FromSoftware President Hidetaka Miyazaki Confirms ‘Armored Core VI: Fires Of Rubicon’ Is Not Being Driven To Soulsborne Type Gameplay
FromSoftware President Hidetaka Miyazaki and designer Masaru Yamamura have revealed Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon won’t be taking many Soulsborne elements.
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Announced during The Game Awards 2022, Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon will be the first new entry in the series since 2013 — which is right about the time FromSoftware began releasing titles such as Dark Souls II, Bloodbourne, Dark Souls III, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Elden Ring.
As a result of popularizing and essentially creating the “soulsbourne” subgenre of video games, some had wondered if this would change Armored Core VI compared to prior games — raising the question, would it become a soulsbourne game, or take inspiration from the subgenere? IGN reports that FromSoftware President Hidetaka Miyazaki answered that very question in their interview.
“No, we’ve not been making a conscious effort to try to direct it towards more Soulsborne type gameplay,” Miyazaki explained. “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,” he revealed.
Having started at FromSoftware as a planner on Armored Core: Last Raven, Miyazaki was more than a fine fit as the rumored initial game director, and provided the game’s concept. However, the current Game Director is now Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice lead game designer Masaru Yamamura.
While insisting there would be “no elements directly referring to Sekiro,” Yamamura revealed some inspirations in the gameplay. For example, Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon will feature a posture system wherein “continuing to attack even the strongest enemy, the force of impact can break the enemy’s posture and inflict a large amount of damage.”
Though Sekiro has a diverse melee arsenal, and Armored Core features firearms, Yamamura assured players there will be “nice melee options.”
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Nonetheless, Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon won’t be featuring an open world that players can tackle how they wish. Instead, players will be taking on missions, as Miyazaki elaborated. “We felt that the mission-based structure was a benefit for this because it allows you to choose and customize before each sortie.”
“At the very least, the tempo — the pace at which the player is able to move across the world and traverse the map…this is a very big aspect in how you approach this design,” he educated.
“I think one of the big appeal points of the previous Armored Core games is having this freedom to choose how you’re going to move across the map and how your choices are going to affect your mobility and your ability once you’re actually in the level,” Miyazaki added. “This is the format we wanted to choose this time, and this is where we wanted to put our focus.”
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