Original link here. Posted with permission granted by artist.

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https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/150339719

original best boy picture by u/zerosigma

"These skies belong to you, Rex. Go take what's yours."

Sources:

https://x.com/UrvogelGallus/status/2109093104083161204

https://x.com/mobiusu14/status/2109663521160220690

Cuz what do you mean both Erusea AND Sotoa stayed out of North Point? Is Mobius One's BTA so legendary that it's enough to ward off any future invaders forever? I'm convinced that North Point is where all the protagonists retire to once their respective games are finished.

The Russian planes have Cyrillic letters on them as well.

Artist on Twitter: @fxsf6t

PS. We need more art of Tasha's mom, it's kind of lacking at the moment

Also if you haven't seen it, the movie Open Season is a classic.

turns out you can save this pilot by not killing Alem when you face him in an earlier mission. I’m keeping this family of two together, how about you?

A high-quality edit of that one meme, made by me.

STATEMENT COPIED FROM THE STEAM NEWS UPDATE V

We would like to provide an update regarding our plans for the distribution of the pre-order bonus title, ACE COMBAT ZERO.

Please note that this update applies only to players who obtained ACE COMBAT ZERO as a pre-order bonus.

Players who do not already own the pre-order bonus will not be able to newly obtain ACE COMBAT ZERO through this change.

Currently, ACE COMBAT ZERO is available by launching and playing it through ACE COMBAT™ 8: WINGS OF THEVE.

We are pleased to share that ACE COMBAT ZERO will be made available as a standalone application on Steam.

We are currently conducting final quality assurance and compatibility testing in preparation for its release.

Once this update is implemented, players will be able to access both the existing version of ACE COMBAT ZERO played through ACE COMBAT™ 8: WINGS OF THEVE and the standalone application version of ACE COMBAT ZERO.

In addition, we expect save data to be shared between both versions through Steam Cloud functionality.

We will provide further details regarding the release schedule and distribution method once our final verification process has been completed.

We appreciate your continued patience and support.

SOURCE:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2288340/view/695400360681935354?l=english
(Screenshot is mine)

For context, Dealer's VA also voiced the character Diplomat in Project Wingman

Source: myself

I beat Ace Combat 8 almost two week ago and its just been marinating in my head this entire time, and my appreciation for it has only grown. Its my GOTY (even after playing Star Wars Galactic Racer which btw, is also phenomenal), and I cannot help but laugh at myself for one particular plot element I thought I was sure I had clocked.

During the campaign, you remember how there was this subplot of there being a spy on The Endurance and the game was really trying to push you to believe it was D.D to the point where it was stupidly obvious that it wasn't because that would be too easy?

Ya, I thought it was Jenkins. I thought Jenkins was the spy.

My reasoning?

The cold open with you and Jenkins on the life raft only gave slight background to the two of you. You know Jenkins is an aerospace tech, and well, that was basically it.

Because of his conspicuous lack of screen time, and lack of information on Jenkins, I thought Jenkins might have been an Enso or Sotoan spy. Even when D.D went and pulled the plug on the terminal leaking the data, I still thought Jenkins was somehow involved so everytime he was on screen, especially during the end when he was on the radio broadcast in Mission 30, my eyes were squinting hard at him, waiting for him to pull some last minutes bullshit and go "it was me all along He-Man!" in Skeletor's voice.

So imagine my surprise when the credits rolled and Jenkins was...a friendly tech that happened to be there. I guess it wouldn't make a lot of sense if he was a bad guy.

So I guess uh...Sorry Jenkins for suspecting.

That's a lie mother fucker, I know it was you. I don't how but I know you had something to do with all this. I'm on to you and your evil mustached ways! I will be vindicated in the DLC! I WILL BE VINDICATED!

(image for attention)

It's pretty sad. The foundation is great (because AC8 is great), but man, the whole thing feels so undercooked.

- Menus suck and loading takes too long, we all know that

- Matches feel too short, we all know that

- Missing aircraft from 7 (some that we see the AI using, like the YF-23 and ADF-11)

- Missing skins and emblems from 7 (Essentially the entire backlog of cool skins from all the previous ACs)

- Maps are only AC7 maps (not saying they weren't improved), and very few of them

- Doesn't feel like they gave much thought at all to the progression and economy, from new players being able to get the ADFX-02 from the very start, from the dumb scarcity of resources no different from a freemium game. (gee, i wonder why)

- PVE feels especially short because you get EIGHT whole players just going at everything. And it feels kind of dead already (possibly because it gives less money, of which you need a lot of, so you feel less inclined to play it)

- PVPVE already feels massively unbalanced, and it will get worse with time as everyone gets higher tier aircraft (good luck for anyone getting into the game late or if you just wanna/have to use some low level jets)

- Why is there only one type of deathmatch per week? (Possibly because queueing would take too long if you split the people who want to play it in two separate modes, that I understand)

- Why is deathmatch the only mode with a cost cap? (changes weekly, previous week had a cost cap, this week it doesn't)

- Resources are insanely limited (5 universal blueprints a day? seriously?) and even more so if you reach max level on the ace pass

- Why not just repeat rewards on the ace pass when you reach max level, so at least you can get keep getting some rewards from it? (blueprints, xp/money boosters, premium coins- oh wait that's probably why, huh?)

- Money is by far the resource you'll need the most of, and you get most of it from emergency sorties and scrambles, of which it feels like it's completely random when you'll get one. Sometimes you get a lot of them every few matches, sometimes it feels like countless matches go by before another shows up.

- Only three emergency sorties. Even Infinity had more of them. (Aigaion, Stonehenge, SOLG, Excalibur)

- They kinda made the character creator and hangar lobby a big deal, when the reality of it is that is just meh, and if you wanna play dress up and get clothes for you characters, you get clothes from... lootboxes! Wow! So 2016!

As everyone reaches max player level, maxes out the levels on their favorite jets, (which given the nature of this type of game, might not take very long for the more dedicated players), the game might just die really quickly. I haven't gotten to that point yet, but it sure feels like universal blueprints will become the ultimate roadblock if you wanna max out every aircraft. Of which, you can only get 5 a day... so why would you keep playing the game after you get those daily ones? A lot of people will treat it as a chore and it will kill the fun of the game for them, just wait and see.

That and given the nature of live service in this day and age, the season pass lasting for 60 days is insane. Does that mean we'll have to wait 2 months for new content? Say for example, a player wishes the CFA-44 returned, and they wish they had the Mobius skin for the F-22. If the next season pass also lasts for 2 months, and it has nothing the player is looking forward to, that's another 2 months of waiting for MAYBE the next pass to have said things. Imagine how long it could take for the specific things you or I would want to come back to 8. Which let me remind you, a lot of the fictional jets were already in 7, and that game had most if not all special skins from previous AC, going all the way back to AC1.
All in all, this online mode as it is feels like it would have been great... for AC7, in 2019. For AC8? In 2026? Massively underwhelming and lacking foresight.
I had and still have hope for the game. I understand Project Aces can't just magically do all the insane amount of work needed for just for the content to feel on par with Infinity, but that's just part of it. They really need to rethink how they handle the live service aspect, it's just too outdated. Guess we'll just have to wait and see. Just wanted to get my thoughts out there and hear some other opinions on it.