More than three years after the release of MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, Piranha Games president Russ Bullock has revealed in an interview with the NoGutsNoGalaxy podcast that an all-new singleplayer Mechwarrior game is currently in development.
"We're still working on MechWarrior, which has been somewhat surprising to me, that we've been able to work on it this long, which is great," Bullock said. "And everyone knows we have of course DLC 4 coming out for MechWarrior 5.
"And there is another MechWarrior game in development at Piranha. I'll just say that it's not MechWarrior Online 2, it's not the successor to MechWarrior Online [which entered open beta in 2012 before releasing in 2013], it's not online PvP—think of it more inline 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 singleplayer co-op type of pathway." There's no indication as to what era the game will be set in, though, or what faction it will focus on, and Bullock warned that the official reveal may not happen until the fall of this year. That leaves us plenty of time for speculation, and off the top of my head (given certain events in MechWarrior 5, which I will not spoil) I feel like something involving the Clan invasion of 3049 might not be a bad guess.
Bullock also said in the NGNG interview that he's interested in doing a followup to MechWarrior Online as well, but noted that it faces additional challenges, including the need for a license extension: Piranha currently has the rights to the MechWarrior license until 2025, but needs "more runway than that" for a full MWO2.
"You're not going to make a MechWarrior Online 2 if your license is maybe over in 2025," Bullock said. "We'd have to know that we have a minimum of five years once the game is done, so we probably need an extension to 2030."
In an email sent to PC Gamer, Bullock confirmed that the new singleplayer MechWarrior game is targeted for release in 2024. The fourth DLC for MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, called Rise of Rasalhague, is slated to come out on January 26.
