With just over a month to go before the launch of FromSoftware’s surprise sequel Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, a brand new story trailer has been released to give us something of an idea of the game’s plot. While the three-minute CGI clip continues the developer’s tradition of holding its narrative cards impossibly close to the chest, we do get a soft introduction to what appears to be the player character, their handler Walter, and a thematic overview of the game’s dark, sci-fi world.
In the trailer we witness several Armored Core units, the titular giant war machines, fall during an assault on some kind of military base, before a single unit dukes it out with a lumbering, somehow even bigger tank unit. Intercut with this clash is a conversation between two men as a human body is operated on in a futuristic, and incredibly eery, medical bay. The two robots continue their desperate fight before the AC expends all of its weapons and limbs to deliver a death blow to the tank, finally falling motionless in the pouring rain, its body now a smouldering heap of metal. “This one is functional, but don’t expect much more,” one of the voices says over footage of the covered human body, “I’m not here to talk, wake it up,” says Walter.
The trailer concludes with Walter welcoming the human, now designated 621, back into consciousness…kind of. After an operating sequence that sees the body pumped with a red substance we imagine to be Coral, the strange fuel material found on Rubicon, a looming AC appears to wake up over the body, its eye that same menacing red. It’s a lot! And very, very FromSoftware if we’re being honest. The Armored Core series has always dabbled with the loss of humanity via the great machines in its title and Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon appears to be very much about to continue that legacy.
Last month we got a brief but intriguing hands-off preview of the game and came away ready to see more. It is the first Armored Core title in a decade, and a surprising choice to follow up FromSoftware’s massive Elden Ring success. But given our current struggles with the loss of humanity in the face of AI and machines, maybe there’s never been a better time for another round in the imposing mechs.
What do you think of the Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon story trailer? Would you let Walter upload your consciousness into a war machine for the sake of an endless war on profits? Be sure to let us know on social media and in the comments below!
Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon launches August 25 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC.
One part pretentious academic and one part goofy dickhead, James is often found defending strange games and frowning at the popular ones, but he's happy to play just about everything in between. An unbridled love for FromSoftware's pantheon, a keen eye for vibes first experiences, and an insistence on the Oxford comma have marked his time in the industry.
