Mech pilots have emotions, too. Armored Core VI is a sport about blowing up all the things in sight with a smorgasbord of overpowered weapons. But it’s additionally a sport about useless, self-righteous males who assume it’s their God-given proper to take over a planet. While you solely know them as codenames, characters like Snail and Handler Walter vie for energy all through the sport’s story.
But in a stroke of brilliance, absolutely the last boss of Armored Core VI isn’t any of these huge personalities, however quite the pettiest weasel you would think about, somebody whose very existence facilities round spite for the participant. It’s a subversive twist that cleverly reimagines a longstanding trope of the mecha style, and creates essentially the most unforgettable video-game villain of 2023.
Buy Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon: Amazon | Best Buy | GameCease
You first meet G5 Iguazu just some missions into AC6, when the participant, generally known as “621,” helps the Redguns assault a dam complicated. He makes a robust impression, bemoaning the truth that he now has to babysit a “freelancer.” Your first time via the sport, Iguazu merely looks like a bottom-of-the-barrel grunt, the whiny character who’s inevitably one of many first to chunk the bullet.
While that’s true in your first playthrough, issues with Iguazu get actually fascinating in your second and third instances via the sport. This is the place you begin to be taught extra about him—and the way a lot he despises your very existence.
More than a rival
Data logs reveal that Iguazu was once a back-alley gambler who misplaced huge, and have become an augmented human to repay his money owed. This then led to him being recruited by the Redguns, and coming head to head with 621. At first he’s merely irritated by you, however as he grows extra conscious of your piloting expertise, the hate begins creeping in.
As you betray and dismantle the Redguns, Iguazu voices his open resentment of your expertise and your freedom. You, the participant, are all the things Iguazu can by no means be. You’re a grasp of your personal future, whereas Iguazu finds himself caught in a struggle he cares little about, unable to free himself from its shackles. Every single interplay you have got with Iguazu, you may see his resentment rising, little by little.
After the Redguns are formally dismantled, he takes a contract contract and launches a shock ambush on you. Ironically, he’s utterly unaware of the AI named All-Mind, which has been pulling the strings all alongside. His revenge plot foiled, in absolute desperation he takes a “take care of the satan,” letting All-Mind increase him into the right killing machine. He believes his freedom with the singular purpose of spiteing you the participant, your demise the one factor on his thoughts.
Inhuman nature
All this culminates within the defining second that cements Iguazu as a villain for the ages. The finish of your third playthrough of AC6 reveals all of the machinations of All-Mind, and as you strategy the ultimate battle you see Iguazu has been warped past recognition, now piloting an experimental swimsuit constructed from the entire simulation battles you accomplished. This implies that Iguazu’s new type is kind of actually constructed from all of the folks you killed and backstabbed to get thus far. He’s fairly actually the avatar of all the things and everybody that’s been thrown in opposition to you on Rubicon.
That collective will would possibly appear to be the ultimate boss, however in one other staggering twist, midway via the battle Iguazu realizes that your accomplice, Ayre, has been affecting his thoughts this whole time. Through sheer drive of will, he shuts All-Mind out and banishes Ayre from the struggle. Iguauzu realizes he’s misplaced his freedom, however in a last act he ranges the taking part in area, lastly paving the way in which for the one-on-one duel he’s craved all alongside.
Time and once more, the participant overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds, eschewing the plans of companies and highly effective folks within the identify of true freedom. Iguazu is the opposite aspect of that coin. He is a person with out free will who discovered goal via a singular obsession of destroying you. You took totally different paths however arrived on the similar place, the identical reply. For a sport that tells its story in such a minimalist method, it’s unexpectedly introspective and philosophical.
It’s not typically you see a villain actually signify the worst elements of us—not simply want for energy however pettiness, spite, jealousy, and hate. Iguazu is the right reflection of the participant themselves, and somebody that suffers for all of our actions. Even regardless of all that, he finds a second of respect within the last battle, a solidarity for the undesirable life that has been compelled on the each of you.
If you lose to Iguazu within the last battle, his final line sums issues up completely: “Leave a spot for me in Hell.”
Armored Core VI is out now for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.