We’re less than two months away from the release of Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon and the game has now received its ESRB rating, further confirming that a delay is very unlikely.
FromSoftware is returning to the Mecha genre with Armored Core 6 after over a decade of absence and the good news is that the upcoming entry will retain the Teen rating of its predecessors.
The Teen rating is due to “Drug Reference, Language, and Violence” in the game which is something you’d expect from a mecha game with a ton of fighting involved.
“This is a third-person shooter in which players assume the role of a mercenary carrying out military-style missions,” the ESRB rating reads. “Players pilot mechanized battle suits (i.e., mechs), using machine guns, rocket launchers, missiles, and melee-style attacks to destroy enemies (e.g., other mechs, tanks, helicopters). Battles are often fast-paced, accompanied by realistic gunfire and large explosions—damaged battle suits often burst into fiery wreckage/scattered debris.”
“The game contains references to a fictional drug in the dialogue/text (e.g., “The Dosers are locked in a power struggle over the Coral drug trade”; “No one’s getting high off that”; “You gotta take Rubicon’s blessings raw…Hits your brain with a pop and a sizzle.”). The word “sh*t” appears in the game.”
Having an ESRB rating is a good sign that the game is progressing and will launch on time. Certification ratings happen at the final stages of a game’s development cycle. For gamers, this means that the game will be ready to ship as scheduled.
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon maintains the Teen rating of the entire mecha series. Every game released in the franchise has received a similar rating mostly for the violence and dialogue.
Interestingly, other games developed by FromSoftware have received the Mature rating. Most of the Demon’s Souls games, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and even the award-winning Elden Ring have all received the Mature 17+ rating.
Having a Teen rating for Armored Core 6 means that the game will have a wider audience as it can be played by younger gamers aged 13 and up. However, we’re curious to see if this will “dumb down” the level of violence that most have come to expect from a FromSoftware title.
Elden Ring sold over 20 million copies as of February, after already becoming the fastest-selling FromSoftware title of all time shortly after its release last year. Many are expecting Armored Core VI to ride the coattails of Elden Ring’s success and post similar numbers, especially as Armored Core is the former flagship franchise of FromSoftware.
We’ll find out on August 25 if Armored Core 6 will be the start of a new era of mecha games or if success has finally dodge rolled away from FromSoftware.
