MechWarrior Online: The Dragon is unveiled
By delta_ass 1 Comments
MechWarrior Online's new Dragon:
TRO 3025's Dragon:
Ah... the classic Dragon. Too bad it's not the Grand Dragon, cause the regular 3025 Dragon kinda blows. An AC5 for an arm cannon is pretty underwhelming for a Heavy 'Mech, when you've got Lights and Mediums wielding PPCs (Panther, Vindicator). The Lyran Zeus design was the same way, with a weak AC5 that later got switched out for a PPC in 3050 when they worked out the technical issues.
Not a fan of the shoulder redesign. If you recall, the original Dragon had these big cylindrical shoulders that jutted out of the torso, very similar to the Awesome. The ends were big honking boulder-like spheres that attached down to the arms. So it gave a very intimidating, polished look, whereas this new design has much more conventional looking boxy shoulders.
They've also lengthened some of the features that the Dragon was originally stubby in. The AC5 arm cannon looks very generic, while the original arm was incredibly short and looked distinctive. The left arm with the fist is now longer and no longer a short block.
Conversely, they've seen fit to shorten up the legs and made them bulkier, when the original legs were quite long and slender in comparison. The biggest change though, has to be the arrangement of the LRM10 mounted in the torso. The original Dragon had all 10 missile tubes situated directly in the center torso. The new design has them mounted on either side of the center torso, almost as if they're being fed from the side torsos.
What I'm really not a fan of is the continued insistence of using really poor and lazy texturing on the armor plating. Look at the shoulder plates. They're just marked with a diagonal line through them. What does that mean? Why is that diagonal line going diagonally? Who thinks this looks good? You'll find the same thing on the legs. There's a diagonal line going through the plate above the kneeplate. Why the love with diagonal lines? I don't get it.
The shoulder and kneeplates have handholds on them now, which might indicate a more prominent role for infantry. Seems a little risky myself though, since those handholds are also an invitation for enemy infantry to grab onto, while they're placing explosives on your joints.
Also, I'm really a bit puzzled as to why they're still using that guy's illustrated artwork, instead of real ingame models. I mean, have they even begun working on this game? Have they created the 3D models yet? They must've, right? So why not show us those?
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