Xboxist

New MechWarrior Game Coming to Xbox 360

Vancouver-based developer Piranha Games knows a thing or two about giant robots. After all, they just finished work on the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Transformers 2: The Game, in partnership with Activision. If Transformers is that loud, brattish kid who leaves skid marks on your lawn and scares all the pets in the neighborhood, then MechWarrior is like his older brother that went to college. The long-running MechWarrior franchise has evolved a lot since its original appearance on the PC way back in 1989. But it has always been about strategic thinking, careful planning, and tactical organization, with the player in command of a group of giant, mechanical fighting machines. In other words, it's the thinking man's giant robot game.

Now, Piranha has teamed up with Jordan Weisman, co founder of FASA and lover of all things BattleTech, to make a current-generation MechWarrior experience. The team has created a preview video for the game, which you can check out below.

For those familiar with the MechWarrior universe, this new game will take place in the year 3015, near the beginning of the Fourth Succession War. Weisman and Piranha picked this setting for the game because it predates every other entry in the series and will allow new players to jump right into the experience without the weight of series canon weighing on story choices. Talking recently to IGN, explained:

"It's definitely a re-launch. I mean, twenty five years of any soap opera, especially space opera, can become pretty difficult for new players to become involved in. We wanted to take the opportunity to re-launch, or as Russ phrased it, redact the universe. Introduce it at the kind of accessible level it was when we first introduced the universe twenty five years ago. This is not unlike what we've seen most recently with Star Trek, Iron Man, Spider-Man...All franchises which, as they reach out to a new audience, need to create an accessible origin story for their beginnings. So that's where we wanted to go to, it's right at the beginning."

According to the developers, the new game is focused on small-scale, intense combat. The player will take on the role of a reluctant hero who is thrust into the cockpit of his Mech when geopolitical events go sour on his backwater planet. The game is set on the planet Dreschler, on the frontier between the Davion and Kuritan houses. Urbanized and under assault from space, the player will not be able to rely on simple radar to track enemies on the surface of Dreschler. Instead, the developers are placing an emphasis on what they are calling "information warfare," the ability to scout and track enemy forces as they move through the dense urban environment.

The title is still early along in development, but Piranha is already contemplating single-player, co-operative campaign and multiplayer modes. Surprisingly, they have not yet secured a publisher for this title, but we expect them to find one very soon.

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