 So if you're new here you're probably wondering why you've never really heard of Armored Core. So today I'm going to do my best to explain why I think that is from the perspective of an old veteran and as a game developer. Now upfront I really think this mainly just comes down to the controls. Historically Armored Core has been known for its fairly unintuitive and clunky controls and there's actually some pretty good reasons as to why they are the way they are. It's actually a bit of a blessing and a curse. But in order to really explain things I'd like to show you how things started in Armored Core 1. Back in 1997 you have to remember the original PlayStation controller had no sticks. All you had was a D-pad, the right hand buttons, and a pair of shoulder buttons on the left and right side. And the devs of this Armored Core made full use of the entire controller. The select button brought up your map, the D-pad controlled moving forward, backward, turning left, turning right, and left and right bumpers controlled strafing. Triangle changed your weapon, square fired your guns, circle was your melee, and X was boost. And most controversially the left and right triggers controlled aiming up and down. In later games when the PlayStation 2 controller standardized to sticks, L3 was used to activate the shoulder weapons, and R3 triggered your overboost. Now as you can imagine these controls sound insane compared to the standards we have today. Where we have one stick dedicated to movement and the other dedicated to aiming. But back then that was all we had. Now I'll go ahead and address the elephant in the room because the next question people always ask is how the f*** did competitive players manage these controls? Because it honestly does seem pretty ridiculous. So just to demystify how the old school Armored Core vets actually played, here is what most of us in the beginning did. Now I'm playing this on an emulator so I don't actually have the PlayStation 2 controller with me, but for demonstration purposes the button placements are almost exactly the same. Keep in mind that towards the later years people started to customize their controls a lot more, but in the beginning a lot of the old guys including myself really just stuck to the defaults because that's what we were used to. So a lot of the old guard operated like this. You held the controller like normal, but where it gets tricky is when you wanted to aim up and down accurately. And to do that you had to micro tap the up and down buttons constantly to keep the enemy within your lock. Now you would have to change the speed of your taps depending on the speed of your AC, so if I had slow boosters like this then it's a bit easier to keep things level. But if I had faster boosters like this then I have to tap a lot faster to keep things in my lock. And also you had to keep in mind the speed of your enemy as well while you were doing this. So that's how movement and locking on was, but as far as firing your weapons, if you wanted to fire and boost at the same time, basically you hold the fire button then roll your thumb down to boost when necessary. If you wanted to fire both your left and right hand weapons at the same time, you would press your thumb sideways to hit both square and circle together and then roll your thumb down from there to reach your boosters. And if you wanted to fire your weapon while boosting and over boosting at the same time, you do the traditional thumb roll but then quickly pivot your thumb to R3 in order to trigger the overboost. So when you put all this together in actual gameplay it would look something like this. Now, despite how terrible this may look, I promise once you've managed to get used to it, you had total control over your AC. And I mean, you had a level of control over this mech that very few games at the time would give you. Complete control at any point, you could switch to any weapon, you could cancel any movement into any other movement, you could run, you could boost, you could jump, you could fly, you could fall, you could strafe, and everything in between. The amount of control you had over your AC in 3D space is actually astounding once you get used to it. So that is how it used to be. Now I want you to compare that to the movement controls for a game like Armored Core 5, which is where From Software did try to simplify the controls to make the game easier for new players. So in Armored Core 5, From Software realized that most people struggled to aim up and down, so what they did was basically keep all of the fighting on the ground. You could no longer jump and fly through the air. You could only do that by kicking off of a wall, and instead of giving the players the ability to micromanage all their defensive maneuver abilities like in the old games, they instead gave you essentially a dodge button called a quick boost. Now, this was something they got introduced in AC 4 and worked really well in that game, but in AC 5, they really turned it into your main and only way to dodge enemy fire, and it completely changed the way you play, because in the past, Armored Core players had total control of their AC. You virtually had an unlimited number of options to avoid enemy fire. It was completely up to you. You could walk, you could jump, you could boost, you could boost jump, you could over boost, you could fly, and then combine any maneuver into another maneuver. So if you wanted to, you could boost then fly, then change direction, then over boost altogether, essentially giving you the ability to craft your own escape path that you thought was best. In fact, one thing I love about the old armored cores was there was no such thing as an attack that you could not dodge. There was always a way to avoid everything, given you had the right setup, knowledge, and the skill to pull it off. If I was good enough at the game, I could literally just never get hit by utilizing all my defensive maneuvering capabilities correctly. But in AC 5, all those defensive maneuvers basically got compressed into a single button, because now the only way to dodge everything came down to quick boosting left or right. And that was it. Quick boosting wasn't even safe, because after you do it, the cooldown lag on the move guaranteed that as soon as you pressed that button, you were stuck moving in that direction until the move was over. And this was kind of a pivot point of high level play, because the strategy was basically wait for them to quick boost and punish right after, because it was pretty much guaranteed damage. So the game became more about counterpicking your enemy and then punishing their quick boost, instead of perfecting your controls and mastering your movement and aiming. And that translated to gameplay in a way where you literally just couldn't dodge some stuff. You either quick boost now and get hit later, or you don't quick boost and get hit now. Which is really weird, because even though the game looked and felt faster, in reality, you had less options than before, and thus it felt like you had less freedom. And as a result, Armored Core 5 is nobody's favorite game, and it still also was not simple enough for casual gamers to enjoy. Which is exactly why From Software didn't change the controls for the longest time. Because what happened in the beginning was, the people who loved Armored Core 1 fell in love with it and mastered the controls. The people who didn't hated it and said the game sucks. So immediately off the bat, it was a very polarizing experience. The people who mastered the controls found themselves in an incredibly fluid and freestyle control system where they had total control to micromanage their movements at all times. And the fans really let From Software know that they kind of loved it the way it was and looked forward to the next one. So From Software found themselves in a bit of a pickle. On one hand, most people said the controls sucked and didn't like the game. On the other hand, a small number of players who stuck through the controls and mastered them really loved the game. And in the end, From Software made the executive decision that I think most of us wish that most of our favorite gaming companies would do. They just said, f**k it, we're gonna make the game for the people who love it. And that's what they did for almost 20 years. From that moment on, Armored Core just kind of stayed to itself, and every year they asked their players, hey, what do you guys want? And we basically just said, uh, yeah, we just want better graphics and more parts and more weapons and more missions. And that's exactly what we got. So every year there was a new Armored Core with better graphics, with more parts, more weapons and more missions. If you didn't like it too bad, but if you did like it, you loved it, which now brings us to Armored Core 6 and why I'm so excited after watching the gameplay trailer, because it really looks like they learned from all their mistakes in Armored Core 5 and brought back almost all the old mobility options. You can go up and down, left and right, you can over boost, it looks like you can cancel one option into another, which is awesome. And most importantly, they simplified the lock on, so it's automatic now, which was historically the most difficult part of the game for new players. So now it looks like you get all the movement options that the traditional veterans like myself love, but also made the controls way more accessible for new players coming in fresh. And I really mean it when I say, even as someone who spent the last 20 years of their life mastering keeping a lock on the target, I do think FromSoftware made the right choice in the end. Yeah, I'm gonna lose my biggest skill advantage over other players, but if it means bringing in a completely new wave of players, I think that's what our community really needs. Because back then I'll tell you straight, when I basically mastered the game when I was 15, and I thought it was awesome, there was still a big part of me that was kind of sad, you know, because I couldn't really share my experience with anybody, because I knew the controls alone would stop most of my friends from enjoying the game. So after 20 years of secretly loving Armored Core as a veteran, I truly believe that I think it's about time we open the gates to a new generation of pilots with fresh updated modern controls and glorious HD graphics for them to enjoy the depth customization, weapons, parts, paint shop, man, there is just so much cool shit in Armored Core, and for the first time ever, we're finally just gonna be able to talk in a modern gaming environment with hundreds of thousands of new players. I mean, man, I'm just super excited to see all the crazy new ideas and designs and combinations of weapons and tactics and teams that people come up with, because it's gonna be something else. So yeah, again, thank you so much for watching, and as always, hope you have a fantastic day, and I'll see you around.