35 replies to this topic

[Wrenchfarm]

After playing this game for almost two years without really diving into the lore, I finally read some Battletech books.

It was a mixed experience.

More interesting than my tepid opinion of the writing though, I found some interesting similarities between the novels and MWO and what it means to be a Battletech fan.

You can read the blog I wrote about them here - http://www.destructo...ks-278200.phtml

[Hex Pallett]

There's the inherent problem with sci-fi: it becomes outdated very quickly as technology in the real world advance. Wasn't the most of BT novels written in late 80s/early 90s? I recall cloning/genetic engineering was still a new thing back then.

Also, I'm under the impression most western sci-fi - or fiction in general - usually contain ridiculous cultural stereotypes. Klingon started out as space Russians. Helghast is basically space {Godwin's Law} Russians. That X-men Wolverine movie has a borderland-******** adamantium samurai exo-skeleton in the end. I imagine it would be a whole lot worse in the late-80s, for neither Japan nor China was a particularly outstanding international power back then.

***

Regarding the new-user experience, however, as long EVE/Dota/Counter Strike still exist, I wouldn't call it bad. I'm no genius and it took me about three hours to figure out the basics. Try that on EVE.

Edited by Helmstif, 16 July 2014 - 09:51 AM.

[Heffay]

Lore needs a reboot, badly. Remake it with modern themes. Remake it as GoT in Space (which really, that is what it is).

[101011]

Quote

The more I understand about the Clans, the more suspicious and leery I become of their self-proclaimed fans. The dudes that run around in Clan role-playing groups, who have Clan emblems as their player icons, or quotes from great Khan's in their forum signatures. I don't trust those dudes anymore. It's like being stuck on a bus with a guy who won't stop telling you about how the MRA movement is misrepresented in the media, or that one weird clerk at Chapter's who always puts The Fountainhead up as her "Staff Choice" book. These are people you don't want to know, much less hang around and play robots with.

Well, you made some interesting points until this paragraph...I find it rather arrogant to say "Anyone who likes these factions obviously agrees that inncest/slavery/whatever is a good thing"
You have the Davion emblem by your name, therefore that means you condone causing the equivalent of a world war because you feel like giving your bride a wedding present. See?

Edited by 101011, 16 July 2014 - 12:21 PM.

[Egomane]

Wrenchfarm, on 16 July 2014 - 06:25 AM, said:

God Help Me, I Read Some Mechwarrior Books

The number you have called is temporarily not available. Please try again later or leave a message after the signal.

Beep!

Indepent of your enjoyment of the books, I'm always glad to see someone willing to invest some time to get to know more about the fictional universe they are playing in.

Yes, the books are from the 80s and 90s and it shows, but I believe that is a part of their flair. Not everything needs to be modernized.

[Jabilo]

Some of the books are better than others, that's for sure.

Check out the Warrior Trilogy- my personal favourites.

[SnagaDance]

Yeah, them being mostly from the 80's shows. Just look at some of the original covers of the Gray Death books. 80's Big Hair and ripped sleeveless shirts ho!! And you could say they've given the universe a re-start with the whole Jihad/Dark Age thing. Problem is that many (most?) people still enjoy the earlier era's like 3025 and 3050.

[Myke Pantera]

Books have been great at the time! Unfortunately i've been stupid enough to give them away for free when i thought, i'll never read them again. I could still slap myself for that decision, because right now, i really wonna read them again ^^ But this time i'd rather read them in english and on kindle!

Man that would be great, if we could get all the old books for kindle.

[Pht]

Heffay, on 16 July 2014 - 11:22 AM, said:

Lore needs a reboot, badly. Remake it with modern themes. Remake it as GoT in Space (which really, that is what it is).

And obviously, to hell in a handbag full of runny poop to anyone who actually likes the lore... because obviously, if you like something I don't like, you're just messed up, right?

Why not the "I just don't like this lore, so I'll find another or make another, instead of attempting to ruin it for the people who DO like it" ... nah, maybe that's too much to expect.

---

Wrenchfarm's blog said:

To the author's credit, he did a great job of replicating the feeling of the battles of the original tabletop game - maybe too good. Battletech is a strategy game, you choose your units, place them on the map, and try to outmanoeuvre your opponent. But it is also a game played with dice and diagrams, and chance. When a mech launches an attack, dice are rolled for each weapon fired and those random numbers determine if, and where, those weapons hit their target.

This results in a lot of random crazy hits and ridiculous (). Considering mechwarriors are supposed to be the elite of the elite, and battlemechs themselves are priceless, finely tuned instruments of destruction, the wars of the Inner Sphere frequently devolve into farcical displays of ineptitude and comedic pratfalls. These machines blunder into battle, spaz out, and spray artillery all over the place. A battery of lasers will burn the shins of an enemy while an auto-cannon rakes the shoulder (despite both of those weapons being mounted on the same arm of the mech firing them), while a bad roll can cause a gyro-failure, sending a mech ass-over-teakettle right in middle of battle.

...

However, I can't help but wonder what non-fans reading it would think. Readers unfamiliar with the Battletech style, puzzling over why these futuristic war-machines can't seem to hit the broad side of a barn, or why anyone would want to pilot a giant bumble**** robot that can helplessly tip over mid-battle and die like a turtle stuck on its back.

http://www.destructo...ks-278200.phtml

You're operating on some false presumptions here - mainly that BattleMechs are capable of hitting perfectly under the crosshairs every time. Not even the most author-fiat characters are blurbed to be able to do this with the best of the mechs,. anywhere in the timeline.

This is, IMO, one of the main differences between eastern mecha and BT - Godlike unexplainable-tech vs ... tanks with arms and legs, that, gosh, can't perfectly hit what their pilots put the crosshairs on under all conditions.

As far as the TT game goes - people wouldn't have all the idiot missing if they'd STOP TRYING to hit targets/make piloting skill checks ... on SEVENS or HIGHER!

Seven = what are you, an idiot? Ok, well, try it ... you MIGHT make it.

On the rest of your blog post: I'll chew on it some more before I decide what I think of it.

Edited by Pht, 17 July 2014 - 09:00 AM.

[Hex Pallett]

However, you'll have to admit that the "general direction" of how the story develops is actually quite impressive. And, as I quote myself, "makes sense" in a way. A lot more than some of the more commercially successful sci-fi franchises.

[Heffay]

Pht, on 17 July 2014 - 08:55 AM, said:

And obviously, to hell in a handbag full of runny poop to anyone who actually likes the lore... because obviously, if you like something I don't like, you're just messed up, right?

Why not the "I just don't like this lore, so I'll find another or make another, instead of attempting to ruin it for the people who DO like it" ... nah, maybe that's too much to expect.

A reboot doesn't invalidate old lore. It supplements it. They can both peacefully coexist without any problems.

[swamp hag]

I have to agree with OP. As much as I love the depth of the BTech lore, despite the infinite potential, the novels are invariably horrible. Finally, in Dark Age, the novels began to have character development worthy of printing. Before that, the novels consisted of characters as robotic as the machines they pilot, and Stackpole is no less guilty of it than the rest of the authors. From Phelan to Aidan (names which mean wolf and falcon in Irish, respectively, ugh), from the Carlyles to the Davions, the BTech novels fell victim to the most juvenile character tropes novels can be subjected to. Sterile, boring hero (Victor, Phelan, Jake Kabrinski). Daring sociopathic antihero (Aidan, Vlad). Golden-hearted traitor (Trent). When the characters are that bad, and the rest of the books do nothing other than describe how 'a PPC crackled through the night sky to impact the Griffin's left knee actuator joint, sizzling and melting the ferro fibrous armor' ... they really aren't worth reading.

(I say that while owning like 30 of the damn things.)

This is partly why I always preferred the source books. There were better characters in the source books than were ever 'fleshed out' in the novels. Kyrie Ben-Shimon, Ace Darwin, etc. Interesting multi-dimensional character concepts which never made it into novel form.

Edited by Glory, 17 July 2014 - 09:46 AM.

[Autobot9000]

Well the Lord of the Rings was written by JRR Tolkien as a psychological digestion of his WW1 experience including strong references to actual nations and landscapes he encountered. References to the real world are made not only in sci-fi or fantasy genres, you find them in every movie as well. There is nothing less original than another Hollywood movie going to christian archetypes or stories and selling that as brand new or even just shamelessly reusing the same set of archetypical characters - just to pick one of the bunch. The more money you want to make the less creativity you allow. The tried and tested outsell the original.

I also think nostalgia is the smallest part in the pricing of MWO, the strong part is, that the audience playing MWO is usually strictly over 30 and has a job, hence can afford expensive toys, such as cars or overpriced video games.

I also don't agree that typical fan audience adopts cheesy novels as their own. I would recommend you to take the MW/BT universe a little easier.

Edited by Autobot9000, 17 July 2014 - 10:30 AM.

[CeeKay Boques]

Glory, on 17 July 2014 - 09:41 AM, said:

I have to agree with OP. As much as I love the depth of the BTech lore, despite the infinite potential, the novels are invariably horrible.

No, they're not. Are they literary masterpieces? No. Are they good pulp Sci-fi? Yep! Are some painful to read? Yep. What's a gaming series that has ridiculously good fiction attached to it? I picked up a Warhammer book the other day. Could have been a Battletech book, easily. These guys don't have time to give characters Wheel of Time like g'damn back stories...

[Crotch RockIt]

Crotch RockIt chewed on his lower lip while pondering this thread.

[swamp hag]

Technoviking, on 17 July 2014 - 11:10 AM, said:

No, they're not. Are they literary masterpieces? No. Are they good pulp Sci-fi? Yep! Are some painful to read? Yep. What's a gaming series that has ridiculously good fiction attached to it? I picked up a Warhammer book the other day. Could have been a Battletech book, easily. These guys don't have time to give characters Wheel of Time like g'damn back stories...

Is there a single good BattleTech novel? Not that I've yet come across... but then again pulp Sci-Fi is not my bag, it's a waste of the time spent reading it.

Wait a minute ... why am I here again? <wanders off into the sunset>

[Bregor Edain]

Autobot9000, on 17 July 2014 - 10:20 AM, said:

Well the Lord of the Rings was written by JRR Tolkien as a psychological digestion of his WW1 experience including strong references to actual nations and landscapes he encountered.

Except for the part where he specifically said no parallels should be drawn from his writing.

[SnagaDance]

Technoviking, on 17 July 2014 - 11:10 AM, said:

.... These guys don't have time to give characters Wheel of Time like g'damn back stories...

*SnagaDance tugs on his braid in frustration*

The book being bigger doesn't necessarily mean better fleshed out characters.


With Sci-Fi pulp like BattleTech you often find that characters are fleshed out (to a bare standard) over several books. Like Vlad Ward for instance. Good writing, no. Acceptable pulp writing, yes.

[General Solo]

I'm a quote newb so bear with my copy paste.

<Quote>
Glory said:

Is there a single good BattleTech novel? Not that I've yet come across... but then again pulp Sci-Fi is not my bag, it's a waste of the time spent reading it.

Wait a minute ... why am I here again?...
</Quote>

The book where Kai Allard Liao, Falls down a cliff, apparently dies, Comes back to life and gets the girl.

That part made me want to punch the sky and yell "YES that was SOOOOOOOOOO AWESOME"

Lost destiny, book 3 of the "Blood of Kerensky trilogy.

[xengk]

Glory, on 17 July 2014 - 09:41 AM, said:

the rest of the books do nothing other than describe how 'a PPC crackled through the night sky to impact the Griffin's left knee actuator joint, sizzling and melting the ferro fibrous armor'

This right here is why I read the novels.
They are the 50 shades of grey of Battletech.

[redacted]

Edited by Egomane, 18 July 2014 - 03:42 AM.
questionable content