Masaru Yamamura Says Armored Core VI Will Feature Secret Encounters

Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon has plenty going for it with its bigger maps and more aggressive gameplay, even containing secret “Hidden encounters”, according to game director Masaru Yamamura.

We caught up with both Masaru as well as the game’s producer Yasunori Ogura, where they chatted about all the innovations and adaptations they’d be bringing to the beloved mech series. It should be noted that while Ogura was present for the interview, all the questions were answered by Masaru instead.

Customization, Oh Customization!

Considering it’s been so long since the last Armored Core game, many fans would have only heard about Armored Core as the precursor to the Souls series, only talked about in hallow reverence. Former Ravens might be surprised that Fires of Rubicon very much carries the spirit of previous Armored Core titles, specifically when it comes to customizing your mechs.

“Assembly is a big part of that balance”, Masaru says. “What we would like to keep intact in this assembly aspect is the essence of Armored Core over the years, and we feel like it from a gameplay perspective and a setting perspective, it still has this universal appeal that will appeal to modern players: That idea of customising your perfect machine, and painting it in your own style, taking it out into battle and having full control over it will feel that this is something that will hold up, even in modern gaming with even with brand new players”.

“In order to introduce those new players to this fun assembly aspect of AC, we wanted to make the control scheme more intuitive. We wanted to make the battle that we want to make the combat feel more intuitive, so that when they’re assembling, they’re feeling these tactile changes to that Max rather than just seeing numbers go up and down. And we’re introducing elements from previous titles of recent years, such as how we approach the map design, how you’re observing the enemies and combat and learning from them and adapting your style of play, as well as customizing your AC”, he continues.

Many players in recent years may get a little nervous at the idea of making their niche games suddenly more “intuitive”. It’s kind of become the more polite version of simplified, and you’d be forgiven if you jumped to that same conclusion upon hearing Masaru’s comments. Never fret, dear reader, because that couldn’t be further from the truth- Armored Core VI will still be a min-maxer’s paradise. It just so happens you won’t need to be looking for which leg has the .5 increase you need.

“We feel like AC was always had these kind of nitty gritty of changing the parameters and min-maxing your build optimising it perfectly, you can still find that with Armored Core VI but at the same time, we did want to make this more intuitive and make these larger, more sweeping changes to the different mech types especially the leg types and how they move”, he says.

“So it’s supposed to be just fun to not think too hard about it, just try something new. And if you’d like the feel of it, just go with it. So changing the leg types changing the weapons and how they behave and how you get feedback from the enemy. This was the main focus in Armored Core VI and so we hope that introduces new players and players who are unfamiliar with Armored Core to the fun of this assembly concept”.

“Because of the range of options that assembly presents, getting that balance just right was probably the the hardest part”, Masaru says. “We are still in the final stages of making those final tweaks to the balancing”.

“Of course, you have all of these different mech parts and up to four weapons you can handle simultaneously. And what is too strong or too weak, sometimes you don’t realise until you have a specific combination of weapons. And so this takes a lot of time to go through and it’s multiplied by the fact that there are so many so this balancing process was definitely one of the most challenging aspects”, he adds.

“During that process, of course, the player is going to eventually land on a specific type of mech, or a specific type of leg part that they’re really fond of, and they just enjoy the action feel of that mech”, Masaru continues. “So they might want to stick with that all the way through the game. And we understand this, this desire as well and so balancing the missions and the gameplay to suit this style to allow the player to do that within reason, this was also another challenging aspect of the balance”.

Building Barbie’s Dream Mech isn’t enough, though. According to Masaru, there’ll be plenty of social options for your assemblies, like the social rite of PvP combat as well as sharing your builds online for others to enjoy.

“There is an online PVP mode in the shape of both 1v1 and 3v3 team matches. We also have some online elements that supplements the single player, so you can actually share your AC data and custom elements with other players through in-game custom ID feature. With this you actually able to share your current AC loadout, choice of weapons, custom parts, and this is useful for strategizing players when stuck on a strong boss or mission, you can recommend your build to help getting through that mission”, he says.

“Also with the appearance and customization aspect, we hope that players will design their own logos and share those to build this community with like minded players through that share functionality as well”, he continues.

The Romance Of Giant Robots

While you’d have the freedom to build the mech that you want, Masaru says that doesn’t include pacifist war machines. Armored Core VI is an aggressive game- with plenty of little gameplay tweaks to help you along the path of mechanical violence like only giant robots can.

“We feel like the unique point of AC6 is we wanted to bring forward what is only possible to do in mech combat”, he says. “So this means having this fresh and aggressive approach to combat and in order to do this with in comparison to previous titles. We’ve brought the distance between you and your opponent a little closer, so you’re able to observe them better, you’re able to see their animations and tells and you’re able to learn from that”.

“This is in conjunction with the aggressive nature of these machines you’re able to use for weapons simultaneously. So it’s creates this very frenetic and very aggressive style of battle where you’re constantly tuning that distance between your and your opponent and constantly changing up your combinations of your attack combinations. So this “aggression” is definitely the key word in how we approached AC6″, he adds.

Education Via Bossfight

But how do you teach players to embrace their burning spirit? Nothing instills a loud roar telling you to grasp victory like sick bossfights. In our own hands-on with the game, we’d seen how he plans to do this- with impressive boss fights that make sure you either see the light, or failing that, a game over screen.

“As to the the structure as you progress and when the player learns how to play the game through these different encounters. As you say, the initial Combat Heli is designed to teach players to use the vertical axis and use boost in every direction when facing these tougher enemies. Also, the Juggernaut as well as you say, is designed to encourage the player to go back to the garage and use assembly and to tinker with that build, and try something new”, he says.

“This is really where the onboarding process ends. So by that point, the player is taught, this is how aggressive the enemies can get, this is how powerful these these enemies can get, this is what to expect”, he says.

“You have to maybe change your approach, maybe you have to be more aggressive yourself, maybe you have to go against intuition and try some different strategies and battle. So this is what the last boss of the first chapter is supposed to represent. And going forward, you will find a mix of these different styles so more aggressive enemies, enemies that encourage more movements and enemies that encourage more variation and assembly. So we hope you look forward to the the rest of the bosses in the lineup”.

It wasn’t all broad-strokes ideas, either. Masaru also shared with us plenty of the little details to make Armored Core VI a triumphant return for the series. The secret, it seems, is skipping a whole console generation and then taking advantage of the technology advancements to make something that feels good in-hand.

“In terms of the feeling of weight for the ACs in this title, we feel like the advances in hardware have helped us with the rendering capabilities and the graphical fidelity. So getting these different parts and weapons looking and feeling just right in terms of how they’re modelled and textured, and the different weathering on these parts”, he says.

“This is all possible now when it wasn’t 10 years ago. So this creates a nice visceral field to the weight and texture of these mechs”, he says, praising the visuals of the game.”Also, aside from graphics, we have the sound design as well. Our sound designers actually went to real live factory floors to record sounds of metals grading and crashing into each other. In order to get this this nice, realistic feel to the to the mech combat”.

Masaru really went on to credit every aspect of love that was poured into the game- he says the team’s experience allowed even just the feeling of acceleration to feel good, like a true romantic would.

“As to the feeling of speed, we feel this is thanks both to our effects and animation team, how they’re managed the rendering of the thrusters on these various machines to give that sense of speed and direction”, he says. “Of course, sound design plays a big part of it as well. Really getting the sound of these things just right to balance with that feeling of weight and power as well. So we feel like this is something that we’ve been able to do on modern hardware with our modern learnings (sic) as well”.

Comparisons To The Souls Series

While never name-dropping the Souls series specifically, Masaru did say that in designing Armored Core VI, making it feel like an Armored Core game came first. Anything taken from other From Software titles was more a question of ‘does this work in our rad mech game’ rather than ‘We need to incorporate mechanics from a game that’s not getting a PC release any time soon’.

“In terms of what we took from titles of recent years. Obviously, Armored Core has always been a shoot ’em up, and a mech action game,it differs in style and an approach to the more melee focused games of recent years”, Masaru says. “So in that sense, we didn’t want to take anything directly and insert it where it didn’t make sense. What you can see is some elements of our map design. So how we approach designing these large three dimensional spaces and how the player moves through those spaces”.

“And also how in terms of combat, how the player is expected to observe the enemy and watch for its attack patterns and watch for its tells and respond accordingly and change their playstyle accordingly. So these are some elements that you could take the end directly from recent titles and applied in a way that doesn’t feel out of place with that core competence of AC”, he continues.

While many of the comparisons to the Souls series have been more general, broad strokes, there have been pointed comparisons to Sekiro’s posture system, even dubbing Fires of Rubicon the affectionate nickname of “Mekiro” in some circles. According to Masaru, this wasn’t even a case of lifting from past works- his team just came to a similar solution of trying to innovate on combat.

“This is something that just coincidentally ended up resembling the posture system in Sekiro”, he says.  “Of course there’s no sort of one sword combat directly and there’s no parry system but in terms of how it plays out we wanted to adapt something that creates this ebb and flow in battle in a more shooter oriented game. And so in the end this the way the stagger system works ends up resembling that indirectly”.

Secret Encounters in Armored Core VI?

Of course, one of the biggest new features in Armored Core VI is its much larger missions. These really give you the feeling of flying an omnidirectional machine. Like teaching your pet parrot to open a gachapon capsule, Masaru knew they’d have to put treats for players to get them in the habit of exploring- and thankfully there’d be plenty in of hidden encounters in Armored Core VI for this.

“We’ve tried to concentrate on having this wide variety of mission types”, Masaru confirms. “So some of them, you’ll be up against these enormous support machines that you have to take down. Some of them you’ll be pitted against similar ACs in terms of combat and agility. Some of them you’ll just be laying waste to waves of inferior NTs. So we’ve really tried to create this nice ebb and flow to the mission structure and create this balance of mission variety”.

“Within these missions, we’ve tried to incorporate some exploration elements and some hidden elements, on the more open ended mission type”, he says. “You have an objective just to go from A to B, you could also go off the beaten path and find these hidden elements, such as these encounters, where you can defeat this tough enemy and get a secret pod or weapon. Or you might find an AC wreck, which you can download data from that gets stored in a data archive, you might find the final recording of a pilot’s transmission log and get a little bit more information about the world and be able to piece together this kind of fragmented narrative that’s happening behind the scenes. So we hope players enjoy these hidden elements as well”.

With just under a month until launch, there’s a lot to be excited for with Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon. We also got to try out the game for ourselves, so be sure to check out our impressions for the game if you’re still on the fence about the glory of piloting a giant robot into battle.

Our thanks to Masaru Yamamura and Yasunori Ogura for their time, as well as Bandai Namco Entertainment for the opportunity to both check out the game and talk to the developers.

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