One odd thing is that the Armored Core series takes a somewhat detached approach to canon, having been through a few full timeline resets. Because of this, the big and small ACs don't have a lot of crossover, it's usually a fresh start between generations, with a few notable exceptions.
@@Gortallyes but also no. all the ac games from ac 3 to VD takes place in the same universe just a few years later after the last game. for example 4 sequel takes place just 2 - 5 years after 4 and AC 5 takes place 10 years after ending B of ac:fa. AC timeline is much more readable than a FF timeline
Actually, I found this theory on the AC discord that compared an RJ with the apartments in the wall climber mission, and it was three storeys tall. Assuming each is the irl average for apartments, being 4.3 metres, they estimated the AC was between 12 to 15 metres tall. Either cars are massive again, or the buildings are unusually small. Hell more to backup the cars are massive theory can be found later in the same mission, as there are walkways in the elevator to Juggernaught that are TINY in comparison to the AC, so this might be an issue of From scaling things weird, or cars are unreasonably huge
worth noting that the final boss of verdict day, a modified NEXT, is absolutely titanic compared to the urban ACs used by the player. so in at least one game we have a direct comparison between two eras of AC
What about the final boss of AC4? that one looks like a different generation to the player too. I can't fully remember but I think the level was called barren earth or something. I distinctly remember the size of the enemy and it's massive weapons though.
@@Valfheim That's the 00 Aretha, the 'Mutant Core'. It's a bit of an anomaly - if I recall it's an early machine which explains why it's so big. It has some successors in ACFA which are down to regular NEXT size.
@@Valfheim The 00-Aretha is a prototype NEXT, so a lot of the components that modern NEXT's had weren't miniaturized for the Aretha, meaning it had to use a larger frame to accomodate the tech. It's the same reason why you have the Nu Gundam be a 23 metre behemoth and the newer F91 be a tiny 15m, the F-91 being newer tech can fit the same amount of power in a smaller frame.
@@shirosaki97 its mostly because pre-UC 100 the arms race was more Bigger and stronger weaponry wich caused the powerplant reactors for each suit to be bigger to allow more for more power and after UC-100 there was quite a long time with no war so development time could be used to make reactors smaller and stronger
10 meters is still a lot. Honestly, their size makes sense. Big enough for pilot to comfortably fit in the chest or "core" and leave plenty left over space for mechanism, systems and armor plating without it being so massive that no material would be able to withstand the forces that joints would recieve.
It also feels more realistic in terms of what we can feasibly make. Having them be a bit bigger than full size tanks is humanly possible. We just need an actual power source haha
I think for Souls games in particular, the player is shorter than most enemies both to convey a sense of threat to the enemy/weakness to the player, as well as for the practical reason of ensuring the lock-on camera can center an enemy and the player on screen without obscuring objects in the distance by forcing the camera above them. For AC, I'd assume the same is true. They want you to fight giant robots and vehicles many times larger than you, so the player is comparatively small so as to not clog up the limited screen space.
@@hermitcard4494 the only threatening small enemies are the annoying ones, that much is true of even fromsoft games. Also, I suggest you play more shooters because plenty of them have bigger enemies for that sole purpose.
Here it's a bit of a mix because you're generally larger than most enemies you fight- the MTs you chew through are smaller than you and the tanks which all die in one shot from anything are so small you barely notice them. The LCs and HCs, and enemy ACs, which actually pose an individual threat tend to be equivalent in size, with HCs being I think a bit larger, and of course the bosses are much much bigger. You can vary easily gauge the difficulty of a foe by comparing it's size relative to yours.
As a newcomer to the ac series, it was actually alot larger than i thought, it didnt sink in until the mission with the boss before the cargo cannon, theres a small area underneath with some cars and it was the size of the ac's foot, for some reason i expected a car to be about a 1/4th the size, not easily an 1/8th or smaller, the scale of everything else just seemed right? But when you take into account the ACTUAL size, everything is GARGANTUAN
If you really pay attention in a lot of maps there are tons of details on the buildings and things that really show off the scale. Little catwalks, stairs and ladders, the doors and windows on buildings etc. It's pretty awesome and really shows off the megastructure nature of most of the buildings in most of the maps.
I'm sure it's been said, but I love Zullie's investigative attention to detail and really concise, communicative formatting. Thank you for all of your hard work, Zullie, and I hope you're enjoying Armored Core!
Going back to your videos on Sekiro, it seems like Fromsoft has a habit of playing fast and loose with the size of characters for the sake of gameplay or spectacle. (Also thinking of the common trope in manga where a character who is merely taller than the rest of the cast can vary in relative height, from merely "tall" to "filling the entire room" as it suits the mood of the scene)
@@zchen27 Don't forget how several characters in JoJo despite being canonically 5 ft can suddenly morph from a tall titan that looks to be 7 ft tall to a shortstack that looks 3.5 ft tall depending on seemingly random artistic metaphors.
As a newcomer to the franchise I had the early impression they were a lot smaller than they actually are, until I got to a mission that was silent for the beginning and stood next to a random car.
I love how that chart says NEXTs are smaller than 3rd generation ACs. But when you're actually in game it's very clear that NEXTs are huge in comparison to previous ACs. For example a tank or a helicopter barely reaches the ankle of your NEXT
@@nisnastNah Its more Fromsoftware cant make 1:1 Scale of what something is ingame Since Motherwill in reality is pretty much a mountain sized fortress, ingame shes much smaller than what shes supposed to be
@@nisnast Just going by the 1/72 scale model kits, AC3 Nexus Oracle and AC4A White Glint, White Glint's head height is 50% higher than Oracle's. So, if Oracle is at 11 meters, White Glint should be 16 meters.
the way I tell they are giant is with the escort mission near the beginning of FA those trucks that you escort are giant themselves with shipping containers stacked 2 high and in rows/columns of 3 and the NEXTs tower over these vehicles
I've noticed in one of the first missions that there are also huge cars with ladders something like Caterpillar 797 and u are TOWERING over them looking like u are at least 30m considering these cars are about 7.5m tall. But then in same place you can see more common cars like the one you showed and they seem oversized (or caterpillar car are undersized). Clearly they didn't scale everything to be realistic so its hard to tell how tall AC really is...
There are human sized doorways on a few of the maps. It would be interesting to see if they are all roughly the same size and to try the scale the AC's off of that. I agree that the vehicle models are an unreliable standard.
Yeah, I noticed this too and was going to comment that the car shown here seemed vastly off compared to other parts of the game. In the mission where you investigate the arsenal that went dark, there are several huge heavy duty trucks, looking like the kind that would be used to transport tanks. They have three shipping containers stacked on top of each other up on their trailers, and you tower above those. This was when I first stopped to consider the ACs scale properly, and it gave me the impression that AC6 has the biggest generation of ACs.
@@nathanpapp432Even the smaller buildings like air control towers look absolutely dwarfed by our ACs, but in comparison the cars make our ACs look slightly shorter.
@NightmareBlade10 There was a car next to what looked to be a Caterpillar dump truck, and I thought the car seemed too big in comparison till I noticed the rear door. That car looks to be some sort of armored personal carrier than a regular sized car.
My realisation moment was in Rubicon when I noticed a dumper truck and it looked like next to my AC as smaller car would next to a human. They can be insanely fast too. When you start assault boosting and you do 2 kilometers in a few seconds
An interesting note is that Armored Core has been (to me at least) an iteration of mecha after the western iteration of Battletech, which explains why AC's are around 10m tall (fitting with Battletech's scale of mechs to boot). So it makes sense that we finally get to measure them in-game properly and we see that while they are much faster than battletech mechs of the same mass they are the same height.
@@ghoulbuster1Depends on the battlemech. Most battlemechs tend to be around 8-10 meters tall, though different sources put stuff like Assault mechs at around 14 or so, or even larger. Honestly Battletech hates giving actual official sizes on their mechs that don't contradict themselves next publication, and usually all you get from them is their weight.
You mean Studio Nue with Macross and Sunrise with Dougram went with a scale around there, as part of launching the 'Real Robot' boom, the designs of which FASA licensed. In turn Studio Nue has semi-consistently been heavily involved in the design work for Armored Core, hence their biases carry forward. Licensing Japanese Work, doesn't mean it's a "western iteration." Battletech is Derivative Work in that regard.
I think that with shorter robots it’s also easier to make them navigate in interesting and credible environments… everything in ac6 it’s already gigantic but it’s a “reasonable” gigantic like it’s still something built for humans which also have big robots
This is why I really like V and Verdict Day. The environment interactivity was really nice. Although apparently not a sentiment shared by any majority of the AC community.
@@GoodwillWrightIts mostly because 5th Gen Armored Core felt forced with its gameplay AC6 while Stagger is too strong, some weapon balance is highly questionable and hard lock existing, at least theres ways to get away with them instead of being major appeal Like tone down stagger a little on some weapon, buff weapons that need it more, and Hard lock is easilly counterable if you keep assault boosting away from people
@@RenoKyrie Yeah, I don't think, at the least, any weapon should stagger in one hit unless it's like the pilebunker. Granted, yeah, the stun cannons make sense to be that powerful, but there really isn't much of a drawback to it in PvP.
Honesty this is exactly how big I thought they were. Good job on from conveying the size of the machines through the weight of animation and context clues.
I was having a discussion with a friend about this, and it seems that most people are often surprised that AC's are quite compact. and funny enough, we ended up discussing how Gundams are actually quite big in general.
Ran into that with my buddies that are new to ac. I’m mostly a V player and explaining the size difference between gundams, acfa, and V was something they struggled to wrap their head around. Then the question of human+ and pilots getting combined with their Acs came up because one couldn’t understand how a human could fit in a AcV sized mech 😂
@@Fra-gee-lay wait till they learn about the scopedog from Armored Troopers Votoms , that mech is LESS than 4 meters tall 😂 , that must be *really cramped*
@@666slateran666I'd call the mechs in AC5 pretty slow. Then again I was comparing them with AC4 at the time and those things are straight up fighter jets
WOOOOOOOOOOO! an armoured core video! honestly, if you're ever interested, it would be great to see many more videos of you breaking down the older games and finding either cut content, scrapped ideas, or possible lore links.
This is a good analysis. The only thing I'd add is that I think that if we saw a Armored Core in person, they would be somewhat bigger than we thought they were. I've had that happen to me a lot when I've gotten to see other vehicles in person that previously I'd only seen videos or pictures of. I think 10m is a good size for the Armored Cores. That's about 2.5 to 3 stories tall, which is my sweet spot for mech size. It's small enough to feel believable, but still large enough to be fantastical, futuristic, and impressive.
Its interesting; the model kits of the Gen 3, 4 and 5 ACs are all 1/72 scale. You can compare them to model planes, which gives a clear picture of their respective sizes. They're relatively small.
In AC6 the mechs are big, but something about the detail in the maps makes their scale seem off to me. For example in the snowy mountain level, since there are no other land marks it looks like any character from any game could traverse the terrain, you could easily imagine other characters (say Arthur from RDR2) running and climbing the rocks and hills, yet they are supposed to be massive when you compare them to the vehicles and building you find later in the level. Also, the way snow is piled in the city looks like how snow accumulates in like a sidewalk or a few inches next to a wall, yet if you look at it's actually reaching like 2 / 3 stories of the buildings and walls.
I think they made things smaller in game so they wouldn't need to craft huge maps, AC4 has a more realistic scale imo, but most of the maps in that game are pretty barren, lots of deserts, so I assume they "faked" the height of things to facilitate level design.
@awhellnah__ they've been playing since AC2 so it's not just because from soft made dark souls, it's because they like armored core and this is the newest game in like, what? A decade?
A bit of interesting to note is that originally, ACs were just heavily customized MTs. It wasn't until the LYNX timeline that they were more in line of high-end/super mechs that you usually see in anime. If I'm not mistaken, in ACV and ACVD, the mechs you're also piloting are (more or less) heavily customized MTs (kinda not different from what you destroyed with a passing thought during AC4-ACFA era, especially if you compare the size of your mech during that era with NWGIX). Technology really regressed during that time, which is probably a good thing, considering what happened with the unchecked use of Kojima technology (well, until some crazy guy thought that it was a good idea bring it back again).
As a fan of the series from the beginning, I thoroughly approve of the music used here. I am absolutely here for any Armored Core content you feel like making.
I loved this video. As a Gundam model kit fan, I was amused and fascinated that you used the to-scale model kits to estimate a “real life” size. I also liked that you compared the size of the Armored Core to Gundams. I would watch more Armored Core size comparisons with Mecha from different series
One of my favorite things to do in the game is look at all the little cars and stairs and doors and stuff. It really paints a picture of how absurdly monumental the construction and equipment and infrastructure on Rubicon is. In a way I wish that we could see tiny little people, because it's still somewhat difficult to wrap your head around the scale of the world without actual humans running around, but I guess they had to get rid of them to avoid an M rating or something like that in case of inevitable squish situations.
What fascinates me is that the Ibis series we fought moves like Gundam with drone lasers and swords waves while having the same 10 meters height as us. I love it
I'm really enjoying this game and so far the way it handles lore is a lot nicer than the cryptic souls games. I feel like I understand all I need to. I will say though, I'm torn between the first decision missions in chapter 3 since I adore both sides!
The general consensus within the community is that ACs prior to 5thgen are between 10-15 meters (some ACs have stuff that makes them pointy or taller), and 5thgen ACs are between 5-7 meters. There are actually some great photos of the human from Project Phantasma standing next to his car that demonstrate how poorly Fromsoft handle scaling in the first games. The black humvee shown is the same size as the helicopters that show up in other missions.
The thing that bothered me the most when I play AC6 is the scaling of the environment. Some building/structures are too small or too big for humans. To me it feels very inconsistent but it could also be my inability to scale things.
My theory while checking this game out was that both the corps and the rubiconians are so dependent on using AC's and other large vehicles to move around that they don't even bother with scaling things down to human size anymore 😅
We already live in a world scaled entirely to cars, where if your expensive-ass rig breaks down you're missing work. I can totally see this happening with ACs!
Great content aside, thank you for using the menu music from AC1. It just brings me back to hanging out in my brother's room playing that all day. Such an iconic track
The fact those giant platforms they built on Rubicon 3 easily outclasses any existing buildings we have on Earth is both fascinating and terrifying at the same time. Like, you pilot your AC out of a facility which is already pretty big, only to see the sky being covered by those HUMONGUS structures, stretching endlessly into the distance... they know how to design an awesome game world!
Mecha scaling is something that fascinates me a little bit, from the variations in AC sizes, to the fact that Variable Fighters from Macross are almost all 15m tall so their fighter modes are the same size as a real fighter plane except the VF-1 from the original show, which is just 10m (just like a gen 6 AC), to the fact that Mobile Suits from Gundam were getting progressively bigger, then a financial crisis came in Japan and they got downsized so they could sell smaller model kits without changing the scale, then they got back to the original 18m and just stayed there for the most part, to just comparing sizes between franchises and understanding why they chose that size, like how Titans from Titanfall are only 6m tall because of the game dynamics of Pilots and Titans… I really like the subject.
I think I remember another reason why they made UC Gundams smaller, starting with F91. Apparently in-lore I think they wanted to go for more maneurverability and harder to hit ones. That explains why F91, Crossbones and even Victory appear to be fast.
Oh great to see you make a video on this game too! This is the first AC game i've seen, and the first 2 hours were pretty cool (watched Vinny Vinesauce play it). One day i'll get the game for myself, even tho i only have an xbox one, and i'll see all the coop stuff that comes after :> Till then, hope to see you show some interesting stuff as always! Love this channel Edit: I forgot, cheers from Brazil !
Was anyone else hoping we'd get a sample of an AC model loaded into Elden Ring, or Vice Versa, with the model scales having AC's being the size of like a horse or something?
I've always loved how in Armored Core 3, the cars and vans and trucks in the Parking Garage level are so tiny and they just explode when you walk over them
Honestly, I kinda prefer a smaller mecha for realistic & more agile portrayal of this walking dead machine, & 10 m height AC seems like the ideal size. It make sense from military sim POV since most military tanks overall length is 4-6 m & AC is double the size for a better overall effectiveness. Comparatively, a combat aircraft like F35 almost just as big as ACs with the length/heigh up to 10-15 m
A bit of a caveat about tank dimensions, but designers would love to go wider and probably longer if they could choose. They're mainly just limited by how wide train cars are, as the main mode of transportation for tanks is rail.
That was always my main gripe with gundams , how do you transport a 18 meter tall vehicle from one place to other without using a massive transport vehicle ? , AC being 10 meters tall would make them way easier to transport and move around , and these two things are very important when it comes to vehicles , having a super op vehicle won't matter if said vehicle can never reach to the places you want to
Wow, I always assumed AC's to be something like 100 feet tall! I'm actually glad that they are considerably smaller than that. It makes the game a bit more realistic and believable which in turn makes it more immersive!
You can see the ridiculous in sizes in terms of mechs of different franchises in Another Century's Episode whereby you get the very large super robots to the hilariously tiny knightmare frames. Also what do you know, it was also developed by Fromsoft.
You should scale some of the crazy big shit in AC6. Like the PCA's war helicopters - how many damn people does it take to even pilot a helicopter that big? Or what about the PCA's battle cruisers? Or really just any of the large PCA vehicles that basically look like scaling a normal vehicle to a human, when comparing to an AC.
They are like close combat versions of AC 130 with more fire power. That can go really fast do alot of damage fuck some shit up and run away comeback do it again like hit and run technic.
When I saw a car in VI I started to wonder this exact thing, thank you for making it into a video! Something about the sense of scale in this game was always hard to read I think so this helps to ground it somewhat.
So they're about the size of a Mech from BattleTech. Other than hover mode it would actually be an interesting set up to see a lance go up against an AC
Oh, absolutely bumfuck murdered :V Like, ACs casually rocks around on 300kmh, carry weapons that can one shot battleships and in general just seems way more destructive with stuff like giant laser blades and huge plasma cannons. I think BattleMechs would be around like, the threat level of an MT at the very best
@@namkha209If they one shot battleships why do bosses even bother having health bars? You can't even one shot the mooks in the game no? They whole break their stamina and then kill them?
@@rddragon5 yup. That just shows how fucking bonkers mechs are in comparision to boring ships. Like, you literally can take the pile bunker up to the PCA ship and one shot it with a single hit to the bridge, yet that thing only deals like, 75% of a boss' HP half the time :v
@@namkha209 Oh so this is just one specific type of gun, aka the biggest one? Because then if you're skewing that way. I can take a lance (4 Mechs) of Urbies that each of an actual nuclear missile on them LOL
Talking about Gundam, the Armored Cores can be compared to the models from Gundam F91, which are known for being one of the smallest (about 10 - 12 meters). But talking about other mech videogames, the comparison is beteween Heavy Gear and Mechwarrior, in the former we play with knowingly small mechs made for urban \ close warfare, while in the latter there are multiples models from light \ ultralight like Flea, Commando and Firestarter that are around 10 meters tall.
Zullie you are just the best, every video is interesting and I always leave with a smile looking forward to your next video. Thank you for always putting in the work to make these and share them with all of us.
Hope to see more AC content Zullie you rock with the vids you make I can't wait to see what info nuggets of joy you find for us! Tyvm for always putting out quality content
nineball seraph shows up in ACE:R (another century's episode R), mecha crossover game made by fromsoftware. its roughly the size of FMP's AS (ARX7 Arbalest, M9s) which are already pretty small
Wow so I was on point. I've also seen that car in AC6 and thought, yeah maybe 10m tall. Interesting how the ACs were smaller in the fifth generation. Thanks Zullie for investigating and making all the sizes clear.
I stood mine next to an apartment building, its head reached the 3rd floor, i then paused the game and went to look through the window, since i have the same soviet era apartment block next to my house i can now visualize how tall an AC is, about 10ish meters, now all that is left is for me to start getting some btches
I'm just impressed Armored Core 6 is such a phenomenal game. I expected nothing going into it and now it's my personal game of the year. I expected good quality, I mean it's FromSoft we're talking about here. But I didn't expect to be so mesmerized.
Zullie, loving the variety and history on this video! Also here's a suggestion, is it possible for you to look at attack hitboxes? Anyway love your stuff and great work! :D
One odd thing is that the Armored Core series takes a somewhat detached approach to canon, having been through a few full timeline resets. Because of this, the big and small ACs don't have a lot of crossover, it's usually a fresh start between generations, with a few notable exceptions.
So AC is the Final Fantasy of Mech games?
@@Gortallyes but also no. all the ac games from ac 3 to VD takes place in the same universe just a few years later after the last game.
for example 4 sequel takes place just 2 - 5 years after 4 and AC 5 takes place 10 years after ending B of ac:fa.
AC timeline is much more readable than a FF timeline
kinda, LordKore explains it well actually! @@Gortall
Actually, I found this theory on the AC discord that compared an RJ with the apartments in the wall climber mission, and it was three storeys tall. Assuming each is the irl average for apartments, being 4.3 metres, they estimated the AC was between 12 to 15 metres tall.
Either cars are massive again, or the buildings are unusually small. Hell more to backup the cars are massive theory can be found later in the same mission, as there are walkways in the elevator to Juggernaught that are TINY in comparison to the AC, so this might be an issue of From scaling things weird, or cars are unreasonably huge
@@LordKoreThis is false.
3 to LR is a different universe than 4 to VD.
I’d like to appreciate your Core being called the “Black Witch” which genuinely sounds like a mech from a sci-fi series.
That's actually a name for one of the mechs in Lancer, a mecha TTRPG
@@rivercochran8173Lancer is such a fun game
The perfect name for witch's mech would have to be "Witch Craft"
Armed with guns named Mortar and Pestle?
Not really Sci-Fi but a mixture of Sci-Fi and Fantasy since witches are part of the Fantasy genre
worth noting that the final boss of verdict day, a modified NEXT, is absolutely titanic compared to the urban ACs used by the player. so in at least one game we have a direct comparison between two eras of AC
What about the final boss of AC4? that one looks like a different generation to the player too. I can't fully remember but I think the level was called barren earth or something.
I distinctly remember the size of the enemy and it's massive weapons though.
@@Valfheim That's the 00 Aretha, the 'Mutant Core'. It's a bit of an anomaly - if I recall it's an early machine which explains why it's so big. It has some successors in ACFA which are down to regular NEXT size.
@@Valfheim The 00-Aretha is a prototype NEXT, so a lot of the components that modern NEXT's had weren't miniaturized for the Aretha, meaning it had to use a larger frame to accomodate the tech.
It's the same reason why you have the Nu Gundam be a 23 metre behemoth and the newer F91 be a tiny 15m, the F-91 being newer tech can fit the same amount of power in a smaller frame.
@@shirosaki97 its mostly because pre-UC 100 the arms race was more Bigger and stronger weaponry wich caused the powerplant reactors for each suit to be bigger to allow more for more power and after UC-100 there was quite a long time with no war so development time could be used to make reactors smaller and stronger
I've never played AC4A, but I've heard some of the generic enemies are last gen ACs
The height of Armored Cores is between the line of giant and plausible and that's what I love about the scaling
Agreed, they are big enought to be cool, but small enought to be feasible.
Agree , not as big as gundams but bigger than a Scopedog
It feels like more of a personal one man mech than a kaiju sized Gundam
@@ulforcemegamon3094 Fellow Votoms fans
Votoms appreciators I see? Good, good.
10 meters is still a lot. Honestly, their size makes sense. Big enough for pilot to comfortably fit in the chest or "core" and leave plenty left over space for mechanism, systems and armor plating without it being so massive that no material would be able to withstand the forces that joints would recieve.
No material would be able to withstand the forces at this height too, especially when moving as fast as they do.
wait so there is a pilot inside?
I thought ACs were remote controlled
@lovell8983 why did you think they have the death speech everytime you kill them
It also feels more realistic in terms of what we can feasibly make. Having them be a bit bigger than full size tanks is humanly possible. We just need an actual power source haha
@@MrMilkyCoco scientists need to hurry up and invent those portable fusion reactors
i want my AC.
"How big is it?"
"It was this big mate, larger than my hand!"
"Oh, stop it mate, my core isn't that huge."
I think for Souls games in particular, the player is shorter than most enemies both to convey a sense of threat to the enemy/weakness to the player, as well as for the practical reason of ensuring the lock-on camera can center an enemy and the player on screen without obscuring objects in the distance by forcing the camera above them. For AC, I'd assume the same is true. They want you to fight giant robots and vehicles many times larger than you, so the player is comparatively small so as to not clog up the limited screen space.
The player character was a similar height to humanoid NPCs in DS1, which caused the issue of the player model obscuring them and their movesets.
@@hermitcard4494nobody would find a 3ft mech intimidating. that's just a microwave decepticon
My AC will still block my aiming in AC6 if I turn on manual aim.
@@hermitcard4494 the only threatening small enemies are the annoying ones, that much is true of even fromsoft games.
Also, I suggest you play more shooters because plenty of them have bigger enemies for that sole purpose.
Here it's a bit of a mix because you're generally larger than most enemies you fight- the MTs you chew through are smaller than you and the tanks which all die in one shot from anything are so small you barely notice them. The LCs and HCs, and enemy ACs, which actually pose an individual threat tend to be equivalent in size, with HCs being I think a bit larger, and of course the bosses are much much bigger.
You can vary easily gauge the difficulty of a foe by comparing it's size relative to yours.
As a newcomer to the ac series, it was actually alot larger than i thought, it didnt sink in until the mission with the boss before the cargo cannon, theres a small area underneath with some cars and it was the size of the ac's foot, for some reason i expected a car to be about a 1/4th the size, not easily an 1/8th or smaller, the scale of everything else just seemed right? But when you take into account the ACTUAL size, everything is GARGANTUAN
a lot of the factory type spaces seem to be built specifically for MTs and ACs.
@@mkv2718 or really really big infrastructure "bigger is better" after all. Also i was just saying that cause i was expecting something similar to ac1
If you really pay attention in a lot of maps there are tons of details on the buildings and things that really show off the scale. Little catwalks, stairs and ladders, the doors and windows on buildings etc. It's pretty awesome and really shows off the megastructure nature of most of the buildings in most of the maps.
@@Ender240sxS13 yeah i did notice alot of those after the first time with the car, after that i started paying attention to the details more
In AC1, the mechs are barely taller than the cars.
I'm sure it's been said, but I love Zullie's investigative attention to detail and really concise, communicative formatting. Thank you for all of your hard work, Zullie, and I hope you're enjoying Armored Core!
Going back to your videos on Sekiro, it seems like Fromsoft has a habit of playing fast and loose with the size of characters for the sake of gameplay or spectacle. (Also thinking of the common trope in manga where a character who is merely taller than the rest of the cast can vary in relative height, from merely "tall" to "filling the entire room" as it suits the mood of the scene)
Gamaguri from Kill la Kill basically only has one scaling rule: Has to be the tallest guy in the scene.
@@zchen27Came for this!
Makes me think of Cyberpunk Edgerunners where Maine switches back and forth between about 6'10" and 10'6"
Yes, but in sekiro it’s also a lore element.
@@zchen27
Don't forget how several characters in JoJo despite being canonically 5 ft can suddenly morph from a tall titan that looks to be 7 ft tall to a shortstack that looks 3.5 ft tall depending on seemingly random artistic metaphors.
As a newcomer to the franchise I had the early impression they were a lot smaller than they actually are, until I got to a mission that was silent for the beginning and stood next to a random car.
lol BAWS
The shot of Zullie with Godrick's soldier and the Kaiden sellsword at the end with AC music goes pretty hard lmao
I love how that chart says NEXTs are smaller than 3rd generation ACs. But when you're actually in game it's very clear that NEXTs are huge in comparison to previous ACs. For example a tank or a helicopter barely reaches the ankle of your NEXT
Pretty sure that chart is wrong, NEXTs are gundam-sized afaik
@@nisnastNah
Its more Fromsoftware cant make 1:1 Scale of what something is ingame
Since Motherwill in reality is pretty much a mountain sized fortress, ingame shes much smaller than what shes supposed to be
@@nisnast Just going by the 1/72 scale model kits, AC3 Nexus Oracle and AC4A White Glint, White Glint's head height is 50% higher than Oracle's. So, if Oracle is at 11 meters, White Glint should be 16 meters.
the way I tell they are giant is with the escort mission near the beginning of FA those trucks that you escort are giant themselves with shipping containers stacked 2 high and in rows/columns of 3 and the NEXTs tower over these vehicles
@@daimyos8823 it's still 10 meters
I've noticed in one of the first missions that there are also huge cars with ladders something like Caterpillar 797 and u are TOWERING over them looking like u are at least 30m considering these cars are about 7.5m tall. But then in same place you can see more common cars like the one you showed and they seem oversized (or caterpillar car are undersized).
Clearly they didn't scale everything to be realistic so its hard to tell how tall AC really is...
There are human sized doorways on a few of the maps. It would be interesting to see if they are all roughly the same size and to try the scale the AC's off of that. I agree that the vehicle models are an unreliable standard.
There's also staircases where your AC is only two flights tall, implying it's maybe 28 ft.
Yeah, I noticed this too and was going to comment that the car shown here seemed vastly off compared to other parts of the game. In the mission where you investigate the arsenal that went dark, there are several huge heavy duty trucks, looking like the kind that would be used to transport tanks. They have three shipping containers stacked on top of each other up on their trailers, and you tower above those.
This was when I first stopped to consider the ACs scale properly, and it gave me the impression that AC6 has the biggest generation of ACs.
@@nathanpapp432Even the smaller buildings like air control towers look absolutely dwarfed by our ACs, but in comparison the cars make our ACs look slightly shorter.
@NightmareBlade10 There was a car next to what looked to be a Caterpillar dump truck, and I thought the car seemed too big in comparison till I noticed the rear door. That car looks to be some sort of armored personal carrier than a regular sized car.
My realisation moment was in Rubicon when I noticed a dumper truck and it looked like next to my AC as smaller car would next to a human. They can be insanely fast too. When you start assault boosting and you do 2 kilometers in a few seconds
Isn't normal AC speed something like 400kmh ? you even have more accel than a electric car lmao
Ac6 have around 250 kmh for avg
@@exile_kzkstillbslow compared to nexts which easily breaks 1000 km
@@jalpat2272 yep,casually break the sound barrier
@@exile_kzkI once a guy set up a next to go at Mach 14, it was terrifying
So seems like, although there's been some wonkiness with the scale over the series' history, the "intended" size has always been around 10m.
An interesting note is that Armored Core has been (to me at least) an iteration of mecha after the western iteration of Battletech, which explains why AC's are around 10m tall (fitting with Battletech's scale of mechs to boot). So it makes sense that we finally get to measure them in-game properly and we see that while they are much faster than battletech mechs of the same mass they are the same height.
To me AC was always a fusion of battle tech and gundams
AC's are slick looking Armored Troopers from the anime VOTOMS
Battlemechs are way bigger than ArmoredCores. But are way slower.
Unless you put MASC on them.
@@ghoulbuster1Depends on the battlemech. Most battlemechs tend to be around 8-10 meters tall, though different sources put stuff like Assault mechs at around 14 or so, or even larger. Honestly Battletech hates giving actual official sizes on their mechs that don't contradict themselves next publication, and usually all you get from them is their weight.
You mean Studio Nue with Macross and Sunrise with Dougram went with a scale around there, as part of launching the 'Real Robot' boom, the designs of which FASA licensed. In turn Studio Nue has semi-consistently been heavily involved in the design work for Armored Core, hence their biases carry forward.
Licensing Japanese Work, doesn't mean it's a "western iteration." Battletech is Derivative Work in that regard.
I think that with shorter robots it’s also easier to make them navigate in interesting and credible environments… everything in ac6 it’s already gigantic but it’s a “reasonable” gigantic like it’s still something built for humans which also have big robots
This is why I really like V and Verdict Day. The environment interactivity was really nice. Although apparently not a sentiment shared by any majority of the AC community.
@@GoodwillWrightIts mostly because 5th Gen Armored Core felt forced with its gameplay
AC6 while Stagger is too strong, some weapon balance is highly questionable and hard lock existing, at least theres ways to get away with them instead of being major appeal
Like tone down stagger a little on some weapon, buff weapons that need it more, and Hard lock is easilly counterable if you keep assault boosting away from people
@@RenoKyrie Yeah, I don't think, at the least, any weapon should stagger in one hit unless it's like the pilebunker. Granted, yeah, the stun cannons make sense to be that powerful, but there really isn't much of a drawback to it in PvP.
Honesty this is exactly how big I thought they were. Good job on from conveying the size of the machines through the weight of animation and context clues.
I was having a discussion with a friend about this, and it seems that most people are often surprised that AC's are quite compact.
and funny enough, we ended up discussing how Gundams are actually quite big in general.
gundams really are realistically speaking they are too big and too heavy to move while acs wouldn't have that same problem
@@yokai1235 yeah , gundams are just too Big for their own good , AC size is something a bit more grounded
Ran into that with my buddies that are new to ac. I’m mostly a V player and explaining the size difference between gundams, acfa, and V was something they struggled to wrap their head around. Then the question of human+ and pilots getting combined with their Acs came up because one couldn’t understand how a human could fit in a AcV sized mech 😂
@@Fra-gee-lay wait till they learn about the scopedog from Armored Troopers Votoms , that mech is LESS than 4 meters tall 😂 , that must be *really cramped*
@@Fra-gee-lay it's not that hard if you see how long 5th gen ac cores ares
They’re so nimble and fast but they’re gigantic lmao
That's exactly what she said 😂
Play a tank build
@@666slateran666 or one of the earlier games
@@23Scadu yeah AC hasn't been slow for 2 or 3 entries
@@666slateran666I'd call the mechs in AC5 pretty slow. Then again I was comparing them with AC4 at the time and those things are straight up fighter jets
I always love your videos especially the souls series ones. Keep making great videos. You are one of my favorite UA-camrs!
Zullie talking about Armored Core is a certified W moment
Common Zullie W
common grift
I'm going to say I really love the "Armored Core" games and those Gundam-style battles, crashing the iron and breaking the armor were really fun.
WOOOOOOOOOOO! an armoured core video!
honestly, if you're ever interested, it would be great to see many more videos of you breaking down the older games and finding either cut content, scrapped ideas, or possible lore links.
This is a good analysis. The only thing I'd add is that I think that if we saw a Armored Core in person, they would be somewhat bigger than we thought they were. I've had that happen to me a lot when I've gotten to see other vehicles in person that previously I'd only seen videos or pictures of.
I think 10m is a good size for the Armored Cores. That's about 2.5 to 3 stories tall, which is my sweet spot for mech size. It's small enough to feel believable, but still large enough to be fantastical, futuristic, and impressive.
Its interesting; the model kits of the Gen 3, 4 and 5 ACs are all 1/72 scale. You can compare them to model planes, which gives a clear picture of their respective sizes. They're relatively small.
The nineball from ac1 is also 1/72
In AC6 the mechs are big, but something about the detail in the maps makes their scale seem off to me. For example in the snowy mountain level, since there are no other land marks it looks like any character from any game could traverse the terrain, you could easily imagine other characters (say Arthur from RDR2) running and climbing the rocks and hills, yet they are supposed to be massive when you compare them to the vehicles and building you find later in the level. Also, the way snow is piled in the city looks like how snow accumulates in like a sidewalk or a few inches next to a wall, yet if you look at it's actually reaching like 2 / 3 stories of the buildings and walls.
I get that.
It "seems" normal relatively until further inspection, then things get,
"Hol' up just a bit."
All things are relative
I think they made things smaller in game so they wouldn't need to craft huge maps, AC4 has a more realistic scale imo, but most of the maps in that game are pretty barren, lots of deserts, so I assume they "faked" the height of things to facilitate level design.
it's a beautiful thing
if you see the small cranes in game it gets more confusing
Yay! I was really hoping you'd cover AC 😊
I'm really thankful that you used Nexus version of AC1's main menu theme that shit rocks
zullie always selects certified bangers
Awesome, didn't know you were into AC. Glad another series that I can support you on.
@awhellnah__many people who enjoy dark souls don’t enjoy ac. I don’t think they were surprised but happy they enjoy the game LAUGH OUT LOUD
I think Zullie said before that she played previous iterations of Armored Core
@@f1fanatic241 Remember that AC6 is the first PC release of the entire series.
Many people enjoy the series but couldn't play it, like me.
@awhellnah__ they've been playing since AC2 so it's not just because from soft made dark souls, it's because they like armored core and this is the newest game in like, what? A decade?
A bit of interesting to note is that originally, ACs were just heavily customized MTs.
It wasn't until the LYNX timeline that they were more in line of high-end/super mechs that you usually see in anime. If I'm not mistaken, in ACV and ACVD, the mechs you're also piloting are (more or less) heavily customized MTs (kinda not different from what you destroyed with a passing thought during AC4-ACFA era, especially if you compare the size of your mech during that era with NWGIX).
Technology really regressed during that time, which is probably a good thing, considering what happened with the unchecked use of Kojima technology (well, until some crazy guy thought that it was a good idea bring it back again).
ACV VD it is a old NEXT, just making from junk.
Anyone remember Supreme Commander? I always loved the scale of that game, the main ACU mechs being 90 meters tall, making trees look like twigs.
Not to mention the experimentals
FA is still the best RTS to date, its actually kinda sad that the genre peaked so long ago.
And then there's Aeon Galactic Colossus, Cybran Megalith, Seraphim Ythota which dwarf ACU xD
As a fan of the series from the beginning, I thoroughly approve of the music used here. I am absolutely here for any Armored Core content you feel like making.
I love how souls creators are also adapting and making armored core content. Shows how great the games are that FromSoftware make.
Of course they're adapting, they couldn't make new content otherwise.
@@lordmuhehe4605 just like how you could never make someone happy
I loved this video. As a Gundam model kit fan, I was amused and fascinated that you used the to-scale model kits to estimate a “real life” size. I also liked that you compared the size of the Armored Core to Gundams. I would watch more Armored Core size comparisons with Mecha from different series
One of my favorite things to do in the game is look at all the little cars and stairs and doors and stuff. It really paints a picture of how absurdly monumental the construction and equipment and infrastructure on Rubicon is. In a way I wish that we could see tiny little people, because it's still somewhat difficult to wrap your head around the scale of the world without actual humans running around, but I guess they had to get rid of them to avoid an M rating or something like that in case of inevitable squish situations.
What fascinates me is that the Ibis series we fought moves like Gundam with drone lasers and swords waves while having the same 10 meters height as us. I love it
AN ARMORED CORE ZULLIE VIDEO??? Christmas came early this year!
Should be a lot more on the way, I've been an AC fan for a long time and we've never had a PC version to dig into before.
@@ZullietheWitch We are truly blessed 🙏
I'm really enjoying this game and so far the way it handles lore is a lot nicer than the cryptic souls games. I feel like I understand all I need to. I will say though, I'm torn between the first decision missions in chapter 3 since I adore both sides!
The general consensus within the community is that ACs prior to 5thgen are between 10-15 meters (some ACs have stuff that makes them pointy or taller), and 5thgen ACs are between 5-7 meters. There are actually some great photos of the human from Project Phantasma standing next to his car that demonstrate how poorly Fromsoft handle scaling in the first games. The black humvee shown is the same size as the helicopters that show up in other missions.
Hey , if you can have giant mechs then why not have giant humvees too ? Lol 😂
Inveigh spittin facts
The thing that bothered me the most when I play AC6 is the scaling of the environment. Some building/structures are too small or too big for humans. To me it feels very inconsistent but it could also be my inability to scale things.
My theory while checking this game out was that both the corps and the rubiconians are so dependent on using AC's and other large vehicles to move around that they don't even bother with scaling things down to human size anymore 😅
We already live in a world scaled entirely to cars, where if your expensive-ass rig breaks down you're missing work. I can totally see this happening with ACs!
@@dragonandavatarfan8865 Yeah I thought that would be the case too.
@@hegel5000 *Country.
With Cores being approx. 10m in AC6, this puts them at roughly the same size as the average Arm-Slave in the Full Metal Panic series.
Wow someone remember fmp?
Great content aside, thank you for using the menu music from AC1. It just brings me back to hanging out in my brother's room playing that all day. Such an iconic track
I was waiting for a video like this. Zullie never disappoints.
The fact those giant platforms they built on Rubicon 3 easily outclasses any existing buildings we have on Earth is both fascinating and terrifying at the same time.
Like, you pilot your AC out of a facility which is already pretty big, only to see the sky being covered by those HUMONGUS structures, stretching endlessly into the distance... they know how to design an awesome game world!
It’s bigger than it looks, but smaller than it feels.
Huge props to you Zullie for using the GOAT track from the GOAT ac game. Made me smile the second I heard it at the start of the video. 😁
Cannot wait for the "head component with tiny witch hat" mod.
I never expected an AC6 video from you; idk why I wasn't subscribed after watching you for so long but today's the day you got me
Yay! Armored Core content!
Finally! I was waiting for a good video on the sizes for 20 years lol
Mecha scaling is something that fascinates me a little bit, from the variations in AC sizes, to the fact that Variable Fighters from Macross are almost all 15m tall so their fighter modes are the same size as a real fighter plane except the VF-1 from the original show, which is just 10m (just like a gen 6 AC), to the fact that Mobile Suits from Gundam were getting progressively bigger, then a financial crisis came in Japan and they got downsized so they could sell smaller model kits without changing the scale, then they got back to the original 18m and just stayed there for the most part, to just comparing sizes between franchises and understanding why they chose that size, like how Titans from Titanfall are only 6m tall because of the game dynamics of Pilots and Titans… I really like the subject.
I think I remember another reason why they made UC Gundams smaller, starting with F91. Apparently in-lore I think they wanted to go for more maneurverability and harder to hit ones. That explains why F91, Crossbones and even Victory appear to be fast.
Can't wait to see you using a NEXT in a purple dress and with a witch hat to show the behind-the-scenes stuff in this game!
Oh great to see you make a video on this game too! This is the first AC game i've seen, and the first 2 hours were pretty cool (watched Vinny Vinesauce play it). One day i'll get the game for myself, even tho i only have an xbox one, and i'll see all the coop stuff that comes after :>
Till then, hope to see you show some interesting stuff as always! Love this channel
Edit: I forgot, cheers from Brazil !
Based Vinesauce fan. Also, Zullie has been a fan of the series for a very long time!
booti pls cum to brazil
Zullie! You're doing videos on my FAVORITE franchise?! Thank you!!! You're the best!
Zullie doing Armored Core content is what I'm here for! Let's go!
I love you putting the Gundams in there. Just, imagine gow tiny an AC would look like against the Xi Gundam.
Was anyone else hoping we'd get a sample of an AC model loaded into Elden Ring, or Vice Versa, with the model scales having AC's being the size of like a horse or something?
I've always loved how in Armored Core 3, the cars and vans and trucks in the Parking Garage level are so tiny and they just explode when you walk over them
Zullie on armored core now let’s go
I love this analysis video about Armored Core, thank you. Always wondered about those things, but so busy playing the game, lol.
Honestly, I kinda prefer a smaller mecha for realistic & more agile portrayal of this walking dead machine, & 10 m height AC seems like the ideal size. It make sense from military sim POV since most military tanks overall length is 4-6 m & AC is double the size for a better overall effectiveness. Comparatively, a combat aircraft like F35 almost just as big as ACs with the length/heigh up to 10-15 m
A bit of a caveat about tank dimensions, but designers would love to go wider and probably longer if they could choose. They're mainly just limited by how wide train cars are, as the main mode of transportation for tanks is rail.
That was always my main gripe with gundams , how do you transport a 18 meter tall vehicle from one place to other without using a massive transport vehicle ? , AC being 10 meters tall would make them way easier to transport and move around , and these two things are very important when it comes to vehicles , having a super op vehicle won't matter if said vehicle can never reach to the places you want to
You never fail to answer questions i have about these games, thank you Zullie
AC content from zullie?? Let's goooo
Fun Fact: The flavor screen for AC4A on the PS3 lists NEXTs as being 1000m tall.
Yaaaas new Zullie
Wow, I always assumed AC's to be something like 100 feet tall! I'm actually glad that they are considerably smaller than that. It makes the game a bit more realistic and believable which in turn makes it more immersive!
I’m buying this game now
Thanks for taking the time to delve into Armored Core, Zullie!
Eyyyy, Zullie arrives in the AC-verse!
You can see the ridiculous in sizes in terms of mechs of different franchises in Another Century's Episode whereby you get the very large super robots to the hilariously tiny knightmare frames. Also what do you know, it was also developed by Fromsoft.
You should scale some of the crazy big shit in AC6. Like the PCA's war helicopters - how many damn people does it take to even pilot a helicopter that big? Or what about the PCA's battle cruisers? Or really just any of the large PCA vehicles that basically look like scaling a normal vehicle to a human, when comparing to an AC.
Some helicopters I think count as ACs or large MTs themselves
Ai is also used alot so probably less people then you think
They are like close combat versions of AC 130 with more fire power. That can go really fast do alot of damage fuck some shit up and run away comeback do it again like hit and run technic.
When I saw a car in VI I started to wonder this exact thing, thank you for making it into a video!
Something about the sense of scale in this game was always hard to read I think so this helps to ground it somewhat.
1:27 AC name: Black Witch, heh
From Software makes player characters short so that they have to endure life’s biggest challenge; being a manlet
So they're about the size of a Mech from BattleTech. Other than hover mode it would actually be an interesting set up to see a lance go up against an AC
Oh, absolutely bumfuck murdered :V
Like, ACs casually rocks around on 300kmh, carry weapons that can one shot battleships and in general just seems way more destructive with stuff like giant laser blades and huge plasma cannons. I think BattleMechs would be around like, the threat level of an MT at the very best
No contest here. They'll get murdered by ACs. Maybe A standard MT might do.
@@namkha209If they one shot battleships why do bosses even bother having health bars? You can't even one shot the mooks in the game no? They whole break their stamina and then kill them?
@@rddragon5 yup. That just shows how fucking bonkers mechs are in comparision to boring ships. Like, you literally can take the pile bunker up to the PCA ship and one shot it with a single hit to the bridge, yet that thing only deals like, 75% of a boss' HP half the time :v
@@namkha209 Oh so this is just one specific type of gun, aka the biggest one? Because then if you're skewing that way. I can take a lance (4 Mechs) of Urbies that each of an actual nuclear missile on them LOL
Talking about Gundam, the Armored Cores can be compared to the models from Gundam F91, which are known for being one of the smallest (about 10 - 12 meters). But talking about other mech videogames, the comparison is beteween Heavy Gear and Mechwarrior, in the former we play with knowingly small mechs made for urban \ close warfare, while in the latter there are multiples models from light \ ultralight like Flea, Commando and Firestarter that are around 10 meters tall.
Zullie you are just the best, every video is interesting and I always leave with a smile looking forward to your next video. Thank you for always putting in the work to make these and share them with all of us.
This video gave me music whiplash. Zullie has conditioned me to expect either Zelda or Kingsfield ost every time I click a video lol
I imagine being short helps create an underdog feeling. Smaller, scrappier, and with much more to prove against greater odds
10 meters is a practical size for mechs, big enough to be important while not being so large it becomes physically impossible
Always love watching your vids, Zullie! The lore of FromSoft's games has always been a kind of crazy enjoyable rabbit-hole.
Hope to see more AC content Zullie you rock with the vids you make I can't wait to see what info nuggets of joy you find for us! Tyvm for always putting out quality content
that OG music hit me with a huge wave of Nostalgia thanks.
Zulie if you want geta good look with reference points you can use photo mode in the hangar!
Came here for nostalgia and honest curiosity, stayed for the vibing garage theme.
When you stand next to a crawler crane, you really get a perspect of just how massive ACs are.
It’s neat to see a mech series with short mechs, nice vid Zullie!
Nah , they are only short compared to a gundam , Titans from Titanfall are smaller and then you have the Scopedog which is a midget 😂
Wooo, From Software has been very consistent about their design in size. Very good info.
So cool to see you doing videos on armored core
i am happy that after posting that litle guy from Projec Phantasma everwhere past week, i got recomended a video with him.
nineball seraph shows up in ACE:R (another century's episode R), mecha crossover game made by fromsoftware. its roughly the size of FMP's AS (ARX7 Arbalest, M9s) which are already pretty small
Wow so I was on point. I've also seen that car in AC6 and thought, yeah maybe 10m tall. Interesting how the ACs were smaller in the fifth generation. Thanks Zullie for investigating and making all the sizes clear.
I stood mine next to an apartment building, its head reached the 3rd floor, i then paused the game and went to look through the window, since i have the same soviet era apartment block next to my house i can now visualize how tall an AC is, about 10ish meters, now all that is left is for me to start getting some btches
so hyped to see more stuff you dig up in AC6, this was my first AC game and im at a loss for words for how much I enjoy it.
Knowing how tall an AC is now makes me wonder: are the railings in the hangar OSHA complying?
It makes me so happy seeing how much of the Souls community has come to give support to this somewhat niche franchise.
I'm just impressed Armored Core 6 is such a phenomenal game.
I expected nothing going into it and now it's my personal game of the year.
I expected good quality, I mean it's FromSoft we're talking about here.
But I didn't expect to be so mesmerized.
Zullie, loving the variety and history on this video! Also here's a suggestion, is it possible for you to look at attack hitboxes? Anyway love your stuff and great work! :D