MechWarrior 5: Clans will humanize its mechas

The Mecha genre is having a bit of a moment right now. Last year’s Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon garnered mainstream attention thanks to a growing love for developer FromSoftware. Another title, Mecha Break, had a big moment at last year’s Game Awards when it debuted on stage. It’s a great time for players who love giant robots already — and there are more exciting mecha games on the horizon.

MechWarrior 5: Clans is set to launch this year, giving one of the genre’s biggest names another new game. It follows 2021’s MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, a co-op-focused game with an emphasis on PVE battles. Clans is an entirely different beast, though. It’s doubling down on story and shining a spotlight on the human pilots who are usually hidden in a cockpit. That makes Clans a potentially unique mecha game that makes the most of the BattleTech universe the series is set in.

Clans‘ emphasis on story would be immediately apparent when developers from Piranha Games Inc showed me a first look behind closed doors at this year’s Game Developers Conference. The first thing I saw wasn’t a giant robot but a cutscene full of humans. A salty sergeant barks at a row of pilots in a familiar scene pulled straight from classic military movies. It’s the kind of cinematic sequence that I don’t see a lot in action-focused mech games.

The developers on hand affirmed that cutscenes like this are core to Clans. The studio aims to tell a more human story about pilots, filled with interpersonal relationships. They compare it to MechWarrior 2, one of the series’ more narrative-heavy installments.

The crew is mostly made up of entirely new heroes. During a gameplay mission, I see their dynamic in action as a crew of piloted mechs spreads out around an objective-filled area while chattering over their radios. Though those characters are invented, Clans will still draw heavily from the existing BattleTech universe. For instance, Sarah Weaver is an important character in the story.

While that modern