MechWarrior: Living Legends - February Update 1 news

One of the major events in weeks since our last update was the release of the "Things go boom" video. For the first time in months, the team decided to release actual animated gameplay footage for public entertainment. The video does not only contain a large number of exploding vehicles and Mechs, but it offers a glimpse at the game from the perspective of an actual participant.

Not using the amazing potentials of the CryEngine 2 to its fullest would just be wrong. Therefore, some of the effects you can expect to see in MWLL might leave you gasping in awe. See below two shots from Extremity, one of our maps for the Solaris Arena game mode. The first of these shots shows a couple of guided missiles exploding at their target and a PPC ending its journey equally successfull. The next shot shows a Catapult firing a whole salvo of LRMs at an enemy Mech hangar.

Tactics will be very important and actively promoted in MWLL. As the battlefield will be crowded by all kinds of vehicles and players with differing equipment, good tactics will make the difference between forgotten casualties and living legends on these fields of destruction. The Inner Sphere's Longinus in the first screenshot below just spotted an enemy armored column. While this simple battlearmor is vastly outgunned and an assault wouldn't even be suicide but at best completely stupid, possible responses to this threat might include designating targets with the portable TAG laser or simply reporting the observation via voice comm. To get an idea of the amount of firepower you'll be encountering in MWLL, the next screenshot displays the four currently implemented variants of the Clan's heavy Novacat and a group of Elemental battle armor for their support.

Another new feature in the past fwe weeks was the implementation of the Raven, one of the Inner Sphere's light and scout Mechs. The four variants that will be playable in the beta are being displayed in the second shot below. Unlike the Mech, the city scenery will most certainly not be seen in the upcoming beta release. Just as unlikely is the appearance of the next environment, at least for the beta release: a group of Longinus battle armor has seen a group of Clan Elementals patrolling through the swamp. Will they avoid contact or attack the larger group?

Being 'in the business' for more than two years already, the team still attracts several incredibly talented individuals from various professions and interests. The two screenshots below are not actual game content, but artwork created by two of our team members. The first image is a painting by Andy which received the working title "Showdown at Sunset". Andy is mostly working as a modeller and texture artist. The other shot is a render by one of the team's most recent reinforcements, an animator going by the name of Strykker.

Explosions being one of the main features of our latest teaser video, they have actually been replaced in the days just after that. The first screenshot of the two below shows the original Mech core explosion in progress. The next picture is a still shot of the new explosion, which still is huge, but significantly less hungry for ressources than the original one from Crysis.

MWLL Developer chat on IRC

On Saturday, February 21st, an open developer chat with the MWLL team will take place on IRC. If there is anything you'd like to ask the developers, join #mwll on irc.quakenet.org. The session is currently scheduled to take place between about 5-7PM EST / 22:00-00:00 GMT.