The Wonders of Unreliable Narration

Uncertainty is the secret weapon of BattleTech/MechWarrior lore

Forty years ago, Chicago-based FASA corporation launched a miniatures wargame called Battledroids. They were informed that this name cut too close to the “droids” of Star Wars fame, and from the second edition onward the game was known as BattleTech.

The basic appeal of BattleTech lies in our deep-seated human desire to see big things go boom. The game’s main units, the Battlemechs (‘Mechs or just Mechs for short) are three-story tall walking tanks that lumber about the battlefield hammering at one another with high-powered weapons ranging from the hypersonic Gauss Rifle through lasers, missiles, cannons, all the way down to the bodies of the ‘Mechs themselves.

In the original game, players controlled their forces from the bird’s eye perspective. The pilots – “MechWarriors” – were little more than a very sensitive part of the ‘Mechs’ equipment. As time went on, expansions added more units and battlefields to the game, allowing Battletech players to contest small-scale infantry clashes or giant battles between military spacecraft. FASA also rolled out an accompanying role-playing game, initially called MechWarrior, that tried to put the players into the thick of the action. The name would end up being reused by a series of simulator-style computer games that contributed much to the franchise’s popularity.

Over the years, a rich science-fiction setting has grown up within the Battletech franchise. The universe depicted is fairly bleak and violent place, showing humanity still trapped in cycles of wars at least as late as the 32^nd century. In some ways the setting is most distinctive for what it doesn’t have: there’s a little bit of miraculous technology but no out-and-out magic, no intelligent aliens, and a lot of the people in the universe are living in ways familiar to people of the 21^st century. BattleTech’s setting isn’t driven by supernatural powers, it’s driven by politics - nasty, vicious politics that all too often boils over into the wars that the games depict.

Your Government Lies, Mechwarrior!

But what really sets BattleTech apart from other imagined worlds isn’t so much what’s written, but how it’s written. The sourcebooks are almost always presented as the official documents of in-universe political players, filled with bias, misconception, and sometimes outright propaganda. It’s an open secret of the fanbase that you can’t really trust more than the broad outline of what a sourcebook tells you. Sometimes fans are treated to two layers of this technique, with a secondary in-universe source commenting on what the main document presents.

While the accompanying novels never openly admitted that their narratives were as unreliable as the sourcebooks, they might be even less reliable. After all, the loose adaptation of the BattleTech children’s cartoon was eased into the fold with the conceit that it’s just an example of the kid-focused propaganda from within the universe. The dozens of BattleTech novels, with inconsistencies inevitable in such a large body with so many writers, could be fairly read as samples of military fiction and semi-fiction from the imagined universe.

None of this is criticism. The way the story of BattleTech has been told is enticing, wide-open to fan theory and conjecture, with the old “that’s not canon” retort so common in fandoms dead on arrival. Once you get past the broad strokes, the BattleTech canon is largely opinion – and why should the opinions of fictional characters be privileged over those of real people?

It’s Just A Game...

Somebody reading this is thinking that I’m taking this too seriously. That’s alright – it’s not the first time someone’s thought that about me and my hobbies. But in this case, I want to make two replies to that sentiment.

First off, being engaged with a game and having a lot of fun with it just is the point of games. If someone else wants to do that by just playing their game and not engaging with the setting, it would be pretty spiteful to suggest that they’re writing off the setting as silly (being too serious) because that person’s having their kind of fun. Condemning people who want to have fun by deeply engaging with the setting is no more reasonable.

But let’s go one step further. A lot of people like to talk about real-life conspiracy theories these day, and the appeal is understandable. It’s exciting to unravel a mystery and satisfying to be part of a group holding little-known secret knowledge. The problem is – and let’s set the truth aside for a moment – getting into real-life conspiracy theories can come at a high cost in terms of personal relationships and even employment. If someone is attracted to the emotional rewards of conspiracy thinking, it’s much safer to indulge those desires by talking about something that is, after all, “just a game”.

… a Game Full of Conspiracies

Somebody else reading this is thinking, “Yeah, I know there are conspiracies in BattleTech,” and has a few examples in mind – probably ones involving the mysterious ComStar Order. I can’t disagree with that person. There are definitely conspiracies in the BattleTech universe that have been overtly outed by the sourcebooks and other material.

But I think there are many more secrets hinted at “between the lines”, especially in the period of the Clan Invasion. I hope you’ll join me in exploring them.