What's worse, however, is that 'Black Knight' doesn't even give you being the new hero who casts down the old villain. which is a really strange transition, given that Ian Dresari was friggin' Captain America in a Battlemech all throughout the first game. Oh yes, and everybody is mad at him for murdering his sister to gain the throne.Īnd he's now an even stupider and more thuggish tyrant than the guy you deposed in 'Vengeance' was. If nothing else, you have your sister literally begging you, on video broadcast, to 'forget about me, go on with the mission!'.Īnd yet, when 'Black Knight' starts, Duke Ian Dresari, the viewpoint character of game 1, is now the NPC mid-boss villain of the expansion pack. Granted, yes, in the bad ending, one of your old family retainers leaves your service because he hates what you did, but there's no indicators that public dissatisfaction was widespread about it. People can really get behind a basic good-kicking-the-crap-out-of-evil thing.įurthermore, whether you choose the good ending (turn aside from reclaiming the arms cache in the next-to-last level, which contains big guns that help make the final boss fight notably easier for you to rescue your sister) or the bad ending (write off your sister, go for the secret assault Mech warehouse), either way, MW4: Vengeance ends with people not being too pissed about it. Vengeance had a storyline you really have to work to screw up - the heroic young prince (ok, /Duke/) returning from exile and foreign wars to reclaim his home from an evil usurper and his treacherous relative. Seriously, though, am I the only person here who was majorly bummed by the storyline shift from 'Mechwarrior: Vengeance' to the 'Mechwarrior: Black Knight' expansion pack? Yes, the games are at least five years old by this point, but I didn't have anywhere to bitch about them at the time, so, having come to the belated realization that blasts from the pasts are OK here, I shall bitch in public at last!