A Look Back on the Armored Core Series

FromSoftware's entire reputation in the latter day has revolved around its Souls games, and not undeservedly: their intentionally oblique design and borderline-spiteful difficulty have captured the imagination of an entire generation of fans, giving rise to a whole new sub-genre of RPG while informing game development trends for years to come. But what many people might have forgotten is that the Souls games weren't always the face of FromSoft. In contrast, its history is littered with forgotten titles like Evergrace, Enchanted Arms, and The Adventures of Cookie & Cream, its original mascot series has only recently resurfaced from within the First Flame: the Armored Core games. It's been a hot minute since Armored Core has been a “thing,” so we've assembled a basic primer for the series for anyone wondering what the commotion is about.

The original Armored Core was released on the Japanese PlayStation in July 1997, with its U.S. release following in October. The player is quickly inducted as a Raven, a soldier-for-hire that works for a megacorp, carrying out their job from within an Armored Core—a fully customizable mech suit with endless potential for modification. As a Raven, players are quickly introduced to a post-apocalyptic world where a handful of mega-corporations scramble for increasingly-dwindling resources, and the common person can only fight or die at their whims. The tone is akin to the Ace Combat series, wherein the individual is quickly depersonalized, reduced to a call sign, and better recognized by the vehicle they pilot than their actual face. Such is the life of a Raven.

The mechanics are all broadly similar between the games: you can customize the legs, arms, head, “core” (read: chest), and weapons of your Armored Core unit with various parts you can buy in the game's shop. You take on a series of missions on behalf of your benefactor; accomplishing these missions with your AC unit grants you reward money minus your maintenance fees for your AC. Any damage you take has to be repaired, and any ammo you use has to be replaced. It's possible to beat a mission and yet have negative profits because of your maintenance fees. What's more, you can fail a mission and lose even more money—and without any income to make up for it, you go into debt, where you cannot buy new parts until you're back in the black. Your choices for your loadout don't just determine your AC's looks; they determine how it handles to an intense degree. Stronger legs might make you move faster or boost more—but you'll also have to mind your energy, or else all those boosts will leave you a sitting duck on the battlefield. You can equip a variety of rifles or missile pods—but as mentioned earlier, you need to foot the bill for restocking ammo between matches, and you'll even have to consider how easy it is to aim while darting about. Quad-legs make it easy to shoot your shoulder-mounted weapons while moving, but can you afford the energy drain during fights? What could have been a series of depersonalized decisions based upon facts on a spreadsheet becomes an intensely personal choice as you pick your favorite parts for your personal mech. Indeed, Armored Core fans tend to feel very particular about their customized babies; famously, Tips & Tricks magazine was able to make a regular feature out of readers submitting their mechs from Armored Core2 and 3. This being the early 00s, this involved readers from all over the country mailing Tips & Tricks their memory cards.

Dark Souls fans might be used to their series drip-feeding lore through vague item descriptions and contextual clues from within the game; the truth is, Armored Core perfected that style of vague storytelling. The Armored Core games frequently reboot their store every numbered entry or so, each with their corporations and reasons for fighting. '97's Armored Core let you navigate the bloody conflicts between the Chrome and Murakumo Millennium corporations and the many rebel factions that opposed them. A pair of expansions followed, Project Phantasma and Master of Arena, which offered unique missions as well as the option of playing the in-game Arena for extra money and parts.

2000's Armored Core 2 took place 65 years after the first numbered title, involving you in corporate warfare across the surface of Mars while introducing new upgrade features for your AC unit. It was followed by Armored Core 2: Another Age, which sacrificed a plot in exchange for a more open-ended mission structure.

Armored Core 3 was released in 2002, representing the franchise's first departure from its established lore. Here, an AI known as The Controller dictates all facets of life for a subterranean civilization known as The Layered. At the same time, a trio of corporations vie for what's left, even under the incoming disaster that is The Controller's impending degradation. This was followed by a stunning five spin-off titles set in this “continuity”: Silent Line, Nexus, Nine Breaker, Formula Front and Last Raven. Each of these titles would include new parts and new components (such as adding in the ability for parts to overheat), as well as refinements to a rudimentary AI system wherein you could “train” an AI partner to fight alongside you through data accumulated in the in-game Arena. Last Raven was also noteworthy for its branching paths in its storyline, with in-game performance determining your ending. It was also the first game to feature Hidetaka Miyazaki as a FromSoft staffer.

Miyazaki would go on to direct Armored Core 4 in 2006, a move that ironically was decried by many fans. AC4's movement speed was tampered with, augmented by the Quick Boost system. Meanwhile, it told the story of a lone Raven navigating life in a world ruled by Pax Economica, wherein loyalty to one of six corporations ensured your food and board. It was followed by Armored Core: For Answer, which increased the speed again.

Finally, there was Armored Core V in 2012; a return-to-basics approach, Armored Core V brought players back into a heavier, weightier AC unit while also offering online play. Here, players fought against an enigmatic figure known only as Father while a mysterious corporation known as The Corporation pursued the player. It, too, got a spin-off, Verdict Day.

The names and countries all change more or less with each numbered entry in the series, with only a handful of constants: a ruined world, the Armored Core mechs themselves, greedy corporations snatching at what little remains of the scorched Earth, and the procedure known as “Human Plus” wherein Ravens that accumulate an exceeding amount of debt are forcibly put through transhumanist experiments that augment their abilities. Gameplay-wise, your AC unit now has a permanent upgrade that won't require an actual part, freeing you up to choose other more-powerful units. Lore-wise, the procedure involves your character being surgically bonded to their AC as their body and spirit are connected to invasive cybernetics that dehumanize them, to the point that their name is forcibly changed to “REBEL[insert digits here]”.

There has been a great deal of consternation among latter-day Armored Core fans over whether the upcoming Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon will be heavily affected by the tone and mood of the Dark Souls series. The concern is valid because Dark Souls and its many successors at FromSoft have genuinely taken root as FromSoft's crown jewel. But in many ways, Dark Souls can be considered a successor of Armored Core's design sensibilities. The deliberate controls across both series are a constant: they may be clunky at first, but a series regular will be shooting down rival AC units from mid-air just as easily as someone can chug their Estus between dodge rolls. The player freedom with customization is also carried over between two games; while much of the character customization in Dark Souls goes to waste, courtesy of those big helmets, it's still possible to determine the entire stat load-out for your character, with a unique set of weapons for almost any stat build imaginable. So too with Armored Core.

But more important, is the dark tone of the universe: Dark Souls 2 establishes that any enterprising Undead's decision to link the Fire or usher in the age of Dark is ultimately worthless, as either option inevitably continues the endless cycle of Light and Dark until the world and everything in it is a burnt-out husk. This is nothing new to Armored Core: names might change, countries might rise and fall, and your mech might even improve. But nothing can bring the world back to its pre-apocalyptic splendor. No development will ever satisfy the oligarchs' hunger to profit from the apocalypse. Even the Human Plus program resembles the stakes the Undead follow for Hollowing: the more you die, the more of yourself you lose, with the only part of you truly remaining being your own determination. To walk away would be to succumb to your deterioration, with nothing of the player remaining but an empty shell.

The sixth numbered Armored Core game, Fires of Rubicon, is set for release on August 25. With this game, we not only see FromSoft returning to form with Armored Core and its mission-based gameplay, endlessly customizable mechs, and dark world. It also sees FromSoft returning to its central conceits as a developer: an emphasis on customization, a steep learning curve, and tons of rewards for dedicated players. Whether you're a returning player or a newbie drawn in by Fires of Rubicon like a moth, the wasteland welcomes the Ravens, one and all.