New Armored Core 5 Trailer!
A new trailer has been released by the FROM SOFTWARE development team for Armored Core 5! It can be streamed via their official website to your default media player or downloaded to your PSP.
The trailer seems to have nearly all the same video content as their initial press release video contained. The difference is that this one is much clearer in both the video and audio departments. There seems to be a bit of information that can be gleaned from the video, but I'll just leave the gleaning up to you!
Do keep in mind that the Armored Core series is infamous for having very high quality intro scenes, with much lower quality in-game scenes.
Beware! The video streams at a whopping 1Mbps! It's pretty good quality.
Here's the video! Enjoy.
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Armored Core 5 Announced!
Armored Core 5 is the latest installment of the Armored Core series for the PS3 and XBox360. It was confirmed at the end of the last Armored Core Championship Tournament on January 10th, 2010. The official AC5 website opened to the public on January 14th, 2010. Information on Armored Core 5 has been sparse since it's announcement, with most of it coming through 3rd parties that had conversations with FROM SOFTWARE employee's.
Armored Core 5 follows a new central theme, violence, and is no longer focusing on speed. This is supposed to be accomplished by making the in-game scenes feel more gritty, by making AC's seem more realistic, and focusing on the brute strength a new age AC can bring to the battlefield. To help bring the focus in AC battles away from AP chipping and dodging and more into the realm of raw destructive force, they have implemented a new part category known as Overed Weapons. These Overed Weapons possess the power to single handedly turn the tide of a battle, even going so far as to potentially one-hit kill the opposing AC!
One of these super weapons has already been displayed in a number of screenshots and in the first AC5 Trailer. It appears to be a large back-mounted 6-bladed chainsaw, seemingly super-charged with energy or heat. The successful use of an Overed Weapon is, supposedly, very difficult. Use of this chainsaw Overed Weapon seems to require the AC to interlock with the weapon during combat. This would surely make the activation of your Overed Weapon very risky.
Armored Core 5 also features a totally revamped approach to the detail level of the Armored Core series. In AC5, the scale of AC's has been shrunk to half of their height from previous installments. This allows the AC to interact with more of the world environment. Things such as hiding beneath bridges, overpasses, and buildings as well as utilizing alleys and roadways are now more easily accomplished by AC's due to their smaller stature. The development team is focusing on creating an environment that has both intricate horizontal and vertical spaces in it for AC5, as opposed to the very linear and flat stages of previous installments. The addition of mission goals that update as you play and multi-objective missions will help to facilitate a less linear story environment, as well. Overall, AC5 promises to bring a more detailed, dynamic, and immersive environment than ever before seen in previous Armored Core games.
Finally, those who pre-order a Japanese release copy of Armored Core: Last Raven Portable for the PSP will receive bonus materials relating to Armored Core 5. One of these bonus materials is a special 60-page AC artwork book containing art from all of the previous AC titles and promotional art for AC5. The other two bonus materials are a disc featuring interviews with Toshifumi Nabeshima and the AC5 developers and a special promotional code that can be entered into the "Campaign" tab of the official AC5 website to download some special content.
FROM SOFTWARE has alluded to a late 2010 release date for the Japanese version of Armored Core 5.