Can we talk about the atrocious story?

[4thQueen]

Whoo boy. This is a big 'un.

The story in this game isn't so bad that it makes me want to stop playing, but only barely. I just finished the story mission on Artru and needed to vent. This is the kind of narrative I'd expect from Tumblr or fanfiction.net, not a professional game dev to make.

The entire opening act is already awful, first for the flashback so we know everything is gonna be alright, and then because we're supposed to care for this Lady Arano because the characters tells us we should care. Our dear old mentor who we met for all of one mission comes back only to die again in what I assume is meant to be a touching moment but we also have no reason to care for him at all.
Kamea has all the trappings of some author-insert fic, where she does all the wonderful things and we must like her because the characters tell us to. Even now, in this last mission, the first time you pilot Assault Mechs is just Lady Bupkiss and three random dudes. Because this is her story.

And it really sucks.

Shouldn't something like that be saved for the player characters? But no, we get what amounts to a glorified cutscene with the Mary Sue because we have to bask in her glory.

Then there's the "bad guys", who we know are bad because we are told they are bad. Then they murder and torture a bunch of people because they are really bad you guys. Like for real. And Espinosa is such a caricature of a villain they have the gall to lampshade it in the dialogue! That made me mad. If you know it's crap, why aren't you writing better characters?

Sorry to vent. Perhaps I am alone in thinking this? Does anyone else hate the story? Maybe it gets better down the line! That would be nice. I would like if that happens.


It's nice to want things, I guess.

[Xero]

Originally posted by Petrothian:

Not to mention you will never get an offical contract/work ever again and will have to go pirate if you do something like that :D


Employer betrays you: MRBC stop posting contracts from said Employer.
Merc Betrays employers (or knows of it): MRBC drops you instead, or drops your rating such that you only get to deliever pizza or something.

You technically came under her "employ" outside the MRB. So as long as you don't betray her on a contract, they wouldn't care.

[Pnume]

Originally posted by Chaon:

Comparing this story to the convoluted, multi-threaded story lines we get in tv shows, of course you will have people disappointed in its basic she is good, they are bad, story.

But you have to remember this is a storyline that was put together in a couple years, not the decades of Game of Thrones and others like that.

If you wanted to make a story so convoluted as GoT, well they would still be making the game in a couple more years.

Even Shakespear had simple stories.

Well even compared to other RPG, it is a very weak story.
I had just finished Legend of Heroes trail of cold steel 2 before playing Battletech and if I gave a 8/10 to that Legend of Heroes, Battletech would get a 0.5/10 and that's being nice.

[Gozer]

story is one of the weakest parts of Battletech. Probably THE weakest part.

within first 30 seconds into the game we're being told how it'll all end. And of course it is the most cliche thing imaginable,. "you are the hero, blah blah blah, the only one with oposable thumbs in the entire universe capable of doing something while nothing else ever happens, and you are destined to win"

the "story" clashes pretty bad with the whole mercenary angle game tries to take. Instead of mercenary company we are playing bunch of deranged zealots who are for some reason chained to the most annoying, boring and predictable chain of events (and characters) imaginable. It is like game is saying "here is very interesting universe where many interesting things are likely happening, but you aren't allowed to know about that because we decided that you'll be stuck with an on-the-nose story that has all the appeal of reading a grocery shopping list".

[Masterhummel]

The story sure isn't anything special but like people already pointed out: It's like every Battletech Novel ever written. And that's probably what most of the people who backed this wanted it to be.

Dunno how deep you're in the material. But Battletech Novels are (usually) cheesy medieval short-stories in space. Short stories because they have a lot of filler but not a lot of substance, even when they fill 600 pages. With the humans just being happy to be around and the main selling point being what i would call "mech porn".

[DayChap]

I was impressed at how they made Arano, your mentor and everyone apart from three of the crew members so unlikable.

[Edmon]

Am I the only one who thought the story was "ok"? :P

Ah your right, bioware this ain't...

[Asuzu]

Originally posted by DayChap:

I was impressed at how they made Arano, your mentor and everyone apart from three of the crew members so unlikable.

Yeah that stuck-up princess is just asking for it.
I like Yang, Darius and Sumire in that order.
The rest are bleh.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Asuzu:

Originally posted by DayChap:

I was impressed at how they made Arano, your mentor and everyone apart from three of the crew members so unlikable.

Yeah that stuck-up princess is just asking for it.
I like Yang, Darius and Sumire in that order.
The rest are bleh.

Two of the three conspirators, you will have cannonballs rolling soon enough.

The story is conventional. Victoria is a cartoon character, Santiago wasn't as bad as he could have been.

[Bicius]

We need a story with the true evil guys

[kingarthur772]

The story is linear, like in all Mechwarrior / Mech Commander Games of this franchise. But it doesn´t matter, because you can travel where you want to make Missions to earn money, experiance, parts etc. and you can do the Storymissons whenever you want.

I like it, because as an old Battletech, Mechwarrior and Mech Commander fan (Books and Games) the Story remembers me on the Titels MW 3 and 4:Vengance, as well as M4: Mercenaries. That were Times and that times are comming back with the new games Battletech and the in Production Mechwarrior 5.

But you are right, the Game hasn´t it fully potential yet, because the developers brought the game out a little bit to fast. 1/2 year more had done better to fix the remaining bugs, integrate the missinge improvements / parts etc.

Like the Developers said, the release hadn´t a good start. The developes have to bring in the missing improvements, options, translations, costumisations etc. in the next time step by step. But therfore they fix the known stability and other bugs and working for the first big one General Bugfix as well as Costumations / Player Options Patch with the missing translations.

And they say too that the Story could be improved with DLC´s. But up to now we have to wait and get stabilizations, bugfixes, missing improvements / parts etc. for the game we have now.

[Lord Quinton]

I don't mind the story so much as I do the logic that leads you down the railroad tracks. Evil Uncle Grand Viseur betrays you plotline number 46. I mean hell, the guy dresses like a stereotypical villain, and of course makes vague threatening remarks when he gets rebuffed after suggesting kamea turns the reach into a dictatorship. How is it that anyone in the inner sphere was surprised when he turned on his niece? This is 5th grade writing at best.

They even included a Bioware Mentor in the tutorial mission. You know the type, he lets you know he's old and wise and ready to impart the secrets of the universe to you, and then conveniently dies before he can.

I will admit, I didn't buy this game for a story that i'll want to relive again and again and hand down to my kids, I bought it so i could stomp on things in a giant mech, which is something HBS has done an awesome job of. If only they'd put a bit more thought into the overall story, and how your mercenary missions affect the different systems you do jobs in. Also, the story missions needed to have been thought out a bit more.

[kingarthur772]

If you look in the Paradox site, the Developers said that they made a mistake and released the game to early. They appologice for that in every intervew they had given so far too.

They are working on the game as fast as they could to update it with all missing conents and are thinking to upgrade the gamestory with more contents too. But those DLC´s will come first after the big patches are out. And the first 2 will come in the next 2 - 3 Month (big Bugfix and some improvements pronounced End May [this month]; the second Update 1: is a big update with coustimations, player options, another bugfixes etc. pronounced June / July).

The story itself is very good for such a kickstarter project, espacialy when you bring in Multiplayer, speech, cinematic storyparts and other important things in a game like this. You have to remember that the Developers have only for 1,2 Milllion Dollars or max. 1,5 Million Dollars for the production.

But before they could beginn they had too pay the licence fee to bring out this great game. The Translators, cinematic sceenes and the Speekers are expensive too, so the game is a very very good compromise.

[Senlin]

The story is really bad, but what makes it even worse for me is the forced pseudo choices it gives the player in the dialogs all the time. It doesn't make any difference whatsover what I select. The dialogs barely give me any additional information, usually it's really useless repeating of the same. Blah, it's really terrible and it seems they spend a lot of time on it.

Originally posted by kingarthur772:

If you look in the Paradox site, the Developers said that they made a mistake and released the game to early. They appologice for that in every intervew they had given so far too.

Can you link to that, please? I haven't seen anything like that so far.

[kingarthur772]

Interwies no, the Paradox Info yes. There are the Points I mentiond too. In the Info the Developers are saing thanks to all helping hands and you can read between the lines the appologise.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/battletech-whats-next.1094890/

[Senlin]

I'm sorry, I don't see anything in there even suggesting they think they released the game too early.