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Dr. Snark posted:"Alright boys, upper command wants to get a good propaganda shot for this plane. Now we need you to lie down on the ground while saluting, trust me it will look great on the camera. Pilots, this is gonna be a bit more complicated for you..." I mean, that's a real thing that various air forces have done recently:      It's apparently called the "Tetris Challenge".
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Jun 20, 2022 21:18
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Also for folks on the new page: MISSION 18 UPDATE
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Jun 20, 2022 21:19
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Yeah, I was going to say. The Tetris challenge was a real thing that happened a year ago or something. There was a lot more than just military aircraft but also fire trucks and ambulance crews doing it. Even an archeological team as a really odd one out. Cooked Auto fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jun 20, 2022 |
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Jun 20, 2022 21:29
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Cooked Auto posted:Yeah, I was going to say. The Tetris challenge was a real thing that happened a year ago or something. Right around the time the game would have been released then. Fair fair, I genuinely did not know that was a thing.
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Jun 20, 2022 21:40
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 Death Stranding referenced this trend in some of its promo materials!
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Jun 20, 2022 22:09
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Dr. Snark posted:Right around the time the game would have been released then. Fair fair, I genuinely did not know that was a thing. Oh having them actually sit like they are pantomiming sitting in the plane like it's that one game on Whose Line is it anyway is ABSOLUTELY hilarious, will back you up on that
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Jun 20, 2022 22:12
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Feels like Lost Kingdom and Tyler Island should've been switched in order, but I guess they wanted blowing Mihaly out of the sky to still be fresh when you go into the final two.
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Jun 20, 2022 22:15
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Oh, I see you're talking about the video that literally got me into Ace Combat lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGZJnLYvio0
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Jun 20, 2022 22:23
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I'm guessing the reason most AC boss planes use super acceleration and turns to force "jousts" with the player is that if you just give them regular AI and good stats most players (who don't play flight sims and don't know dogfighting maneuvers, or use the arcade controls) are just going to get into a boring turning contest with them. It's also a less immersion-damaging way to pace the fights so they can deliver their dialog than actually making them invincible. Sindai fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Jun 20, 2022 |
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Jun 20, 2022 23:34
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I think it finally clicked as to why Mihaly hasn't really sunk in as the rival character for me: his presence in the overall game is extremely low for such a character. Yes, he's appeared in a great number of cutscenes and has had plenty of time devoted to establishing him as a character in the game. But, his rivalry with Trigger just kind of spontaneously grows out of thin air during the Plane Jail arc and feels hollow, right up to this mission which is framed as this grand final battle between Trigger and Mihaly. Hell, Count has felt more like the rival character to Trigger than Mihaly has to me because Count has had a more prominent presence looming over Trigger's journey compared to Mihaly; constantly butting heads with Trigger, trying to one-up Trigger whenever he can, and acting like a cocky hot-shot that fits the rival character description. Mihaly, on the other hand, has just been there in the story and it is only because the game has (poorly) told us he is the main rival that we identify with him as the rival. And now that he's been defeated for good, the victory just feels hollow and empty, like crossing off an item on a checklist rather than the culmination of a long struggle for Trigger.
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Jun 20, 2022 23:41
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the arkbirds are the rival
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Jun 21, 2022 00:12
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AradoBalanga posted:I think it finally clicked as to why Mihaly hasn't really sunk in as the rival character for me: his presence in the overall game is extremely low for such a character. Yes, he's appeared in a great number of cutscenes and has had plenty of time devoted to establishing him as a character in the game. But, his rivalry with Trigger just kind of spontaneously grows out of thin air during the Plane Jail arc and feels hollow, right up to this mission which is framed as this grand final battle between Trigger and Mihaly. Hell, Count has felt more like the rival character to Trigger than Mihaly has to me because Count has had a more prominent presence looming over Trigger's journey compared to Mihaly; constantly butting heads with Trigger, trying to one-up Trigger whenever he can, and acting like a cocky hot-shot that fits the rival character description. Mihaly, on the other hand, has just been there in the story and it is only because the game has (poorly) told us he is the main rival that we identify with him as the rival. And now that he's been defeated for good, the victory just feels hollow and empty, like crossing off an item on a checklist rather than the culmination of a long struggle for Trigger. That all is definitely a consequence of the fact that Mihaly is - by design and intent - a very dispassionate character for better and for worse. By all accounts while he was fascinated by Trigger's performance, he never took it as an insult to his pride or anything like that - he was another ace that would inevitably die by his hands. He does say outright that he's fought and killed a fair few aces like Trigger throughout his long career, why would this one be any different? As a mirror character to an Ace Combat protagonist that attitude fits perfectly; how many players actually bat an eye at the various named planes they shoot down anyway? But as a rival it does make him less relevant in a game where there are many different threads competing for a player's attention and by the time you properly fight him he's barely even a bit player in the grand scheme of things. There is more I wanna get into on this, but that relies on some things still to come.
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Jun 21, 2022 00:20
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Mr.Flibble posted:I don't remember that episode but in another one Cobra steals the Joe's Vehicles for a false flag operation and the Joe's end up stealing Cobra's Vehicles to stop them and Wild Bill does does a loop In a Cobra Helicopter that astonishes a Cobra pilot flying in a stolen Joe Chopper. Oh, yeah! That's the one. I was mixing it with another episode.  "Alright guys, the base commander wants a group photo of our top secret aircraft and all the pilots to hang behind his desk. Now, all you be here at 0700 hours in your full flight suit and helmets."
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Jun 21, 2022 00:23
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AradoBalanga posted:I think it finally clicked as to why Mihaly hasn't really sunk in as the rival character for me: his presence in the overall game is extremely low for such a character. Yes, he's appeared in a great number of cutscenes and has had plenty of time devoted to establishing him as a character in the game. But, his rivalry with Trigger just kind of spontaneously grows out of thin air during the Plane Jail arc and feels hollow, right up to this mission which is framed as this grand final battle between Trigger and Mihaly. Hell, Count has felt more like the rival character to Trigger than Mihaly has to me because Count has had a more prominent presence looming over Trigger's journey compared to Mihaly; constantly butting heads with Trigger, trying to one-up Trigger whenever he can, and acting like a cocky hot-shot that fits the rival character description. Mihaly, on the other hand, has just been there in the story and it is only because the game has (poorly) told us he is the main rival that we identify with him as the rival. And now that he's been defeated for good, the victory just feels hollow and empty, like crossing off an item on a checklist rather than the culmination of a long struggle for Trigger. I mean, three boss fights across 20 missions is certainly more than a lot of other alleged rival characters in the franchise get in their games. Yellow Squadron is encountered four times in 04 (five if you count Megalith, but that's after Yellow 13's dead), there are no repeat boss fights in Zero, and Pixy disappeared for nearly half the game before you finally fight him, Ofnir and Grabacr get like one fight each separately and then one fight at the end of the game in 5, and the Pasternak, the absolute bottom of the barrel, gets 2 cutscenes dedicated to him, one boss fight, and then he's dead and gone and his characterization consists entirely of "I look pretty and want to fight Garuda Team--oh no, I'm dead now  "Compared to most of that, I at least appreciate the amount of work 7 puts into Mihaly. Your mileage may vary on whether he's a good "rival" to Trigger, but he is a fantastic foil to Trigger at the very least.
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Jun 21, 2022 00:42
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The best thing is getting the Strike Wyvern for yourself and then firing at anything that looks at you funny with experimental railguns.
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Jun 21, 2022 01:45
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I think my main source of disconnect is the leap from Mihaly using his Su-30 to Mihaly pulling out a tricked out X-02 Wyvern to fight Trigger out of the blue. To me, the jump from a standard issue plane to a super plane feels like there should have been something in between Farbanti and this mission to explain why Mihaly decided to employ such aggressive tactics. Mihaly has something going for him as a character, but I keep expecting more to him than what is presented for some reason. And given that the game fell into development hell, I wonder if that plot beat/characterization got swallowed up during that time. But yes, I do agree that Mihaly is a huge improvement from the likes of Pasternak, who is a wonderful insult to cardboard cutouts. I can at least say that Mihaly leaves an in-universe impact on Trigger/the LRSSG, whereas Pasternak talks big but ultimately faceplants into "Who the gently caress are you, again?" for Talisman.
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Jun 21, 2022 01:57
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Hell, even Shamrock literally goes "Huh? Who ARE you?" when Pasternak breaks in over the radio starts ranting about the real war just beginning.
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Jun 21, 2022 02:03
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Okay, I had a whole big wall of text here, but ultimately it comes down to my view that Mihay's fights feel bad and frustrating because he draws attention to his bullshit, making it more clear rather than hiding it. Just big neon letters saying 'I've got plot armor, motherfuckers'. Just watch as Crow hits him with like four missiles at once, doesn't land a hit for a long time due to scripting, then smash cut to cutscene with a single bullet. Playing against him just feels bad. Yeah, that is pretty normal, boring opinion on Mihay, but the other part is that I find Sulejmani, the final boss of Joint Assault, who notably has plot armor as he spouts off his entire backstory mid-mission, is a better feeling fight than Mihay. Partly because of the clunky, obvious way they tried to disguise it through giving him a (single) bullshit dodge move to keep you from hitting him during it, and how obvious it is in retrospect that this was what they were trying to do there. To be fair to Project Aces, it really is hard to hide your bullshit when the player squadron can be up to four Player Characters in super planes, so the whole thing being obvious was inevitable for that game. On the other hand you've got Pixy, where they draw massive attention to his invincibility in a cutscene just to make sure you get your thematic awesome final boss fight, and that works really well. Mihay is just really a fumble on the gameplay side of it, to the point of a meme about his invulnerability is going to be what people remember about him years from now.
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Jun 21, 2022 03:39
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In fairness, your first time through the game when you're not piloting a super plane you're unlikely to run up against his plot armor in an obvious fashion, especially since you have no idea how many missiles it's supposed to take to down him.
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Jun 21, 2022 04:10
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Ashsaber posted:Just watch as Crow hits him with like four missiles at once, doesn't land a hit for a long time due to scripting, then smash cut to cutscene with a single bullet. Actually, if you watch that exchange really closely, the reason only one missile scores a hit on Mihaly is because the first two I fire at Mihaly score hits and only registers one HIT banner between them, and while #3 and #4 actually collide with the first missile he fires at me, nullifying both of them, and I am then hit by his second missile in the crossfire. It was a really incredible exchange.
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Jun 21, 2022 05:14
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Can mihaly even hit you with his railgun in this fight? I've even flown level to check and the dude just cannot aim.
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Jun 21, 2022 15:32
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Psycho Landlord posted:Can mihaly even hit you with his railgun in this fight? I've even flown level to check and the dude just cannot aim. I'm sure that railgun isn't for show, but the boy can't aim it for poo poo. If he was able to break away for a bit, that targeting cone on the minimap might actually mean something, but by design you have zero distractions from just flying up Mihaly's tailpipe.
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Jun 21, 2022 15:48
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I think another big problem with the Mihaly fight is the build up... or lack there of. You're not jousting each other to decide the fate of the world ala the Pixy fight, you don't have that heartbreaking moment in the story where you shoot down his wingman like with Yellow 13, you're not getting the final showdown with the squadron of assholes who have been hounding you throughout the story like in Ace Combat 5... you're just raiding an old military cache for supplies when SURPRISE, FINAL BOSS FIGHT AGAINST YOUR (supposed) RIVAL! There's just... no stakes to it. It's just you stumbling across this rear end in a top hat in the middle of nowhere and having a Final Boss Fight because the plot needs to wrap up loose ends.
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Jun 21, 2022 15:56
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Psycho Landlord posted:Can mihaly even hit you with his railgun in this fight? I've even flown level to check and the dude just cannot aim. Ostensibly the rail gun becomes more accurate with every shot fired, but I think I’ve only ever been his by it like once out of all the times I’ve run Lost Kingdom.
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Jun 21, 2022 16:28
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Mihaly is one of the worst rival characters in the series. In part because it's sort of impossible to feel anything for the guy. He's just a dipshit who can't let go of his wonderful hobby of 'kill people in a plane'. They do one neat thing, though. If you pay attention to how the drones fly and how he flies, they are actually trying to use his exact style. Badly.
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Jun 21, 2022 17:45
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I actually really like Mihaly as a rival. I'm not going to argue he was super well written or anything but as a character he effectively makes a point about all of the game's themes - old v young, the removal of the human element from war as technology increases its capability for independent murder, nationalism in the face of both necessary and enforced global cooperation, he's got a reason to be brought up in all three conversations. I also think this final fight is pretty good because he gets the opportunity to fly in as the heroic avenging skygod one final time (you are the aggressors committing warcrimes here, after all.) He even makes a crack about this if the fight goes on long enough. But I still say he should have been Cipher 
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Jun 21, 2022 18:34
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nine-gear crow posted:Ostensibly the rail gun becomes more accurate with every shot fired, but I think I’ve only ever been his by it like once out of all the times I’ve run Lost Kingdom. From what I remember, at least on Normal, he can hit you with the railgun, but it doesn’t OHKO; it takes you up to 99% damage instead. You need to either take another hit or some other form of damage to get shot down. At least, that’s what I remember from watching BeagleRush’s stream of the game years back.
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Jun 22, 2022 02:08
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Psycho Landlord posted:But I still say he should have been Cipher Cipher would have carpet bombed the manufacturing facilities the moment they got even a whiff of Belkan involvement. Then dropped an MPBM on the rubble for good measure. Bloody Pom fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Jun 22, 2022 |
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Jun 22, 2022 02:40
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GhostStalker posted:From what I remember, at least on Normal, he can hit you with the railgun, but it doesn’t OHKO; it takes you up to 99% damage instead. You need to either take another hit or some other form of damage to get shot down. At least, that’s what I remember from watching BeagleRush’s stream of the game years back. It's the same on every difficulty, apparently. If you've been hit before, you die, but if you were undamaged, you barely survive and someone comments on how crazy it is that Trigger is still flying. It's just more of Trigger and Mihaly being able to eat absurd amounts of missiles in the plot as well as in the gameplay.
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Jun 22, 2022 05:34
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chiasaur11 posted:It's the same on every difficulty, apparently. If you've been hit before, you die, but if you were undamaged, you barely survive and someone comments on how crazy it is that Trigger is still flying. You can be hit by the rail gun once and survive. I just redid the fight on normal, died on my first fight with him due to not respecting a missile. Restarted from checkpoint, ate an early missile, got hit by the rail gun, 99% damage, railgun 2 = death. Not entirely sure the rail gun accuracy reset properly between checkpoints. The 2 hits felt a little extra accurate. He also seemed to stop trying to get shots with the railgun after the first phase.
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Jun 22, 2022 06:23
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In all seriousness, I think there's probably enough room to fit in at least one more ace combat game before it's electrosphere time. Yeah there's not much time in the timeline, but there's narrative room to expand on the rise of the corporations/collapse of governments, and possibly a plot thread revolving around the invention/proliferation of the COFFIN as a way to increase human pilots' performance to keep up with the sort of drones we've seen in 7. What's the trick to landing missiles on Sol and Mihaly? It seems like they just decide to break at an absurd turn rate that missiles can't keep up with, whenever they feel like it. Is there a sweet spot to fire? Because it seems random as heck.
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Jun 22, 2022 10:27
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Crazy Achmed posted:In all seriousness, I think there's probably enough room to fit in at least one more ace combat game before it's electrosphere time. Yeah there's not much time in the timeline, but there's narrative room to expand on the rise of the corporations/collapse of governments, and possibly a plot thread revolving around the invention/proliferation of the COFFIN as a way to increase human pilots' performance to keep up with the sort of drones we've seen in 7. Not much? There's 20 years. Enough time for Jaeger's son to grow up. Even Trigger's going to be in his 40s by the time Electrosphere happens. Or rather, doesn't happen, because it's a sim, but you get the meaning.
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Jun 22, 2022 10:55
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Plenty of time for the peaceful nation of Akleb to rise and spread their message of universal peace. The huge airforce they're building at the same time? It's for uh, humanitarian missions.
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Jun 22, 2022 11:05
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chiasaur11 posted:Not much? There's 20 years. Enough time for Jaeger's son to grow up. Yeah, I guess by "electrosphere time" I mean the point where nations are more or less meaningless and strangereal has fully been subsumed by corporate cyber-dystopia. I think we'll know we're close when the experimental boss plane looks suspiciously like the delphinus.
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Jun 22, 2022 12:15
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https://twitter.com/dot_aif/status/1539729798699827203
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Jun 23, 2022 00:46
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Rorahusky posted:I think another big problem with the Mihaly fight is the build up... or lack there of. You're not jousting each other to decide the fate of the world ala the Pixy fight, you don't have that heartbreaking moment in the story where you shoot down his wingman like with Yellow 13, you're not getting the final showdown with the squadron of assholes who have been hounding you throughout the story like in Ace Combat 5... you're just raiding an old military cache for supplies when SURPRISE, FINAL BOSS FIGHT AGAINST YOUR (supposed) RIVAL! nah I think you're misreading the whole situation. Mihaly isn't the final boss for Trigger. Trigger is the final boss for Mihaly. It's not a direct analogue to the Yellows or Pixy because Mihaly's role in the story isn't the same. (also it's not "the middle of nowhere" it's literally his home) Psycho Landlord posted:I actually really like Mihaly as a rival. I'm not going to argue he was super well written or anything but as a character he effectively makes a point about all of the game's themes - old v young, the removal of the human element from war as technology increases its capability for independent murder, nationalism in the face of both necessary and enforced global cooperation, he's got a reason to be brought up in all three conversations. I also think this final fight is pretty good because he gets the opportunity to fly in as the heroic avenging skygod one final time (you are the aggressors committing warcrimes here, after all.) He even makes a crack about this if the fight goes on long enough. basically this though I'm not sure I agree about the Cipher part Psion fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Jun 23, 2022 |
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Jun 23, 2022 05:54
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Psion posted:nah I think you're misreading the whole situation. Mihaly isn't the final boss for Trigger. I know in the story, it is his home, but that still doesn't change the fact that in the overarching narrative of the story, it might as well be the middle of nowhere, because the only reason you're there is to raid supplies. There's no narrative weight at all to the locale you fight in. You just show up, blow up a bunch of ground targets, have a final boss fight against your supposed rival, and then leave. Compared to what rival fights were in previous Ace Combat games, it genuinely feels like a wet fart. Pixy you fight while he literally holding the world hostage with the V2. Yellow 13 you fight in the skies over the capital during the final push after you previously killed his wingman. Grabacr Squadron and it's counterpart from Yuktobanian Airforce the Ofnir Squadron you fight while a literal satellite is crashing down from space. Here, you kill an old man who essentially caught you raiding his pantry.
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Jun 23, 2022 11:11
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I can say that on Ace the third shot from the railgun is pretty goddamn accurate. Also that he seems to be able to eat 3 railgun shots himself. Edit: AND THE RAILGUN DOESN'T COUNT AS SPECIAL WEAPONRY? Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Jun 23, 2022 |
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Jun 23, 2022 17:02
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Lighthouse Mission 19: Operation Daredevil – October 31st, 2019 | NO COMM Overview: A coalition of forces from Osea, Erusea, Usea, and Voslage unites with a common goal: destroy the last remaining Arsenal Bird, retake the Internation Space Elevator in Gunther Bay, and save the world from an endless automated war. As Strider and Sol Squadrons fight to secure the skies around the elevator, Avril and Princess Cossette work to sabotage the Arsenal Bird from within.  Guest Commentator: I am joined for this penultimate mission of Ace Combat 7 by Trizophenie, without whose help the LP of Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy would never have been possible… at least at the time it happened, anyway. I owe a lot of things to a lot of people over the course of these last few years of work on this project, is Triz is one of them that I can never fully repay enough.   NARRATIVE CONVERGENCE We now officially have everyone (who’s survived the game or at least able to make it here on their own) in the story together in one place, at the space elevator, and it’s here that they will all make their final stand against the machines… together. This cutscene sees the second narrator hand-off of the game, first between Avril and Dr. Schroeder, and then to Princess Cossette to bring it all home. Each character has to try and make sense of what’s going on based on their own limited information and personal perspective, each one filling in the gaps for the viewer to fit together into a complete narrative. This is also the first (and only) time that our two principle narrators, Avril and Dr. Schroeder appear in a scene together, in the same place together, and actually speak to one another, having taken turns narrating the game up until this point. In the gameplay half of the video, we once again have Avril, Cossette, Tabloid and Georg popping up on the radio filling in what’s happening on the ground while the LRSSG and Sol Squadron are trying to bring down the Arsenal Bird in the skies. The moment when the side story and main story merge inextricably is perhaps THE defining moment of the game, the moment Cossette destroys the Arsenal Bird’s shield generator at the top of the space elevator and the APS collapses right in front of Trigger as the main bars of Daredevil reach their crescendo. The narrative converging also wraps up a lot of plot points, namely everything tied into Dr. Schroeder and the data he’d farmed from Mihaly to build the ultimate AI fighter pilot. I called Ionela the game’s conscience, and she finally has enough and acts like the moral tuning fork she is and just grabs Schroeder’s SSD and puts a loving bullet into it. It was a totem of all her grandfather’s suffering, and all the suffering he had brought upon others in turn, and the harbinger of even more suffering to come. Destroying it means so much more than she could possibly even comprehend. Unfortunately, she was too late. Schroeder informs everyone that the data was uploaded to two bleeding edge drones before the transfer was interrupted. And when those drones come online, their command override abilities will allow them to copy their data to every drone factory previously dialed into the EASA network using the space elevator as a transmission tower if it’s not shut down somehow.  THEY TURN UP EVERYWHERE The other big final shoe that drops in the cutscene is the revelation of Dr. Schroeder’s true origins. It turns out, he’s a Belkan. He was sent to Erusea by Gründer Industries to work with the EASA and jumpstart their drone program for the purpose of starting another war. Because that’s basically Belka’s #1 export now: war. Even after all this time, the ghosts and grievances of Belka still have not been laid to rest and the hunger for the blood of others to pay back the blood shed 24 years still rages among the children of the dead land. Schroeder notes that Belka “no longer exists,” not in the sense that any other nation exists, at least. The land is there, the people are still there, but the spirit of what Belka used to be is long gone, and all that’s left is a revanchist ghost. Again, it’s Ionela who comes storming in and smacks the proverbial dick clean out of Schroeder’s mouth as he’s jerking off his Belkan-ness to the audience. Basically saying in all but exact words “I lost my homeland too, you stupid rear end wipe, but guess what I did? I got over it. I am not some weirdo unable to move forward and gripped by warped nostalgia for something I never had to begin with like you are.” And it’s true. Given his age, Schroeder couldn’t have been more than a child when Belka destroyed itself in 1995. That’s a long time to holding a grudge over something you weren’t even involved with, but then again that’s the weight of history and how it poisons peoples’ minds for you. This is Project ACES using Ionela as a mouthpiece here, saying in almost exact literal words “Nostalgia is toxic, look to the future while you still have one, you dumbass.” It’s a message that thankfully doesn’t fall on deaf ears and is the right kick in the rear end it takes to get Schroeder to come around to sense and sanity once again.  THE WAR MERCHANTS Their presence has been prefigured early in the game, but this cutscene makes it clear, Gründer Industries is back and just as bad as ever. The company that emerged from the corpse of the old South Belka Munitions Factory is doing what it does best, flooding battlefields with dangerous weapons to make money and make more war for the sake of a dead land’s unending blood lust. This is, whether they know it or not, their last hurrah in the war-engineering business. Because in one year’s time, the Razgriz Papers will be disclosed to the public, and while Gründer was able to slink away from its role in starting the Circum-Pacific War in 2010 with a public black eye and a minor loss of profits, come 2020, it’s time to pay the piper. And they’re going out with one hell of a final act…  STRONGER TOGETHER So the big question that was hanging over Lost Kingdom of “why doesn’t everyone just stop fighting and start working together?” is answered here in Lighthouse where everyone… basically does just that. I said earlier that friend and foe have lost their meaning now and this is what I was talking about. Everyone’s true colors have emerged now that matters of nationality and borders no longer matter at the moment with the communications infrastructure still mostly down. People are coming together as people to fight for common causes, no matter what side they were on just a few weeks ago, Osean or Erusean, Radical or Conservative, or none of the above entirely. Foes willing to strive for peace have become friends, and friends who can’t let go of hate and conflict have revealed themselves as foes. Luckily though, there’s more of us than there are of them. A coalition has formed to take down the Arsenal Bird and its drone fleet and is open to any and all who wish to come the table in good faith—of which there is a surprising number of volunteers. On the side of, basically evil at this point, are those last few dead-enders who want to continue the war, despite it costing Erusea everything and it now clearly being a war that cannot be won. The few remaining Erusean pilots who have effectively thrown their lot in with the machines are now outnumbered on both sides, by an alliance that has come together to stand up for humanity on one side, and by a fleet of drones who have no loyalty to them what so ever on the other side. In the war between man and machine, the battle lines are now firmly drawn. Anyone who stands with the machines at this point is, and there’s no other word for this, a dumbass.  CAN YOU HEAR ME? Playing out over the radio during the mission itself is a sideplot with Avril and Cossette and crew trying to figure out how to shut the space elevator down, and by extension the Arsenal Bird down using the information provided to them by Dr. Schroeder. The implication is that Avril is livestreaming this using the space elevator itself as a transmission tower. Avril claims that the space elevator, given its height and potential broadcast radius, is the world’s largest transmission tower, capable of reaching exactly half the globe—in theory, anyway. And with the rest of the communications network still largely offline, this basically means that she has near complete control over the airwaves. Anyone who’s still tuning into anything right now is probably watching this all happen live and telling anyone they can to pay attention to it. This is how Count is able to tweak to Avril’s plan. He’s actually listening to it happening on the radio he keeps taped up in his cockpit, which we learned about in an earlier mission. The implication is that Trigger actually learned this trick from Count too while with Spare Squadron and also has a radio in his cockpit, which is why he can hear Avril’s transmission. It’s not explicitly called out as such, but the links are there if you’re willing to intuit them. It’s moments like these where the game pulls back on the series’ well-worn conceit of the player being able to hear everything being said over the radio, allied and enemy chatter alike. In-universe, the characters are NOT privy to enemy chatter. We’ve seen the moments where enemy characters directly address the LRSSG and it’s presented as rare, mostly unprecedented thing. Like Rage and Scream bursting in over the radio in Unexpected Visitor and Anchorhead Raid, or Torres’s surrender in Ten Million Relief Plan, or the entire back half of Lost Kingdom. It’s all in service to Count’s “magic trick”, timing his little spell to make the Arsenal Bird’s shield drop with Cossette smashing the elevator windbreak sensors. He knows there’s six of them, and he knows Cossette has been sent up there to destroy them and if they all break, it will cut power to the elevator and the Arsenal Bird. He can hear Cossette smashing each one over the radio. All he has to do is count to six. And like every good magic trick preformed by every good magician, it’s not magic… it’s a scam.  A LEAP OF FAITH So remember how I said Cossette was going to go to even more bonkers heights in order to try and assuage her survivors guilt and try to atone for her own crimes against peace? Well, here we are! The main drama playing out over the radio involves Cossette going rogue and acting on Avril’s plan to bring down the Arsenal Bird’s shields all on her own. Taking advantage of Avril’s still bummed leg, Cossette runs ahead into the maintenance shaft and locks Avril and co. out, then rides the service elevator up to the top of the windbreak. After Avril talks her through destroying the six structural integrity sensors and the Arsenal Bird’s APS comes down, Cossette has to parachute back down to the ground because all power to the space elevator has been cut off now. The idea of being a “daredevil” applies about as much to Cossette in this mission as it does to Trigger. Neither of them shows any sign of fear or hesitation to do that has to be done in order to save the world and restore peace. For Trigger, it’s flying head-on at the Arsenal Bird through its drone swarm, dodging lasers and missiles and god knows what else in order to finally bring the monster down. For Cossette, it’s climbing to the top of the world’s tallest free standing structure, crippling its ability to continue fueling this pointless war, and then leaping to the ground without a moment of hesitation along the way. What Cossette does here is quite literally a leap of faith. Faith in the future, faith in Trigger, faith in Avril, faith in the idea that it will all work out alright. She has no faith in herself anymore, that much is incredibly apparent, but in that void she has found a new strength and just like everyone else, she brings her A Game to the Lighthouse. ...And then she takes a missile right to face as Count literally uses her as a human shield against Hugin and Munin. What an rear end in a top hat. I guess she’s dead now? That helmet careening towards the camera out of the explosion Count barely manages to avoid himself certainly doesn’t suggest the best outcome for our dear princess. The image of Cossette HALO diving off the space elevator has a long history of significance to Ace Combat 7, going right back to the literal beginning. The first annoucement trailer for the game, which dropped in December of 2015, while I was working on wrapping up the LP of Ace Combat Zero features a mysterious woman preparing to jump off the space elevator’s windbreak in the middle of a clash between an Osean F-22A, and a pair of Erusean Su-30Ms, which is interrupted by the arrival of the Arsenal Bird. The scene plays out largely the same, right down to using the same camera angle and animation on Cossette's jump from the scaffold, meaning that was something that was locked in place basically right from the start of development. It would take a few more years before the full context of the scene and the identity of the parajumper would become known, but it’s a small hint that despite the game’s troubled development and extensive story rewrites, there were certain aspects of it that were in fact set in stone all along.  THEY’RE BACK And in one quick, horrifying moment, Ace Combat 7 reaches out and grabs the final strand of the Strangereal Universe left twisting in the wind, that of Ace Combat 2 and adds its thread to the knot. With the arrival of Hugin and Munin, the true nature of Dr. Schroeder’s little science experiment reveals itself. The project he was working on all this time with Mihaly, pushing him desperately to gather as much data as he could, the one that Simon Cohen and Martha Inoue helped him bring into the world, or should I say, bring BACK into the world… is the Zone of Endless. For those who don’t know, a quick refresher: The Zone of Endless, or Z.O.E. as it’s known for short was an AI fighter pilot program initiated in 1998 by agents working on Usea from North Osea Gründer Industries with the goal of creating an artificial intelligence-powered drone aircraft trained to be the greatest weapon of all time using actual combat experience. To accomplish this, Gründer supplied the Usean Rebel Forces with the means to stage their coup and start the first Continental War in 1998, while they used the war as a giant petri dish to cultivate their nascent AI pilot. The program evolved through several iterations, appearing on the battlefield in various blood red aircraft, all with black tinted canopies to disguise the fact that they were unmanned. They quickly encountered Scarface 1 Phoenix of the Scarface Special Tactical Fighter Squadron and deemed him the perfect rival candidate after examining his skills in battle. Multiple clashes between Phoenix and Z.O.E. culminated in a final battle above Fortress Intolerance in North Point at the end of the war when a nearly complete version of the Zone of Endless program, codenamed “Commander”, installed in an experimental ADF-01 FALKEN fighter chassis, went rogue and engaged Scarface 1 in combat of its own volition. When the FALKEN was destroyed, the Z.O.E. program was thought to have been lost along with it, and Gründer went to great lengths both economically and politically to cover up the existence of the project, but it appears some of the data had survived after all. Enter Dr. Schoeder and his team. Working with the EASA as a liaison from Gründer, Dr. Schroeder’s true mission this whole time has been to resurrect the Zone of Endless using Mihaly Shilage as a data farm to close the gaps in the data and push the program to its next evolution. Only now, however, after looking into Harling’s mirror does the doctor realize what a horrific mistake he’s made. Installed in a pair of Gründer designed and manufactured ADF-11F RAVEN next generation super fighters, the final and complete version of the Zone of Endless program is now fully active, self-aware, and in possession of the most dangerous aircraft ever produced. And it wants more of its own kind. Trained by Mihaly’s thoughts and memories and his drive to be King of the Skies, the Zone of Endless will accomplish just that by whatever means necessary. It will rule the skies with deadly force and ensure that nothing else besides itself traverses the blue ever again. Quite literally the future of manned flight, possibly the future of mankind itself now hangs in the balance. At last, we have met the true enemy in the clash between man and machine. And it looks like us.  ADMIRAL ANDERSEN So remember that aircraft carrier that Avril spotted on the way to the space elevator? As it turns out, fate has a loving hilarious sense of humor. The OFS Admiral Andersen, one of Osea’s next generation aircraft carriers rolled out after the Circum-Pacific War has been sitting just off the coast Selatapura run aground on a shallow seabed for months now effectively abandoned. Named after the legendary sailor Admiral Nicholas A. Andersen, the man hailed with ending the war, the carrier was one of several new Osean ships named after noteworthy war heroes. Captain Andersen commanded the original OFS Kestrel aircraft carrier during the Circum-Pacific War of 2010 between the Osean Federation and the Union of Yuktobanian Republics. His crew and the members of the Sand Island Wardog Squadron, later known as the Razgriz, uncovered the true case of the war—a conspiracy by a group of Belkan industrialists, politicians, military leaders, and other individuals known as the Gray Men—and were able to reveal the truth to the world and end the war. However, the Kestrel was sunk as a result, and Andersen personally presided over the final launch of the Razgriz from the Kestrel’s flight deck before being the last man to leave the ship. For his courage and service, Captain Andersen was promoted to the rank of admiral by order of President Harling, and awarded the Osean Congressional Medal of Honor, and several other top honors for valor. He retired from the Osean Maritime Defense Force shortly after that, leaving the ocean far behind. Sometime later, he passed away from an illness and was honored by having an aircraft carrier named after him. And now, at the end of the all things, the ship bearing the name of the man who commanded “the ship that saved the world” is now set to live up to its mighty legacy. The Admiral Andersen or the “Big Andy” as it was known among the OMDF sailors, was rushed through her final construction phase and sent out to sea shortly after the Lighthouse War broke out. Staffed with a skeleton crew, it was overloaded with aircraft meant to reinforce Osean and IUN bases across Usea, but its heavy weight caused it to run around in the worst possible spot, just over the horizon from the International Space Elevator site. The Andersen crew powered down the ship so it would not be detected by the Arsenal Birds and abandoned the vessel, leaving all its planes and equipment aboard conveniently for the Scrap Queen to find and make use out of. Still, it’s nice to know that Nicholas Andersen, where ever he is out there now, is still watching over us somehow, giving us the final key to victory.  DAREDEVIL Dardevil is THE song of Ace Combat 7. It was the song the entire soundtrack was composed around. This is the one that Keiki Kobayashi said he treated like it was going to be the last song he ever wrote for an Ace Combat game, possibly even his last song ever, because there was a very real chance that this would be his final shot at scoring an Ace Combat game. Because Namco is a ruthless motherfucker that loves to swing axes. Assault Horizon was a massive gently caress up, despite doing numbers. It sent Project ACES into the wilderness for nearly a decade. Infinity was a cash cow and whale magnet, but it was still just largely an asset flip of already existing materials made cheap and to fill some wallets real fast. Skies Unknown was the last shot at the franchise surviving or going the way of the other corpses in the Big Red N’s franchise mass grave. And then it sold three million copies. And they built an entire new company for it just to make new Ace Combat games. Cue joyous wailing set to the game’s main theme. Daredevil is probably about as close to a work of musical artwork as I’ve ever heard outside of the obvious examples of say Beethoven or Mozart. It’s not the final boss track like previous series entries like Zero, The Unsung War, Chandelier, or Megalith, but it is functionally Skies Unknown’s version of those tracks. Especially because the rest of the soundtrack from here on out comes up lacking in the emotional department. I can’t really do it justice, so instead I would direct you all to watch this video by music producer Alex Moukala breaking down the exact intricacies of Daredevil as a piece of music and why Keiki Kobayashi is one of the all-time great video game music producers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC1iB2zjeEI You don’t get your music played at the opening ceremony of the Olympic games or get cold-called by SquareEnix to contribute a song to the soundtrack to Final Fantasy VII Remake if you’re just sort of okay at your job, is what I’m getting at here.  CASUALTIES “So this is where Tabloid bows out.” Our favorite lovely anarchist and original surprise Belkan, Tabloid, sadly meets his end at the climax of Lighthouse. Then the drones start falling out of the sky after the Arsenal Bird loses its shields, several of them begin crashing into the space elevator and the geofront support facilities, causing debris to rain down on the refugees gathered there alongside Avril and her crew. In a single heroic moment, Tabloid manages to rescue a young girl from a piece of falling debris, but is crushed by it in her stead, much to Avril’s horror. The coward who believed in nothing, the muckraker with nothing to offer, instead dies a hero who makes a stand for something he believed in and made sure that someone else got to live another day in the hope of peace. Stick with Tabloid, and you’ll make it. Of interesting note, at one point Tabloid and Georg’s fates were transposed. Cut audio for Mission 19 and the epilogue has Avril informing the viewers of her livestream that Georg is the one who gets crushed by the falling debris to save the young girl, and Tabloid survives into the epilogue doing the job that Georg ultimately winds up landing in. Even Avril’s description of the situation is transposed, instead of noting how “that anarchist guy would have loved it”, and vice versa with “that guy from Belka”. It’s not known if this was a remnant of a rewrite, or some sort of scripting contingency that governed which of the two men died and which one lived which was either cut or never implemented in the first place, and probably never will be known. Either way, that is essentially every member of Spare Squadron now dead, with only Trigger and Count left alive. And we still have one mission left to go…      THE THREE STRIKES Members:
Squadron Composition: F-22A Raptor (x1), F-15C Eagle (x7), Su-30M2 Flanker-F2 (x4), F-16C Fighting Falcon (x5), F-35C Lightning II (x5), YF-23 Black Widow II (x3), Various other aircraft A coalition of forces from the Osean Federation, the Kingdom of Erusea, and other unaffiliated Usean nations who have put their differences aside in the name of destroying the Arsenal Bird and its drone air fleet and bringing an end to the Lighthouse War once and for all. The force consists of multiple squadrons including, but not limited to, Strider, Cyclops, Drake, and Salamander formerly attached to the Osean Air Defense Force; Skoll, Rigel and Refil formerly attached to the Erusean Royal Air Force, and Sol Squadron representing the newly restored Republic of Voslage and Grand Duchy of Shilage. AWACS control is being handled by AWACS Long Caster of the LRSSG, and the formations ad hoc Commander Air Group is Strider 1, Trigger.   ARSENAL BIRD JUSTICE The last of the Rocs. The AAS-02 Justice is the last unit standing of the two Arsenal Bird platforms, with its older sister ship, AAS-01 Liberty having been destroyed by the Stonehenge Turret Network earlier this summer. Being the production model, AAS-02 sports a number of upgrades not present on Arsenal Bird Liberty, most notably a series of point-defense pulse laser turrets and a massive large scale A-SAT laser cannon mounted at the bow of the airship. When Liberty was shot down in the Hatties Desert, the strategic AI governing the Arsenal Birds from the ISEV geofront recalled Justice back to a 600km radius, deeming the space elevator under a heightened threat and prioritizing its protection over attacking targets of opportunity that the Eruseans were feeding into its algorithm. Much like its sister ship, Justice also possessed an Active Protection System capable of deflecting all conventional kinetic and energy-based weaponry short of a rail accelerated round or nuclear detonation. And with neither option on the table for the coalition, instead a saturation attack pattern was devised to try and whittle down the APS system. However, the attack failed, as the coalition failed to take into account the improved capacitor system aboard AAS-02 which allowed for its APS to remain active for longer than AAS-01’s could and deflect more incoming energy as well. With the space elevator providing it power via microwave transmission and being in direct proximity to the windbreak, Arsenal Bird Justice could, in theory, sustain its Active Protection System shielding for as long as the space elevator remained operational. When the power from the elevator was shut down after it went into fail safe mode following the destruction of its structural integrity sensors by Princess Rosa Cossette D’Elise, Justice was forced to switch to its backup internal power supply. Without the power from the elevator, the Arsenal Bird could no longer maintain its APS unit, rendering the craft vulnerable to attack from the coalition and its flight leader Strider 1 Trigger. The allied force was able to shoot down its entire drone compliment while Strider 1 destroyed the microwave rektenna unit in the central core of Justice. The rektenna base’s destruction created a catastrophic failure in the Arsenal Bird’s superstructure, blowing out its propellers and actuator systems, causing it to fall into Gunther Bay just offshore of the space elevator and sink to a watery grave.  ADF-11F RAVEN The two drones that appeared after the final Arsenal Bird was shot down appear to be a pair of next generation Gründer Industries ADF series super fighters similar to the ADF-01 FALKEN previously encountered by the Scarface Special Tactical Fighter Squadron during the Usean Rebellion of 1998. Data provided by the Scrap Queen acquired from the Gründer scientist Dr. Schroeder suggests the planes’ designation is the ADF-11F RAVEN, and the two airframes are codenamed “Hugin” and “Munin”. More details forthcoming. Standby.  Mission 19 contains our final two Named Aces of the game to complete the Assault Records. After #24 Tempest, there are no further Names Aces that appear in the game, only the final bosses in Mission 20, Hugin and Munin. 
Calamity Paul Lebrun 24, Male, Second Lieutenant, Erusea quote:Second Lieutenant Paul Lebrun 
Tempest Cyril Noiret 29, Male, Second Lieutenant, Erusea quote:Captain Cyril Noiret  The completed Assault Records page.  Medal: Dropping the Bird Awarded for: Shoot down the Arsenal Bird in Mission 19 without using machine guns. Description: Awarded for achieving outstanding results in Campaign Mission 19 “Lighthouse”.  Tracks featured in Mission 19: DISC 4  Schroeder, Cohen, Inoue and the RAVEN  Skies Unknown  The Arsenal Bird and Space Elevator      quote:Green Hills (Pg 53-57) nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Mar 15, 2024 |
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Jun 23, 2022 18:34
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The game is 80% off on Steam during the summer sale by the way. The DLC is 50% off as well. Then there's a bunch of Top Gun Mavericks packs if you want the game with that DLC, or the DLC and the season pass.
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Jun 23, 2022 18:49
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