MechWarrior 5: Clans

AD 3049. Almost fifteen hundred light years from Terra, the self-exiled Clans, heirs to the fallen Star League, live lives of ritualistic combat and the pursuit of honour. The arrival of an exploration vessel from the Inner Sphere shocks the Clans, who hold themselves to be technologically superior and safe from the constant infighting of the Sphere. Faced with the threat of the Inner Sphere powers discovering the Clan homeworlds and attacking, the Clans resolve to strike first, launching a massive invasion of the Inner Sphere which throws the Lyran Commonwealth, Free Rasalhague Republic and Draconis Combine into chaos.

Clan Smoke Jaguar is assigned the task of sweeping through the lightly-settled Periphery and then driving hard into the Draconis Combine. Their first target is the independent world of Santander's Bay, followed by the Combine world of Courchevel and then a determined strike on Luthien, the Draconis capital. A newly-assembled Star (five-mech unit) under the command of Jayden is tasked with helping the Smoke Jaguars seek victory...but their leaders' utter ruthlessness, indifference to civilian casualties and seeking honour only when convenient to them leads Jayden and some under his command to question what they are fighting for.

Five years ago, Piranha Games released MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, a freeform game where you gained command of a detachment of BattleMechs (big stompy robots) and a starship, and guided them to fame and fortune through a mixture of procedurally-generated missions, handcrafted jobs and a lengthy story campaign. The game was released in an iffy state but was rapidly fixed and then expanded through six DLC campaigns to become a very solid game of stompy robot fun in the BattleTech universe, augmented further by a very healthy modding scene. Whilst the game was very solid, its grindy, freeform nature came in for some criticism, so Piranha decided to address that with a new game with a much more focused, narrative approach.

MechWarrior 5: Clans depicts the full-scale invasion of the Inner Sphere by the Clans, arguably the biggest and most consequential event in all of BattleTech lore. BattleTech games are largely set either in the pre-Clan period, which focuses on political intrigue and conflict between the five Inner Sphere powers, or the post-Clan period when the Inner Sphere's rearranged borders and polities are trying to adapt to the Clans' arrival. By depicting the invasion on-screen for the first time (it has been depicted before in Michael A. Stackpole's splendid novels), Piranha are answering the wishes of a lot of die-hard BattleTech / MechWarrior fans.

The invasion is straightforward enough - these bonkers semi-Klingons from elsewhere in the galaxy are trying to invade Earth (sorry, Terra)! - and takes place early enough in the timeline that newcomers won't be lost either. And it's an interesting stroke on Piranha's part to not only have the players fighting for the Clans (the "bad guys" of this story, but only very relatively compared to the ruthless realpolitik-governed Inner Sphere), but arguably the least-pleasant Clan of them all, Smoke Jaguar.

Extensive cutscenes introduce the plot and cast of characters. You get to know your starmates through surprisingly polished and extensive cutscenes, as well as in-battle banter. As usual in these games (forget the number, this is actually the eighth mainline game in the series, not counting expansions), you can customise your mechs before battle, maybe choosing to switch to different models and then choosing weapons loadouts. If you're fighting on a hot desert world, you may want to ditch those lasers for cooler autocannons, but if you're in an arctic environment, you can go hogwild with the pew-pew. You can also choose how much armour you want your mech to carry, and if you want a cool jump jet or not. Outfitting your mech is supposedly made easier by the presence of Omni-pods which have preset loadouts; in practice I found these mostly useless, and tinkering with the loadouts more directly was often more effective. Newcomers who don't know their PPCs from UACs may find the default loadout for each mission to be perfectly fine and stick with that.

You then hit the battlefield and have to achieve objectives, which are usually some variation of "go here and kill all the things," although occasional pursuit, rescue and defence missions liven things up. When battle is joined and lasers and missiles fly, the results are a splendid feast for the eyes, enhanced by the switch to Unreal Engine 5 for this excursion. Not only do you have to pilot your own mech in battle (from either first or third person), but you can also direct your starmates to hold particular areas of the battlefield, target your opponent or follow you. You can also switch to an overhead battlemap for more granular control of the battlefield, briefy turning the game into an RTS (and makes the heart pang for a new MechCommander game), although in practice I found controlling the battle from this viewpoint to be more confusing than from the cockpit.

The game is linear, but at several moments you have a large choice of different missions to select, which you can approach sensibly (do the missions in escalating order of difficulty) or not (do the toughest missions first to accrue the most honour and resources). There is also a big decision you make towards the end of the game which completely changes the final few missions. But the whole point of Clans is to offer a more curated, story-driven experience with memorable characters; if you want the freeform open-world approach, then MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries (or the classic turn-based tactics game BattleTech) is the place to go.

The cutscenes and story are both surprisingly enjoyable. There's little surprising here, the fact that you're playing for the bad guys and become increasingly aware of how evil they are as the game continues makes things fairly predictable, but it's all executed with enough panache and character you can bear the unoriginality. Your five starmates all have their own personality and attitude to things (although I confess I found Ezra and Liam to be a bit interchangeable), and their disagreements are useful in shaping your own attitude to the Clans. The supporting cast are splendid, with a special mention reserved for Cordera Perez, your commanding officer, who is both a spectacularly unrepentant arsehole and has the most outstanding "total dickhead" voice performance I have heard in many years. I am disappointed we don't see more of the famous lore characters, like Leo Showers, the supreme commander of the Smoke Jaguars, who gets a memorable cutscene near the start but otherwise doesn't show up again.

The game is also surprisingly meaty. Normally a game like this - story focus, linear campaign missions - would top out at 10 hours, maybe 15, but MechWarrior 5: Clans lasts around 30 hours of stompy mech action, more if you replay the game to see the alternate ending. This length does mean the game occasionally struggles to keep things fresh - the "shock plot twist" of a late-arriving, heavily armed dropship you have to disarm under heavy fire is used a few times too many - but the campaign moving on between several different planets, the supporting cast changing (as this is a war, and people die) and the story of the war taking several unexpected turns keeps things ticking over nicely. There are several brutal difficulty spikes which may frustrate players, but the ability to switch difficulty levels if a mission is particularly kicking your arse means you can usually find a way of getting past them.

MechWarrior 5: Clans (****½) is a splendidly enjoyable slice of fun. You stomp around in robots blowing things up, against the backdrop of an epic space opera saga which is well-told. The strategy command element adds depth to the game, and you can go down a deep rabbit hole of mech customisation options if you want, to optimise your combat experience. Hopefully Piranha can match the generous DLC they provided for Mercenaries to expand on the war, maybe giving you the opportunity to play for other Clans or maybe crossing over with Mercenaries with a freeform mode. MechWarrior 5: Clans is available now on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, as well as via the Xbox Game Pass service.

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