough of those out there. Even a story driven level based design would be fantastic.

[Green Mamba]

I would love a single player Campaign but I think we will have to wait for another MW Game to get that
.Single Player Campaigns require more than 1 Map a Year to be complete, the old MW titles had about 40 + Maps at release to use for SP

Edited by Green Mamba, 14 July 2014 - 01:12 PM.

[Hex Pallett]

How about the perspective of some small-time merc hired by one of the great houses operating at the Periphery got surprise-attacked by the clans?

[Egomane]

Didn't we have that in MW2-Mercenaries already?

[Hex Pallett]

Well MWO is my first MW game so....

Anyway, I'd say the storytelling of the game should be structured like Hitman: Blood Money. Each mission is designed on their own, but certain things in the mission could connect the story together.

***

Okay I just took a shower and here's what I came up (it may get a bit crazy and I don't know a whole lot BT history so bear with me )

So, a legendary mechwarrior of a legendary merc unit was catastrophically damaged in a mission and was discovered by a certain IS House person. A powerful one, like a general or something. Said merc mechwarrior and the remainder of his unit was saved by the said IS general person under the condition of signing a contract, basically forcing them to do whatever sh*t they were ordered to do.

After fighting for the said house person for a while, the merc unit was stationed on some rural periphery station, and due to various logistic reasons they had to be put into cryostasis along with their mechs. Then some major sh*t hit the fan - clan invasion, word of blake, whatever - and they were abandoned and forgotten. Hundreds of years later they were rediscovered, and the campaign of the game was the chief of the merc unit retelling his/her past stories, and the missions are based on that.

How about this? Then we could let the merc unit use their current-day mechs with all those fancy new technologies, for a prelude to a sequel.

[Hex Pallett]

Wow...was my idea that bad it shut every up?

Anyway, I do know how the menu screen should look like though: remember that popular "headshot" Battletech art? That, in the lower right corner, and in the distance you see smoke and dust and fire, and occasionally Atlas walking past the horizon against rains of LRMs. Also there should be a Jenner passing though sometime and checking the headshot mech.

[MarineTech]

To me, it always seemed that things went just a little bit awry once the Clans showed up in the TT world and the novels.

I'd like to see this set in the 4th Succession War. Start it off with the wedding reception of Hanse and Melissa. Show that fateful moment when Hanse "gives" the Capellan Confederation to her as a wedding gift, then pop right into the cockpit of a mech being dropped from orbit. Thundering down to begin the invasion.

Another option would be to follow Katrina Steiner after she disappeared from Poulsbo, through her time (as I recall it mentioned) as a pirate, then follow her return to Tharkad and her coup d'etat against Allesandro Steiner to become Archon.