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Cars 2 is the lovely James Bond one; 3 is kinda decent.
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Jun 7, 2022 03:45
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ManSedan posted:Cars 2 is the lovely James Bond one; 3 is kinda decent. Weirdly appropriate username/post combo.
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Jun 7, 2022 04:44
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My only experience with the Cars series is this clip from the Mcelroys and it made me want to avoid the series entirely. On a more serious note, I went into AC7 mostly blind, with this mission entirely blind. Mihay in this mission managed to break my suspension of disbelief extremely hard, enough so that the intended emotional beats at the end failed to land entirely. I couldn't take Wiseman's death seriously because during the chase sequence I took a moment to look at what was going on and could suddenly see pretty much exactly the 'rails' they were on. At that point, why bother to chase Mihay when I know he's got full plot armor and nothing I could do would matter. So I spent the last quarter or so of the chase just watching from a distance instead of actually engaging. My reaction to Wiseman's death wasn't anger or disbelief, I wasn't thinking something like 'I couldn't save him' or 'drat that guy'. It was 'meh, nothing I could have done' and 'has he lost his plot armor yet?'. Not great for keeping me invested. I have other things to say about Mihay, in comparison to another boss from Joint Assault, but that's for later, once we see the end of Mihay.
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Jun 7, 2022 06:14
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Planes has exactly one memorable scene- the one where you get to watch a bunch of teenagers loving die in a war. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq-pI4EiwQU Though I've not watched it before so.... 'Gwendalecanal'. Ok.
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Jun 7, 2022 12:56
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Also Planes wasn't made by Pixar, it was made by Disney's DTV animation studio specifically because Cars toys sell so well and they wanted to do more of them.
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Jun 7, 2022 14:26
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Paingod556 posted:Planes has exactly one memorable scene- the one where you get to watch a bunch of teenagers loving die in a war. The fact that there was, apparently, a Cars/Planes universe WW2 with sapient war machines is some steve buscemi in spy kids 2 level kids movie writing
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Jun 7, 2022 14:27
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Why didn't the boats have faces?
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Jun 7, 2022 18:55
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Only trains, planes, and automobiles get faces.
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Jun 7, 2022 21:56
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paragon1 posted:Only trains, planes, and automobiles get faces.  
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Jun 7, 2022 22:06
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How dare you all keep making GBS threads up my thread with this Holiday Fartcruise poo poo 
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Jun 8, 2022 01:51
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There's nothing you can do now. We're free men. 
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Jun 8, 2022 02:03
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Waffleman_ posted:There's nothing you can do now. We're free men. Famous last words.
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Jun 8, 2022 11:21
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Cooked Auto posted:Famous last words. Well, they can take our lives, etc, etc.
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Jun 8, 2022 11:34
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nine-gear crow posted:How dare you all keep making GBS threads up my thread with this Holiday Fartcruise poo poo Or what? You're gonna send me back to plane jail? Your authority went down with the Alicorn, old man.
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Jun 8, 2022 13:29
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nine-gear crow posted:How dare you all keep making GBS threads up my thread with this Holiday Fartcruise poo poo Go dance with the angels
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Jun 8, 2022 19:59
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-GDXATCsqg
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Jun 9, 2022 00:35
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It's the middle of the day surely they can see you
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Jun 9, 2022 01:01
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They're distracted by all the loud jet engine noise
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Jun 9, 2022 01:15
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hot take; farbanti the mission kinda sucks that said you'd think they'd clean up the flooded district simply as a hazard risk probably a metric fuckton of seagulls in there
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Jun 9, 2022 02:04
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Gamerofthegame posted:hot take; farbanti the mission kinda sucks Can't, too busy waging pointless wars of aggression and giving superweapons to clinically insane folks with dubious origin stories
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Jun 9, 2022 04:50
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Gamerofthegame posted:hot take; farbanti the mission kinda sucks The seagulls are a potential weapon against Osea. Why would they get rid of them?
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Jun 9, 2022 06:00
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Look, Erusea could either fight the entire continent full of people or they could fight the seagulls, they couldn't fight a war on both fronts.
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Jun 9, 2022 10:31
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I started playing yesterday and drat, you're making it look easy. I'm crashing left and right haha. Definitely having fun, though. drat that aircraft tree is overwhelming, your post explaining it is a great help.
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Jun 9, 2022 11:03
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Geemer posted:I started playing yesterday and drat, you're making it look easy. I'm crashing left and right haha. Crow's flight ability and combat efficiency are the biggest reasons I've been able to commentate on these videos without throwing up. Legit imagining the dogfights with like 2 or 3 additional passes on each TGT would make the LP way harder to watch, the guy is a pro at playing in an 'I'm recording this' kinda way.
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Jun 9, 2022 11:15
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0Iv_sAb4YE
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Jun 11, 2022 00:24
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I'm enjoying the commentary if only because of the attempts to explain Sol squadron. When really the answer is. You know Star Fox? We're Star Fox. You know Star Wolf? They're Star Wolf. Also as an aside. I'm unsure if you can trigger this in this specific Mr. X fight. But I do know that if you tail him long enough without shooting him, he does the same maneuver that he used to kill champ.
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Jun 11, 2022 01:11
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now that communications have ceased and no military on the usean continent can maintain a unified presence, we have finally given the people opportunity to seize control over their own destiny and understand what must be built: a world with no boundaries
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Jun 11, 2022 04:58
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Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:now that communications have ceased and no military on the usean continent can maintain a unified presence, we have finally given the people opportunity to seize control over their own destiny and understand what must be built: a world with no boundaries With the governments of the world gone, it is time for soldiers to seize their own destiny and create their own Outer Plane Heaven
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Jun 11, 2022 05:01
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Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:now that communications have ceased and no military on the usean continent can maintain a unified presence, we have finally given the people opportunity to seize control over their own destiny and understand what must be built: a world with no boundaries This twisted series needs to be reset. We'll start over from Zero with this LP and entrust the future to the next-gen.
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Jun 11, 2022 05:05
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NEITHER NATIONS NOR NATIONALITIES HAVE MEANING; WE MUST ERASE THOSE UNNECESSARY BORDERS!
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Jun 11, 2022 05:49
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3uA2hKPrnE
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Jun 11, 2022 06:08
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i got 400 hours in this stupid rear end game and i didn't even know you could bring down the derelict buildings in farbanti lol but maybe that's just because i'm not an imperialist war criminal unlike some other people in this thread
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Jun 11, 2022 06:13
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Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:i got 400 hours in this stupid rear end game and i didn't even know you could bring down the derelict buildings in farbanti lol I didn't know myself until I started doing test sessions for the LP and accidentally hit one of the buildings with machine gun fire and was surprised when it actually started collapsing.
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Jun 11, 2022 06:19
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oh yeah i just watched the last four missions more or less back to back and there's one thing i have to say: cape rainy assault is a great mission and a good warmup whenever you pick up the game after not touching it for a while. it turns out there's a foolproof strategy to get through it: 1. get completely shitfaced so you are utterly fearless 2. select the sexiest plane (that's the su-47 in case you're loving stupid) 3. equip all the ugb upgrade parts and whatever other garbage you want that fits 4. start the mission and go through the canyon while squeezing the afterburner control and screaming and laughing like an unhinged maniac (you may need to repeat this a couple of times) 5. drop bombs on everything once your reach the base 6. shoot down and salute named ace "gadfly" who is also flying an su-47 and clearly has good tastes in planes 7. do the landing sequence or not it doesn't give you any points and if you did the above correctly you already have the maximum amount of points this mission can give out anyways
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Jun 11, 2022 06:24
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Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:oh yeah i just watched the last four missions more or less back to back and there's one thing i have to say: cape rainy assault is a great mission and a good warmup whenever you pick up the game after not touching it for a while. it turns out there's a foolproof strategy to get through it: You misspelt Mig-21 there, mate.
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Jun 11, 2022 07:58
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correct plane is chosen, excellent
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Jun 11, 2022 12:59
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biosterous posted:correct plane is chosen, excellent 
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Jun 11, 2022 16:46
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Since Italy canonically exists in this universe, I'd like to think the helicopters were actually broadcasting this during the mission for psychological warfare purposes.
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Jun 11, 2022 20:50
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what Now I'm gonna start shooting random poo poo in all the missions to see what breaks and what doesn't
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Jun 13, 2022 18:51
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Last Hope Mission 16: Operation Gorgon – October 1st, 2019 | NO COMM Overview: The world remains in a state of chaos as a result of the Kessler catastrophe created by the simultaneous anti-satellite strikes carried out by the Osean Federation and the Kingdom of Erusea. With lines of communication severed, regional conflicts have erupted all across the planet. Erusea is falling apart as formerly conquered states make their bids for independence. With “friend” and “foe” no longer relevant, the LRSSG is contacted by an Erusean general who claims to have vital information on the origin of the war, and who may be the last chance for peace within Erusea.  Guest Commentator: I am joined for this mission once again by Makrond. And by “once again” I mean for the actual first time, chronologically speaking. She is, again, joining me on this mission to make up for the fact that I wasted hours of her time having her record and send me the entirety of Ace Combat: Assault Horizon which I then recorded an entire game’s worth of commentary for with dozens of people and then did absolutely nothing with because my depressive hiatus devoured it. Speaking of depressing things… Here’s Last Hope!   CHAOS REIGNS There is not an inhabited corner of the globe that hasn’t been touched by the satellite destruction crisis. Even stable and peaceful nations have found themselves gripped by panic and chaos. National governments have been attempting to maintain order via landline communications and attempting to daisy-chain information networks over the horizon via old radio relays, but time delays and information reliability remain harsh obstacles. The “broken telephone effect” has seen many official communications from world capitals mangled into completely false statements by the time they reach local population centers. Rumors and speculation are flying around the world faster than the truth can travel from one suburb of Oured to the next. The monsters are due on Maple Street… With global supply lines already threatened by the ongoing Lighthouse War, panic buying has broken out among the populations of nations like Osea, Emmeria and Aurelia. Strangely enough, it has actually been the Union of Yuktobanian Republics that has emerged from the crisis as a leading light to re-establish peace and order. With its old Cold War era hardlines still intact across Verusa, Yuktobania is one of the few nations on the planet that has been able to maintain stability within its borders via (mostly) free flowing information. The Yuktobanian prime minister has been negotiating with allies on Verusa and Anea to establish a temporary crisis pact between the nations of the eastern hemisphere to ensure the world doesn’t slip any further into chaos. In Osea, fears of regional and civil conflicts remain high. The victory and anti-war demonstrations in downtown Oured planned for the anniversary of the 19th quickly turned into full blown riots when the information networks went offline and Capitol District Police are still having trouble regaining control of the streets. The president has declared a state of emergency for the entire state of Eversol and the Oured Metropolitan Area and has called upon the Osean National Guard to help restore order. Dark days remain ahead for the Osean Federation, war or no war at this point. Also a neat little bit of timeline trivia. If you go back and you watch the final cutscene at the end of the DLC, the date and time on David North’s desktop clock shows 12:00 PM on September 19th, 2019. So he basically finished his report on Trigger and the Alicorn incident and fired it off to his OIA superiors literally hours before the internet went offline across the planet, given the time difference between Oured and Farbanti.  INTO THE UNKNOWN Last Hope is where we are introduced to the main gimmick that will be in play for the remainder of the game to various effects at times. With Osea’s IFF system offline due to the satellite catastrophe still unfolding in orbit above the Earth, there is currently no way for the LRSSG survivors to properly identify friend from foe electronically. Every target showing up in the combat zone will now be tagged as a yellow UNKNOWN target by default and will have to be visually identified at extreme close range as to their national affiliation and disposition via gun cameras before Long Caster is able to tag them either ally or enemy. Trigger is forbidden from opening fire on unidentified targets in the combat zone due to the risk of friendly fire incidents. Blinding firing on any yellow target on the map will get you a warning from Long Caster not to do it again. If you repeatedly destroy any yellow targets before they are identified, the mission will automatically fail and you will be forced to restart, regardless of whether they were ultimately an enemy or not.  RADICAL VS. CONSERVATIVE With the chain of command busted, the Erusean military has been split down its center axis into two rival camps based on their political dispositions and generational divides. One faction has become known as the Conservatives, while the other has been identified as the Radicals. Future missions will see the HUD updated accordingly to reflect the schism within the Erusean ranks. The Radicals are the dominant force in the Erusean power balance and have been so for some time. Their core membership consists primarily of young Erusean officers from all branches of the military who believe that only through direct armed conflict with Osea and the FCU can they restore Erusea to its former glory. Many of these Radicals were children and teenagers at the time of Erusea’s capitulation to ISAF at the end of the Continental War 14 years ago and have come of age in a time where their homeland was on the decline. They toe a fine line between being belligerents within their nation without crossing over into full blown insurrectionists like many of their fellow soldiers who joined Free Erusea became years prior. The Radicals have overseen the transformation of the Erusean military into a largely automated fighting force through drone technology and cyberwarfare advancements, finding various loopholes in Erusea’s disarmament treaties with the FCU and Assembly of Nations that its signatories couldn’t have envisioned back in 2005. They also held favor with the Erusean monarchy and civilian governmental branches. They had convinced the king to sign off on their planned surprise attack on Osean interests across the globe utilizing their MQ-99 drone fleet and the hack of the ISEV Strategic AI to gain control over the Arsenal Birds. Over the objection of the more conservative factions of the Erusean military leadership, the Lighthouse War was officially a go. Now that the Erusean military has fractured following the destruction of the world’s satellite network and the disruption in global communications, the Radicals are the ones pressing for continued military action against both Osean and Usean forces still active across the continent. They have also siezed on the opportunity to dispose of their political and military rivals within Erusea and have begun a highly disorganized purge of any Conservative loyalists still holding power in the Kingdom. On the opposite end of that spectrum are the Erusean Conservatives. Made up of moderate and centrist members of the Erusean military, the Conservatives tend to skew older in their numbers and have a longer view of history than their Radical brothers and sisters. They understand exactly why and how Erusea is in the state it was in prior to the start of the Lighthouse War. Derided initially as peaceniks, and even as traitors by the Radicals, the Conservatives have argued repeatedly against military action of any kind, knowing it will not benefit Erusea in the slightest. The Conservatives have opposed the Radicals’ plans to modernize and automate the Erusean military, repeatedly warning of the dangers that such unchecked automation and machine learning pose. They were gaining ground with the royal family up until the start of the war, when the Radicals proved the initial effectiveness of their modernized weaponry in combat with a decisive and clean first strike against the Osean Federation. The Conservatives vehemently despise the Radicals’ notion of the “Clean War” doctrine, knowing that it does not actually end up saving more lives like promised, and indeed actually makes atrocities even easier to commit, as we’ve seen in spades so far and will see more of in the near future. As Erusea’s military losses mounted, the position of the Conservatives grew stronger within the Erusean government, to the point where certain Radical-aligned commanders were openly lamenting their situation on Erusean radio frequencies. One such commander was overheard during the previous Osean attack on Anchorhead Bay that the sinking of the Rán reserve fleet, combined with the defection of the Alicorn would give the Conservatives under General Labarth even more political clout in their efforts to end the war. While the Conservatives broadly seek an end to the fighting, they should not be taken as a monolith and are just as fractious as both the Radicals and Osean forces at the moment. Labarth’s overture of peaceful cooperation with the LRSSG is in now way indicative of the opinions or disposition of the remainder of the forces claiming to share the ideology of the Erusean Conservatives. The hope is that other like minded forces will rally to his cause as lines of communication are reopened in due time, but at the moment the best policy is to assume all Erusean forces remain hostile actors until otherwise proven.  BACK TO ANCHORHEAD Last Hope sees us “return” to the Erusean metropolis of Anchorhead since we last visited it in the DLC mission Anchorhead Raid. In reality, Last Hope is actually the first time you visit Anchorhead in the game if you’re just playing through the story because the DLC released after the fact, but since you can play the SP Missions whenever, it’s really up to you and your own experience as to when you visit Anchorhead first and in what mission. This just serves to highlight how much mileage the DLC gets out of the assets it reuses from the base game compared to its wholly unique elements. The only real “new” element of the DLC trilogy is the stage built for Ten Million Relief Plan, which is just a plain of water and a few rock formations sticking out above the surface. Not exactly something that needs a lot of work done on it, if you take my meaning. Regardless, this just shows you the power of what a lighting engine can bring to a game. We’ve seen this stage in two different time periods now and it seems like brand new experience each time. Contrast for example, Cape Rainy Assault at night time, vs. the same mission with a daytime skybox and lighting parameters loaded in via mods. It is literally night and day.  THE ETHICS OF MACHINE LEARNING AND AUTOMATED WEAPONRY Broadly speaking, the first rule of creating weaponry capable of automated learning and self-improvement is… Don’t. That is a horse that can never be tamed, and once it escapes from the barn, the barn itself ceases to exist. This is one of the other definitions of a “singularity”, to bring back a term from the end of the DLC—the point across which technological development is no longer predicable, because human minds have been removed from the equation entirely. The core tenant of Ace Combat 7’s story is a strong cautionary tale against this type of weapons development. People like to deride these games an awful lot and say that their stories don’t make sense or that they don’t matter. That could not be further from the truth at times like these. Yeah, they are hammy and written to often be hokey as hell, but they use that wackiness to disarm you in order to slip in statements like the ones conveyed by Labarth and, in a roundabout way, by Dr. Schroeder. Basically, to quote forums posters paragon1 and Waffleman_ paragon1 posted:Useful idea I heard once: Any time someone tries to sell you on "autonomous" technology; replace autonomous with "unsupervised" and see if you're still comfortable with the idea. Now that we’ve put the “Rookie vs. Master” binary to bed for a while, and have had our big high point in the “Perception vs. Reality” one, it’s time for the game to start and shift its focus to “Man vs. Machine” for its final act. The game is clearly coming down against Schroeder super hard now after just short of putting up with his bullshit till now. His cutscene monologue at the start of the mission has a palpable air of “EVERYONE THINKS THIS IS A BAD IDEA EXCEPT FOR YOU, DUMBASS!” as he rambles. And the second half of Last Hope takes that even further as the EASA drones escorting Schroeder, Ionela and Alma’s plane through Anchorhead airspace suddenly go wildly off script of their own accord. Because Schroeder had programmed them to be capable of self-determination and self-improvement with no need for human control or oversight, mistakenly thinking they would act rationally. He was too clever by half though, and too ignorant by half. Because the drones weren’t just coded off of Mihaly’s flight data and skills in combat, they also share aspects of his personality, a personality that colours their decision-making thought processes. And Mihlay has had multiple run-ins now with the Three Strikes, a pilot he personally considers a worthy opponent and has tried to kill multiple times now to no effect at all. This has been coded into their data for a while now. They can recognize Trigger’s plane from the three scratches on his tail fin. They have been conditioned through Mihaly’s thoughts and feelings on Three Strikes to interpret three diagonal lines on a plane as a “kill on sight” order, and act accordingly with the free will that Schroeder has given them. It’s little wonder that Schroeder is completely blindsided by this, missing the obvious connection when the drones turn hostile and attack the LRSSG. He was so focused on creating the perfect machine that he failed to notice how the man he was modeling it off of was shaping the nascent virtual mind that was emerging within the machine. The drones going rogue should have been a wake up call to Schroeder that everything about this project was one massive bad idea and it needed to have been shut down before it ever got to this stage. But he’s in too deep now and too invested in his own bullshit to stop now. He mistakenly believes “I can fix this”. He just needs to upload the new version of Mihaly’s data to the drones and everything will be alright. Without realizing that putting even more of Mihaly into the drones, a Mihaly that wants to kill Trigger and and that will fight and die to be King of the Skies no matter what even more than the past versions of Mihaly that are swimming around in the soup of consciousness of the drone pilot AI will just make things infinitely worse. Who would have thought the real villain of Ace Combat 7 would be hubris.  TIME TO CUT BAIT And speaking of hubris. With the world officially gone to poo poo, and communications from Schroeder’s corporate headquarters cut off, the not so good doctor has decided it’s officially time to get the hell out of Dodge. It’s been three weeks since the Battle of Farbanti, and with no sign of Mihaly or the rest of Sol Squadron returning the EASA test site anytime soon, there’s no longer any reason for Schroeder or his team to stick around anymore waiting for them. The doctor is savvy enough to know which way the global winds are blowing, even if the rest of the world is now broke, blind, and bedlam. He’s ordered his staff to pack up all essential equipment and prepare for immediate departure to a destination that will be disclosed en route. While chief apprentice Simon Cohen oversees the secure transfer of all local data to portable hardware, Dr. Schroeder has tasked Martha Inoue with “convincing” Mihaly’s granddaughters Ionela and Alma Shilage to accompany them on the liaison plane. The implication seems to be that if Inoue can’t persuade them, then Schroeder will order his security detail to bring them along by force. For what purpose is currently unknown, possibly leverage of some sort in case Mihaly should come after them, though that outcome appears unlikely given the current state of global affairs. Regardless, Schroeder’s intended destination appears to be a manufacturing facility located at the International Space Elevator site, where a new model of unmanned fighter is currently undergoing its final testing phase in preparation for large scale deployment. This craft, known as the [REDACTED] is the culmination of Schroeder, Cohen and Inoue’s hard work with Mihaly. Already uploaded with nearly all of Mihaly’s neurological, biometric, and flight telemetry feedback data, the machine has begun to coalesce a nascent pilot profile from the wealth of data fed through its algorithms. With the satellite network down, the doctor was unable to upload the finale batch of data to the ISEV’s servers for sublimation into the Z[REDACTED] of E[REDACTED] program. He intends to complete the data upload directly in person, at which point the AI fighter pilot project will be deemed officially complete.  SIMON AND MARTHA So this is the point where we need to start taking Electrosphere seriously. Dr. Schroeder drops a name in his cutscene monologue between Missions 15 and 16, “Massa”. It goes by super quick but it has immense implications for both the future and the past, in a sense, of Ace Combat. “Massa” is in fact a mistranslation of “Martha”, as in Yoko Martha Inoue, one of the principle background characters to the story of Ace Combat 3: Electrophere. It is Martha’s relationships with both Simon Orestes Cohen and Abyssal Dision, the co-antagonists of Ace Combat 3, as well as her tragic death, that kicks off the actual plot of the game, the one that’s hiding beneath the surface at the outset. At this point in the series timeline, Martha Inoue is working as an assistant to Dr. Schroeder on his project for the EASA. As is Simon Cohen. His presence in Ace Combat 7 is never alluded to directly in the game like Martha’s is, but a piece of official key artwork published in the the ACES AT WAR 2019 lore/art book that shipped with certain editions of Ace Combat 7 as a pre-order bonus seemingly confirms that he was there as a part of Schroeder’s EASA team. Sadly I cannot show you the piece of artwork in question at the moment as the subject of the piece is still one giant spoiler, but when the appropriate time arrives, I will post it, have no doubt. Either way, this is another one of those little continuity flags the game loves to throw up every now and then for those in the know. Another reward for sticking with the series right back to loving Electrosphere. Because it turns out that the two progenitors of all of that game’s woes were both the proteges of the progenitor of all of THIS game’s woes. And if you think that Dr. Schroeder is kind of a cruel bastard now, wait till you see what Simon gets up to in about 15 years’ time in the 2030s. It is the ultimate “I LEARNED IT FROM YOU, DAD!” case of the learner supplanting the master. But that is far, far off from where we are now. If you’d like to see where things go from here… relatively speaking, and see the full story of Martha, Simon, and Dision play out, be sure to check out Lunethex’s LP of Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere, up on the LP Archive.  BELKAN WITCHCRAFT Some of you regulars to these LPs are probably surprised it took this long for the Belka Bomb to finally drop… poor choice of words, I know. Yes, once again it’s another Ace Combat game and another #BelkaDidIt plot. As it turns out, the principle supplier of drones to the Erusean military were Belkan interests, chiefly the Belkan owned and operated defense contractor North Osea Gründer Industries and other rogue elements hailing from the cursed land of Nord Belka. This revelation was prefigured all the way at basically the start of the game right before the first encounter with the MQ-99s. The cutscene preceding Charge The Enemy shows containers marked with Gründer iconography among the the launch platforms for the drone attacks on Osea. And during the mission itself, right before the drones are deployed against the player for the first time, the Erusean base commander at Scofield can be heard saying “drat war merchants, write your manuals in a language we can understand!” The implication of course is that the Erusean (French) soldiers can’t read the materials provided to them written in Belkan (German). There is far more to this story that we will learn in short order over the remaining four missions, but this little drop of details should go a long way towards helping certain events over the course of the game make more sense.  INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN The biggest revelation of Last Hope, the one most relevant to Trigger and Count at least, is the confession from Labarth that Erusea was in fact responsible for the death of former president Vincent Harling at the International Space Elevator. Trigger was indeed completely innocent and Mother Goose One was in fact shot down by an Erusean-controlled F/A-18F drone spoofing an Osean IFF transponder, just like the ones that attacked Spare Squadron in the Waiapolo Mountains. When playing Mission 4 during the final minutes of the mission when Mother Goose One turns and starts heading back towards the space elevator, you will suddenly be shadowed around the map by a seemingly random Hornet. When the time comes to trigger the “assassination” scene, your missile doesn’t actually fire and a super fast missile can be seen coming in from off-screen from the right above and behind Trigger. When the game goes into the cutscene, the first plane that passes by Trigger after Mother Goose One explodes is the phantom Hornet, the one that was shadowing you across the man, and indeed the plane that actually killed President Harling. There is still one piece of the puzzle left outstanding though, who exactly was controlling the phantom Hornet, the person who radioed in pinning the blame on Trigger in the first place, but that shoe will drop in due time as well. In short, they pulled a Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. In that film, basically the same thing happens. The USS Enterprise is framed for firing on the Klingon flagship carrying the Chancellor of the Klingon Empire on diplomatic mission to Earth, which results in the Chancellor’s death. Kirk is arrested and sent to prison for a crime where the facts just don’t add up, notably that the Enterprise crew was able to manually account for all of her photon torpedoes, meaning that there was no way they could have fired on Kronos One. The truth is eventually revealed that elements within the Klingon Empire seeking to prolong the war with the Federation utilized a cloaked Bird of Prey positioned directly beneath the Enterprise to fire on their own flagship, making it look to basically anyone observing from the outside that the Enterprise had in fact went rogue and opened fire. Again, we know for a fact that Project ACES is a studio full of film nerds. This was completely intentional. From a practical standpoint, the revelations don’t really matter much. It’s a nice bit of moral vindication for Trigger as a person, and for Count as well, hearing that Trigger was innocent all long. And learning HOW the Eruseans pulled it off at least sews up one lingering mystery of the plot. But otherwise it’s functionally pointless because Trigger has already been formally pardoned for the crime, guilty or innocent, and all the people who it would have mattered to are either dead now, or never particularly cared about what Trigger did to land himself in Plane Jail in the first place. Well, except maybe Tabloid. He’d probably care that Trigger was innocent...  BANNED DOG? Part of the dialog in this mission and in the prologue cutscene talks about Osean penal units utilizing the chaos of the satellites going down to turn on their allies and make a break for freedom. Now “allies” is a very broad term without any real definition given to it in the context of the game itself. It could mean anything from the prisoners attacking Osean regular forces to turning around and fighting each other. But from the sound of it, it appears that once the blackout dropped, the penal units basically staged the military equivalent of a prison riot. And who do prisoners tend to attack first in a riot? The prison guards. And who do we know in the cast of Ace Combat 7 that was basically a glorified prison guard? Now, I’m not saying Bandog is dead now, but there’s a very real possibility that he might be. We don’t know and we never really will. As is intended thanks to 7’s baked in theme of information disparity. The truth is always incomplete and subject to your own interpretation. Still, this effectively confirms that the 444th squadron from Zapland was not the only penal unit that Osea was utilizing as part of its irregular forces, and that the Osean military continued using penal units long after the survivors of Spare Squadron and the 444th prison base were all officially pardoned by the Osean President. But I don’t think anyone here really needed any more evidence to convince them that the Osean Federation was and always will be a massive pile of dog poo poo, didn’t they?   LABARTH Real Name: Édouard Labarth Callsign(s): None Age: Mid 50s Sex: Male Nationality: Erusea Signature Plane: None Voice Actor: Paul St. Peter An Erusean Army Lieutenant General stationed in Anchorhead. Even before the faction split in the Erusean military, Larbarthe had emerged as a leading voice in the conservative wing of the military, trying to dissuade the government away from its war footing and fighting the adoption of drones to supplement the Kingdom’s fighting forces. His positions and rhetoric earned him numerous enemies within the Erusean establishment and also garnered the attention of Osean intelligence, who deemed him a high value potential asset ripe for cooperation under the right circumstances. It turns out, those circumstances just happened to be a global information network collapse. Having lived through one crushing military defeat for Erusea earlier in his career, the general knows a second one would most likely be the end of the nation. And with no respect or loyalty to the warmongering radical elements of the Erusean military who only want to continue the fighting, and no functioning civilian leadership to report to in Farbanti any longer, Labarth had gone rogue and sought out the nearest Osean representative with an overture of cooperation in the name of ending the war before the crisis spirals out of control even further. He intends to confess all of Erusea’s sins over the course of the war to anyone who will listen, in the hopes that it will save the soul of the nation, and give the Oseans leverage to force Erusea’s surrender once and for all.  KARL Real Name: Captain Karl Callsign(s): None Age: Early 30s Sex: Male Nationality: Osea Signature Plane: None Voice Actor: Marc Diraison Captain Karl is the Osean army representative chosen by Labarth to make contact with for the purposes of, while not defecting, at least beginning a mutual cooperative relationship with in the name of ending the war. The captain has been tasked with escorting the general to safety outside of Anchorhead and bringing him to Osean command on Usea for the purposes of forming an alliance between their respective forces in the name of reestablishing peace on the continent. To accomplish this goal, Captain Karl has reached out the LRSSG for assistance and to provide air support to ensure General Labarth reaches the rendezvous safely.    CASUALTIES So I’m sorry to break this to you, but General Labarth and Captain Karl do not, in fact, make it out of Anchorhead safely. While the LRSSG is preoccupied with cleaning up Dr. Schroeder’s science war crime bullshit, an unaffiliated Osean AWACS operating under the callsign Argus ordered an allied OADF F-16C to intercept and shoot down the helicopter ferrying the general out of Anchorhead airspace. Details on the matter are sketchy, it appear that Argus had received falsified intelligence that Captain Karl, Labarth’s handler for the exfiltration operation, was an Erusean impostor and the operation was all a set up. In the immediate aftermath of the mission, it is hard to discern the true facts of what happened, as the information disparity and ambiguity makes many interpretations possible. It could be that “Argus” was an Erusean operative spoofing an Osean IFF transponder and radio frequency—two things we’ve seen the Eruseans are capable of already—in order to once again use ignorant Osean assets into doing their dirty work for them. The ACES AT WAR 2019 lorebook, however, states that Argus was in fact a genuine OADF AWACS, but the intelligence it received warning them of Captain Karl was in fact deceptive information provided to them by the Erusean Rebels for the purposes of using Osean assets to stage a blue-on-blue assassination of General Labarth by using the fog of war and the chaos in Anchorhead to their advantage. Either way, the LRSSG walks away from Anchorhead empty handed, and probably even worse off now than they were when they arrived, their “last hope” completely dashed. Unfortunately, Édouard Labarth may well have taken the only chance for peace in the Lighthouse War to the grave with him…  
Axeman Emeric Pons 46, Male, Lieutenant Colonel, Erusea Erusean Air Force 25th Air Division, 6th Fighter Squadron quote:Major Emeric Pons   Tracks featured in Mission 16: DISC 3 DISC 4 nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Nov 22, 2022 |
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Jun 13, 2022 19:18
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