Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

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Windknight
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Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

Ok, picked this up second hand, and have been having a blast with it, and have beaten it on normal.

Now, this is my first armored core, and the copy I got didn't come with a manual, so a few plot aspects left me confused.

Firstly, why do a lot of the other Next pilots call you a 'fossil'?

Secondly, why did the White Glint pilot attack me at the end with that huge AC? and from my Mission Controls reaction, I get the feeling there's supposed to be some significance to the core itself, but it flew right over my head. Did it come from one of the earlier games?
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ZeroBusterXX
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Re: Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

Since you mentioned White Glint, I'm gonna assume you mean 4a and not 4. As for your actual questions: I'm not going to lie: I paid zero attention to 4 and 4a's plots. Nothing from them really came out and grabbed my attention.
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Turinu
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Re: Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

Suffice to say, Armored Core 4 didn't really have any plot. And he's talking about 4 and not 4A, as "White Glint" is an Next in AC4 that pilots a large Next at the end of the game that you beat the ZOINKS out of.

Pretty much, You were the sole Next pilot belonging to the Anatolia Colony. IIRC, you were one of the first people to pilot a Next, or at least one of the people who tested Nexts. People hated you, I believe, because Anatolia was selling you to the highest bidder for your assistance.

I haven't played AC4 in awhile, so these are all just guesstimates. Suffice to say, AC4 didn't have much of a plot and AC4A tries to make up for it.
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DeltasTaii
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Re: Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

"Joshua O'Brien" people, the Lynx who piloted the original White Glint. While the player character was a mercenary for Anatolia, O'Brien was hired as a mercenary but was still technically from the corporation Aspina. Aspina specializes in experimental technology and the like, including a cyborg Lynx in for Answer, so O'Brien was presumably used as the test subject for Aretha and was sent off to destroy Anatolia as someone's payback for the main character taking down the corporations and such. It seems to have some sort of berserker system in it, so Joshua isn't fighting of his own will. To honour O'Brien as a former comrade after killing him, the main character replaces him as the pilot of a new White Glint by for Answer.
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Mr. Hanekoma
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Re: Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

It never ceases to amaze me how many different interpretations of AC4's plot there are. Might as well through mine in:

You play one of the first Lynx to pilot a NEXT and you work for a colony called Anatolia. The leader(s) of Anatolia sell you to the highest bidder and play off the corporations' endless war to make a huge profit. Eventually, Anatolia's actions cause Rayleonard and Akvavit to start playing dirty and begin directly attacking manufacturing plants and testing facilities. This begins an actually, full-scale war between the corporations, colonies, and Lynx that comes to be called the Lynx War. Anatolia uses the chaos caused by the war to advance its own position and uses you to take out high value targets.

Towards the end of the game, Anatolia becomes allied with Omer Science Technology, as does Aspina which is a colony/corporation that specializes in expiremental technology. Omer sends you and Aspina's Lynx, Joshua O'Brien, to attack Rayleonard and Akvavit's headquarters, respectively. You both succeed and the war ends. Omer then forces Joshua to pilot Rayleonard's prototype NEXT, Aretha, and attack Anatolia in an attempt to get rid of both of you and secure its place as ruler of the world.

You end up killing Joshua and surviving. In honor of his memory, you and your operator leave Anatolia and align yourselves with Line Ark. In fA, you're character from 4 is the pilot of White Glint, which is named after Joshua's NEXT.

This is all, of course, my own interpretation of events. In all actuality, there is no story to AC4. You're just a dude in a mech and you blow shit up.
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DeltasTaii
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Re: Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

Eh, mine doesn't contradict yours that much. Actually, it makes far more sense that Anatolia was attacked because it was seen as a threat than for payback by companies that were completely devastated at the time, dunno where I was going with that.
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Mr. Hanekoma
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Re: Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

Well, considering the apalling lack of story in AC4, you can really interpret it anyway you want, and no one can contradict you. The thing is though, you can come up with almost two completely different stories based on whether you play on Normal or Hard difficulties. I can't elaborate on my interpretation of Hard Mode, however, because I sold the game before finishing it.
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Windknight
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Re: Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

The plot (or lack of) didn't bother me so much. It was just the aspects of the other pilots calling you a fossil made me wonder if i'd missed something from the manual/an earlier game, and being suddenly attacked by your ally seemed to come out of nowhere and made no sense.
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ORegan
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Re: Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

To be fair, most of AC's plot made no sense. Why would any of these companies sell NEXT parts and weapons at all? Selling weapons to a mercenary that can just as easily attack you with said weapon at a later date seems a little unwise to me.

You also have to wonder why you don't see more random mercenary Lynx around. There's you and O'Brien...and that's it. The rest of the NEXTs you fight against are employees of the companies, and then there are the two random ones from the rebel group that you take out early in the game.
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Mr. Hanekoma
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Re: Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

To be fair, most of AC's plot made no sense. Why would any of these companies sell NEXT parts and weapons at all? Selling weapons to a mercenary that can just as easily attack you with said weapon at a later date seems a little unwise to me.
Well, you weren't really a mercenary in AC4. You were more like a glorified security guard, IMO. You worked for and protected Anatolia, which was a colony that helped develop and deploy NEXTs for the companies. It only seems logical that the companies would want to supply you with the latest parts and weapons in order to protect their investment.
You also have to wonder why you don't see more random mercenary Lynx around. There's you and O'Brien...and that's it. The rest of the NEXTs you fight against are employees of the companies, and then there are the two random ones from the rebel group that you take out early in the game.
O'Brien was just like you, in that he was a glorified security guard, but for another colony called Aspina. Aspina was the colony that developed the AMS, which improved NEXTs and made them much easier to pilot. Aspina also produced its own weapons and parts, as seen in fA.

As for the two rogue pilots with the rebel group, I believe the game made it very clear that that was a highly unusual case. It sounded like NEXTs and weapons for them were really hard to get without some connection to the companies. Besides, both of the rebel Lynx used outdated models, like Soluh, and whatnot.

Unfortunately, fA never really offers us any reason why independent mercs have become so prolific, since they could easily turn on the companies (and do), like you said.
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DeltasTaii
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Re: Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

I think that's easy enough to hypothesize-with several companies either destroyed or in heavy rebuilding, a lot of Lynx ended up out on their own, and a lot of parts presumably ended up on the black market. Collared later got formed to turn all these Lynx into something of an organized mercenary guild and companies started making some of their parts available to the mercs they were employing, but many NEXT pilots never went back to being exclusively employed by one company.
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ORegan
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Re: Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

Mr. Hanekoma wrote: Well, you weren't really a mercenary in AC4. You were more like a glorified security guard, IMO. You worked for and protected Anatolia, which was a colony that helped develop and deploy NEXTs for the companies. It only seems logical that the companies would want to supply you with the latest parts and weapons in order to protect their investment.
I got my paycheck by working as a hired gun to destroy anything that I could lock onto, with sometimes having to defend a boat or an aircraft. The rest of the time it was just destroy everything I can, making me a hired gun. The entire game, there's only two missions to protect Anotolia. I think they even mentioned it somewhere in the game that the colony's economy was based on you taking jobs from the companies. Based on that, I would've liked to have seen a few colonies with their own NEXTs doing the same...but that's not the point. The point is that the companies shouldn't be selling you parts, especially when you're known to take jobs that cause them to lose profit.

Speaking of which, why do the companies mass produce AC parts to sell in the first place? If they each have their own private NEXT sqauds, who else is buying them? Two colonies wouldn't be enough to warrent mass production, especially when Anatolia's Lynx is the only one who seems to change their NEXT frequently
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volrath77
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Re: Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

Shori wrote:Pretty much, You were the sole Next pilot belonging to the Anatolia Colony. IIRC, you were one of the first people to pilot a Next, or at least one of the people who tested Nexts.
Really? Somehow I don't think that the protagonist in AC4 is one of the first to pilot a NEXT since he's not one of the Originals who fought in the National Dismantlement War (where the NEXTs were first used) which, in its aftermath, led to the establishment of the Pax Economica. The protagonist only became a NEXT pilot during Pax Economica era.

I believe it was referred during the course of the game that the protagonist's skills rivaled that of the Originals. Now, if he's one of the Originals, surely people would have heard of him before his service for Anatolia and before he basically triggered the LINX War.
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DeltasTaii
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Re: Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

Mass produced might be an exaggeration, although considering the amount of damage NEXT's often take, I'm sure there's a reasonable number of spare parts required for the 50ish+ NEXTs out there. The trick here anyways, is that AC4 has this weird kind of proxy cold war thing going on. Even Berlioz or other Lynx who are high ranking within their company have parts from other companies because the companies specialize in different things.

Anyways, on a public, business, and corporate level, the companies maintain semi-amiable relations for their economic purposes, but use their Lynx, hired mercenaries (of the Normal variety as well) and what have you to try and leverage their position and annex the technology and resources of their rivals. Corporate warfare is a funny thing. People like the Raven are useful (and thus worth supplying) because they give plausible deniability. They feel he's more useful to them than the risk, which for some of them proved to be wrong when he turned out to be an unstoppable god of destruction who could take down several of their NEXTs on his own.
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Mr. Hanekoma
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Re: Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

Even Berlioz or other Lynx who are high ranking within their company have parts from other companies because the companies specialize in different things.
Its worth noting that in Berlioz's profile it mentions that he is allowed to use parts from other companies solely because of his amazing combat performance. Also, I can't recall any company Nexts, other than you, Berlioz, and Joshua who used parts/weapons from multiple companies that weren't affiliated.
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DeltasTaii
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Re: Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

"Affiliated" only goes so far though, I seem to remember GA America and GA Europe having some fun times. Corporations have basically replaced government remember, so you see plenty of parallels to things like the Soviet and Nazi backstabbing or the US selling weapons to Middle East groups that would later get used against them.
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LineArkWG
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Re: Armored Core 4 Plot Questions (SPOILERS)

The reason the player is called a "Fossil" is because he was originally a raven before becoming a Lynx. The National Dismantlement War was the companies hiring the newly devoloped Lynx/Nexts to destroy all ravens so there wouldn't be independant mercenaries to attack the companies. But the player managed to survive thanks to the help of Anatolia. That is why he his Anatolia's mercenary. He does whatever Anatolia tells him to do. Either Joshua O'Brien had a similar experience, or he became a mercenary for Aspina later. All the Lynx are mercenaries, it's just that they only work for a certain company. In ACFA, when you do a mission that gives you the oportunity to hire a wingman, it tells you who each wingman works for, whether its Omer, Interior, Independant, etc... Ravens were, in previous games, pilots of ACs, the pre-Next mech used by mercinaries. Ravens were mercinaries that worked for money. Pretty much the same thing the player does in AC4 and ACFA. In the last level, Omer took Rayleonard's Aretha and finished it or perfected it and made Joshua O'Brien attack anatolia by basically holding Aspina hostage. They also sent Celo/Testament to kill whoever was left standing, which you would know if you played hard mode. I don't quite know why Omer did this, but it is most likely because both mercenaries where too powerful to be left alone. What better way than to pit them against each other.
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