Armored Core VI Will Be All About Mecha Customisation And Action, Not A Soulslike

The next game by FromSoftware will be something different to their current reputation of pioneering the soulslike/SoulsBorne brand of action RPG, but a familiar one to those the knew these devs before Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls. It’s Armored Core VI: Fires Of Rubicon.

IGN has interviewed Hidetaka Miyazaki (game director on Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring as well as previous Armored Core titles), and Masaru Yamamura of FromSoftware, revealing a few details on what to expect on the latest entry of this mecha action game.

And that’s the first thing, it’s a mecha action game, not a soulslike.

“No, we’ve not been making a conscious effort to try to direct it towards more Soulsborne-type gameplay,” Miyazaki said. He was involved as the initial game director for Armored Core VI before handing the reigns to Yamamura.

“The essential direction of [Armored Core VI] was to go back and take a good look at the core concept of Armored Core and what made that series special. So we wanted to take the assembly aspect, assembling and customizing your own mech – your AC – and then being able to exact a high level of control over the assembled mech. So we wanted to take those two core concepts and reexamine those in our modern environment.”

After the reveal of Armored Core VI at The Game Awards 2022, FromSoft fans are discussing whether or not the developers’ next game retains elements of a soulslike.

But AC fans, rest assured that FromSoft has made it clear what’s the best part of Armored Core, and it’s the mecha customisation and mecha action combat, and expect that to be at the core of AC VI.

However, there’s one little mechanic from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice that will be seen in AC VI: posture.

“For this title, by continuing to attack even the strongest enemy, the force of impact can break the enemy’s posture and inflict a large amount of damage – a critical hit,” said Yamamura. Previously a designer on Sekiro, he said there are similarities in how the action of Armored Core VI and Sekiro plays: aggressive, various speed changes and action-oriented.

Previous Armored Core games have players manage a boost meter and be wary of high temperatures that can damage their AC if it pasts a threshold. A posture mechanic shouldn’t be too far-fetched of an inclusion, especially if you can customise the AC to be resistant to it- or consciously have it low as a trade-off of making other parts of the mecha better.

There are many other confirmed details for Armored Core VI, all of which line up with what you expect from an Armored Core game:

• A reboot – no connections to past games (all numbered AC games have been reboots)
• Mission-based structure (not open-world)
• Game loop is to customise mech, go do missions, earn money then buy parts to customise mechs for the next mission
• Parts tuning (boosters can be tuned to improve boost/flight time/boost height/boost “explosiveness”
• Multiplayer versus mode is planned

It’s safe to say that if there are any soulslike parallels in Armored Core VI, it’s not because of the influence of past games, but rather because it’s an Armored Core game.

You can find the full interview by IGN here.

Armored Core VI: Fires Of Rubicon will be out in 2023 for the PS4, PS5, PC (Steam), Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.