There's a lengthy, story-driven series of critical path missions to guide you, and while these are ostensibly optional they often come with the best rewards and gate your access to certain game features.
I enjoyed the story, but diving into it headlong feels like the right way to play in a manner that undermines the freedom that an open campaign structure purports to offer.
Similarly, the campaign's light RPG elements feel underdeveloped. When you create your character you construct their background through a questionnaire, but the choices you make here don't seem to impact very much at all. Likewise, each of your pilots has a series of keywords that define who they are—criminal, soldier, noble, etc—but this never seems to have an influence on battles or the story.
These feel like hooks for systems that aren't quite in place yet, and their absence is one of the things holding BattleTech back from all-round excellence.