forum Armored Core
Started by @Cackla-the-Phantasma group
tune

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@Cackla-the-Phantasma group

(excited fangirl screaming)

[Editor’s note: I’m so, so sorry for how bloated this comment is.]

Before I clicked this, I thought I somehow messed up the forum rules again lol.

Trust me when I say that this is the shortest way of explaining this.

Armored Core is a game series created in the 90s by FromSoftware (those guys who later created Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring to name a few) where pilots of eponymous giant mechs (ACs) called Ravens take on mercenary deals to satisfy the whims of their employers: usually corporations.

Notably, this game’s controls were very fast for giant mechs compared to something like Mechwarrior.

Since there’s around 5 continuities, I’ll just speedrun through them all.

Armored Core 1 was the first one, and it detailed a conflict in a network of underground strongholds between the Chrome and Murakumo Corporations after a devastating war on the surface. The player character is a new Raven, and they make a living blowing s*it up and upgrading their AC as they begin to suspect something clandestine within the Raven’s Nest organization that supports mercs.

FromSoft would release two more sequels to the first game. The first of these was Project Phantasma, which was a prequel describing the actions of a doomsday organization that sought to fuse man and machine to create the perfect weapon.

The second of these was Master of Arena. In this game, your player character is a different Raven, who took on the job after their family was killed in battle by Rank 1 in the Arena, a man named “Hustler 1” piloting the AC Nine-Ball.
You are then contacted by an operator from Raven’s Nest, who serves as your agent within the secretive organization.
As the game progresses, it becomes clear that something is amiss, as one of your corporate sponsors begin to suspect that Raven’s Nest is involved with a number of elements they considered “undesirable” disappearing.
Eventually, your operator ghosts you after they learn that you’re taking requests from the sponsor to uncover the conspiracy.
After making their way to second place, the Raven takes on a mission to go to Raven’s Nest HQ from the operator.
It is revealed that the operator and “Hustler 1” are the same ‘person’.
Or rather AI.
H1 Nine-Ball was the true leader of the Raven’s Nest, and was a creation prior to even the surface wars. It was designed to ensure global security and a stable peace. In the chaos of the first Armored Core (no subtitle), H1 decided that the best way to secure peace was to ensure war between the powerful corporations, so that their self-interest could pretty much guarantee peace for their citizens.
After a long battle against Nine-Ball’s ACs, the player character seemingly kills H1 for good, leading to the freedom of mankind.

After AC1’s success, FromSoft would make a second game on the PS2 distinct from AC1, Project Phantasma, and Master of Arena: Armored Core 2.

This game takes place after the fall of the old corporations. Mankind has not only escaped from underground but has also made their way to Mars using old technology.
The new corporations are Zio Matrix Emeraude, and Balena. They are challenged by the fledgling Earth Government LCC and the Frighteners, a terrorist group led by the enigmatic Leos Klein.

You are a new Raven who migrated to Mars in search of opportunity in the war’s chaos. However, after several jobs as normal, you are faced with a decision. Stop Leos Klein and his group from exterminating the populace of Mars or die trying.

After a series of missions against its members, other corporations, and the government, you then confront Klein himself, who commandeers an old Martian machine called Phobos to kill you. During the battle, he reveals his motivations, for he was the Raven from Master of Arena, who has since come to the conclusion that H1 Nine-Ball was correct. After the old powers were merely replaced with new ones, Leos Klein reveals that Humanity cannot live on its own.
You best him in battle, saving the Martians from his plans.
There is a subtitled sequel to AC2, but it’s more of DLC, an epilogue to the main game.

FromSoft would reboot the series in the early 2000s with Armored Core 3.
Here, mankind is underground (again) after an apocalyptic surface war and under the whims of new corporations. At the head of all of this is DOVE, the Controller. It was an AI system designed to manage humanity’s stronghold underground, however it began to deteriorate with time, making terrible decision after terrible decision.

As usual, your character is a Raven. He takes on jobs from the corporations Mirage, Kisiragi, and Crest alongside a resistance group aligned against them.
The game ends with DOVE being killed by the Raven, who disappears afterwards.

This game would have two sequels: Silent Line and Nexus. For the sake of this comment not being more bloated than it needs to be, I’ll just say that these games detailed the corporation’s efforts to take out an ancient defence system from before the surface wars and mankind’s attempts to soar past their previous failures.

AC3 was followed up by Armored Core 4, set in a new continuity. This time, the titular mechs were much faster than normal. Even for AC standards.

Unlike the previous continuities, humanity didn’t have to go underground. However, there was still a surface war. Rather than being fought by different companies, the war was fought by 6 powerful conglomerates (Bernard and Felix Foundation, Global Armaments, Eqbal, Leonemeccanica, Rayleonard, and Rosenthal), who usurped the old order; replacing it with Pax Economica.
This resulted in people working in colonies as slaves to shareholders. One of the colonies, Anatolia was home to a scientist who developed NEXT technology using Kojima Particles (Teehee Metal Gear), a substance that singlehandedly changed warfare forever, making the old ACs obsolete.
Your player character was a Raven from Anatolia who was turned into a Lynx, who was augmented with cybernetics to pilot a NEXT.
The Lynx goes on a journey to liberate their colony from its corporation. Along the way, they would kill many old Ravens, some Lynxs, and make a name for themselves in this new world.

Near the end of the game, the Lynx meets a man named Joshua O’Brien, who would join up with him on some sorties.
The Lynx would also singlehandedly kill off one of the major corporations: the Bernard and Felix Foundation, atop their giant space-station headquarters in the atmosphere.

The Lynx would then kill off the Rayleonard group, whose military advances posed a major threat to the other corporations and the colonies.

The final match of the game paired you against the brainwashed O’Brien, who controlled a massive NEXT, which had begun its assault on your colony of Anatolia.
The game ends with the Lynx leaving the colony, whereabouts unknown.

AC4 was followed by one subtitle sequel: For Answer.
The aforementioned Kojima Particles had begun to poison the Earth and the Atmosphere. The remaining corporations from Pax Economica would form the League of Ruling Companies, who are challenged by Line Ark, a maritime city-state, and the terrorist group ORCA.

The League would devise a plan for people to evacuate at a price: the Cradles: massive aircraft that can hold more than a hundred million people. Unfortunately, this still leaves many people on the ground, slowly dying from Kojima Radiation.
In the game, you play as another Lynx who stands in the middle of the conflict. Along the way, you fight and best White Glint, an AC piloted by AC4’s previous Lynx, battle the leader of ORCA, a man named “Maximillian Thermidor” revealed to be Odstarva, a Lynx from the previous game that faked his death, plummeting into the ocean after fighting and losing against White Glint, and either fight or join up against Old King, a rogue member of ORCA who plans on destroying the Cradles in order to start the revolution against the corporations.

Depending on who you fight, you either get the Corporation ending, the ORCA ending, or the Old King ending if you battle White Glint, Odstarva, and Old King respectively.

The first ending has you side with the current order.
The second one has you replace it.
And the third one says “Why not burn it all to the ground?”

I’m pretty sure you can tell which one was the most memorable for me.

The Old King ending has you join the rogue Lynx as he joins you on a mission to destroy Cradle 3. Your NEXT has infinite energy, so you don’t have to worry about falling from the sky.

Unfortunately, the people of the Cradle aren’t given the same mercy.

You and Old King damage parts of the Cradle, with components falling down to the Earth presumably exploding below.

He gleefully counts the number of complacent albeit completely innocent people as the components crash down to the ground.

20 Million. Then 40 Million. Later 60 Million. After that, 80 Million.
Old King also sings a lyricless nursery tune as you fell the last component.

You are paid 100 million credits at mission’s end: the same amount as the population living on Cradle 3 as it was sent plummeting to its demise.

Old King is then killed in a skirmish with other characters, including Odstarva and other corporate forces.

You win of course, then your character goes on to fell all the Cradles, which have populations likely ranging in the billions given Cradle 3’s relatively small size.

After the success of AC4 and AC4a, FromSoftware would release the penultimate game to the series: Armored Core 5. This would revert the NEXTs of the previous game to normal ACs, who were sluggish in comparison to even the first AC game.

It’s ambiguous whether this is a continuation of the previous timeline or if it’s a new continuity. Regardless, taking place on the surface in the City, a settlement that resides in an apocalyptic wasteland several years into the future ruled by Father and a private military corporation under his control creatively called “The Corporation”, who fight against resistance fighters with two ace pilots: Chief and Carol along with an additional third faction known as the Zodiac, an elite group of AC pilots whose allegiance remains unclear.

You are the Dark Raven, a mercenary and former City enforcer of the Corporation who fights for the resistance. Along the way, you battle the members of the Corporation, the most notable being Chief, who possess technology that eclipses the tech of present day.

Eventually, Father is captured by a group of resistance fighters, but the Corporation airstrikes the area, killing both Father and his detainers.

The Corporation then begins to slaughter the townspeople of the City, the resistance is forced to go on the backfoot, taking as many citizens with them as they can.

This results in the resistance becoming a group of nomads that roam the apocalyptic landscape Mad Max style.

The Dark Raven then fights and kills Chief, implied to be an AI either from the general past or from the League of Corporations from AC4a.
Regardless, when he is downed, Carol remarks that perhaps mankind deserves another chance to live.

FromSoftware would release only one sequel to this game: Verdict Day.

This game takes place a century after AC5, the contamination has begun to subside, revealing ancient towers made of advanced technology.

The Three Powers (Sirius Corporation, Venide, and the Evergreen Power) fight over the tech in a conflict known as the Verdict War alongside a supposedly neutral group called the Foundation and an enigmatic AC team called the Reaper Squad made of members K, D, N (Giggle), and J (Teehee Murder Drones).

Notably, the Foundation had produced Unmanned ACs for all the factions to use called UNACs.

This time, your character is simply known as the Lone Raven, and they are joined by two operators: Fatman and Magnolia Curtis.

Over the course of the game, it is revealed that the Reaper Squad are an elite group of “phantasma beings”, AI reconstructions of the best dead AC pilots that work for the Foundation.

The Foundation also turn the UNACs against the Three Powers, seizing all of the towers in the process.

During all this, Magnolia defects to the Reaper Squad after promising her that they’ll provide the surgery needed for her to be able to pilot an AC again.

The Reaper Squad reveal that their purpose is to eliminate talented AC pilots that echo the Dark Raven that defeated Chief long ago.

After killing off the rest of the Reaper Squad, the Lone Raven then confronts their leader: J, in the desert. He is seen piloting a NEXT from the previous games bornth from the towers.

The Foundation Man, leader of the Foundation gloats that J will effortlessly crush the Lone Raven due to data from the UNACs, J’s expertise inhetent from the person he was copied from, and his new NEXT to top it all off.

J then reveals why he personally fights in this monologue here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t3XGVWdInAw&t=23s&pp=ygUVaiBzcGVlY2ggYXJtb3JlZCBjb3Jl .
I’d copy it verbatim here, but my hands are getting too tired for that lol.

Anyway, after the Lone Raven kills J, the Foundation Man confesses his hatred for mankind, and reveals that he has programmed the towers to mass produce powerful UNACs to prolong the war between the Three Powers for many decades to come.

The Lone Raven and Fatman, his only remaining operator face against these tough odds with the hope that the Foundation Man never had. That perhaps one day, mankind can finally move on from these wars and build a new era of peace.

Eventually, FromSoftware would create Dark Souls 1, which started their path of creating more fantastical games resembling it like Bloodborne and Elden Ring.

But in 2024, FromSoft would release a new game called Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon. This was the game that started my journey down into this franchise.

Since this game is relatively recent, I’m not going to spoil it in-depth like the other games. However, here’s the brief summary of the setting and early portions of the game.

It’s currently an unknown amount of time into the future, and the planet Rubicon-3 was discovered by mankind, who colonized the planet at first thinking nothing of it.

However, they would soon discover a miracle.

A mysterious electric substance called Coral was found on Rubicon, and it served as an excellent organic data conduit alongside being an excellent fuel source.

The Rubicon Research Institute (RRI) soon made use of the tech, and they would turn this previously unknown backwater planet into a thriving metropolis, with approximately more than a billion people residing on the small world.

Unfortunately, they discovered too late that Coral was actually alive, and that a C-Pulse Wave Mutation, a mote potent consciousness within it could trigger a mass exodus of Coral from Rubicon and into the stars, where humanity would have no hope of containing its spread.

The leader of the RRI would then use Ibis Mechs, coral-powered machines that moved like a NEXT to ignite the Coral and set the entire local star-system ablaze.

Trillions presumably died in what would later be called the Fires of Ibis.

Nearly a hundred years later, a branch of government called the Planetary Closure Administration would quarantine the planet when they discovered Coral was still present on the planet.

Sadly for them, the knowledge would eventually leak off world due to the efforts of a Mercenary organization that championed the will to choose what one fights for.

They would also bust a hole in the PCA’s system of defensive orbital rings around the planet, allowing numerous corporations to make planetfall in search for profit.

The most notable were Balam Industries (The American Blowhards Corporation) and Arquebus Corp (The British A*sholes Group), which commanded the Vespers, an augmented human AC squad, and the Redguns, an elite AC battalion.

Your character is called “C4-621”, an augmented human of the last Coral generation with an operator called Handlet Walter, who has unfinished business with Rubicon.

Some of the other factions include RaD and the Junker Coyotes, a faction of crazy arms-dealers led by “Cinder Carla” and a group of Mad Max styled demolitionists led by “Honest Brute”, the Rubicon Liberation Front (RLF): a group of surviving native Rubiconians who fight an uphill battle against corporate and government forces, the Overseers, a group spawned from the RRI’s ashes to burn away the Coral a second time; hopefully for the last time, ALLMIND: an AI support system for freelance mercenaries that has a lot more going on than it seems, and the aforementioned independent mercs who took advantage of the situation by fighting the wars of the Corps, Dosers (RaD/Junker Coyotes), and Rubiconians for them.

Again, I’m so sorry for how long this turned out. It’s just so exciting sharing this stuff lmao.