A little off-brand for this channel; based on an old script I wrote two years ago. Wasteland 3 is next. Most of the gameplay footage is borrowed from @SirxMMPD who runs a Mech 2 channel: www.youtube.com/@SirxMMPD/videos Alex' Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/sneksock (for commissions) Their Patreon: www.patreon.com/sneksucks Their Twitter: twitter.com/sneksucks Support Alex and Inna!!!!!
Wasteland 3, huh? I've been trying to play it, but the writing and quest design was just too off putting for me. Usually feels like the game is constantly railroading you into outright silly binary choices and then shaming the player for making either choice. There's no need for a "right" choice, but everything is so contrived to the point where it feels like the player has no actual agency. I'm expecting a well-thought out video like usual. Maybe you'll convince me to try it again, maybe to not bother trying.
This was one of the first games me and grandpa played on his computer in the 90s, i was 11.. He passed away in june. Thanks for helping me unlock memories
I relate to this a lot. My grandpa passed away in August and he showed me all kinds of games in the early 2000s. Anytime I see a game I played in that time it's a weird feeling.
@@grundlehunter69 strike commander, quest for glory, the original swat series. I even use computers to make living for myself now within the transportation industry. Thanks grandpa miss you man!
Oh man, the memories are flooding back from my childhood. Actually living the Clan invasion of the Inner Sphere as a "free-birth" mercenary! Please re-release this great series on Steam. Heavy Gear 1 and 2, while we're on the subject. =P
Aerospace actually does function in this game. Here's how it works. Unlike lance mechs, Aerospace will spawn far off in the distance at the beginning of any mission. Upon loading in, call the Aerospace to form on you or attack a target, and then wait roughly a minute or two. You'll see them roll up from the horizon on your radar. If you don't give it any orders, he won't show up or do anything.
Damn, why didn't the game just explain this?! You've reactivated a 20-year forgotten memory of disappointment. If I ever revisit MW2 I'll have to try it as intended.
Lol I forget how I stumbled across that as a kid, I think I hit alt+x or something and heard "Sir Yes Sir" and I was like "Huh" and then eventually a plane shows up.
@@Jerad2142yep, alt-x. It would still glitch sometimes though. Especially if you were playing the ice-ship campaign, the aero fighter support would be thousands of meters below you close the the “floor” of the level
I always loved the fake contract. Ostensibly Comstar and Outreach are supposed to be making sure you don't get those kinds of contracts, but you'd always imagine at least a few of them would drop in an unwary mercenary group's lap over a career. Its also always fun to beat the missions that are against the odds, like you can do in Mercs 4, and its especially fun when your character lies about it afterwards to not seem like a massive chump.
Did you hear the one about that one guy and the phone company getting into an argument? It didn't end well for the phone company; I can tell you that much.
THIS WAS UNEXPECTED. And yet I’m so hyped for him to cover this game. Even though I’m of the newer gen of BattleTech players, it’s always fun to see people who played through the older titles show off their love for the series.
Mechwarrior 2. I remember hearing of this game on a forum 10 years back when one of its developers, Eric Peterson was around. He brought up the game when he talked about his experience as a developer. Sadly he passed away a few years later in 2015.
Seriously, not only are Warlockracy's videos just crazy entertaining *and* informative, he puts out so many at once! It's absolutely incredible! This guy rules.
The ending cutscene for this game (Battle of Dinju Pass 42:46, look up Mechwarrior 2 ending cinematic if you wanna see it) is possibly the hardest FMV of all time. My favorite comment about it is "i watch this once a day instead of doing excercises. it keeps me in shape". The soundtrack (Gotterdammerung) is the best song in the entire Battletech series. In general the older Battletech games had highly memorable cinematics, especially the MechCommander intro. I first saw that as a kid and have loved the Battletech universe ever since.
Fun Fact : All of the mechs in the final FMV were taken either from previous FMVs, or the Mauler which was taken from the box art. It's a clever reuse of assets to save time and production resources.
@@AlcomIsst Yep, from what I can tell the Timber Wolf is from the MechWarrior 2 base game intro, the Mad Dog and Kodiak are from the intro to MechWarrior 2: Ghost Bear's Legacy, and finally the Zeus, Catapult, and Atlas are from the intro to MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries. A lot of Battletech fans over the years have pointed out that the Smoke Jaguars weren't supposed to have Kodiaks at the Battle of Dinju Pass, but it was done for time saving. And the end result looked totally badass. IMO the Kodiak was one of the few mechs (like the Mauler) that actually looked pretty good in the low poly FMV format.
This video spurred me down a battletech rabbit hole, and coming back after a few weeks of lore videos its very funny in hindsight how Rasalhague cut the reward money in half after not believing in the clan story and then they proceeded to get mauled into almost non-existence when the clan invasion actually started
In the final mission with Hanson's RoughRiders, if you shoot the cockpit out of Deadeye(quick before he kills you) you can actually get lucky and salvage the Catapult, which you wouldn't normally have access to for the first hour or two of the game.
@@aquarius5719 windows. The original dos version had a preset loot table that the game rolled against whether or not you killed anything. 1.1 patch and later added dynamic loot to the game and made head shots a lot more valuable. The catapult is one of the easiest cockpits to hit and since I stacked mediums on my commando, it was an easy kill. You can also salvage the crab and sentinel on the kurita mission that becomes available after the RoughRiders one. Easy full lance in early game.
One thing thats kinda intriguing about Battletech is that a lot of its early mech design just straight up is Macross with a new coat of paint. They actually got into legal trouble with Harmony Gold, who was producing Robotech at the time (basically, Macross rewritten and mashed up with two other mech shows so they could get it syndicated on television) due to copyright issues (basically, Battletechs owners got the rights to the Macross mechs from the Japanese producers of the show, but the US didn't recognize Japanese copyright at the time, so the legal holder to those designs was Harmony Golds Robotech). They eventually managed to settle and quietly redesigned the Macross mechs to look slightly different, but with Harmony Gold on its last legs (the animation department of HG is basically kept alive by a single person and seems solely to exist to pretend that Robotech is still relevant. Once that person dies, HG is expected to just turn into the real estate company it actually is these days), Battletech has been reintroducing those old mech designs.
man just seeing harmony gold's name makes my blood boil the whole western world missing almost the whole world of macross because of what is basically them pulling illegal ass shit and getting away with it
@@LunaPPK harmony gold is definitely one of the biggest mixed bags out there. On one hand, they are pretty much THE reason that we have an anime fanbase here in the west since they were pretty much the first distributor (discounting some European kid shows that happened to get contracted out to studio Tokyo in the 70s like Alfred Jodocus Kwak and Maya the Bee), on the other hand... Harmony Gold basically massacred the shows to do so. Not to mention their IP hoarding of Macross. Very messy, all things considered.
Then, the courts ruled that Harmony Gold did not, in fact, have the visual rights to the mechs. Also, Harmony Gold actually has ties with the Italian Mafia
My father was/is super into battle tech when he was my age, some of my first small toys were minis from the ttrpg games. We still have all of his books and expansions sitting somewhere in his basement. Good times
Same for me. Had a Hatchetman and a Rifleman from when the cartoon was still popular, then my father gave me a pewter Atlas. It was one of those things that became a lifelong love for big stompy robots.
I worked on the 3DFX and Multiplayer patch of this game- nice to see someone still doing videos on it. This patch also added "dynamic salvage" which was a massive improvement over the scripted salvage, although you could break the game somewhat by being sure to only shoot off legs. The game was highly advanced in the rendering area, being able to render resolutions beyond what most machines at the time could handle. When I first saw the clouds reflect off the canopy glass in 3DFX mode, I just went "...WOW". One flaw in the design is it follows the table-top rules too closely allowing clever players to break the meta. Like Machine guns suck at 1pt damage per shot, but they shoot at a high rate. Thus, you could do more damage per second than the most powerful weapons in the game by strapping on 20 machine guns with no heat generation (again- TT rules). The same was true of inferno bomb 'overloads'. This is why later iterations of Mechwarrior have a hard-point system. The multiplayer was very buggy and unstable at first as they were basically retro-fitting a single-player game. It did end up being playable, but weird things could still happen.
That's so funny. I remember experimenting with an all Mgun load out on MW2 and it just deleted legs. I quit doing it though because you still take a ton of damage getting close enough to hit, so it's only viable if you have a small number of targets for that mission.
Awesome to read this. I was an old player of Titanium editions and played a lot of multiplayer through Kali (who here remembers that)? Clan Wolf and later Wolf-In-Exile.
I still remember going over to my buddies house after school every day for weeks in a row so we could play this on his dad's computer. I was absolutely blown away, it made my Genesis games feel like toys in comparison. This wasn't a toy, it wasn't just a game, it was a new universe for me. One of my greatest gaming regrets is not having the hardware at home to enjoy the computer games of the 90's as they arrived. Thankfully I had some rich friends, at least. Thanks, Justin.
@@viktordickinson7844Not in any way. They both have mechs. That’s it. Battletech is more like slow lumbering chunks of metal. . Armored core feels like a free trail of parkinsons. . Also mechwarrior doesn’t have the megastructures that armored core does.
@@comradecameron3726 exactly, it's battletech but from the land of the rising sun. also, there are megastructures, you just dont see them in the game, more of a lore/tabletop thing.
Battletech by HBS is my favorite Mechwarrior/Battletech game too! Man it still has what I think is the best opening cutscene of any game I've ever played. Short, to the point, beautiful, tells you everything you need to know with a minimum of text.
You probably know this but your approach to lore is seriously thorough, you present a lot of information in the way a user would naturally discover it. Very well done, Mechwarrior is one of my all-time favorite series.
I remember my dad had it. And it came with a booklet that was listing all the mercenary factions and people that where part of them. A little like a big recruitment pamphlet. It was great, even though I had no understanding of Battletech at that time. My brother and I emersed ourselves completely in that game.
My introduction to Mechwarrior/BattleTech was the OG Mechwarrior 2 that I found for $2 at a yard sale. I would give almost anything to have all the old Mechwarrior games remastered and put on Steam.
MechWarrior 2 was my introduction to Battletech some twenty-ish years ago. Just the other day, my son and I were playing a lance vs. lance match on tabletop. I'll love this franchise forever.
This game was always a little mysterious to me in a somewhat peculiar way due to how I came about finding it. There were a brief few years I spent during the start-to-middle of my time in highschool wherein I'd take trips into my hometown to scope out two out of the three thriftstores we had for stuff that appealed to me. At one point in time, a very particular one was run by a family who were able to take in a number of very interestingly diverse items for a shop in the thick of the deep south (I'm from Alabama) and two of the items I can remember with clarity were BattleTech-related. The first was a boxed compilation of DOS games, 'Triple Action - Vol. 2' by Prism Leisure Co., which included 'The Crescent Hawk's Revenge' and the second was this game, Mechwarrior II, just the CD in a loose jewel case. Oddly enough I was only ever to get the older DOS game to run, but even as a teen I knew Win95 games were a shot in the dark. Sometimes a Win98 title would run on my crummy 2012 laptop though it'd usually have to be 3D or use Directx -- Anyways, the point is that I could never get this one game to run and I've only seen a little gameplay of it sometime after I bought it. That copy is long gone, along with CD copies of Duke Nukem 3D, Revenant, and other DOS games that were burned onto homebrew blank CDs. Sadly, that thriftstore was eventually bought out by another family and a lot of the techy stuff started disappearing. Most I found in there after the buyout was a Phillips CD-i that was missing a controller and only had some FMV golf game sole separately, which I had barely any interest in, *but probably would've went for these days.* The last few times I went in there they were primarily focused on selling typical southern knicknacks, pottery, homemade crafts --- and I understand that all has it's crowd, but all the older PC and videogame stuff would have easily made them just as much of a profit. Though, I moved out earlier last year, and I don't have any interest in ever going back (aside from maybe visiting SOME of my family, but even then... Eh.) I haven't even watched the video yet, I'm paused at 1:19, Warlockracy is an uploaded I've come to enjoy so I know the video will be of his usual quality. I'm simply reminiscing over just having seen the game's title again after so much time has passed. Maybe I could find some way to play it these days now that I have a bit more knowledge on getting older stuff to run on PCs. Or there might be some modern-enabled rereleased that I haven't looked into yet. ... Welp, back to lurking on RUclips(! ! !)
The thing I love most about this universe is they have planned out the common languages, and religions, in the regions of space. It's very interesting to see a far future with Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, being worshiped by people who may be speaking a language composed of 3 or more recognizable ones today in some odd homogeny. It of course all comes together when those same people then smash giant mechs into each other for money, homeland, prestige, and survival.
YESS the pods!!! I played in one of these at some kind of mall or arcade when I was little, maybe 6 yrs old. I think the ones I tried were a whiteish gray color on the outside. My dad took me to them one time. I never hear people bring these up, we need more stuff like that today, real physical sims for these kinds of games are so freaking cool!
Nothing like a good blast from the past to get 2023 started. This game a lot of my childhood! I don't know if you played Interstate 76 but that was another "how dare you have story like this" shocker for the 90's. It wasn't great it was just bizarre and great! RIp scholastic school book catalogs getting me into 90's C&C, x-wig/tie fighter and hordes of other classics. Thanks for the video!
Man, every single game you end up talking about is either really fucking good or super interesting (yes, even Alcatraz and Marauder). I love this channel.
@@SpecShadow Yeah, I actually played Marauder before (because I played 7.62 High Calibre) but I just couldn't be arsed to play through the entire thing. So it was actually really nice to finally see the whole game myself (and get some much-needed context)! And I was secretly hoping for an Alcatraz video from the very first time I discovered his Morrowind videos.
Having currently put well over 500h into MW5 running tons of mods, it really pains me how much better the presentation and flair is in MW2. Also I appreciate you diving into really niche games, without needing to find the worst ones.
Sigh, Piranha Games. I remember the 500 dollar golden Timber Wolf skin for MWO. I appreciate that they still try with MW5 but man the missions are boring.
@@Atrahasis7 same for tank combat fans. Esp realistic tank combat. You basicly only have war thunder and while it could be worse. Damn the devs are some greedy russian biased motherfuckers.
Nixe trip down memory lane. MW & MW2 (w/all the expansions) is what had my buy my first PC & got me hooked on the BT Universe in 95. I played all subsequent games at least a bit & hot my boys into them. I played the tabletop Heroclix game in the early 2000s & now in '23 am getting intonthe OG BT tabletop. The game & cuts ends were fantastic & the opening scene for MW2 & the Ghost Bear expansion still give me chills. Apparently MW2 is shareware now & I was really tempted to get it running & play the campaign. Anyways thanks for this video!
I think some of my earliest memories were of MW2 Mercs, picking it up at a Micro Center along with the strategy guide. I still have both the guide and the original CD..
Such memories! I remember that I didn't know much about Battletech when I first played this, and got taken completely by surprise by the clan invasion. I remember getting my shit wrecked by them on the Oberon mission. The follow-up mission to escape was also super hard (at least when I was young), and I remember that's where I got stuck the first time I played the game. One other neat thing about the game is that the campaigns are somewhat dynamic, and even failing a mission outright won't necessarily end the game. For example, I remember having trouble with the ice-hauler mission, and because I failed, I got a mission to basically escape rather than continuing. Also, an interesting fact about his game is that originally, the salvage was completely hardcoded into each mission. You could and would never get anything different than what was scripted. Dynamic salvage was added in (I think) the Direct3d version of the game.
I had hoped as a kid, that at a certain point of graphical fidelity, many devs would feel satisfied and divert much more work into plotting dynamic playthroughs. Sadly this remains mostly restricted to sandbox RPG's. Real-time RTS games would especially benefit from dynamic campaign design, but they almost never bother. Oh, one mission failed? You just lost the whole war.
Cool runthrough, I did enjoy MW2/mercs back in the day. Fun bug is if you throw / quit out of the final solaris match, then do Wotan, you'll get a madcat as loot.
I remember my dad having this game when I was growing up but I was too young to really understand how to actually play it competently so I never got that far into it. Eventually my uncle got me Mech Commander 2 and Mech Warrior 3, which ended up being my proper introduction to the Battlemech series. But I always wanted to go back to two and give it a proper try. Just to see what it was about. Sadly couldn't get it to work, though. So yeah, thanks for making a video about this little gem of a game!
It's wild we went from story missions that introduce you to the factions, where you see dropships and jumpships in orbit and aero space fighters that are hireable to MW5 which is spawn on randomly generated map to do generic randomly generated walk-there-shoot this mission.
The Atlas defeating the Kodiak is also ironic considering the former was designed by the leader of the original clanners. I played the majority of Mechwarrior 4, I think I played part of Mechwarrior 1, and I read one of the books. I'm still shockingly ignorant of the lore though, so I appreciate the nuggets in this video.
I somehow ended up with this game when I was 9. I had no idea what I was doing, and it crashed constantly. I was never able to finish the first mission on my Windows 98 machine, lol. I remember the giant manual being the best part of the game. I would look at all the badass art and statistics of the mechanics for hours. It will be cool to see what the game is actually like!
Discovered your channel a few days ago and I've already binge watched 90% of your videos. I hope you someday cover Underail, with the amount of fallout 2 videos I think it might be a game you'd be interested in.
Wonder what it would be like if PGI were to use the graphical layout and engine that they used for MW5 "teaser" video, then turned around and rebuilt MW2:Mercs, in its FULL glory... Story, Travel, The whole 9 yards. After all, story-wise, this is one of the best MW Games to have ever hit the market.
BattleTech was sort of the entire reason for Titans to be added to 40k as GW wanted in on that big ass robot action. Best part is that their Titan game intorduced the Horus Heresy Imperial civil war as they only had one model for the boxed set and needed a reason for the same models to fight eachother.
40K took a lot of inspiration from battletech (and a lot of other things, for that matter) but made them different and interesting enough to not seem like a copy cat, the same way Battletech did from Dune and Macross. Both games narrowly avoided destruction at the hands of Pokemon, which wiped out most TTGs of the time, with battletech moving to MW 1/2 (digital) and 40K releasing their 3rd edition book just in time.
I've always wondered how a crossover with Macross would play out, mostly cause of the design background for Battletech. It'd be pretty cool seeing the various factions respond to NUNS contact
Your videos are quite something, I really enjoy watching them. Thanks for your high quality work. P.S: Also thanks for recommending Battletech, it its really good strategy.
Was just about to fire up Mercenaries to play a couple hours when I saw this pop up in my recommended. Great video! I really appreciate that you added bits from the Mechwarrior's journal. It's all so well written and I think is often overlooked by players. Gives a great taste of the Battletech universe too. It should be noted that the video footage you are using is from the Titanium Edition of the game, which introduced "Dynamic Salvage," allowing for each playthrough to be a lot more varied depending on how you played. The base version of the game has Scripted Salvage, which provides you with weapons and 'mechs at specific points in the game, and can even change depending on what order you choose to do campaigns, or if you fail certain missions throughout each campaign. Also I now consider Wojack Grady to be the canon protagonist for this game from now on.
A little note on mech tonnage. The mechs weigh way more than their listed tonnage. The tonnage value written in TRO's and on record sheets is actually how much weight of parts and equipment the chassis can support.
...what? No, the weight written is the total of the chassis, parts, and armor combined. All these things have individual weights that can be calculated out and add up to the Mech's total weight. Where did you hear that?
Thanks for the amazing content Warlockracy. I found your channel about 2 weeks ago and your videos have inspired me to pick up many classic rpgs like Arcanum, Baldurs gate, and Gothic. I love classic fallout and ive been searching forever for games that capture that experience. I actually havent been able to fully watch your videos on those games yet as to not spoil myself, but your series on Fallout, elder scrolls, and stalker are classics! Thanks for the videos and your dedication to spreading the word and history of these classic games!
The Clans are not space nazis exactly, but they are DEEP into eugenics and distinctly look down on civilians in general. Deeply into the military junta thing too. And by all accounts SHOULD have dissolved a short bit after they got beaten by a combined Inner Sphere, but someone really liked Clan Wolf and Jade Falcon so now one of them rules Terra.
I meant more that their culture was shown to not be superior after that war, and also because they were being influenced by the Inner Sphere into becoming distinctly un-Clanlike@user-lk7cv8vg7r
What a trip down memory lane, thank you for covering this! That intro really hammered home the setting of being a mercenary company in Battletech, the newer games are really lacking in these kinds of impactful cinematics. The other memorable one was Mechcommander's cinematics, all very well done IMO. Mechwarrior 2 was one of the first PC games I played, and sparked my love for big stompy mechs. I got the game in the Titanium Trilogy pack, which included Ghost Bear's Legacy and Mercs. Even though the graphics are really shit by today's standards, back then it was mind-blowingly amazing. I hope you cover the other games in the Battletech series too in the future.
Im one of the newer gen fans of Battletech and that intro shocked me a bit and I love it. It portrays what I wanted and was missing in the newer games. Sure there are a few examples like it but its not the same atmosphere.
My favorite bit of bizarre Mechwarrior lore is how the Clans, due to basically only being able to reproduce and have children when approved by the government eugenics committee have an attitude towards sex that most people in the Inner Sphere find uncomfortable due to the average clanner just walking up to someone they're interested in and asking if they want to fuck. More abhorrent is how incest (due to the aftermentioned lack of risk of unwanted pregnancy) is common, especially in certain castes.
Decent sci-fi is willing to follow ideas to logical but uncomfortable conclusions. It even has the side-benefit, in a sandbox setting like this, of helping you pick a side!
The Clans are a fun mix of various fucked up ideologies. A fun little counterpoint to Wilhelm Reich's disgusting "Sexual Revolution" idea that sexed up kids make for more peaceful/ "Less fascist" adults.
I remember going to the local Elecronic Boutique after school and bought this game for myself mostly because of the cool box art. Little did I know it would start a life long obsession with a game franchise.
It's the first MechWarrior game I played, back in the days. The one game that introduced me to the best sci-fi universe ever: Battletech. I still play this game from time to time. Immortal classic!
Honestly I want more of this. Mostly because Battletech is a very interesting Universe and honestly I wish it didn't have that huge hiccup in the 2000s.
I was born on 1995 so didnt really get a chance to play mech warrior and iv been wondering wtf happened. Why is there an 18 year gan between MW4 and 5? My first introsuction to the series was actualy mechassault 2. Though i didnt find out about battletech/mech warrior for like a decade.
This was the first Mechwarrior game I played. Could not run it on my crappy 486 rig so I had to play it on a friend's PC which had one of those fancy Pentium CPUs :D
20:15 Reminds me of that one map from Mechwarrior Living Lengeds, Extremity I think it was called. You were fighting on a rotating asteroid and the temperature would fluctuate from 250C to -40C or something like that.
Mechwarrior 2 and Ghost Bears Legacy were amazing games. I'd played Earthseige earlier, on my 486, and finished it a few times. But I got a copy of MW2 with my Matrox Mystique graphics card, and it was surreal level good. Probably the best version of that generation of 3D cards, even without the bilinear filtering of the 3Dfx version, the Matrox version just had better colours, crisper edges, darker atmosphere and the best music. Even after I bought a 3Dfx card, I always used the Matrox to play Mechwarrior. Still have the entire OST on a playlist on my phone.
You should make another video of a similar length to the Deus Ex one. That video kept me occupied for days after I got evicted/assaulted and had to pull my life together again. I cannot understate how much happier I was to almost have company in your videos at the time.
Everything on this video is spot on, commentary, storytelling, the voice, the audio and gameplay. I love MW so it is easy to get me, but i truly enjoy this care in content!
I love mechwarrior and armored core serieses. Especially early games for armored core. We don't have enough political/corporate mech pilot mercenary simulators.
an instant classic, maybe one of my favorites from your channel. this era of science fiction worldbuilding makes me feel so warm inside would love to see content for the new tamriel rebuilt update... ty for everything warlockracy
I was very disappointed with the modern remake of MW2. It has no mechs in it at all, it's just got soldiers fighting in various modern day setting on earth. Not even on other planets!
Starting the new year with another amazing video! Thank you Warlockracy! You have quickly become one of the best in the business for me! Keep up the good work!
Its clear there is a lot of world building put into this game's universe. I wouldn't play this but I do appreciate the menu readability. The Robot Lady voice is reminding me of the Vault computer from the Fallout New California mod. Probably a mild coincidence. They did have a giant mech chilling in that mod.
I enjoyed this. I didn't get into mech games until Mechassault on the Xbox, which me and my sisters loved. MA 1&2 are classics for us, and we enjoy their silliness but also awesome and fun combat.
Happy New Year, Mr. Warlockracy! Also, a question - if we're already dipping our toes in MW 2, how do you feel about exploring series like Earthsiege or Heavy Gear?
@@Iymarra I know this is months late, but you just caused me to flashback to my childhood where, 20 years ago, I finally beat Starsiege's single play campaign for the very first time. I even remember the mechs having the stupid name of HERCULAN: Huniform Emulated Robotized Combat Unit with Large Articultered Navigation.
I've known nothing about this series, but I love mechs and politics. So thanks, I think I'll be looking into this series. Fantastic video Warlockracy, always a treat to watch.
Should really get into the novels then. There are some stinkers in there (like the one at 33:14 "Far Country" omg so bad, the contents were banned from being referenced or used in any other battletech material!) or (only in the original German print edition) the one where it turns out that the Battletech universe can be accessed from this very Earth by hightech simulator cockpits... but thankfully these days you have the internet and can look up timelines, user lists and whatnot.
Seeing some of the licensed designs that they took from mecha anime is really surreal since im a big mecha anime fan its like if you saw a 40k marine in halo and in universe it was completely normal
As someone who recently got into Battletech! I love this so much, and I really appreciate the work you did pulling up old TV footage, that's really going above and beyond!
I love all things Battletech so I was very happy to see some Mechwarrior content. Especially glad with the cursory overview of the BT universe too. Well done!
Huh, I was just reinstalling all the old mechwarrior games just yesterday, and now one of favorite youtubers drops a MW2 video? Year's starting out good.
A little off-brand for this channel; based on an old script I wrote two years ago. Wasteland 3 is next.
Most of the gameplay footage is borrowed from @SirxMMPD who runs a Mech 2 channel: www.youtube.com/@SirxMMPD/videos
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Damn, so you don't think you plan to make a video on the rest of the MechWarrior games?
I want to get into BT mod scene
Well done! I Enjoyed it! I had been wondering if this was still coming. I think it was worth the wait! Cheers!
The Gippers are the most true to life US faction in gaming
Wasteland 3, huh?
I've been trying to play it, but the writing and quest design was just too off putting for me.
Usually feels like the game is constantly railroading you into outright silly binary choices and then shaming the player for making either choice. There's no need for a "right" choice, but everything is so contrived to the point where it feels like the player has no actual agency.
I'm expecting a well-thought out video like usual. Maybe you'll convince me to try it again, maybe to not bother trying.
This was one of the first games me and grandpa played on his computer in the 90s, i was 11.. He passed away in june. Thanks for helping me unlock memories
I relate to this a lot. My grandpa passed away in August and he showed me all kinds of games in the early 2000s. Anytime I see a game I played in that time it's a weird feeling.
@@grundlehunter69 strike commander, quest for glory, the original swat series. I even use computers to make living for myself now within the transportation industry. Thanks grandpa miss you man!
This was the first PC game I bought. Used to play it on my dad's work computer.
Godspeed
Oh man, the memories are flooding back from my childhood. Actually living the Clan invasion of the Inner Sphere as a "free-birth" mercenary! Please re-release this great series on Steam. Heavy Gear 1 and 2, while we're on the subject. =P
Aerospace actually does function in this game. Here's how it works. Unlike lance mechs, Aerospace will spawn far off in the distance at the beginning of any mission. Upon loading in, call the Aerospace to form on you or attack a target, and then wait roughly a minute or two. You'll see them roll up from the horizon on your radar. If you don't give it any orders, he won't show up or do anything.
you are telling me this 20 years too late...
Are you bloody serious? I always wondered why that aerospace was just parked outside the field.
Damn, why didn't the game just explain this?! You've reactivated a 20-year forgotten memory of disappointment. If I ever revisit MW2 I'll have to try it as intended.
Lol I forget how I stumbled across that as a kid, I think I hit alt+x or something and heard "Sir Yes Sir" and I was like "Huh" and then eventually a plane shows up.
@@Jerad2142yep, alt-x. It would still glitch sometimes though. Especially if you were playing the ice-ship campaign, the aero fighter support would be thousands of meters below you close the the “floor” of the level
I always loved the fake contract. Ostensibly Comstar and Outreach are supposed to be making sure you don't get those kinds of contracts, but you'd always imagine at least a few of them would drop in an unwary mercenary group's lap over a career. Its also always fun to beat the missions that are against the odds, like you can do in Mercs 4, and its especially fun when your character lies about it afterwards to not seem like a massive chump.
Did you hear the one about that one guy and the phone company getting into an argument? It didn't end well for the phone company; I can tell you that much.
THIS WAS UNEXPECTED.
And yet I’m so hyped for him to cover this game. Even though I’m of the newer gen of BattleTech players, it’s always fun to see people who played through the older titles show off their love for the series.
You’ve hinted your familiarity with Mechwarrior in your previous videos, it’s awesome that this series is getting some love. Superb work as always man
Mechwarrior 2. I remember hearing of this game on a forum 10 years back when one of its developers, Eric Peterson was around. He brought up the game when he talked about his experience as a developer. Sadly he passed away a few years later in 2015.
Seriously, not only are Warlockracy's videos just crazy entertaining *and* informative, he puts out so many at once! It's absolutely incredible! This guy rules.
The ending cutscene for this game (Battle of Dinju Pass 42:46, look up Mechwarrior 2 ending cinematic if you wanna see it) is possibly the hardest FMV of all time. My favorite comment about it is "i watch this once a day instead of doing excercises. it keeps me in shape". The soundtrack (Gotterdammerung) is the best song in the entire Battletech series.
In general the older Battletech games had highly memorable cinematics, especially the MechCommander intro. I first saw that as a kid and have loved the Battletech universe ever since.
Fun Fact : All of the mechs in the final FMV were taken either from previous FMVs, or the Mauler which was taken from the box art.
It's a clever reuse of assets to save time and production resources.
@@AlcomIsst Yep, from what I can tell the Timber Wolf is from the MechWarrior 2 base game intro, the Mad Dog and Kodiak are from the intro to MechWarrior 2: Ghost Bear's Legacy, and finally the Zeus, Catapult, and Atlas are from the intro to MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries. A lot of Battletech fans over the years have pointed out that the Smoke Jaguars weren't supposed to have Kodiaks at the Battle of Dinju Pass, but it was done for time saving. And the end result looked totally badass. IMO the Kodiak was one of the few mechs (like the Mauler) that actually looked pretty good in the low poly FMV format.
This video spurred me down a battletech rabbit hole, and coming back after a few weeks of lore videos its very funny in hindsight how Rasalhague cut the reward money in half after not believing in the clan story and then they proceeded to get mauled into almost non-existence when the clan invasion actually started
In the final mission with Hanson's RoughRiders, if you shoot the cockpit out of Deadeye(quick before he kills you) you can actually get lucky and salvage the Catapult, which you wouldn't normally have access to for the first hour or two of the game.
In the DOS or Windows version?
@@aquarius5719 windows. The original dos version had a preset loot table that the game rolled against whether or not you killed anything. 1.1 patch and later added dynamic loot to the game and made head shots a lot more valuable. The catapult is one of the easiest cockpits to hit and since I stacked mediums on my commando, it was an easy kill. You can also salvage the crab and sentinel on the kurita mission that becomes available after the RoughRiders one. Easy full lance in early game.
One thing thats kinda intriguing about Battletech is that a lot of its early mech design just straight up is Macross with a new coat of paint. They actually got into legal trouble with Harmony Gold, who was producing Robotech at the time (basically, Macross rewritten and mashed up with two other mech shows so they could get it syndicated on television) due to copyright issues (basically, Battletechs owners got the rights to the Macross mechs from the Japanese producers of the show, but the US didn't recognize Japanese copyright at the time, so the legal holder to those designs was Harmony Golds Robotech).
They eventually managed to settle and quietly redesigned the Macross mechs to look slightly different, but with Harmony Gold on its last legs (the animation department of HG is basically kept alive by a single person and seems solely to exist to pretend that Robotech is still relevant. Once that person dies, HG is expected to just turn into the real estate company it actually is these days), Battletech has been reintroducing those old mech designs.
man just seeing harmony gold's name makes my blood boil the whole western world missing almost the whole world of macross because of what is basically them pulling illegal ass shit and getting away with it
@@LunaPPK harmony gold is definitely one of the biggest mixed bags out there. On one hand, they are pretty much THE reason that we have an anime fanbase here in the west since they were pretty much the first distributor (discounting some European kid shows that happened to get contracted out to studio Tokyo in the 70s like Alfred Jodocus Kwak and Maya the Bee), on the other hand... Harmony Gold basically massacred the shows to do so. Not to mention their IP hoarding of Macross.
Very messy, all things considered.
Then, the courts ruled that Harmony Gold did not, in fact, have the visual rights to the mechs.
Also, Harmony Gold actually has ties with the Italian Mafia
My father was/is super into battle tech when he was my age, some of my first small toys were minis from the ttrpg games. We still have all of his books and expansions sitting somewhere in his basement. Good times
Same for me. Had a Hatchetman and a Rifleman from when the cartoon was still popular, then my father gave me a pewter Atlas. It was one of those things that became a lifelong love for big stompy robots.
I worked on the 3DFX and Multiplayer patch of this game- nice to see someone still doing videos on it. This patch also added "dynamic salvage" which was a massive improvement over the scripted salvage, although you could break the game somewhat by being sure to only shoot off legs. The game was highly advanced in the rendering area, being able to render resolutions beyond what most machines at the time could handle. When I first saw the clouds reflect off the canopy glass in 3DFX mode, I just went "...WOW". One flaw in the design is it follows the table-top rules too closely allowing clever players to break the meta. Like Machine guns suck at 1pt damage per shot, but they shoot at a high rate. Thus, you could do more damage per second than the most powerful weapons in the game by strapping on 20 machine guns with no heat generation (again- TT rules). The same was true of inferno bomb 'overloads'. This is why later iterations of Mechwarrior have a hard-point system. The multiplayer was very buggy and unstable at first as they were basically retro-fitting a single-player game. It did end up being playable, but weird things could still happen.
That's so funny. I remember experimenting with an all Mgun load out on MW2 and it just deleted legs.
I quit doing it though because you still take a ton of damage getting close enough to hit, so it's only viable if you have a small number of targets for that mission.
Awesome to read this. I was an old player of Titanium editions and played a lot of multiplayer through Kali (who here remembers that)? Clan Wolf and later Wolf-In-Exile.
honored to represent Chungolia on the anti-clan action committee, thank u mr. warlockracy
I still remember going over to my buddies house after school every day for weeks in a row so we could play this on his dad's computer. I was absolutely blown away, it made my Genesis games feel like toys in comparison. This wasn't a toy, it wasn't just a game, it was a new universe for me. One of my greatest gaming regrets is not having the hardware at home to enjoy the computer games of the 90's as they arrived. Thankfully I had some rich friends, at least. Thanks, Justin.
Things will be different depending on your camera angle!
I've rotated my phone (and thereby my camera's angle) and things are indeed different!
"Kill the meat, Save the metal" is such a strong quote...
that is exactly what i expected out of a American-Made "Armored Core".
Battletech came first man, armored core is japanese battletech
@@viktordickinson7844Not in any way. They both have mechs. That’s it. Battletech is more like slow lumbering chunks of metal.
.
Armored core feels like a free trail of parkinsons.
.
Also mechwarrior doesn’t have the megastructures that armored core does.
@@comradecameron3726 exactly, it's battletech but from the land of the rising sun. also, there are megastructures, you just dont see them in the game, more of a lore/tabletop thing.
@@viktordickinson7844 What? Exactly?
They have nothing in common.
They both have designs by Shouji Kawamori, except Kawamori actually got paid for Armored Core
Battletech by HBS is my favorite Mechwarrior/Battletech game too! Man it still has what I think is the best opening cutscene of any game I've ever played. Short, to the point, beautiful, tells you everything you need to know with a minimum of text.
Also it's sandbox, so after the campaign you can still play with your collection of death machines
The writing in the main story is kinda meh, but the career mode and mods are very good
You probably know this but your approach to lore is seriously thorough, you present a lot of information in the way a user would naturally discover it. Very well done, Mechwarrior is one of my all-time favorite series.
I remember my dad had it. And it came with a booklet that was listing all the mercenary factions and people that where part of them. A little like a big recruitment pamphlet. It was great, even though I had no understanding of Battletech at that time. My brother and I emersed ourselves completely in that game.
My introduction to Mechwarrior/BattleTech was the OG Mechwarrior 2 that I found for $2 at a yard sale. I would give almost anything to have all the old Mechwarrior games remastered and put on Steam.
MechWarrior 2 was my introduction to Battletech some twenty-ish years ago. Just the other day, my son and I were playing a lance vs. lance match on tabletop. I'll love this franchise forever.
Mine was 4
I was not expecting a video so soon but your quality and production has always been solid, Love your videos man and happy new year.
Zhukov heavy tank: published in a BattleTech sourcebook in 1989 with that illustration you showed, 7 years before Red Alert was published.
That will be an interesting watch. Hopefully MW3 and MW4 are in the cards as well sometime in the future. Thx.
Modern Warfare 3 & 4?
@@EmeraldLavigne 😀 I had something else in mind ...
@@EmeraldLavigne actually I wouldn't mind that. Be kinda cool do get a non-shitty Russian opinion on those games.
This game was always a little mysterious to me in a somewhat peculiar way due to how I came about finding it.
There were a brief few years I spent during the start-to-middle of my time in highschool wherein I'd take trips into my hometown to scope out two out of the three thriftstores we had for stuff that appealed to me. At one point in time, a very particular one was run by a family who were able to take in a number of very interestingly diverse items for a shop in the thick of the deep south (I'm from Alabama) and two of the items I can remember with clarity were BattleTech-related. The first was a boxed compilation of DOS games, 'Triple Action - Vol. 2' by Prism Leisure Co., which included 'The Crescent Hawk's Revenge' and the second was this game, Mechwarrior II, just the CD in a loose jewel case.
Oddly enough I was only ever to get the older DOS game to run, but even as a teen I knew Win95 games were a shot in the dark. Sometimes a Win98 title would run on my crummy 2012 laptop though it'd usually have to be 3D or use Directx -- Anyways, the point is that I could never get this one game to run and I've only seen a little gameplay of it sometime after I bought it. That copy is long gone, along with CD copies of Duke Nukem 3D, Revenant, and other DOS games that were burned onto homebrew blank CDs.
Sadly, that thriftstore was eventually bought out by another family and a lot of the techy stuff started disappearing. Most I found in there after the buyout was a Phillips CD-i that was missing a controller and only had some FMV golf game sole separately, which I had barely any interest in, *but probably would've went for these days.* The last few times I went in there they were primarily focused on selling typical southern knicknacks, pottery, homemade crafts --- and I understand that all has it's crowd, but all the older PC and videogame stuff would have easily made them just as much of a profit. Though, I moved out earlier last year, and I don't have any interest in ever going back (aside from maybe visiting SOME of my family, but even then... Eh.)
I haven't even watched the video yet, I'm paused at 1:19, Warlockracy is an uploaded I've come to enjoy so I know the video will be of his usual quality. I'm simply reminiscing over just having seen the game's title again after so much time has passed. Maybe I could find some way to play it these days now that I have a bit more knowledge on getting older stuff to run on PCs. Or there might be some modern-enabled rereleased that I haven't looked into yet.
... Welp, back to lurking on RUclips(! ! !)
The thing I love most about this universe is they have planned out the common languages, and religions, in the regions of space. It's very interesting to see a far future with Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, being worshiped by people who may be speaking a language composed of 3 or more recognizable ones today in some odd homogeny. It of course all comes together when those same people then smash giant mechs into each other for money, homeland, prestige, and survival.
This game was my jam growing up. Thank you for covering it! I hope you cover other MechWarrior titles!
YESS the pods!!! I played in one of these at some kind of mall or arcade when I was little, maybe 6 yrs old. I think the ones I tried were a whiteish gray color on the outside. My dad took me to them one time. I never hear people bring these up, we need more stuff like that today, real physical sims for these kinds of games are so freaking cool!
0:23 I could have swore that the newscaster was saying "MethWarrior 2" 😂
Nothing like a good blast from the past to get 2023 started. This game a lot of my childhood!
I don't know if you played Interstate 76 but that was another "how dare you have story like this" shocker for the 90's.
It wasn't great it was just bizarre and great!
RIp scholastic school book catalogs getting me into 90's C&C, x-wig/tie fighter and hordes of other classics.
Thanks for the video!
Sounds just like my childhood. So many great games
This was very nostalgic for me. When you look past the bugs this was a GOOD game with a GOOD story back in the 90's
Man, every single game you end up talking about is either really fucking good or super interesting (yes, even Alcatraz and Marauder). I love this channel.
Check out Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries. It's on abandonware sites, easier to run on Modern Hardware and in my personal opinion the best in the series
you mean - especially Marauder and Planet Alcatraz? Because they're absurdly janky and not for everyone.
@@cyberninjazero5659 and most importantly it had the best commentator of Solaris, Duncan fisher.
@@SpecShadow Yeah, I actually played Marauder before (because I played 7.62 High Calibre) but I just couldn't be arsed to play through the entire thing. So it was actually really nice to finally see the whole game myself (and get some much-needed context)! And I was secretly hoping for an Alcatraz video from the very first time I discovered his Morrowind videos.
@@cyberninjazero5659 Yeah, 4 Mercenaries is fucking awesome.
Having currently put well over 500h into MW5 running tons of mods, it really pains me how much better the presentation and flair is in MW2.
Also I appreciate you diving into really niche games, without needing to find the worst ones.
Thats because PGI, the Dev for MWO and MW5 are a complete joke, a bunch of Canadian doushbags.
Enjoying mech games is true suffering. No modern semi simulation Gungriffon, and Mechwarrior just shambles along in devs incompetent hands.
Sigh, Piranha Games. I remember the 500 dollar golden Timber Wolf skin for MWO. I appreciate that they still try with MW5 but man the missions are boring.
@@Atrahasis7 same for tank combat fans. Esp realistic tank combat. You basicly only have war thunder and while it could be worse. Damn the devs are some greedy russian biased motherfuckers.
Nixe trip down memory lane. MW & MW2 (w/all the expansions) is what had my buy my first PC & got me hooked on the BT Universe in 95. I played all subsequent games at least a bit & hot my boys into them. I played the tabletop Heroclix game in the early 2000s & now in '23 am getting intonthe OG BT tabletop. The game & cuts ends were fantastic & the opening scene for MW2 & the Ghost Bear expansion still give me chills. Apparently MW2 is shareware now & I was really tempted to get it running & play the campaign. Anyways thanks for this video!
This game has such a cool artstyle. It manages to look very realistic while being low res.
The ending of this video has been nothing short of life-changing.
Thank you, Mr. Warlockracy.
Bro the video came out 4 minutes ago lol.
His name is mad prophet for a reason
I think some of my earliest memories were of MW2 Mercs, picking it up at a Micro Center along with the strategy guide. I still have both the guide and the original CD..
One of the first games I ever beat. Such a classic. Thanks for sharing!
Such memories! I remember that I didn't know much about Battletech when I first played this, and got taken completely by surprise by the clan invasion. I remember getting my shit wrecked by them on the Oberon mission. The follow-up mission to escape was also super hard (at least when I was young), and I remember that's where I got stuck the first time I played the game.
One other neat thing about the game is that the campaigns are somewhat dynamic, and even failing a mission outright won't necessarily end the game. For example, I remember having trouble with the ice-hauler mission, and because I failed, I got a mission to basically escape rather than continuing.
Also, an interesting fact about his game is that originally, the salvage was completely hardcoded into each mission. You could and would never get anything different than what was scripted. Dynamic salvage was added in (I think) the Direct3d version of the game.
I had hoped as a kid, that at a certain point of graphical fidelity, many devs would feel satisfied and divert much more work into plotting dynamic playthroughs. Sadly this remains mostly restricted to sandbox RPG's. Real-time RTS games would especially benefit from dynamic campaign design, but they almost never bother. Oh, one mission failed? You just lost the whole war.
Cool runthrough, I did enjoy MW2/mercs back in the day. Fun bug is if you throw / quit out of the final solaris match, then do Wotan, you'll get a madcat as loot.
Nice pic, I picked this out myself, for reasons. lol.
Praise The Sisters, of BATTLE!
I remember my dad having this game when I was growing up but I was too young to really understand how to actually play it competently so I never got that far into it. Eventually my uncle got me Mech Commander 2 and Mech Warrior 3, which ended up being my proper introduction to the Battlemech series. But I always wanted to go back to two and give it a proper try. Just to see what it was about. Sadly couldn't get it to work, though. So yeah, thanks for making a video about this little gem of a game!
Ah the Ying to MW4's yang. Glad you covered this. Its wild how the series's 'feel' has changed over time.
It's wild we went from story missions that introduce you to the factions, where you see dropships and jumpships in orbit and aero space fighters that are hireable to MW5 which is spawn on randomly generated map to do generic randomly generated walk-there-shoot this mission.
The Atlas defeating the Kodiak is also ironic considering the former was designed by the leader of the original clanners. I played the majority of Mechwarrior 4, I think I played part of Mechwarrior 1, and I read one of the books. I'm still shockingly ignorant of the lore though, so I appreciate the nuggets in this video.
If you want lore look up a channel called Black Plants legion. It is all about lore. Good day and God bless.
My first MechWarrior game was MechWarrior 4: Vengeance. This series will always hold a special place in my heart.
Thanks Harmony Gold for taking this from us
That company is vaporware in a nutshell. They don't even put out a product.
I somehow ended up with this game when I was 9. I had no idea what I was doing, and it crashed constantly. I was never able to finish the first mission on my Windows 98 machine, lol. I remember the giant manual being the best part of the game. I would look at all the badass art and statistics of the mechanics for hours. It will be cool to see what the game is actually like!
Discovered your channel a few days ago and I've already binge watched 90% of your videos. I hope you someday cover Underail, with the amount of fallout 2 videos I think it might be a game you'd be interested in.
I remember this game. It was super cool and innovative for its time. Happy New Year!
Who knew people just wanted to play as a mercenary mech pilot?
Me, I knew.
Wonder what it would be like if PGI were to use the graphical layout and engine that they used for MW5 "teaser" video, then turned around and rebuilt MW2:Mercs, in its FULL glory... Story, Travel, The whole 9 yards. After all, story-wise, this is one of the best MW Games to have ever hit the market.
BattleTech was sort of the entire reason for Titans to be added to 40k as GW wanted in on that big ass robot action. Best part is that their Titan game intorduced the Horus Heresy Imperial civil war as they only had one model for the boxed set and needed a reason for the same models to fight eachother.
FOR THE EMPEROR!
40K took a lot of inspiration from battletech (and a lot of other things, for that matter) but made them different and interesting enough to not seem like a copy cat, the same way Battletech did from Dune and Macross.
Both games narrowly avoided destruction at the hands of Pokemon, which wiped out most TTGs of the time, with battletech moving to MW 1/2 (digital) and 40K releasing their 3rd edition book just in time.
I've always wondered how a crossover with Macross would play out, mostly cause of the design background for Battletech. It'd be pretty cool seeing the various factions respond to NUNS contact
Your videos are quite something, I really enjoy watching them. Thanks for your high quality work. P.S: Also thanks for recommending Battletech, it its really good strategy.
Was just about to fire up Mercenaries to play a couple hours when I saw this pop up in my recommended. Great video! I really appreciate that you added bits from the Mechwarrior's journal. It's all so well written and I think is often overlooked by players. Gives a great taste of the Battletech universe too.
It should be noted that the video footage you are using is from the Titanium Edition of the game, which introduced "Dynamic Salvage," allowing for each playthrough to be a lot more varied depending on how you played. The base version of the game has Scripted Salvage, which provides you with weapons and 'mechs at specific points in the game, and can even change depending on what order you choose to do campaigns, or if you fail certain missions throughout each campaign.
Also I now consider Wojack Grady to be the canon protagonist for this game from now on.
A little note on mech tonnage. The mechs weigh way more than their listed tonnage. The tonnage value written in TRO's and on record sheets is actually how much weight of parts and equipment the chassis can support.
100 tons always did feel a little low for how big an Atlas is supposed to be.
...what? No, the weight written is the total of the chassis, parts, and armor combined. All these things have individual weights that can be calculated out and add up to the Mech's total weight. Where did you hear that?
Awesome video as always! Thank you for playing through and preserving the stories and quirks in these old games.
Warlock thank you so much for making videos every time you upload is a treat for me your videos are awesome
Thanks for the amazing content Warlockracy. I found your channel about 2 weeks ago and your videos have inspired me to pick up many classic rpgs like Arcanum, Baldurs gate, and Gothic. I love classic fallout and ive been searching forever for games that capture that experience. I actually havent been able to fully watch your videos on those games yet as to not spoil myself, but your series on Fallout, elder scrolls, and stalker are classics! Thanks for the videos and your dedication to spreading the word and history of these classic games!
The Clans are not space nazis exactly, but they are DEEP into eugenics and distinctly look down on civilians in general. Deeply into the military junta thing too. And by all accounts SHOULD have dissolved a short bit after they got beaten by a combined Inner Sphere, but someone really liked Clan Wolf and Jade Falcon so now one of them rules Terra.
I meant more that their culture was shown to not be superior after that war, and also because they were being influenced by the Inner Sphere into becoming distinctly un-Clanlike@user-lk7cv8vg7r
What a trip down memory lane, thank you for covering this!
That intro really hammered home the setting of being a mercenary company in Battletech, the newer games are really lacking in these kinds of impactful cinematics. The other memorable one was Mechcommander's cinematics, all very well done IMO.
Mechwarrior 2 was one of the first PC games I played, and sparked my love for big stompy mechs. I got the game in the Titanium Trilogy pack, which included Ghost Bear's Legacy and Mercs.
Even though the graphics are really shit by today's standards, back then it was mind-blowingly amazing.
I hope you cover the other games in the Battletech series too in the future.
Im one of the newer gen fans of Battletech and that intro shocked me a bit and I love it. It portrays what I wanted and was missing in the newer games. Sure there are a few examples like it but its not the same atmosphere.
My favorite bit of bizarre Mechwarrior lore is how the Clans, due to basically only being able to reproduce and have children when approved by the government eugenics committee have an attitude towards sex that most people in the Inner Sphere find uncomfortable due to the average clanner just walking up to someone they're interested in and asking if they want to fuck. More abhorrent is how incest (due to the aftermentioned lack of risk of unwanted pregnancy) is common, especially in certain castes.
Decent sci-fi is willing to follow ideas to logical but uncomfortable conclusions. It even has the side-benefit, in a sandbox setting like this, of helping you pick a side!
The Clans are a fun mix of various fucked up ideologies. A fun little counterpoint to Wilhelm Reich's disgusting "Sexual Revolution" idea that sexed up kids make for more peaceful/ "Less fascist" adults.
I remember going to the local Elecronic Boutique after school and bought this game for myself mostly because of the cool box art. Little did I know it would start a life long obsession with a game franchise.
I started with Mechwarrior 3. Loved that game. Whoever did all the voice acting was incredible.
Truly the successor to Space Invaders.
It's the first MechWarrior game I played, back in the days. The one game that introduced me to the best sci-fi universe ever: Battletech. I still play this game from time to time. Immortal classic!
Honestly I want more of this. Mostly because Battletech is a very interesting Universe and honestly I wish it didn't have that huge hiccup in the 2000s.
I was born on 1995 so didnt really get a chance to play mech warrior and iv been wondering wtf happened. Why is there an 18 year gan between MW4 and 5? My first introsuction to the series was actualy mechassault 2. Though i didnt find out about battletech/mech warrior for like a decade.
This was the first Mechwarrior game I played. Could not run it on my crappy 486 rig so I had to play it on a friend's PC which had one of those fancy Pentium CPUs :D
I hope one day the old Mechwarrior games comes to GOG or Steam.
Effin love mechs!
Just started watching Battletech history and behold, a video uploaded just yesterday! Thanks man!
20:15 Reminds me of that one map from Mechwarrior Living Lengeds, Extremity I think it was called. You were fighting on a rotating asteroid and the temperature would fluctuate from 250C to -40C or something like that.
Yes, that was crazy
Mechwarrior 2 and Ghost Bears Legacy were amazing games. I'd played Earthseige earlier, on my 486, and finished it a few times. But I got a copy of MW2 with my Matrox Mystique graphics card, and it was surreal level good. Probably the best version of that generation of 3D cards, even without the bilinear filtering of the 3Dfx version, the Matrox version just had better colours, crisper edges, darker atmosphere and the best music. Even after I bought a 3Dfx card, I always used the Matrox to play Mechwarrior.
Still have the entire OST on a playlist on my phone.
Love some Mechwarrior/Battletech. Always had a soft spot for the series.
Yes! MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries, my first introduction to the Battletech universe as a 10 year old kid. Loved this game growing up lol.
You should make another video of a similar length to the Deus Ex one. That video kept me occupied for days after I got evicted/assaulted and had to pull my life together again. I cannot understate how much happier I was to almost have company in your videos at the time.
Everything on this video is spot on, commentary, storytelling, the voice, the audio and gameplay. I love MW so it is easy to get me, but i truly enjoy this care in content!
Happy New Year to you and yours. I always wait for your videos, I love your style of delivery and storytelling.
OMG, I thougth you would leave it at the youtube short, I'm so glad there is a full video on this!
I love mechwarrior and armored core serieses. Especially early games for armored core.
We don't have enough political/corporate mech pilot mercenary simulators.
an instant classic, maybe one of my favorites from your channel. this era of science fiction worldbuilding makes me feel so warm inside
would love to see content for the new tamriel rebuilt update... ty for everything warlockracy
Love this game :)
Such a welcome surprise, nice to see more battletech content on the youtube and especially from your channel man
I can tell this game is fiction based up the fact there's someone made Alexander Kerensky is leading something successful
Love seeing these older games being brought to light again!
I was very disappointed with the modern remake of MW2.
It has no mechs in it at all, it's just got soldiers fighting in various modern day setting on earth. Not even on other planets!
Not to mention it has no relation with battletech universe. Nothing. It's a generic cod like fps. Activision has ruined it
Starting the new year with another amazing video! Thank you Warlockracy! You have quickly become one of the best in the business for me! Keep up the good work!
Its clear there is a lot of world building put into this game's universe. I wouldn't play this but I do appreciate the menu readability.
The Robot Lady voice is reminding me of the Vault computer from the Fallout New California mod. Probably a mild coincidence. They did have a giant mech chilling in that mod.
I enjoyed this. I didn't get into mech games until Mechassault on the Xbox, which me and my sisters loved. MA 1&2 are classics for us, and we enjoy their silliness but also awesome and fun combat.
Happy New Year, Mr. Warlockracy! Also, a question - if we're already dipping our toes in MW 2, how do you feel about exploring series like Earthsiege or Heavy Gear?
Earthsiege... The name I haven't heard for 20 years
@@Warlockracy Oh boy, but Starsiege.
@@Iymarra I know this is months late, but you just caused me to flashback to my childhood where, 20 years ago, I finally beat Starsiege's single play campaign for the very first time. I even remember the mechs having the stupid name of HERCULAN: Huniform Emulated Robotized Combat Unit with Large Articultered Navigation.
@@combustionwhisperer461 Nah no worries man, it's always good to see people who played and enjoyed Starsiege. Be nice to get a retrospective some day.
I remember back in the day, this game was a freebie with basically any 3dFX card
RIP, Holly. You were a good boss for that one cutscene. I put a little plaque in the breakroom for you.
I've known nothing about this series, but I love mechs and politics. So thanks, I think I'll be looking into this series. Fantastic video Warlockracy, always a treat to watch.
Should really get into the novels then. There are some stinkers in there (like the one at 33:14 "Far Country" omg so bad, the contents were banned from being referenced or used in any other battletech material!) or (only in the original German print edition) the one where it turns out that the Battletech universe can be accessed from this very Earth by hightech simulator cockpits... but thankfully these days you have the internet and can look up timelines, user lists and whatnot.
Seeing some of the licensed designs that they took from mecha anime is really surreal since im a big mecha anime fan its like if you saw a 40k marine in halo and in universe it was completely normal
Heh, I still have both of these still in the boxes w/manuals in a tote in the mancave. A bunch of others too, going back to win 95 MS-DOS. Fun stuff.
The clan icons remind of 90s water stickers you find in crisp packets or bubblegum packs
As someone who recently got into Battletech! I love this so much, and I really appreciate the work you did pulling up old TV footage, that's really going above and beyond!
welcome to the community. It's great to hear that people are still getting into it. Just avoid those clanner types, they are weird...
That final news clip juxtaposing MechWarrior 2 and the O.J. Simpson trial is wild
I love all things Battletech so I was very happy to see some Mechwarrior content. Especially glad with the cursory overview of the BT universe too. Well done!
Huh, I was just reinstalling all the old mechwarrior games just yesterday, and now one of favorite youtubers drops a MW2 video? Year's starting out good.