While it took a while to arrive, Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon’s marketing cycle is finally spinning up for the last month before launch. Many fans are still waiting on uncut mission gameplay, and any details on the Arena and multiplayer modes promised for this complete mecha package. Plenty of events are already lining up demo kiosks to show Armored Core 6 off, so answers to the community’s questions should pile up faster than they know what to do with them.

In the meantime, San Diego Comic-Con 2023 is featuring an Armored Core booth with a life-sized machine replica and a new trailer was released to coincide with this. Said trailer offers no additional gameplay, but rather focuses on the story leading into Armored Core 6. In particular, it shows off what a mission could look like, and reveals how the player character and their handler Walter meet in what may be the first cutscene. The circumstances are some of the darkest in the Armored Core franchise, and much of that is thanks to the return of an old concept that already capitalized on the setting’s worst aspects.

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Human Plus Was Old Armored Core's Dystopian Take On Easy Mode

In the original Armored Core, Ravens were expected to manage their resources even more than modern Souls players. Everything had a cost, from buying parts to taking damage and even firing most weapons. If players didn't pay attention, they could spiral deeper and deeper into debt. After a certain point, the Human Plus program is forced on them. This begins a fresh campaign complete with significant tune-ups and abilities that could not be used otherwise. It’s a great easy mode, arguably making the game more fun, and Armored Core generations with both Human Plus and save transfers can keep the state across titles.

Helpful as it is, Human Plus is fraught with unnerving details. For one, the technology is experimental, invasive, and sometimes not understood by contemporary humans, making its use detrimental to the mind and body. Several confirmed Human Plus pilots are psychotic, and one utters a dying warning to the player that they may share this fate. Human Plus is gone by the third Armored Core generation, but lore from the fourth reveals that all NEXT pilots go through a Human Plus equivalent to neurologically link with their mechs. Armored Core is grim on its brightest days, but Human Plus really hammers home what humanity is willing to do for power.

Armored Core 6 Reinforces Its Tone Through Human Plus

Unfortunately, Fires of Rubicon has brought something like Human Plus back, and players can’t avoid it this time. Unit 621, the presumed player character, is a wrapped-up body wired to a mech's head, with several circular lights nearby resembling those in the Armored Core 1 Human Plus cutscene. Their only signs of life are brain activity on a nearby surgeon’s tablet, and the machine suspended above them turning on when Walter has them “woken up”. Considering that Walter refers to Unit 621 as "it", the player character may be little more than organic piloting AI.

This raises a whole host of questions, like how the player got there and whether every numbered pilot in the trailer was similarly dehumanized, but answers will have to wait. For now, it’s clear where Walter got his “infamous” title, and that Armored Core 6 may be FromSoftware's bleakest game yet. It should be interesting for Armored Core 6 to explore just how much control players have in this state, and how feasible a rebellion is when their mech is all they are.

Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon will be released on August 25 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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