Elden Ring dev’s Armored Core revival gets a release date and gorgeous gameplay

Elder ring developer FromSoftware’s revival of the Armored Core franchise launches this summer. The latest trailer for Armored Core 6: Burning Rubicon confirms an August 25 launch date for the game, while also showing off the initial gameplay and cryptically teasing the story.

An official description of that story makes everything much clearer. Here’s the setup for it Armored core 6: Firing of Rubiconfrom publisher Bandai Namco:

On the remote planet Rubicon 3, a mysterious new substance called “Coral” was discovered. As an energy source, this substance was expected to dramatically improve humanity’s technological and communication capabilities. Instead, it created a catastrophe that engulfed the planet and surrounding stars in flames and storms, forming a Burning Star System. Nearly half a century later, Coral has resurfaced on Rubicon 3, a planet now contaminated and sealed off by the catastrophe. Alien companies and resistance groups fight for control of the substance. The player infiltrates Rubicon as an independent mercenary and gets into a battle over content with the corporations and other factions.

Armored Core 6: Burning Rubicon was officially unveiled in December. The developer promises that the new Armored Core will not be just another Soulsborne game with mecha. Hidetaka Miyazaki, president of FromSoftware, said last year that his company is “looking closely at the core concept of Armored Core and what made that series special,” applying its recent game development experience and “reexamining it along with those core concepts of Armored Core .”

Bandai Namco says players will control “highly mobile and highly customizable mechas” in Armored core 6. The game’s “fast-paced battles” can only be overcome, the publisher said, by “master[ing] rapidly changing combat distances, using the environment for protective cover, and omnidirectional combat to overcome challenging enemies and situations.

Sekiro: Shadows die twice director Masaru Yamamura leads the new Armored Core. He says Armored core 6 “part[s] the same essence of battle like aggressive, speed change and action-oriented fighting” with FromSoft’s samurai action game.

Armored Core 6: Burning Rubicon coming to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC (via Steam), Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.