Syngyne

Cameron actually said that the second movie shouldn't take like four years to make. A lot of the time consuming setup work they had to do for this movie (rigging the actors' models, etc) can be used for the next.

Also, Heavy Gear isn't a U.S. franchise, it's Canadian.

The Onion AV club has a really good interview with the director where he answers a lot of questions people are bringing up. As to why the aliens just sit for almost thirty years, and don't organize, rebel, or whatnot:

Then she did an awful job of it in the first Rebuild movie. It sounded much better in the second movie.

The voices in the American trailer make me cringe, but I will give it one thing... the Eva's roar sounds MUCH better than the original. The Japanese version made me think they grabbed on of the Gainax interns, shoved a mic in his face, and said "say 'RAAR' a couple of times."

To be honest, while I'm usually a fan of Kawamori's work, I found those designs to be a little overdone.

Goooordon, send us into ooooouter spaaace~~~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltNaApI-k2M

Seriously. The strings in this theme are greatness.

While iconic, that is not the He-Man theme. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhGJE7TlFIY It is the total encapsulation of manly power. Why, I was once mugged by a gang of fifteen, and by humming the theme I summoned enough inner strength to knock them all out with a single punch. And I don't mean I punched them all once. I threw one punch and it knocked them all into next week with a wave of pure badassery. Also you never forget the lyrics to it.

BattleMech armor is not armor, though. It is some sort of magic substance that evaporates into fairy dust as it's hit. It doesn't act like real armor should.

Fluff reasons aside, it's a gameplay consideration. You've got large, lumbering vehicles that fire lasers at each other. If you could lock weapons on, you'd never miss. How much fun would that be? Cool factor, mainly. Large blinding explosions are pretty to look at. Also, if you noticed, when the Warhammer died the pilot's HUD was flashing "CORE BREACH," hence the boom. The Jenner may have been put out of action without having its reactor pulped. But yes, it is a little silly to have mushroom cloud come out of an exploding 'Mech, considering fusion plants shouldn't really be exploding anyway.

Yeah, that's what bugged me about going by straight board game rules. You could do some pretty silly things that only made sense if you were trying to minimax your 'Mech. If go with completely free customization, though, it eliminates the difference between the chassis of the same weight glass. Every 40 ton 'Mech is basically every other 40 ton 'Mech, since you can outfit them all the same. There are quite a few 'Mech chassis to choose from in that era (assuming that they go off the 3025 listing, which is close to the game's time period). I keep harping on this point, but if anything, being able to totally customize a 'Mech if anything would contribute to people getting bored by the chassis selection, because again, one 40 tonner is going to be the same as another 40 tonner if you can load them out completely the same. Weisman said in the interview they're definitely not doing this. He said he did it before, it was called the BattleTech simulator centers, and he didn't feel like doing it again.

If you read the interview on IGN, yes, that's in-game. It's running on Unreal Engine 3.

There were mobile repair facilities you could fix yourself with in MW3, and if I remember right that's where all your customization was being done between missions. Even with a 'Mech bay, unlimited customization is a bit silly... cramming a bigger engine into a 'Mech and moving its insides around so it'll fit doesn't seem like something you could do in the time between missions on the front lines, especially given how technologically stagnant the IS had become.

They should if it makes sense within the context of their universe. That's one thing that really bugged me about the first few Mechwarrior games. They basically went straight off the board game construction rules, which is great if you're building a 'Mech up from scratch and have access to a full factory. There is no way you should be able to do that level of customization in the field, even with the magic mobile field repair thing. Replacing a weapon here and there is one thing, but pulling an AC/20 out and replacing it with half a dozen new heat sinks and a PPC should require tearing half the 'Mech apart. With this system, basically every 'Mech is an Omnimech in terms of versatility, since you can put anything everywhere. I actually liked the way the customization was done in MW4(even if the game itself felt too arcadey). It just made more sense that certain areas of the 'Mech could only take certain types of weapons (I can't imagine that a missile launcher would have the same power and cooling hookups that a large laser would). The Omnimechs even had multipurpose slots to make them more versatile than the IS 'Mechs. While I wouldn't like only being able to pick between 2-3 configurations of a 'Mech (even though that would be more in line with the source material), I don't think complete freedom to customize with the board game rules makes sense in a game like this.

If you mean the Warhammer/Tomahawk, didn't they just sort out the licensing issues behind that? They're back in the tabletop game.

This one is a brand new announcement, so no, it's not dead.

If this were your own thread about the subject, I could understand getting miffed about it going off topic and wanting to rerail it. However, it's not, and I don't really see the need for you to police it, especially by telling everyone to shut the f*ck up. That's seriously inappropriate. I think the answer was pretty well covered and I don't mind if the discussion evolves into something else. It's not a big deal.

Eh, the general consensus has been no. I don't think there's any harm if it goes a bit off-tangent from here.

Right shoulder is loosey-goosey, left shoulder is too tight. If only I could average them out.

Is THAT who that was a picture of? I was wondering. Also, people seem to be directing a disproportionate amount of ire towards a silly question.

Or maybe they ate it...

Why is everyone so keen on the VF-4? I always thought it was kind of an ugly design...

Again, it's just a theory being thrown around.