We need more positive male role models like Rusty from Armored Core 6

It is hours after the events of Armored Core 6: Burning Rubicon before you feel a sensation of warmth. Until the mission ‘Operation Wallclimber’ you are nothing but a number, nothing but a hired gun on the other side of the barked orders.

In the cold steel garage that is your home on the deserted planet Rubicon, you are called ‘dog’, ‘dog’ and ‘merc’. More inhuman nicknames await you later. The closest identities your character, C4-621, has before “Operation Wallclimber” are “Raven”, the identity you stole, and “Gun 13”, a designation forced on you after you killed the man who that would have done. used that name.

But everything changes when Rusty of the Vespers arrives and calls you ‘buddy’.

(Ed. remark: This story contains spoilers for Armored core 6.)

It’s rusty Armored core 6‘s most crushing AC pilot. He’s effortlessly cool and introduced with appropriate panache: At the wall, Rusty swoops in on his Steel Haze mech, and the camera pans up his spindly Nachtreiher AC legs to reveal his emblem, a muzzled wolf. Unlike the rest of the characters in the game, Rusty treats you with respect and camaraderie in your first battle together – during which he also seems genuinely concerned about your well-being. He then shares private information about that mission as a warning about the companies’ intentions for you, making Rusty the first character on Rubicon who seems trustworthy.

Whatever impressive performance you deliver Armored core 6No matter how many slo-mo exploding boss fights you walk away from, none will match the earned composure of Rusty saying “I won’t miss” before slicing your shared opponent with a railgun during the battle against the Ice Worm.

Is it any wonder that players have done that? fell in love with Rusty, portraying him as a dashing, rebellious pilot? We never actually see Rusty’s face Armored core 6but every piece of fan art from the guy in Steel Haze looks 100% accurate to me at least.

FromSoftware’s dialogue for Rusty is made to make you fall in love with him. He boosts you up (“Walter knows how to pick ’em”; “Glad you’re on my side”; “Keep calm, buddy”) and gives you something to strive for.

“There is no greater threat than power without purpose,” Rusty tells you during a mission in which he is tasked with destroying 621 under the command of his corporate handlers at Arquebus. While Handler Walter can force the player to carry out missions for his clients, and Ayre can push them to do the right thing, it is Rusty who offers 621 a path to redemption, to that ‘goal’, to something more than just a other job. In the cold, unfeeling world of Armored core 6that’s something uniquely humanizing.

Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco

It isn’t until much later in the game, when the reality of two AC pilots working for competing interests comes to a head, that Rusty’s true importance – and true intentions – emerge. By means of Armored core 6‘s story, those intentions are telegraphed in dialogue and battle logs. Like other FromSoftware games, Rusty’s role in this story is initially opaque, but it is eventually revealed that he is a secret agent working for the Rubicon Liberation Front.

Near the end of the game, when Rusty reappears in a new mech, reborn as Steel Haze Ortus, he wears a different emblem. The wolf is unmasked this time, and depending on certain mission choices and which playthrough players are on, they will fight him or fight alongside him again, with the power of the Rubiconian Resistance behind Rusty and 621.

Rusty’s fate at the end of the game is unclear, as it should be for a man with his cool factor. But regardless of whether Rusty survives the events of Armored core 6, he’s the one who walks away clean. He is the hero of this story – not only because of his beliefs and actions, but also because he turned the player into a hero.

Stay calm, Rusty.