"From the ashes of destruction emerges a society where corporations hold sway. Disputes among those vying for power are a regular occurrence. All that is needed is a catalyst... and the machines of war are set in motion... unleashed to secure dominance. Fighting at the forefront are mercenaries known as Ravens... it is they who will determine the final outcome."
— Opening narration
Armored Core: Nexus is the eighth game in the Armored Core franchise by FromSoftware. It was released in 2004 for the PlayStation 2.
Sometime after the events of the Silent Line, the surface has been fully conquered by humanity, and the corporations' control over the world is stronger than ever. When a newer corporation called Navis quickly rises to power thanks to their discovery of powerful lost technology, the largest corporation, Mirage, demands that it be shared with the other corporations. Navis vehemently refuses, putting the two at odds. As Mirage presses on the issue, the other corporations use it as an excuse to further their own agendas. In the middle of all this is the Ravens' Ark, an organization mediating between the corporations and the elite order of AC pilots known as Ravens that is keen to turn a profit from the conflict.
A Soft Reboot of the third generation, Nexus overhauls many aspects of the series' gameplay. Modern FPS-style dual analog controls are finally included, though the original control scheme is still an option. You now have the ability to tune all of the Core parts beside the FCS, allowing you to increase positive stats and decrease negative ones. "Hangar" cores are introduced, which can store small weapons and left or right slots. Heat management is given an increased focus as your own parts and booster action will now generate heat.
Consisting of two discs, Nexus' main story takes up the entirety of the first disc, "EVOLUTION." Included in the second disc, "REVOLUTION," is a massive collection of PlayStation-era Armored Core missions redone in the newer engine, as well as numerous music tracks, artworks, and videos to celebrate the franchise's history.
Nexus is followed by the plotless Armored Core Ninebreaker. Its story is concluded in Armored Core: Last Raven.
The game provides examples of:
- All There in the Manual: The date of the game's events is left ambiguous in-game, but the Armored Core 10 Works Complete File book indicates that it takes place at least fifty-five years after Armored Core: Silent Line.
- Big Good:
- The OAE try to be this as the intermediary between the corporations, but they instead spend the majority of the plot getting pushed around by Mirage to act against Navis.
- Jack-O is this for the Ravens' Ark. He'll help out rookie Ravens and he takes the organization's neutrality in corporate affairs very seriously. When it becomes apparent that the upper management and some Ravens are going against that, Jack expels them all and has the Ark management overhauled, including replacing the player's Operator.
- Blatant Lies: Mirage claims that its interest in the new resource isn't at all out of self-interest and that it only wants Navis to share the resource for the benefit of all. Considering Mirage's history, as well as the numerous surreptitious measures they then take to grab the region, nobody believes a lick of what they're saying.
- Bullying a Dragon: Mirage attempts to destroy the player along with an enemy base through an aerial bombardment, despite the fact that Mirage themselves had already hired the player to take out the base. They do this even after three events have already happened in the story: the player has already proven to Mirage that they are a capable pilot; the player is already a high ranker at this point; and Jack-O's restructured Raven's Ark has made it clear that corporate shenanigans against the Ark would not be tolerated. As payback, the Ark sends the player on an all-expenses-paid mission to thrash an important Mirage facility.
- Citadel City: Bayload City, a heavily fortified, enclosed city serving as Navis' headquarters. Its defenses are repeatedly tested thoughout the story by Mirage and terrorists, until finally it falls when Crest takes it in a surprise betrayal against Navis. By the end of the game, it's completely abandoned and the buildings inside are in ruins.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Nexus removes only from the player the Human PLUS/OP-INTENSIFY mechanic present since the first game, meaning that special abilities that the AI can do that players could obtain in prior games, like using back cannons on the move, are no longer available to the player unless they hack the game.
- Corporate Samurai: Crest's stable of in-house ACs. Their decision to deploy them in the region is seen as a sign that they're dead serious on fighting Mirage.
- Controllable Helplessness: The ending. Nothing you can do can stop the horde of drones from advancing past you and wreaking havoc on the world; the most you can hope to accomplish is drag a tiny handful of them down to Hell with you. The Operator is fully aware of this.
Operator: It may be too late... But we must stand and fight... It's our way.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Genobee's Dual Face is an all-black, ominous-looking AC, but Genobee is ultimately just another Raven following orders, until the end of the game, that is, where he's actively disobeying them to prevent a potential crisis.
- Downer Ending: In stark contrast to the previous games, Nexus ends with countless suicide bomber drones nearly annihilating human civilization. The final scene is the player character facing off against an endless swarm of the drones, with the screen fading to black as their AP slowly whittles away.
- Dub Name Change: The Final Boss, who is simply referred to as "UNKNOWN" in Japanese, was given the name "Nine-Ball" in the English version. Whether it's just a name or if it's meant to be an explicit case of Hijacked by Ganon on the localization team's part is unclear.
- Dub Personality Change: Compared to the cold, robotic depiction in the English version, the Japanese version of Genobee is deep-voiced, emotive and easygoing enough to ask as a friendly gesture and training etiquette that the player go easy on him in their test battle.
- Early-Bird Boss: The test fight with Genobee early on in the game, well before most players will have an AC and skillset enough to beat him, though defeating Genobee anyways will shock his sponsors.
- Hegemonic Empire: Mirage begins as this, maintaining an army that can sustain a war against all of its rivals at once while holding enough influence to force the OAE to do its bidding. Begins transitioning into a more direct bid for control as Mirage comes out of the war with its military intact and no one except Jack-O’s Ravens’ Ark to stand in their way. Whatever would have happened next is derailed by the rogue drone swarm’s sudden attack.
- Hero Antagonist: Genobee serves as one of the game's penultimate bosses, and his final words imply that he's only fighting to prevent the corporations from trying to exploit the lost technology, Genobee having theorized that it would only bring devastation. As it turns out, he's exactly right.
- It's Personal:
- Defeating either Trasher or Vernhunt in their two-on-one fight against the player will cause the survivor to retreat and vow vengeance, which happens in the form of an Arena fight a few missions later.
- Once the player kills Pin Fire, they'll receive this kind of threatening email from a vengeful unknown party later revealed to be Rim Fire.
- Last Stand: Genobee makes his in Bayload City as the final remnant of the Crest Regional Force.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Navis reverse-engineers one of the lost technology weapons they've uncovered, a massive, highly destructive MT, as a last-ditch attempt at turning the tide, only for it to go rogue and wreck their last remaining base. Seeing how dangerous it could be if it escaped, they have the player character destroy it, marking their final action before dissolving.
- Later on, Kisaragi quickly realizes that the lost technology they accidentally activate at Borbos Mine is actually really dangerous, so they desperately send the player to disable it before it's too late. They fail.
- Perspective Flip: Alongside remakes of missions from past games, the "REVOLUTION" disc also includes new "what if?" variations on missions that allow you to fight for the opposite factions, such as working alongside the Doomsday Organization or trying to rescue the infamous Human PLUS experimentee.
- Plot Armor: Unlike the previous games, the story here will continue even if the player is defeated as the player character doesn't die if their AC is disabled; they're just incapacitated. Some Ravens will even help out to prevent enemies from actually destroying the player's disabled AC. By contrast, any NPC AC pilots taken out in missions outside of the Arena or testing center always straight-up die.
- Precursors: The lost technology Navis finds is said to prove the existence of one such lost civilization.
- Renegade Splinter Faction: Happens to Crest three-fourths into the story when the Crest Regional Forces refuse orders to withdraw, intending to finish the battle against Mirage. Crest HQ, in turn, orders for all the rebels to be eliminated.
- The Rival: Evangel becomes one with player over the course of multiple Arena battles. His continuous defeats leave him increasingly frustrated.
- Stylistic Suck: To reinforce how Head parts with Standard computers have lower quality parts, the computer voices for them have audio that's intentionally low quality compared to the rest of the game.
- Uncertain Doom:
- If Agraya is defeated on her second encounter, the game will confirm her death in a post-mission report; but if Agraya actually wins that fight, then it's instead reported that she survives the assassination attempt and is then never seen nor mentioned in the game again for reasons unknown.
- Like the above, Genobee's fate is player dependent. He can either be killed in his fight with the player, or if he wins, he'll just go missing, never to be seen again.
- Video Game Remake: After a sort. The "REVOLUTION" disc remakes and restructures numerous missions from the first three games (Armored Core, Project Phantasma, and Master of Arena) into the Nexus engine and gameplay, as one large heaping of Nostalgia Level. There isn't really a plot tying any of it together, nor does it actually try to remake any of these games as a whole, but it does serve as an idea of how the games could've been modernized for the time.
- Villain Protagonist: Whereas prior Armored Core games have the player characters make the world better in one way or another, Nexus shows the negative effects of what happens when a mercenary with few compunctions takes jobs without a care for the repercussions. They play all sides, occasionally engage in unsavory jobs, and in the end, can potentially take out one of the people trying to prevent a catastrophe.
- World's Best Warrior: Genobee is the number one Raven in the Arena at the start of the game and even by the end he remains constantly near the top.
