A bit of a bittersweet moment I experienced recently was hearing a few people I know express complete shock at the fact that Armored Core 6 just gives you complete and utter freedom and control to do whatever you want with the appearance, aesthetics and colors of your Armored Core. I asked them to elaborate a bit on that, and a few mentioned that they were fully expecting colors and overall looks to be something you pay for in microtransactions, not something to just... Be there, baseline, in the game.
And that made me so fucking sad when I thought about it a little and, yeah, makes sense that at least a significant amount of people nowadays associate "control over my character's appearance" and "looking good in-game" to "microtransaction", because that's the state of the industry in plenty of its wings. You unlock or sometimes even pay for colors, individually, you pay for looks, on scheduled releases of microtransactions. Fucking hell, I'm used to that being the exception, they are used to it being the rule. That's the bitter part.
The sweet part was seeing them glow with the intensity of a supernova 3 hours into the game when they got a bunch more parts and then spent the next 6 hours just playing with colors, patterns, the incredibly robust emblem maker, and bringing to life their ideal, coolest, sweetest rig of an Armored Core.
And part of me believes, because I can't say I know this for a fact, but god be my witness, I fervently believe, that there was one dude, one very strong dude, in the FromSoft dev team, who didn't code a single line or attend a single meeting in the developmental cycle of Armored Core 6, no, this herculean individual's whole fate-given task was to stand at the door to the studio, stop any Bandai Scamco executives or managers that wanted to drop by the studio or join in on the meetings, and defeat them in spectacular fashion so they don't fucking ruin it for all of us with their greed, because I would bet my first three children if I had any that at least one of those fucking vampires had the idea to market customization and cosmetics as a microtransaction, and it was Very Strong Dude's job to make sure that particular asshole never once set foot in the studio.
