The trailer for Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve (ACE8 below), long-anticipated by fans awaiting information, was announced at The Game Awards 2025 on 12 December, 2025 [JST].

ACE8 is the latest game in the Ace Combat series, which turned 30 in 2025. A landmark series which established the arcade flight sim genre, it has taken an untold number players to the skies beyond. ACE8’s release date is planned for 2026, for the Playstation 5 (PS5), Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Steam).

We’ve had an opportunity to interview Ace Combat Brand Director Kouno Kazutoki, and producer Shimomoto Manabu, continuing in his role from the last game, before this information became public. We asked about ACE8’s development concepts, about where they’ve “powered up,” and about some points of interest in the PV, so pay attention to the very end!

ACE8: a new game which has “deepened” the series the right way

ーーThe game is finally announced! When did you spin up the project, approximately?

Shimomoto: The concept for ACE8 was firmed up and development began in 2020, thanks in no small part to the support you've all shown. Development was spurred on by the high acclaim ACE7 received from fans of the series, and from the fact that it was able to bring in new players. I think there’s a golden opportunity here for the release of ACE8 to truly give the Ace Combat series wings.

ーーSo ACE7 sold well?

Shimomoto: ACE7 will soon have sold over 7,000,000 units. I hope that with ACE8’s success, we can reach even more players around the world. We’ve been putting every effort into development in the hope that it can become an inflection point in the series: one that can take it all the way to its 50th anniversary.

Kouno: You know, you keep talking about the future, but it’s not like I’m going to be at the company anymore by that point (sad laugh)

Shimomoto: Yeah I’ll be pushing 60 too (sad laugh)

ーーSure sounds like you’re making a big effort with this one. May I ask what the core concept is?

Kouno: ACE8 is a proper numbered game, and I consider that the core concepts of the Ace Combat series are as follows:

>The exhilarating sensation of being able to fly freely through the sky
>The exhilaration and excitement of being able to engage and destroy each target according to your own judgement
>The sense of accomplishment of having overcome adversity to become an ace pilot

Those are the three pillars: the three parts of its identity that we’ve adhered to. As such, and as this is the first Ace Combat that fans will be experiencing on next generation platforms, we feel the need to exceed whatever expectations people have for us. For this next step, we’ve aimed to make an Ace Combat that could not, under any assessment, be judged lesser when lined up alongside any of the other latest and greatest big titles.

Fundamentally, Ace Combat is filled with universal experiences, free from the peculiarities of country and culture: the experience of the player themselves becoming an ace pilot, the sense of satisfaction of defeating tough enemies, and an unparalleled longing for the sky. We aim to use new technologies and new ideas to maximize the benefit to these charms and strengths of Ace Combat.

Shimomoto: As development progressed, we had to hash out what elements we should carry forward and which we should change. We say we’re aiming to be a “big title,” but that absolutely does not mean we should start from a clean slate. There are certain elements with which fans have become familiar over the past 30 years. What changes could we make that would be welcome? We’ve put a lot of thought about what the proper course of evolution for a numbered title ought to be as development has gone on, and the word which I think perfectly encapsulates what you should imagine when we talk about this evolution is an ever-delving “deepening.”

ーーI see! On that note, it seems that the way you're depicting the sky is one of those things that’s been “deepened.” What sort of development environment are you using?

Shimomoto: Our game engine is Unreal, which we’ve brought forward from ACE7, but the biggest difference from last time is that we’ve developed a cloud rendering tool called “Cloudly.”

Kouno: Under ACE7’s “renovation of the sky,” we integrated an external tool called “trueSKY.” (※) It really was a spectacular tool, but since we didn’t develop it ourselves, there were limits to how we could improve and use it…

ーーSo you developed Cloudly yourselves.

Kouno: By integrating Cloudly, we’ve been able to replicate things like the way clouds differ depending on altitude, and render clouds with more layers in them. Kanno (Mr. Kanno Masato: the art director of the game with Namco Bandai studios) is very knowledgeable about meteorology, and he was central to our efforts towards developing a more realistic sky.

Visuals of the sky naturally become richer as machine power improves, and realistic visuals deepen the sense of immersion, but personally I’m not really interested in visual improvements that aren’t accompanied by functionality. In ACE7, the effects upon entering a cloud served naturally as a sign to the player. That's the sort of visual we're looking for: the kind that can function to naturally cue the player into game rules as they play. The contrails and smoke from enemy planes, reflections on the canopy: these things are all cues for the player. With this functionality, the player will naturally pick up on these cues, and it’ll influence how they think and make decisions.

ーーYou mean that the clouds in ACE8 will have even more functionality to them?

Kouno: Yeah. We’ve added multi-layer clouds, which function as a cue to the player that their altitude is high.

Shimomoto: You’ve checked your altitude via the on-screen altimeter in previous games. Obviously you know this if you’ve played the games before, but for people playing Ace Combat for the first time it might be hard to get at first. Obviously you’ve got an altimeter in ACE8, but we’ve been making sure that you can get a sense for your altitude just by looking outside your plane at the types of clouds spread out around you.

Kouno: Personally when I’ve been playing ACE8, I notice the number of times I’ve had to check my instruments has gone down. This is one of the things that benefit that “exhilaration and excitement of being able to engage and destroy each target according to your own judgement” I was talking about. The functionality of these “rich visuals” give you more information to ground your judgements in a dogfight. We’ve been hoping to use the immersive nature of the sky to fill your surroundings with the rules of the world, to make the gameplay feel more natural.

Director Katabuchi’s decision to stay on in his role thanks to Mr. Kouno’s warm regards

ーーIn the trailer, you can see that there are parts where you’re walking through a carrier in first person view. Is that how you’re going to be presenting the story this time around?

Kouno: Ace Combat has been a game that unfolds from the first person point of view since the very beginning. With only a few exceptions, they’ve basically stuck to FPV: the idea that you personally are experiencing the world as an ace pilot. You are the player, so the game doesn’t mysteriously give you excess memories, like you’re not going to suddenly meet your estranged father or anything. We hope to send you to the other side of the monitor to Strangereal (※), so that you can do ace pilot things.

※the fictional world which all the numbered games have shared since ACE3

This line of thought led us to the idea of first person cinema as another way to “deepen,” in a sense, the way that the world naturally spreads out around you. We want the player to be immersed – we want them to be like “dang, I really am part of this world.” On the other hand, Ace Combat up to this point has had a “storyteller” or “storytellers” as an essential part of how the games work.

ーーHuh, I see.

Kouno: In AC04 it was the boy, in ACE5 it was the war photographer, in ACE ZERO it was the enemy pilots, and in ACE7 the Scrap Queen took on the role. We’ll have to talk about this in more detail another day, but we decided that the storyteller of ACE8 should be a “certain someone” at an early stage. With that decided, the first person cinema concept came together easily. We’re focusing on first-person “real time cinema.”

ーーCan you control the player during these cinematics?

The player can control their line of sight during the cinematic scenes. Of course you can’t control where you move or anything, but you could even just stare up at the ceiling when people in front of you are talking if you want. You can discover new things by purposefully looking away, like what characters on the other side of a conversation are up to. It’s very important to us that you’re immersed, that you feel as though you’re actually existing inside the world. The sense of verisimilitude of the visuals is important obviously, but if that were it, we could just get away with pre-rendered movies.

By involving the player in even the cinematics, they can feel more like they’re there. By maximizing the benefits and drama, we’ve been able to improve immersion. You can look forward to some pretty exhilarating dogfights, with the sky folding out around you in game, sitting in the cockpit, flying your fighter around. We hope that soon you’ll be able to stand on our own feet, feeling the reality of both your own existence and those of your comrades, and together bring you a profoundly intriguing story playing out on a stage high above the earth.

Shimomoto: The fact that the Ace Combat series is story-driven is important. Just like the rest of the series to this point, the story of the game proceeds by way of cinematics, but in order to make it feel more like you’re really there you’ll be able to control the point of view. You’ll also be able to do things like shake hands when prompted by pushing a button, so we think you’ll find the degree of immersion higher than it’s ever been before.

ーーWhat were the some of the most challenging parts of developing the cinematics?

Shimomoto: Well, there were a bunch, but the biggest thing was reproducing tiny little details when the scale is so dang big. You can be freely flying around in this massive 10,000 square kilometer dogfight map, and then in the cinematics we have to be able to craft something as small as that hamburger you saw in the PV.

Kouno: The in-game aspects of the previous title were done in Unreal Engine at a 10:1 scale, but we’re doing everything in real scale this time around. The in-game map and the hamburger have to exist in the same world.

※director Katabuchi Sunao, best known for anime like Black Lagoon and In This Corner of the World. In this series, he contributed to the screenplays for AC04, ACE5, and ACE7

Kouno: So in preparation for the interview, I went back through my text messages, and I found that I sent director Katabuchi a long offer DM in June 2020. I was aware at the time that director Katabuchi was in the middle of production for a movie and had quite a lot of work ahead of him, but I told him in the DM that I wanted to take Ace Combat to the next step as an IP. I told him I’d been entrusted with this task, but I didn’t feel like I could make it a success without director Katabuchi’s DNA. I really poured my soul out to him.

Director Katabuchi’s film project was stalled out at the time, but even so he replied “ah, well, if it means I get to work with you on Ace Combat,” and we were able to schedule a meeting. This was during the start of Covid, when everyone was trying to avoid crowds, so it was just Shimomoto and me who met with director Katabuchi at the workplace. We were able to talk through a lot of things.

Director Katabuchi officially agreed to work with us after that, and that evening he sent me a message with all of his ideas written out. I was on the return train when I got it, and when I read what it said, I got goosebumps. Right then and there, we decided on the most important factor of the game. It’s incredibly shocking to look back now and go “holy crap, there it is, we already had the main theme nailed down.”

ーーI’m really curious what director Katabuchi wrote in that message then!

Shimomoto: We’ll have to save that discussion for another time, when more information about the game has been revealed.

ーーI’ll look forward to that. How did you decide on the protagonist’s plane being an F/A-18E Super Hornet? It somehow reminds me of a certain movie…

Shimomoto: Yeah…so compared to the F-35C Lightning II or something, the F/A-18E is of a slightly older generation, but it’s a very widely known, iconic carrier-based fighter, which as you have so observantly noted, is because it was featured in a famous fighter movie. As the stage of our story is an aircraft carrier, we chose the F/A-18E ※.

When we conducted our preliminary research, we found that as we hoped, both Ace Combat fans and fighter fans could tell from the images and key visuals we published that the setting would be an aircraft carrier, and could picture the sort of story that might unfold.

ーーI thought it was very unusual for the key visual of an Ace Combat game to not depict a flying scene. It seems like you were trying to really get across that the story is set onboard a carrier.

Shimomoto: For the past 30 years, what we’ve always wanted to communicate first and foremost with our key visuals was the sense of freely flying around the sky, so we’ve always used scenes of fighter planes in flight, but this time we wanted to depict the characters too – to give a sense of what the story is like. If you look reeeeeal close at the key visual, there’s one thing in particular you might be able to find. Take a look, think about the story, and let your imagination run wild.

ーーThe thing is, if the setting is a carrier, will there be non-carrier-based planes? A fan might hear that and be a bit uneasy.

Shimomoto: There’ll be other planes than just carrier-based ones, just like the rest of the series. Don’t worry.

ーーI’m glad to hear that (laughs). There’s an aircraft in the trailer that looks like the Arsenal Bird ※ from ACE7…what is it in this game, exactly?

※a fictional massive unmanned aircraft intended for defense. It's goddamn huge.

Kouno: It’s under a massive attack so it looks like an Arsenal Bird, but it’s actually a giant transport plane. As for what it’s doing in the trailer, we can discuss that in more detail another time if we get the chance, but it’s connected to the game mechanics, in particular how we’ve rethought how we've designed the support elements for air combat: how we’ve made them easier to understand and more dynamic in how we’re representing them. If you really look closely at the trailer, you can see some things happening that don’t usually happen in Ace Combat games.

ーーAlso, in the trailer it seems like you can see a Su-57 Felon doing a post-stall maneuver. ※ What’s going on with those?

※when an aircraft maneuvers while stalled. The cobra, hook, and kulbit are all various post-stall maneuvers

Kouno: That scene is in there to give you a dramatic impression of the obligatory rival plane. It’s a post-stall maneuver we thought of that the enemy fighters can use, which we call the “Parthian shot” in the production materials. “Parthian shot” is the name we came up with during production, but it's possible they don't mention it in the game.

ーーI see. So there’s a type of shot that a horse archer can make called a “Parthian shot,” but like…what is it in-game?

Kouno: So, there’s obviously a reason it’s called the Parthian Shot, and it’s connected to the culture of the country your rival and opponents are from. We’ve prepared the background materials in exquisite detail for this one.

Shimomoto: If you pay attention to the Parthian Shot scene, you should be able to see “SHADOW22” written on the airframe, and hear them referred to as “Shadows” on the radio. As for what “Shadows” means, you’ll have to wait to find out.

ーーIncidentally, can the player perform post-stall maneuvers like in ACE7?

Kouno: How you do them is currently being tweaked.

ーーI look forward to following up about that too. You brought up the setting earlier: that the setting would be the world of “Strangereal.” Is this the same world as the previous games?

Shimomoto: Yes, you’re in the Federation of Central Usea (abbv. FCU), which is in the world of Strangereal.

ーーCould you explain in detail what kind of polity the Federation of Central Usea is?

Shimomoto: The Federation of Central Usea is a federal state on the Usean continent. All you need to know for Ace Combat 8 is that the FCU is a federation consisting of various countries in Usea.

If I can speak a bit more for fans of the series, the Independent States Allied Forces (ISAF) the protagonist belonged to in AC04 was a military alliance of Usean countries centered around this FCU, but by ACE7, the job of maintaining public order on the Usean continent had passed to the United Nations military (IUN-PKF), and ISAF was gradually dissolved.

By the time of ACE8, the various countries of Usea established a centralized government out of ISAF and became constituents of the FCU. However, the government of the FCU has long been struggling and failing to address the painful legacy of the wars and cumulative economic issues, and just as discontent among constituent states was growing, they faced an invasion from Sotoa – which brings us to the beginning. For those who want to know more, we’d like to do something to explain all this separately, so look forward to that.

Your pilot alter-ego, “The Wings of Theve,” “Rex”…an idol?

ーーI’m curious about the three letters, “REX,” written on your helmet, and the red winged emblem. What are those?

Shimomoto: Those red wings are the eponymous “Wings of Theve.” The protagonist’s TAC name is “REX,” a name celebrated as that of a legendary ace, spoken of as a symbol of hope, but that reputation is unfounded. After a certain incident, the player will take on the name “Wings of Theve” and alight. The final image of the trailer, the words “enlighten me, o sky!” represent the troubled feelings of the protagonist forced to bear this complicated duty.

ーーSo you’ll be experiencing a story of growth from an idolized hero to an ace pilot. There’s also a shot in the trailer that shows a closeup of a pilot’s face, like a trailer for a Hollywood movie. Are there shots like that in-game?

Kouno: Yeah. Up to now, we could only depict narrative scenes using radio chatter and shots of fighters from the outside, but now we can use a cockpit camera to shoot wingman characters. We’ve created a few conversation scenes like that which you’ll come across occasionally in missions, but boy did we have production issues.

We’d envisioned how we could make the story easier to understand by inserting actual shots of pilots talking before, but in order to do that we needed to create a camera for all of the plane’s cockpits. It wasn’t possible in previous games, but we decided to take on the challenge.

Except there’s no way to work a cockpit camera into every scene. There are scenes where we still ask you to just imagine the expression on the character’s face, and we’ve been thinking about other techniques we can use for those. Also, there may seem to be some shots of a pilot that seem to be the player, but those are solely for the replay camera. I feel like implementing the replay-only camera has really improved the entertainment value of dogfights.

ーーSince this is an Ace Combat game, I’m interested in what the radio dialog will be like. I’m guessing we can look forward to frenetic conversations during these fierce dogfights?

Kouno: But of course! I consider radio chatter to be one of Ace Combat’s areas of innovation. You’ll be flying around the battlefield in the cockpit, getting a sense for the frenetic drama playing out around you – all the things happening in the background that can’t be depicted visually – through radio chatter.

But as you are aware, Ace Combat is a game where you can choose freely where you fly, and where the player is at any given time is going to change each time they play the mission. This time we’re recording multiple subtly different takes and adjusting their timing to suit the circumstances. There’ll be radio chatter that might not even play depending on the situation, so this is certainly the most recording we’ve ever had to do in the whole entire series.

ーーI’m looking forward to the radio dialog, but…what if a skilled player were to shoot down enemies at a rate outpacing the radio dialog?

Shimomoto: That question is related to what we were saying before about radio chatter that might not play depending on the situation. We’ve created radio chatter at key points that will only play if the player is performing much better than we’ve expected. We’re calling them “rewards” internally.

ーーI see. I’ll try and trigger those on my replay attempts. If I may change the subject to music, does the music playing in the PV include the game’s main theme? I'm given to understand Kobayashi-san ※ is involved with the soundtrack but…

※Mr. Kobayashi Keiki. He's been involved since AC04, including as the main composer for ACE7

Kouno: The music in the PV is the main theme. Actually we’re smack dab in the middle of adjusting and refining the climactic second half. The trailer music is from a very important scene, but there are a few more tracks that represent ACE8.

As for the sound team, Watanabe※ and Kitadani※ are the core, with all the staff who’ve created the series’ most famous pieces participating, including Kobayashi-san. We’re always working on the music until the last possible moment. We’re always swapping things out and adjusting the arrangement until we go “that’s it!” We’re trying to deliver the strongest emotional experience for the player here.

※Mr. Watanabe Ryou. He's been involved since ACE ZERO, and is credited as ACE7's sound designer
※Mr. Kitadani Mitsuhiro. He's worked mainly as a composer on various titles, and is credited as the composer for Enchanter I and Mimic from ACE7.

ーーI’m looking forward to the music too! Also, is there an online component?

Shimomoto: We will, of course, include a multiplayer mode. We’ll explain in more detail at a later date.

ーーI’ll look forward to that explanation too.

Shimomoto: We’re aiming for a release in 2026, so development is still moving rapidly. Stay tuned for more information.

ーーThe Ace Combat series had its 30th anniversary this year. How do you feel looking back on such a special occasion?

Kouno: Let me start by expressing my gratitude towards my senpai who brought the very first ACE1 into being. Without them, the past 30 years wouldn’t’ve happened. Next, I’d like to thank the fans who’ve been with us the past 30 years, the staff who these fans have empowered, and the family and friends who have supported that staff. I can only feel immensely grateful when I think of the huge number of people who have supported Ace Combat as a series. Thank you for these 30 years, and I look forward to even more.

Shimomoto: It’s been about 15 years since I became involved with Ace Combat: Assault Horizon in 2009, and honestly it’s gone by in the blink of an eye. Every day I think how I can give Ace Combat larger wings in my current role as producer. I told you this at the start, but I hope ACE8 becomes a new inflection point which will see the series continue to grow to its 50th anniversary.

ーーWith ACE8 announced, I’m sure the excitement of Ace Combat fans around the world will be ceaseless. Do you have a message for them?

Shimomoto: ACE8 has finally been announced. It’s undeniably the largest work of the series so far. Please check back for more information as it’s revealed, and look forward to its release.

Kouno: Thank you very much for waiting. Production has been moving forward far more than anyone knows. ACE8 shall mark the dawn of a new era for Ace Combat. Let’s share this moment together.

A lecture entitled "The Ace Combat Series: a 30 Year Journey" was held at the South Korean gaming convention G-STAR on 13 November, 2025. At this lecture, Mr. Kazutoki Kouno of Bandai Namco entertainment took stage with IGN Japan's Daniel Robson as host.

Mr. Kouno joined Namco in 1994. Following his debut on the tennis game Smash Court, he worked on the racing games Ridge Racer and R4 – RIDGE RACER TYPE 4. He's been involved with the arcade flight sim series Ace Combat for a very long time: from Ace Combat 2 in 1997, up to the newest release: Ace Combat 7 in 2019. He remains involved in that series as its "brand director."

According to Mr. Kouno, the reason why the series continues to be loved is that "for all these past 30 years, you've been the protagonist. It's made it possible to experience what it's like to become an ace pilot. The fact that this has never changed is why it's so beloved."

The visual component has continued to evolve dramatically, but this style of first person protagonist is unchanging. The player is in the cockpit as they become an ace pilot in the fictional world of "Strangereal" – and the core of this experience has been maintained.

Mr. Kouno explained the three pillars of Ace Combat.[1]

First: the sense that you are free to fly around unconstrained in a 360 degree environment with high quality visuals.
Second: the exhilaration of flowing from target to target at your own discretion (at any range, with any weapon, at any time).
Third: the sense of accomplishment brought by a story where, as you clear each mission, you establish your legend as an ace pilot: a hero who has overcome all adversity.

"These three pillars have remained largely the same for the past 30 years," Mr. Kouno claimed. However, as technology has advanced and opened up new modes of expression, they've turned those technologies into new techniques and used them to elevate that experience by leaps and bounds.

For example, being able to depict the environment in a more realistic manner on next generation platforms greatly benefits that sense of being free to fly around unconstrained. When new technology has come along, they've thought hard about what kind of benefits it might confer, and by so doing have pushed the series forward.

On the other hand, Mr. Kouno points to Ace Combat: Assault Horizon and Ace Combat Infinity as the two points when the series was in its deepest crisis.[2]

In the former, they determined to have the protagonist be not the player but a specific character, and the latter was essentially a free-to-play title with next to no narrative. Since in both cases they had altered the series concept, player opinions were mixed

The lesson Mr. Kouno drew from this experience was that "the creator will always become bored faster than their audience." He reflected: "our audience was still starving for a new narrative-driven Ace Combat, but as the people making it, we felt like we were simply doing the same thing over and over again. We ended up changing the series' whole identity." Mr. Kouno observed that this is a rather common occurrence not limited to Ace Combat alone.

The setting of the Ace Combat series is known as "Strangereal" among fans. According to Mr. Kouno, many people mistake it for a flight simulator, but it is, in fact, a "flight shooting game," not a simulator.[3]

"Believability," Mr. Kouno emphatically stated using the English word, "is the degree to which the audience can believe in the world of Strangereal."[4] They had to construct a world where they could put fighters like the ones you'd see in real life on the backdrop of near future SF elements, and have their audience believe it all the same.

Moreover, the SF elements have to be carefully considered and researched, to the extent he says that they asked the Obayashi Corporation – a major construction company – about their plans for a space elevator.

As to why the game is so loved the world over, Mr. Kouno stated "I believe that games reflect life." Just as one may encounter success and failure in life, so too in games may one encounter "mission clear" and "game over." The experience of profiting through repeated success and failure is a lot like life itself; games are a form of media through which one may experience life.

"The probability of you becoming an ace pilot is abysmal, but in a game, if you fail over and over, gradually improving, you can ultimate experience what it's like to be a success – as reinforced by the narrative. Mr. Kouno believes that this sensation is something fundamental: global and agnostic to the circumstances of one's birth.

At the end of the presentation, when asked by Mr. Robson about the next title, Mr. Kouno simply said "we're working on it." He'd already announced some years ago that they were working on a new game, and he touched on the foundation of Bandai Namco Aces as the developer (relevant article). "I participated in an online meeting just yesterday from here in South Korea, directing the new title," he said, elaborating on the situation. However, as he was unable to shed any light on the details, he only showed a plain white slide.

He also mused, however idly, about how he'd be interested in other works using Strangereal as a setting.[5] However, he'd want to avoid the impression of a mere spinoff. He explained his vision: "I'd like to figure out how to launch a new IP where like, you'd have this legit plan for an action/adventure game, and it'd look really intriguing, but if you look real close, you'd see that it was totally a game in the world of Ace Combat."

Ace Combat: a series which has maintained its concept unchanged for 30 years as it continues to improve the experience with changing technology. From Mr. Kouno's development philosophy, one can see the vital lessons learned from nurturing a long-beloved franchise. We look forward to the day when the new title in development is released.

CAN YOU TAAAAKE IT ALL AWAAAAAYAY〜
CAN YOU TA-

-okay you get the idea.

Kouno-san had been tweeting about the process of preparing the materials for this presentation for a while, and I thought it might be handy to translate this snapshot of how he thinks of Ace Combat as a series to contextualize AC8 when it's finally unveiled for real. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's mostly the same sort of thing he's been talking about for the past decade, but if I had to pick out one new development, it's the increased emphasis on hyping up the player as they develop. He's mentioned this aspect before, but his talking points during AC7's press tour tended to emphasize the first two pillars.

The other thing that caught my eye is his musings on how technology can create new ways to emphasize the core pillars. He tweeted before about how PA's UE5 toolchain was having trouble accommodating tiny assets in huge environments, which puzzled my friends who use UE5. It may indicate some shift in how the engine is being used, but we'll see.

Aside from that, there aren't really any big insights here. I was hoping for something a little more in-depth. I've been reading old interviews and dev diaries for a different project, and Kouno-san's framework glosses over a lot of very important shifts in mindset ever since AC3 that I think have way better explanatory power for Ace Combat's success than the three things it has in common with almost every single one of its competitors. For instance, the development of the use of radio chatter from 3 to 04 to 5 is something they talk about repeatedly as being core to their aesthetic, experiential goals. It's no mistake that the one big technical overview ever done about the Ace Combat series is how its dialog processor works. Moreover, a fact conspicuously missing from discussions of Ace Combat authorship is that almost none of that dialog is actually written by credited "writer." This is only one example of many that I feel make this a missed opportunity.

Of course, Kouno-san has more important things to do than give lectures.

In any case, we'll be back when there's more.

Why yes buddy, as a matter of fact we are still alive.

What a year it's been. A lot has happened since last time we've posted here. Some good. Some bad. Mostly bad.

But hey, Ace Combat 7 came out! That's good, probably!

The rest of the World News which the official site seemed to imply never materialized, so I'm afraid we haven't updated much lately. We're still watching just in case, but as it turns out, the next big thing came not from the official site but Famitsu in the form of an article summarizing a presentation Kosuke Itomi and Masahide Kitou gave at CEDC.

If you'll recall, the official sites for a lot of classic Ace Combat games had production journals where the staff talked about how things were going and a bit about the production process itself. You'll also notice that we haven't translated these because, not being lore-related, they're not strictly within the scope of this site. I'd like to translate some of these eventually, but that's going to be a fuck-off huge amount of work for what is ultimately a side project.

This presentation seems to cover some of the things that an Ace Combat 7 production journal might've touched on though, so I thought I'd translate the whole thing in full.

The secret of Ace Combat 7’s radio chatter!?
Many innovations were made to merge gameplay and story!

CEDC 2019 – the biggest conference in Japan aimed at computer entertainment announcements – was held between September 4th and 9th 2019 at the Pacific Convention Plaza in Yokohama. Here is our synopsis of the session “Sharing the kind of story we'd like to tell ~ the narrative production techniques of Ace Combat 7” which took place at the conference.

The role of a narrative director in improving the gameplay experience holistically, including story

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown: a game by Bandai Namco Entertainment which connects rich worldbuilding with a story told through serious dialog exchanges. At this session, we were given an introduction to their storytelling techniques and to the innovations which they’d developed for themselves.

Appearing on stage during the first half was Kosuke Itomi, who served at Bandai Namco Studio as narrative director on Ace Combat 7, and who has been involved with the Ace Combat series since 3.

The discussion eventually came around to the topic of what Itomi’s role as narrative director was. A narrative director is in charge of planning out every element of the game’s direction and story. By “narrative” they don’t just mean he’s in charge of the “story,” but also all the related elements involved in storytelling like direction and music.

To that end, his job ranges widely from setting down the general blueprint for production, to managing the story, conceptualizing the movies and music, and supervising the audio recording. He stands alongside planning and sound engineering staff related to these things, and improves the overall quality of the game experience. You might say he is the one who keeps everything related to the narrative on track.

This scope is quite wide, and the tools which Itomi used in this key position include  scene planning tables, “mission story,” and pre-visualization.

The first of those – the scene planning tables – summarize the flow of the campaign mode from start to finish. It creates a large outline of the flow of the entire story. This is where the story’s flow and worldbuilding – and the basis for all the missions which stem from the story – are collated during initial stages of development.

The specifications for each mission are decided upon during the mid stages of development and reflected here, as well as additional notes in the form of emails and minutes from meetings with anime screenwriter and director Sunao Katabuchi, who is in charge of the scripts.

Further, in the final stages of development, a cue list (flags for starting and stopping) is added for the BGM – an inseparable part of the play experience. This is how the play experience is constructed.

Scene Construction Table

• Blueprints for an entire sequence with a stamp of approval
• Brief overview of the flow of the campaign mode from start to finish

The second tool, the “mission story,” is as the name implies, a collection of all the resources for any given mission in one place, with details about the story and gimmicks which unfold during the mission itself. By adding in the the in-mission script and appending time codes, the “mission story” is managed.

As you might expect, many conversations take place between staff members while building the missions and story, and when there are scenes where the level design and story conflict and become out of balance, they work to pare down the dialog. This, among other things, makes it very easy for aberrations to develop which run counter to the original vision.

To prevent this from happening, Itomi thought to create a backbone for the story. He took down Katabuchi’s answers to questions like “Why did you have this part like this? Why is this dialog important?” in emails and meetings for as long as her could, so that after the fact he could remember why things are the way they are.

Mission Story
A resource where the story and gimmick ideas for each mission are written down. Each mission specification sheet is created based on this.

A backbone for the story during development is vital
In the scene construction table, notes from meetings with Katabuchi and email content are noted as they relate to the scene.
“Why did you have this part like this? Why is this dialog important?”
As time passes, recollection will fade. We took as many notes as we could, and by mentioning them alongside the scene, we could see plainly what was originally meant.

The third item, pre-visualization, is used so that staff may properly share between themselves things which are difficult to explain in words like radio communication timing and BGM cue timing. In other words, it’s a specification document in video form.

Itomi presents Ace Combat’s storytelling like a radio drama. It is a drama formed out of radio conversations, breathing noises, pauses, and environmental sound effects. For things like this, it’s faster to explain the key points by making a video instead of using words.

Pre-visualization
Previs is a video used to validate concepts during the production of CG video and movies. A simple video is made to determine dialog and music selection, as well as playback timing. By sharing a complete image, trail and error in the actual version is kept to a minimum.

Ace Combat’s storytelling is a radio drama
For instance…
If a pause is short, it expresses breathlessness and impatience, and if it’s long, it indicates contemplation and holding back emotion. It’s a simple thing, but the chaining together of pauses creates part of the drama. Environmental sound effects going on behind the transmission source are also an important element of creating drama.

Here, Itomi gave us an introduction to the concept of dividing music up and determining loop points so that the high points in the music flow naturally with the excitement of the gameplay. [1]

The amount of time different players will spend playing any given part of Ace Combat 7 will vary, so they wanted to match the music with how the mission is progressing so as to make the play experience more exciting. How it works is that the track’s B and C melodies are divided into looping parts called “landings” and played back. As the player advances through the mission, once a break point is reached, it proceeds to the D melody. This is to say, climaxes which fit the gameplay are made to loop in a way which feels natural.

Finally, Itomi talked about how the development information’s “freshness” was important. If feedback to address problems in development comes too late, those problems are dismissed, and they become irreversible. In severe cases, the problem itself can be lost and left as-is. He told us fresh data is valued for that reason, and getting feedback as quickly as possible is important.

Fresh information is vital
During development, there’s always one thing after another that needs looking after. If feedback is late, the scope of a problem becomes frightening. With previs we can quickly arrive at a finished image, and getting retakes is quick and easy, so while information remains fresh, we can validate an image.

Ace Combat 7’s radio chatter is mixed into three types and fit to match the gameplay!

Masahide Kitou took the stage in the last half. He was in charge of the writing and implementation of the radio dialog.

Kitou started by saying that the interactive gameplay, and the text, sounds, and dialog of the story mix like oil and water. As mentioned above, it’s hard to reconcile the fact that different playthroughs will vary in play time – and what state the game will be in at any given moment – with the fixed nature of text and voice. This is called “ludonarrative dissonance:” the situation when the gameplay and the story are out of harmony.

Ace Combat 7 has three types of radio dialog in order to adapt to the troublesome nature of interactive gameplay.

They are “situational transmissions,” “greek chorus transmissions,” and “strategic transmissions.” Of these, situational transmissions play in reaction to player actions. They’re feedback to gameplay, and increase the sense that the game is responsive to the player.

Greek chorus transmissions are, to name an example, things that might play when the player is in a particular map and the enemy forces fall below 70%. They’re transmissions which play when certain conditions are met. They create a sense of atmosphere in the battle space.

Strategic transmissions are the kind of thing that might play when the player destroys a particular target. They’re transmissions that tell the player about plot points when they get to them, and help develop the story.

 With these three types of radio transmission, the play experience and story progression can be complemented by natural radio chatter even during fluid mid-mission gameplay. All these things are controlled by the RadioTable and the queue.

The RadioTable is where radio chatter which might play during a mission is collated. For this lecture, it was put in an Excel-like table to make it easy to grasp. Transmissions which play in response to gameplay are entered into a queue and wait in order to be played.

However, each transmission has various parameters for playback appended on the RadioTable. First of all is Priority, which moves items up the queue in relation to their importance.

Next is QueueLimitLife. Voice lines in the queue waiting to be played whose queue lifespan has expired are removed. For instance, if you shoot down an enemy plane, but a voice line with higher priority is playing, if too much time elapses since you’ve shot it down by the time the line ends, it wouldn’t be natural for there to be a “bandit down!” line anymore. Items are given a lifespan so that this never happens.

Additionally, there’s a RequeueingWaitTime. This is a parameter by which once something has played once, it won’t enter the queue again for a specified interval. It’s unnatural if the same transmission plays non-stop, and this guards against that.

The odd man out is the StartDelay parameter. Voices wait a specified amount of time before playing. By putting these delays in the radio exchanges, one may read contemplative pauses and restrained emotions into the conversation. For instance, you can see a glimpse of a squadron member’s chagrin by the delay of her reply after being bested by her captain. This is the kind of affect you can achieve with this parameter.

①Priority
Sorts items in the queue according to priority. Generally it’s “Strategic > Greek Chorus > Situational”

②QueueLimitLife
Transmissions are removed from the queue at a specified time after having been triggered to play.
Given to transmissions which would be weird if delayed too long.

③RequeueingWaitTime
After having played once, an item won’t enter the play queue until a specified amount of time has elapsed. Interval.
Given to items which would be disconcerting if they played continuously.

⑤StartDelay
Wait a certain amount of time before voice playback.
If there isn’t this delay, the characters would seem less human (and more like a game)

The three types of the Ace Combat series’ indispensable radio dialog are managed in their various aspects by assigning different parameters, created so that the fluid gameplay mixes naturally.

Kitou refers to managing the transmissions combined all together and mixed within the queue as “stirring.” Once combined and emulsified, the oil and water of gameplay and story will mix. If mixed adeptly using these concepts, game and narrative will play in concert. On that note, the presentation concluded.

Well friends, Ace Combat 7 has a release date!

~woo~

It's January 17, 2019 for consoles, and February 1st for PC. This information comes at the end of a new trailer released at Gamescom in Köln. The public could play a new mission there, and the press could apparently play one mission more. But if you're reading this, I'm guessing you already knew that.

Anyway, a new show where AC7 makes an appearance means a new Famitsu interview with our man Kono. We'll summarize it for you as usual.

• Kono apologizes again for the wait and causing everyone to worry. He feels the pressure of everyone's expectations.
• He says that they're aiming for a scale and atmosphere somewhere between 04 and 5.
• The purpose of the trailer was to show off more story details while providing AC-like hooks with dialog and imagery.
• Famitsu observes that there sure are a lot of things it looks like you can fly through (tunnels, sea platforms, parts of Stonehenge). Kono replies that we have Masato Kanno to thank for that.
• Everyone knew this, but the plane at around 02:56 isn't a Falken. There'll be a lot of new planes in the game, which Kono says has kinda been a pain.
• The F-104 is playable to those who have confidence in their ability to fly around such an old aircraft.
• As you may have guessed, the reason two of the three euro-canards are in the demo is because Gamescom is in Europe.
• Kono does not elaborate on the parts system, even though he totally did to 4gamer.
• The demo missions are basically the same as they are in-game.
• They talk about clouds again, but didn't say anything new.
• Mission 6 was chosen for the demo because of its large scale.
• Kono says he's heard a lot of European media focusing on whether this game is more casual or more serious, which is interesting because I haven't heard any of that. There's also a lot of talk because flight action games are so rare nowadays.
• Kono says that even though AC clearly has a global audience, PA isn't making the game specifically with a global audience in mind, but rather just pursuing what they think would be compelling.

The rest of the article is a description of the gameplay demo. I'll skip over what they say about Mission 6 entirely, since there's nothing they say that you can't see for yourself in gameplay footage. However, they also talk about Mission 7 (First Contact). It's another "destroy a bunch of surface targets" mission like 6, but the Yinshi Ravine somewhat complicates things. The targets are in the ravine, and a layer of storm clouds makes them impossible to see from above. The way they describe it sounds to me almost like a Sky Odyssey level, which I'm sure is a helpful comparison to maybe four people.

Anyway, Famitsu guy pursued an enemy plane in to a rain cloud and had to really be on his toes to keep sight of the plane while also not running into something in low visibility conditions and unreliable instruments. They really like those clouds.

One last note: there were two lines in the trailer which I and a few other people mis-parsed at first, but which can be clarified by referencing the Japanese subtitles.

• "That aircraft needs to be taken care of!" means "shoot down" and not "protect."
• "There are pilots like you in every generation, and I have felled every last one of them" means…well…"felled" and not "felt."

Weirdly, they both have to do with the same word:「墜とす」or "tsuitosu." It generally means to "take down" or "shoot down," and it was the word at the heart of both "felled" and "taken care of." I think in context both these lines would've been a lot more clear.
​
We've gotten a lot of information over this game's multi-year press cycle, but I'm sure we're not done until 2019 either. We'll have those updates for you when they come around, whatever they might be.

(Hopefully it involves World News)

(Please let it involve World News)

Hey all! E3 2018 came and went, leaving us a new trailer for Ace Combat 7 – or so we're told, because it hasn't been released to the public yet. Along with the trailer came a Famitsu piece with an interview and map. Black Kite has already done a fine translation of the interview and translated Japanese summaries of the article that get everything of substance. All we'll add is that futuristic weaponry is confirmed for player loadout – the implication being that along with the futuristic planes, they will be a normal part of the game.

Speaking as a curious observer, the most interesting part to me is piecing together exactly what's been going on at Project Aces by cross-referencing what Kono said at TGS 2017, but it's not my job to speak as a curious observer; it's my job to speak as a lore encyclopedist – and as a lore encyclopedist, what's most relevant to us is that big map of future Strangereal! Speculation already abounds, so here's what those text boxes say.

Anea
The setting of 6. The Republic of Emmeria – which suffered little damage during the fall of Ulysses – and the Estovakian Federation – whose economy collapsed and entered a state of civil war – both exist here.

Verusa
The setting of 5. Thriving in the north of the continent is the world’s largest country by landmass, the Federal Republic of Yuktobania: a great power.

Osea
Splitting the continent north to south, 5 and Zero are set in the north, and the PSP game X is set in the southern half. Osea dominates the greater part of the north, while to the south is the Federal Republic of Aurelia, and the Democratic Republic of Lesath.

The Orbital Elevator
The orbital elevator was constructed with the goal of reconstructing from the Ulysses disaster. With Osea and their expertise in space development providing the technology and initial investment, they earned the goodwill of the countries of Usea, but the flames of war arose anew.

Usea
On Usea – the setting of 04, 5, and the current work – tensions have increased between the Osean Federation and the Kingdom of Erusea. In 2019, terrorist attacks on Osean soil using UAVs broke out. At the same time, Erusea occupied the Space Elevator jointly developed by Osea and various Usean countries. Raising the banner of revolt against Osea’s overbearing interference and monopolization of its interests, Erusea declared war. With the superior military power of Osea soon to be on their back feet in the face of Erusea’s countless unmanned attack aircraft, and the clean war Erusea has waged which hasn't affected the metropolitan area, public opinion is swaying towards Erusea.

Hey all, we're bringing you something special today: a summary of a print interview with Kono. What makes it special? Well…nothing really. It's like an online Famitsu interview, but it's marginally harder to look up words.

But before we get to the interview, there was also a feature on the city of Selatapura, where the space elevator is located.

“The city which developed into the great hub of the orbital elevator, Selatapura”

Seaside Selatapura, which possesses the gigantic orbital elevator, is a massive port city located on the tip of the near equatorial Gunther Peninsula in the southern part of the Usean Continent. As if to overcome the hardships following the Continental War (the conflict depicted in 04), it has seen remarkable economic development in recent years, and many buildings of futuristic design rise from the city's heart.

Photographic scenes of the daytime scenery of Selatapura, the sun peering in through gaps in the clouds. Beautiful scenes of a sky dyed in madder red are here published. The time of day differs within the same scene, so will missions vary with different times in the same location? We ask Kono about these details directly in our interview, so check for yourself on the following pages.

Interview Summary

• Kono says that post stall maneuvers were included because Ace Combat has always been about making it possible to experience what a pilot does. Actually scoring a kill with the help of one is more about style.
• Famitsu says it sure would be nice to have a replay system to look back on their own displays of sweet high-alpha skillz, and Kono mentions that - what do you know - they happen to be working on just such a system. However, he’s running into camera-related challenges. As he explains it, a car will take the same path in a racing game every time, but since a plane can go anywhere in a huge map, they’re having problems with the camera clipping into irregular features.
• Nonetheless, his approach to this new “numbered title” is “If [we feel] it should be done, we’ll do our damndest.” He really wants to please us fans.
• Apparently besides the atmospheric conditions already discussed, there will be updrafts and upper atmospheric jetstreams which will increase your plane’s speed.
• Kono and Famitsu go on about the physicality of the sky for a while, but then Famitsu observes that the terrain - the rock formations in the Yinshi Ravine for instance - seem to play a role as well. Kono immediately reiterates that low altitude flying will not be forced, “please be at ease.” Chasing planes at low altitude is something you challenge yourself to do. Enemies will of course never run into rocks, but he implies they'll actually be trying to avoid running into features instead of just clipping. The same goes for the buildings of Selatapura
• While many cities were used as reference, Selatapura is designed to look like an entirely new city. As written above, Kono says Selatapura is a city which has seen recent economic expansion. One thing he brings attention to is the difference between the center of the city with its super tall buildings, and the suburbs where nature remains. He also points to the globe monument and ferris wheel as illustrating the city’s worldview.
• Apparently they still haven’t decided if the time of day will change during the mission, but if it does, it’ll just be based on time elapsed in the mission, so it won’t change dramatically. The weather may change as well, since as said above, Selatapura is tropical and is subject to sudden rain. However, this too is undecided.
• Project Aces chose the carrier variant of the Lightning as the only variant to increase the number of carrier aircraft. Implementing the B would require a hovering mechanic, and they want to focus on including other aircraft.
• Famitsu brings up an element labeled “parts” in the hanger. Kono laughs nervously, confirms again that there is a parts system, and segues into talking about how you can look at your planefu – no seriously he says the closest thing in Japanese to planefu – in the hangar in VR. The director and producer of Summer Lesson, Jun Tamaoki, was apparently involved in this.
• Kono demures from giving a completion percentage and instead says they’re progressing: towards completing the goals they set in the initial stage, towards “other good stuff,” and ultimately towards the finish line. Apparently Kono’s desires to satisfy the fans with the best possible product and his desire to satisfy them by actually finishing the game are competing. He apologizes, and mentions running into various small problems. What should happen visually and aurally when the player’s plane is struck by lightning, for instance? These are the problems of AC7, and Kono wants solutions. It seems.
• More info on the Japanese dub at a later date. Kono says that the staff of another project commented that they'd cast well. So take that for what it's worth.

Another fine Famitsu interview. What struck me is how personally Kono seems to be taking the whole thing. That, and the comment implying just how many of these ostensibly small features went beyond the initial plan. Indeed, there may well be a connection between these two things.

Anyway, as always, feel free to ask questions or comment either on this post or in our discord.

Discordといえば、日本人ユーザーの為に作ったチャネルもあって、ぜひ喋りに来てください。

The other half of 4Gamer's Ace Combat 7 coverage from TGS 2017 has landed, and it's…well, the same single player demo that we've already seen plenty of coverage on. Nonetheless it's a short article with one or two new fragments of insight, so there's nothing lost in summarizing it.

• The content of the TGS demo is basically the same as that we already saw at E3 and Gamescom. The main difference is that PA finally included Japanese subtitles so the Japanese press could actually understand the dialog, though 4Gamer doesn’t actually comment on what they thought of it. There’ll be a Japanese language track with a cast to be announced.
  AWACS Inori Minase confirmed.
• F/A-18E and F-14D are still the plane choices, 4Gamer opting for the F-14D because…you know perfectly well why.
• As expected, you can skip the launch and takeoff sequences.
• Much like Famitsu, 4Gamer is also impressed with the atmosphere and feeling of acceleration during carrier launches.
• Also much like Famitsu, 4Gamer is impressed by the clouds, which they say evoke a sense of realism.
• “The fighters maneuver with the right feeling of heaviness. The feeling seems apparent when, for example, I’m pulling back on the stick, raising the nose, and ascending.” Could it be AC7 is modeling angle of attack?
• As we know, clouds in AC7 interfere with radar and reduce lock-on distance dramatically. Droplets form on the canopy, your plane vibrates in the turbulence, the controller provides feedback while in turbulence as well…actually that might be new info.
• Like the previous demos, once you bag the Viper Cs, the Arsenal Bird shows up and throws a bunch of MQ-101s at you. After you shoot down a few of those, you attack the Arsenal Bird itself, but after you make a few passes, the battle is interrupted and the gameplay ends with the Arsenal Bird still intact. 4Gamer does reveal that it’s possible to attack the engines straightaway, so the sequence probably isn’t divided into very many stages.
• The author says they couldn’t pull off a post stall maneuver because of their “lack of skill.”

I wonder if some of the same behavior used for clouds will also be applied to jammer pods. That could provide an interesting dimension - maybe even make the things useful.

As always, you can get in touch either in the comments or in our Discord if you have any questions.

Ace Combat 7 appeared at TGS 2017! The coverage has slowly been rolling out in the Japanese gaming press, and now we have another interview between 4Gamer and brand producer Kazutoki Kono. This one is mostly about plot, which we figure may be something our audience is curious about.

• 4Gamer asks how it came to be that Osea constructed an orbital elevator in Erusean territory, leading to war. Kono replies that of course he can’t give away too much, but that many countries - including Erusea - expected that construction of the elevator would bring economic benefits. He says some countries did see these benefits, and implies Erusea did not. This is one of the factors in the war. According to Kono, this is a problem with parallels in the real world.
• 4Gamer suggests that the soot on the Princess’ face shows the war has taken a strange turn. Again, Kono naturally doesn’t want to give anything away, so he just points out that her role over time is being slowly revealed as the trailers reveal more and more of the plot, and coquettishly demurs from saying more.
• From there he just hits the same points he always does. It’s not a good versus evil story. Everyone’s got their own reasons for fighting, and this is what lies at the heart of the game. The princess is cute, but not merely cute. ＵＣＡＶｓ.
• 4Gamer brings up the "morality play" that was ACX2 and Kono very politely says “yeah nah that’s not where Katabuchi wants to go with this.”
• Kono gets on the subject of the traditional Ace Combat self-insert protagonist, and talks about how much of a challenge it is from a storytelling perspective to have a protagonist whose perspective nobody else knows. I’d imagine that this must be especially difficult in a game which is, as Kono says, about the different opinions and motivations of its characters.
• He goes on to talk about how, just as the protagonist in AC04 fit the archetype of a hero on a quest, and Blaze fit the archetype of a hero cast in shadow, so too would the protagonist in AC7 fill a “certain role.” He calls it “pretty shocking,” and that there’s gonna be “parts you won’t see coming.”
• 4Gamer asks whether the three stripes crossing out Trigger's unit on all the player's aircraft has anything to do with this role. To which Kono replies “Very astute! That's pretty much it.”
• Kono goes on to say how they struggle every time to come up with an easily recognizable icon for the player, and how they settled on the three stripes for this one. The fact that he’s seen people on twitter building kits and slashing out the unit affiliation in this way is another one of the little things that makes Kono a happy man.
• 4Gamer points out that Osea - the player character’s nation - is painted as a villain because of, for example, the line in the E3 trailer accusing them of harming civilians. Kono points out that the Gamescom trailer and the E3 trailer are of a pair. The E3 trailer paints Osea as “fighting for justice,” and the Gamescom trailer as Osea being the cause of the war. “Both lines of reasoning are correct,” he asserts.
• 4Gamer asks whether Kono can comment on the fictional plane with the white swept forward wings in the trailer. “Nope,” says Kono. Apparently someone put it into the trailer on their own, and Kono was like “Wait why is that in there?” But he gave the OK because “it might get people talking.” He justifies it as a sort of symbol of the new things you’ll come across as you progress in the story. “Game-y things are cool too,” he says.
• Kono confirms that the FSW aircraft is unmanned.
• Kono points out that while Mihay and the player stand opposed on one level, if you take a step back, you're both in the same category of pilots who stand in opposition to the imminent future of unmanned air vehicles. This, Kono says, is a departure from what 4Gamer casts as the traditional story structure of having the player and their opponents belonging to diametrically opposed camps. This is something Katabuchi and Kono hashed out together.
• He goes on to clarify that the fact Trigger is shown using a sci-fi laser weapon - and Erusea is not - does not play into the story’s system of contrasts - it’s just a coincidence. Laser weapons are one of the many things added to the game for variation, which also includes the clouds, UCAVs, countermeasures, and post stall maneuvers.
• 4Gamer points out that the Z.O.E. Falkens in ACX have “beam-saber like lasers,” which gets them onto a discussion about concessions you have to make to gameplay away from, say, how airborne lasers would actually work.
• 4Gamer wonders if the reason why the people in the trailers have a negative view of Osea is because they’re Erusean, but Kono says there are Oseans among them too. “Organizations aren’t monolithic,” Kono observes.
  
• “It’s not that deep, fam.” - Kono, almost word for word, replying to 4Gamer’s question about whether the scene where planes of different types form up together represents anything about the player’s situation. “It means you can change your plane.”
  
• You can't change your wingmen's planes.
  
• “People keep asking me about the tunnel. (laughs)"
  
• Kono says that tunnel segments in Ace Combat history have always had mixed reception. Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War split the difference,  but this time they're approaching the problem with "STRONG STYLE."
  "So it may or may not be just a tunnel.”
  He declines to say more.
  
• On the subject of the EASA and where AC3 stands in relation to the rest of the series, Kono says that the official answer is “Since Ace Combat 3 is part of the Ace Combat franchise, Ace Combat 7 contains various influences from it.”
  
• Masato Kanno (art director on AC7, staff on almost every AC game since the first) is apparently really into UGSF - a hypothetical crossover universe between a few Namco titles including AC3 - which is the source of a lot of the AC3 stuff in AC7. Kono largely gave him a free hand.
  
• 4Gamer suggests that the numerous spinoffs from the numbered games suggest that the franchise has a lot of flexibility, and Kono agrees. He says there's a lot of challenges working within Strangereal's worldbuilding, but that the basic mechanics have a lot of applications that he'd like to explore.
• Kono draws a fundamental distinction between the Ace Combat style of flight shooting game and VR experiences like Argyle Shift which happen to use the same technology. Mainly, you don’t have the same choices.
  
• There were many people who said that you couldn’t do that kind of flight shooting in VR at first, but since there were so many people talking about the idea of flying jets in VR, Kono thought “doing something about this is the Ace Combat team’s job.” He enjoyed the R&D.
  
• Kono reiterates that Campaign and VR modes are 100% discrete, and hits some familiar talking points.

That's about it, folks!

The game Kono paints in all his interviews seems very ambitious, both structurally and thematically. I'm very curious to see how his team will execute on all these ideas. It'd be nice if they put some fluff material on the official site, but at this point we may well simply be waiting until the game is out.

Of course if they do post anything, you'll hear about it from us. Feel free to hit us up in our Discord or the comments if you have any questions.

Hello everyone! First up, NamDai decided to release a new trailer for Ace Combat 7 at Gamescom. There's little new material in it, but it still provides some food for thought. We're not the kind of blog that does gameplay, plot, or visual analysis, but there's a few things about the localization that deserve clarification and discussion.

"Spare 8! Do not engage the enemy!"
A fine line that lost a bit of data in English. In the Japanese, they forbid Spare 8 from getting into a dogfight with the Flanker, rather than exhorting him not to engage. The result for Spare 8 is the same, but the nuance is different, since it implies that the reason AWACS doesn't want the Super Bug to engage is because the "experimental" Flanker is especially dangerous in a knife fight, and not for some other reason.

"…clearly an illegal and unforgivable violation of our nation's sovereignty."
Maybe there just wasn't enough space to put the whole line in subtitles, but that entire clause is gone. Japanese Cosette simply says that "the great power Osea encroaches on us from overseas, building a titanic orbital elevator within our sovereign territory." I guess we'll see whether it's a trailer-specific quirk or whether the localization team was being bombastic again.

"Concentrate on him! Shoot him down!"
-was in Japanese "Get that guy! We can turn it around if we get that one plane!"

The English lines in this trailer aren't so bad, but they do seem to diverge in ways which are at least mildly important. So long as the final product is good, I think us fans can forgive a few liberties beyond what's needed for good flow here and there, but I hope they're being careful. As you'll see, translating Sunao Katabuchi's work isn't something to be taken lightly.

Sunao Katabuchi recently wrote and directed a wonderful film called In This Corner of the World. It's about the life of a young, newly wedded woman named Suzu Hojo (nee. Urano) in the town of Kure - a major Japanese military port in the Hiroshima prefecture - during the final days of World War Two. It's a simple story of a woman and her extended family told as realistically as possible, with no desire to shock or impress. No more, no less.

With realism as its main goal, it's also an honest examination of the effects the war had on the daily lives and attitudes of the people who lived then. Suzu takes a lot of pride in continuing to live her life as the American bombing campaign continues, seeing the surrender as "giving in to violence," even as the movie makes clear that the war is hopeless and brings only needless suffering. Earlier, Suzu takes cover with her father-in-law Entaro and her young niece Harumi during an American carrier strike against ships in the harbor. Entaro points to an N1K-J Shiden dogfighting an American plane, and expresses his pride in having worked to increase the output of the Nakajima Homare engine powering it to 2000hp. Young Harumi struggles to scream over the engine noise and explosions, "what about the American engines?" The noise consumes her question.

As you might guess, there's a certain thematic through-line between In This Corner of the World and Ace Combat 04, which IGN JP asked Katabuchi about in a November 2016 interview:

– What were the circumstances that led you to be involved with the Ace Combat series?
The people in Namco’s Ace Combat team knew Eiko Tanaka (representative of Studio 4ºC, which produced Princess Arete), and this led to talk of whether or not to have them make the in-game images. When Tanaka heard it was a fighter game, he decided to come and talk with them together, and I get the sense that's where they hammered things out. It was either after the first screening or when we were dubbing Arete, but the very next day I was off to go see a Japanese Navy airstrip in Yokosuka.

– I guess that was your disposition for painstaking research at play. What kind of tone does Ace Combat 04: Shattered Sky [sic] (released in 2001) have, being made in that manner?
Ace Combat 04 is a close up of an ace pilot in the jet age. I knew I wanted to make a story like those you find in military aviation history, so following from that he’d have to be like this, and like that, and when it all came together I figured I could make him the so-called “final boss.” And yet, I wanted to make him a sympathetic person in the highest degree. That’s not really something done in games. But it’s war, after all. Isn’t it a good thing for there to be life in the opponent you’re taking down, and to make the moment when you defeat the strongest foe a sad one for the player? That’s how I thought of it.

– It felt very fresh at the time.
Maybe it’s because I did it without knowing anything about games. Is it really okay to have an enemy pilot, create a neighborhood, have a young boy and girl protagonist become involved, and then have this person appear as the last boss to be taken out? I was torn, but I decided it’d be for the best. Hayao Miyazaki often draws people who fly, but Ace Combat 04 had a ground level perspective: a boy who lost his family when a destroyed plane crashed into his house. This boy can only look up at the sky. Suzu doesn’t fly herself in In This Corner of the World either. She’s the kind of person who doesn’t even fly in dreams or fantasies. The sky above her is where horrors come from. Maybe there’s a direct line from Ace Combat to this depiction. I think people who play Ace Combat will understand.

​Alright, we've got another interview courtesy of 4gamer, and as far as interviews with Japanese press go this one is pretty interesting. It touches on a lot of the same material, but the interviewer does ask about some things that were never touched on elsewhere.

• The game takes place at the same period as ACX, but the two aren’t connected in any meaningful way. Kono is insistent that this game is a continuation of AC04, AC5, and AC6 (but never mentions ACZ).
• Kono says that it's better to use VR with a control stick because it helps with motion sickness. At first blush this might sound like “Hey, buy our control stick,” but this is actually a well understood facet of VR. It helps with discomfort to have the motions of your real hands and your VR hands be as similar as possible.
• Of course there will be superplanes, and according to Kono, they will have new "gimmicks.” Kono takes this moment to remind us how difficult making new models in high res is, which may be a very Japanese way of saying “Now don’t expect too many.” Or it could mean nothing.
• We already knew this, but post stall maneuvers are a thing, and they aren't just "press X to kulbit." You can enter post stall by entering stall conditions in level flight and raising the nose and throttle slightly at the same time. However, Kono says that there probably won't be any real applications to this besides just being cool.
• There will be multiplayer, but Kono is tight lipped about it. My guess is they're not planning much, but we'll see.
• There is plane customization, but surprisingly, it's only a new game plus thing. They were worried about players playing the same mission over and over again the first time through the campaign just to grind for parts
• Kono reiterates all the things he said about clouds before, and clarifies that weather won’t significantly affect gameplay. It would distract too much from the core pillar of flying around and shooting things.
• That said, another design goal is to make the landscape seem alive as well. His example is that in the demo, if you descend below the clouds, you can see squalls over the tropic jungle, and if you fly low enough, you’ll see startled flamingoes taking flight.
• Kono acknowledges the problems with getting new people into flight action games and says their marketing strategy is to - as in the E3 trailer - sell it as a “jet fighter game full of drama.”
• He goes on to say that there are two stages to training players on Ace Combat: how to control the plane, and combat. If you make the first stage too simplified, you chase away all the previous players.
• He reiterates previous interviews, stating that the player’s development as an ace pilot is an experience most associated with RPGs, going on to say that Japanese fans should appreciate that aspect in particular.
• Kono promises that there are actual reasons for the Kestrel II’s appearance. He says this idea developed after consulting with Katabuchi, which raises all kinds of questions about his involvement. He makes it sound like it was he who came up with the idea to include a “Kestrel II” and Katabuchi’s job to make sense of it.

It would be very nice to find an interview with Katabuchi or the nominal game director Yuta Hamanka, but Katabuchi is busy doing the circuit for In This Corner of the World, and at any rate Kono seems to have either been anointed or anointed himself as the face of the franchise. I did find one recent interview with Katabuchi that brings up AC04 though, which could be the subject of another post.

For now though, if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or check out the discord.