Pictured here is the exact moment he looked out the window and said “…I can fly under that!” All control surfaces move as the planes maneuver, engine nozzles expand and contract as thrust changes, unique features like variable geometry on some aircraft, even a unique cockpit when flying from a first person view - from flaps to air brakes, no detail has been spared to make these aircraft as realistic looking as possible.Įven when watching light stream through the canopy of your aircraft as you maneuver, you will see it playing across a thousand microscopic scratches in the acrylic that would be otherwise invisible on direct examination. Never has the ground that I crash into looked so realistic.Įvery plane is a licensed replica of their real-world counterpart and the care that has been lavished on the models is incredible. If you’ve been living under a rock for the past two years and somehow missed the steady stream of photo-realistic screenshots of aircraft pornography that Bandai Namco have trickled out, rest assured that every moment of Ace Combat 7 is a visual marvel. Trigger’s role in shaping major political events emerges as a redemption story, as his ‘assignment’ to the Spare squadron serves as an unexpected vehicle (literally) to get back into the war and clear their name.
It becomes easy to grow invested in the success of each mission as the stakes feel personal, making those moments where operations take an unexpected turn to be even more keenly felt. Radio chatter between your fellow pilots and commanding officers constantly flows through your headphones, providing constant updates on mission parameters but also humanizing these characters who are often little more than blips on your radar.
These are juxtaposed with the missions that you fly as the newbie pilot ‘Trigger’ (later known as Spare 15), framing your experiences as just one more thread of the narrative woven between characters on both sides of the conflict. They set the stage for the new developments in the ongoing conflict in Strangereal, currently featuring a new conflict between the nations of Osea and Erusea, and provide a larger context for your missions beyond simply following orders. Highly polished cutscenes following stories of survivors of war have long been a component of the Ace Combat series, and continue to be very effective in this entry. The A-10 is still unmatched in taking a beating while bombing everything flat.