Mech pilots have emotions, too. Armored Core VI is a sport about blowing up every part in sight with a smorgasbord of overpowered weapons. Nevertheless it’s additionally a sport about useless, self-righteous males who suppose it’s their God-given proper to take over a planet. When you solely know them as codenames, characters like Snail and Handler Walter vie for energy all through the sport’s story.
However in a stroke of brilliance, absolutely the ultimate boss of Armored Core VI isn’t any of these large personalities, however reasonably the pettiest weasel you may think about, somebody whose very existence facilities round spite for the participant. It’s a subversive twist that cleverly reimagines a longstanding trope of the mecha style, and creates probably the most unforgettable video-game villain of 2023.
Purchase Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon: Amazon | Greatest Purchase | GameStop
You first meet G5 Iguazu only a few missions into AC6, when the participant, often called “621,” helps the Redguns assault a dam complicated. He makes a powerful impression, bemoaning the truth that he now has to babysit a “freelancer.” Your first time via the sport, Iguazu merely looks as if a bottom-of-the-barrel grunt, the whiny character who’s inevitably one of many first to chunk the bullet.
Whereas that’s true in your first playthrough, issues with Iguazu get actually attention-grabbing in your second and third instances via the sport. That is the place you begin to be taught extra about him—and the way a lot he despises your very existence.
Greater than a rival
Knowledge logs reveal that Iguazu was a back-alley gambler who misplaced large, and have become an augmented human to repay his money owed. This then led to him being recruited by the Redguns, and coming nose to nose with 621. At first he’s merely irritated by you, however as he grows extra conscious of your piloting abilities, the hate begins creeping in.
As you betray and dismantle the Redguns, Iguazu voices his open resentment of your abilities and your freedom. You, the participant, are every part Iguazu can by no means be. You’re a grasp of your individual future, whereas Iguazu finds himself caught in a warfare he cares little about, unable to free himself from its shackles. Each single interplay you’ve with Iguazu, you may see his resentment rising, little by little.
After the Redguns are formally dismantled, he takes a contract contract and launches a shock ambush on you. Sarcastically, he’s fully unaware of the AI named All-Thoughts, which has been pulling the strings all alongside. His revenge plot foiled, in absolute desperation he takes a “cope with the satan,” letting All-Thoughts increase him into the right killing machine. He believes his freedom with the singular objective of spiteing you the participant, your loss of life the one factor on his thoughts.
Inhuman nature
All this culminates within the defining second that cements Iguazu as a villain for the ages. The top of your third playthrough of AC6 reveals all of the machinations of All-Thoughts, and as you strategy the ultimate battle you see Iguazu has been warped past recognition, now piloting an experimental swimsuit constructed from the entire simulation battles you accomplished. Because of this Iguazu’s new kind is sort of actually constructed from all of the individuals you killed and backstabbed to get up to now. He’s fairly actually the avatar of every part and everybody that’s been thrown towards you on Rubicon.
That collective will may seem to be the ultimate boss, however in one other staggering twist, midway via the battle Iguazu realizes that your companion, Ayre, has been affecting his thoughts this whole time. By sheer drive of will, he shuts All-Thoughts out and banishes Ayre from the struggle. Iguauzu realizes he’s misplaced his freedom, however in a ultimate act he ranges the enjoying discipline, lastly paving the way in which for the one-on-one duel he’s craved all alongside.
Again and again, the participant overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds, eschewing the plans of companies and highly effective individuals within the identify of true freedom. Iguazu is the opposite facet of that coin. He’s a person with out free will who discovered objective via a singular obsession of destroying you. You took completely different paths however arrived on the identical place, the identical reply. For a sport that tells its story in such a minimalist method, it’s unexpectedly introspective and philosophical.
It’s not usually you see a villain really signify the worst components of us—not simply need for energy however pettiness, spite, jealousy, and hate. Iguazu is the right reflection of the participant themselves, and somebody that suffers for all of our actions. Even regardless of all that, he finds a second of respect within the ultimate battle, a solidarity for the undesirable life that has been compelled on the each of you.
Should you lose to Iguazu within the ultimate battle, his final line sums issues up completely: “Depart a spot for me in Hell.”
Armored Core VI is out now for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.
