Like Warhammer lore is digestible because it’s very self aware that it’s ridiculous.

Battletech unfortunately is really self serious. The different houses of the Inner Sphere are basically a rough sketch of what a redditor thinks America, Europe, Russia, and China are and Japan.

Then you have the clans who are basically exiled nazis with a handful of quirky social progressive quirks.

This. Is a shame because Battletech and MechWarrior are really cool.

But the understanding of states of any stripe is basically what a redditor thinks if they were also from the 80s.

I think I would appreciate sci fi that werent blisteringly inaccurate and vulgar appropriations of real modern day states. God damn.

  • Max@lemmygrad.ml
    8·
    2 years ago

    is it a problem that all the various organizations in battletech are near uniformly morally detestable? I don’t think anyone is positively depicted outside of stories told from the perspective of individuals in the organizations, who of course view themselves favorably.

    • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
      5·
      1 year ago

      Which is exactly like 40k where literally every faction and sub faction are horrible to live under. Yes even the tau with their outlawing of different culture and religion or you get disappeared

    • GloriousDoubleK@lemmygrad.mlOP
      41·
      2 years ago

      Sure. It’s not a “problem” really. The issue that I have is that all of the houses and clans being detestible is based on bullshit we think is actually true in real life. Like they took the house that was “socialist” and basically slapped together ill the bullshit lies about real socialist states and then put a veneer of sci fi on it? Then the house that is the allegory for “America” is bad because they keep talking about freedom and all that bullshit but they’re… Smug about it. 😒

      I dont know all the lore. And Im slowly getting into it. But most of the stuff im seeing so far is just lazy sci fi. Which is a big shame.

      • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
        7·
        2 years ago

        The “lore” is just window dressing for having a game with stompy robots punching one another. That’s it. Same with Warhammer really

      • bemenaker@lemmy.world
        4·
        1 year ago

        The lore was written during the cold war and some of it is done as a mockery of what was at the time. Context of the 1980s is helpful to understand why it is written how it is.

      • Max@lemmygrad.ml
        41·
        2 years ago

        You’re definitely not wrong. Admittedly my days of owning boxes of miniatures is long over, so my battletech knowledge does not extend beyond the late 2000s. Maybe it’s even worse now. Not to mention any sort of narrative lore controlled by a big business that hires working writers to fill out plot points will inevitably end up falling back on tired sci-fi tropes—many of which were solidified during the Cold War era.