With Harebrained Schemes returning to mech warfare roots in BattleTech, it's only fitting that the story drip with complex political drama as noble houses wage war against each other. Today the developers unveiled the singleplayer campaign's main cast of characters along with further details about where the story is headed. It's complicated stuff, but it should set the stage nicely for some good ol' fashioned mech-on-mech combat.
This update provides story details that take place three years after the last batch of information was released back in June and does contain some "mild spoilers" that spill the beans on what happens during BattleTech's prologue.
The story is set in the Aurigan Reach, a swathe of space that is now ruled by a coalition of minor houses after a brutal civil war fractured the Terran Empire. Since the civil war, the Aurigan Reach was ruled by House Arano, but a coup during the prologue has destroyed the house and pushed its newly-crowned ruler, Lady Kamea Arano, into exile. Not one to roll over and die, Lady Arano has rallied what forces she can to form the Arano Restoration to retake her kingdom. Aiding her are tenuous allies in the Magistracy of Canopus—a powerful nation that once ruled a slice of the Aurigan Reach before the civil war. Lady Arano sounds like a total badass, leading what forces she still controls into battle seated in the cockpit of her family's ancestral BattleMech.
And who does she lead them against? That would be House Espinosa, who served as advisors to Lady Arano's father, the Highlord, before betraying him and taking the Aurigan Reach for themselves. The bastards. Described as a ruthless pragmatist, Santiago Espinosa has transformed the Aurigan Coalition into an authoritarian empire that he seeks to protect from the bigger fish stalking just outside of the Reach. Helping him cement his new rule is his daughter, Victoria, who enforces his rule with "fire and steel."
And finally, there's your mercenary outfit caught in the middle of this coup. Though you'll have your own recruits that you take into battle, manning the controls of the Argo, your dropship, is this ragtag group of misfits pictured below. All of this should be taking place around 3023, which puts the events of BattleTech at the end of the Third Succession War, but a couple decades before the Clan invasion of the Inner Sphere 3049.
I'm really not sure what side I should be rooting for because they both sound so cool, and BattleTech is shaping up to be the mech combat game we've been waiting for. Unfortunately, we're going to have to keep waiting. Along with the new characters, Harebrained Schemes shared their plans for a beta exclusive to Kickstarter Backers which should "begin sometime in the late January—early March timeframe." Meaning it could be up to a year before we finally discover the fate of the Aurigan Reach and get to kick some BattleMech ass.
