MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries - Rise of Rasalhague
released on Jan 26, 2023
DLC for MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries
In a conflict that pre-dates the formation of the Star League, Join Colonel Månsdottir and the people of Rasalhague in a fight for freedom and independence from the Great Houses, and discover the Crusader 'Mech, in a new 12-mission quest line.
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This DLC is weird. So weird that Backloggd forgot to add "PC" as a platform for it.
A pretty big component of MechWarrior 5's tone is its relative honesty in depicting just how awful mercenaries in the Battletech setting be. Sure, a lot of the endgame is House vs. House fights that basically see you taking sides in a war, but a good 30% of your contracts are knocking over civilian/rebel forces for a fat paycheck, or damaging critical infrastructure out of political spite.
This is not a game where you play as a hero.
So, anyway, RoR tries to make you feel heroic. A lot. Perhaps too often. Which is a genuine problem, both because of the game it's in and because of what Battletech events it covers.
The Ronin War, spanning about a year, refers to clashes between the newly formed Free Rasalhague Republic (space cowboy Scandinavians who spent decades under the heel of neo-Japan in space) and several rogue members of the Draconis Combine (neo-Japan in space). During the war, Rasalhague's military wing - the KungsArmé - was supplemented with mercenary units to offset their relative inexperience and then-dated technology compared to their opponents. Unfortunately, the mercs themselves were inexperienced and thus exploited every contractual loophole possible to get out of fighting the well equipped and well experienced Combine troops which ultimately ended in the mercs causing more harm than help. Eventually the fighting ended when the Combine leadership declared its troops ronin (yes, Battletech is that kind of sci-fi) and squashed them in a joint operation.
I dump this exposition on you because I feel it's genuinely important context to understand the problem.
You may perhaps think that RoR involving the player and their mercs would lead to a storyline where you actually being a mercenary would come up when the mercs start deserting.
But it doesn't. You and your company are the exception. The lone heroic mercs. Your reward for this is... Being able to witness as events you likely have no context for play out over the radio with badly voice acted dialogue and awful mission pacing.
There's a review on Steam that says "if you turn the voices off, this is just a series of basegame missions" and that's pretty much on the nose. This DLC is a series of missions where you watch a dude whose face was poorly photoshopped onto a template waffle on about the Rasalhague republic's right to exist until it's over.
It, unfortunately, takes a long time to be over. There are about 3 or 4 points in this DLC where I expected to get that big 'campaign finished' screen only to be told that no, actually, we have to go kill more baddies. It's not helped by the fact that the pacing and mission balance is distinctly off. Your first Big Bad - Marcus Kurita - is abruptly offscreened due to being a canon character and thus bound by the plot. Rather than ending here, the story instead forces the interference of another faction and Marcus' son, which leads to another exhausting mission chain with yet more bad voice acting culminating in an anticlimactic fight against a handful of melee mechs in a conveniently wide open space.
But hey, at least you can get a Hatamoto-Chi early.
After enduring this, the writers suddenly remember what happened during the Ronin War, so once you receive your final reward you also get a message from a minor NPC (who is important to Rasalhague's lore, fair enough) that boils down to "oi oi merc cunt get the fuck out of my system". You are then deposited in Rasalhague territory with max positive reputation.
I almost want to say "they learned their lesson for the next DLC", but that would ignore that they already knew this lesson with Legend of the Kestrel Lancers; a DLC that both integrated the player's faction into the plot decently well and made the best of its Ace Combat-style story told over the radio. It was not high art, but it was fun and not a huge waste of time. Same goes for The Dragon's Gambit.
But not this.
At least the Crusader is as gorgeous as ever.
[Also just, as a minor aside, if you know anything about Battletech then this DLC is especially boring to play, knowing that Rasalhague is barely a decade old before it kneels the Clans and is eventually subsumed. Hopefully that's in MW5: Clans, eh?]
A pretty big component of MechWarrior 5's tone is its relative honesty in depicting just how awful mercenaries in the Battletech setting be. Sure, a lot of the endgame is House vs. House fights that basically see you taking sides in a war, but a good 30% of your contracts are knocking over civilian/rebel forces for a fat paycheck, or damaging critical infrastructure out of political spite.
This is not a game where you play as a hero.
So, anyway, RoR tries to make you feel heroic. A lot. Perhaps too often. Which is a genuine problem, both because of the game it's in and because of what Battletech events it covers.
The Ronin War, spanning about a year, refers to clashes between the newly formed Free Rasalhague Republic (space cowboy Scandinavians who spent decades under the heel of neo-Japan in space) and several rogue members of the Draconis Combine (neo-Japan in space). During the war, Rasalhague's military wing - the KungsArmé - was supplemented with mercenary units to offset their relative inexperience and then-dated technology compared to their opponents. Unfortunately, the mercs themselves were inexperienced and thus exploited every contractual loophole possible to get out of fighting the well equipped and well experienced Combine troops which ultimately ended in the mercs causing more harm than help. Eventually the fighting ended when the Combine leadership declared its troops ronin (yes, Battletech is that kind of sci-fi) and squashed them in a joint operation.
I dump this exposition on you because I feel it's genuinely important context to understand the problem.
You may perhaps think that RoR involving the player and their mercs would lead to a storyline where you actually being a mercenary would come up when the mercs start deserting.
But it doesn't. You and your company are the exception. The lone heroic mercs. Your reward for this is... Being able to witness as events you likely have no context for play out over the radio with badly voice acted dialogue and awful mission pacing.
There's a review on Steam that says "if you turn the voices off, this is just a series of basegame missions" and that's pretty much on the nose. This DLC is a series of missions where you watch a dude whose face was poorly photoshopped onto a template waffle on about the Rasalhague republic's right to exist until it's over.
It, unfortunately, takes a long time to be over. There are about 3 or 4 points in this DLC where I expected to get that big 'campaign finished' screen only to be told that no, actually, we have to go kill more baddies. It's not helped by the fact that the pacing and mission balance is distinctly off. Your first Big Bad - Marcus Kurita - is abruptly offscreened due to being a canon character and thus bound by the plot. Rather than ending here, the story instead forces the interference of another faction and Marcus' son, which leads to another exhausting mission chain with yet more bad voice acting culminating in an anticlimactic fight against a handful of melee mechs in a conveniently wide open space.
But hey, at least you can get a Hatamoto-Chi early.
After enduring this, the writers suddenly remember what happened during the Ronin War, so once you receive your final reward you also get a message from a minor NPC (who is important to Rasalhague's lore, fair enough) that boils down to "oi oi merc cunt get the fuck out of my system". You are then deposited in Rasalhague territory with max positive reputation.
I almost want to say "they learned their lesson for the next DLC", but that would ignore that they already knew this lesson with Legend of the Kestrel Lancers; a DLC that both integrated the player's faction into the plot decently well and made the best of its Ace Combat-style story told over the radio. It was not high art, but it was fun and not a huge waste of time. Same goes for The Dragon's Gambit.
But not this.
At least the Crusader is as gorgeous as ever.
[Also just, as a minor aside, if you know anything about Battletech then this DLC is especially boring to play, knowing that Rasalhague is barely a decade old before it kneels the Clans and is eventually subsumed. Hopefully that's in MW5: Clans, eh?]