New details about Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon have emerged in an interview that took place during the 2023 Taipei Game Show.
Armored Core 6 is due out in 2023 – a full decade after the most recent entry in the series – and in the interview (opens in new tab) producer Yasutaka Ogura was asked just why the heck it took so long for FromSoftware to return to its mech roots. According to Ogura, the studio simply had too many other projects to work on to dedicate resources to a 16th Armored Core game.
“There was never any intention to leave this long a gap,” Ogura said. “We have made a number of titles in the interim and seen a lot of really talented developers grow into their roles. Many of us, including [Hidetaka] Miyazaki, our CEO, and myself as well, have always wanted to create a new Armored Core title, so there was never any question that one day we would return to the series. The only real obstacle standing between us and the development of a new title was that our company has always had so many different titles on the go, and we had to make sure that our resources were appropriately distributed.”
Ogura also teased how Armored Core 6 benefits from its developers having had worked on so many major games in the 10 years since the last game in the series. Asked to name the biggest differences between Fires of Rubicon and the most recent entry, Armored Core: Verdict Day, Ogura said one factor is that there’s a new “freedom to spend more on the game’s development and resources.”
“The other factor,” he said, “was that as 10 years have passed between titles, we at FromSoftware had developed so many games in the interim, from Dark Souls 2 to Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, Déraciné – and of course others like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and most recently, Elden Ring – all of which changed us. The experience and knowhow that our game designers and developers built up through these titles was able to be made use of in this title.”
For the uninitiated, Armored Core is a mech action series that debuted way back in 1997. It’s probably best-known for its trademark learning curve and multiplayer elements, but don’t let that trick you into thinking it’s a Soulslike.
For more, check out our in-depth feature on what Armored Core 6 might look like in a post-Elden Ring world.