Big Beautiful Messy Feelings About Armored Core VI

“We sat on a dead rock, in dead metal, waiting for reactivation as From Software and Hidetaka Miyazaki became household names.”

“A franchise with 15 entries between 1997 and 2013. They wrote about it like a faded legend.”

““Maybe we’re just Ace Combat people now,” we wondered”

“After 10 years, the mech life was calling us home with the siren song of a new Kota Hoshino soundtrack.”

“The keening of synthetic life howls with fury, agony, and loss.”

“sound design fully invested in maintaining pressure, texture, and movement. Whether the space is the emptiness of desolation or cramped claustrophobia, terror and exhilaration layer like pancaked skyscrapers of ambiance and explosives.”

“the Armored Core franchise has been chasing a perfected dogfighting model of mech game for five generations now.”

“Each version has expanded on and experimented with the form, in ways that have gotten close. But I think, finally, with Fires of Rubicon, they’ve achieved it.”

“The fantasy provided by a mech game is incomplete without spreadsheets and planning each mission accordingly.”

“Armored Core VI isn’t about perfecting a build, it’s about understanding that the Core is the persistence of identity, everything else can and should be swapped to suit the needs of the job.”

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of mech pilots who don’t make it home. Make new mechs, save variants you love, and try everything.”

“in the summer of 1993, I walked into a hobby store in Richmond, Va. and bought a copy of Mike Pondsmith’s Mekton II”

“In Mekton II it costs .1 Construction Points to include a tape deck in your mech. It’s described as “Useful for going into battle with the proper theme music. The tape deck can also be linked to the P.A. External Address system of the vehicle to allow you to let the world know you’re loud and proud.” It takes no spaces. This was Pondsmith’s way of communicating mechanically that you should always take the tape deck and use it as a means of expression for your pilot.”

“What purpose is there for a giant ambulatory weapons platform if not suffering and extraction?

This is what you know at the beginning of Armored Core VI.”

“way Elden Ring brought even more people into the Souls family. This is the mech life. And so many people are finally embracing the totality of it.”