The developers learned from making the original MechWarrior what worked with their game and what didn't, but they also didn't have the MechWarrior license anymore, so they took all the things that did work and compiled them together into their own franchise, resulting in the "MetalTech" game universe and ultimately this game, EarthSiege. This is also the episode that originally caught the attention of everyone's favourite Lazy Game Reviewer and put me under his radar! Ironically, not long after his 100th video where he said he wasn't going to do stuff like that.