as much as i love the music in armored core 6 i still think for answers title screen is the best piece in the series. the dancing echoey piano as the strings swirl around it, overlapping melodies that build up until they hesitate for just long enough to collect themselves, before their combined weight hits you all at once. it fills me with visions of the end of the world. rarely have i heard such a piece that is so hauntingly beautiful and also so visually striking. the climbing of the strings as they ascend to the highest notes they can reach, screaming out with the pain of a hundred million souls, before they find themselves snuffed out, only the piano remaining as it continues to dance across the sky, disappearing into the distance.
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Haunt the Narrative.
One of the things I liked about Armored Core VI is how it really shined a light on how corporations exploit their workers, particularly by the “we aren’t a company, we’re a family” mentality.
You can really see this with both Arquebus and Balam, particularly in the Vespers and Redguns.
On the Vesper side, you clearly have a lot of dynamics going on. O’keefe cares about the people under him, as evidenced by the way Pater speaks about him in the true ending. Plus Hawkins and Pater’s relationship. There’s also Maeterlinck, who respects Snail as her superior and looks up to him. And Snail, as the firm company man who see himself as the embodiment of Arquebus, exploits ALL of this. He knowingly sends Maeterlinck to die by your hand, exploiting her loyalty. He constantly throws those under his command out on useless missions just because he can (as evidenced by the dialogue between Hawkins and Pater). He doesn’t care about anyone or anything but himself and sees himself as the true future for Arquebus.
On Balam’s side you have the Redguns. A fucked up military family lead by Michigan. Michigan knows the names of those under his command, even the grunts in MTs. He cares about everyone under his command and Balam exploits the shit out of that. The Redguns are sent on suicide missions constantly. They clearly seem to be underfunded compared to the Vespers and Balam tried to rush out ahead of Arquebus to their downfall to make up for their financial shortcomings.
The corpos don’t care though. They see the family dynamic in their Ace AC squads as another tool in their belt. ACVI is good.
conversation around the militia base that goes something like
"How come Cooper and BT keep getting sent on cool missions?"
"The alternative is that they find ways to entertain themselves."
no i havent seen that critically acclaimed movie with significant relevance to culture. no yeah, still working through bad stuff from other decades
Things you can stay instead of "k1lled", "murked" or "unalived":
involuntarily converted to room temperature
cancelled on a corporeal level
successfully transitioned into fertiliser
rendered permanently horizontal
sent to investigate the potential existence of an afterlife
I never get tired of the thing where fantasy books name something by just calling it a word but capitalising it. Like oh shit, that person is a Wielder. The supernatural ability to see beyond matter called the Sight. Forces of Light and Darkness. The prohibited art of Knowing. A place simply known as The Blight. Awesome and horrible forces. The Force. You know something's getting bat shit wild when Fantasy Capitalisation comes into the picture. As in capitalising the letters, not the unholy act of seizing fantasy itself in order to churn profit off of it.
That is the work of evil creatures, like The Mouse.
me not using social media because I rarely have anything worth saying and don't want my only post in a year to be some random comment on something from 4 months ago like: