A new MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries trailer teases extended 'destructibility'

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As you would expect from a game about giant fighting robots in the 31st century, MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries is all about destruction. Witness, for instance, last month's trailer, which was ostensibly intended to show off the game's biomes but was really just a bunch of stuff blowing up. Today's teaser is much the same, but more exuberantly musical, and without the pretense of being about anything but explosions.

Developer Piranha Games says MechWarrior 5 will extend the "destructibility feature" beyond what's been seen in previous MechWarrior games. Mechs themselves will take damage that will impact their performance in various ways: Damage to legs can impact speed and maneuverability, for instance, while destroyed heat sinks will reduce your combat efficiency and make it harder to stay in extended firefights. But environmental damage will also have to be dealt with, which is where things get interesting.

"Environments can cause damage as much as an environment can absorb damage. If you are on a hot planet and running a larger/quick-to-overheat mech build, you will be able to deal far less damage to your enemies," the studio explained.

"Additionally, in both urban and natural environments you will have the ability to use buildings, certain rock formations and trees as cover but all of it is destructible—so if getting at enemy mechs means taking down a skyscraper, then by all means..."

Piranha also announced that the Solaris patch for the multiplayer mech shooter MechWarrior Online will finally be out this week, bringing with it the organized arena combat of Solaris 7. The MWO arena will support 1v1 and 2v2 combat, with a spectator mode that will enables players to "watch the world's best pilots absolutely annihilate the ever-loving shit out of each other."

A trailer for that is down below. MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries is scheduled to come out in December.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.