Armored Core VI: Freeing the Dog

The dog. This is who you are on Rubicon-3, or at least who the pilot you play in Armored Core VI is introduced as. You go by many names. Never is your character given a history, emotion, or a voice, but by god do they have names.  C4-621, Raven, G13, Tourist, The Wallclimber, Buddy. What does this array of names mean? After all, just because you're a silent protagonist doesn't mean you're not a character. Link goes by Link, Gordon Freeman is Gordon Freeman. 621 however, is less than a person. Less than a dog. Raven is a weapon, pointed at whatever the holder wants to crush.  G13 gains the respect of the Vespers and various groups struggling for power on Rubicon purely through the might of their own destructive capacity. Tourist is perhaps the most fitting of these names. The only concrete history we have on Raven is that they're an outsider to Rubicon, a pilot with unstable fourth generation augmentations that leave them essentially unable to exist as a human being, and only able to exist as a machine of war. This literal dehumanisation of the player character is reflective of real world depersonalisation that occurs in zones of conflict. It is key to the thematic messaging of Armored Core VI, and it is a key component of the Armored Core series as a whole. There are essentially no human faces ever shown in the series. The only purpose of humanity in this grimdark future FromSoft has built, is solely to pilot machines of profit. Be it the workers striking in the first mission of the first game, to the Rubicon Liberation Front members you execute while searching for a callsign at the start of VI, anyone in this world not functioning for profit will be terminated under the heel of the custom built pink hello kitty-decal-covered monstrosity you've built, funded by a megacorporation. If humans aren't existing in the interest of these faceless corporations, they are crushed. If they are, they still aren't people, as it were. They are enforcers of the law of social Darwinism, never seen without the mechanical cage built for them and in some cases (such as the player's), by them.

Halfway through chapter 3, after defeating the Raven whose name you stole, Ayre tells you that the name Raven is not an individual's callsign, but a title. Passed down through generations of mercenaries, the name Raven embodies free will, the ability and strength to choose what to fight for. It's touching when Ayre says that she will proudly call you that, if that's what your title embodies. But it's clearly an untrue representation of what you have been to this point. Throughout the game you are consistently at the mercy of whoever is paying for your services. Be it Balam hiring you to attack the Rubicon Liberation Front or the RLF hiring you right after, you are only free to choose which pay check you'll cash in. Even then, 621's agency only really extends to buying parts for the AC. Obviously, this is a gameplay function, but thematically it serves to underline the lack of freedom G13 Raven possesses. They are almost literally, a cog in a machine who can only choose to build that machine further. The Wallclimber's array of names serves to underline this grim fact, by focusing the player's attention on Raven's lack of identity. This paradoxically, gives him a sense of personhood in the player's eyes. There may be no fixed identity, but the player character is distinctly something that is not the player. They have some sort of history that led them to 4th gen augmentations. There is a reason why Walter is your handler, even if we never see it. Hell, disregard that thing I said earlier about agency, because you do get to make decisions that alter the game's finale. These decisions manifest as a choice between two disparate missions, where completion of one will remove the other. However, these missions are still given to you by others, to follow the agenda of others. 621 has been just a pawn in the larger machinations of Rubicon's scarred landscape. 

Which makes it all the more interesting when the forever war that led to this scarred war-torn planet finds an abrupt truce in Chapter 3. The various factions Raven has been fighting for and against, namely the Balam and Arquebus corporations, the Rubicon Liberation Front, and Cinder Carla's RaD gang, band together against a common threat. It is never fully explained what the Planetary Closure Administration (PCA) is due to the way AC6 drip feeds story details to you, however we can assume they are some sort of interplanetary bureaucratic organisation going by their title. Whatever Planetary Closure entails, you can assume it is not a pleasant experience for those on the planet itself. As such, the fight against the PCA is not exactly disparate organisations banding together for the good of the planet, it is motivated by each organisation as a fight for self-preservation. Specifically, preservation of their autonomy and identities. This struggle is at the core (heh) of Armored Core VI through 621's arc and growth into themselves. As such, Chapter 3 acts as an externalisation of these core thematic messages, literalising Raven's struggle to find autonomy and a sense of self. At the chapter's finale, Raven bands together with a crew of Vespers and Redguns to take on the Ice Worm, an autonomous C-Weapon controlled by the PCA, essentially their trump card. Throughout this mission, 621 is the key, carrying the only weapon able to disable the Ice Worm's shield and allow V. IV Rusty a.k.a. the guy who calls Raven "buddy", to take it down with a fuck-off railgun. It's probably the most "set-piecey" the game feels, and afterwards, the PCA flee. A resounding victory. But just as war depersonalises it's participants, it also has the tendency to go on. Arquebus steal most of the remaining PCA tech, and bring Balam to heel, forcing them to flee too.

Now this is where one of those decisions comes into play. You are given a choice in Chapter 4. Ambush two of the Vespers and piss off Arquebus, or enter Balam's base of operations and eliminate the Redguns. Both these missions are key to understanding the growth of 621 into Raven. If you take on the Vespers, you must kill V.V Hawkins and V.VII Pater accompanied by the military leader of the RLF, Middle Flatwell. He has specifically contacted you due to your reputation and even though you are a mercenary who has solely fought for the highest bidder, by taking this mission you paint a picture of 621 as an anti-establishment rebel. No longer are you working for the highest bidder, you are working for the cause. If you don't want that romanticism, you take on G1 Michigan, he who deemed you G13. As you tear through his forces he screams at his men, that you are the Wormkiller, you are the Wallclimber, you are the longest surviving G13, and that in essence, Raven is not to be fucked with. It's a more affecting mission than the Vespers one due to Michigan's force of personality. Regardless, the choice you make adds something to your character. It adds a sense of identity that doesn't really exist in the preceding chapters, where the only choice you make is between destroying one big robot or a couple of smaller ones. These choices are handed to you by Walter in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 and 5's (i'll get to 5's don't you worry) choices meanwhile, ask the player, and by extension 621/Raven/G13/The Wallclimber/The Wormkiller/Tourist, to make a judgement based on morality, economics, and personal investment. It's a type of choice I haven't seen in games much, the ambiguous kind, the kind that may affect little (as these two do) but reflects your stance on various topics through the click of a button. I hesitate to use this word, but it's realistic. It's not a blue prompt red prompt kind of thing, it's a deliberately designed reflection of your own judgement. Most importantly, it's subtle. It affects little in game which one you choose, but by framing the Arquebus mission as paying 200000 COAM more, it allows the player to reflect upon whether it's right to take the money from the strongest faction on Rubicon to wipe out their only competitor, even if it will fill your coffer substantially. Is Raven a merc at heart, or are they something else?

That question is brought to the fore in Chapter 5. The finale of the game requires you to pick between two missions that will each show a different ending based on which one you choose. One is given by Cinder Carla, and going by the course of the game, this is where the whole thing has been heading towards towards. It pays more too. Logical choice right? She wants you to help defend the spaceship you helped her steal with Walter's tips so she can use it to destroy the Vascular Plant. A giant machine under Arquebus' control that is sucking up the Coral from Rubicon at a rapid rate, giving them the potential for a stranglehold on the AC universe with regards to energy with the risk of massive explosions spread across it due to Coral's unstable nature. However, Ayre knows that most of the Coral on Rubicon is there and is filled with sentient life. The Coral is not just a fuel source, it's beings. So she asks you to refuse Overseer, the organisation committed to destroying Coral after the Fires of Ibis, led initially by Walter and now by Carla after his death at the hands of Arquebus. Ayre needs you to save her people. The only being to treat you with respect and dignity the whole game, to treat you like a person and not a simple tool, asks you to take the 81000 COAM (compared to 400000). So, do you save the only real friend you've made on this journey, or do you take the money? If you side with Carla, Ayre tries to stop you from blowing up her and her people. Unfortunately, you have been built into an unstoppable machine of war. So you kill your only friend and the majority of her people. You blow up the plant, creating "The Fires of Raven", magnitudes more destructive than the Fires of Ibis that preceded the story. Arguably to protect humanity, sure, but it's an argument that is built on the backs of god knows how many people died in the Fires of Raven and almost the entirety of the coral species.

Making the choice to help Ayre though, has you taking your destiny into your own hands by eliminating all factions related to the exploitation of Coral. This means killing Cinder Carla, V.II Snail and Handler Walter himself, driven mad by Arquebus' Coral experimentation on his body. The hand that holds 621 being bound to his own leash. It's similarly ironic then, that he depersonalises Ayre in the same way he did 621 throughout the battle, referring to her as "kindling for the pyre" after stating that he can finally see her. Walter hasn't just been assigning missions this whole game, as seen by the Fires of Raven, he had his own. To bring closure to the saga of Coral through it's destruction. In this ending Walter acts as a foil for Raven, not a guiding force. He is unwilling or even unable to break free of his chains as Raven did, putting the mission to destroy Coral above all else. Even suspecting that Ayre exists throughout the game, even after directly seeing her, he can't let go of the mission. To be clear, the mission is genocide of a species and mass multiplanetary extinction "for the greater good". Regardless, the game's messaging is clear regarding Walter's fate. At the end of it all, Walter snaps out of it somewhat. He comments on your friendship with Ayre, and allows himself to be consumed in the explosion of Xylem. He treats Raven and by extension Ayre, like a person, finally. There are shades of this throughout the game, but none as pronounced as this. Each positive framing earlier in the game is tied to Raven's ability as one of his hounds, but here, it's unconditional. He seems to genuinely respect 621, for a brief moment there's even a glimmer of pride. As Xylem falls into the ocean, the people of Rubicon rejoice. Raven is known as the Liberator of Rubicon, and Ayre pledges allegiance to you for whatever comes next. 

What comes next is revealed in new game ++, however I won't be delving into it here. Instead, I'd like to draw your attention to how 621's growth is framed as distinct from you, the player. The player is the driving force behind their choices, your moral compass determines which route you take throughout the story. However, 621 goes from a mere tool for whatever organisation wants you to wreck shit to becoming someone caught up in the fate of planets and species. Through each ending, Raven is it's driving force. From a dog, to a protagonist. From a merc, to a raven. Unchained, carrying the winds of change on the dog's wings.