A bit late to this, but yeah the moment Ryoto said that
all the Huckebeins were in for maintenance in Masaki's route at the beginning of the game (in fact, even when I saw Ryoto in the
Armorlion of all things), I knew Banpresto was going to take the Huckebeins out of the series for good. I just didn't know if it was going to be an off-screen attack on Mao Industries or they were going to get blown up on-screen on the hand-off to our guys. Thankfully they weren't cheap and went with the latter; I would have been seriously irked if something big like that happened off-screen. Though I'm quite a bit irked that they blew up the Huckebeins anyway. ****ing copyright whining jack@$$es that started that whole mess.
I'm not sure why they didn't leave the name Huckebein on the EX-exbein. Nevermind that the name "EX-exbein" sounds dumb, there was nothing wrong with the name Huckebein itself, hence why we still have MP
Huckebein Mk IIs. The original Exbein Ash was just a testbed machine for getting data on new parts and equipment so that name made sense, but the EX-exbein is an actual full-blown sucessor to the Huckebein line.
Personally, I just call it the Mk X, as per its codename that Rob pointed out.
I just hope that Ing stays with the cast for the rest of the OG series. He's now the Last Huckebein Pilot. Film copyright pending.
And I also hope that we keep the D and MX pilots and mechs for the next game as well. Katina, Russel, Tasku, Leona, Ryoto, Rio, Yuu, and Carla are all still around despite having no plot relevance anymore, and in more than just being brought back because they needed support mecha pilots like the R crew returning. (who I'm glad are back too, and the Excellence Rescue is actually a nice unit even for combat)
On a side note I like how they indirectly mentioned ACE R and Endless Frontier Exceed.
By the way, there's rumor going around that kill counts are carried over (in fraction) just like credits and pilot points. Is this true? (I haven't finished my first playthrough yet) That would seriously help with the secrets that require kill counts. I've noticed that this game gives
crap PP and kills to pilots just joining up or who went on the other route lines. Axel had less than 100 PP when I first got him on the first space route; by that point characters who I'd had since the beginning of the game like Irm had gotten
over 300. And all the pilots who went on the earth route had barely gotten anything in either kills or PP when I got them back.
So we have hints of SRW Z and there was never any doubt that 3rd Alpha was going to arrive of course (and in all likelihood will be used for the OG Saga's conclusion), so what other SRWs do we have left? There's K, W, and J as far as I remember, and by the time any announcement for 3rd OG is made there will be UX as well. So who bets on which SRWs are going to be in 3rd OG when it comes in a few years?
And as unlikely as it is, it would be amusing to see Endless Frontier make an appearance; since Axel "magically" got a tonfa sword when he appeared in EF as well as Alfimi's ghost mask thingies becoming small-sized, seeing Harken appear in a big-sized Gespenst Harken wouldn't be impossible. And maybe Kaguya too as a sub-pilot, if just to see Kyosuke and Sanger's reactions to the Sword that Cleaves Evil, Kaguya Nanbu.