The Subtle Horror of Armored Core 6

As per lore, before the Fires of Ibis, Rubicon was the CENTER of an interplanetary human civilization at it's peak, housing the top factories, foundries and R&D institutions. What WE see in the game are the remnants, after being the epicenter of basically space Chornobyl, after being abandoned for 50 years. Space Pripyat, sort of.

The reveal trailer really emphasises how terrifying giant mechs are. Then when you revisit the trailer after beating the game you realise you forgot the fear because you were playing as the terror.

All you need for horror with Mechs is to remember you’re essentially piloting a giant body To steal a famous quote, “We could have made them look like anything, but we made them look like us”

At 4:20 I remembered when i too felt this dread, but in Armored Core 4. In that game, the speed is clearly shown as km/h, with of the same Quick Boost switching, and in the THOUSANDS. And I had a thought. "If something was heavy, this weaponized, this radioactive (AC4's sheilds were radiation), this INDEPENDENT, and there was this many of them , how TF does humanity survive?" And the sequel to 4, fittingly named "For Answer", give me my answer. They didnt.

Walter: „Now youre up close and personal“ The target marker: 1400m distance

That mission where you fight the student pilot is one of darkest parts of the game. If he does some damage to you, he gets really excited and says something along the lines of “I can hang in a fight with the a real mech” only to be ultimately gunned down in the prime of his life. His final words are “I just wanted a callsign if my own” It’s haunting.

Remember; modern aircraft fire telephone-pole sized missiles at you from ranges where sight no longer remains a feasible option, from altitudes that you'd never survive.

And this is up to scale. Zullie the Witch with help from Dropdown imported some AC6 assets into Elden Ring and you'd be mind blown to how terrifyingly large everything is. To put in perspective: 1. The Standard Armored Core is 6 person high 2. Gransax whole body is as large the Ice Worm the first segment. 3. The Strider's full length can reach half of Elden Rings map. 4. The Lands Between is as large as a small Mission Area to AC6 5. The Watchman (The megastructure looming overhead in the last mission area where you'll fight Walter, Ayre, or ALLMIND) is as large as the Elden Ring MAP. You'd think monstrosities from beyond space is scary? Compared to humanity in AC6, they're nothing but worms and insects.

the answer to how to make something so huge standing is "Active support structures" these are structures that maintain structural integrity by consuming energy. a good channel that explores this concept is Isaac arthur to give a rundown, you can utilize an accelerated fluid in a tube to counteract forces attempting to compress the tube, think how stiff a hose becomes when water runs through it. but instead of water its either a gas, or a loop of magnetic cable. you can build SUPER HUGE structures using that and funny thing is once you build one it gets easier to build more. on a side note the whole mechs forcing the world and everyone to build their civil engineering to accommodate the mechs... is basically the American Car infrastructure, the cities and all such are designed to accommodate for cars. so funnily enough it has a real world analogue hypothetically you could apply active support to something like a mech. but it would drastically influence their shape design to have more cylinders and rings. so sadly they wouldn't look anything like an AC. that is unless we discover material that can be actively supported through means other than material acceleration in a tube.

In NG+++ the soldiers in the MTs kind of put it into perspective how scary you are. After you rip through like 20 of there friends in MTs (in max like 20-30 seconds) they start screaming they're in hell. No less you're also flying through fire in linear hallways to kill them.

don't forget that AC(armored cores) and MT(muscle tracers) were first made for construction of larger scale object and the coral is living gasoline

I remember being impressed by the absolute scale and size of the Strider. Then I was even more impressed by the absolute disregard Handler Walter had for the Strider’s utter obliteration. For Walt to just imply it’s creation was a waste of time and resources really helped frame the insane technological advancement humanity had made on Rubicon 3 as a whole.

Throughout armored core (every game) it sends this message. "These mechs are big as hell, expensive as hell, and deadly as hell."

One thing to note that jet fighter g forces are exerted vertically where it affects blood flow to the brain, so lateral g forces wouldn't affect our blood flow that much. I would imagine whenever an AC quick boosts it would be like experiencing a car crash which is in the range of 100+Gs

For me, my first realization of the scale of these mechs was on Operation Wallclimber. When I hopped on the wall to knock out the turrets, I noticed these tiny doors and I was like "Oh my gawd! There are teeny weeny cute doors!" then I immediately forgot and destroyed the tetrapod

The acceleration issue could be the reason why augmented human are necessary for ACs and why V.I Freud is unusual.

There are inertial dampeners installed in the cockpits. From armored core 2 we learned that modified humans performed better because they put damperners directly into them freeing up the cockpit for more advanced equipment. Also all those pilots chug iodine because them generators put out rads Also in one of the spinoff games for armored core. Last Raven. There's a mission where your opponents are just regular humans with normal machine guns and Rpgs. That was truly an eye opener for me.

The most prominent subtle horror in AC6 for me is the inclusion of augmented humans. The fact that we’re not given many details about the procedures or given many glimpses of what they look like makes my mind go into dark speculation.

Zullie the witch has some great videos showing off the scale of some of these machines. She imported many of the Ac6 models into elden ring and how much space they took up on the map really makes you realize how huge they are.

I will never shut up about how much I appreciate how accurate to scale everything is in armored core. The fact that you can shoot down a squad of MTs, stop for a moment and look down and see a car, a door, a guard rail or a street that is to scale for a human is just so refreshing. And whats more is everything is actual size. You can import any of AC6's assets into Elden Ring and they would be 1:1 as massive there as they are here, this isn't a trick of perception.