FromSoftware has scheduled a special livestream showcase for Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon.
On their official Twitter account, FromSoftware made this announcement:
“Join us for an #ARMOREDCORE VI Showcase on August 18th at 16:00 PDT. We will highlight lore, mission gameplay and PvP.”
You can watch the stream on Twitch here, or on YouTube, here.
This follows a gameplay showcase video that FromSoftware presented about a month ago from today. If you’ve been following this game through the different video previews and social media updates, you probably already have a very good idea of what this game will be like.
And what it is is unapologetic mech game action. Mechs are cumbersome, and play sessions are the polar opposite of matches in Valorant or Counter-Strike. But, that is precisely the point.
FromSoftware specializes in building their gameplay around creating a particular atmosphere. Your mechs may not be as fast or responsive as you may want, but this game design is intended to make you feel immersed, as if the mech is a real, gigantic, humanoid tank you are piloting.
Today’s showcase will likely be FromSoftware’s last major advertising push for Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon. This is where FromSoftware will show the game’s real crowdpleasing features, the things that the fans want to see.
CBR tried to collect some impressions online of what fans are looking for in Armored Core, AKA what they would hope to see in this showcase. We are sure this doesn’t match the quality of the internal research that FromSoftware has done themselves, but we can consider these good guesses for what to expect.
To get this out of the way; some fans want Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon to be a Soulslike, and FromSoftware has repeatedly insisted they will not be doing that. Hidetaka Miyazaki has gone out of his way to leave development of this game to make sure it won’t happen, even unintentionally. FromSoftwar was the Armored Core dev for far longer than it was the Soulslike dev, and that franchise has its own norms, tropes, and gameplay design.
Other expectations are much more reasonable. Every mech game franchise, the fans insist that the developers make better tutorials. For Armored Core, that suggestion may be warranted, as its cult status owes itself to the steep learning curve of just getting used to controlling any mech game.
Fans also want a better story, and a better single player campaign. FromSoftware can tell that Armored Core’s future is in online multiplayer, but the fans want these things too for good reason. We may not have to wait long to find out if FromSoftware sees these things as the things they should do better now.
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon will be released on August 25, 2023, on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows on Steam.