With Armored Core 6, FromSoftware has a chance to be cool again

A long time ago, Of software used to be extremely cool. It was a name you’d see on something you bought at a stinking privately owned game store down a side alley. Maybe you catch a glimpse of some cool robots or weird monsters in a quarter-page paragraph of a PS2 magazine’s preview section and that would be all you’d hear until the game was unceremoniously localized over a year later, usually. . to a 5 or 6 of publications that were mostly not interested in this type of thing. The indie boom was still a long way off, and the most exotic thing that caught the mainstream eye among FIFA and platformers was the occasional Final Fantasy.

However, for sweaty enthusiasts, FromSoftware was a guarantee of exactly the kind of utter filth they crave. esoteric systems. Player hostility. Muddy and ugly graphics designed to scare the weak. Ranging from the Playstation 1 to the Playstation 3, FromSoftware was known for its various extremely niche and tough video game franchises for cool and sexy weirdos.

Tenchu ​​was the stealth series for the people they found solid metal gearClear communication and headless guards an insult to the concept, for people who craved an experience where taking down a single guard and getting away with it feels like a miracle. king’s field it was there for the refined RPG fan who found the garish colors and absurd storylines of more traditional JRPGs offensively adolescent. Do you enjoy vibrating in detailed cabins and reading ghost letters? The surprisingly ahead of his time echo night the games were there for you.

The absolute king of them all was armored core – a mechanical simulator that made the dream of driving a giant robot feel as exciting as passing the MOT on an ’89 Vauxhall Nova. Armored Core was a franchise that totally and completely rejected the “Wow, Cool Robot” aspect of the genre in favor of forcing players to take into account weight distribution and the inevitable entanglement of technological development with the military-industrial complex. It was in Armored Core that everything FromSoftware does was fully realized, taking a subject that 12-year-olds think would be totally awesome and proving that it would actually be a miserable, soul-destroying job. And it controls like complete crap.

So Dark souls He went out and ruined FromSoftware and gaming in general forever. Enough of the cool kids made too many people realize that it’s basically okay demon souls that, by the time his spiritual successor came out, he was poised to be the studio’s big hit. It was huge. Everybody was playing. Normal, well-adjusted adults were playing it. Famous people were playing it. Everyone was talking about it, everywhere, all the time. It was horrible, mostly because it was by far one of the least interesting things they’d ever done. But history declared it such a perfect and incomparable masterpiece that it became the only thing the developer would do for over a decade. It became the only thing lots of developers would for over a decade. An endless stream of identical brown games about catching a big man and rolling around him.

elden ring it was the real final nail in the coffin for FromSoftware’s concept as an entity known for ugly games with niche appeal. A huge, beautiful world based on the lore developed by one of the world’s greatest writers, something that has been given pages of trailers and years of lavish PR. An open world game about rolling around the big man, the most tired design concept out there. It was an amalgamation of all the ideas that are currently conventional and boring. basically it was a assassin’s Creed game, a real solid 6. Of course, it was one of the biggest video games of all time, making more money and getting more applause than can really be fathomed.

So it was a real surprise to hear that FromSoft’s next game was going to be the long-awaited return of Armored Core, something some 14 game journalists have been asking for incessantly across two console generations. Not only that, the director made it clear that he would stick with the linear, mission-based structure of the rest of the series. The game is still full of menus. The fear was always that if AC ever returned, it would be like a grotesque Armored Souls: a joyless squashing of everything that makes the series what it is to appease the demands of the masses who really like to lock themselves in the box. great man and roll around. him.

It’s the first real risk the studio has taken in years. Continuing an expansive, crowd-pleasing RPG filled with beautiful trees and waterfalls with an obtuse, linear shooter full of metal and monotony is the kind of move cool developers of weird pervert games make. It’s the first chance FromSoftware has had in a long time to be great again. The absolute best case scenario is Armored Core 6 launches to five and six mainstream press, which absolutely repels the fan base they’ve built up over the last ten years. If gamers in general express disgust at not being able to take notice of the great man and roll around him, FromSoftware may finally have a chance to grow up, returning to what they were during their heyday (2004).

FromSoftware simply should never have been doing 10 out of 10. Its name shouldn’t have been anywhere near the glitzy Game of the Year extravaganzas with huge corporate sponsors and celebrity-studded audiences. It really feels like such a conscious decision, that even FromSoftware is tired of Soulsbornes at this point. He’s ready to sneak into the shadows and start churning out dense ninja simulators for anoraks. If Armored Core 6 is as boring and unappealing as the rest of the franchise, it’s going to be the most exciting release of the year.

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