I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect going into a closed door, hands-off demo for MechWarrior 5: Clans at GDC, but then Piranha Games CEO Russ Bullock pulled out from a standard, third-person view of his mech to an RTS-style overview of the map, queueing up commands for his squad or "star" of five Smoke Jaguar pilots.
In keeping with a series tradition of paired, numbered releases, Clans falls under the same "MechWarrior 5" aegis as 2019's Mercenaries, but make no mistake: It's a brand new, full entry in the long-running series, complete with an upgraded engine and new story. Clans moves the action to BattleTech's defining Clan Invasion arc (covered in the foundational MechWarrior 2 and a series of novels by ex-Star Wars Expanded Universe scribe Michael A. Stackpole). It also opts for a new gameplay focus, with a story-driven, cinematic campaign and hand-designed levels as opposed to Mercenaries' proc-gen private military management sandbox.
