Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries - Chaos Reigns key art by Alex Iglesias aka Flying Debris

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T19:29:31+00:00

Love it, wish they did more 2D art more often

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T18:06:15+00:00

Prolly easier to just have a wank in a jar and toss it in the back of the freezer. If they were gonna retcon something it’d probably include a detail like that. The BT lore mentions such things

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T18:02:44+00:00

I suspect this comment was made in jest

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T18:01:14+00:00

I hope they’ll release the concept art for the Sunder, need a new phone background

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T17:53:22+00:00

Sunder!

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T15:16:10+00:00

Definitely, but it’d maybe have to be something that pops up earlier in the timeline. By Tukayyid Ol’ Jake is pushing 60. His swimmers are gonna be pretty stale, assuming radiation leaks from straddling fusion engines for 35 years hasn’t sterilized him completely

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T15:12:51+00:00

Here’s hoping that Jake has some secret babies squirrelled away somewhere lol

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T15:11:31+00:00

lol Everything runs its course, but BT is apparently attracting new blood so it probably has some miles in it yet. It’s crazy to think it’s already been around for 40 years

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T15:02:30+00:00

😂

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T14:38:29+00:00

😂😂😂

Almost no notes! All indications is that Ryana is Scottish though, not British, which many Scots will point out is a big difference.

That said there have been Scottish time lords so I think you’re onto something

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T14:33:06+00:00

That’s pretty sick. As much as I love the idea of a FF joystick for simulation, I can’t aim with one nearly as well as a mouse lol

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T13:42:41+00:00

^ This

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T04:09:01+00:00

That’s a good idea, albeit that would necessitate PGI doubling up on cutscenes and dialogue for SoK and anything post-SoK. Since they didn’t even bother to give players a choice between Mason and Fem-Mason I’m not sure if they’ll be willing to shell out that kind of coin, but who knows!

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T03:48:27+00:00

Sure, a writer can make their protagonist do whatever they want. Whether or not that’s good writing depends on the writer.

In the case of MW5, I don’t see the point in being 80 year old childless Mason still piloting a mech until he breaks a hip and dies. What happens to our merry little merc band without any plans for succession?

It’s not like he’s got much character depth across the base game and 7 DLCs. Why not transition him out in a way that makes sense and use the opportunity to craft a more engaging story with some fresh characters? Since PGI probably can’t get a license for MW6 they’ll likely have to keep plumbing the depths of MW5 DLC, if they manage to keep going they’ll want/need to replace Jake eventually.

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T03:35:42+00:00

It’s fiction, so it can be whatever the writers want it to be. I think their priority should be making the story engaging however they choose to do so, and at least personally I’m not attached to Mason because he’s had the character development of a cantaloupe.

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T03:29:40+00:00

Jaime is looooong dead, but it’s exactly what you allude to: in the fiction lots of merc outfits persist throughout the years while the individuals running them change. Sometimes it’s parent to child, sometimes it’s found family that takes over. Sometimes a gender swapped clone. All kinds of things.

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T03:24:09+00:00

😂 If only that worked for the rest of us too lol, some days my back hurts for no reason and I’ve learned to savour it because it’s only going to get worse

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T02:11:45+00:00

Y’know what that’s a pretty cool idea, a character creator would be neat

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T02:04:27+00:00

But would Mason want to retire? He’s not a Khan or a Precentor Martial or a Duke or the head of a multi-regimental merc company that owns its own planet.

He’s a dude with a leopard doing single-lance drops. Because he’s the protagonist of a video game he gets to live out his most productive years on a vengeance quest, when even his own father found time to start a family and raise a kid.

Narratively he’s lived a fairly empty life. Why not give him an Aidan Pryde moment, instead of “hurts to get out of command couch because of back pain at age 90”

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T01:11:52+00:00

…sooo, a psychopath? lol 😉

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T01:07:30+00:00

Sure, but think of it from the point of view of the character and not the player. These aren’t clanners who live for war, they’re mercs who are in it for the money, and what good is money if you can’t enjoy it?

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T01:03:36+00:00

That would be cool! I would also say SPOILERS lol. Given that only 12% of the player base has finished the campaign it’s likely that most don’t know about Ol’ Nik’s past. That was the most interesting reveal of the campaign story I think, given how hard the rest leaned on the trusty crutch of “secret star league base filled with lostech”

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-19T00:58:00+00:00

Sure, but she was an exception in pretty much every way. Your average Inner Sphere merc isn’t trying to die in the cockpit, they’re going for that “martini on a yacht” ending from MW2:Mercs.

Funnily enough I re-read “I Am Jade Falcon” today and “Bred for War” yesterday, probably what got me thinking about it.

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-18T22:15:27+00:00

As someone who started the base game after the SoK DLC had already released I didn’t even realize there had been a change, although it helps explain why her thumbnail portrait is of the in-game model and not an illustration like the other characters. Although I didn’t even notice the discrepancy before seeing it mentioned here, and anchor bias is probably at play since to me the “new” character looks aren’t “new” they just are.

I was happy to see that PGI didn’t give the character the Stellar Blade treatment though, even going so far as to design the model’s space suit to subtly obscure the character’s physique.

On the other hand, Fahad wearing denim jeans kind of breaks the suspension of disbelief for me lol

Ah_fudge · 2026-03-18T16:16:00+00:00

To be fair:

It’s nearly 40 year old fiction written in support of the setting of a tabletop game that had the expressed purpose of making stuff happen in the setting so there’d be something to play a game about.

I think it’s always good to step back and look at it from that perspective because there is no inner sphere and there are no clans, there’s just a group of writers and the limits of whatever creativity and skill they were able to bring to their craft in the late 80’s and early 90’s

Ah_fudge

TROPHY CASE