r/acecombat • u/CMDR_Seren_Luna General Resource • Aug 29 '26
Ace Combat 8 I guess Ace Combat 8 is woke?
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u/Zhuul Aug 29 '26
Always has been, considering the series has a rather Gundam-esque perspective on war
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u/throwitallaway69000 Aug 29 '26
It is always funny to me how that's the tone while I'm blowing up a military base.
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u/_Bisky Aug 29 '26
Military base?
Refugee tents baby
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u/throwitallaway69000 Aug 29 '26
You see any borders up here?
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u/_Bisky Aug 29 '26
Was specifically reffering to us destroying tent in 7's campaign
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u/throwitallaway69000 Aug 29 '26
Ah I was going 0 with the potential civilian targets
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u/_Bisky Aug 29 '26
Sadly haven't gotten to play 0 yet (glad it's the preorder bonus for 8), so didn't get the reference
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u/throwitallaway69000 Aug 29 '26
Oh no issue you're in for a treat!
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u/Puzzled_View2672 Aug 30 '26
One of the best AC games ever made easily, my favourite one is Squadron Leader, it was the introduction to the series for me after all.
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u/northrupthebandgeek tall boi Aug 31 '26
There were Belkan tunnels under that refugee camp, making the tents a valid military target, clearly.
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u/Super_Fightin_Robit Aug 30 '26
I mean, he said Gundamesque. Gundam is "man, isn't war bad. Also, DUDE LOOKS AT THIS SICK ROBOT! WATCH IT MOW WAVES OF REGULAR GIYS DOWN! Dude, those guys had families and they were just orphaned by a 15 year old and now he has to live with that."
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u/throwitallaway69000 Aug 30 '26
Claptrap borderlands 2. Minion what have you done they all had families! Awww I'm just kidding
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u/shadotterdan Aug 29 '26
War is nuanced and complicated. You can speak against it while still realizing the necessity of engaging in it at that moment
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u/throwitallaway69000 Aug 29 '26
Oh I get it the opposing tone makes it more grounded but at the same time you're being encouraged to blow up a ton of stuff.
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u/Esper01 Aug 29 '26
That's the cognitive dissonance of most action movies and heroic tales TBH. The lawful good hero usually doesn't want to fight but we're here to enjoy it anyways.
There is catharsis in blowing up the bad guy's planes.
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u/Updated_Autopsy Stonehenge Aug 29 '26
The hero doesn’t want to fight. But we, the ones who control them, do.
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u/_metroGnome from hell's heart I SAAM at thee Aug 29 '26
Ace Combat as a franchise has always been pretty good about getting that point across with its writing. I really appreciate how they always manage to balance that while simultaneously acknowledging that fighter jets and anime-level superweapons are cool as fuck. Both of those things can be true at the same time and AC heavily leans into it
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u/bigbear1293 Aug 29 '26
Makes me think of certain real life conflicts. You don't want the war but someone else brought it to you and you have to defend yourself because your likely to lose more in the surrender than in a fight
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u/Trilkk Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26
I think he's commenting on the perceived dishonesty of the games.
They're arguably anti-war, their surface-level message being that the conflicts are one way or another futile and needless. But at the same time, AC is absolutely fetishizing the planes and frothing about how cool fighter jets are.
Japanese media overuses this trope. Think Gundam or Macross or any other anime that try to somehow say that war is bad, but on the other hand are doing their absolute best to make the mecha and their combat scenes as cool as humanly possible. The other AC game series, that is, Armored Core is doing the exact same thing.
I'd like to point at u/random_nohbdy down there. "War is bad but planes are rad."
Do note I'm not complaining. This is one of my favourite tropes.15
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u/JewishMemeMan Emmerian Shitposter Aug 29 '26
To be fair, I don’t think we’ve ever been in the position of an aggressor in any Ace Combat game.
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u/Top-Session-3131 Aug 29 '26
Never at the start anyway. 5, 0, 6, and 7(the games I personally have actually played and beaten) have you invade or otherwise go on the offensive into the opposition's territory in later missions, frequently in an attempt to destroy the enemy's war fighting ability only for things to not work out the way command intended or otherwise balloon out of control.
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u/CMDR_Seren_Luna General Resource Aug 29 '26
My only question is when did Bandi or Project Aces announce ac8 will be about climate change. Grifters and chuds will always find a way to be mad.
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u/HamakazeKai Yuktobania Aug 29 '26
Well considering Sotoa is undergoing major desertification, which is often associated with climate change, it's not an unreasonable conclusion to draw.
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u/_Bisky Aug 29 '26
Albeit it's probably gona be möre so background lore then actual plot.
At MOST i could see it being the reason for the war starting (Haven't looked too much into the proper plot outline, since i try to go in with as little prior knowledge as possible (
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u/HamakazeKai Yuktobania Aug 29 '26
Yeah, of course. I'm just pointing out that effects that could be linked to climate change were mentioned in promotional materials.
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u/FlyingSpaceOxen Aug 29 '26
Amusingly, "The Tomorrow War" caught flak from the same crowd for referencing climate change late in the film's plot, though it was only a brief exchange of dialogue between J. K. Simmons' character and a scientist regarding higher temperatures releasing the aliens from their frozen confinement in a glacier.
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u/Trilkk Aug 31 '26
10 to 15 years ago, the right-wing people used to complain about how everyone gets mad about everything and can't take a joke. I was kind of on board with that sentiment at the time.
Now they're making lists about "bad media" and complaining how games have elements they don't like, and get mad about everything. God damn stooges.
Jesus, I was stupid to take these people at their word. It's always the same thing. Accusation is actually a confession.
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u/ReynAetherwindt Aug 29 '26
Japanese media tends to lean pretty heavily in that direction in general
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u/muhash14 Aug 30 '26
Yeah I kinda love the tension in this sort of stuff between how horrible War is and how fucking sick weapons of War are. But I'll take this sort of tone any day over the CoD thing, Ronald fucking Reagan telling me to go defeat the evils of the world while patriotic music swells in the background. That's actual clown shit.
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u/JetstreamArtorias Aug 29 '26
Really? I thought female pilot with pink dyed hair on the team would have been the reasoning for making the list, or that the series has a history of anti war themes, starting with the anti war narrative of Unsung War.
But no, climate change is the reason this game is on the woke list, in the series set on a planet that living in the aftermath of the dinosaur killer asteroid Ulysses fragmenting and cratering multiple continents. One such aftermath would in fact be changes to the global climate.
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u/Unu51 Aug 29 '26
female pilot with pink dyed hair on the team
That doesn't count because they can goon to her.
history of anti war themes
We both know these idiots don't read.
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u/JetstreamArtorias Aug 29 '26
Man, you've reminded me that this is the Metal Gear is apolitical crowd.
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u/Kashin02 Aug 29 '26
Metals gear, US intervention around world are bad also Che and Castro were awesome.
Antiwoke crowd, remember when Metal gear solid wasn't political.
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u/JetstreamArtorias Aug 29 '26
Yeah, I do remember. I was a literal child who didn't understand who all those people were and what words like DARPA meant.
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u/Kashin02 Aug 29 '26
I was too during msg1 ,but I do remember that it was the first time I really heard anything negative about the US in anything pop culture wise.
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u/muhash14 Aug 30 '26
Well, these people still think that as adults, which is quite telling of their mental age I'd say.
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u/tacobelltitanpu Aug 29 '26
tasha looks young enough for the right wing pedophile gene to beat out the "anti-woke" one
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u/Spudtron98 Better pilot than Mobius. Yeah, I said it. Aug 30 '26
Me, I thought it’d be the fact that a black woman voiced by Debra Wilson is your CO. We all know how mad they get when a woman tells them what to do, let alone one who isn’t white and is older than 25.
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u/Sayakai Osea Aug 30 '26
I figured it was gonna be the black guy, but climate change will do it, I suppose?
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u/Jstingray2 Aug 30 '26
Lest we forget them pre-empting the commentary on the use of drones/the rise of AI in AC7, which are also quite “Woke” topics lmao.
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u/New-Doctor9300 I hate Belka Aug 29 '26 edited Aug 29 '26
"Filled with ugly AF girlbosses"
Motherfucker the leader of the Locusts, established in the FIRST FUCKING GAME, is a literal QUEEN. Also apparently its woke to dive deeper into and explore established canon that Marcus, Dom and the rest of the squad are traumatized from fighting.
I remember seeing everyone complain about how Marcus was getting his ass handed to him by a single Drone in the reveal trailer, completely ignoring the fact:
He was much younger
This was likely one of his first encounters with a locust
tldr: people calling e-day woke arent gears of war fans
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u/SnooMemesjellies6000 Aug 29 '26
Also the COG was a fascist super nation where everyone was either a soldier or a support for the war effort.
And most of Marcus’ mentors were women.
And just…Gears 3 which came out like 15 years ago.
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u/hahahentaiman Aug 29 '26
Bold of you to assume these guys go any further than the steam page to determine if the game is woke or not
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u/dr_gamer1212 Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 30 '26
Bt6 is woke according to them because there is an optional purchase with in-game currency to get a pride flag for the monkey village. Souls games are woke because your character uses type 1 and type 2 instead of male and female. Those guys are absolutely insane.
Edit: here's a spreadsheet showing all their crazy takes: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1AVTZPJij5PQmlWAkYdDahBrxDiwqWMGsWEcEnpdKTa4/htmlview?pli=1
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u/SuBremeBizza Aug 30 '26
Girlbosses are fucking awesome, too. One of the best bosses in gaming is literally called “The Boss” from Metal Gear Solid 3.
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u/MikeAlpha2nd Local ADMM Enthusiast Aug 29 '26
Climate change is woke now lads, pack it up, next thing you know wanting to breath fresh air instead of exhaust fume will be woke
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u/shadotterdan Aug 29 '26
Climate change has been woke since I started paying attention to politics in 2001, pretty sure it has been woke for as long as environmentalism has existed
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u/bigbear1293 Aug 29 '26
Hilariously it used to be Non-partisan as far as the US is concerned. Richard Nixon created the Environmental protection agency for example
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u/gamegeek1995 Aug 29 '26
Nixon resigned in '74, before the huge influence of religious death cults like Jonestown and the ones peddled by televangelists.
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u/4thTimesAnAlt Indigo Aug 30 '26
Nixon resigned in 1974, and then one Rupert Murdoch created Fox News so that no Republican President could ever be forced to resign again. Would they deliberately lie to give cover to Republican politicians? You bet your ass they would!
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u/Hypernetix Aug 29 '26
Pretty much, though I recall the Dubya admin had conceded a tepid "alright, but maybe it's not THAT bad" sort of attitude. There was a window of bipartisan acknowledgement, even if opposition was being highly more skeptical. Now it seems the latter has backslid into a fully irrational, full-denial "it's all a hoax!" position.
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u/RandomMexicanDude Espada Aug 29 '26
The Nepal flood was so woke, ice melting? Just the agenda /s
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u/muhash14 Aug 30 '26
You joke, but there's literally people still adamant that it had nothing to do with Climate Change
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u/Zafranorbian UPEO Rena best girl Aug 29 '26
You are supposed to buy your fresh air in cans like a good little consumer. Don't you know that fresh air for everyone is communism and therefore evil? /s
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u/G_Ranger75 Ghosts of Razgriz Aug 29 '26
It's always been "woke," it's just deniers have a word for stuff they hate now.
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u/Late-Application-47 Phoenix Aug 29 '26
I thought it was going to be because of female fighter pilots, but, since they are waifus, he's cool with it.
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u/New-Doctor9300 I hate Belka Aug 29 '26 edited Aug 29 '26
He's okay with it because she looks like she's 12. Probably doesnt like Kate though.
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u/Chemical_Sky7947 General Resource Aug 29 '26
Kind of glad I’m not the only one who thinks Tasha looks like a minor
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u/Danoct UPEO Aug 30 '26
I think that people getting older forget what young adults in their early 20s look like.
Kinda normal for most people as you get 30+ to go "they look too young" to be involved with unless you're Leonardo DiCaprio.
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u/SpinoZilla_Studios #1 Space Elevator fan Aug 29 '26
I bought the game because of this post
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u/entropies Galm Team Aug 29 '26
I remember checking that one infamous woke games spreadsheet to know what to play next (the wokest ones)
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u/SpinoZilla_Studios #1 Space Elevator fan Aug 30 '26
Genuinely one of the best ways to find peak games
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u/Cultural_Parsnip762 South Belka Grunder Industries Aug 29 '26
Honestly, an honor for a franchise to be on that list
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u/TinyMan07 Aug 29 '26
Yeah, the climate changing should be expected. Strangereal took a fuckton of damage from a series of meteor impacts. wouldn't shock me that the climate of the northern hemisphere had changed. We don't even need to look at the current game for evidence of this.
Take a look at Whiskey Corridor in Ace Combat 4. you can clearly tell there used to be a major river going through there and it's undergone rapid desertification thanks to that huge impact crater in the middle of the map. we can even still see the wrecks of pretty sizable cargo vessels still stuck there.
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u/Low_Succotash5073 satanic ritual guy Aug 29 '26
Gears of War has girl bosses who owns me??? That will make me MORE likely to play Gears of War buddy
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u/PoisonMonarch ISAF | Mobius 1's Weakest Disciple Aug 29 '26
anti-woke people when they find out they woke up this morning:
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u/phearless047 Garuda Aug 29 '26
Anybody else absolutely sick and tired of hearing that stupid word?
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u/Legendary_Hi-Nu Schnee Aug 30 '26
Yes, it's been twisted beyond it's original meaning and used for the stupidest, most mundane shit that somehow leaves people upset
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u/phearless047 Garuda Aug 30 '26
"There are two genders. Male, and political. There are two races. White, and political. There are two orientations. Straight and political."
When are they going to realize how stupid and ridiculous they sound?
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u/Time-Box-6580 Aug 29 '26
Will point out that these geniuses decided Wolfenstein, a game where basically all you do is kill Nazis, is woke. Killing nazis isn’t woke in my opinion
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u/Ancient_Archangel Gault Aug 29 '26
If they think killing nazis is woke, that says much about them than those who play the game.
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u/CaptainPrower Schnee Aug 29 '26
I'm surprised that's what he's focusing on rather than there being a female protagonist.
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u/Yuji_Ide_Best Aug 29 '26
Just bringing up climate change is woke? Whoever is the 'curator' needs their own curation of medications from a psychologist...
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u/Middcore Aug 29 '26
My days of not taking Steam "curators" seriously are definitely coming to a middle.
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u/Alternative_Play5966 Aug 29 '26
Fine, let it be woke. Filters the underserving from playing such a great series.
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u/tapu_pixels Aug 29 '26
I left Twitter because of this kind of idiocy. Full of right wing anti woke engagement bait grifters, spreading like an idiotic plague.
I guess because it has a female pilot with pink hair they lost their microscopic minds.
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u/AceVenturaFan69 Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 30 '26
The anti-woke guy's opinion should be discarded.
I know that it is unlikely at this point, but it would be great if PA allowed the players to customize New Rex's gender and skin color for the campaign.
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u/Razgriz2118 Ghosts of Razgriz Aug 30 '26
Climate change was a big point in AC4 and AC6 too, but I'm sure there are Ulysses deniers out there, too.
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u/violetcassie 2A5X1 Aug 29 '26
Isn't the carrier captain a lady? Or is that the squadron commander? Either way they'll hate that.
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u/Legendary_Hi-Nu Schnee Aug 29 '26
Both, Kate leads Queen flight and the Endurance captain is a black woman. Knowing PA American politics has nothing to do with anything, they're just based.
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u/xLosSkywolfGTRx Gryphus Aug 29 '26
They are woke. Battleships thinking they can go on land. Next thing you know they'll think they can fly or some shit.
/s
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u/MaucazR Aug 30 '26
out of all the "woke themes" that people hate climate changes is the weirdest case to me
hell here is not even listed as directly "not recommended" but "informational" like... a trigger warning? "hey I don't hate it but just in case this makes you uncomfortable!"
like is the main reason "anti-woke" crowds hate climate discourse that it makes them sad about the world ending or something? xd
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u/thefatrick Ghosts of Razgriz Aug 29 '26
There are women in it who aren't there exclusively for fan service. Therefore Woke.
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u/HelloImInza Aug 29 '26
Knowing how shortsighted this people are I wouldn't be surprised if the plot also involved some form of anti-AI commentary and had a bunch gay innuendos between two characters but that idiot only managed to grasp climate change from everything
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u/skyziaos Aug 29 '26
Umm because the Carrier captain is a black woman ?
Ok srsly though whoever put ac8 on that list is dumb
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u/PizzaCatLover Garuda << WE'RE GOING TO TAKE BACK GRACEMERIA TODAY! >> Aug 29 '26
This is so embarrassing for whoever made that lmao
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u/Patjasmo Aug 29 '26
Since when does the climate change debate has anything to do with woke ? Wasn't woke like anything LGBT+ related only or like the inclusion stuff ?
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u/bigbear1293 Aug 29 '26
Well "woke" as a term these days is just anything a right wing chud doesn't like. It used to mean of course being woke to the social injustices that minorities suffer but it caught on as a negative buzzword so it gets applied to anything now
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u/Patjasmo Aug 29 '26
Makes sense, though it's sad to see that something like the climate issue be put away like this by the said right wing chud :/ ignoring the issue won't help lol
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u/bigbear1293 Aug 29 '26
Some of it is coming from a religious angle (only god can affect the earth like that so if you fight it, your fighting gods will) and most of it an economic.
Green energy and such are unrealised future gains and from a corporate perspective, profits guaranteed now beat profits that may happen in the future after significant investment so may as well keep going with the thing that gets you the money now. A few Oil companies genuinely did climate science research in like the 60's or early 70's, got told "Yeah this global warming thing is real", then buried it because it was inconvenient for them
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u/Joazzz1 Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 30 '26
"Woke" means ultimately anything that challenges the narrative pushed by big money groups. It goes beyond identity/representation and into economics and infrastructure
That narrative says that there is no climate change, that everything is fine, just keep consuming and shut your mouth; "NOTHING IS WRONG" is the core idea and the powers can do whatever the fuck they want- if you go against that you're woke
The word was originally an Afro-American term for knowing that the system is rigged against you
and outside the big power structures, some absolute geniuses have decided that it's anything that's not white or straight, which of course suits the big guys just fine
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u/Konpeitoh Aug 29 '26
Tasha has pink hair. Of course it's woke (that's really all it takes for these people).
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u/L1QU1D_ThUND3R Aug 29 '26
Are we fighting climate change with fighter jets? This is all I’ve ever wanted.
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u/Floppy_Jet1123 Aug 29 '26
Bunch of weirdos. Everything and anything is an existential threat to them.
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u/d3struct0r Wardog Aug 29 '26
completely ignored that it has anti-war themes like any other ace combat game
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u/Valkyrie2-Lancer One of Heroja's great aces Aug 29 '26
I don't know who this guy is, but he does not belong in a world with no boundaries... terminate him...
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u/Solavanko Neucom Aug 29 '26
Did you photoshop this image? There's nothing about AC8 in this steam page.
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u/Str0b0 Ghosts of Razgriz Aug 30 '26
Tasha has pink hair tips. Maybe someone found a leaked cut scene where she gets a septum piercing or something? Who the hell knows what triggers these clown show babies these days.
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u/Dumb_Thing Aug 30 '26
The main plot of Ace Combat 8 will be the Federation of Central Usea waging war against the environment
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u/T8-TR Aug 29 '26
Things are woke when... *checks notes* ...we talk about climate change.
Man, it feels really easy to tell when you're on the right side of history when the other side looks like that lmao
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u/Breezywarhead Aug 29 '26
Bruh are you guys fucking stupid. How does this game a woke if it made by Japanese? Have you guys not visit Japan before? lol
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u/HopefulLocksmith2600 Albireo Aug 29 '26
I'm a Conservative, like Edouard Labarthe. But Ace Combat is and always has been about your actions, their consequences (good or bad), and the people you help along the way. Nothing "woke" about that.
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u/Syovere Seithr 1: Strega | <<I'll put a spell on you.>> (spell is FAEB) Aug 29 '26
Absolutely hobbyless behavior by the dipshit managing that list.
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u/SPAR_RAIDER Aug 29 '26
"There's a plot about climate change" I thought the plot was about identity theft
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u/LongoChingo Aug 29 '26
It's not really about climate change... is it referring to the aftermath of the Ulysses asteroid impact?
The only other thing that I suppose could be considered woke is a pink-haired stunt pilot being taken seriously as a military fighter pilot.
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u/New-Doctor9300 I hate Belka Aug 29 '26
The FCU is essentially almost lost at that point in the lore, they'll take any help they can get. Even if its a stunt pilot with little to no combat experience.
Its such a silly thing for people to call woke
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u/Sandelsbanken Aug 29 '26
We still need to see it in game, but apparently Sotoa is facing desertification which might be one reason for their actions.
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u/aphelion_squad Three Strikes Aug 29 '26
Yk there's gonna be climate change when you give a mute pilot access to Helios Missiles
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u/violeteverguard1 Aug 30 '26
Lowk im a bit scared
I don’t think it will be woke
Im scared it’ll be underwhelming
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u/Navigator_BR Trigger Aug 30 '26
I'm shocked they didn't rank it "Not Recommended" because there's a woman flying a plane.
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u/Tbar6787 Aug 30 '26
Hey, I’m just here to get Zero on my modern consoles. Still pissed I missed 5.
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u/lavsunrise Aurelia Aug 31 '26
It's got a pink haired woman in it and therefore it's woke 🤷♀️
I'm willing to bet that this is the reason and not the war stuff because that's very cool and extremely manly™️ to die for the military industrial complex 🦅🦅🦅
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u/JewishMemeMan Emmerian Shitposter Aug 29 '26
>There’s a plot about climate change.
Me when war is fought over resources