More than three years after the release of MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries (opens in new tab)Piranha Games president Russ Bullock revealed in an interview with the NoGutsNoGalaxy (opens in new tab) podcast that an all-new single-player Mechwarrior game is currently in development.
“We’re still working on MechWarrior, which was somewhat surprising to me, that we’ve been able to work on it for so long, which is great,” Bullock said. And of course everyone knows that DLC 4 is coming out for MechWarrior 5.
“And there’s another MechWarrior game in development at Piranha. I’ll just say it’s not MechWarrior Online 2, it’s not the successor to MechWarrior (opens in new tab)Online [which entered open beta in 2012 before releasing in 2013]it’s not online PvP – think of it more in line with MechWarrior 5, but a standalone game, a standalone product.”
Bullock said the new game will be released for PC and consoles, and will “follow more of a single player co-op path”. However, there’s no indication of what era the game will be set in, or which faction it’ll focus on, and Bullock warned that the official reveal won’t be until the fall of this year. That leaves us with plenty of time for speculation, and off the top of my head (given certain events in MechWarrior 5, which I won’t reveal) I’d like something where the Clan invas (opens in new tab)ion of 3049 (opens in new tab) maybe not a bad guess.
Bullock also said in the NGNG interview that he is interested in a sequel to MechWarrior Online, but noted that it faces additional challenges, including the need for a license renewal: Piranha currently holds the rights to the MechWarrior license until 2025, but needs “more runway than that” for a full MWO2.
“You’re not going to make MechWarrior Online 2 when your license might be up in 2025,” Bullock said. “We should know that we have a minimum of five years when the game is done, so we probably need an extension to 2030.”
In an email to PC Gamer, Bullock confirmed that the new single-player MechWarrior game is scheduled for release in 2024. The fourth DLC for MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, called Rise of Rasalhague (opens in new tab)is scheduled for release on January 26.