Above is a companion video to “Evil Mind, Evil Sword,” an AMV I cut to try to figure out some feelings about Armored Core 6. Previously, I wrote an essay about how moving I found the game, too. This video, “NO RELATION: Heroes Eventually Die,” is a close look at how I felt going after Tester AC over and over, racking up money to buy gear to go after bigger and badder enemies. I hope you dig it. It’s 9:30-ish. Transcript/essay below.
Are you there? This is No Relation, and I’m David Brothers.
“Kamina: Go on! I know you can do it, buddy!”
“Simon: Uhh, but I don’t!”
“Kamina: Listen, Simon. Don’t believe in yourself!”
“Simon: Huh?”
“Kamina: Believe in me! Believe in the Kamina who believes in you!”
“Yoko: What’s that mean…?”
“Simon: …right, I’ll try!”
I’ve been really thinking about overcoming in the mecha genre. Sometimes it’s a young pilot overcoming her past trauma in order to reach her peak, and, y’know, sometimes it’s a grizzled old vet proving that they are not past their useful season, that they have not become “winter men.” In Gurren Lagann, y’know, it’s a young boy learning to believe what others see inside him, instead of the doubt and insecurity that his heart is burdened with.
“COM: Main System. Activating Combat Mode.”
“Handler Walter: Commence mission.”
“Handler Walter: We’ve got a read on the target. Now’s the time, 621.”
Stories for me are about seeing a breadth of responses to the slings and arrows of the world, that’s what gets me fired up in mecha stories especially. I found FromSoftware’s Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon, directed by Masaru Yamamura and written by Yamamura and Kazuhiro Hamatani, it was a sensational playground for this kind of storytelling.
Your character is a mostly blank slate, y’know, very easy to imprint your self on, and the cast is filled with characters who range from violent sadists to people who kind of have a point, even if their execution leaves something to be desired.
“Dafeng Student Pilot: The Redguns need this AC. I…I can’t fail this mission!”
I said “your character is mostly a blank slate, easy to imprint your self on” but what I really should have was that “my character was a blank slate, easy to imprint my self on.” ’cause I played this game in character. I aligned myself with a different faction on each run and did my best to see things their way, to behave in the game as if I was working towards the same goals right alongside them instead of, y’know, pressing buttons on the couch.
I found myself empathizing with a lot of the characters in the game because of this, thanks to the fantastic writing and storytelling, but one caught me more than all the others. He’s only ever referred to as “Dafeng Student Pilot,” a representative of the company Dafeng, and he operates Tester AC, an armored core—a mobile suit, a giant robot—for just one mission in the game.
“Handler Walter: Got a job for you, 621. It’s an open call from the Arquebus Group.”
“Arquebus Corporation: To all independent mercenaries—this request comes from Schneider of the Arquebus Group.”
“Arquebus Corporation: Dafeng, one of our adversaries allied with Balam, has introduced a new tester AC.”
“Arquebus Corporation: It’s a sample model from an external architect, featuring extensive assembly optimizations.”
“Arquebus Corporation: In the hands of an experienced pilot, it will pose a threat far too great to ignore.”
“Arquebus Corporation: This brings me to the request.”
“Arquebus Corporation: Intercept delivery of the tester AC and destroy it.”
That one mission is called Destroy the Tester AC. In exchange for more or less a hundred thousand bucks, mostly less, you’re tasked with destroying the Dafeng Core Industry Tester AC. Your handler Walter needs the various corporations and factions that are battling on the planet Rubicon to move a certain way, to get into certain positions in order to achieve his own private goals. And calling Destroy the Tester AC an assassination mission is way too kind. Because you assassinate human beings and you destroy machines.
“Arquebus Corporation: Briefing over—and happy hunting.”
Dafeng Student Pilot isn’t even collateral damage when it comes to Handler Walter and everyone else giving orders on Rubicon. He’s nothing.
But, a quick sidebar about money farming in games. If I could play a video game and never spend even a single solitary second grinding, that is game of the year for me as far as I’m concerned. But money farms can be useful. You know, if I need money, if I need a quick payday of some type, then a money farm is a quick route to get the money that I need to make a later mission easier.
And…it’s a useless experience, is my thing. It’s tedious! Because you’re just exploiting a video game’s mechanics or doing something really repetitive, running forward and hitting the same button over and over. The art of video games is lost when it comes to grinding. It’s a distraction from what’s real about the video game.
In Armored Core 6, the money farm mission is Destroy the Tester AC. Dafeng Student Pilot doesn’t put up much of a fight, and it’s a quick in-and-out. Not a huge draw on your time or energy. You don’t even have to think too hard. You just get in there, hit him a few times, and you’re done. But the empathy I felt for the other characters in the game eventually extended to Dafeng Student Pilot as well.
“Dafeng Student Pilot: Damn it!”
“Dafeng Student Pilot: I… I just…”
He has a work ethic.
“Dafeng Student Pilot: I’ll deal with the merc! I’ve been training for this!”
He understands the stakes.
“Dafeng Student Pilot: The Redguns need this AC… I… I can’t fail this mission!”
And most striking to me, that he has skin in the game.
“Dafeng Student Pilot: I can’t die to a merc who only kills for credits!”
Our character, my character, 621, is not even from the planet Rubicon. Another character in the game calls him a tourist repeatedly and exclusively. But all of these are traits that Dafeng Student Pilot has are things that I would find admirable in a hero character, or a villain character, to be honest. But he’s not really either one of those. He’s worth a hundred thousand bucks, and I have a ton of equipment left to buy. I can’t get away with not grinding in this one.
“Handler Walter: That’s it for this job, 621. Return to base.”
I like that this money farm puts the cost of farming front and center. You have to listen to his screams before you get your little reward, before you can go off and buy a new shotgun or funnels. There’s something really nice about that.
But even still, I obliterated Dafeng Student Pilot over and over for my own benefit and the benefit of my handler. Each time, he insisted that he was ready for it, that he could keep up, and that he just can’t let it end like this.
One alternative to overcoming is surrender. And where overcoming is triumphant, surrender is cold, an acquiescence to the, the way of things. No matter how much our hearts, training, or willpower say otherwise. Sometimes you don’t get to win. Sometimes you’ve had enough, sometimes it’s easier to not do the hard thing. Sometimes the game’s mechanics point you right at the big bags of money even as the game says you’re evil for taking it. And sometimes you don’t like it, but do it anyway, because this is how video games work. You know. Very much “It is what it is” as a curse.
“Chirico Cuvie: And, feeling as safe as a child held to its mother’s breast,”
“Chirico Cuvie: before I knew it, I was fast asleep.”
So, what was possible for Dafeng Student Pilot if it isn’t what it is? What’s likely? Would he have grown into Amuro Ray type of character, one of those heroes who finds a new path and doesn’t leave a trail of death and destruction behind them like I did on Rubicon? Does he become a symbol of hope for his community? An ace like Roy Fokker? A tyrant? Something else? What exactly am I crushing when I snuff out Dafeng Student Pilot’s light?
It doesn’t matter. I’ll never get to know. There’s only this moment, shared between us where I show up, he does his best, and it’s not enough. It reminded me of the first ending from Yoko Taro and PlatinumGames’s Nier Automata, when a character faces a great tragedy and, in a fourth-wall breaking moment, says, “It always ends like this,” just…bleeding despair.
“2B: It always ends like this.”
It always ends like this because it was written this way. It would take impossible effort to change it. So, if I can’t win, if Dafeng Student Pilot must die in order for me to achieve my goals, in order for things to proceed, then there has to be something that I can learn from what I’m taking from him. What does it mean for me, the nominal hero character of the game, the savior of Rubicon…what does it mean for me to punish Dafeng Student Pilot over and over again?
Questions like these are why I love Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon. It was hands down the best thing I played in 2023.
Further Reading:
Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon: Directed by Masaru Yamamura, written by M. Yamamura & Kazuhiro Hamatani. Dafeng Student Pilot voiced by Johnny Yong Bosch. FromSoftware (2023)
Armored Trooper VOTOMS Complete Collection: Directed by Ryosuke Takahashi Written by Soji Yoshikawa & Jinzo Toriumi. Sunrise (1983)
Gunbuster: The Complete OVA Series: Directed by Hideaki Anno Written by H. Anno, Toshio Okada, Hiroyuki Yamaga Gainax (1988)
Gundam: Reconguista in G Written and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino. Sunrise (2014)
Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt & Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt: Side Story: Yasuo Ohtagaki (writer/artist) Shogakukan (2020)
Nier: Automata: Directed by Yoko Taro Written by Y. Taro, Hana Kikuchi, & Yoshiho Akabane PlatinumGames (2017)
Street Fighter 6: Directed by Takayuki Nakayama Designed by Mitsugu Ashida Capcom (2023)
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi Written by Kazuki Nakashima Gainax (2007)
The Winter Men: Brett Lewis (writer), John Paul Leon (artist), Dave Stewart & Melissa Edwards (colorists), John Workman & Jared K Fletcher (letterers) Wildstorm/DC Comics (2007)