Mechwarrior: Living Legends

Living legends
So what exactly does Mechwarrior: Living Legends offer? According to Wandering Samurai Studios, the project seeks to create a massive, highly detailed outdoor environment where players can take control of over 47 vehicles (most of them Battlemechs) and slug it out against each other in armed combat with a twist.

“We are planning to release two game modes initially: Solaris Arena and Trial of Annihilation,” explained Caleb Essex, the team’s lead level designer. “The Solaris Arena mode basically allows two teams to fight to the death. Any equipment and vehicle restrictions are removed and there are no objectives other than kill the other team. Trial of Annihilation is a battle for the map itself. Your objective is to take away your opponent’s bases, thus conquering the planet or area. We’ve introduced several new innovations to the mixed arms genre in both game modes to promote team work and give a new perspective on what can be done with gameplay of this type. We didn’t want a game where the teams just capture and recapture bases endlessly. We wanted to make the players earn it, each and every time.”

It’s Mech combat in its purest form, but given a completely modern facelift; are you adjusting your pants yet? It’s okay, you can admit it. The team has been careful to make respectful nods to Mechwarrior’s tabletop roots with as much dependence on the same rule sets that the original game(s) contained, but some aspects have been tweaked or modernised,

“We followed the rules of what we always felt the strength of the Mechwarrior IP has been. Modular weapons, heat tracking on vehicles, battle armour that can jump and attach itself to the vehicles to ride into combat,” comments Daniel. “Other things we’ve taken a few liberties with. We’ve slowed the Aerospace fighters down significantly, we’ve tweaked the behaviours somewhat to keep true to the spirit rather than necessarily the word of the technical readouts or documents pertaining to the IP.”

Fortunately for hardcore Mechwarrior fans, the team has worked hard to include not only all the iconic Mech units like the Mad Cat, Atlas and Raven, but also some of the best maps from earlier games. There’s a definite feel here that old Mechwarrior staples are being mixed with some of the better advancements in game technology that previous Mech titles never had access too. The title will be faction-based – as is the expectation for any Mechwarrior game – and at the time of writing the two main groups involved in the fighting are The Inner Sphere and the Clan.

The player will be dumped into a major conflict between these two groups, with a campaign scenario of three maps laid out to re-enact historical engagements between these two old foes. The separation of the two fighting forces trickles right down to the design of the Mech’s themselves, with different technologies and appearances for both. For example, in the Battletech universe the Inner Sphere – due to the fall of the Star League – has degraded to nearly 21st century levels of technology. The quality of the Mech units is reflected in this, being in a state of disrepair before they even enter combat, indicative of the lack of equipment available to maintain the machines of war and a lack of skilled labour across the Inner Sphere.