33 replies to this topic

[Felicitatem Parco]

It makes me sad to conclude this, but I'm pretty certain that MechAssault and MechAssault 2 were the official sequals to Mechwarrior 4. If you check out the ending sequences for all the divergent paths in MW4:Mercs, they all concude with something like "...but something far more sinister was about to happen." And they cut to an image of Word of Blake insignia.

Enter MechAssault and you start the game as a member of the Wolf's Dragoons in the begining stages of the WoB jihad. MechAssault 2 puts you at the end stages of the WoB Jihad.

That makes me sad.

Edit: I'm positing this as the "Official, Microsoft-approved" sequals, not the "what the BattleTech community knows is actually accurate and true-to-canon" sequals.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 22 January 2012 - 12:01 PM.

[Catamount]

I have a better conclusion: Mech Assault never existed.

The games are a myth by Microsoft meant to terrorize Mechwarrior fans.

You'll never convince me otherwise!

[Arctic Fox]

MW4 Mercs ends with the end of the FedCom Civil War storyline, which was going to have been followed by the Word of Blake Jihad, and that is what the ending sequence is foreshadowing. However, FASA folded up at that point and as a result the Jihad was not actually written until several years later. MechAssault and MechAssault 2 were made during the time after FASA stopped functioning when the continuation of the original plotline was put on hold by FanPro, as a result, MA's depiction of the Jihad has very little in connection with how the Jihad actually turned out (Or the BattleTech universe as a whole, for that matter).

So, as long as MechWarrior remains connected to the BattleTech continuity, then no, those events aren't canon.

Edited by Arctic Fox, 22 January 2012 - 11:25 AM.

[Burned_Follower]

Catamount, on 22 January 2012 - 11:21 AM, said:

I have a better conclusion: Mech Assault never existed.

The games are a myth by Microsoft meant to terrorize Mechwarrior fans.

You'll never convince me otherwise!

If you were a preacher and this was your sermon i believe my reply would be, "A-MEN!" lol I couldn't agree more with you. The only thing worse than the Mech Assault game was when i found an arcade with a joystick attached to it and it was playing MW4: Vengeance, the first moon mission and it made the sim feel like an arcade. Of course i played it anyway cuz even then it was the coolest arcade in the arcade section of the movie theatre i found it in, lol.

[Felicitatem Parco]

I know that the events of video games in the Mechwarrior series do not count as cannon, neither do the evens of Mech assault...

... but the MA games take place chronologically after the MW games, Microsoft owns the rights to make these games, and there is no Mechwarrior 5... so... one can only conclude that MechAssault 1 and 2 were the Microsoft-approved official videogame sequals.

[Stormwolf]

What Arctic Fox said.

The games are set in a pre-existing universe that exists within the sourcebooks and novels. The games are merely set in certain stages of the overarching storyline.

Mechassault always struck me as a seperate game from the MW series.

Edited by Stormwolf, 22 January 2012 - 11:39 AM.

[Catamount]

Prosperity Park, on 22 January 2012 - 11:34 AM, said:

I know that the events of video games in the Mechwarrior series do not count as cannon, neither do the evens of Mech assault...

... but the MA games take place chronologically after the MW games, Microsoft owns the rights to make these games, and there is no Mechwarrior 5... so... one can only conclude that MechAssault 1 and 2 were the Microsoft-approved official videogame sequals.

It seems to be a bit more complicated than that (canon is NEVER a simple matter it seems).


Basically, the present view of canon seems to be that MW types games don't define canon, in the sense that anything they say goes, no matter what, but that they can be considered part of the canon where they don't contradict the hard-canon sources. In other words, they're what we often call "soft canon".

As I understand it, this defnition would mostly make the Mechwarrior games canonical (basically, in all the places they don't contradict hard canon), but Mech Assault is not canon in the least pretty much, because almost every aspect of it grossly violates canon, from the aforementioned differences between its presentation of the WoB Jihad, to the fact that the game just blatantly made up mechs out of nothing, mechs that have no precedence, and don't remotely make sense (because we never see or hear of anything remotely related to them elsewhere). Technically, any soft canon is made up independently of hard canon, but the difference is that it can still be considered tentatively part of canon essentially so long as it makes sense (and while that's partly subjective, sometimes, like with MA, it's very blatant that something does not).


Now, of course, I could be wrong in that there's a soft-canon policy being established here, but that's most certainly how I read the article's quoted canon policy.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Of course it's seperate in the sense that it's designed to be played without a keyboard by 13 years olds who don't want to deal with strategic vehicle design. That doesn't mean it's not a sequal in the game timeline.

I will back down from my conclusion when a Mechwarrior Sim is released that takes place after the FedCom civil war... until then, I will assume that the games that take place after the FedCom civil war are the sequals to the games that take place during the FedCom civil war.

[Arctic Fox]

Prosperity Park, on 22 January 2012 - 11:34 AM, said:

I know that the events of video games in the Mechwarrior series do not count as cannon, neither do the evens of Mech assault...

... but the MA games take place chronologically after the MW games, Microsoft owns the rights to make these games, and there is no Mechwarrior 5... so... one can only conclude that MechAssault 1 and 2 were the Microsoft-approved official videogame sequals.

The video games don't count as canon, but all of the previous MechWarrior games were based firmly in the BattleTech storyline. MechAssault and MechAssault 2 don't have any connection to the storyline, since the storyline they are based on wasn't even written until years afterwards (The last Jihad sourcebook only came out a couple of months ago, after all).

So, as Stormwolf says, while the MechAssault games might be official Microsoft sequels, they form their own (bloody silly) separete continuity from the BattleTech universe and therefore its related games. And since the MechWarrior series is being rebooted, I seriously doubt we'll see any more games relating to MechAssault. If we ever get more games set in the Jihad era, I'm sure they'll be based on how events are now established in the actual BattleTech canon.

[Tyzh]

The nice straight line along the top is the Battletech timeline. The one that shoots of randomly and starts doing it's own thing along the bottom is the Mech Assault interpretation of Jihad where Biff rules the world.

[Felicitatem Parco]

No, that line would have to diverge from the last X for your statement to be accurate.

In the "Timeline of released Mechwarrior Games" you have MW1, MW2, MW3, MW4, MA1, MA2

Post-Jihad BattleTech history is not part of this conversation.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 22 January 2012 - 12:03 PM.

[Steel Raven]

The Mechwarrior and MechAssault games are treated like your local table top game, based on canon but not directly impacting canon what so ever.

(Plus the story in Mechassault wast just stupid, made the whole Cliche MW4 Vengeance story line seem like Shakespeare.)

[Arctic Fox]

Prosperity Park, on 22 January 2012 - 12:02 PM, said:

No, that line would have to diverge from the last X for your statement to be accurate.

In the "Timeline of released Mechwarrior Games" you have MW1, MW2, MW3, MW4, MA1, MA2

Post-Jihad BattleTech history is not part of this conversation.

You're implying that the MechWarrior games form their own timeline. The MechWarrior games fit into the BattleTech universe, they don't form their own separate continuity. The MechAssault games wildly diverge in storyline (and nearly everything else) from the BattleTech universe, so as I see it, the post-FCCW BattleTech canon is the actual continuation to the MechWarrior games' timeline and the MechAssault games are more or less completely separate.

Edited by Arctic Fox, 22 January 2012 - 12:13 PM.

[Tyzh]

Prosperity Park, on 22 January 2012 - 12:02 PM, said:

No, that line would have to diverge from the last X for your statement to be accurate.

In the "Timeline of released Mechwarrior Games" you have MW1, MW2, MW3, MW4, MA1, MA2

Post-Jihad BattleTech history is not part of this conversation.

The X's are arbitrary. The moral of the story is that the "plot" of the Mech Assault games goes off into it's own crazy little fantasy land, while the Mechwarrior games are based more solidly in Battletech cannon.

Edited by Tyzh, 22 January 2012 - 12:41 PM.

[Felicitatem Parco]

The post-FCCW BattleTech canon is the continuation of BattleTech timeline. There is no "Mechwarrior Timeline"

The corporation who owns the rights to these games [since before Mechwarrior 4 was started] released the last 3 games I mentioned in BattleTech chronological order, featuring the same Mechs and fictional universe, and so they should considered to be part of the same family of videogames.

If you really believe that MechAssault 1 and Mech Assault 2 were not the sequals to Mechwarrior 4, despite the chronological continuation, then you should expect the next Mechwarrior game to be Mechwarrior 5: Blake's Legacy

Edited by Prosperity Park, 22 January 2012 - 12:30 PM.

[Catamount]

Prosperity Park, on 22 January 2012 - 12:02 PM, said:

No, that line would have to diverge from the last X for your statement to be accurate.

In the "Timeline of released Mechwarrior Games" you have MW1, MW2, MW3, MW4, MA1, MA2

Post-Jihad BattleTech history is not part of this conversation.

That would only be true if MW4 represented the end of BT canon, rather than sitting in the middle of it. Tyzh's graph is a graph of BT continuity, not MW continuity, because MW does not have its own continuity. Of course post-Jihad BT history is part of the conversation, because that's the continuation of the canon continuity of which MW is a part, and which MA is not.

Unlike MW, MA does have its own continuity, so it's a tangent that splits off somewhere in the middle of BT.

Prosperity Park, on 22 January 2012 - 12:27 PM, said:

No, the post-FCCW BattleTech canon is the continuation of BattleTech timeline. There is no "Mechwarrior Timeline"

You're right, there is no MW Timeline, because it's just part of the BT timeline, of which the post FCCW canon is a part, like anything else, ergo, it's what happens after MW, because MW doesn't have its own separate continuity, unlike MA, which does.

You just made our point for us.

Edited by Catamount, 22 January 2012 - 12:29 PM.

[Tyzh]

Catamount, on 22 January 2012 - 12:28 PM, said:

Unlike MW, MA does have its own continuity, so it's a tangent that splits off somewhere in the middle of BT.

Yeah, see! I like you Catamount. I knew my graph picture made sense.

[Tyzh]

http://uk.xbox.ign.c...4/374984p1.html
Read that and tell me how it is, by any definition, a sequel.

[Arctic Fox]

Prosperity Park, on 22 January 2012 - 12:27 PM, said:

If you really believe that MechAssault 1 and Mech Assault 2 were not the sequals to Mechwarrior 4, despite the chronological continuation, then you should expect the next Mechwarrior game to be Mechwarrior 5: Blake's Legacy

That could well have happened (Well, maybe the name would have been different) if FASA hadn't closed down or the Classic BattleTech storyline hadn't been put on hold when it did, or if Piranha didn't decide to set the new MechWarrior game at a point earlier in the BattleTech timeline.

[Karyudo ds]

Catamount, on 22 January 2012 - 12:28 PM, said:

You're right, there is no MW Timeline, because it's just part of the BT timeline, of which the post FCCW canon is a part, like anything else, ergo, it's what happens after MW, because MW doesn't have its own separate continuity, unlike MA, which does.

Er...how does MA have it's own timeline? Plotwise it butchered the Jihad. It did not butcher something else, it took from Battletech in exactly the same way the MW games did with the exception of being based off a plot point not entirely written yet. So as far as Battletech's video games go they in a way come after the MW games chonologically. Not that any of them have any real relavance on the plot or my Clan Wolf would have taken over the galixie back in the early 90's

Prosperity Park, on 22 January 2012 - 12:02 PM, said:

Post-Jihad BattleTech history is not part of this conversation.

And yet Post-Jihad BattleTech history is a part of MA.

EDIT: And yes I do think MA's plot was terrible...3 people running WD was rediculous.

Edited by Karyudo-ds, 22 January 2012 - 01:00 PM.