MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries Announced, Set To Launch In 2018

MechWarrior fans: rejoice! After a staggering sixteen years, the mainline MechWarrior series is getting another entry. MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries will see fans take on the role of a noobie in a war-torn 3015, but fortunately, it won’t take some 1,000 years to play it: Mercenaries should hit us in 2018.

MechWarrior 5 is developed by Piranha Games, which also develops MechWarrior Online. What MWO lacks is something its name implies: there’s no single-player. MW5, by contrast, focuses entirely on the single-player aspect, letting those who simply want to chill out and battle AI opponents in a modern mech game to do so.

In the game’s first trailer, your 500-year-old mech is given a once-over by a mechanic, at which point you strap in and take it for a small test drive. Soon, things go awry, and what was supposed to be a casual walk in the sunshine quickly becomes a survival mission. As you return to the bay to regroup, an invasion begins to go down. We’ll have to wait to learn what happens next!

In case you can’t see the video above, here’s a couple of screenshots showing off the game’s graphics:

Piranha Games says that MW5‘s story will progress and vary based on player decisions, and that to build up your mechs, you need to succeed. Based on the quick gameplay we see in the video, the game is looking good, and MW fans everywhere are no doubt joining in unison to pray that the game becomes a proper follow-up in the MechWarrior series.

Here are some fun facts. When MechWarrior 4: was released in November 2000, the hottest NVIDIA GPU at the time was the GeForce 2 MX, and AMD, the Radeon SDR/7200. At the same time, 20 and 30GB hard drives were considered top-of-the-line.

Yeah – it’s about time that MechWarrior gets another proper release.