Main Story kinda meh? *spoilers*

[Tudeg]

After playing throug the campain I can not help but fell disapointed by the plot.
It feels plain and never got me invested.
The main story is just meh, with unsurprising, predictable "twists" And the characters feel one dimesional.

Your enemies are simply massmurdering sociopaths who commit warcrimes recreationaly and Lady Arano is just the light that need to be carries forward.

At several points you obviously are ment to have an emotional reaction to an npcs demise/harm without getting a chace to form an emotional attachment with said npc in the first place.

Montgomery died - be sad! Even though you only know him through flavor text.
Lady Arano survived - be happy! Even though you have know her for just 5 minuts.
Alexander got captured - be concerned! Although he is a background character you can just
choose not to talk to ...ever.

The dialoge options have no influence on the story or even npcs demenor towards you, nor does your origin.

I am not saying the the story is bad, its just not good. And after what i've heard about the developers and articles like polygon claiming "BattleTech raises the bar for storytelling in a turn-based strategy game" i have to ask am I missing something? Or was the "bar" that low.

[Mentally Unstable]

Yeah, I felt the story was underwhelming too. I felt like they spent more time and effort into the whole "he/she/they and alternative race representation" thing than the campaign.:/

Throughout the whole campaign, I never felt like I was part of a war effort. It felt like my lance, my Argo crew and lady Arano were the only members of the restoration. It felt empty/lonely like I had singlehandedly won the war for her. I wish I could have participated in the final battle. I appreciate the importance of the mission to upload the virus but surely there was time to allow us to fight in the main battle as well? I would like to fight in a main battle with a bunch of other allied mechs for once.

They missed a chance to make it a braching campaign. There are times where mercenaries fail and employers have to resort to contingency plans. Let's take battle for coromodir for example. What if we failed to upload the virus and had to pull out? Yes, the Iberia would have landed and the tide would have turned but surely all is not lost yet? That coulld have been a potential mission whereby the player's lance(or whatever is left of it) stood with the remnants of the restoration for a final stand against the Taurian and Directorate forces. Afterall, we have been fighting dozens of assault mechs up the wazoo anyway on every other contract, how much worse can the Iberia's complement(12 mechs,12 vehicles, not counting infantry because not in game) be?

[KarusDaedlyn]

I've wanted to comment on this, but fear lots of people would launch a few hundred LRMs my way in retaliation...

Even with less cutscences, Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries told a better story. After significant 'plot' missions, there was a Comstar News network you could read. Sometimes your exploits were on there, sometimes not, but it made the universe feel more real and lived-in.

Next, the mission descriptions/pilot's journal. The mission descriptions are written in character of the faction giving them to you, IE; Dracs are very formal, dislike you in general as a merc (keep in mind in MW2 mercs you were the guy available, not a proper merc unit with a pedigree.) The pilot's journal describes all sorts of conditions. Suppressing revolts and being queasy over mechs opening fire on civilians, or when you are the lynchpin of a guerrilla campaign, and notcing how well you get treated/fed even when the lower enlisted are starving, etc.

Every single mission in Battletech reads like a Madlibs page where instead of noun it's "Local pirates/nearby other faction." Some of them don't even make sense, like once I got a mission from the Restoration, the "Repossession" one, saying the Directorate had fallen behind on payments. Uh...Is Kamea loaning massive tanks to her uncle just to pay us to blow them up? Terrible princess.

[Mentally Unstable]

Originally posted by KarusDaedlyn:

I've wanted to comment on this, but fear lots of people would launch a few hundred LRMs my way in retaliation...

Even with less cutscences, Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries told a better story. After significant 'plot' missions, there was a Comstar News network you could read. Sometimes your exploits were on there, sometimes not, but it made the universe feel more real and lived-in.

Next, the mission descriptions/pilot's journal. The mission descriptions are written in character of the faction giving them to you, IE; Dracs are very formal, dislike you in general as a merc (keep in mind in MW2 mercs you were the guy available, not a proper merc unit with a pedigree.) The pilot's journal describes all sorts of conditions. Suppressing revolts and being queasy over mechs opening fire on civilians, or when you are the lynchpin of a guerrilla campaign, and notcing how well you get treated/fed even when the lower enlisted are starving, etc.

Every single mission in Battletech reads like a Madlibs page where instead of noun it's "Local pirates/nearby other faction." Some of them don't even make sense, like once I got a mission from the Restoration, the "Repossession" one, saying the Directorate had fallen behind on payments. Uh...Is Kamea loaning massive tanks to her uncle just to pay us to blow them up? Terrible princess.

Glad to see a fellow MW2:Merc fan!!!

Yeah, MW2:MERC had more flavour when it came to lore. Multi-mission contracts. My most memorable one was the one involving guarding some kind of giant ice spaceship for the Free Rasalhague Republic......fighting in Zero G space! The contract whereby we get captured by the clans halfway and hd to escape in a hovertank was cool as well.

We started off only with a commando 2b and had to work towards building our lance up, mech by mech, pilot by pilot. We could even hire aerospace fighters as well! Salvage was also so much harder to come by. There was no such thing as priority salvage and we had to make do with whatever scraps the employer saw fit to throw our way. Getting a mech with only a torso and leg
as salvage was considered hitting the jackpot. Hell, one of my pilots was still in a Jenner by the "Battle of Luthien" contract because I couldn't afford anything better and no salvaged mechs came my way.

Would also like to add that the weapon sounds(especially the autocannons) and sound track in MW2:Mercs were better as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qRmjNexfE0

[Elldrytch]

Yeah, I've felt the same. I keep hearing HBS talk about decisions they made to make it feel "more like a merc outfit" and yet it really doesn't. MW2:Merc and MW4:Merc actually felt a lot more like a merc outfit to me. I felt more engaged.

MW2 was a single player game that they tacked on LAN play too. It was balanced and designed around that campaign. I feel like BT is a MP skirmish game someone threw a story on top of. A lot of weapon balance and design decisions seem to be based on that. Considering if you look achievements and less than .1% of people have played more than 5 MP games, I think it was a poor choice.

It really hit me when I was watching someone twitch streaming Stellaris for a few minutes during lunch, just how terrible the strategic and story layer of BT really is. I think back to games like Star Control 2 and think "this was done by 2.5 guys in a basement, I feel like this "We're a small shop" thing" only goes so far" The cutscenes on priority missions are GREAT, but everything in between seems weak. I think a lot of that has to do with some need to make "your" character have to BE in every conversation instead of just reading things (like you said in MW2, having the reports)

I've played the crap out of BT, so I got my money's worth. That said, It's a long way from a game like Long War that i'll keep playing over and over again. It just doesn't have any depth to it. It's possible enough modding will fix it, but it's an uphill battle, because there really isn't a lot ot work with. Here's hoping.

[EarlOfNoobton]

Blake be praised, I am not the only one. ^^

I was only waiting for the "heroine" to pull the one sword out of a stone and find the grail (while curing cancer) and the main villain to declare -in a heavy German accent- "Vhy, yes, ve have replaced our banner vith ze swastika and given the Guards black uniforms with skulls on ze caps. Rather fetching, ja?" ...

okay, slightly exagerated, but the main story was rather predictable, boring and uninspired in my opinion.

[KarusDaedlyn]

I mean, I remember when the clans dropped in the middle of my supposedly easy mission, all of a sudden I'm facing omnimechs that are *way* better, plus getting captured? It was unreal.

Mechwarrior 3, while light on story, was very immersive from a single lance surviving a drop and managing to make it through a campaign of attrition. I cared more about my MFB in that mission than I ever did about *spoilers*....

Whatever lord guy who got captured at some point. I actually don't remember his name without looking it up.

Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries actually had alternate endings. Support Davion, you 'win.' Support Steiner, well, you can rescue her at least, if you are willing to go through clanner BS. Or, you can abandon the causes and raid a planet to keep on your own. At least choices in that game felt like, choices. Battletech feels like a 'choose your own adventure book' where every option goes to the next page until all the pages are turned and that's it.

I have to re-iterate...I enjoyed the game. I wouldn't play a game for 80+ hours if I didn't. But this could have been way, way more, and struck a chord with new players too. As it stands, I can't imagine this winning over the hearts and minds of anyone who isn't into Battletech already.

[EarlOfNoobton]

Originally posted by KarusDaedlyn:

I cared more about my MFB in that mission than I ever did about *spoilers*....

Whatever lord guy who got captured at some point. I actually don't remember his name without looking it up.

Lord Port? Lord Sherry? It was some kind of fortified wine, that I do remember.

[wesnef]

Originally posted by project_mercy:

MW2 was a single player game that they tacked on LAN play too. It was balanced and designed around that campaign. I feel like BT is a MP skirmish game someone threw a story on top of.

Well, given that the basic premise of the game was "make a computer game out of the Battletech boardgame" (i.e, a multiplayer skirmish game)..... yeah?



I've never played any of the Mechwarrior games. This is the only digital BT game I've done, and I played the boardgames.

I also read a dozen or two of the earlier novels (Grey Death trilogy, 4th Succession War, Clan Invasion, some of the one-shots in the same time period). And maybe I don't remember them that well, but honestly - this game's story doesn't seem that much more melodramatic & cheesy than the novels were. Plenty of Noble Heroes and Dastardly Villains, over-wrought speeches, pretentious feudal nobles being jerkasses, and famous mech pilots being Legendary™. So this all seemed familiar. :)

[Valen]

Main story was the best story ever compaired to the previous battletech and Mechcommander pc games.... At least that is my opinion.

Story was never a issue for me - Now some more TLC to the overall game - Yea, I could go for that.

[Twelvefield]

Originally posted by wesnef:

Originally posted by project_mercy:

MW2 was a single player game that they tacked on LAN play too. It was balanced and designed around that campaign. I feel like BT is a MP skirmish game someone threw a story on top of.

Well, given that the basic premise of the game was "make a computer game out of the Battletech boardgame" (i.e, a multiplayer skirmish game)..... yeah?

The Banner Saga plays out like a tabletop game and has brilliant writing. So does that Conquistador game and I imagine the Viking one that follows. Dangerous High School Girs In Trouble! is exactly a digital board game and its writing is deep, hilarious, and in parts really sexy.

Just because the game is based on dice rolling and moving around little plastic robots doesn't mean that there also can't be a gripping story. It's war after all! Yet Bettletech consistently chooses the blandest, most contrived stories to follow. It's an institution. I suspect the slapdash foundation of the game plus a bouquet of subsequent lawsuits has made the game hard to adapt to the new millenium. It's so 1980's it makes my No Jacket Required CD seem avant garde by comparison. The only thing missing is that nobody gets impaled at the end. Bring on Phoebe Cates!!

[hf22]

I have to agree with the OP. I have got my monies worth from this game, but the story is just meh. Not actively bad, not good, just meh.

[Wantoomany]

The problem with the story, is its not your story. The player is just a secondary character in what is clearly Kamea's story. Nothing you do has any meaning because you are not the central character. And worse, they already tell you how its going to end in first opening cinematic.

[Bishop-Six]

Originally posted by Wantoomany:

The problem with the story, is its not your story. The player is just a secondary character in what is clearly Kamea's story. Nothing you do has any meaning because you are not the central character. And worse, they already tell you how its going to end in first opening cinematic.

This. Its a fairy tale and you just have to do what you get said.

[Wantoomany]

I think the most disappointing part of it is at no point is your character required. There are several missions where you are forced to take Kamea, but not your own. Once past the introductory missions. You can literally park your pilot behind a desk and never use them in combat again. It makes the entire character creation system kind of pointless.

[Atma]

It's no worse than fallout 4's "they took your baby, be mad!".