Battletech: Gothic is not where we expected this franchise to go

Long-time holders of the BattleTech tabletop gaming license, Catalyst Game Labs, have something surprisingly grim and dark to talk about at this week’s AdeptiCon convention. BattleTech: Gothic, formally revealed on Facebook, adds massive monsters to the game of big stompy robots. It’s described as a “themed-box release” — something entirely new for the roughly 40-year-old franchise. The announcement of the “complete, stand-alone game experience” arrived Monday alongside a 38-page lore dump, the first entry in what the publisher is calling the BattleTech Continuum. 

While there’s no mention of a launch window, best-selling author Michael Stackpole said on Bluesky that he has been tapped to write related fiction. Polygon has reached out to Catalyst for more information.

The scaly, winged kaiju — or “abominations” as they’re being called — are being billed in the lore as just a continuation of the Inner Sphere’s penchant for creating planet-crushing, biosphere-destroying weapons of mass destruction. In addition to nuclear weapons and virus bombs, now these evil scientists can graft biological material together in roughly the same way that McDonald’s turns living chickens into boot-shaped nuggets.

BattleTech was originally born as a tabletop wargame in the 1980s, and went on to become both a tabletop role-playing game, a boutique retail arcade experience, and a series of popular video games published by Microsoft. It lives on digitally through Piranha Games’ Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries, and the recent stand-alone spin-off called MechWarrior 5: Clans. But since Harebrained Schemes walked away from its BattleTech turn-based strategy video game, it’s the tabletop game from Catalyst that has maintained the most momentum with diehard fans. The company revealed in 2023 that it had sold more than 9 million pre-assembled miniatures — and that was before it raised $7.5 million to help launch BattleTech: Mercenaries.

Trouble is, at least some of those diehard fans on social media don’t seem all that hyped about this particular thematic turn. More than a few are asking cheekily if this is an early April Fools’ joke. We’ll see what shakes out in-person as fans stop by the Catalyst booth in Milwaukee, the new home for AdeptiCon, this weekend.