Armored Core 6 seems to be more armored than Soulsborne

In practical terms, this means retaining many of the elements that have defined the series over the years – features like granular mecha customization and a one-on-one arena mode. Its most readily available “Soulsborne” elements are its powerful bosses – a FromSoftware staple – and its dark setting, the latter of which was really a big part of Armored Core’s identity.

It also features a pose system of sorts, which director Masaru Yamamura — a veteran of Dark Souls and Sekiro: Shadows Dies Twice — says works by “continuing to attack even the strongest enemy, the power of the impact can break the enemy’s pose and deal a significant amount of damage.” “. Think of it as something like raising a shield and absorbing damage until you have to back off.

Where Armored Core stands apart is in its focus on ranged weapons over swords and melee weapons. Yamamura is equally acknowledged in our interview, though he also notes that Armored Core features some “nice melee options.”

Both Yamamura and Miyazaki resist petty comparisons to the Souslborne games. Miyazaki is firm in saying that personalization is his main focus, and Yamamura says there are “no elements that refer directly to Sekiro”. Nowhere is this more evident than the decision to go with a mission-based design, which ties directly into its predecessors, versus the more open structure of the Elden Ring and its ilk.

“We felt that the mission-based structure was good for that because it allows you to choose and customize before each sortie. At least, the cadence — the speed at which a player can move through the world and traverse a map… That’s a very big aspect of how we approach this design,” he says. Miyazaki. “I think one of the big draws of previous Armored Core games is having that freedom to choose how you’re going to move across the map and how your choices will affect your movement and ability once you’ve actually entered the level. That’s the look we wanted to go for this time around, and that’s where we wanted to focus on him “.

Miyazaki, of course, got his start with the Armored Core series before eventually moving on to channeling Demon Soul, so he knows it better than most. Armored Core’s main opportunity may lie in using FromSoftware’s augmented resources to produce a graphically ambitious experience. Miyazaki himself admitted he was “jealous” of the team today that will be making Armored Core VI.

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