With the highly anticipated release just around the corner, Armored Core 6 game director Masaru Yamamura is the talk of the town once again, and most fans believe that the upcoming game is in good hands.
Masaru Yamamura is a Japanese video game designer who has been with FromSoftware for years. Yamamura is a renowned name in the gaming industry as he has played significant roles in the success of top-rated games like Bloodborne, Sekiro, Dark Souls, and previous Armored Core titles.
Yamamura acted as one of the game designers in Bloodborne, the maps/event planner in the original Dark Souls, and the lead game designer in Sekiro. In addition to that, he has also worked on multiple games in the Armored Core series over the years.
Armored Core 6 director Masaru Yamamura talks about the major game design decisions
In an exclusive interview with IGN, Yamamura talked about Armored Core 6 being focused on the core elements of the long-running series but also taking a more modern approach to it. The aim behind this is to ensure that those new to the series don’t feel alienated and can have a fresh start.
Talking more about the story bits of Armored Core 6, Masaru Yamamura mentioned that it has no direct links to the previous games in the series and brings along a fresh setting and storyline.
Masaru Yamamura, lead designer of Armored Core VI and Sekiro, describes why Armored Core VI isn't an open-world game after the success of the Souls series and Elden Ring.
It may seem like an obvious response with the Armored Core series, but I still thought this was interesting: pic.twitter.com/pKSkPRAjWp— Ziostorm (@Ziostorm1) June 1, 2023
Yamamura went on to reveal that there were discussions about whether to make Armored Core 6 in an open-world setting owing to the success of Elden Ring but they decided to go against it. The core elements of Armored Core were, after all, the mecha building and its impact on combat. To stick to this philosophy, they had to go with a limited world map rather than an open-world one.
As far as carrying the legacy of the coveted mecha series, Masaru Yamamura is unanimously agreed upon by fans as the right person to be heading Armored Core 6.
Yamamura helmed Sekiro as Lead Game Designer
Masaru Yamamura being the lead game designer of Sekiro took a different route than the previous Soulsborne games by focusing more on combat. In an interview with Game Informer, Yamamura mentioned that unlike Dark Souls and Bloodborne, Sekiro was more of a Katana-to-Katana combat action that required the players to master their deflect techniques to handle the enemies.
Additionally, there was the challenge of designing precise enemy and attack animations for the combat system as it was a crucial point in helping the players get a better grasp of the system. Masaru also designed the famous Deathblow system in the game which he told was inspired by the 2004 title, Tenchu: Fatal Shadows.
Although these elements do not translate to the mecha series directly, fans expect the tight moment-to-moment gameplay and tactile combat that made Sekiro such a fun experience would feature in Armored Core 6 as well.
Armored Core 6 is set to launch on August 25, 2023, on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
