I'm not sure if it's part of the countdown on the AC site, but I found it while browsing the net.

Source

I am not sure if I should jump for joy or spit at the name of choice.

I'm guessing there is some engrish going on there. Sounds like it could be good... could be bad.

Yeah that name sounds pretty stupid.

Armored Core: For Great Justice sounds a lot better.

But at least you finally get the coop missions that you always wanted.

Interesting, looks like they are just jumping into a new series instead of having the obligatory 3 expansions per series.

Hopefully they actually put some thought into this one.

DAMN! This is what I've been waiting for! Motherfucking ONLINE coop missions ftw.

^ As long as it doesn't turn out like it did before, with smalll levels; then I can see this being pretty cool.

How about "Armored Core 5: For Real"?

New game engine I imagine. Or maybe this is just wishful thinking on my behalf.

I hope there is a new engine. The one for AC4 is terrible.

Unfortunately, and as I think you already saw on the other site, the current logo presents the premise that it's still under the banner of AC4.

http://i9.tinypic.com/7xnprif.jpg

Oh, I get it now. The title is "Armored Core 4: A". The A stands for Answer. So the title should read, "Armored Core 4: Answer".

Didn’t From Software issue a questionnaire asking Japanese fans what the wanted to see in the next Armored Core game? Did From Soft bother to implement any of their ideas?

On-line co-op is nice but pretty much mandatory in today’s world hence nothing to really get excited about. I want a game where it feels like giant mechs are fighting and there’s battlefield strategy as well as a strong customization element.

I wonder what they've added to slow down game play, as they seem to do with every expansion. Boosters draining from PA, maybe (ie. booster heat)?

Source!

Once again, I fail. I hope they used the fan suggestions. The co-op is definitely a good start in my opinion. I like Transformers.

...I get to fly Ultimate 9Ball?

Reminds me of Gundam Wing Zero and Epyon cause I just played them in Dynasty Warriors: Gundam. It wasn't all that great. But yeah transforming, I don't want it to be too Macrossy. Just give it that U9B tweak and it's good to go.

It's really funny too cause I just imaged a jet like NEXT in AC4. You give it those wing looking like missiles and that big turbine booster looking back-unit with some sort of tread or hover and there you go. OB that bitch and it sorta looks like a weird shippy jet thing.

Glad to hear that Shoji is back on board. I might actualy pick this game up, and the graphic book too.

Hold it.
What? A producer left recently?
Which ones did he work on?
I believe the original producer of AC1 never came back.. Which ones worked on which?
AND transforming?
I'm scared.

I have a gut feeling with that survey, that From Software is now in over their heads. "online co-op shadow of the colossus mission premise" I really, really like. But can From really do something that awesome? I have doubt. It took them 10 years from the original engine to get to another I liked more, if even just as much at least. At least I see them investing in it though. Hiring 3 designers.

My guess Shoji came back from the survey maybe. I loved that they put a different designer of the AC's to work for AC4, and now Shoji only making the new basass/classic parts will be a nice mix.

I want to second guess my doubts by the fact that they made AC4. My favorite release by far to date. So I hope.

Transforming? When did that come in? Sorry i have never associated AC with transforming Hello? Oh look a bandwagon, lets jump on that...

Online co-op in 20km maps would, sorry Could, be good. However its not more designs they need, but to lock down some good gameplay mechanics. If the announcement was they'd hired Peter Molyneux and Cliffy B i'd probably be happier.

At least they could be trying something new as AC really needs a shakeup, and IMO Chromehounds is a superior game than AC4, certainly online, and showed a lot more thought and innovation.

Well this is pretty cool. It looks like From is REALLY catering to fans. (Japanese players have the same likes and complaints over AC, so I'm not worried).

The biggest missions in AC4 where like 2 km x 2 km, so 20 x 20 is 100 times the area size. This would be great for coop.

Also, maybe this will explain the great destruction and what not.

I hope this is like an improvement like AA.

Oh, something interesting: For those who don't play Chrome Hounds, there's parts during the online war theatre where occasionally a nation will break out a super weapon under special conditions. Basically everyone is free to go after it. The mission stays the same during the online session for everyone, so any damage done to the super weapon stays until it's defeated. It usually takes 20 Chrome Hounds to take one out if the player are vets. Originally, about 50-100 people would get their asses handed to them.

Also give much more reason to longer range. Rader too.

Looking pretty sharp. There seems to be part style for everyone.

Those legs on the gold AC look kinda like the floating legs on those weird Nexus AC's. Maybe we'll get to make AC's that can behave like the old bosses?

I also see what looks like the old SRBIA super tank from AC2 and AA.

I'm not getting excited for this. I'll just end up getting disappointed like I usually am.

Nexus
Me: OMG! This game is going to rox my sox off!
Me after playing: WTF? I can't move, AND I'm on fire?! I'm gonna vomit now.

AC4:
Me: PS3 graphics FTW! I hope they improve the gameplay a bit...
Me after playing: I can move pretty fast.... but I'm die'n way faster than I should be. Even for AC, the difficulty level and learner curves are SUCK.

History will repeat itself; it's the words that will be different.

Maybe they hired some staffers from Toho.

I call dibs on CRMT62-Mothra.

Hour and a half left on the counter btw, so we'll know soon.

*edit*
(All pics courtesy of J.E.)

MOOOOST BOOOST!

The big question for me is how the engine and mechanics will be handled. After some tuning, AC4 is now in what I think is a good, solid place. Adding new parts would be great, but changing something fundamental about how the game is played would be a huge mistake. Unfortunately, as Del pointed out, the trend on prior systems has been to add in some good things and introduce at least a noticeable number of new bad things, with the net gain often being zero or even negative. At the very least there has been far too little cohesion between editions, something I felt like Reg files addressed wonderfully well (since just the particulars of a problem were changed, not the whole engine itself as in prior editions). If AC4:A is something that builds on the strong bones of AC4 r1.6, IMO it will either be a very good game from the off or rapidly become one with some more Reg tuning. If OTOH they throw the baby out with the bath water and take a monkey wrench to the things that made AC4 good, it could stink... but at least there's the thought of Regs fixing its issues as they have with AC4.

Edit: Another quick point is that the first editions on any system are typically sort of "builder kits" with stripped-down part rosters by comparison to later titles (reference AC2, AC3). This doesn't mean they can't be good games, simply that a lot of the really cool ideas are usually later added (and, historically, weighed down by the load of mediocre or poorly thought-out engine changes riding on their coattails). AC4 looks to fit the same trend, looking at all this revision appears to be attempting. Again, my most sincere hope is simply that the design team started from the basis they had and worked up from there, rather than tinkering with the basics of how the game works and plays.

Even so, I'm still going to eat this game up like a free warm pretzel when it comes out.
My hopes are high, but sometimes I just can't keep my inner critic at bay. Having my hopes dashed by From time and again have made me bitter. Like an abused dog.

Maybe this time From will change and build off an decent existing engine, rather than make a crappy new one.

And maybe I'll get to figure out what the satellite launcher on that AC's back does.

The engine isn't bad actually. It's just that the PS3's GPU is woefully inadequate for solo use and that From didn't make any use of the co-processers.

I'm also assuming that the 360 version simply used one core CPU as well as both the PS3 and 360 use essentially the same Power PC cores. Porting code for use in that manner would be easy and quick.

(The 360 had the advantage of a better GPU and non-dedicated ram for graphics, btw).

If From gets all of the cell going and all three of the cores on the 360 working, then yeehaw!

Hopefully we'll get the whole AC4 experience we were expecting.

If this runs well, I may buy a good HD set.

...and it was done by the same team (Nabeshima helmed that too you know). As for Molyneux and CliffyB, they are just PR mouthpieces and transformation is integral to a lot of Kawamori's non-AC designs. Considering that he was responsible for Armored Core's aesthetic birth letting him lead the way is a very natural thing to do for the series. However, they haven't said what kind of transformation will take place yet. They've only used the word "henkei" and that doesn't specify whether they change into a plane or just that an extra pair of arms folds out or some such. Basically, no-one knows for sure what they play to do but that the fact Kawamori's involvement can only be a good thing due to his 30 plus years of mecha design experience.

From what I understood in the Famitsu piece is that some of the larger areas are more built up arenas for the giant mobile fortress to crash through and that it's similar in some ways to Shadow of the Colossus in terms of the modular approach to destroying your target (which the co-op would fit nicely here).

As for AC needing a shakeup, AC4 did that but the shakeup the series really needs is a PR one and no-one outside of Japan has a fucking clue when it comes to mecha. So that's more the issue really.

I going to assume that the manner of transformations we'll see will be to the extent of what we saw with 9B seraph, the Hogire AC from the old promo trailers and the red mystery MT from the end of Nexus. I'd also throw in the BFF quad legs as another example.

Yeah, something fairly restrained.

Though that VOB part looks bloody amazing.

I'm really curious to see how the parts roster and alliances will change given the destruction of various corporations in AC4. The destruction of Rayleonard and Akvavit would put a big technological blow on several groups, especially GA and Interior Union.

Then there's BFF's Sphere reactor center which nobody owns.

BTW: Was that gigantic AC at the end of AC4 GA's secret weapon? People keep saying it's Omer's, and the name Aretha would fit that, but the design and style is most certainly Rayleonard and Akvavit on a GA scale. (I recall reading something about GA having a secret weapon in the "Another Story" shorts).

Any answer is greatly appreciated, because information what we get over here is somewhat dismal.

Fixed.

Welcome back (again) Ollie!

Actually if you look at the entire ALIYA chassis, a jet-plane transformation is really just obvious and very intuitive. The arms fold back and sideways, with the delta-swept surfaces extending slightly to become "wings," the pelvis of the legs rotates 180 degrees to reorient the rearward-facing leg thrusters as V/STOL jets, and the waist moves up and back to streamline the whole thing for movement but leave the boost and OB exhausts clear. It looks like it should turn into a jet - first thing I thought when I saw it.

Online co-op is too good for the AC series. From Soft should really think about way to make the experience tortuous. AC is not AC unless you think you're burning in hell.



The only member of the AC1 executive staff to not return on another title was Karasawa. Given that there were parts named after him, I'm going to guess he died. Can Caco confirm? Anyway, since we never saw the kind of brilliant writing present in AC1 again, I'll hazard a guess that Karasawa was responsible for it all.

AC has always been very much inspired by the works of Ryosuke Takahashi and anyone who has watched VOTOMS knows that burning in hell is pretty much integral to the narrative.



I'm not sure on the details because Karasawa was before my time so to speak, however the manner in which the remaining staff barely allude to his existence suggests that he was "let go" for being a bit rubbish. Bear in mind that Karasawa's role was that of producer on the first AC, which is very much focused around scheduling and project management. Nabeshima was the primary mission planner (aka a lead designer outside Japan), since the series' success Nabeshima has moved away from design and into production (since Master of Arena in fact). Admittedly, he does oversee the game's manufacture but a production role isn't anywhere near as hands on as design. I, personally, think the games have improved noticeably since Nabeshima's return to production (don't forget that Kenichiro Tsukuda produced the first four PlayStation 2 AC games), with AC4 being, quite frankly, fucking epic throughout. However, Nabeshima would probably be better suited to a lead designer role, as being a producer in the games industry is like trying to push three tons of jello up a large hill on a hot day whilst simultaneously herding several hundred cats. It's a different skill set to design really.

Quoted for awesome. Signature worthy material right there.

I noticed that those new Acs look alot more like the ac3-aclr era acs. Things look fairly interesting. Im curious as to how many parts we are going to get this time.

Holy shit, look who posted?! I thought Caco had been locked into a cupboard in EA's basement or something...

So any more linked details on AC4:AA sorry 4A I guess my big hope is that they introduce mission based online games, both co-op and VS, and decent maps with cover.

I left EA a while back and I was only one of many frontline testing minions anyway (hardly all that swanky). My timing was somewhat fortuitous though because they axed several hundred staff recently (mostly because they've been losing a lot money due to their yearly shit pumping marathon, so they had to make up the loss somewhere else).

Just so people know; testing is horrid for someone who cares about gaming. You find nasty bugs that can't be fixed because the game has to make its ship date, then customers find said bugs and management blame the testers. It also pays bugger all.

Anyway, back to ACFA...

From what I can gather from the Famitsu piece, the areas are populated with the remains of whatever the mobile fortress has destroyed (for the land based ones, some of the fortress operate on the sea and in the air, the latter is probably why the VOB exists but that's an assumption on my part), so they can act as partial cover (I think they are destructible remains too, so you can't camp forever). The online missions are the same as the offline ones, so you can drop in and out (this is bloody hard to pull off though, from a tech and infrastructure point of view but since Chrome Hounds they should have the experience in house to pull it off).

That being said, there were a fair few maps in AC4 with good cover but there's no harm in having more I suppose.

My main desire is for the missions to be pretty substantial in length really. Whilst I enjoyed the speed focused AC4, I'd rather have something a bit more lengthy. The big problem really is that AC's travel so fast now, so the areas will need to be immense to make up for that (which is what it sounds like thus far in all fairness).

New interview with Nabeshima here:

http://www.famitsu.com/interview/article/1212269_1493.html

Notable being the pretty pictures (though his interview is interesting too, but it's Japanese only).

Something's wrong with that vid damnit. I don't speak any form of their language!!!

don't care bout the art, robots are gay.

game mechanics look the same as ac4, so that means spam + luck + weapon counters = gameplay.

I'll just wait till ac5 I guess.

Some information that should be new:

-Weapon power increased greatly
-PA strength upped by about 4 times
-You can blow up your PA shield as an attack. (Called Assault Armor feature. I don't know if it is AC specific or not).
-Normal boosting speed about double. (Don't know about QB).
-Normal OB power increased.
-Just over double the amount of parts.
-40(42?) missions
-You can play single player missions Co-op online and offline with either another player or an AI player. (In single player, AI players are available as consorts, but choices depend on how the single-player game goes).
-VOB in used in only a few missions. (Don't know if it is available online).
-Omer, GA, and Interior Union are the three major groups. They each have sub-factions and such. (Don't know about some of the other corporations, but apparently they exist. BFF has their own armed fort).
-Multiple Endings.

So many small changes and nothing to be excited about.....

That's all nice, but what about the transformation feature?

The change list is a bit odd.
1. <spoiler?>Wasn't BFF destroyed already? How can it have a fortress anymore?</spoiler?>
2. Making weapons and PA stronger - but not defense - makes it look like they want PA to be significantly more important. If the increase in proportions of damage:PA is 1:1, damage without PA would be ridiculous. This suggests a part rebalancing and probably several months of broken multiplayer. Hopefully it doesn't turn into a Halo-esque shield system.
3. Multiple endings means the game will probably be as short as LR. If the missions are still 30 seconds like in AC4, it sounds like one could beat the single-player game in an hour.

In my wanderings about the internet, I recall someone stating that the transformations only took place during OB; I'm afraid I don't recall the source or its level of credibility. It does make sense, though, if the transformations were jet-like and did not allow the ACs to hover, since OB forces that kind of movement already.

I have same feeling that transformation is movement related. I haven't seen any really specific information on it.

Regarding destroyed companies, I suppose they either regroup and pull out secret weapons (the forts) or get absorbed by the left over companies. The big groups relied on their technology. Either way, I don't know.

(There's a flowchart that shows the relations between all the companies on From's AC4 site).

I also forgot to mention that missions overall do take longer. (Thankfully!)

What's VOB?