When FromSoftware announced Armored Core VI at The Game Awards last week, the top comment in the dedicated subreddit’s announcement thread simply read, “I hope this subreddit gets out of obscurity forever.”
Still a cult series at best, the Armored Core series was overshadowed by the rise of the so-called Soulsborne genre, which catapulted FromSoftware from obscurity to one of the best studios in the world. But Armored Core has been around for a long time – much longer than Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls. In its heyday on PlayStation and PlayStation 2, it gained quite a reputation thanks to its powerful designs. A wide variety of rooms and intense split-screen combat. The latest Armored Core – an ambitious online game that pits teams of players against each other on a large multiplayer map – was released in 2012.
With the Soulsborne subgenre becoming a dominant part of the FromSoftware brand, it’s easy to wonder if Armored Core will follow suit. Will it be Sekiro with the giant robots? Will it take place in a vast open world? For now, the answer to both of these questions appears to be “no,” although there are some nuances to this comparison.
“No, we didn’t make a conscious effort to try to steer it toward more Soulsborne-like gameplay,” said FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki, who introduced the game’s concept. [Armored Core VI] is to go back and take a good look at the basic concept of Armored Core and what made this series special. So we wanted to take the assembly side, collect and customize your mechanics – your air conditioner – and then be able to claim a high level of control over the assembled machine. So we wanted to take these two core concepts and re-examine them in our modern environment. “
In practical terms, this means retaining many of the elements that have defined the series over the years – features like granular mecha customization and the single arena mode. Probably the most readily available “Soulsborne” elements are its powerful bosses – a FromSoftware staple – and its dark frame, the latter of which is already a big part of Armored Core’s identity.
It also features a sort of stance system, which director Masaru Yamamura — a veteran of Dark Souls and Sekiro: Shadows Dies Twice — says works by “continuing to attack even the strongest enemy, the power of the effect can break the enemy’s stance and cause a great deal.” from harm.” Think of it as something like holding up a shield and absorbing damage until you have to give up.
Where Armored Core sets itself apart is its focus on ranged weapons rather than swords and melee weapons. Yamamura admits this in our interview, though he also notes that the Armored Core has “nice fighting options.”
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Yamamura and Miyazaki both resist direct comparisons to the Souslborne games. Miyazaki is firm in saying that personalization is his primary focus, and Yamamura says there are “no elements that refer directly to Sekiro”. Nowhere is this more evident than the decision to go with a mission-based design, which ties directly into its predecessors, versus the more open structure of the Elden Ring and its ilk.
“We felt the mission-based structure was an advantage to this because it allows you to pick and customize before each outing. At the very least, the cadence — the speed at which a player can move through the world and traverse the map… That’s a really important aspect of how to approach this design,” says Miyazaki. I think one of the biggest things about previous Armored Core games is having that freedom to choose how you’re going to move around the map and how your choices will affect your movement and abilities once you’re actually in it. This is the look we wanted to take this time around, and this is where we wanted to emphasize.
Of course, Miyazaki got his start with the Armored Core series before eventually leading Demon Souls, so he knows this one better than most. Perhaps Armored Core’s biggest opportunity lies in leveraging FromSoftware’s optimized assets to produce a graphically ambitious experience. Miyazaki himself admitted he was “jealous” of the team making today’s Armored Core VI.
“I wish we had that kind of leverage back then,” he says wistfully.
Meanwhile, Yamamura talks at length about what FromSoftware can achieve with the improved Armored Core VI graphics.
“Obviously the mecha theme for Armored Core VI means that we’re filming these huge pieces of steel, and we’re supposed to visualize how these things are going to move and how they’re going to be put together, the different joints, how it all moves in conjunction with each other and how do we make it cool – from a perspective Play style, too,” Yamamura says. So we can apply resources to it. The metallic texture of these things and the sound design are clearly visible too. We can use sound effects to get realistic sounds to apply to these instruments. There are many areas where we can apply these resources and modern thinking as well.
Perhaps this is the heart of what drives FromSoftware to create Armored Core VI. He may have found untold riches creating games like Elden Ring, but he hasn’t forgotten his early days. Pending its first full game reveal, Armored Core looks all set to be…an Armored Core game, with all that that entails. He even keeps the number though for a new story.
“Armored Core is the reason anyone reading this tweet has played Dark Souls,” developer Doc Burford wrote shortly after its reveal. This is the post transmission [sic] To finally get back to their best selves. “
Armored Core 6 is scheduled for release in 2023. You can read more about everything that was announced at The Game Awards here.
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Writer for IGN as well as a co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Do you have any advice? Send it directly to the_katbot.