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.

[mdohertyedi]

I didn't mind the story so much. OK so its not very deep, the characters are meh and pacing is a bit off. But I thought it was passible. I thought the artwork was quite good, a little rough in some areas but the battle scenes were nice to look at.

I can think of a few other games with stories that were absolutly HORRENDUS!

One in particular. Lets just say it has the word command and the number 4.

[Gozer]

Belle Sorciere původně napsal:

Given what happens in the tutorial, would you really work with Espinosa in any capacity? Would you really?

why not? It could be even set up by the 'story' ... and very easily. You could be Espinosa's infiltrator the whole time, or someone who just has been bought last minute before the coup. The game pretty much says to you "You are The One" Neo' and you are supposed to go with it, it could just as likely say to you "you are a scumbag who's betraying princess McUseless for heap of money". Even in tutorial you could easily blast Raju's mech in the back, blast both legs off Kamea's mech and wait for Espinosa reinforcements. No planetary invasion, no dumb coup, just princess out of the way and Directorate can move in to take over (and maybe silently shank next few claimants of the throne first, before they can completely take over), after all that'd be much smarter and easier than planetary-wide bloodbath followed by reign of terror. Ding, you just became a proud owner of huge pile of money, enough to get your career as mechwarrior mercenary company captain started and you leave. The End, story time over, happy sandbox time everyone. Or - if you want something a bit more long winded - just as you get out of planet you are (of course) blamed by Espinosa as the sole culprit of Kamea's death (crazy soldier gone berzerk), there is bounty on you in Directorate territory and once in a blue moon a contract offered to you can turn out to be just a bait prepared to spring a trap on you (oh look, plausible explanation for the crazy and nonsensical difficulty spikes the game has). But you don't care one tiny bit, neither does anyone else in the entire universe, because backstabbing and killing people is pretty normal in the Battletech universe, as shown absolutely everywhere on daily basis. After all you are just getting ready to start making career of murdering anyone who has the bad luck of being anywhere near the general area random stranger who gave you your current contract pointed at. So just stay away from Directorate territory (or risk it, if there is a reason) and the fact that you recently survived ambush attempt #32 is pretty good advertisement for mechwarrior and most of the people giving contracts wouldn't give one solitary flying -princess- about your past. But some might, so that could make some contracs unavailable (unless you build up reputation, so they know that you are reliable enough as mercenary) ... and some mechwarriors wouldn't want to be in your mercenary company (making use of the personality traits of mechwarriors that the game currently completely ignores), or would ask for more money. Again, story time over, let's get sandbox time rolling.

there, problem solved, here you have backstory that still saves you metric frackton of pointless dialogue, is much better setting for mercenary carreer and isn't really worse than what we have now

[FemmeDracula]

Needs more paragraph breaks. I can't read that.

[M.Rollf]

The plot is hot Garbage. From My point of view BattleTech is a place where every one is the villian they where up till just a few Years ago Nucking the living hell out of each other. I cant give the plot a pass just becuase they didnt have a Giant budget to flesh it out.

Besides we all know the best Battletech plot line is the one where the goverment Shots you with a blow dart in the shower to use you as a body double because they saw the Space Commies do it once.

[Prester]

story is crap. my 8 year old ♥♥♥♥♥ better stories. still better than twilight thou

[Twelvefield]

I'm with OP. There are plenty of great stories, Battletech isn't one of them. I blame the devs in part for not paying enough attention to their art department, but they can certainly blame the TT devs who encourage this sort of tripe.

Still, giant robots fighting one another: it's my guilty pleasure.

Here's hoping we get some tools for crafting our own stories and campaigns. No doubt there will be a lot of elbows bent marching pom-pom pom-pom let's-save-the-royals crud that normally comes out of BT, but I bet there are enough players who have read Homer, Hemingway, Heinlein, and Hammett to come up with something great.

[XIII]

M.Rollf původně napsal:

The plot is hot Garbage. From My point of view BattleTech is a place where every one is the villian they where up till just a few Years ago Nucking the living hell out of each other. I cant give the plot a pass just becuase they didnt have a Giant budget to flesh it out.

Besides we all know the best Battletech plot line is the one where the goverment Shots you with a blow dart in the shower to use you as a body double because they saw the Space Commies do it once.

Eh, there have been a bunch of naive/good as well as comically evil characters in Battletech. Victor Davion and Jinjiro Kurita were mentioned.

[Jukelo]

I can't remember thje last non point-and-click-adventure video game that had a decent story, so... just play the game?

[David]

Prester původně napsal:

Chaon původně napsal:

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.

LOL

so apearently writing a story better than

"woman should be crowned, uncle steals her throne and exiles her, she comes back 3 years later and wants her throne back, hires you as mercenaries, you win the war for her while finding out that the uncle is evil and your client is good."

takes YEARS. ♥♥♥♥ i write a better story on a single day and im not even a professional writer

It took me a while to realise you weren't talking about Games of Thrones XD

Dany & Robert are blood relatives. Dany returns to Westeros approximately 3 years later after Game of Thrones starts, army of Unsullied. Portrayed as an evil barbaric invader in Westeros.

[AbsynthMinded]

Twelvefield původně napsal:

I'm with OP. There are plenty of great stories, Battletech isn't one of them. I blame the devs in part for not paying enough attention to their art department, but they can certainly blame the TT devs who encourage this sort of tripe.

Still, giant robots fighting one another: it's my guilty pleasure.

Here's hoping we get some tools for crafting our own stories and campaigns. No doubt there will be a lot of elbows bent marching pom-pom pom-pom let's-save-the-royals crud that normally comes out of BT, but I bet there are enough players who have read Homer, Hemingway, Heinlein, and Hammett to come up with something great.

Its as interesting as Warcraft 1, and more appealing to me. That is a lot. If they can get actual League play in order it might become pretty epic.

[RasaNova]

Gozer původně napsal:

RasaNova původně napsal:

Other than that, the way I see it is:
Whatever drama Arano is mewling about, Espinosa betrayed ME, sabotaged my mech, murdered my Obi-Wan, and forced me into hiding. I'm rescued by a passing merc band, end up in charge, share in dealing with crippling debt and restrictions. But wait, along comes this financial opportunity... It's Princess Buttercup! She wants to pay off my debts? She wants to GIVE me a prototype Argo-class dropship? All she wants me to do in exchange is a handful of high paying contracts against those who I want dead anyway? No-brainer here....

well what the game shows me, I'm mercenary who spends hundreds of missions stomping on buildings and blasting enemy bases (that could just as well be packed to the roof with hospitals and kindergartens) or destroying convoys (carrying orphans and puppies?). And you can easily take contract for faction A against B and just one mission later another one for B against A with no reputation or faction relation penalty, neither of them even blinks at the fact that just a bit earlier you were killing their people and destroying their base/mechs/vehicles/propperty for their enemies ... so everyone in the universe seems to be ridiculously tolerant to blatant acts of aggression against them and has very flexible morals (to the point of almost nonexistence). Given all this, why can't I shank princess McUseless the second she steps out of the airlock and deliver her to Espinosa? Financial problems solved and not only would I be free to enjoy mercenary/sandbox life, it'd also save me ridiculous ammount of pointless dialogue that doesn't lead anywhere anyway.

Oh believe me I would absolutely LOVE to see an open world Battletech game where you could make or break alliances with different factions and such. Unfortunately, this is not that game - this is a linear tactical squad combat game held together by a very cliche but serviceable story.

And I also agree It would have been nice if we COULD have options or make decisions that affected the outcome of the game, but there's a balancing point where making a complex branching or opended narrative has to take backseat to a solid battle system, if they still want to release anywhere near their target date.

[arnaud_defrance]

The story integration was pretty decent in my opinion. It was linear, certainly, but I didn't find the dialog choices annoying : you can be friendly, pretend to be friendly (because client has tons of cash) or make clear you're in there for the cash. You get to learn the background of the characters by talking to them rather than reading their biography which was nice too, and you aren't required to learn to know them every playthrough in order to unlock some odd consumable.

The missions had some issues, but honestly XCOM:EW praised so highly had at least as many problems as Battletech (Newfoundland, I am looking at you. Also XCOM2 final mission.) Otherwise there were some variety, and I appreciate the fact you can say 'screw it' and do the minimum of objectives to do them quickly (like when you can capture three silo but one suffice), it only cost cash. My only gripe there is that borders are limited till you complete the story, so currently others places but Periphery and Arano are essentially pointless. I've hope for DLCs to change that though.

Now narrative-wise, it works well enough. We have believable motives for the various characters to act as they did. The artstyle is decent with no character whose style make me cringe and they don't even blabble over and over every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ story mission. There is a clear goal to the plot (winning versus the bad regime), there are setbacks that aren't caused by the characters' stupidity and there is a clear climax and ending. It's a textbook story, true, but it's a well-executed one in the context of a game.

It isn't depth, but it's a game about giant mechs punching each others and stomping on vehicles, it'd look sillier to dig upon deeper themes. The game even annonces the story isn't the point, when Arano comment on 'I don't know why you fought' with money being perfectly serviceable.

The one thing I perhaps regret was not getting to fight on the Ibera, my lance versus the grieving father across a battleship going to pieces due to a century old virus. That would have been much more awe-worthy than the arena fighting for the win. Even if I get it'd have been a lot more work.

It's a good game. It has a decent story.

[SpitefulSpirit]

to be honest i dont even read any of the dialogues.

[wendigo211]

You're a mercenary in charge of a lance. Not a regiment, not a batallion, not even a company (although the Argo could support a company). Sure you're on the periphery where a lance means more than in the Inner Sphere proper, but you're never going to have any power to influence wars or politics. Playing a critical role in some of the battles is about all you can hope for. Unless they made a galactic strategy game, any story involving factions fighting factions was always going to be someone else's story.

In 3025, Battletech is feudalism on a galactic scale. It's a sci-fi version of the fall of the Roman Empire (Star League), with the various factions fighting over the crumbs. Nobles replaced democratically elected leader, just like they did over time as the Roman Republic (a Democracy), became the Roman Empire (which was effectively the USA, if the president was president for life) and eventually broke into warring states. If you have a problem with nobles fighting other nobles over planets play something else, because it's a core part of the setting.

Since this game is a reintroduction to the setting that the folks at HBS helped to create, I think they wanted a story that hit the major points of the setting for new folks. That meant it was going to be a story that had nobles fighting nobles. It was going to frame the player's lance as mercenaries working for one the Italian city states. It was going to show that technology was in decay from what it had been in the past. It was going to show how war was gradually grinding all the factions into dust. In that regard I think they hit all the major points. It wasn't a very original story, but it was a very Battletech story.

[Lilith]

i find it interesting how many people claim that they could create a better story.
Well, do so. I can't wait to see how quickly your "better stories" are going to be ripped apart.

Honestly, i play this game for the MechCombat. The story is fluff.
But at the very least, this is a BT-Game with a somewhat original Story. The other games are only retelling of established canon. Here we have an original State, with original LosTech.