Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon Director Says its Boss Battles Are “the Highlight”

FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki and director Masaru Yamamura offered even more new details on Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon to IGN. The duo recently confirmed that the title won’t be open-world and instead follow a mission-based structure like previous games.

Given FromSoftware’s pedigree, can players expect tough battles? Yamamura said the focus was on “really intense and tough mecha battles.” This doesn’t mean all missions will be equally difficult. “We have generally tried to keep it on the challenging side, but it’s not to say that it’s a flat difficulty line throughout. We wanted to have some nice tempo changes and some nice balance to the difficulty and the level of challenge. It can vary depending on the mission type.

“It depends on the enemies you’re coming up against in those missions. It depends on how you want to assemble your mech. But this is one approach we wanted to have, which is to have the player decide how they want to assemble and approach each mission and then to have this nice balance of level of challenge throughout the missions and the campaign.”

Since Yamamura was the lead designer on Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, one may think some design philosophies will carry over. However, the way that the player can approach battles is different due to the amount of customization. “You mentioned Sekiro, and the approach there was this very stoic, one-track approach to battle with just one weapon and just your resolve as a player. I feel like with Armored Core 6, the approach is quite different mainly because of that ‘assemble’ aspect that you have.

“So your battle starts in the AC garage where you are deciding which weapon and you’re deciding which layout, what performance you want your AC to have in battle, and taking this forward to each encounter in each boss battle. So that’s part of the strategy this time, and I think that affects the difficulty greatly.”

In a separate statement, Yamamura revealed that the boss battles are the “highlight” of the game. “The essence of the battles, in which the player reads the enemy’s moves and then plays games with them, is of course provided, as is typical of FromSoftware. In this title, both the enemy and your own machine are aggressive and violent in their attacks.

“We are developing the game so that players can enjoy the dynamic and intense boss battles that only mechas can offer, along with the unique aspects of Armored Core, such as how to assemble the right parts to take on the strongest enemies.”

The customization will be familiar to fans of previous games. “There’ll be a wide variety of different parts that you can exchange on different parts of your mech. So that aspect is going to be fully intact in Armored Core 6.”

Describing the “general game cycle,” Yamamura said it’s about clearing missions and then using the money “to buy more expensive weapons and parts for your mech. And also within that, you are tuning these parts, and you’re tuning the weapons and tuning your mech to suit your play style, changing parameters, changing the performance of various parts to suit the way you want to approach each mission in each battle. I think you could call this the equivalent in Armored Core 6.”

In terms of mobility, players can tune generators and boosters. In previous Armored Core titles, you could improve boosting or flight time, boss height and the “explosiveness” of boosts. “These are all things that will apply in Armored Core 6, as well.”

Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon is out in 2023 for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and PC. It’s a brand-new story that’s not connected to previous games. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.