I always found it a little funny that basically all of the Ace Combat games have pretty prominent anti-war plotlines despite the actual gameplay.
Excellent game, though. Can't wait for the next oneThey made one game set in the real world (Assault Horizon), and of course it's pro-NATO propaganda.
The writer that they hired from the NYT for the real world Ace Combat game (Jim Deflice if I remember correctly) actually wanted to write a nuanced story that took place in the frictional strangereal world. However, the Japanese westaboos/ameriboos/ rip off Hideo Kojimas at Project Aces forced him to write a real world story where America is the good guy. I don't know why either.
Ace Combat Assault Horizon, along with Need For Speed The Run, were the pinnacle of the late 2000s/early 2010s trend of making games as close to action movies as possible, with all the scripted events and gameplay sequences. Done in order to showcase the new HD graphics nicely, and to appeal to a new demographic outside of traditional gamers. All actual gameplay elements be damned. Because of this, if you got a hang of the scripted events in this kind of game (which honestly a toddler could do), the runtime would be less than 4 hours. For full price AAA games!
For every masterpiece level (the fist mission of Assault Horizon, the snow avalanche sequence in The Run) that made good use of the action movie style scripting mechanics and cinematic scenes, there were 10 dud/boring/easily exploitable levels, at minimum. I'm glad the trend is dead. Sony Playstation and their exclusive games have done a much better job at actually executing this kind of thing, while still keeping the gameplay elements at a high level.
Love QTE dogfights and turret sections in Ace Combat
Good thing it flopped and all of that was abandoned.
But look! The metal is bleeding oil! Graphics! Wardog 1! Bishop! Markov! Dogfight. Counter manoeuvre! And counter - counter manoeuvre!
I am very glad it flopped. But sadly it killed the in house game engine and the games use unreal now. Ace Combat Infinity, the last game with the in house engine, looked amazing, but was sadly free to play nonsense
I just realized that if AH had been successful, in the sequel they would've 100% added on-foot shooter sections.
Call of combat: Ace warfare.
I can see it now
. It's a third person cover shooter with lock on aim. And QTEs for headshots
There's definitely a space in Japanese media where anti-war messaging and otaku fetishization of military hardware overlap.
I was originally talking about
凄いねぇぇぇぇ！type stuff (tanks and planes and stuff are pretty cool despite being literal death machines), but stuff like this exists lmao
Ace Combat 8 is next yeah? Wonder how they tie in the ending of 7 with the events of 3, given the crossover and that 3 happened in 2040.
Yeah, I don't think anything is known about the game beyond the fact that they have one in development. I don't think it'd be the first lore contradiction so they might just ignore it
