Art, AI, And MechWarrior Underwear – An Interview With Catalyst’s Brent Evans

As a bit of a treat for year’s end, we sat down with BattleTech Art Director Brent Evans to have a chat on a variety of subjects. We talk about redesigning classic ‘Mechs, where AI fits into your next BattleTech campaign, and why we haven’t seen more AeroSpace fighters get the redesign treatment (and why Ray is having nightmares about it).

As always, Brent had a lot to say, so I won’t waste any more time getting to the good stuff. Enjoy!

Brent Evans (Catalyst Game Labs): Hello, everybody. 

Sean (Sarna): Welcome. I think our previous interviews were done by email, and I didn’t get the chance to ask you a little bit about your background with BattleTech. So when did you get into BattleTech?

Brent: I was drawing comics, and working graveyard at a wireless company in the ‘90s, which is now T-Mobile. I had finished all my books, it was 2 o’clock in the morning, and I was bored out of my mind. I just stood up and said, “Hey, does anybody have a book I can read?” 

A good buddy of mine looked at me—he’s like, “Dude, actually, I have something you should totally read. This is the best, and if I could draw like you could, this is what I would do.” 

And so he hands me Blood Legacy. I was hooked by like five pages and I’m like, “Oh my god. Well, this is the greatest thing ever!” And it was funny ‘cause it’s not like comics are, so far removed from gaming. Like I’d seen some ‘Mechs and I even remember trying a demo of MechWarrior 2 in a gaming shop. I remember turning and shooting the tank in the tank—I knew I hit the tank, but the tank didn’t explode and I’m like, “Well clearly the game is broken.” You know, ’cause it wasn’t like Tank Commander—you shoot it once, it blows up. I just had no grasp of it. 

By the moment I started reading the book, though, I was like, “Oh, this is so awesome,” and I was totally hooked. I became an addict in like five days. My wife was like, “What happened to you?” Next thing I know, I’ve got stacks of Technical Readouts in the bathroom. I think I burned through 70 novels in 10 months. All the way down the rabbit hole—totally hooked. Never going back. Never swayed. 

It’s funny. Randall and everybody make fun of me because I’m a gamer who only plays one game. “Oh did you try the new Skyrim? Oh, you know this just came out.” No, I haven’t tried. Is there ‘Mechs in it? “No.” I haven’t touched it. Sorry.

Sean: I mean there are other games with ‘Mechs in them We could get you to branch out.

Brent:  None of them are as good. None of them are. I’m a BattleTech universe diehard. 

Sean: Well, if you’re a universe diehard, then what is your favorite book? Is it still Blood Legacy?

Brent: Well, like anybody, you have great moments that you just fell in love with. When I actually got brought in to work on BattleTech, my first assignment, Jordan Weisman sat at my desk and said, “I want you to design the ‘Mech that Clan Wolf is gonna use to replace the Mad Cat.” And then my first thought is the fans are gonna hate me. Are you kidding me? That’s the most iconic ‘Mech in the world. 

Warwolf

The Wulfen and the Warwolf; I love those two ‘Mechs because that was part of that initial assignment that Jordan Weisman personally handed to me. I think most fans if they got to sit down with Jordan Weisman would probably spend the first three hours just geeking out into incoherence because they’re like, you’re Jordan Weisman!

But with that said favorite products? There isn’t just one. There are several moments. I will say The Wars of Reaving sourcebook. One of the most spectacular, over-the-top projects to be a part of from start to finish, inside and out. It was such a cool experience to be on the inside of that. And the hardest part of it was not telling the fans on the other side of the curtain because you can’t be Santa Claus telling everybody what they’re gonna get for Christmas. That just ruins everything. You have to keep the surprise, but that was such a cool project to be a part of. 

One of the big ones for me was I think it was Technical Readout: 3075 and the introduction of the Celestials: the Word of Blake special OmniMechs.I designed all of those. That one was really, really cool because the process was: Randall Bills sits down and is like, “So, I want you to design a whole line of ‘Mechs.” And, you know, usually, he’ll say, “Yeah, I want you to design 50 ‘Mechs for me.” I’m like, dude, I can crank out 12, no problem. But 50? It gets really hard not to be derivative. 

Archangel

But the cool thing about the process is I’m like, well, here’s my concept. And he’s like, “That’s actually a really cool concept,” because I did the write-up—here’s my thinking behind this. Then he turned that over to the development team. And the writers and they’re like, “That’s a really cool idea.” So then they changed all the stuff that they were writing to accommodate that and set me new parameters. And then I’m like, “Oh, that’s really cool. We could really push this further and do this,” and I turned it back over and they rewrote their stuff.

I ended up doing three full sets of those first Word of Blake ‘Mechs because we kept going back and forth and really playing off of each other. And what that did was fundamentally change the way BattleTech has been created ever since. That was the first time that the writers and the artists were ever connected. The process had always been the writers do everything and then they just turn it all over to the artists when the writers are done. Well, that’s not a very collaborative process! The ability to go back and forth was like lightning in a bottle.

And ultimately that’s why they hired me. They’re like, “Can you just be the art director that connects the artists to the writers? Because we don’t know how you just did what you just did.” I’m like, I’m in. Everything has been different ever since and dramatically better, in my opinion.

Sean: You were previously the line developer for BattleTech, and now you’re the art director again. How are things going in your “new” role? 

Brent: The truth is, I never stopped being the art director. I just did two full-time jobs. I was working 100 to 120 hours a week for two and a half years.

Sean: So really you were just training your replacement for two and a half years.

Brent: Yeah, it kind of worked out. I don’t even know that any of us had that plan in mind. We just had to get BattleTech through, the writers wrote themselves into a corner. Somebody has to go charging through the minefield. And you know what? Let me do it because my ego is not on the hook here. 

Ultimately, I didn’t take on a new role. I really just fell back into my old role and allowed Ray [Arrastia] to take over the hat. Not working 120 hours a week is so much better. I will say I’m much happier. It’s actually had a weird twist though.

So part of that two and a half years, I worked with all the creative teams and said, we need to fix this. I made a three-and-a-half-page document, single space, of every one of the dangling plot lines that had been just left out there doing nothing. Every time we just wrote ourselves into a corner, left it as a big question, and never touched it again. Here are all the things we need to address. Let’s carve these into books and source books and storylines, things that people can play. This needs to be something that the fanbase can sink their teeth into. 

I knew where all of those were going to go while I was the line developer, but the moment I turned that all over to Ray, I stopped knowing what was going to happen. It has been so weird! I showed up to Gen Con last year and I’m like, a new novel came out, I don’t know what happens. I know what we had planned to happen, but of course, everything changes along the way as the sourcebooks happen and the writers jump in. All that stuff is a very fluid thing and I was no longer the guy with the answer sheet.

In a lot of ways I kind of feel like I’m back to fan mode. Honest to goodness, now when novels come out I don’t know what’s gonna happen. I know what we had to do for the art notes for the cover, so I have some idea what the story was, but I no longer know all the answers. And it’s been fun to switch back to being a fan.

I would liken it to if George Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney. If George Lucas were to now go to a Star Wars movie not knowing how it ends.

Sean: I mean, sometimes it feels like he doesn’t.

Brent: Yeah. Well, he’s also pretty old, so you know what, it’s alright, he can turn that over.

Sean: Well, welcome back to the fandom.

Brent: Yeah, thank you. It’s been fun. 

Sean: How has been redesigning all these minis for the past couple of years? Anything that’s been like a particular challenge there or have they all been rolling out pretty smoothly? 

Brent: Some things go smoothly. The truth is the ones that were the hardest, we tackled first. You know, trying to overhaul the Unseens—get those so they really look new and contemporary, but they’re very true to the source material. 

Warhammer

If you really take a look at the old Warhammer or the old Marauder, there is not one millimeter on that thing that hasn’t been changed. But the tweaks have been so true to the spirit of the design that when you look at it, you’re just like, oh, that’s a Marauder and that looks really cool. And we’ve had the fans come and tell us it’s like you redesigned what I had in my head, not what was actually on my gaming table. And, and that’s a really tough line to walk.

We kind of loved it, but a lot of the ones we do now, they’re so much easier than they were originally. Partially because we’ve now got it down and we’ve really built an awesome team of guys that are all veterans at this now. We’ve all chunked our way through it. We’ve all beaten our heads up against the wall.

Starslayer

What’s been entertaining is that each of us has our darlings. You know, the ‘Mechs that we were just dying to get to? None of them were the same. None. It’s great. I’m a perfect example. I think it took me five years to get the Starslayer—five years, ever since MechCommander 2. That is the perfect ‘Mech for any mercenary unit: it doesn’t rely on ammunition, it has decent movement, it’s got decent armor. It’s not great at any one thing, but it’s solid. I can’t think of a better starter mech than a Starslayer. 

Yeah, couldn’t have it. Couldn’t. I’m like, come on, we gotta get it to the list. But I think there were 135 ‘Mechs in front of it on the line. Like, come on! 

Here’s a funny one: I’m still a huge fan of the Fireball. The Fireball is a great little ‘Mech, you know what?

Sean: Yeah, Fireball‘s amazing. 

Brent: It’s got a terrible weapon load. All you gotta do is strip out that junk and throw in three ER Medium Lasers, and you’re good to go.

Sean: True of so many light ‘Mechs. 

Brent: Super, super cheap, super fast. Anybody can have it. You know, like Stingers. I know a lot of people sweat the Stinger. I have always loved the Stinger, but I don’t think of the Stinger as a BattleMech—I think of the Stinger as infantry. 

Sean: I mean, it’ll usually beat infantry. 

Brent: Yeah or run away from them, one or the other.

Sean: How about you walk us through the redesign process? I’m pretty sure I have an idea; It goes from artists to make a sketch, and then it goes to 3D modelers who actually make a 3D model, and that gets sent out to manufacturers to actually make minis. But how does that step-by-step process work?

Brent: Oh, it’s magic. Dragons are called.

Sean: Fair.

Brent: You know, it’s interesting because the redesigns really do follow the same process as creating a new ‘Mech. Usually, you have a concept for something, you turn it over to the artist, and they give you what they think you asked for. Then you look at what you asked for and like, man, that does not look right at all. 

A lot—especially on the first hundred redesigns of classic ‘Mechs—the record sheets didn’t match the original art. And we’re like, you know what, we have got to get this stuff fixed. It killed me when I did TRO: 3050 and Randall would not let me fix the art. I’m like, please, it doesn’t match the build. He’s like, “I know, but it matches the minis.” I’m like, that’s killing me. 

But yeah, functionally it starts with somebody having a concept. Maybe it’s a concept for a new ‘Mech; the artist has a concept, or a writer has a concept, and sometimes a developer has a concept. And sometimes you get weird ones out of the blue where somebody just throws you a weird idea at the convention floor and you’re like, “Yeah, that actually would be kind of cool, I can make that work.” But somebody’s got an idea, somebody else bashes it together and pitches it. 

Once that gets approved, then it gets turned over to art, and then the rough sketch comes. And once that rough sketch is thrown back to the people, whoever had the original concept for it, then we’re like, “Okay, does this fit the need? What should we tweak? What shouldn’t we tweak?”

One of the weirdest parts is that we actually try to make something wrong with everything. You know that idea of the Japanese sand garden, where you want to place an imperfection, something that somebody’s going to want to fix. It’s less about Zen than it is about recognizing our fan base will always want to tweak something. I think the worst thing we can do is deliver the perfect ‘Mech.

Wulfen

For instance, one of my all-time favorite ‘Mechs—I’ve used it many times in Masters and Minions and I have just been ridiculously effective with it—is the Wulfen. One of the main versions of the Wulfen—and I did all the builds for the Wulfen—has empty space. It’s actually got a cargo slot. Nobody ever plays it, but if you’re trying to run a blockade and you need to get something from point A to point B, having a ‘Mech that can move 15 and has a slot to carry three tons of something is pretty great.

It does the same thing that most people think of as machine gun ammo—get that out of there! But it also does it in a way that invites the fans in and makes them want to play with it. Let me tweak it. Let me make it my own. And that’s a wonderful thing.

But yeah, back and forth with the artists and the developers until ultimately we all agree on it or just agree to drink lots of whiskey and ignore it. And then we’re good. 

Sean: You said that there was a big list of ‘Mechs that are still awaiting redesigns. How far down are the Dragon Fire, Maelstrom, and Tempest? 

Brent: Every one of us has our list. It’s not one list. Randall, Ray, me, Anthony, and then all of the designers.

Sean: Oh, this is hard. 

Brent: It is. I think there are seven lists. None of them have the items in the same order. Not a single one. So anytime that there’s a slot, we’re like, “Okay, what’s the purpose for the slot, how can we shoe-in the slot?”

Solitaire

And keep in mind out of all of this, Loren Coleman does not have a list, but he has two ‘Mechs that he wants above all else. He still doesn’t have one of them. We still haven’t done the Solitaire; it just hasn’t fit. We gave him the Sagittaire, but not the Solitaire because it doesn’t fit with the products that we’ve done. Whatever we want, whatever our darlings are, they have to fit with what’s the goal.

We’re all uber-geeks in this one. And we all have our darlings, but the truth is when we chose to overhaul this entire product line, it had to be retailer-friendly. We have to make this so that it’s packageable, deliverable, and the themes make sense. The whole thing that we’re gonna just shoehorn everything we can get into this box and all that, that’s long since gone. Retailers have told us to stop doing that. We don’t want that. That doesn’t help anybody. And we broke a lot of spines on books trying to. Can we get 600 pages out of this rulebook? No, okay, split that into two books, dumbass.

You know, after 40 years of continuous production, it’s going to show up eventually somewhere. It’s just going to take some time. It took us, what, 15 years to get the Clan box set out? It takes a while sometimes, but it’s worth it.

Sean: Okay. So we just got to be patient. 

Brent: Yeah, yeah. Nobody wants to hear that, but ultimately that’s the way it usually comes out. 

Sean: Well, you did just recently mention the Helios and the Kintaro at PAX. Those are some personal favorites, so I’ll take those for now.

Helios

Brent: You know, it was really interesting, particularly the Helios. When you think about the signature ‘Mechs for an era, or a conflict, like, say, the Civil War. That ‘Mech is just so indelibly connected to that event, I can’t ignore it. It is hard to disassociate the Helios from the Second Star League because it was on the cover. It’s kind of like if I say Clan Invasion and try not to think of a Mad Cat. You can’t do it, there’s no way. It wouldn’t be a Clan Invasion without it.

When we’re looking at units, quite often we’re like, “Okay, I have the ones I automatically think of.” But there’s four of us and each of us has three ‘Mechs that we each think of and none of them are on the same list. Now we have some challenges. 

We’ve actually bartered like, “I’ll give you this one, but I get a wild card for the future.” It totally happens—especially when two of us have the same darling but we don’t agree in any way, shape, or form of what it should be. 

Sean: Let’s get granular and talk about the Stormcrow redesign. It’s not bad at all, but of all the Clan Invasion ‘Mechs, it seems the most changed from its original design. It all comes down to its hands. The original design had these vestigial hands but now it’s got these big honking fists that remind me of the Nova.

Stormcrow

I’m wondering if there was a decision to bring the Stormcrow into the sort of pattern that the Clan Invasion ‘Mechs had, where one ‘Mech seems to use components from the other, like the Hellbringer and Summoner share the same legs, same with the Mad Dog and the Timber Wolf, Warhawk and the Dire Wolf; now the Nova and Stormcrow might share the same hands?

Brent: Okay, with the disclaimer that this is a recollection, and none of us were getting any sleep at the time that we were going through this process; I don’t remember anyone saying I want to make sure it has hands like a Nova. Because you’re right: it’s a medium ‘Mech, so they should have components that they can use to swap regardless of weight class. But our number one thing, and it was the crucible upon which everything got smashed; we all just thought the tiny hands looked derpy. 

The goal with overhauling the line was we needed BattleTech to be visually interesting, inspiring, and attractive for the current generation and the generation moving forward. People who are two and three now are going to grow into this we need to make sure that the designs that we create look cool. 

Every one of us felt the tiny hand thing—no one’s gonna like that. If it doesn’t look cool to an eight through 12-year-old boy, then we cut it. And that’s where the tiny hands went. 

Sean: I think a similar sort of thing happened with the Viper, where the arm with the missile launcher ended in a big box with a tiny hand tacked on below. Alright, no Tyrannosaurus arms anymore. That’s fine. I can deal with that.

I’m going to refer back to a previous interview you had with Travis at RenegadeHPG, where you said that the design direction for ‘Mechs is basically walking tanks, and what is going to differentiate those tanks is design marks throughout various eras. So ‘Mechs from the Star League will look different from ‘Mechs from the 3025 era versus ‘Mechs from the Clan Invasion, etc.

But what about actual tanks? How are you going to make tanks look different from one era to the next when it seems like there’s just less to visually define a tank than there is a ‘Mech?

Brent: First off, let’s talk about the context of the original statement about walking tanks. BattleTech came out at the same time as Transformers and Robotech. And each one needed its own different niche.

In Robotech, you have the mechs flying around and doing somersaults. In Transformers, they are on the ground doing somersaults. And when it comes to BattleTech, ‘Mechs aren’t doing somersaults—it’s not gonna happen. You know, in the early years, all three things had the same mech designs because they were all licensed together. But you could tell which one you were looking at by how it was presented. 

With that in mind, you brought up an interesting thing about the tanks. It helps that the source material for BattleTech, there are a huge number of tanks. And in truth, there are a wide variety of looks for those tanks. So as far as keeping them all looking somewhat unique, our goal is obviously to make them look cool but stay true to the spirit of what those tanks were

If you look at a lot of the art, a lot of the art was old and dated and just didn’t—dare I say—look functional. With that said, I don’t know that any of us ever felt that it was a challenge to redesign the tanks. Like, none of us flinched. Hey, if we can redesign the Sentinel for crying out loud, we can make the tanks.

SM1 Tank Destroyer

We just try to stay true to their spirit and make sure that their look and feel within our universe look unique. It wasn’t an easy goal, because a lot of those things fundamentally looked similar or the same. But every once in a while there was one that came out that just changed everything.

I know for me, when the SM1 tank destroyer came out, I’m like, that is so dramatically different than anything I’ve ever seen, and yet, oh my gosh, that is so cool. The Condor from Dark Age was the same thing. I never thought the Condor would look like this, but oh my gosh, that is awesome, I want to pilot that. And I actually did, I piloted one in a campaign for like a year and a half. 

Skulker

But it’s not just the hovers. There’s Anthony’s new Skulker; every time I see that the circular rotating back thing for steering, it looks so cool and unique. The Patton or Von Luckner both look so badass sticking to those original units. And honestly, Anthony’s team does a fantastic job of you know, not cookie cuttering.

Let’s make sure that they stay looking unique. Pick those unique elements from each one and let’s double down on those. Let’s make sure we’re keeping that spirit. Because we want everybody to look at it and say, that looks cool. And we also want them to look at it and be able to instantly identify what it is, even if we’re changing everything. 

Tanks were less hard, I will say, than AeroSpace fighters. 

Sean: We’ll circle back to AeroSpace fighters, but I did want to ask this quick question because it seems like there are more tanks than ever. Do you think tanks are getting a larger piece of the redesign budget than they otherwise would because we’ve got a lot of Warhammer 40K defectors who are more used to tank minis than ‘Mechs?

Brent: You know, that’s a great question within that context. I think my answer may surprise you. First off, yes, absolutely, max, our tanks are getting a bigger amount of bandwidth than they had before, but that’s because of a decision that I made at the time when I was the line developer. We wanted to get through the Beginner Box, the Game Of Armored Combat, and the Clan Invasion box sets before we started adding vehicles.

I’m not even gonna apologize for the experience of the ‘Mech-Clix era, and we know how severely the vehicles dominated that gameplay. When you show up at Nationals, and there was only one or two total armies that had a ‘Mech in it. All of them were tanks because the rules were so heavily weighted to tanks because they didn’t have heat. ‘Mechs had a downside and tanks didn’t. 

SRM Carrier

We wanted it to be BattleTech, we did not want it to be TankTech. That was a very intentional thing. As we started injecting tanks into the list, we were very sensitive to making sure that the tanks weren’t game-breaking. Like the Schrek PPC carrier, like the SRM Carrier. Anybody that’s ever had their heavy ‘Mech accidentally stumble upon an SRM carrier—just a single SRM carrier—and next thing you know, you’re just getting hosed by this volcano of fire. That’s not a fun gaming experience. We wanted to make sure we did not fall into the same trap that ‘Mech-Clix did.

With that said, tanks are an integral part of building a combined arms force. And they’re a very cheap way to get awesome firepower on a battlefield. So there’s no ignoring tanks.

But we knew we were attracting numbers of new players in the history of the game. BattleTech has never been hotter than it is right now—especially globally. We have so many new players, young players, and we want to ensure that the products we’re feeding them—if they’re buying the coolest, newest whatever—the gameplay experience that we want them to have will keep them coming back for decades again. Feeding them a steady stream of tanks that are going to wipe all the ‘Mechs off the board, that’s not the way to do it.

Honestly, the battlefield support decks and things like that are great ways to introduce things like AeroSpace fighters, tanks, vehicles, infantry, and things like that into the gameplay that does not have them completely overwhelming the game. Oh, you got an AeroSpace fighter? Okay. Go over there and roll dice for 15 minutes. Come back and tell us what happened. We’re avoiding those pitfalls. Moving in a different direction. 

Yeah, tanks are definitely getting more attention now because we’re doing Mercenaries. It totally makes sense. Within Mercenaries, there should be tanks in there. There should be combined armed forces. And we’re moving further into the timeline. There are a lot of eras where vehicles were a key fundamental part of that. 

Especially VTOLs. VTOLs are such a fun game component, it’s like shooting skeet. Who doesn’t get excited when a VTOL enters the board? Those are the kind of things we want to make sure that that’s an experience-added element to the game.

An unfortunate VTOL incident

Sean: It makes you wonder who would ever get into a helicopter in the BattleTech universe. You just seem so vulnerable to everything. What exactly does a VTOL bring, except for rapid response to an enemy that doesn’t have a MANPAD for whatever reason?

Brent: It’s so funny because everybody has their own theories on that one, and my theory is definitely not the same as most of the teams. But my question is why would you ever a light ‘Mech? Why would you ever a scout mech? 

Sean: Yeah, I’ve asked that question before too.

Brent: Bring in your VTOLs! They’ll cover three times the distance, they don’t have to worry about terrain, and when one suddenly dies, you’ve found the enemy! Yep, perfect!

Sean: Okay, but the question stands: who would ever get into the helicopter if you know you’re the sacrificial lamb? 

Brent: Yeah, well, when people fail ‘Mech school, they gotta go somewhere. 

Sean: Well, the other option when they fail mech school is AeroSpace. And we have seen a couple of redesigns already. The Shilone is beautiful. The Visigoth, I’m very much looking forward to its wild collection of aeronautical elements ranging from World War II to modern fighters.

Visigoth Salvage Box

Brent: And the original was like three things just glued together! It just didn’t even look like a coherent unit.

Sean: I still love what you came up with in terms of the redesign because it looks like it’s hearkening back to like these older eras of flight, but it still is like this sci-fi fighter.

What is coming on the AeroSpace front? Are we going to see more of these AeroSpace redesigns? And are we going to see maybe more rules that integrate AeroSpace fighters into things like Alpha Strike?

Brent: Good questions, good questions. That. The whole topic. Right now, Ray Arrastia is turning around wondering what’s going on behind him. He wants to go climb into a hole. This whole topic is going to keep him in therapy for the rest of his life. The nuances behind AeroSpace—we’ve continued to fight over it behind closed doors. 

We probably weren’t going to get more AeroSpace fighters other than the one for the Mercenaries campaign except I need the 3D models so that our artists can be putting these fighters into the art. We can’t have Shilones be the only AeroSpace fighter that ever shows up in an illustration; that just doesn’t look right! And so the thing that broke the roadblock on AeroSpace fighters is that our illustrators need them.

Shilone

But that does not mean we need to be pumping out a whole bunch of miniatures for AeroSpace fighters. In no uncertain terms, AeroTech is not a system that we feel matches the desire or market for a gameplay experience in the current demographics globally. We just don’t think it holds water. It’s not good enough.

For us to actually have an AeroTech game it needs to be contemporary. It needs to have so many elements of gameplay that BattleTech succeeds at, but AeroTech doesn’t. 

So we are still on the lookout. I have sat through many demos of games that are pitched for this. We’ve never seen a good one. Until we get a really, really good AeroTech game that we’re like, you know what? That’s the new one. That right there, that’s the one. We won’t be cranking out miniatures for AeroSpace fighters until we get that.

That’s not to say that there won’t be AeroSpace fighters—there absolutely are, and Ironwind Metals produces a whole bunch of them. We will slowly be turning out some AeroSpace fighters, but you’re going to see a whole lot more tanks, and you’re going to see far more, like battle armor, infantry, things like that.

We all enjoy the BattleForce support rules, like having those decks of cards that allow people to play AeroSpace fighters in gameplay without them completely taking over everything. Right now that is, we’re gonna stick with that because it’s a winning strategy. It didn’t break the game, didn’t take over the game, but it definitely had an impact and made me think about it and adjust strategies. 

You will continue to see more, just not a heavy flow of them. Until there really is a good game for it to go with it.

Sean: Let’s weigh in on some of the more aesthetic elements of BattleTech, and let’s start with the MechWarrior aesthetic. There has been a shift over time where MechWarriors—especially the 3025 era, because all their ‘Mechs were like friggin’ boilers—would fight in their underpants and a cooling vest, and that was it. I think there are even a couple of stories of MechWarriors fighting completely naked, save for a cooling vest. 

MechWarrior circa 3025

However, in more recent visual representations for both MechWarrior as well as CGL products, they’re wearing full suits kind of like flight suits. So, is that just an era thing, or is the MechWarrior aesthetic just kind of evolving with the game to be something else?

Brent:  That is a great question. We are expanding the eras, and that changes some of the aesthetics. For the 3025 era, things were just sauna-cooking-hot. They were ovens, so you’d have men and women, underwear, nothing else. And honestly, I think it’s funny that we had women in sports bras and men just shirtless because I’m like, man, you would just think the inside of that cooling vest would sand your nipples off. It just sounds painful. 

But all that aside, the idea here is that overall ‘Mechs are still super hot. And depending on your weapon loadout—or whether you just are a MechWarrior for House Davion, because they apparently don’t like heat sinks—it’s gonna be sweltering in there. Even in the modern era, in the ilClan era, in my opinion, most MechWarriors are in there in short shorts, a cool athletic shirt or a top of some kind. Something very minimal, something akin to what you would wear to do hot yoga.

The most important nuance with that aesthetic is the tech of the helmet and the tech of the cooling vest. Ray felt very strongly about this, and you will see a whole lot more illustrations on this over the next year as we unveil the next iteration of the roleplaying game because there will be a whole bunch more art for characters. You’re going to see a whole lot more MechWarriors in all kinds of things and a lot of that plays into the gameplay. There are mechanics for different tech levels and availability. If you’re playing 3025, you’ve got everybody else, you’ve got ComStar—who has good tech—and then when the Clans come they bring their Clan-tech stuff. And then as we get to the Kai Allard Liao-era of him on Solaris, you realize their gear is not combat gear; It’s like NASCAR gear. They have much better stuff, but that’s not stuff that the average soldier’s gonna get.

MechWarriors from Field Manual: Mercenaries Revised

Some higher-tech stuff exists. It’s not just you have nothing or you have all the good stuff from the Star League. Like they’re making good new stuff, but not everybody has access to it. It’s a thing of expense. Quite often I’ll equate things to like most people in America (and I’m not, it’s just America’s a good poster child for this one). Most people in America drive Fords, Chevys, or Toyotas. We have Lamborghinis here, but it’s not like everybody’s driving Lamborghinis. They exist, but most people don’t use them. Is there super high-end tech for what you would wear in a cockpit? Sure, but most people wouldn’t have access to it.

If you’re a noble or you’re a really elite MechWarrior, then yeah, you probably would have access to really cool specialty tech. Cutting edge,  like a cooling suit or a cool helmet. But for the average warrior in any House military, they’re not gonna get the coolest stuff, they’re gonna get whatever the quartermaster has in quantity. There’s always gonna be that nuance and we continue to play with that.

Sean: Let’s look at the overall art direction of BattleTech.

Brent: I gotta say, it’s been amazing for like 15 years.

Sean: It has been, absolutely! I wonder who we can blame for that? But there have been eras—much older eras—where the art direction has kind of ebbed and flowed and gone a different direction. Now we’re in an era where we are standardizing—especially things like ‘Mechs and other mechanized units. 

Is there going to be a similar standardization to the entire universe? In terms of characters, their clothing, the general aesthetic of BattleTech—would you consider it still to be retrofuturism ‘80s, or is it more cyberpunk, a mix, or something completely unique? 

Brent: Our primary goal is to be true to the universe. The universe is ultimately what has people hooked. A 2d6 combat system is not what keeps people playing BattleTech for years; it’s that they fell in love with the universe. And everybody has their own corner that they just think is the greatest. And not just a corner of the Inner Sphere, but also their place in time.

Jihad Final Reckoning

Some people love the cyberpunk aspects of the Jihad. That’s not everybody’s cup of tea though, so we want to make sure that there are corners for everybody—places within the universe and within the timeline that everybody can just dig in and stay forever.

So, will there be a standardized aesthetic across the board? No. Honestly, I think the nonstandardized nature of BattleTech is one of the strengths behind the universe. You’ve got your Houses, and each House faction has its own sets of cultures that have different strata and incomes and niches, but that’s not gonna last long. In BattleTech, we’ve got hundreds of years worth of perspective so things can adjust. 

One of the hardest things I will say—which we are now tackling because we’re doing a lot more stuff with the roleplaying game—is a lot of the uniform designs from the different cultures and Houses.

Man, a lot of that old art did not survive the test of time. You look at that and go, man, that does not look cool. There’s just no way to make that look cool. It’s been interesting finding artists and being like, “Okay, we want you to take this source material, but don’t do that. Cause that’s awful. This was a marker in 1987. It did not hold up well.”

Trying to do stuff that feels true to the source, kind of like we did with those original BattleMechs when we were overhauling those, making them contemporary and real. And we want this to feel sci-fi. A lot of that 1987 art does not feel sci-fi anymore. 

The Future, courtesy of ComStar

Sean: It just feels 1980s.

Brent: It does, yeah, but not everybody wants to go retro. Like the current eight to 12-year-old boy; this is our crucible. They don’t care if it looks like 1987, they don’t have any nostalgia factor for that. We try to find the right balance because there’s a place for nostalgia and retro stuff, but you can’t hang the entire line on that ‘cause it just won’t hold. 

Sean: Speaking of the future, AI has been a big topic of discussion around here as well as everywhere. I believe CGL has said in the past that it will not use AI art products at all. What are your thoughts on the AI art revolution? And how do you think it can or will ever relate to BattleTech?

Brent: I’ll happily speak on that. And thankfully, I checked with the rest of Catalyst and we’re all in agreement on this one. So the answer is really easy. It’s also very complex. 

Ultimately, BattleTech is a licensed property. Legally, we absolutely cannot use AI-generated art in any way, shape, or form, because you can’t get the rights to the source material AI engines use to operate. We would have to ensure that for every image used in that AI generator, we have the full rights to it. And if there’s even one image that sneaks into the way the AI thinks, it instantly breaks it. All of a sudden, we’ve just opened ourselves up to legal liability. There is no way. It’s not possible. No, hard no, no way. We will never do it. 

If I ever find an artist trying to sneak an AI-generated image in, not only will that not go, but I would have a hard time ever using that artist again because I have to be able to trust that there’s no legal exposure.

It is so much easier and better to hire a quality artist and say, “Here’s the image we want you to generate,” to pay them what it costs to generate the art and get the art with no legal strings attached to it. 

The flip side of that is Catalyst is entirely the creative teams from the two previous companies FASA and FanPro. We will never take a shortcut that boots a creator. Even if it was cheaper and legal, we wouldn’t do it. It’s just not who we are. 

In fact, Catalyst paid off all of the debts to all of the outstanding freelancers from the previous company. I think it was like two hundred and seventy thousand dollars worth of debt to the previous company. It’s just because we don’t want any freelancer to get stuck with the bill. We protect the creators. So yeah, not only can’t we, but it goes against our corporate culture.

An AI-generated MechWarrior

With that said, is there a place for AI? Absolutely. There’s a place for AI. Any player that wants to generate their character image for the game? Yeah, go ahead. You come up with cool ideas. If you’re having a hard time, you’re in a creative block, run a whole bunch of things through an AI, and come up with some new ideas.

Inspiration: fine. That’s no problem. Just don’t try to sell that as your new art. The moment you try to sell that as a product, that you’re the artist, you created this: can’t do it. But by all means, use AI to generate your characters, use AI to create cool environments for your campaigns. Use AI for all that stuff. Just don’t try to sell it and repackage it. That’s where everything shuts down. 

Sean: One other thing that I did want to mention because I have seen it from sources like The Art of BattleTech: AI upscaling of older images, is that okay?

Brent: That is a great question. The answer to this one is it’s never come up. It is so much easier to hire an artist and pay them to do what you need. So the only way that would happen is if the art artist is dead.

Sucker Punch, AI-upscaled courtesy of The Art Of BattleTech

This is the only scenario in which I can imagine us doing that. I’ll use Doug Chaffee as an example because we all know Doug passed away a few years ago. Let’s say there is a great old Doug Chaffee image and we wanted to bring it back to life, but the source scans that we have in the archives are corrupted. The file comes through damaged. If we were able to get an AI generator to only look at Doug Chaffee’s art that we know we have the rights to so that that’s the only source material that the AI mind is pulling from to help us fill in damaged sections of an image that we have the legal rights to, that’s the only situation that we could resort to AI. 

And if the artist is alive, we then contact the artist and say, “Hey, can we get you to do this?” 

One thing that we’re working with—and the fans may be curious to find out about this. Print production of books has come to a place where a lot of books that we do, we just POD [Print On Demand]. And we want to make it so that all the old stuff is POD-able. So like if somebody wants a sourcebook from 1993, POD prints it out and sends it to them. The only way that’ll work is if it’s in portrait, so the TROs aren’t doable because they’re landscape. The POD can’t bind to the short side. So we’re actually hiring artists, like, “Can you do like the two inches on the side so we can change them because we need to flip the image?”

It’s still cheaper and easier and far faster to just contact the original artists and say, “Hey, can you do me a favor?” Right now I have Kat Wilder doing the next two BFMs, just adding a four-inch strip along the side because it’s a little taller than the strip of maps is. It is weird how often that has happened. We’re like, “You know what? We changed the parameters on, said, well, can you adjust this a little bit?”

Sean: Speaking of things that have changed in terms of a project. Have you ever had to reduce the scope of a project because your team wasn’t able to accomplish your original plan? Or have you had any other funny stories sort of like that?

Brent: I think that there’s normal world and then there’s BattleTech world. In normal world, I think that would totally come up. For instance, Total Warfare—the core rulebooks were supposed to be one book. One book became seven that were released. When that happens, we don’t cut everything down. We’re like, you know what, let’s expand this out.

BattleTech ilClan

IlClan‘s a perfect example. IlClan was supposed to be one sourcebook. This is the pinnacle of where the whole universe has been going. There’s no way this is happening in one sourcebook. This battle is not happening in a day. That one sourcebook became five novels and five sourcebooks because to do that story justice, you have to give the writers room to run. Let them tell the story the way it needs to be told.

For fans, reading a war through a sourcebook would be like thinking you can really understand World War II by reading military briefings. No! You have to be able to see it through the character’s eyes, experience what it was like in the trenches, and go through those storylines as characters that are in these events. That can really only be done through fiction. 

I can totally see why a lot of franchises would cut things down. We have found far more success in building things out. Perfect example—I wish I could remember which TRO this was, I want to say 3085—at the eleventh hour we had to cut like 18 entries just because we couldn’t get them through editing or fact check fast enough. And so we cut them and I said, well, let’s not throw those away. Let’s just release those as a PDF, like an extra product. And that was how TRO: 3085 Supplemental was born.

Recognition Guide ilClan Volume 1

It ended up being the highest return on investment product we’d ever done. The stuff that ends up on the cutting room floor is still good stuff, we just couldn’t fit it in the package for some reason, so let’s find another place for it. And honestly, I think that birthed what is now the Recognition Guides. I think we’re 30 versions of that into it, so clearly it has worked well for us.

Sean: I would agree. So to change gears again: what is your dream BattleTech product? And if you could design the art for anything, or any redesign of anything, what would it be?

Brent: Wow, tingles. You know, when I first started, my dream was just to create one new ‘Mech that I can get added to the universe. That’d be so cool to know that I’ve contributed to this thing that everybody loves in some way.

Once I was brought in, I was asked to create a whole bunch of stuff. I’m like, well, I’ll create a whole bunch of stuff. Then it became, I really wish I could fix these things that got mentioned but they just were just dangling out there, like the Blood Reaper. That’s what Alaric Wolf took his Trial of Bloodright in. What is that ‘Mech? What’s the TRO look like? What’s the record sheet? What’s it got on it? I’m reading, writing down what the weapons it had. I want to see that brought in. And a lot of times that stuff took two, five, seven years to actually happen. 

I had a list in my first decade here behind the curtain. You always have these dream project pitches that you want to do. I pretty much got them all done. They’re all in there. They’re all either in there or they’re in the works. It’s remarkably freeing. Now I’m really looking forward to the conflicts that are coming. I don’t know what’s going to happen in them anymore because I’m not a part of that side of the writer team. 

Dominions Divided

There is going to be some really exciting stuff in the Draconis Combine—we began to hint at that in Dominions Divided. In order for that invasion of House Davion to happen, the Warlord had to raise the economy of the Draconis Combine. He pulled 90 to 95 percent of the JumpShips out of Kurita space to do that. This whole region of space would be melting down. There are entire worlds that could be starving to death because there are no ships. You’ve got this pressure cooker in the Draconis Combine going on for a decade as a warlord systematically kills off the entire noble family. There’s nobody to reign him in, and none of the other warlords stop him. Why would all the other warlords let him do it? What’s the saying? “Never interrupt your enemy when they’re making a mistake.” 

I cannot think of an easier way to get rid of one of your rivals. There are a lot of really interesting storylines within just Kurita space alone.

And honestly, every House has really interesting storylines that are coming. The way everything’s been set up for the events that played out throughout the Battle for Terra, no corner of the Inner Sphere was quiet. There is a whole lot of stuff going on that has just been building pressure.

Having one Clan elevated to ilClan is not suddenly going to make the Inner Sphere become peaceful. Can you think of a worse outcome for the Clans? Anybody that’s not Clan Wolf, “Oh, I’m supposed to take a knee now, am I?” 

Every one of those characters is going to have to emotionally deal with that as a real person, not a one-dimensional character, but as a real person, “By the way, there’s an ilClan now, and you’re not in it.” Like, can you think of a worse outcome for a Clanner? 

There’s a whole lot of really great storylines and stuff that’s playing out there. I’m so excited to see the look on the fans’ faces as we begin delivering these new storylines. That’s what I’m looking forward to most. 

Sean: That’s it for my real questions. Let’s get into the three questions that our Sarna staff came up with.

First one If you were going to make a six-man soccer team with you on one side and five other BattleTech artists against a six-person team of BattleTech writers on the other side, which five artists are on your soccer team? 

Brent: Oh, Marco Mazzoni. Matt Plog, because I just think there’s always a place for Matt Plog.

Since this is mythical, I’m pulling Doug Chaffee, and then I’m gonna mix it up. We’ve got a new artist, out of Columbia, named Wallok. This guy has been a diehard BattleTech fan since he was 11. He’s 35 now, and in case you’re wondering, no, BattleTech has never been in Columbia. This guy didn’t have miniatures. He, as an 11-year-old kid, hand-carved his miniatures out of wood and hand-drew his hex maps, and then convinced neighborhood kids to play BattleTech with him. That’s how diehard this guy is. I’m like, you are awesome! So yeah, I’ll pull in the new guy. 

How many is that, is that four? 

Sean: That’s four.

Brent: That’s four? Okay, I’ve got to bring in Anthony Scroggins. There’s no way you can leave Anthony Scroggins out. That’s five. 

And by the way, I think the funniest thing about that team is that we will not agree or get along in any way, shape, or form. We’re all totally different people. We have totally different creative visions. Like, dude, you should have been over there. I passed in over there. Well, if you’d been there, I would have passed in. That would have been entertaining to watch us play soccer.

Sean: Alright, next question. If you could have BattleTech crossover with any other game franchise or universe, which one would it be?

Brent: That’s a cool question. My first answer is Shadowrun because I think that BattleTech and Shadowrun are the two coolest universes of all time. There are so many rich, cool storylines going on there in Shadowrun. I would say it’s probably even more fun to be an artist for Shadowrun than BattleTech. Unless you’re just a diehard BattleTech fan, which is all of us, so, you know.

But yeah, Shadowrun‘s an awesome, awesome universe, so I would think that that mix-up would be amazing, and that’s not just because we happen to have the licenses for both of those. 

BattleRun

Sean: It has happened before, I will mention. 

Brent: It has, yeah. BattleRun was a cool idea for April Fool’s. I’m with you.

Assuming that I can’t use that one because it’s just too much of a gimme answer. I want to say Halo. Because I think that it would be such a good fit. They would both complement each other so well, I think there could be a lot of fun there. 

Sean: The Spartans are basically Elementals. 

Brent: I think they’d really fit together, it’s kind of a chocolate peanut butter thing.

Sean: Final question, if you had the chance to be written into the Battletech canon as a leader of a musical band, what would the band name be, and what would be its genre of music?

Brent: So I have a funny backstory here. One of the video games that we have been brought in over the years to oversee, they tap us to help offer insights and stuff. One of them was this crazy little mobile app game for Apple. I think it was called BattleTech Tactical Command done by a team out of Singapore. When they were talking about the soundtrack, they were asking our technical advice on the subject, they said it’s straight-up techno and gangsta rap. We all laughed, like, are you kidding neither of those, no, don’t do that.

So my first thought would be if there is a way to do techno gangster rap, I think that would be hysterical. But honestly, I don’t think I would ever listen to it. So we would probably be like Five Finger Death Punch. And I have no idea what we’d call each other, but it would be something counterculture-ish and in your face.

Sean: Very cool. Well, thanks for sitting down to talk with me and answering all these questions.

Brent: Thank you for the opportunity.

Thanks again to Brent for chatting about BattleTech, and look forward to more interviews in 2024.

And as always, MechWarriors: Stay Syrupy.