MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries developers Piranha Games hosted a livestream providing updates on the plans for the future of the game, including info on DLC.
President Russ Bullock talked about what is scheduled to be the first DLC pack, which is planned for April.
He also added that the largest aspect of the DLC will be around a “much more robust freeform career mode.”
According to Bullock the game out of the box does a “pretty respectable job” at allowing you to roam freely, but you’re forced to take on story missions from time to time and the warzone system based on reputation is the biggest distraction, being a linear path. You can’t really stay in a place beyond a certain reputation value and then you’re forced to move on.
To address that, there will be a mode that’s more “purely free-roaming” utilizing a lot of existing systems but removes barriers and things that prevent players from playing freely as they like.
It’s very important for Piranha to get this out in the first DLC because all future content, whether is official or mods, will be better served by being able to exist within this new and better free-roaming backbone for the game.
Bullock also added that while it was mentioned that mechs from MechWarrior Online that fit the timeline and don’t involve equipment that MechWarrior 5 doesn’t support, would all be included in the game.
That wasn’t entirely true because one detail that the developer forgot to mention was that there was a cutoff point after which new mechs added in MechWarrior Online would not make it into 5 just to be able to finish the game.
Those mechs are also an “obvious target” for DLC. Some equipment will also be added that will unlock “a bunch of other variants.” Basically, we can assume that future DLC will include a lot of mechs, whether it’s new chassis or missing variants.
New biomes and mission types will be coming at some point as well.
At the moment Piranha Games doesn’t yet know whether some sort of season pass will be offered, but it’s not likely because they aren’t positive on how many DLC packages they’ll make. One is confirmed and they’re “pretty damn sure” they’re going to make a second, but that’s as far as they’re planning for the future.
Free updates will also be provided to players in parallel with the paid DLC.
If you want to see more of MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, you can also check out the opening cutscene, and the launch trailer.
The game is available exclusively for PC on the Epic Games Store. It’ll also come to steam at some point.
