Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon will be the new effort of FromSoftware who takes a break from Souls, after still winning the award Game of the Year with Elden Ring, making us rediscover (or for many discover from scratch) their passion for high-level mechs, built and armed for battle. The return of a saga interrupted two generations ago, when the internet and online gaming were experiencing their first moments, is a good thing and we’ll explain why.
Armed and dangerous
Armored Core has always been a niche within a niche: a kind of game dedicated to the craziest geeks you used to know, we are talking about an era that today will sound strange and certainly anachronistic, an era where the internet did not actually exist (or was the prerogative of a select few), an era where magazines were expected on newsstands to discover the secrets of a game or the codes for “cheating” a title. Armored Core was outside of all thislittle was said about it in fact, the newspapers only mentioned it, and basically it was a product for very few people – we could say “mad madmen” to mention Marco Montemagno today – that is, people who were stubborn enough to learn, by experimenting, like playing a game that most of the time arrived only in English on the Italian shelves.
This was basically not a small obstacle, just think that most of the game components have to do with the functioning of an engine and the elements that compose it. Today all this certainly makes us smile: times have changed, today we have translators and online guides capable of making us play even the most complex games in a fluid and streamlined way and whatever we do, no matter how niche it is, there will certainly be a YouTuber who talks about it. Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon will be the real challenge of this generation: A series’ ability to leapfrog a generation and come back after being long dormant, lost in the forest of time when many of the modern gamers weren’t even born yet.
Fires of the sky
FromSoftware has stated, via Hidetaka Miyazaki, that its games tend to be dark, dystopian and always on the verge of the apocalypse (or shortly after the fact): Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon is certainly no exception, placing the player in the role of a mech technician and pilot who will be led to face specific missions in certain areas, they side with one or more factions. The heart (or Core in English) of the game will be the mobility and the intrinsic action of these machines, making the game more similar to an action game than a management one, compared precisely to the dictates with which it started: the old chapters were almost a game of reasoning, disinclined to action, while times change here, ed it’s a good thing that a title can adapt to change while keeping its soul intact.
On the planet Rubicon 3 a mysterious substance was discovered, according to some similar to dark matter, the source of potential well-being for humanity, but instead of bringing prosperity it turned out to be a plague that destroyed the planet and the surrounding stars, unleashing fiery storms and in fact creating a totally fiery new solar system. Despite everything the substance has re-emerged on the surface of Rubicon 3 and here the factions of the civilized world fight for control of the substance.
A mech for salvation
Returning to piloting a mech, playing the role of a mercenary in Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon it will be an immersive experience for many, a return to the past for some, but for others it will be a new discovery: as we said, the series was discontinued in 2012 towards the end of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 generation, and therefore those born around those years certainly could not experience a similar title. It is good that old and new generations meet (or clash) on a similar title, also considering a massive online multiplayer game component that will characterize this new chapter of Armored Core. The foundations for a winning product are all there: it remains to be seen how they will intend to best express the game, but considering the development studio behind the title, we have no doubts about the good will and the ability to deliver us an innovative and “new” product in all respects wait.
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