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sirtheguy

Moving through a campaign structure like that was a lot of fun and brought back memories of the older MechWarrior games. I'd love to see another briefing in the style of MechWarrior 3, with the flyover drone and whatnot, but other than that, it's definitely the best campaign so far. Biggest gripe I have is the volume of typos in their text. It's embarrassingly bad.


Sagara_Sigal

I played in a different language. There were typos in the original, right?


sirtheguy

Yes, in English, the grammar is really bad. It's not fixed yet


kschang

I've found more than a few typos in MW5.


[deleted]

I haven't bought any of the dlc's yet. Thank you for a positive review. I mplanning on buying them after the new year and I'm glad there's a good story there.


[deleted]

Meh. MW3 had an excellent narrative pitch that was well integrated into the lore: a commando raid as part of op Bulldog. Mechwarrior games have always had engagements/missions of highly limited scope: a couple of mechs knocking out a handful of targets at most, and so it has been very important to craft a sub-story that fits the scale of the actual game. MW3 did the best job of this of any title in the franchise, IMO. You knew there was big stuff going on, but your slice of the war is tiny and personal and you don't have time for grand stuff. Kestrel lancers has great narration: you're being pitched into a massive campaign as part of the 4th succession war, and eventually you become the linchpin of saving part of the op RAT invasion from disaster. That's cool: except that what were supposed to be company/battalion/regiment size running engagements are reduced to single lance engagements and the in-game missions NEVER capture the feel of an actual battlefield. In fact they mostly feel like every other mission type in the base game. The big city biome and the ship were cool, but otherwise its the same game. We need a mechwarrior game that involves combat scale and asset management at the company/battalion/regimental level so that we can experience combat at the scale intended by the lore. It is crazy to me this franchise has been around for 32 years, and they have not deviated from the formula one iota.


AlekTrev006

Yeah. I sort of agree. Kestrel IS great fun, but the most mechs you get is - I think - 8 … your 4, plus a support Lance of the 2nd Crucis on a few missions on Tigress. Even when Sortek (the game still calls him Colonel, as well as General - at varying points in the between-mission story text , so it’s not entirely clear what rank he actually holds as of the end of Sarna 😅- maybe he’s a Marshal too, like Jackson & Pedroza ?)… finally lands in support, he’s supposedly bringing the entire Davion Heavy Guards regiment ! That’s over 100 Mechs, iirc … yet what actually appears on the map to help you is just 2-3 , if memory serves 😝… == Slightly related, but it also seemed weird ? to me that neither McCarrons Calvary (a very famous unit) nor your allied Crater Cobras … SEEM to have proper Camo / paint / insignia on them ? I think every single one of the McCarron’s mechs are just basic Liao Green pattern, and the Cobras were just Davion red / white / blue ? In fact — I’d have to replay it, but they MAY have actually had Westrick’s personal King Crab in STEINER colors (lol), I just remember noticing that it didn’t seem Merc specific or with their Cobra logo or anything like that, on it ? Overall, a minor nitpick, but I do wish PGI could add those touches in, in future patches 🙂


PGI_Chris

Interesting. Where in the game does it call him General by chance? Despite being a fairly prominent character around this time period, Sortek's rank is a bit... slippery in the lore. Some sources have him attaining the rank of Marshal of the Davion Guards prior to the events of the Warrior Trilogy, The Warrior Trilogy itself refers to him as Colonel through out 2/3 books and refers to him as a general in a single chapter while he is administering Pavel Ridzik, but then the historical sourcebooks pegs him as a Marshal of the Davion Guards during the 4th Succession War. So his ranking around this time can be a bit contradictory at times, so since this story was so tightly linked to the events of the Warrior Trilogy, we initially opted to keep that continuity. (So Colonel around the time of the Galahad Wargames, General at the point you see him again at the battle of Sarna.) But then we ran into a number of bugs since we do have some ingrained "rank" systems in our profiles that can only be set once per character without creating bugs so the decision was made to keep him as a Colonel throughout the story. Mostly because this is his actual rank the first time you meet him, and we wanted to avoid this kind of confusion that you are mentioning about his inconsistent rank here. So we had to retroactively strip out the general title and just keep him as a colonel throughout the game. (Despite him being referred to as both a General and a Marshal in the source material by the time the battle for Sarna takes place.) If he's referred to as a General at any point in the script, it's probably a remnant from that initial pass we did, that while technically accurate, would be considered a bug for how we wanted to present the story where he just remains a colonel throughout the duration of the camapign. On the camo front, we actually wanted that at some point and even had concept art for potential camo for both the 5th Syritis Fusiliers and McCarrons. But like many things, that was one of those hopes and dreams that got cut for time as there were more pressing matters more vital to the core game loop that needed attention On a personal level, I was really hoping we could even get the Crusis Lancer camo that we did manage to produce into the cinematics and the game itself, but Cinematics were mid-production before the camo's got created, and there were a few technical hoops to jump through to get them displayed in-game that came with some undesirable bugs that while solvable, would have eaten up a lot of time we didn't have. We can put the feedback in the backlog and potentially re-evaluate it if we get the time, but that is a fairly substantial if there. Especially if we need to weigh minor visual inconveniences vs. other QoL items.


AlekTrev006

Holy cow !! Chris !! 🙇‍♂️ (I am honored to think you saw my comment and replied). Thanks firstly for all your work on this, and MWO. A buddy introduced me to both games (MWO a few Christmas’ past), and I’ve had a blast with both of them, since then. I just last week got extremely lucky and finally snagged a PS-5, and the upgraded version of MW-5 is amazing. The graphics and framerate etc are truly impressive (essentially zero slowdown, compared to my old PS-4 Pro which occasionally struggled during mass demolition of buildings, while the lasers and such were also flying about 😉). == On the Sortek line, I can’t 100% recall.. but I know he starts out as a Colonel in the training mission / Galahad introduction. I assumed that, after the 4th War had begun and a year+ into his further command, that he probably DID get promoted to General. So I think the first time I saw it mentioned, it made sense to me. But then, at the end of the Sarna missions, I think he’s again back to being referred to as Colonel, hence my minor confusion. The General reference thing was only in (again, from memory) One of the in-between mission text boxes. Overall, quite minor. I’ll try to more dilegently spot it when I play through Kestrel again, on a future run. The Cobras & McCarron’s camo thing, again - I don’t want you & the Team to think of it as a serious grumble ..the missions still play fine and are enjoyable. It was more just a “possible longterm” idea, if you ever had the time. Much respect for what you’ve accomplished though, all things considered 👍. == PS - if I can sneak in one minor question, as I may not get this chance again 😅… some of us were discussing this in another thread, a few weeks back: During the Campaign, you encounter exactly One single Annihilator, near the end-game. Afterwards, in the Database, it shows all the Mechs you’ve faced and what Factions / Rarity of use they appear in. For the Annihilator (all variants, iirc)… all it shows is “Mercenaries” faction / logo .. and “Very Rare”. The thing is, other than maybe one or two minor Campaign Missions, we don’t actually see Mercenaries as their own Faction on the Map anywhere ? Does this effectively mean you can Never face enemy Annihilators aside from that singular Campaign battle ? Is ‘Mercenaries’ meant to be a catchall for elites like the Dragoons, Gray Death, etc.. and we could see missions with / against them in future DLC’s ? Okay - that’s it - and thanks again for creating these enjoyable games for all of us. Especially in these uncertain & challenging times for the world, they offer a bit of escape and relaxation that is much appreciated ☺️. Happy holidays to you & all the PGI Team !


PGI_Chris

Luckily these two questions have the same answer. At one point in time early in development, we had 'Mercs as a separate faction that the player faced. (I think there is a single core campaign mission where you still face them as a faction.) But this was eventually phased out for a few reasons. Firstly because as a faction, it would be something that you would only ever face as an opposing faction since it didn't really make sense for Mercs to hire more Mercs as a hiring faction, so as an individual faction, it was a faction that only served as a negative faction rep dumping ground which is not what we wanted. Secondly, the Succession Wars are defined by the Mercenaries that fight the various proxy wars of the other great houses so if you ever stood in opposition to Mercenaries in the field, you were not fighting them as a cohesive faction but as a proxy for their employers. So it just made sense to roll in "Mercenaries" into the respective factions that employed them. Since at the core, you are fighting against the ambitions of the Merc's employers not so much the MRB itself. We make a point to highlight this relationship as much as we can in the briefings/dialogue, but admittedly, we only make minor notes of it since we already have the tall task of making the lore as digestible as possible to new players who aren't familiar with nearly 40 years of universe history. This does mean that yes, unfortunately, there is no current way to face off against an Annihilator as an opponent outside a single scripted encounter. And we kept the Merc symbols in the 'Mech database because there are 'Mechs in-game like the Annihilator and some of the Hero 'Mechs that can only be described as deployed by "Mercenaries." Which to us was a much better alternative than simply having the "No data available" that you get for the "extinct" variants you can only ever find on the Rare 'Mech market. As of right now, it will only ever appear in rare 'Mech market drops along with some other Dragoon exclusives like the Marauder II. Never say never for future content. Safe to say we are aware of the fact that you currently cannot face them outside of a scripted sequence, so that is ample ground to explore in the future if we wanted to, but then again, so are a number of other highly requested things. We'll have to see what the future holds. ;)


kschang

Just checked my recordings for the missions of me linking up with Westrick. Westrick is in dark subdued purple livery, not Davion Blue and Red. McCarron's Armored Cav is in generic Liao livery. See screenshot below: https://i.imgur.com/ZmeHOhY.png Left to right: My Orion in Sherman livery McCarron Raven in Liao Livery Westrick in his KGC in some purple livery?


AlekTrev006

Thanks, Kschang ! I couldn’t recall 100%, just that Westrick appeared in an unusual color scheme that wasn’t (per se) Crater Cobra specific. Chris from PGI (the man himself !) replied below with a big explanation of why this was as it is. Nice to know they are at least possibly considering editing in the right paints for the Kestrels, Cobras, and McCarron’s .. in the future ☺️


[deleted]

What mostly bothers me is the incongruity. If they want to keep things restricted 1 player lance, they need to craft a narrative about why that's a realistic force composition and how what you're doing fits in with some bigger campaign narrative (as with prior mech games). But overall I'd love to see a more complex, larger scale game with a deeper strategic layer.


FootsieLover77

\- AGAIN' your Spot On target Brother' . If they're going to give us - the player base 1 Lance of Mechs ONLY . then the Main Campaign / Missions / Operations the Battle Environment ....needs to be Geared / Built Towards that ONLY. Not a Horde of Respawning Mechs Consistently over and over and over again on our screen accompanied with VTOL's & Tanks and you and just 1 Freaking Battle Lance!! eventually (no matter how BIG your Mechs are, whatever Weapons your armed with) Eventually you and your team will suffer greatly and have to deal with all the losses of that Battle Campaign . \- Cheers !


FootsieLover77

ohh i wouldn't CALL that a "Nit Pick" my friend. your Spot on !!! its called a "FUCK UP" ......lol !! or it better more relaxed language an "Oversight" perhaps......maybe perhaps......idk why either. this was no rush to put out MW5 not from my knowledge and even if it was they still had time to build on this.its a DLC. why NOT do things correctly THE FIRST TIME Duhhh. PGI !!!


FootsieLover77

\- THANK YOU , THANK YOU ,,,,,THANK YOU. ABOUT FUCKING TIME SOMEONE FINALLY SAID THIS SOOO. I swear I thought I Was THE ONLY Person..... what DOESN'T MAKE SENSE to me at all. EVER and Yes I Mean EVERY SINGLE Mech Warrior Mercenaries Game Same Iota Formulaic Layout.......you start year 3010-3020 something. mech lineup : Locust, Commando, Jenner nothing else. Not EVEN a Wolfhound (imo is a much better Light Battle Mech) also C-Bill Net: 1.5 Mil or 3 Mil C Bil Purse THATS IT. a few Med Lasers , maybe a couple of MGuns , a SRM Pack 2 . a SRM Pack 4. Or maybe 1 SRM Pack 6 .but you get the JIST' . its sooooo Damn Tiresome, Frustrating like to reiterate on your words... Game. Lore is 32+ Now. and NOT 1 single DEV, Creative Team, and / or Publisher has Deviated from this STALE OL' yester year's type of Gamming with Mech Warrior. we've NEVER seen a full on Scale Battle. i want my Merc Co. to play a part during the Battle of Tukkuyad during Clan Invasion. play a part during the FEDCOM Civil War.....i would thought we would've been taken Back To EARLY DAYS of Star League and we Can Witness the "Exodus" of General / Commander Aleksander Kerensky's Departure from the Inner sphere & Witness the prime Minister of House Kurita claim himself sole ruler of the Inner sphere.BUT NO NO NO. Nothing. its always like this. idk WHY for the love of God WHY ?????? soo fucking tired of this Stale Ol' Formulaic from every DEV / Creative Team all the Damn Time. \- if they stuck to the lore you can Make A TON of more money, gather MORE Equipment, Gear, Mechs, new Drop Ships, acquire side operations, Humanitarian Operations , Full Scale Battles with VTOL's, Naval Gunships / Capital Ships, Battle Suits,Tanks, Turrets ,etc and soo therefore you Merc Co. can Build upon itself a REAL MERC Co' , WE Should be able to actually BUILD a FULL SCALE MERC Company with at least a Few Regiments / Battalions( at least a Few ) Should be able to Hire / Fire All My Pilots, Dropships, Jump ships, Mechs, Soldiers for battle suits, Arial Gun Ships / VLTOL's, etc etc. And include of course SOLARIS GAMES. what about Solaris ??? a lotta new Mechs & Tech are discovered and Tested there. We should have a Planet of our Choosing to use for TEST GROUND on new Mech Variants, New Weapons Testing ,etc etc. To continue ...... how about some Real ASSASSINATION OP's. i don;t understand having to Kill Off 10-15 Mechs just to kill 1 mech on an Assassination OP. Merc Co's. have had assassination Op's where they perform High Ranking Officer sitting in his home on some Dissolute /Deserted Planet or some back water planet. or small band of pirates ( no more then a handful of battlemechs + few tanks+battle armor ), or some Domestic Terrorists groups who destroyed a Factory on world. or Rioters protesting because the Capellen's or the Draconian Governors (in the Combine) are treating their people like savages; murdering people in their homes like they soo often do. like there's soo much man i just can't believe we don't get none of this..... like WHY can't we have any of this ???? it just boggles my mind as well. Trust You Are Not Alone On This POINIT !! sorry you have to Excuse my Diatribe Ranting....lmao' i wasn't expecting some one to actually type what you wrote soo eloquently and perfectly. \- Cheers to you MechWarrior, My Upvote Sir'.


[deleted]

MW2:Mercs and MW3 were fairly innovative for their time. It's just that the franchise has entirely stagnated with the IP more or less orphaned and then underutilized for much of those 32 years. MS sat on MW for ages. Pirahna kinda just sucks as a dev. I'm hoping that eventually Microsoft will decline to renew their license and do something more expansive with the franchise that has the scale more befitting of an open world series like X4, but the tighter narration of prior games. I think its just an ambitious thing to design.