 So, this will be my final Armored Core Introduction video, so if you are new to the series and you've seen the last five videos, you've got a pretty good idea of how it felt to play the AC games back then. And after this video, you'll basically be caught up on all the story as well, so spoiler alert! If you plan to play any of the older Armored Cores, leave now, and come back later. Okay, so, off the bat, I'm gonna be straight, I am not a channel that specializes in lore and backstory. I just played Armored Core primarily as a fighter and a soldier. So all of this is coming from my perspective of a pilot on the frontlines of every mission. There are a lot of different interpretations for AC's story. I see a lot of theories for how it's a satire on the evils and problems of whatever political and economic system you hate or love. But as someone who has lived and played through 23 years of Armored Core, I actually think those theories are superficial and a bit too surface level. Armored Core is a carefully and methodically crafted work of art. Everything from the gameplay to the story to the sounds really do bring feelings and emotions out of the player that hit hard in a way that is much deeper than surface level understanding of politics. And if you're a game developer or a story writer, there is an excellent video of an interview with Jack Grapes from Film Courage where he explains why 99% of stories are garbage and what makes a good story feel meaningful. I highly recommend you check it out if you get the chance, but basically he explains that none of the contents, mechanics, or characters in your story matter unless there's an emotional truth behind it. The story experience has to capture something much deeper and fundamental to human nature if you actually want people to be able to feel and bond over it. And that's why I believe the actual story for Armored Core is much deeper than people think and if you've played all the games, then there's some striking recurring themes that keep repeating that I think reveal what the true story in Armored Core is really about. And that's why even though I haven't played Armored Core 6 yet, I have a pretty good feeling as to what I think is going to happen based on all the other games that came before it. So my theory is it's going to follow a story much more similar to Armored Core 2. My brother pointed out to me that the story intro for Armored Core 6 is almost identical to the intro for AC2. The game starts out on an orbiting satellite, launches a strike team of three ACs to the surface of a new planet. And just like in the recent trailer, the long range unit launches a barrage of missiles, taking out the facility's defenses. If you also take into consideration the cutscenes regarding human plus intensify injections and the lab table, I get the feeling that Armored Core 2 is very likely the model they have chosen to create the new game experience from. And AC2 is one of those rare Armored Core games where I think the recurring main theme of Armored Core really becomes clear. But in order to really understand what that is, you do have to understand what the main overarching antagonist throughout Armored Core really is. Historically, the antagonist for Armored Core is Nine Ball, which comes from the term Nine Breaker. A Nine Breaker is a title given to a pilot who has defeated the top nine ranked opponents in the arena, essentially making the Nine Breaker the number one strongest pilot of his time. And Nine Ball was one of the strongest Nine Breakers for a long period of time. The main crux of Nine Ball's story starts in Master of Arena on the PlayStation 1. Nine Ball was fighting another raven, and in the crossfire of the battle, a young boy lost his family. Enraged by the loss of his family, the young boy vowed to become a raven and kill Nine Ball for what he did. Years later, the young man barely passes the raven test, and he builds a very close relationship with his operator, Laina Nielsen, who operates as his liaison taking care of all the paperwork for him to apply and find clients who are willing to hire him for new missions and help bring him closer to his goal. While he desperately and constantly grinded, accepting mission after mission after mission, barely surviving each time in the middle of the pain, the chaos, the heartless clients who sent him on impossible missions for dirt cheap pay. Laina was the only one in his entire life he felt he could call a friend. Her voice would be the first and last thing he heard before every mission, and the only one who ever told him to be careful and come back alive. She seemed like the only one who actually cared about him, who noticed him, the struggles he fought through every day to slowly claw his way towards his goals. Laina was an incredibly talented liaison, as he proved himself every single mission in battle. In the corporate world, she would politically constantly fight on his behalf for better pay and bigger, more important missions. And when he performed beyond the expectations of the client, she would mercilessly demand the clients pay more compensation for the unexpected expenses. With her help in the corporate world and his growing skills as a combat pilot, eventually he started to become a serious and powerful force in the world. He was now a pilot that the richest and most wealthy corporations sought after, offering him the highest paid missions available to any raven. And after defeating every other pilot in the arena, he was finally able to build an AC capable of going head to head with nine ball. Laina promised that if the raven could survive long enough, she would bring him to nine ball one day, and she kept her promise. One mission, he was finally able to come face to face with his enemy. And in a violent battle of rage and will, the young man finally destroyed his enemy. He defeated nine ball, but something was wrong. Something didn't feel right. Nine ball should have died, but he was still in the arena. Upon further investigation, it turns out the ravens nest itself was tampering with the data to cover up his death. But there's no mistake, the pilot in the arena fought exactly like nine ball. No one else could possibly do that. And then he got a very unusual message from Laina. She congratulated you on reaching this point. As usual, she's the only one who ever really does, but this time she doesn't seem happy. After the mysterious email, she disappears without a word. And then suddenly, you get a random email from her, telling you there's a secret location nobody knows about. And if you want answers, she'll be waiting there. The young man goes to the secret location desperately and as quickly as possible in order to save the only semblance of a friend he's ever known. And once inside, he hears her voice. Why are all of you here? Confused by her question, before he has any time to respond, nine ball ambushes him and a fight ensues. The most powerful enemy he's ever faced is once again trying to kill him. But this time he's not fighting for revenge. He's fighting to save someone and he kills nine ball for the second time. He goes as fast as he can for the heart of the facility where you hear Laina's voice, but her voice is different now. And the corporation, the AC's, the ravens nest. All of these were formed by me. It's as if her voice and nine balls are now talking together as a single person. For the sole purpose of recreating the world and humankind with it. That's the duty to which I've been entrusted. We'll do much power. Another battle ensues, this time against two nine balls simultaneously, and you finally realize that Laina, nine ball, the corporation and the ravens nest itself, are all the same. The young man barely claws his way through the battle. Low on ammo, low on armor. Now fighting twice his nemesis for the third time. Kind and this world, I intend to fulfill this. And once it's finally over, in the silence of the worst battle he's ever faced, the flora collapses. He falls into a pit, dark, cold. In Out of the Shadows, he hears Laina's and nine ball's voice. Menacing hostilities! And he finds himself face to face with a third generation AC. The fight for his life finally begins. There is no time to think. There is no running. There is no choice. There is only war and those who survive it. A battered AC, a wounded pilot and one last charge. This is how the game ends. This is the story for Armored Corps, Master of Arena. The name of the young man who defeated nine ball, and the entire system the world was built on, was Leo's Klein. And he was the undisputed nine breaker champion during his time. Now, can you guess who the villain of the story in the next game was? That's right. Leo's Klein. Leo's Klein is the main antagonist for Armored Corps 2. Where you play as a raven from Mars, and you try and protect Mars from the nine breaker Leo's Klein from Earth. Klein realized in his quest for vengeance, when he destroyed the world order, it got worse. Not better. And he spent his whole life trying to rebuild the old order to rectify his mistake. So in Armored Corps 2, you play as a new young pilot, who works his way to become the undisputed nine breaker on Mars. And you protect your planet from Klein, who's trying to revive the old order that created nine ball in the first place. By the end of the game in Armored Corps 2, you defeat Klein, preventing whatever it was he was trying to bring to pass. Now, can you guess who the antagonist in the next game was? Well, this has never been confirmed, but we know the final boss of the game, Antares, is one of the most feared ravens on Mars. Well, who do you think is one of the most feared ravens on Mars? Well, I think it's probably the guy who defeated Leo's Klein. So I always believed that the antagonist from Armored Corps 2, another age, is the protagonist from Armored Corps 2. And from software does this a lot. Later in the PlayStation 3, in Armored Corps 4 Answer, one of the most heroic ravens known as White Glint fell in combat. And in Armored Corps 5, Verdict Day, the final antagonist of the game, is the corrupted version of White Glint called Black Glint, who is a clone from the earlier pilots. From Software has a recurring theme in Armored Corps, and that theme is, the hero from the last game eventually becomes the antagonist in the next game. It's a cycle. The hero defeats Nineball. A new hero defeats the old hero. And when things go to shit, Nineball comes back and retakes control to stabilize humanity in whatever way it can. That's the cycle. And I think the idea it represents here is the concept that, no matter what the system is, everyone always says, things will be better once I destroy who's in charge. But no matter how incredible the accomplishments, or the intentions, or the feats of the hero are, once the hero destroys the system, no matter how good it is, there will always be people whose lives are ruined because of it. And they will vow to destroy the new order you so painfully and desperately fought to establish. But that is their right. And if their will is sufficient, and they prove it, then it will be their turn to defend it against the next generation. And when all hell breaks loose, and shit goes down and the world is about to fall to pieces, Nineball comes back and establishes a new order to barely keep it going. Nineball is every pilot's worst nightmare. He is always the toughest and most dangerous force in the game, and many great pilots have lost their lives to him. But I don't think Nineball is necessarily the villain a lot of fans think he is. There are a lot of clues about this if you pay close attention to the dialogue in Master of Arena. And I was created to protect mankind and this world. I intend to fulfill this task. Nineball was an AI system created a long time ago to protect mankind. What do you think it was protecting us from? We don't really know, but I speculate it must have been something truly horrifying and terrible, in order for humanity to create an AI like that to protect us from it. And I think based on the hero-villain pattern from software has demonstrated so far, it's pretty safe to assume that in the beginning, Nineball was probably the hero. And it succeeded in protecting mankind from whatever force was threatening our species. And when the fight was over and the enemies defeated, later generations grew to resent the status quo. Blaming Nineball for all that was not perfect. And after thousands of years of war, the AI realized there was no such thing as a perfect state that mankind would accept forever. There was no system that somebody would not vow to destroy. There was no system where people wouldn't fight for the chance to establish something better. War was inevitable. So the AI came up with a solution. You can't eliminate war from the equation. Peace is a goal. War is the process. You cannot control peace, but you can control war. And so it did. In the shadows, in secret, it became both the hero and the villain. It became the buyer and the seller. It gave mankind the one thing it always wanted more than anything else. Purpose. As long as there's an enemy to unite mankind against, mankind survived. And when mankind pushed extra hard to have the right to decide its own fate, Nineball would actually grant it. There are actually armored core games where we see this, where after fighting hard enough, the AI grants mankind its wish to write its own destiny without control or oversight and entrusts you with the hope and the future. Raven, the rest is up to you. Raven, please copy. Over. Of course, we always f*** it up and Nineball has to come back in some way, shape, or form before we destroy ourselves, but I think that's the moral of the recurring theme here. It's not necessarily about whether we screw it up or not at the end. It's about never giving up, to fight for the chance to make it better. Yes, we almost always make it worse, but the next generation has to try. The chance of making things worse is always greater, but people will fight to the end in order to have that chance. Which one of us was ultimately right? You have the right. The duty to find that out. And maybe one day, we'll defeat Nineball, and we'll actually learn from our mistake and build a better world. And he won't have to come back and clean up our mess. But, uh, yeah, so far the odds don't really look like they're in our favor. So here is my prediction for armored core six. I think they can take this one of two ways. First, they could make a completely new story unlike any armored core before. If they do that, I don't really think anyone can predict it. But if not, I think there's a high chance the antagonist for the game is going to be somebody familiar to the series. Someone we recognize, maybe someone who even used to be our hero. Someone who gave up everything to establish a new and better order than the one before it. And when you finally encounter him face to face, he will test you, and he will challenge your dreams and goals. He will test your will, and he will tell you, I know how you feel. I know what it takes to change the world. I've changed it before. If that's truly what you want, prove it to me. Prove to me that your will to change the world now is greater than mine was when I was in your place. And then when you finally defeat him, he will happily pass the torch to you. But he will make you earn it. Like I said before, if you're a new pilot, welcome to the fold from this moment on. You are a raven. And as always, hope you have a fantastic day, and I'll see you around.