This piece contains heavy spoilers for Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon.
Armored Core 6is a game about choices. How the player chooses to design their AC to best fit each new situation, be it a towering mechanised spider or a missile-belted physical manifestation of bullet hell. How the various corporations, factions and individual mercenaries choose to treat the player, and the consequences these choices have.
But most importantly, there is the key question of its narrative: what is done with the Coral, a precious and dangerous alien substance that left Rubicon 3 in such a scorched state. DespiteFromSoftwareoffering several choices as part of Armored Core 6’s New Game+, your actions will always result in widespread, unnecessary suffering. Begging whether the protagonist we control can even be called a hero at all.
When the protagonist arrives on Rubicon 3, they are referred to solely as C4-621; a soulless classification serving as nothing more than a serial number; just one of many augmented humans, ridding them of their identity. Early on, 621 steals a license from a long-destroyed mech and its presumed dead pilot: Raven. Fans will recognise this as the title traditionally held by player-controlled pilots, carrying with it a legacy of being the one to drive the narrative of each past game; the title of Raven is specifically noted to be “passed down to generations of mercenaries who champion the free will it stands for”.
The Raven that 621 supplants the identity of is later revealed to have been responsible for leaking data that eventually led to the Balam and Arquebus corporations invading Rubicon 3 for Coral prior to the events of the game, and has been battling the authoritarian PCA alone in the background ever since. Narrative-defining actions that not only proves Raven’s ability to choose their own destiny, but also parallels the protagonist’s own noble crusade against authority, suggesting that they are a mirror protagonist of their own unseen heroic story.
Armored Core 6 might consist of relatively short missions, but in typical FromSoftware fashion hides a grand and mystifying narrative that asks some big questions of the player.
On a meta level, the recurring appearance of Raven’s AC NIGHTFALL as the focus of promotional material (in cinematic trailers and on the box art) led many to presume Raven was the protagonist. Yet, when they are inevitably murdered at the hands of 621, their title is wholly usurped, leaving this alternate hero of Rubicon 3 lost to history, while the thief of their identity flies off with their unearned legacy on borrowed wings.
Far from Raven’s mysterious persona, Rubicon’s other hero is pushed by the narrative as a saviour: Rusty, the Vespers’ ace and Arquebus’ chained lone wolf. First met while climbing the Wall in his Arquebus-made AC STEEL HAZE, Rusty sets himself apart from every other character in the narrative for one simple reason: he treats 621 like a human being. 621’s closest acquaintances at this point are handler Walter, who treats them as a disposable hound, and a few mouthpieces for the corporations, all of whom despise their current stance of working purely for credits, personal ideology and morality of their client be damned.
However, Rusty immediately refers to 621 as “buddy”, treating them with the warmth of a close comrade, deliberately taking hits from the JUGGERNAUT and letting 621 become revered as ‘The Wallclimber’. Rusty even takes the initiative to inform 621 that Arquebus was planning to sacrifice both himself and 621 atop the Wall They remain a force of good on Rubicon, assisting 621 against the PCA, taking out the Ice Worm, and never ceasing to compliment their skills when forced into duelling them in the Depths.
Rusty’s final, and most vital, appearances arrive during the game’s many endings. In the Liberator of Rubicon path, he joins his buddy in taking down the Xylem. Prior to this point, Rusty has been implied to be in contact with the Rubicon Liberation Front. In this path, Rusty makes his allegiances clear, abandoning Arquebus to join 621 and the RLF in their final stand against the corporations and the PCA. It’s notable that Rusty arrives in an upgraded non-Arquebus AC, whose new emblem is similar to his previous muzzled wolf emblem, but with one key difference: the muzzle is off. Rusty is free to fight for his beliefs.
Despite his tireless fight for the good of Rubicon and his final grand return with the RLF, he is unceremoniously assassinated by Walter. Similarly, in the Alea Iacta Est path, Rusty simply dies offscreen, eliminated by ALLMIND as a mere hindrance to its plan. The title of ‘Liberator of Rubicon’, bestowed upon 621 by Rusty himself, should fall solely on his shoulders, yet it is robbed by 621 from Rusty’s grave. The message being sent by the narrative is clear: no good deed goes unpunished, and Rubicon 3 is no place for heroes.
Rusty’sis most tragic fate lies in the Fires of Raven path. With 621 having chosen to ignite the Coral and eviscerate Rubicon entirely for the greater good of ending the Coral War, Rusty is forced to defend his home. He holds himself responsible for saving Rubicon and stopping 621. Despite it all, Rusty’s last word, reserved for 621, is “buddy”. Of all their feats, 621’s most impressive was to form a genuine connection on Rubicon. But they kill him in cold blood. Regardless of the player’s choices, Rusty will always die.
The message being sent by the narrative is clear: no good deed goes unpunished, and Rubicon 3 is no place for heroes.
Raven and Rusty are far from the only characters to die at the hands of 621. While they naturally pick off many pilots and soldiers, these deaths are somewhat justified. However, the weight of their sins increases exponentially in the narrative’s three possible endings. While they vary hugely in specific consequences, they all hold one factor in common: 621’s responsibility for the deaths and/or suffering of countless innocent people.
The Fires of Raven is the most explicit, seeing 621 recreate the Fires of Rubicon that previously wiped out its civilisation on an even larger scale to cease the corporations’ endless fight for the resource of Coral. Igniting the Coral reduces Rubicon to an ashen wasteland and murders every living being. While 621 succeeds in their aim to end the Coral war by forcing the PCA and corporations off Rubicon, it’s deliberately left uncertain if this ‘greater good’ was truly worth the merciless murder of an entire planet. You’re a monster, not a hero, something the epilogue makes clear.
On the contrary, the Liberator of Rubicon is the closest thing to a ‘good’ ending.. The noble death of the anti-Coral extremist Walter at the hands of his hound; the 621-led uprising of the RLF against the corporations and the prevention of a Coral ignition – come together to form a seemingly optimistic end, in which Ayre thanks 621 for saving her and Rubicon as a whole, hoping for a future in which humans and Coral can coexist peacefully. Despite the RLF and 621’s heroism, there is no war won in this path; no true closure to the conflict.
The corporations have been temporarily driven off, but will surely return with greater force to continue mining the Coral, wiping out the “rabble-roused locals”, as Arquebus’ V.II Snail disgustedly refers to them. Human greed, exacerbated by capitalism’s need to maintain an iron grip over precious resources, will prevail and keep Rubicon locked in a forever war without winners.
Finally, comes Alea Iecta Est, deemed as the ‘true’ ending due to only being accessible after the player has seen the Fires and Liberator endings at least once. The mercenary support system ALLMIND reveals itself to be bearing its own plans to advance humanity. Its aim to initiate Coral Release – an event which would irreversibly combine humanity with the Coral consciousness, achieving true symbiosis – is explained to be for humanity’s benefit and viewed as the next stage of evolution.
While ALLMIND is eliminated by 621, they make the choice to initiate Coral Release of their own volition. Once the Coral singularity dissipates, 621’s consciousness awakens inside an AC slowly powering up, surrounded by several others doing the same, as Ayre confirms the symbiosis has succeeded. A new race has been created, a perfect symbiosis of human and Coral linked to ACs; no longer an extension of its pilot, but instead acting as consciousness itself. For all intents and purposes, every single human across the stars has been killed; transformed into something new, something unknown.
Armored Core 6 is about choices. But despite the many paths presented to us over the course of its narrative, all roads lead to one inevitable truth: Rubicon, and humanity as a whole, is doomed to war, suffering and death. No amount of mecha power fantasy or indomitable human spirit can change this, and resistance is futile. You are not the hero.
