Armored Core VI: Design & Sound of Rubicon

I wanted to write a bit about Armored Core VI and its sound design. 

In the previous post, I wrote about how I had started up a spreadsheet acting as a cue sheet I’m assembling purely from playing a game, and how the first subject of these observations was the 2023 From Software mecha-action game Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon. I’ve been a fan of From Software since I picked up Dark Souls III at launch back on March 24th, 2016. I’d had my eye on it for a while, and though I wasn’t exactly sure what I was getting into, I knew that they had fiercely devoted fans, and that their games were all incredible. With it coming up to a staggering 8 years since that release, I’ve played and loved Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice [2019] and Elden Ring [2022], and while I’d heard of the Armored Core series, I hadn’t actually played any, or any mech game for that matter. But I trusted the developers and waited with bated breath until release in August, which lo behold, it was incredible. From the worldbuilding to the customization and the variety and speed of combat, I place it up alongside Sekiro as the best of their combat designs (though I do think Sekiro edges out slightly better). 

The game’s core loop is as follows: 

Play Sortie missions for credits, use credits to purchase more/new mech parts, tailor your mech to the next mission

There are several other core loops that the player will find themselves in as well, with the Arena giving the player a means of progressing through a 1v1 gauntlet of NPC Armored Cores, all of which have different builds that will force the player to change their approach to the fight. Progressing in the Arena will give the player OS Chips, which are used to upgrade stats and unlock different abilities for your mech. The player’s ability to progress in the Arena is limited by where they are in the main story as well, with more fights being unlocked as they play through their first playthrough. Upon reaching New Game Plus, an additional set of Arena fights will unlock, progressing once again as the player goes through the story with new missions and choices along the way. Completing a second full playthrough, the player will unlock the final few Arena fights with narrative consequences tied to the third ending. 

The genius of these two systems of the Sortie missions and Arena lies in their connection to each other and the meta-game progression in the garage. A player could theoretically just run through the campaign a single time without touching the Arena, but doing so would mean missing out on key upgrades and abilities, ultimately making for a more difficult time for no real reason. The player is pushed to complete Arena missions as they come up to maximize their potential damage output and survivability, thus being able to keep up with the increasing challenge in the later chapters. Naturally, with a system like that being so tied to upgrades, limiting the player to a few fights before needing to progress the campaign to unlock the next few is exactly how the developers pace out the spread of rewards, and pushes the players to keep progressing to get those rewards. Upon reaching the start of playthrough 2, myself and likely most players would notice that there are still lots of OS Tuning upgrades that can’t be fully unlocked without more chips, leading to the conclusion that progressing the story missions again would lead to more Arena fights, ergo more chips. With the third ending being the final ending one can get, it follows that urging players subtly to get there through additional content like the Arena and its ties to the story would be a key part of the design of the progression. 

Moving away from game design and moving towards sound design, I’m going to be referencing my observations that I documented on a spreadsheet which I’ll put screenshots of throughout. 

The sound design of Armored Core VI is phenomenal, and a massive part of that in such a chaotic game is how readable it is. From the main menu to the garage to gameplay, the UI sounds occupy much of the higher frequencies and are often quick chirps, with the lows and mids taken up by the heavy sounds of gunfire, explosions, and rocket thrusters strapped to thousand-pound machines moving at mach speeds. This separation is common, with Doom Eternal [2020] being at the top of my mind as an example, and similarly to Doom, this game’s frenetic action and need for extremely fast problem solving and inputs necessitate clear and readable UI and audio design. In gameplay, there’s a huge swathe of UI sounds, with everything covered from soft lock grabbing and releasing enemies, entering and exiting optimal range for your weapons triggering the red reticle, missile lock ons, and more. Each of these have their own unique chirps as well, which considering their variety, similar functions and sound profile, and the chaos of gameplay requiring them to be clear, it’s amazing that they each stand out from each other. 

Another fantastic element of the sound design is how the player can change the sounds they hear depending on the parts being used in their mech. The more noticeable changes are with legs, changing footstep sounds, movement starts, jumping, and boosting sounds, with tank legs in particular changing these quite significantly. The generator also changes a few things, with the visual difference being the colour of the jet trails from the boosters, but the other difference is between the Coral generators and the rest, with those having increased performance with the Expansions, which are limited abilities with huge benefits in combat. Due to story reasons, the Coral generators are significantly rarer, using a volatile and powerful form of energy that the game is centered around, so those being stronger and sounding different was the natural way for those to go. 

To wrap up this post, I’ll touch on the mixing a bit. Typically, a game mix will prioritize the important sounds first, then any gameplay sounds that are inputted by the player, then the environmental sounds and anything else. With Armored Core having hundreds of sounds playing in intense combat and boss fights, this was something that definitely needed more attention than it might in another From Software game like Elden Ring. I already brought up the frequency distribution of the sounds, with more room on the high end for those important UI elements, in particular the warning beeps that tell the player to get out of the way of a big or explosive incoming projectile, but the mixing also seems to push them through the mix, potentially through side-chain compression with a quick attack and release. Alongside this, the environmental sounds like trees being knocked down or objects being destroyed are almost always mixed lower than everything else, with the exception of set pieces and some of the environmental explosions. Trees snapping and shipping containers getting launched having punctual sounds absolutely would’ve added to the power fantasy, though ultimately the amount of sounds that take higher priority means that usually these don’t get through in gameplay. 

Thanks for checking this out, I hope that this analysis was helpful, either for game design or sound design. Alongside that I really hope that the screenshots from the spreadsheet I made was helpful, I know it’s definitely helping me and has already come in handy.