Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon

So much of Fires of Rubicon would normally seem archaic. Mission select in a menu, which sends you to a voice-only debrief, and then a loadout editor to tweak your mech before embarking on discrete levels, whose significance to the story varies and is often a mystery to the player anyhow. The forbidding granularity of the mech construction system. The paucity of cutscenes. The impression is of a game whose skeleton could have been constructed in 2009 or earlier, when even blockbuster games weren't really blockbusters, and the Armored Core franchise did numbers that seem laughable today.

That the game could not actually have been made in 2009 owes to two factors: the rising star of developer FromSoftware, and From's meticulous mastery of a few very specific third-person combat mechanics. Rubicon is the most expansive game in its long-running franchise, the previous installment of which was released well before a game could be described as a "soulslike". And its breakneck combat is a singular triumph in the series.

Rubicon plays at the fraying seams of mecha power fantasy. Compared to footsoldiers, and even lesser mech units, any Armored Core is a terrible force, and protag Raven is an exceptional pilot even by AC standards. This is driven home in an early chapter, where Raven brutally dispatches a young pilot head to head, and on throughout the game, both in a simulated combat arena where Raven climbs the ranks of registered pilots, and in the story itself, where many of those same pilots end up as boss fights in the story. Raven is a god of war, capable of turning armies. Yet, in the game's many voice messages, Raven feels entirely powerless, to the point of being referred to as a 'dog' or 'hound' throughout most of the game. It seems largely unthinkable to most of the game's characters that Raven could even make decisions alone, until it finally happens.

Most of these choices are carried out simply by selecting one mission over another in that same menu screen, and yet they are imbued with almost divine significance by the canny reaction of Raven's companions. The simple thesis: Raven's terrible power means nothing without the power to choose. And this, too, says a little bit about Raven and the pilots of the Armored Cores, but might say more about the player and their relationship with video-game violence.

In typical From fashion, the choices presented to the player are hazily defined, and their consequences are never made explicit. The game refuses to offer any opinion. If it did, their decision would be invalidated. All you can do is look within yourself, search for some principle that might guide you, and select the corresponding option on the mission screen.