Hunting the Wolves of Tukayyid with Chris Lowrey

We are mere days away from experiencing a momentous event in BattleTech history. For the first time, players will be able to experience the Battle of Tukayyid virtually through the eyes of Clan Wolf. Wolves of Tukayyid brings MechWarrior 5: Clans to the pivotal planet to determine the fate of the Inner Sphere and the fate of the Invading Clans.

With such stakes, I felt it necessary to reach out to MechWarrior 5: Clans Narrative Director Chris Lowrey to learn all that I could about the upcoming expansion. Here’s our conversation. 

Sean (Sarna): Because of the Wolf Clan and Battle of Tukayyid sourcebooks, as well as some Mike Stackpole novels, this DLC-more than any other-is going to tread well-written ground. How faithful will fans find Wolves of Tukayyid‘s story compared to the established lore? How difficult was it to translate the static canon of BattleTech into a dynamic, interactive experience?

Chris Lowrey (PGI): There is a lot of ground to cover with this question, so bear with me a bit here.

I should start by saying that yes, Wolves of Tukayyid is more closely intertwined with the established canon than anything we have done before. Specifically, the events of Michael Stackpole’s Lost Destiny novel, the short story We Do The Impossible by Joel Steverson, and the many sourcebooks that cover the Battle of Tukayyid, both new and old. 

But with that said, I need to make it very clear that just like all MechWarrior 5: Clans products, while Wolves of Tukayyid intersects with events from other stories and sourcebooks, it is not a raw adaptation of any particular novel. It is its own unique story that stands on its own within the context of a MechWarrior videogame, and an extension of the grander story that we have been telling in MW5: Clans. So, people should not go into Wolves of Tukayyid expecting a beat-for-beat recreation of Lost Destiny or any other Tukayyid story. Rather, the story of Wolves of Tukayyid will serve as both its own Clan Wolf-facing story and the epic conclusion to the story of Operation REVIVAL as presented in both the core MW5: Clans campaign and Ghost Bear: Flash Storm.

Even within that context, this expansion was still a beast to tackle due to what Tukayyid is. More than any other battle in all of BattleTech‘s timeline, the Battle of Tukayyid has literally thousands of pages written on it between novels, sourcebooks, and scenario books spanning over 40 years (the latest scenario book and short stories covering the battle being published as recently as 2020). Between detailed breakdowns of each Clan’s campaign, extensive fleshing out of the terrain on each battlefield, and in the case of the original Wolf Clan and Jade Falcon sourcebooks, a complete phonebook roster of every individual who participated in the battle, along with the ‘Mechs and vehicles they piloted. And this is before even trying to break things down to where we can chart and craft an engaging campaign that doesn’t feel shoehorned into pre-existing stories.

It was a lot. But Tukayyid has this much literature written about it for a reason. It is a monumental clash that brings Operation REVIVAL to a climactic end, while also setting up the next steps of what happens in the greater story of the Clans.

Sean: I think the Smoke Jaguar campaign did an excellent job of telling a story where the player is the winner, even though the Clan as a whole ultimately fails to conquer Luthien. The Ghost Bear campaign similarly gives the player that sense of victory despite the Star eventually perishing to take Alshain. How much easier/more difficult was it to write the Wolves of Tukayyid campaign, given how much has already been written about the Battle of Tukayyid?

Chris: Wolves of Tukayyid is by far the most challenging MW5 story we have taken on across either title. In the Smoke Jaguar campaign, so little was written about many of the major players in that story that even Leo Showers and Sarah Weaver had less than ten pages of spoken

dialogue between the pair. And Cordera Perez, despite how impactful he was to the greater universe, was a name on a page in a few sourcebooks—nothing more. This made for fertile ground to craft our main campaign’s story around without worrying about trampling over existing depictions of the characters.

For Flash Storm, Aletha and Bjorn are characters with substantial history with the Ghost Bears, but much of their fiction where they take prominent roles in the story come from events decades after the events of the Flash Storm campaign, so in many ways, the Flash Storm campaign can be taken as almost a prologue for Clan Ghost Bear and their pre-established stories in the universe. This still gives us ample space to craft our own story to make them work within the context of a MechWarrior game.

Neither of those is the case with Tukayyid, and doubly so when we finally landed on following the Thirteenth Wolf Guards as our primary POV unit. The Thirteenth Wolf Guards were a central POV unit in the fiction they were a part of, so we are going from lore units whose written lore can be summed up in around 1-5 pages, to units and characters that have literally entire novels written about them. It’s a big shift and one that I think always brings a certain challenge—both in adapting the material, as well as maintaining expectations to remind even the long-term fans exactly where we are in the timeline when this story takes place.

That last part was a big bit of learning we came away from when it came to feedback on Clans’ base campaign. Lots of feedback about how “the Jaguars aren’t acting like Jaguars” or other impressions that are colored by events that happen much later in the timeline than at the moments we are depicting in the moment.

The Jaguar example is a big one, as when most people think of the Smoke Jaguars in the lore, they latch onto their favorite characterizations of them from novels like Exodus Road, MechCommander/MechWarrior 3, or other points later in the timeline, after they go through a fairly major culture shift after the Battle of Tukayyid (this major post-Tukayyid culture shift for them serves as the central plot point for Exodus Road itself). But the story of MW5: Clans‘ base campaign was “pre-Tukayyid,” before the Jaguars had that major culture shift into what most people are familiar with—we simply were not at that point in the timeline. So for us, it was important to show how the Jaguars saw themselves at that moment in time; much closer to how they are in the novel Jaguar’s Leap (whose timeline intersects with the events of MW5: Clans) than they were in Exodus Road, which has yet to happen in our game’s timeline.

But nostalgia is a helluva drug. Even though we made efforts to show a bit of those underlying hints as to “what is to come” with the Jaguars throughout the campaign, for some, they either did not know enough about the wider BattleTech universe or were very attached to that very specific image of the Jaguars to get the sense that our adaptation felt “off,” even when it isn’t. We’re not refuting that’s what the Jaguars became; the story we’re depicting just “isn’t there yet.” And so, it must reflect the moment in time that the campaign takes place in. Especially if we do get to the point where we can show the players how those attitudes shifted into something they are more familiar with. I bring all this up because the narrative team knows going into this expansion that we’re bound to face similar challenges with Wolves of Tukayyid. 

Natasha and Phelan alone have thousands of pages written on their characters across nearly a century of the universe’s timeline. While the events of Wolves of Tukayyid will see them in a single moment in time during the events of Lost Destiny and We Do The Impossible. So if your perfect image of Natasha Kerensky is 100% grounded in her numerous depictions of her as the 40-year-old “takes no shit” bombshell firebrand of the Succession Wars, that is a very different image from the 79-year-old “senior Khan and experienced mentor” that she is during the events of Lost Destiny.

Like all MW5: Clans story campaigns, Wolves of Tukayyid aims to be as accurate an adaptation as possible to the source material while telling our own story that fits into the context of a MechWarrior experience. And for this expansion, that means that the characterization of many of the novel characters will stem from how they were depicted specifically in Lost Destiny and We Do the Impossible. 

Sean: Ghost Bear: Flash Storm was 12 missions, but Wolves of Tukayyid is going to be 20—that’s 40-percent more campaign! Were there any sacrifices made in other areas compared to Flash Storm to increase the mission count, such as cinematic count/length or new gameplay mechanics? Can we expect a similar quality experience to?

Chris: We use Flash Storm as a starting point, but like any kind of expansion product, our hopes for Wolves of Tukayyid is that it helps build on the success of both the base game and the Flash Storm expansion to continue to push the story of the Clans further. This time, into what is ultimately the climax of the Operation REVIVAL story we’ve been telling since the launch of the base game.

As I said in my previous interview, DLC expansions need to be produced on DLC budgets. For Wolves of Tukayyid, we still put in the same effort and resources, but this time around, focusing on delivering a Tukayyid expansion that delivers on depicting the events of that battle was paramount to this specific expansion’s production.

So this time around, features like deployable artillery as well as equipable Arrow IVs were important to not only deliver new features for the players, but also to bring the battlefields of Tukayyid to life on both sides.

On the mission front, I should highlight that while there are 40% extra missions compared to Flash Storm, some will notice that the missions are more focused than what you might be used to in the base game and Flash Storm. This has come about thanks to player feedback. While I think key setpiece missions like the final battle on Turtle Bay or the protracted fight through the Alshain Orbital Shipyards benefit from their long length and boots-on-the-ground look at some of the key events of those stories, there was a consensus in player feedback that beyond those setpiece missions, average mission length in general tended to be long and grueling in later missions, which can make for some frustrating experiences if you end up suffering a team wipe very close to the end of a 30-40 minute long mission with no checkpoints (since we have the management element and damage carries over, checkpoints could end up “softlocking” progress if you take too much damage in early fights).

For the Wolves of Tukayyid levels, when it comes to those non-setpiece missions, they are at much more digestible lengths without being frustrating. This also serves us well on the metagame side as it gives us more runway to change out ‘Mechs and gear in earlier missions towards a lighter Star composition. Players will have to learn to leverage their lights and mediums for the first third of the game, as it will take a bit for the heavies to become available in the markets, and like Clan Ghost Bear, market availability will be tight as Ulric rations resources for the Wolves’ critical campaign.

And since you mentioned cinematics, no, that has not been something that we cut back on for this expansion. Tukayyid is a seminal moment in the story of both the Wolves and the story of Operation REVIVAL that we’ve been telling, so cinematic storytelling was extra important to depict the events of Tukayyid. While the final edits are still being cut, the current projection is that it will have a similar run-time to Ghost Bear: Flash Storm.

On a wider note, our Cinematic Director, Matt Leigh, recently shared with the team the total runtime of cinematics that the team produced in 2025:

• Ghost Bear: Flash Storm: 31:36 
• Shadow of Kerensky: 18:18
• Wolves of Tukayyid: ~28-29 minutes (still not final at the time of this interview.)

That means that within the past year, we wrote, cast, directed, captured, and published what amounts to 78 minutes of MechWarrior cinematics. That is pretty much 10 minutes shy of a feature-length production. And that is not even going into all the hard work that goes into the non-cinematic performances for the missions and mission briefings.

When combined with the 117-minute run time of the base MW5: Clans game, we’re currently sitting on close to three and a half hours of MechWarrior cinematics since we debuted the Clans’ style of storytelling. A monumental achievement that the team is very proud of, and we hope the players will continue to enjoy.

Sean: In the promotional material, we see Ulric and Natasha Kerensky, and the player character is confirmed to be Ranna Kerensky as of some recently released screencaps, but I didn’t spot Phelan. Considering how central Phelan is to Ranna’s story, are we sure to see him somewhere in the campaign?

Chris: Yes, Phelan is in the game. There was a point in the earliest versions of our drafts for the story where he wasn’t, as including him would be a lot of work. And the closer you get to him, the more we shackle our story to an adaptation of Lost Destiny, which is detrimental from a gameplay perspective.

In the earliest versions of the campaign, we were initially looking to have Vlad as the central protagonist instead of Ranna, given that he is another major lore character who doesn’t really get his due until Malicious Intent. Handing him a campaign would be similar to the Ghost Bears, in which we can take pre-established lore characters and give them a bit of a prologue before their own stories take center stage.

But charting his course through the lore, you quickly see that his path doesn’t really hit the key touchstones of the Wolf campaign on Tukayyid, and he barely interacts with Ulric or Natasha if at all once he’s on the ground.

That last part was the deal breaker for Vlad, as we already did a lot of narrative lay-up to introduce Natasha in the core Jaguar campaign. And with Flash Storm really setting a precedent when it came to adapting existing novel characters like Ulric, Bjorn, and Aletha, we would have been raked over the coals if we didn’t include Natasha in the Wolf campaign as a central feature.

So Ranna became a good compromise. She is close enough to the story of Phelan, Vlad, and Natasha, where we could still have those intersection points with the key set pieces we wanted to depict, but given that she is in a separate Trinary from Natasha and Phelan, we could also break her off to do her own thing without having Natasha and Phelan glued to her hip. This gives us flexibility on the gameplay side to craft our own story that centers around her own experiences on Tukayyid with the rest of the Bravo Assault Star (Breaker Star).

Sean: Ranna Kerensky is confirmed to be the player character, but I assume the player won’t be locked into using her Warhawk, “Lupus”? Might we get a new named variant of the Warhawk in her honor?

Chris: No. It is one of those concessions we need to make for the sake of gameplay in a MechWarrior game. While we do make passing mention of her Warhawk, we start Ranna with skills and a Warhawk affinity to honor her pre-existing lore. That is pretty much where it ends. In fiction, she primarily deploys the Warhawk Prime configuration anyway.

Sean: Ranna features heavily in Lost Destiny, which is a pillar of BattleTech‘s lore, but it doesn’t show her engaging in a lot of ‘Mech combat. What will we learn about her combat abilities in Wolves of Tukayyid?

Chris: Lost Destiny, as a novel, is set fairly tightly around Phelan, given all the moving pieces at that point in that trilogy. Ranna is in it, but she is more of a supporting character for Phelan’s arc than a character of her own. But she does have her own character history and aspirations that we can lean into with a story that is more firmly rooted in her experiences on Tukayyid. At this point in the story, she firmly outranks Phelan and is herself going through her own challenges.

Our story will go into some of those challenges. Especially those that are carried over from Lethal Heritage, Blood Legacy, and the first half of Lost Destiny, where she is now not only comfortable with her taboo relationship with Phelan being public knowledge, but she is also an accomplished Star Captain of her own right—one who sees herself as the heir to Natasha Kerensky’s legacy as her trueborn genetic granddaughter.

In many ways, Ranna finds herself grappling with living up to the legacy of Natasha and making a name for herself within the Thirteenth Wolf Guards. A unit that, at this point in the timeline, is a powder keg waiting to explode, thanks to Natasha crafting the unit the same way she formed the Black Widow Company: by taking the belligerents, malcontents, from every corner of Clan Wolf’s Touman, regardless of age, experience, political affiliation, or trueborn/freeborn birthright, and bringing them all to heel under her command.

In this way, the Thirteenth isn’t the line-unit training the next generation of newly minted warriors like the Jagar campaign, nor the fanatically loyal Elite Honor Guard of the Ghost Bear campaign. It’s an isle of misfit toys that the Black Widow wishes to mold in her own image, a combination of the dregs of Clan Wolf, ready to stick it to anyone and everyone with the promise of glory and score-settling at the Black Widow’s side, coupled with young ristars like Ranna brought in to bring order to the controlled chaos. Natasha already has decades of experience proving that she can tame the tempest she has created. But now, Ranna needs to prove that she herself has what it takes to live up to her claim as the true heir to Natasha Kerensky’s legacy.

Sean: Will the player still be a Star Commander in control of a Star of Warriors, or will we no longer have a command rank in Wolves of Tukayyid?

Chris: The Elemental feature we introduced in Flash Storm will still be present in the Wolves of Tukayyid campaign, and in the lore, to have direct command over what is effectively a Nova, one typically needs to hold the rank of Star Captain or Nova Commander. So, our primary POV character pretty much needs to maintain one of those ranks at a minimum.

While Ranna led an entire Trinary in the fiction, for gameplay purposes, you are still confined to your own Star, plus the Elemental support points assigned to you.

Sean: We’re getting six new ‘Mechs, four of which already exist in MechWarrior Online and are some of my personal favorites: the Ice Ferret, Linebacker, Incubus, and Shadow Hawk IIC. I’m not a huge Bane fan, but I hear people really like their dakka. Will we see any new variants compared to what’s already in MWO? Are there any differences in the models or animations compared to MWO?

Chris: Despite being longer than the Flash Storm campaign, flooding the markets with too many alt variants of BattleMechs ends up having a somewhat detrimental effect when you have no chance to ever be able to try everything out across a single campaign. And many of the newer ‘Mechs, such as the Shadow Hawk IIC and the Naga, are built with MWO restrictions in mind so that we can launch those in MWO as soon as we can (with the Naga planned to eventually come to MWO sometime after Wolves of Tukayyid‘s launch).

Sean: Will any of the new ‘Mechs be playable in the base campaign or Ghost Bear: Flash Storm?

Chris: Yes, to both campaigns. It will be just like the content from Flash Storm; the ‘Mech content will be slotted into the campaign at the appropriate spots to place them within their respective campaigns. With the sole exception of the Linebacker, which will be introduced in-game after it enters the timeline in 3052 (around the same time the Ebon Jaguar unlocks those that also have the Ghost Bear campaign). But it will still be available from the onset in New Game + modes for those who do not care about it having proper introduction dates.

Sean: What’s truly notable is the Naga, a ‘Mech that hasn’t been seen since Ghost Bear’s Legacy and MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries. This 80-ton assault comes with paired Arrow IV missiles, which historically offered enormous firepower and a blast radius. How will the Arrow IV missile perform in Wolves of Tukayyid? Will there still be massive splash damage, or is it basically going to be like a Thunderbolt missile on steroids?

Chris: Oh, there will be massive splash damage. This isn’t your smaller LRM or SRM, but what amounts to a ‘Mech-sized SSM launcher. So be assured, it will carry the appropriate amount of punch that comes with such a weapon.

Sean: Of the new ‘Mechs coming in Wolves of Tukayyid, which one is your favorite?

Chris: For me, the Shadow Hawk IIC. Not just because of the fantastic art direction and modeling work put into the ‘Mech, but because the design is tailor-made to benefit from the re-worked jump jets that are coming to MW5: Clans. And as the only jump-capable ‘Mech coming with the Wolf expansion, it makes for the perfect ‘Mech that highlights how fun the new jump jets are (although keep in mind, jump jet refactoring applies to the game globally, so those Vipers and Executioners are also massive beneficiaries of this change as well).

Sean: I did see some Arrow IV-equipped Catapults in the promotional materials, the CPLT-C3, so the Inner Sphere will also receive this deadly artillery system. Are there any other Arrow IV variants hiding in Wolves of Tukayyid? Maybe the UrbanMech UM-AIV?

Chris: No to the UM-AIV. That is a design that was rolled out in the Jihad Era and so would not be something found on the 3052 battlefield. For that, the CPLT-C3s are one of the few canon Arrow IV designs active in 3052.

Sean: The Wolves are one of the few Clans to respect artillery, which means we’re going to be able to call in artillery bombardment in Wolves of Tukayyid. The promotional material suggests we’re calling in an orbital strike of some sort. Is this going to be a mission-specific thing, or can we equip artillery strikes similar to how you do in MWO or MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries?

Chris: They won’t be orbital strikes. No space-based naval assets were deployed on Tukayyid. They will be artillery barrages from other Wolf assets in the field, such as other stars of Nagas.

The mechanics are going to function closer to Mercenaries than to MWO. Like the Elementals, it will be mission-specific based on the mission parameters, but unlike Mercs, which involve an up-front cost to use, it is more about assets being available to call in.

Ulric and Natasha both know the stakes involved with winning this fight, so if they line up the support, they are not going to begrudge your liberal use of the strikes.

Ignore the strikes at your own peril as well, as some of the battles on Tukayyid are going to be quite pitched and designed around the fact that you will have access to the strikes. If you don’t leverage your artillery to thin the ComStar ranks down before engaging them up close, you can quickly find yourself overwhelmed—especially at the higher difficulty settings.

Sean: MechWarrior 5: Clans is getting a TRO Record Sheet-style MechLab as a free update. People seem to always complain about the MechLab, no matter what you do. Why do you think it’s so hard to make a MechLab that appeals to everyone?

Chris: We’re committed to improving the MechLab experience for everyone, and that is what these latest changes to the MechLab aim to do. But we want to highlight that “everyone” includes our gamepad players just as much as mouse and keyboard players. If we are to expand the reach and ambitions of what a MechWarrior title is, menus like MechLab by necessity need to find a solution that can effectively find a middle ground between the BattleTech Record Sheet layout that is efficient for mouse and keyboard users and something that is streamlined for the majority of players who are gamepad-only users.

The update to the MechLab in Clans aims to get back to the more Record Sheet-level overview that PC mouse and keyboard players find more efficient, but constructed in a way that flows a bit better than the layout was in Mercs for our gamepad-only users playing on PlayStation, Xbox, and Game Pass (which alone brings in hundreds of thousands of new players). And it doesn’t come at the cost of the existing MechLab interface that was designed for gamepad inputs.

Sean: Jump jets are getting a boost in Wolves of Tukayyid with new directional thrusters. How do they work? Will it be like the PgUp/PgDown keys in MechWarrior 2?

Chris: Dear lord no… Even back in 1995, those jump jet controls were unwieldy (I think I ended up key-binding those things to the hat controls of my Sidewinder 3D Pro).

In practice, the jump jet controls are more inspired by a combination of other modern ‘Mech games and the Crysis mod MechWarrior: Living Legends‘ Improved Jump Jets. The changes include a general reduction in jump jet fuel time (reduced to three seconds from the previously tuned five), but giving a much more distinct kick to the acceleration of the jets that at a baseline, will get similar “per jump jet” height, but with a feeling that the jets are about 30% more responsive than they used to be.

But the big add is directional vectoring on the jump jets, giving a ridiculous amount of flexibility in how you use your jump jets.

How it works is simple enough. If you engage your jump jets “from neutral,” not inputting any directional inputs, your jump jets will give you vertical thrust similar to what you were accustomed to before (but still with noticeably snappier ascention rates). But where the fun begins is when you give a directional input based on the vector you wish the jump jets to propel you along. When you hold that direction down while engaging jump jets, the jump jets will vector along that chosen direction, giving you a great amount of flexibility in how you can engage your jets. Both the neutral thrusts coupled with the vectored thrusts can be combined to get an extensive number of results based on how you use your jump jet fuel.

Need to close the distance on a sniper or missile boat? Jump behind a slow mover? Quickly jump to cover when caught out in the open? Or even jumping backwards to get behind an enemy trying to get into your rear arc? Well, now you can do all those things. Especially on ‘Mechs that come pre-mounted with numerous jump jets like the Shadow Hawk IIC, Summoner, and Viper. And even ‘Mechs like the Executioner become more flexible in how you can maneuver yourself.

If any tabletop veterans find these descriptions familiar, then you’re not wrong. These changes were designed as equal parts, adding value to jump jets to make them a generally more attractive piece of equipment to take into the field, as well as to try to deliver on the fantasy and flexibility jump jets have in the lore and in the tabletop game that I always felt the MechWarrior games failed to deliver on.

I will caution ahead of time that there is a bit of a learning curve to them. The directional jump thrusters are, by design, fairly shallow. So, if you imagine jumping over a rock or terrain features to ambush targets or jumping behind pursuing ‘Mechs, you’ll need to master the art of engaging jump jets in neutral for vertical lift, followed by vectored input to clear tall obstacles. Takes some getting used to, but once you master it, jump jets become tremendously useful and fun to use. At least until you accidentally close the distance on an assault lance and don’t have enough fuel to jump away, that is.

Sean: Will we see these jump jet changes in MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries someday? I need my Victor to soar!

Chris: Unknown at this time. But it is something we can investigate if there is an interest in carrying it over to Mercs.

While we would love to back-port these jump jet improvements over to Mercs if another DLC is greenlit, which is still not a guarantee at this point, we cannot say with certainty at this time that this feature will be able to be ported over. We would need to do a round of internal testing to ensure that the implementation won’t result in performance hitches for our players on PS4 or Xbox One before we could make a call either way.

Sean: Will Elementals return from Ghost Bear: Flash Storm?

Chris: Yes. Elementals will return, and with a new commander. As much as we loved Rook in the Ghost Bear Campaign, the Elemental Trinary of the Thirteenth Wolf Guards firmly belongs to Star Commander Olin Dubczeck and his years of gruff experience.

Sean: The Com Guards famously had a lot of top-tier Star League-era designs that had largely disappeared from the Inner Sphere. MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries already has a selection of these ‘Mechs, such as the Black Knight, Champion, and Highlander, but might Wolves of Tukayyid bring back the Flashman, Crockett, Mongoose, or Shootist? How will the Com Guards stand out from the rest of the Inner Sphere’s forces?

Chris: Up until this point, MW5: Clans has mostly focused on House Kurita as the primary antagonist faction of both the main game and the DLC. While House Kurita does have a “similar-ish” roster of ‘Mechs compared to ComStar, thanks to Operation ROSEBUD, the Com Guards make much more liberal use of the higher-tech Star League ‘Mechs in their reserve. Including brand new variants that were specifically configured for the Battle of Tukayyid—the venerable Clanbusters.

As to new OpFor ‘Mechs, no, outside the Clanbuster variants, there will not be any new ‘Mech Chassis’ introduced this time around. If there were, we would have likely added more playable ‘Mechs on the Clan side than dedicate a heavy amount of resources to chassis that you cannot play yourself.

Sean: Could this Tukayyid-related DLC be a harbinger of a Mercenaries Tukayyid DLC?

Chris: Never say never, but in this case, there are a number of challenges in the way of this option. The two biggest being that on the gameplay side, Shadow of Kerensky more often than not typically takes you beyond the Battle of Tukayyid on its own. So, to play Tukayyid in Mercs, it would need to come right in the middle of the Shadow of Kerensky DLC campaign, and based on your own decisions in the back half of that DLC, you could find yourself softlocking yourself out of the events due to how the back half of the Shadow of Kerensky expansion is put together.

The other major reason is that thematically, it was never a conflict that involved mercenaries, and there was even a very explicit avoidance of using mercenaries at all in the battle. Anastasius Focht was very explicit in that conflict that the Com Guards didn’t just play by the rules, they did everything in their power to adhere to the Clan ways of honorable combat, including a pretty firm exclusion of mercenary forces in their rosters (only pre-enlisted Com Guards only) as he did not want to give the Clans any excuse to invalidate the results of the battle should ComStar win. For him, deception was off the table. 

If we were to tackle that conflict on the Mercs’ end, there would be a lot of smashing square pegs into the round holes in both of these departments just to shove in a battle that is pretty explicitly said to have never involved mercenaries in the conflict. If you were a mercenary engaged with ComStar at this time, you would have more than likely been wrapped up in Myndo Waterly‘s Operation SCORPION that ran parallel to Tukayyid rather than participating in Tukayyid itself.

While we’ll never take things completely off the table, this is something where it is not like we are starved for choice on what conflicts to depict moving forward. And any potential

direction needs to be weighed against all the other options available to us. There are a lot of major events that are happening in the Inner Sphere that heavily involve mercenaries, including some major, starmap-altering changes beyond the Clan Corridor‘s formation that would likely make for better conflicts to highlight in Mercs.

Sean: Many others and I were sure that the next Clans DLC was going to star Clan Jade Falcon. Is there still a Jade Falcon DLC in the works? What does the future hold for MechWarrior 5: Clans?

Chris: Wolves of Tukayyid is, in many ways, considered an essential DLC for us on the Clans team. While the story of the base campaign was a self-contained story that centered on Jayden and Cobalt Star’s experiences in the early days of the Clan Invasion, a big part of that campaign was establishing the grander story of Operation REVIVAL itself. And that story has yet to reach its conclusion, even after the events of Ghost Bear: Flash Storm.

While that was always the plan for us going in, since Luthien allowed us to achieve the branching path ending that was a core design goal of that campaign, it still left some feeling like the main story of Operation REVIVAL was far from over.

Given how important Tukayyid was to not just the Jaguars but all the Clans, we didn’t want to rush straight into Tukayyid without doing a bit of behind-the-scenes establishing of some of the other major players. This was why the Ghost Bear DLC was targeted as the follow-up story to the Jaguar to start widening the lens on the other Clans and their own personal stakes in the invasion, and how they differ from the Jaguars. Which is how Flash Storm developed into what it became.

But we also can’t languish in this corner of the universe forever, either. Despite it being a story focused on the Ghost Bears, Flash Storm was just as important to widen the “big picture” storytelling of REVIVAL itself, highlighting both Ulric Kerensky’s accession to ilKhan as well as the fraying unity of all the Clans once Ulric Kerensky took out the guard rails preventing them from fighting one another (something that Cobalt star was too low-ranked to really see, as well as too green to really understand the wider implications of). 

And while I know some like yourself were convinced we would be focusing on another Invading Clan like the Jade Falcons, the reality is that while I’m sure we can come up with an interesting micro story regarding the Falcons or one of the other Invading Clans, we would be doing it at the expense of the macro story of REVIVAL as most of the big picture plot points have already been covered through both the base campaign and the Ghost Bear expansion. A hypothetical Jade Falcon campaign would either have to keep larger events “spinning in place” or worse, retread ground we already covered in the base game and Flash Storm.

For us, an ideal Jade Falcon campaign would be one with deeper ties to the more macro storytelling that adds to the experience of MW5: Clans as a whole rather than existing in its own isolated bubble. And I’m sure I don’t need to tell the Jade Falcon fans out there that there are plenty of those stories that exist for the Falcons that adhere to those wider product goals. We would love to work on one if given the chance, but it’s still too early for us to greenlight a new DLC until we see how Wolves of Tukayyid does.

So while Wolves of Tukayyid may be the expansion that brings the story of Operation REVIVAL to a close, it’s an important note that the name of the game is MW5: Clans, not MW5: REVIVAL. The end of REVIVAL isn’t the end of the story of the Clans—only the beginning of a new era with many other twists and turns to come. 

And hopefully, with enough support, one that we can continue to expand upon.

Wolves of Tukayyid arrives on every platform you can get MechWarrior 5: Clans on December 4. 

Wanna support Sarna? Get Wolves of Tukayyid on Steam via our affiliate link!

And as always, MechWarriors: Stay Syrupy.