Armored Core 6 is all about customising your mech and fighting bosses

A recent interview with Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki and Sekiro lead designer Masaru Yamamura has given us our first details on Armored Core 6.

One of the biggest reveals at The Game Awards last week was that FromSoftware is finally making a new Armored Core, officially called Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon (presumably unrelated to the fruit juice drink). In classic FromSoft fashion, the reveal trailer was just a mysterious cinematic that didn't really tell us all that much. Thankfully, a recent interview between Miyazaki, Yamamura, and IGN has given us our first details on what we can expect from this sequel.

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While Miyazaki did do a bit of directing on the project, he was only there at the beginning, Yamamura took over and is the main director on the game. Of course one of the biggest questions on everyone's mind is whether Armored Core 6 would be like the Soulsborne games, and Miyazaki quickly put any notion of that to bed. "No, we've not been making a conscious effort to try to direct it towards more Soulsborne type gameplay. First of all, let me just make that clear," Miyazaki explained.

According to Miyazaki, with Armored Core 6 the team went back to look at the core concept of the series, and what made it special. "We wanted to take the assembly aspect, assembling and customising your own mech - your AC - and then being able to exact a high level of control over the assembled mech." Throughout the interview, both Miyazaki and Yamamura emphasised that customising your mech will once again be a big part of this sequel, and that having more resources compared to the previous entries will flesh this one out a lot.

Aside from customising your mech, Yamamura said that "boss battles are the highlight of the game in this title." There is still some FromSoft DNA in there of course, as you'll still need to "read the enemy's moves," with "both the enemy and your own machine" being "aggressive and violent in their attacks."

Don't expect a big open-world title like Elden Ring though, as Yamamura did specify that the game will have a "mission-based structure to the single-player. It's not fully open – it’s going to stick with that mission-based structure." You might have noticed that single-player was mentioned there, and Yamamura did also confirm that there will be a versus mode, though didn't provide any specific details on what that will be like.

Single-player is apparently the big focus, but you don't need to have played the other games despite this being the sixth numbered title in the series. "We'd like to think of this as a completely fresh new story," explained Yamamura. "There are no direct links with the previous games in terms of continuing story. This is a brand-new setting and a brand-new story for players to enjoy."

The full interview is worth a read to get some more, smaller details on what to expect from the next Armored Core.