gameplay by @Flanve

this edit by @itsabigmaze

https://x.com/i/status/2111280592738246986

Mine is

1 Cipher

2 Gryphus 1

3 Antares 1

I don't know how many ppl posted MemriTV x Ace Combat in this sub. But hey, I want to contribute too

Feel like people still don't know about this tunnel run so had to post it here. Embrace your inner cave diver aces.

I still feel emotional about AC8 the soundtrack is just so good I had to make this

Alright, bear with me here - I'm about to get really fucking schizo.

As of the conclusion of Ace Combat 8, it's been EXPLICITLY confirmed that Strangereal has a genuine afterlife that all pilots go to when they die. During the epilogue cutscene of riding backseater in a Rhino with Kate while flying recon over Sotoa, the desert landscape outside vanishes into a full-blown vision of a pristine prairie, the souls of the dead flying free overhead as white birds, two of which are Cope and Tewy as their souls finally reunite. And when the vision ends, the dogtag held in Rex's hand has fucking vanished completely, only to somehow reappear a good few thousand feet outside the cockpit on the ground below.

Over the course of the campaign, there are a few other moments where, despite the game being very strictly limited to Ray's personal perspective, we get quick glimpses of things that he should not be able to see - mostly it's just minor, very quick external perspectives like D.D.'s social media antics, Pike alone at a desk, Tasha after the funeral, etc., but a few are almost deliberately odd in how they're framed. After the battle with Tewy, for example, the PoV flashes across the various landscapes of Usea before somehow diving into D.D.'s phone camera, then flipping out out of it to an omniscient view of the scene in the Endurance's briefing room, the swooshing "camera" movement feeling almost uncanny with how deliberately grounded the shots otherwise are. And in the prior duel, when Tewy herself is shot down and flung out of her plane's cockpit in slow-motion, she makes a whole statement to Ray before the craft explodes and cuts her off as time snaps back to regular speed. And yet, right in the next misison, it's made a major plot point that EVERYONE from the Jokers to Dealer all heard her exact words - when not only was she no longer connected to her plane's radio, but also speaking within a bullet time sequence, because the real-time sequence of events didn't last long enough for her to speak her message. AND THEY ALL HEARD HER.

So, ghosts are real, the afterlife is real, and not only can Rex perceive them, not only can he perceive other things that should be outside the scope of his awareness, but he can also somehow let others perceive them as well. And just exactly why can he do all this when nobody else can?

It's because Rex is you.

I'm not talking about Rex being self-insert for the whole power fantasy - Rex is literally a manifested avatar of the player themselves within the fictional reality of Strangereal. Kono himself explicitly stated as such in the Famitsu interview:

"With some exceptions, for thirty years, I basically followed the first person, 'I (myself) have been through the experience of an ace pilot in the world over there.' The player is yourself, so you don’t have any extra memories of the game, and you don’t suddenly meet your separated father. Go to the Strangereal beyond the monitor as yourself and (set) out to be active as an ace pilot."

We all naturally assumed he was just talking about the player being a blank slate for maximum player immersion, but I'm starting to suspect that he was being literal. Just like Mihaly was a meta-commentary on veteran players, what if Rex is a reflection of players being uniquely able to understand and connect to the vanquished and fallen pilots beyond what someone in-universe could?

Getting back to the Watsonian element, in the aforementioned epilogue cutscene Cope mentions how the souls of the dead are unbound from physical space, yet they surround it completely - so whatever the afterlife is, it's something adjacent and parallel to the material reality of Strangereal. Baxter and Kate both briefly see Cope when they're on the brink of death, so passing through or near that boundary between life and whatever follows seems to grant the living an awareness of that parallel reality that they'd otherwise lack.

Now, if Rex's sentient awareness exists outside of Strangereal, then it's pretty much in a perpetual state of transit across that boundary with every single input/output- if Baxter and Kate are radios that start to pick up a weak signal from another room when they're in the doorway, Rex is a pair of radio comms with one half inside the building and the other in a completely different building, picking up everything just because the distances of the transmission and reception involved make it incredibly sensitive to "background noise" that would otherwise be imperceptible.

We're able to perceive all that spooky shit - the voices of the dead, the last words of the dying - the originates from beyond the material plane because we originate from beyond that material plane as well, albeit even further out. This is why, when Tewy overrides the safeties on her proto-ENSI control system and ramps it up to 145% or some shit, she starts to read your exact control inputs as you do them; she's pretty much dying from the neurological strain, her Copro gradually uploading her consciousness into the machine to evacuate it from her failing physical shell, her vision going blind because she isn't inside it anymore, and as she passes across that gateway between the material and immaterial, just like Baxter and Kate could at the brink of death, she can see Rex, see us perfectly.

And after all the jokes and complaints about Project Aces ripping off Project Wingman, we get one last nod, and the greatest of them all:

We are the king of the dead, and the keeper of the high garden they all return to.

In an alternate universe, Spare 7 emigrates to the FCU and ends up serving with Cpt. Pike and AWACS Dealer.

I know the orange tail belongs to Team Queen, but I liked that design better, I hope you like it

I came up with a few drawn memes; let me know if you’d like to see them

So I've been stuck on misson 20 of AC7 and every time I get to the very end of the space elevator I get SLAMMED into the wall by nothing. Every attempt its happened. And its not stick drift, it's not my settings, its not my plane build. Idk what it could be. In the clip above I dont touch the controls at all. That violent movement was THE GAME.​​

UPDATE: I'm a dumbass.

I've been only shooting down the UAV then immediately climbing the SE. Didn't even think about having to destroy all the targets in the base part as well. Im not going to take the post down for the simple fact that a fellow dumbass might need this evidence in the future ✌️😭

Our economy depends on mercs like us.

Unmanned (is always active, can perform missions of infinite duration)
Massive drone supply that can fight regular quality pilots and even intercept missiles on behalf of the AB
Can receive a steady resupply of material and missiles
Standard battery of a metric fuck-ton (actual measurement) of AA weaponry
Laser weapon that slices through battleships like butter
Wirelessly powered(???)
Self-repairing propellors keep it airborne while sustaining damage (????????)
It's energy source is from the ISEV, which gives it an effective operational range of half the planet(????????????)
And the piece de la resistance, a super fuck-you forcefield that is functionally impenetrable and it can just keep it active forever (??????????????)

It's only demonstrated weaknesses are:

Asteroid destroying super-rail guns - Stonehenge's guns are gargantuan, I don't think the land battleship guns or even the ones aboard a megafloat are punching through the shield

A super ace pilot systematically dismantling the ship, with a whole coalition of fighters keeping the drones off his back, after the bird's APS is knocked offline by princess Rosie infiltrating the ISEV and destroying some computers... If Erusea wasn't suffering from a total breakdown of military communication and multiple wars of secession, this wasn't gonna happen at all. Of course they'd have an army of ground troops protecting the ISEV from infiltration, and as long as it shields are up, Arsenal Bird doesn't even need to bother with the planes around it, it can just send all its drones to destroy the enemy ground troops trying to get into the tower.

Sotoa is lucky that Enso Order couldn't succesfully escalate this war to get Osea/Yuktobania involved, cause absolutely, Osea would've(or at least should've) built more arsenal birds, its the air superiority to end all air superiority

We’ve seen massive rail guns, we’ve seen giant super planes, hell we’ve seen laser towers and all the insane weapons the strange real universe has to offer, but it’s honestly crazy to say that something as simple as orbital rods from space in my head is the most terrifying when you look at it

- the entire concept of being a victim to it is unsettling, one moment everything is fine the next without warning a massive explosion goes off and the place you once stood is devastated, if you somehow manage to survive your thoughts are running at 1000 “ what just happened, were we nuked?

- It’s a weapon where we never really had a sure way of destroying it fully, yeah sure we may have taken out one and disabled another but throughout the whole game it’s shown to be one of the more resilient super weapons, having multiple ways to aim it and it and Sotoas ability to launch more if needed

- The final thing is that it’s just too damn effective at being a shadow that you can’t help but being afraid of, almost every mission I had a fear that a spear would just come down and decimate the fleet or destroy our ground forces and multiple times that did end up happening

All in all a terrifying weapon for how simple the design truly is, and in a world of crazy and unique super weapons it stands out as being the most effective

I thought Ace Combat 8 was one of the best the series had produced. A near flawless game, but I have discovered something that brings it from legendary to utter trash. I speak of course of the medals for completing the game with a certain aircraft.

At first I thought nothing of it, as I was moving through getting each medal quickly and methodically in order to achieve 100% completion. But as I neared my goal, I decided to stop and take a look over each medal and admire my progress. It was there that I saw it. To my horror I have discovered that the color on the medal ribbons do not match the color of the aircraft type they belong to. I can’t believe that PA could overlook something this monumental, and It makes me doubt the future of the series.

Tell me fellow Aces. Can you live with this travesty or should we demand an Immediate patch to fix this?

The Babe in the Back Seat "Prez"

or

Jan "The Man (in my head that calls me Stud Muffin)" Cope