Hot off of Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon’s spectacular reveal last week, everyone has been wondering whether FromSoftware’s long-forgotten scifi series will play more like the studio’s recent action RPGs like Dark Souls or Elden Ring. As it turns out, that likely won’t be the case.
During an interview with IGN, FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki gave some insight into Armored Core 6‘s direction.
“We’ve not been making a conscious effort to try to direct it towards more Soulsborne-type gameplay,” Miyazaki said. “The essential direction of [Armored Core 6] was to go back and take a good look at the core concept of Armored Core and what made that series special. So we wanted to take the assembly aspect, assembling and customizing your own mech — your AC — and then being able to exact a high level of control over the assembled mech. So we wanted to take those two core concepts and reexamine those in our modern environment.”
At the 2022 Game Awards on Thursday, FromSoftware’s Elden Ring won best game direction, art direction, and overall game of the year. So that Soulsborne formula is serving the studio well. Regardless, Miyazaki isn’t keen on comparing Elden Ring and Armored Core 6, especially regarding mission structure.
“We felt that the mission-based structure was a benefit for this because it allows you to choose and customize before each sortie. At the very least, the tempo — the pace at which the player is able to move across the world and traverse the map, this is a very big aspect in how you approach this design,” Miyazaki explains. “I think one of the big appeal points of the previous Armored Core games is having this freedom to choose how you’re going to move across the map and how your choices are going to affect your mobility and your ability once you’re actually in the level. This is the format we wanted to choose this time, and this is where we wanted to put our focus.”
Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon is coming out in 2023 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
Written by Kyle Campbell on behalf of GLHF.
