FromSoftware nearly gave Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon the open-world treatment, but decided it would be too limiting for the player in certain, key aspects.
When we spoke with game director Masaru Yamamura and producer Yasunori Ogura,, we asked whether FromSoftware prefers the more linear style of something like Armored Core or Sekiro compared to the monstrous world of Elden Ring.
"Actually," Yamamura began. "In the initial stage of development, we did consider taking it in a more open-world direction. But we opted against it purely for the fact that we wanted to concentrate on the assembly aspect and the level of freedom that assembly brings. So if you're building a game like Elden Ring, you want to concentrate on the exploration and traversal aspect of that world. Whereas in Armored Core, we wanted to concentrate on this freedom of assembly. So this means you don't want to put too much of a restriction on how the player moves or how they're able to customise their level of movement."
"If you have a massive open world map, you have to start putting restrictions on where the player goes, how they move through that map, the mech's speed, things like this. And that would cause stress that we didn't want to add to this game. So we wanted to open that up a little bit. And with these more confined and curated maps, we could control that little bit more and allow more of that freedom on the way these mechs through the maps."
In order to spare the depth of the assembly mechanic, then, Armored Core ditched the idea of giving us a planet to explore. It's a bold decision, really, considering many developers would claim that every part of their game is as deep as its counterparts, whereas FromSoftware have been honest in what the real focus of Armored Core VI is.
Read the full interview here, and check out our preview of the game here.