Video Game / Project Wingman

"Entire kingdoms are founded by people like him."

"It's all business...I'm sure you guys understand."

Project Wingman is an action-arcade flight simulator in the vein of Ace Combat, developed by indie studio Sector D2 and published by Humble Games, powered by Unreal Engine 4, released for PC in December 2020 on Steam and GOG.com, followed by a release on XBOX consoles in October 2021. A PlayStation 5 release featuring an exclusive set of six missions from the viewpoint of the Federation known as Frontline 59 and PSVR2 support was later released on October 4th 2023.

In an alternate version of Earth, a catastrophic event known as the Calamity ravaged the world centuries ago. Massive earthquakes and volcanic eruptions around the Ring of Fire turned whole countries into exclusion zones, reshaped continents and upended the world order. The current year is 432 AC (After Calamity). Civilization has recovered to a level similar to 21st century life and learned to harness the large quantities of geothermal energy generated by the volcanoes as well as cordium, a material with great energetic proprieties.

Armed conflicts have also changed, with mercenary companies flourishing all over the globe, supplanting national armies in some cases. Geopolitical tensions are at an all-time high as the Pacific Federation has steadily been using its position as one of the last real superpowers and upholder of a worldwide near-monopoly on cordium to begin annexing other nations, thanks in no small part to the large deposits of cordium in the Republic of Cascadia, a member of the Federation. Elements within Cascadia initially supported the Federation's outreach programs, mindful of the privileged status their natural resources afforded them, but when it became clear the Federation was resorting to force and violence, a rebel movement began within the country. The Federation has cracked down on the rebels hard, and, outmanned and outgunned, the Cascadian Independence Force has no choice but to hire mercenaries to bolster its military power...

You play as Monarch, a mercenary pilot working for the Sicario Mercenary Corps, hired to defend and liberate Cascadia from the invading Federation. Players have access to a wide range of fighter aircraft to dominate the skies.

The game is largely modelled after Ace Combat in regards to plotline, world building, flight mechanics, weapon loadout, and enemy density. But what is unique to the game is that you can have multiple slots for special weapons as opposed to just one. The entire game can also be played on VR, provided hardware that supports it are connected.

The game also features a separate Conquest mode; a Roguelike game mode where you buy upgrades for your arsenal and crawl the territory map to complete objectives as the game throws increasingly dangerous hostile at you. Defeat here will cause the player to lose all progress in that run, and they have to start from zero again.

Project Wingman provides examples of the following tropes:

• Ace Pilot: The Player Character Monarch, naturally. The Federation also has the peacekeeping squadron Crimson, assigned to high-risk engagements.
  • Frontline 59 adds another Player Character, Driver, on the side of the Federation as the squad leader of Reserve Air Wing K-9, defending Magadan. Peacekeepers from Ulaanbaatar note that they're skilled enough to become one of Magadan's assigned peacekeepers.
• Airstrike Impossible: Considering its inspiration, the game is surprisingly lacking on forcing you to fly through tunnels, but there are a couple of examples:
  • In "Machine of the Mantle", the extractors you need to destroy are housed in partially-enclosed indestructible tunnel-like structures; the easiest way to line up a clean shot is to fire into the entrance of the structure, but this also requires you to put your plane really close to the bodies of cordium the extractors are placed on which, in defiance of Convection, Schmonvection, will continuously damage your plane. Conversely, if you keep your altitude and try to hit the extractors through the gaps in the structure, you also have to deal with the Federation's air units spamming missiles at you.
  • During "Stepping Stone", you have several completely optional but high-reward targets in the form of multiple containers stashed within the long runway tunnels used by the Federation; if you want to bag them, you'll need to fly into the tunnels, risking an instant death if your plane touches the tunnel walls or floor.
  • Frontline 59 has the mission "Express Lane" depend on this. The Federation's best available pilot from reserve, Driver, has to fly into the unfinished tunnels of Highway 1 to get behind enemy lines and decapitate the Cascadian Marine command structure at the exit.
• A.K.A.-47: As the game was a small-budget indie production and wasn't able to afford the license fees (not to mention to maintain availability for years to come), the game's aircrafts are not only given slightly altered designations, but also tweaked appearances compared to real-world aircraft. Two of the most apparent is the Accipiter, which is the Hawker-Siddeley Harrier (which can actually hover due to its VTOL capabilities), and VX-23, a mish-mash of J-20 Mighty Dragon and F-22 Raptor with elements taken from the Northrop NATF-23◊ in its appearance and name. Otherwise, many of the aircraft just have their names switched around; the F/C-15 is an F-15C, the F/E-18 is an F/A-18E, the MG-29 is a MiG-29, and so on. The ACG-01 Chimera is an interesting example, as it resembles the Su-57 Felon, F-16XL and BAE Systems Tempest.
• All There in the Manual: The in-game File Archive reveals quite a few details on the world and the characters, namely the real names and backstories of Diplomat, Comic, Galaxy and Kaiser, as well as the post-war state of the Federation, Cascadia and the rest of the world in the aftermath of the Cascadian Calamity Event. Most of the really juicy lore only unlocks near the end of the campaign, however.
• Alternate History: Overlaps with Cataclysm Backstory. A geothermic event known as the Calamity (where powerful earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occurred throughout the Pacific Ring of Fire, with the Yellowstone Supervolcano being the biggest of the eruptions) plunged Earth into a new dark age, effectively ending human civilization for over a century and a half before humanity slowly began to recover from the discovery and usage of Cordium. It's noted in the game's codex that technological progress has only recently returned to pre-Calamity levels, either implying that the Calamity occurred sometime during the mid to late 20th century (putting the events of the game sometime in the 25th century) or sometime before the 20th century (resulting in countries that would be recognizable today either not forming or being named differently). Unlike Strangereal, the landmass of Project Wingman is recognizably our Earth, albeit with the continents reshaped in ways large and small due to the Calamity. Most notably changed is North America; the Western Interior Seaway has reformed at Yellowstone, turning California and the Pacific Northwest into an island.
• Alternative Calendar: The game takes place in the year AC 432 (After Calamity), named after the geothermal cataclysm that reshaped the Earth’s surface centuries prior.
• Animesque: Downplayed. While there are no anime-style cutscenes in Project Wingman compared to its inspiration, if Mission 11 is played on Mercenary difficulty, the usual opening text is replaced with very anime-style opening text.
• Animal Motifs: Aside from Monarch, Sicario and Crimson are compared to dogs and wolves; the former have a wolf head as their emblem and are frequently compared to either bloodthirsty dogs or wolves, the latter (for Crimson 1 anyway) as sheepdogs protecting their herds from threats. Or leading them to slaughter, if you ask Comic.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Ships, airships, and land battleships don't present their hull as a target until their subsystems are destroyed, making the turrets easier to lock onto. The hull still takes damage, though, so shots that "miss" by hitting the wrong side of the structure still help.
  • Targets that are killed by your allies will still reward you with a small amount of points, with more points received if you dealt damage to the target before it was finished off.
  • All remaining non-critical hostile entities and missiles in flight vanish in a puff of logic as soon as the main mission objectives are completed, avoiding a Kaizo Trap by an enemy straggler during mission-end dialogue. However, there is no autopilot, so it is still up to the player not to crash into any scenery or the terrain.
  • Unlike Ace Combat, aircraft can carry up to three special weapons instead of just one, giving players much more flexibility in fine-tuning their playstyle.
  • Flares have infinite ammo and are limited only by a 6-second cooldown. They're by no means a foolproof get-out-of-jail-free card, but their reliable availability still makes defending against enemy missile attacks significantly easier than having to rely solely on evasive maneuvers. Conversely, enemy flares don't seem to have any effect on your missiles.
  • There are no substantial Hard Mode Perks beyond the dialogue that plays over the ending credits if you complete the game on Mercenary difficulty, so if you aren't good enough or simply don't want to play through the game on difficulty settings higher than Easy, you're not missing out on anything significant.
  • Quitting a Conquest Mode mission, even when it is already in progress, will not delete your save game, instead resetting your progress to the point before you launch. Because the missions are always randomised, you can thus reload your save as many times as you want to change the map layout.
• Apocalypse How: The Calamity was a Class 2 as it reshaped the world and nations as we know them, and caused a volcanic "ice age" that lasted some 150 years. The Cascadian Calamity Event is a Class 1 as, while Cascadia and some of the Federation member states bear the brunt of it, its effects are less severe on the rest of the world.
• Applied Phlebotinum: The post-Calamity geothermal resource known as cordium is used as a power source, with applications including large aerial battleships as well as experimental superfighters and weapons of apocalyptic destruction.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Land Battleships fielded by the Federation never went past the prototype stage since, despite giving Baneblades a run for their money, they're extremely slow and while bristling with more armament than most naval vessels are a very easy targets for air forces.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: During Monarch's solo nighttime assault on the AA defense system at Wensleydale Range, the Federation base commander there is able to deduce from the echoes in the mountains that there's only a single attacker. He's also able to tell that the attacker is a mercenary, reasoning that mercenary pilots often use foreign fuel that is cheaper and has a distinctly different sound when burning. Both explanations described Monarch very accurately. It's especially impressive since he made these two deductions just after being dragged out of bed.
• Back from the Brink: When Sicario joins the conflict between the Federation and Cascadia, the rebel forces are in full retreat. Sicario's involvement (or more specifically, Monarch and Hitman Team) manages to turn the entire war around.
• Beam Spam: Cordium-fueled railguns fire slugs that leave a persistent damaging trail of light in their wake, essentially bringing a slight element of Bullet Hell into what a flight arcade game. As the story progresses, you encounter an increasing amount of railguns that saturate the skies with those trails of energy. And that's not even getting started with two major bosses that start spamming their rapid-fire railgun, with the end result being a display of fireworks that would look more at home in Touhou Project than anywhere else.
• Beyond Redemption: The ultimate fate of the Federation. At the end of "Presidia", Sicario and the Cascadians successfully recapture the eponymous capital city from the Federation, and delegates from both sides agree to call for a ceasefire. Unfortunately, Crimson 1 arrives and nukes Presidia to oblivion with cordium weapons just as soon as negotiations were about to begin. The rest of the world sees this as a last act of cowardly spite from the Federation, with it being mentioned in post-game lore that the Federation's newer member states started seceding.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence:
  • "Cold War" is a highlight, with both sides committing all available air power in a rapidly-escalating furball, filling the sky with missile contrails and burning aircraft. Once you come out victorious (on top of forcing Crimson Squadron to retreat), it is mentioned in the debrief that the Federation's air superiority was so badly broken, they would need a substantial amount of time to gather and deploy a replacement force of the same scale.
  • Operation Welder has the entirety of the CIF's navy, two of their airships, and Hitman team going head-on against the Federation's naval blockade of Presidia. This escalates into an all-out, close-quarters sea and air brawl when Kaiser drastically reinforces the CIF with the mercenary forces he rallied from the Periphery nations.
  • Frontline-59's Home Invasion has Federation reserve forces, both ground and air, defend the shores of Magadan from invasion by Cascadia's elite Black Eagle Marine Division, covered by experienced mercenary fighter and bomber squadrons. K-9 Squadron has to split their attention between air and sea as the reserve forces get pushed back regardless. Then Peacekeeper Steel Squadron show up from Ulaanbaatar and promptly crush the mercenary air power, to the point that in following missions, the Cascadian Marines have to make up for their loss of air dominance with heavy amounts of AA and Flak as they move further in.
• Big Good: Due to the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits that made up the Cascadian Independence Force, there are a few of them:
  • Kaiser is usually the one who makes the decisions on where the Sicario Mercenary Corps go, but during sorties, as well as his absence, Galaxy stands in, directing Sicario's forces as well as serving as Mission Control. Kaiser takes over the CIF following Morgan's death in the destruction of Prospero and, after the ceasefire, leads the newly formed Cascadian Foreign Legion.
  • Morgan Elizabeth, TAC name "Wild Boar Actual", was a general in the Cascadian National Guard. Once hostilities broke out between the Federation and separatist elements that would eventually become the CIF, Elizabeth often called the shots on National Guard elements siding with the CIF, commanding them to advance or retreat when needed. He also coordinated movements of the separatist forces during the initial retreat from Presidia, as well as the subsequent retaking of the city near the end of the war, and is usually the one commanding the CIF's land forces during most operations.
  • The captured Federation battleship Eminent Domain becomes this for the CIF's naval forces, being their single greatest power projection asset at sea and, thus, their flagship, with the captain who captured it, Chad Woodward, often calling for fleet movements and attacks so that he can bring the Eminent Domain's armaments to bear.
• Bittersweet Ending: Due to the Federation's "Solution 0-8-1-6" and Crimson 1's use of cordium weaponry on Presidia, resulting in the Cascadian Calamity Event, much of Cascadia is buried in a sea of cordium by the end of the war, with strong implications of lasting effects on the rest of the world. However, as the credits dialogue that plays on Mercenary difficulty flesh out, the Cascadians themselves are still very much alive to claim victory against the Federation, and proceed to honor their contract with the remnants of Sicario by paying them what is implied to be enough cash for them to retire, and start a new life with a clean slate after their identities were exposed during the war. In addition, the Federation's military force has been decimated, and due to the numerous and escalating atrocities they committed, they have become reviled by the rest of the world, with the other super powers also taking advantage of their defeats in Cascadia to put them on the backfoot; post-game File Archive entries confirm that Cascadia retained its sovereignty, while also suggesting that the Federation was beginning to suffer a power vacuum as their newer member states start seceding, and although the CIF and Sicario ultimately did not fare much better than the Federation military, the former is bolstered by the numerous other mercenaries and freelancers rallied from the Periphery nations by Kaiser, such that the country becomes a hotspot for mercenary work and freelancing, with enough combined forces to even consider a possible retaliatory crusade against the Federation in the future, in the event the changing international state of affairs permit it.
  • Frontline 59 ends with the Dangerous Deserter Faust ranting about what Cascadia found in Oceania that was such a Dark Secret she was willing to go rogue before her airship finally explodes, implied to be part of the Deal offered to Sicario, and the K-9 squadron begins to look forward to finding some R&R...only, if you listen closely during Faust's rant (and paid close attention to the date of the mission), one might realize that the mission takes place during "Consequence of Power"...and as the HUD begins to glitch out, the skies begin to light up as the cordium missiles are launched.
• Book Ends: The game's first and last missions end in almost the exact same way: with a contract being completed and a single earth-shaking cordium-induced fireball, courtesy of the detonation of the Meilynx in "Black Flag" and the destruction of Crimson 1's PW-Mk.I in "Kings".
• Boring, but Practical: Standard missiles. They have the shortest range of any guided weapon, but they also have the best seeking ability of any fire-and-forget ordnance, reload in seconds, and are carried in enough numbers to offset their low base damage. Even well into the game another rack of STDM can be more tempting than other special weapon options.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: There is one squadron of enemy aircraft in the game that are not priority targets and appear the same as any other fighter spawn, but are set to spawn at the highest AI level in the game - significantly more aggressive than even Crimson Squadron. These appear in Presidia during Sirens of Defeat as part of the Optional Boss encounter with the overwhelmingly powerful Federation fleet. It's three flights of three for a total of nine F/S-15s, the most maneuverable non-boss craft in the game, and with their hyper-strong AI and needing three missiles to take down like all late-game jets, they are by far the biggest threat in the level; the fleet can be destroyed with hit and run tactics or the right special weapons, but the fighter squadron will hunt you down. They become even more terrifying if you're running the Double Time modifier, which doubles the number of non-airship aerial enemies, these monsters included. Fortunately, you don't encounter them unless you cross the big red line, which you are repeatedly warned not to cross.
  • The Ace Training modifier applies the same AI level as the above F/S-15s from hell to all enemy aircraft, turning every high-end air spawn, such as SK.30s, SK.37s, and VX-23s, into almost textbook Demonic Spiders, everything else into Goddamn Bats, and making the game absurdly difficult verging on nigh-unbeatable if you don't fly at least one of the top-end jets, if not outright requiring you to use the PW-Mk.I on some missions, particularly on Mercenary difficulty.
• Boss-Only Level:
  • The first time, it's against Frost Druid and her newly-outfitted X-PF in "Wayback". While Master Goose Squadron provides support for her early on, they will almost always be completely dispatched by the time you get started on the three health bars.
  • The second time around, it's against Crimson 1 and his PW-Mk.I in the final mission, "Kings", and due to the tremendous G-forces in play, your WSO (if your plane is a dual-seater) passes out early during the fight, whereupon he mentions that there's no longer anything standing between you and him as you fight one final aerial Duel to the Death.
    "Me and you now. No distractions. No wingmen. No war. Just me and you, whoever wins is the best pilot."
• Boss Warning Siren:
  • The arrival of high-value targets is heralded by a screen-filling "CAUTION" along with the enemy name overlaying their emblem.
    CAUTION: FEDERATION PEACEKEEPER SQUADRON - CRIMSON TEAM
  • With the 1.0.3 Update, if you play on any difficulty other than Mercenary, Monarch gets his own screen-filling overlay when Crimson 1 is down to his Final Stand, complete with the addition of a white health bar representing the integrity of Monarch's plane above Crimson 1's.
• Bottomless Magazines:
  • Downplayed; while even the most basic planes carry hundreds of missiles in a Hyperspace Arsenal, all weapons, including the basic gun, have limited ammo, and while this seems like more than enough ordnance, you cannot resupply during a mission a la Ace Combat; on longer missions and/or higher difficulties, you may find yourself running low on missiles or gun ammunition towards the final part of the mission, as well as running the risk that you may lose battle against boss enemies simply because you ran out of ammo.
  • Defensive modules, such as flares, have a cooldown system instead of an ammo pool, averting this trope.
• Bounty Hunter: There's a whole guild of mercenaries (and some freelancers) who specialize into tracking down and killing wanted mercenaries for cold hard cash. Diplomat and Comic find out the hard way they're on their list when Frost Druid and Master Goose Squadron come after them for the bounty the Federation put on their head, once they found their real identities. Fortunately, Stardust offers them asylum in Cascadia (alongside a mountain of cash) provided they honor their contract.
• California Collapse: The Calamity tectonically separated California and the Pacific Northwest from the mainland. Midway through the game, the Federation decides to cover the region in lava again.
• The Cavalry: After Cascadia's war efforts get jeopardized following the Cordium bombardment of Prospero and subsequent Ring of Fire disaster, Stardust convinces Kaiser to go abroad and find whoever can still fight for Cascadia, with the implied prize being enough money for a lifetime (and protection from rival mercenaries in Hitman's case). Sure enough, Kaiser returns during the climax of "Red Sea" with a massive congregation of mercenaries, freedom fighters, and anti-Federation squadrons to bolster Hitman in annihilating the Federation's last roadblock to Presidia.
  Federation Ship: Jesus, where'd these guys come from?!
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: The pirates that Sicario go against in mission 1 do actually call for backup. Unfortunately for them, said backup (Master Goose Squadron) arrives much too late to be of any help to them. With their clients annihilated and having no reason to turn hostile, they remain neutral upon arriving in the area and instead inform Sicario's AWACS Galaxy of a potentially lucrative contract in Cascadia.
• Challenge Run:
  • Conquest Mode is a Rogue Like mini-campaign where you play through a set of missions, earning credits and prestige points to purchase planes and resources. Conquest Mode his its own difficulty mode setting, as well as several difficulty modifiers that add additional challenges to each run.
  • Mercenary difficulty counts, too. You don't get anything substantial out of it except personal satisfaction.
  • Finishing the campaign unlocks a choice of modifiers that can be activated to make replays more challenging in a number of ways, like doubling the amount of enemies, increasing everyone's weapon damage, or giving all NPC aircraft an additional boss-level weapon. They're completely optional, and activating them offers no benefits other than ramping up the adrenaline factor. Combining Mercenary with all modifiers on (MAMO) makes Nintendo Hard feel like an understatement.
• Checkpoint Starvation: As the game warns during the first mission, there are no in-level checkpoints. Shot down at the end of a 20- to 40-minute mission? Buckle up and start over. It's not just health that can be a concern, though—ammo conservation becomes an issue in longer engagements, and there are no resupply lines a la Ace Combat 04, 6, and 7.
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: At the start of "Homestead", the remnants of the Cascadian resistance forces are not thrilled that they're being bailed out by mercenaries.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • The Botched Requisition modifier in a nutshell, making good on the description of an additional lethal weapon attachment to any combat-capable aircraft. Granting them an extra boss-tier weapons like the BML-U or the Railgun is one thing, but they can use the latter from any angle, rendering even tail-chase engagements a risky endeavour. If you combine that modifier with Ace Training, the advanced enemy AI will even predict your path and try to snipe you with their additional weapon. Fortunately, this modifier also affects your allies, allowing them to be a greater boon on the battlefield than without the modifier. Unfortunately, enemies that have no business sporting any weapons (like cruise missiles) also again access to them!
    • As if Conquest mode wasn't difficult enough already, it slaps the Botched Requisition modifier on hostile priority aircraft once you reach a mid-to-high alert level. Yes, even if you didn't activate it at the start of the campaign. Enjoy your furball of 20+ interceptor aces spamming railgun shots and clouds of BML-U missiles at you from all directions.
  • Railguns and the BML-U have lengthy cooldowns when under player control. When an enemy uses them, they suddenly turn into rapid-fire weapons that either fire in bursts (Railgun) or practically non-stop (BML-U). On the other hand, AI-controlled railgun projectiles move much slower compared to the player's; in player hands it's a deadly sniping weapon, in the AI's it's area denial.
• Controllable Helplessness: During the closing moments of "Consequence of Power", you have full control over your plane, and can destroy as many targets as you like, but there are far too many swarms of high-speed cruise missiles heading towards Prospero from three different directions for you to legitimately intercept. Even if you do intercept everything through sheer skill or the use of cheats, there will be no change to the sequence of events that follow.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Averted. Mission 6 has you fighting over large patches of exposed magma. Fly too low over them and your plane takes damage.
• Cool Airship: Cordium-powered airships, while smaller than the XB-0, the Aigaion, or the Arsenal Birds, provide high-altitude and long-range fire support for fighter squadrons. The basic, smaller Anura-class "only" carry anti-air missiles and basic AA, while the super-heavy 205-class airships carry over a dozen weapons, advanced SAMs, anti-air guns and cordium-fueled railguns. Each also comes in basic, Mark I, and Mark II variations, with improvements to their quantity and type of weapons, upgrading basic AA to far deadlier CIWS guns, swapping basic SAMs for long-range L-SAMs, and significantly improving the fire rate of their railguns. They can also only be shot down after all their weapons have been destroyed, unless you use anti-ship missiles or the railgun.
• Cool Plane: It's an air combat simulation game, so there are plenty to choose from, based off all sorts of past, current, and cutting-edge designs. Plus a few customs.
• Corrupt Politician: Diplomat implies his father was this, mentioning that there's a stretch of incomplete highway that never got the funding needed to complete it due to his interference.
• Creator Cameo: Abi "RB-D2" Rahmani, the game's lead developer, provides the voice for the SP-34R's AI when Frost Druid transitions to her second phase in "Midnight Light".
  "Mass driver ready. Begin ballistics calculations."
• Crippling Overspecialization:
  • The ASM really can't target anything that hasn't "ship" in its name, with the exception of aircraft carriers, which are obviously enough ships as well. However, there's nothing more effective at killing warships, airships and land battleships dead than the ASM, so it's not all bad.
  • Most aircraft have at least some token special weapons for engaging air and ground targets, but a few lack any anti-ground armaments except their standard missile complement. Others can lay waste to half a continent on their own but get into real trouble the moment some advanced enemy aircraft show up.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: In addition to Christianity, Cascadia has a local deity called the Dust Mother.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The gamepad control configuration is nearly identical to Ace Combat... except that the rudders are on the controller triggers and thrust controls on the bumper buttons (which is the default setting before Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown). Thankfully, this is easily adjusted in the options. The ability to carry more than one special weapon also means that weapon switching is by necessity bound to D-pad directions rather than the left-side face button; that button instead expands the radar, which it hasn't done by default in Ace Combat since 2004.
• Darkest Hour: Everything seems to be going well for Sicario and the Cascadia Independence Force right up until mission 15. You’ve just witnessed the Federation unleash Cordium warheads into Prospero, your base has become a molten lava pit thanks to the geothermal storms and earthquake, your team gets ambushed by bounty hunters who know your identities and your squad mates are starting to crack under the stress. Everyone decides to stay and continue fighting after Stardust proposes a deal they can’t refuse, and realizing they have nowhere else to run.
• David Versus Goliath:
  • The Cascadia Independence Force and whatever hired guns they've managed to get their hands on vs the full might of the Federation. Both Comic and Diplomat aren't that thrilled at the odds, while Kaiser is openly salivating at the thought of the renown the group will get if they manage to put a dent in their foe.
  • To a lesser degree, the Cascadian Coast Guard managing to capture a cutting-edge Federation Battleship which is explicitly stated to be the naval equivalent of a One-Man Army. It probably had no business being anywhere near Cascadian territory to begin with, only adding to the humiliation of the former Captain. Even more humiliating is that it is the sister ship of what is implied to be the Federation Navy's flagship, the Dejanus.
• Deconstruction: Despite being a game heavily influenced by Ace Combat, it also flips a number of Ace Combat's usual narratives on their head, with occasional cases of realistic outcomes;
  • The first mission in a nod to a some of the earlier Ace Combat games, involving an airstrike being sent to deal with the last remaining HQ of a faction. Except rather than being on the side defending said HQ, the player is the one being sent to finish it off. The Burlock Privateers may be dangerous to merchant ships, but against any serious military threat, they lack any significant means of repelling an air attack. And by the time any air support arrives, their allies have already been cleared out, leaving that air support to decide it's no longer their problem and they're going to jump ship to another conflict entirely, setting off the plot proper.
  • Members of Cascadia's Independence Force are not happy to have to call upon mercenaries to shore up their forces, in part because this is supposed to be their fight, and also because some of them fought against the Mercenary Cabal during the Oceania War in the game's timeline.
  • In multiple Ace Combat games, the source of the conflict is a coup d'état or rebellion of some sort, with the player's squadron called in to halt the aggressors. In Project Wingman's case, Sicario is fighting on behalf of the rebellion, after the conflict starts because political tensions between the Federation and Cascadian governments boiled over.
  • In the events after Mission 15, the in game codex notes that multiple nations are publicly critical and condemning the Federation for the use of the cordium missiles and causing the Prospero Calamity, but at least one is already looking into engineering their own cordium weapons in response, unlike in Ace Combat, where nukes are almost entirely abandoned following the Belkan War due to the international community being horrified by them.
  • By Mission 17 through 20 there is confusion from both sides as to the status of the war. Federation troops are vocally wondering why the hell they're still in Cascadia, during the worst of the geothermal storms and in fear of retribution from Cascadia instead of retreating. Stardust also notes that Cascadian military plans were originally to plan to blockade and siege Federation held positions for as long as possible until Independence Force command suddenly declares a push to reclaim the ruins of Prospero and liberation of Presidia. It's revealed that there have been secret cease-fire talks happening in the Republic of Albion, with both sides' governments attempting to hold or reclaim territory to determine where the map lines get drawn. The second that Presidia is in Cascadian IF hands, the officials are scrambling to sign the agreement as Cascadia has their capital back and the Federation realizes that they're going to continue to lose more if the war keeps going. The next few minutes as military forces are verifying the cease-fire order are extremely tense, which leads to the next event.
  • The aftermath of Crimson 1's cordium missile strike on Presidia immediately voids the cease-fire. Everyone is now out for the Federation's blood since as far as anyone can tell, the Federation just unleashed a cowardly and spiteful attack when everyone's guard was finally down. The Federation meanwhile is absolutely terrified about the world of hurt they're in for, and peace is not restored.
  • The tendency towards having massive prototype vehicles like the Arsenal Bird and the Hresvelgr operate with little to no support outside of maybe some fighters is also deconstructed with several examples:
    • The Eminent Domain, a prototype Federation battleship, ends up being captured by the Cascadian Coast Guard after straying too close to Cascadian waters without an escort, with both sides wondering what it was doing there alone and Cascadia's initial reaction being to scramble ships and planes to fight through the Federation forces attempting to bring it down, after which they never deploy it without a fleet supporting it.
    • The prototype land battleships deployed by the Federation suffer from overspecialization, being meant primarily to dominate land combat and needing air support to survive. Even the Federation soldiers deploying them realise they will be easily taken out due to Cascadian air superiority, only doing so because they'd prefer to go down fighting.
    • The various airships, while dangerous when properly escorted, tend to fall to regular planes, with one mission featuring the Cascadian forces taking down the largest Federation airship fleet in the region while it's in port with nothing but planes. While it is considered suicide to attack them from certain angles due to their heavy anti-air defenses, without a proper escort there is little the airships can do to stop you from attacking from their blind spots, and anti-ship missiles can one-shot them.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Your WSO Prez has additional lines and chatter, but you only hear them if you take a two-seater aircraft. This even applies to one cutscene that takes place immediately after a landing away from your main base; the conversation changes to allow for whether Prez arrived with Monarch or is absent completely.
  • Mission 5 has your AWACS warn you not to cross a red line to avoid a large enemy fleet. If you do cross that red line, there really is a fleet there which will not hesitate to fill the sky with missiles and anti-aircraft fire to shoot you down.
  • Mission 6 has your ground attack interrupted by the arrival of the peacekeeper squadron Crimson. Your AWACS tells you to run for it and your wingmen proceed to bug out. The game expects you to follow the script and high-tail it out. If you decide to stay and fight, the enemy planes are extremely agile and dangerous, but still vulnerable. If you manage to shoot down a Crimson plane, Crimson 1 will pull his planes out, with your AWACS and wingmen reacting in shock and astonishment that you managed to chase off a peacekeeper squadron.
  • It's officially impossible to shoot down all the cordium-tipped cruise missiles in the "Consequences of Power" sortie, but the devs apparently expected someone to pull it off somehow and prepared accordingly, as the background chatter in this phase of the mission is written in a way that doesn't break the campaign's continuity regardless of how the battle ultimately plays out.
  • During the final mission (if you have a two-seater plane) your WSO loses consciousness during the fight, and you can actually see her passed out in the seat behind you if you turn to look.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • The AOA Limiter module for certain planes allow its pilot to pull off Post-Stall Maneuvers like nobody's business. Dodging missiles this way is much harder to do consistently compared to pressing a single button to pop flares, but crafty pilots can also use PSMs offensively, rapidly changing the direction of their plane to acquire lock-on faster or keep a fast-moving target in the path of their guns.
  • The SP-34R prototype features no missile armament whatsoever, but it mounts every gun pod in the game in addition to a deadly railgun. AI in this game tend to be very good at evading missiles (especially at higher difficulties) but can be easier to shoot down using machine guns. Learning how to get into gun range, track a fast-moving target, and evade enemy fire during all that is no easy feat, not helped by the plane's mediocre maneuverability compared to its peers, but in exchange you have bar none the best gun platform in the game.
• Disc-One Nuke: Played with in Conquest mode where prototype aircraft and superplanes are significantly cheaper than in the campaign. Even average players can comfortably reach alert level 15+ with the crappy starter plane to save up the Prestige required to directly unlock their favorite endgame aircraft, making the rest of their Conquest run a whole lot easier. That being said, even the best plane can only get you so far in a Final Death Mode designed to get you killed with extreme prejudice.
• The Dragon: The mercenary leaders of the Cabal each had a Signature, the absolute best pilot on their payroll, who acted as their posterboy/personal enforcer. Several mercs note how Monarch's relationship with Kaiser can be seen as quite similar.
• The Dreaded:
  • The Federation Peacekeepers, the cream of the crop of their air force. Among them, Crimson Squadron are the top aces, flying top-of-the-line aircraft. The radio chatter fills with dread when these guys enter the scene, and the first time they appear you even get a tooltip telling you to run.
    HUD: ENGAGEMENT NOT ADVISED.
  • Monarch eventually becomes the Federation's boogeyman by the time they are about to be driven off from Cascadia.
    Federation Defense: Ah shit. We've got positive contact with the Crowned mercenary. All arrays concentrate on him!
• Drives Like Crazy: This is supposedly the reason why Prez and Monarch work together: according to the rest of Sicario, Prez's attempts to fly are remembered as equal parts terrifying and hilariously inept, and Monarch's style of flying is dizzying enough that the only other person who can stand the g-forces he puts his plane through is Prez.
  • Also applies to Driver as well, if their speed tickets and willingness to fly through caves is any indicator.
• Eagle Land:
  • Cascadia is the most obvious analog to the USA, her territory covering most of Alaska, British Columbia, and the entire Pacific Northwest of the former United States.
    • Cascadia, like the fledgling United States, instigated a rebellion for independence from a ruling power an entire ocean away over increased taxation and demand for resources.
    • During the Second Battle of Presidia, the Independence Force commander reminds her forces in a Badass Boast that "They are descendants of those who would not be ruled," implying that Cascadia has some memory at least of American heritage. The operation is even codenamed "Manifest Destiny."
  • On the other hand, the Federation can be interpreted as the villainous equivalent of USA:
    • Two of their most superior combat-ready "Prototype" airplane are based on the F-22 Raptor and F-15 STOL-MTD.
    • Their vassal state (whose name resembles Waikiki) being attacked in a surprise attack is very reminiscent of Pearl Harbor.
    • Launched two weapons of mass destruction during the war, much like the bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The difference is that here the bomb dropping happen between months, the second one was unsanctioned, and eventually, it's the Federation who lost.
• Early Game Hell: While Hard mode is not too difficult for anyone familiar with the gameplay, it can serve as a trap of sorts if you were to clear the game on it and then jump into Mercenary difficulty. You probably will have, at best, the money for one of the prototype planes, and airships, railgun weaponry, and even land battlecruisers make it very difficulty to pick out an optimal fighter for the task at hand. As time goes on though this is less of an issue, and is all but outright negated once the pilot unlocks the Infinity Plus One Plane.
• Easy Logistics:
  • Averted, as several missions involve destroying transports and severing supply lines to make it harder for the Federation to bring troops and supplies in and out of the front line. Two major turning points of the war both revolve around Sicario hammering transports carrying vehicles and personnel, with the biggest battle of the two caused due to both sides being desperate to cut off/destroy several planes carrying infantry coming back from the Cascadian mainland.
  • Fuel limits also come up in a couple of missions. Sicario is only able to evade their first encounter with Crimson because the peacekeeping squad was already bingo fuel, and an assault on a remote communications array is acknowledge as a death-or-glory operation as without taking the airstrip there, none of the air wing will have enough fuel for the return trip.
• Effortless Achievement: You get one for the heroic accomplishment of selling one of your aircraft.
• Emergency Weapon: Subverted by the mounted guns that usually serve in this role in most air combat simulators. They're harder to aim than homing missiles but are very powerful once you get the hang of them, with a one-second burst being enough to destroy any aircraft that isn't a boss, and a well-aimed barrage can take down even airships in short order. Enemies are also much less adept at evading them than they are with missiles, making guns a surprisingly effective weapon against enemy aces and bosses. Their only drawback is that they don't have unlimited ammo, but most aircraft carry enough rounds for a lot of kills unless you keep laying on the trigger.
• Enemy Chatter: You hear the enemy talk amongst themselves as often as you hear your own guys. Often this chatter involves their shock at seeing their forces being torn apart.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Several Federation officers and soldiers are not happy or outright opposed to their compatriots' actions, such as shooting down water bombers trying to extinguish the wildfires the Federation started to cover their retreat or firing cruise missiles loaded with cordium warheads on Prospero.
• Exact Words: A weapons-related one. The Anti-Ship Missile (ASM) sounds like it's meant for use against naval ships, and it does do well against them. What it also does well is destroying airships and land battleships in one shot without destroying all of their subsystems first.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Late-game prototype aircraft Chimera is a mishmash of real-life F-16XL, Su-57 and YF-23.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: During the cordium bombing of Prospero, various seismic surveillance stations all over the continent go haywire, frantically discussing what's happening until one of them calmly realizes that a second Calamity is starting. The others are incredulous.
• Face–Heel Turn: Master Goose Squadron, the guys you meet at the end of the first mission, go from flying with Hitman Squadron to trying to kill them later in the story. The boss they accompany, Frost Druid, has a similar backstory, being a former mercenary who switched to fighting mercenaries as a Bounty Hunter. None of them have a personal grudge against Hitman, though. It's just business.
• Fantastic Nuke: Cordium-laced missiles are capable of widespread destruction. The Federation deploys a whole swarm of them against Prospero. Later, Crimson 1 launches several against Presidia. Both times result in massive explosions and the target locations glowing red with exposed magma and tectonic activity.
• Fantastic Racism: Dialogue in the game implies that mercenary pilots are looked down upon by military pilots, which comes as a great shock to them when the "mere mercenaries" proceed to wipe the floor with them.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
  • Cascadia forms a large strip of land running from Alaska to the Baja Peninsula, covering almost all the North American West Coast. This is also much larger compared to the Cascadia bioregion and independence movement as defined in Real Life.
  • The Federation is essentially a more multinational equivalent of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, as explained below. Or a villainous, imperialistic counterpart of the United States of America (see Eagleland above) combined with aligned countries and a vague resemblance to the European Union and NATO flags (or Osea and Emmeria from Ace Combat).
  • Made-up nations are mentioned, including the Creole Republic (Louisiana), Magadan (Russian Far East), the Kingdom of Ulaanbataar (Mongolia), Oceania (not shown, but assumed to be Australia and/or nearby countries) and the Kingdom of Sawaiiki (Hawaii).
    • Sawaiiki has some elements of pre-Meiji Japan, as it is mentioned to be fairly isolationist, with most of the country closed off outside of a single trade port.
  • Europe and Africa also had their own share of changes; the ceasefire between Cascadia and the Federation has been drafted in the United Kerneuropa Alliance, in the Republic of Albion. Meanwhile, the West African Concordate (implied to be the equivalent of the real life African Union) is the first diplomatic power to openly criticize the Federation following the second Calamity.
  • Cities are not immune either: the biggest city in the world is named Constantinople and two of the Federation's biggest cities are Byzantiun and Moira. Presidia roughly sits where Portland is in our world, while Prospero sits in the middle of real-life Nevada. Visually, they resemble San Fransisco and Seattle (complete with a nearby volcano that might as well be Mount Rainier), respectively.
• The Federation: A rare evil example. The Pacific Federation, who covers all the eastern coast of Asia from Kamchatka to Indonesia, including what's left of Japan (as almost all of Japan's territory is in a volcanic exclusion zone) and all of Cascadia's territory, is implied to extend deeper into Asia and not above using their massive military clout, virtual monopoly on cordium and wealth to bully other nations into joining them or letting them do as they please, "no" being an unacceptable response.
• Final Death Mode: Conquest mode is a Roguelike secondary campaign that gives you only a single life - if you die at any point regardless of the cause, it's back to square one. Good luck getting through 43 increasingly insane sorties without ever dying. Fortunately, your Prestige account and unlocked aircraft roster do carry over, allowing you to start over with better equipment at least.
• Foreshadowing:
  • There are numerous hints pointing towards the turning point of Mission 15, "Consequences of Power" and the game as a whole, the Second Calamity.
    • The end of Mission 1 has your ground team successfully reach the Federation cargo ship you were hired to recover, only to discover whatever its cargo is positively reeks of Cordite radiation and is highly volatile. Then your (Federation) client gives you a call and orders your team to destroy the entire ship than try to recover it. Upon destroying the ship, it produces a massive explosion that pretty much reduces the entire side of the island into a crater. Cue Mission 15, where the cruise missiles bombarding Prospero produce explosions like that of the cargo you destroyed.
    • During Mission 6, the geothermal plant manager insists several times that despite the fact that they're being carpet-bombed and the Federation brass won't be happy, employees must follow all procedures on storing cordium safely and cordium extraction must be stopped out of fear of causing a chain reaction. While it might seem like a case of Skewed Priorities at first, the destruction of Prospero and the triggering of the Second Calamity by way of cordium warheads prove him right.
    • If you take the time to read the new codex entries that unlock after most missions, you can learn about the devastating effects of cordium explosions triggering runaway chain reactions in cordium-rich environments long before the issue suddenly turns the whole war on its head.
    • In the Open Season mission (the one with the wildfires), Comic expresses her dismay about how the Federation is "desperate enough to just light this world on fire again". One mission later, the Feds do so again to Cascadia, only much, much worse, by deploying WMDs that inadvertently trigger the Second Calamity.
  • In the debriefing of Mission 3 Homestead, Kaiser states to all Sicario members to use their callsigns as their identity while their real names are kept hidden, with a hint that their real names may attract bounty hunters. By Mission 16 Wayback, Hitman team are ambushed by a flight of bounty hunters led by Frost, who reveals that their identity had been exposed and the Bounty Hunter's Guild are after them.
  • During Sirens of Defeat, Diplomat mentions being from Presidia, and lets out a slight chuckle when he hears that a place called Kennedy Hall has been destroyed in the fighting. It is eventually revealed that the important political family he is from is the Kennedy family, and he is on poor terms with them, meaning Kennedy Hall was most likely named for his family.
  • In Mission 4, Galaxy may complain about unknown interference and ask if anyone knows the source; General Elizabeth will then reveal the existence of the Solana Communications Array and complain that it makes coordinating their resistance efforts difficult. Sure enough you later raid and cripple the Array in Mission 10, clearing up said interference and allowing the CIF to operate more freely.
  • One of the early Files Archive entries, along with Mission 05 dialogue, point to Cascadians fighting alongside the Federation either due to propaganda, misguided loyalties, or personal gain. Crimson Team is made up of Cascadian natives fighting for the Federation, thinking it's for the best of their homeland.
  • In Mission 13, Kaiser curtly tells another group that Sicario is talking the lead because they're the ones in demand from the IF. Later, he exclaims that everything is for the taking and that nobody needs to share. To which a Master Goose pilot groans "Easy for you to say, Sicario..." This foreshadows their betrayal and defection to the Federation three missions later, when they fight you alongside Frost.
  • In Mission 18, halfway through the battle with Crimson, Prez will mention that she's starting to feel sick due to Monarch's aggressive flight style. Cue Mission 21 when she passes out due to G-LOC.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Through the course of the game, Monarch goes from "that pilot merc who gets the most amount of kills in some mid-level merc group" to "The Crown", with multiple enemies frantically calling for backup once they spot his insignia.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Looking closely at the briefing screens shows that the software being used is expired. The one in Frontline 59 used by Federation is said as a "perpetual license" instead.
  • If you fly a two-seater during the final fight with Crimson 1, you can see that Prez passed out due to the several high-G turn strain.
  • In pitched air engagements one can sometimes spot ejected pilots parachuting to safety.
• Fun with Subtitles: With subtitles on in the mission "Wayback", the subtitle briefly changes after Frost reveals the identity of Diplomat and Comic in the dialogue, showing Diplomat's real name where his callsign would be. It returns to normal after the battle ends.
  Hitman 2 | Peter Kennedy: How do you-? Who sold us out? How do you know our names?
• Game-Breaking Bug: Conquest mode, as fun as it may be, suffers from some serious issues. Issues ranging from map being too dark or too bright, clouds covering the whole map, mission clear flag isn't triggering, and alert level achievements not unlocking properly.
  • Occasionally, most commonly occuring on Mission 14, an enemy tank will spawn under the map. While this may be amusing at first, it'll become quickly apparent that the only fix to this is resetting the entire mission because neither you nor any of your NPC helpers can progress the mission, and without checkpoints, that's all your progress gone.
• Game Mod: Plenty of them, with the most popular ones being those that unlock all the unreleased aircraft hidden away in the code, and the ones that let the player enjoy Prez' chatter regardless of the aircraft they're flying - especially since some of the more powerful planes (like the PW itself) are single-seaters.
• Gameplay Ally Immortality:
  • Downplayed in the campaign, where your allies can take a massive amount of punishment before going down, if the enemy ever gets to focus on them instead of you in the first place; and in the case they do go down, they'll be fine in the following missions anyway. For example, the mighty Eminent Domain can get sunk in its debut mission if you sit by and let enemy ships and aircraft wail on it long enough, but the mission will keep on going as planned.
  • Played straight in Conquest Mode, where the allied wingmen and airships you purchase are invincible, making them useful scapegoats for more heated mission types such as Fleet Hunt. Also means you don't have to worry about earning enough points to constantly "rebuy" them, and that even the lowest-tier ones have a use (even if that use is 'occasionally distracting the enemy') instead of needing to be replaced every sortie.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: The hangar background in the aircraft menu changes whenever Sicario relocates to another base.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • It's implied multiple times that Monarch is already rolling in cash by the time the game takes place. The player still has to engage in Money Grinding to purchase decent aircraft. Maybe it's all stored in a Swiss Bank Account? It rears its head after "Cold War", where Galaxy happily tells all Sicario elements they're now obscenely rich as a result of the op.
  • "Cold War" itself. The official kill count is something in the hundreds, and you're told that the Feds sent as much of their air force as they could to the battle and you slaughtered a decent chunk of infantry. You kill maybe 30-40 planes out of maybe one hundred. That said, the air battle had been raging for quite a while by the time you join the party, meaning you probably missed a good chunk of the carnage and the numbers given could be valid after all.
  • "Cold War" also states you shot down every Fed transport, but this plays out even if you let all the transports escape.
• Glass Cannon: The actual name of an optional post-game modifier that increases your damage output by 250% and the enemy's by 500%, effectively turning almost everything on the map including the player into a One Hitpoint Wonder.
• Gone Horribly Right: The Federation obviously planned to destroy Prospero with Cordium missiles to deny it to the Independent Forces and to eliminate as much of the enemy force as possible. What they didn't count on was for the cordium in the missiles to react to other cordium sources, such the latent cordium in the soil. The concentration builds up, creating a runaway chain reaction that sets off a geological disaster so great it's referred to as "the second Calamity." The devastation is severe enough that not only both sides of the war need to recover with your next mission occurring two months later., but this proves to be the last straw for other nations worldwide, who start speaking (and in some cases, acting, even if in a limited fashion) against the Federation.
• Good Weapon, Evil Weapon: Averted in relation of real world planes, as in-universe, the manufacturer of pretty much every aircraft and military hardware is Federation client states. Most iconic would be the main antagonist Crimson Squadron has half of them piloting not-Raptors and half of them piloting not-Su-37's.
• Grand Theft Prototype: During Mission 7, the Independent Forces of Cascadia manage to capture and commandeer a state-of-the-art Federation battleship with the firepower of an entire battlegroup, christening it as the Eminent Domain. She would prove to be a crucial pivot in naval warfare throughout the conflict. Played with in that it isn't the only ship of that class, and ends up facing her sister ship later on.
• Gray-and-Gray Morality: Reading between the lines of the Black-and-White Morality espoused by Cascadia reveals neither the Feds or Cascadia are demons or knights in shining armor.
  • Cascadia was desperate enough to hire mercs. While that doesn't seem like a big deal, mercenaries as a whole are seen as even more untrustworthy after a corporate cabal consisting of PMCs nearly overthrew the world, and a majority of mercs were participants in that conflict - and it's implied they did a lot of war crimes in the process. This gets hammered in Frontline-59's first mission, where dozens (and implied to be hundreds, if the furball from "Cold War" in the main campaign says anything) chase retreating, defenceless pilots all the way to a Federation mainland despite getting warned by Galaxy and Cascadia Command that they won't get AWACS support that far out and that Cascadia has no wish to invade the Federation, only to wage a war of self-defence. Some do it just because they get paid a measly $300 a plane, some have chips on their shoulders against the Feds from the merc war, and others just want to murder defenceless targets.
  • Behind Cascadia's "free nation for a free world" rhetoric and the Federation's "stability for all" rejoinder is the simple fact Cascadia wants to stop paying taxes and the Federation wants more of their resources. Furthermore, it's implied Cascadia has a chunk of seething bloodthirsty nutjobs looking for an excuse to use their freedoms and gubmint on a target, judging from a Cascadian soldier calling to kill "globalist rats" in the final mission, and it's also implied further that Kaiser and Stardust's deal only ensures Cascadia becomes a successor to the megacorp-run Mercenary Cabal.
  • Hitman Team targets a Federation logistics train using a well-used civilian airspace... currently in use by civilian passenger jets. Both sides take care not to harm any civilians, but Dip speculates that the Federation deliberately uses the airspace to hide behind human shields... and Presidia risked collateral damage, anyway.
  • Earlier, you can deliberately shoot down a helicopter carrying civilian personnel in "Machine of the Mantle", and you can also kill a civilian yacht during "Valkyrie's Call".
  • "Cold War" starts because Cascadia finds retreating Federation transports carrying infantry back to the Federation mainland. You kill them all.
  • Right before the Feds deploy Cordium cruise missiles, which inadvertently set off a second Calamity, you can hear an officer attempt in vain to stop the Peacekeepers from launching them. Other Fed grunts express disgust, but feel that they need to keep Cascadia at all costs to ensure world stability.
  • "Open Season" has Federation pilots hesitate to shoot down civilian firefighting planes and choppers trying to save the forest from the fires the Feds lit, but as another pilot points out, it's that or have their retreat get annihilated.
  • After the Second Calamity, both Sicario and the Cascadian Government have a point. Sicario doesn't want any more dead mercs under his belt or fight a losing war, but Stardust offers something to convince nearly all of Sicario to their side. Prez implies whatever it was, it's nothing any one person should have, and whatever it is, it turns Kaiser into a raving Cascadian patriot at the end.
  • During the final battle, every Cascadian element, including yours, openly call for all Feds to be killed and to take no prisoners. The same elements repeatedly express frustration they can't kill Feds once the ceasefire is called for.
  • Peacekeeper forces believe in unity above all else, and are dedicated to protecting their own. Besides the fact you kill nearly all of Crimson-1's flight twice, with the heavy implication that they're just as much of a heavily-bonded family as you and the rest of Sicario are, he's been trying to protect Federation personnel that you've been swatting like flies for cash. Small wonder he swears revenge on you and tries to kill you at all costs, even it means ANOTHER Calamity.
  • Frontline-59 is a complete reversal, with the Cascadians being the foreign invaders while the reservists of the Federation territory Magadan are the underdogs protecting their homes. However, things become even more muddled as the invasion goes on when the battered Cascadian invasion force is pressed with their backs against the the sea. Captain Woodward tries to propose a ceasefire to allow the remaining Cascadians to withdraw without a fight, but the Federation refuses and orders their forces to kill every last Cascadian on Federation soil. It's implied to be tit-for-tat for the massacre in "Cold War".
• Great Offscreen War: The Oceania War that occurred 15 years prior to the game's events, and caused the widespread hatred of mercenaries.
• Guy in Back: If you fly a two-seater aircraft, you get a WSO (Weapons Systems Officer), callsign Prez. She has her own dialogue lines and adds to the radio chatter.
• Harder Than Hard: Mercenary difficulty, which is unlocked after clearing the story mode at least once on any difficulty. Not only are enemies deadlier with their increased damage and tendency to spam homing missiles, but most missions have additional enemy spawns and priority targets, making it more taxing on your weapon ammo count. For example, land battleships, which you only encounter in Mission 17 on Hard, appear as early as Mission 4 on Mercenary. The game also scraps the Mook Chivalry it has in place on lower difficulties, so where normally you never have more than two or three enemies at once locking onto you, on Mercenary they all dogpile you the moment you get into range.
• Hard Mode Perks: Averted. Aside from two achievements and slightly higher mission payouts due to more enemies spawning on the map, there's no tangible benefits to playing on Hard or even Normal, least of all Mercenary difficulty (aside from some extra lines in the end credits after the final mission that confirmed some of your allies’ survival, which will not appear at any lower difficulty). All content including any and all levels, aircraft, weapons and paint schemes can be unlocked on Easy. Mercenary difficulty is therefore meant purely for private challenge seekers.
• Hated by All:
  • During Operation Broken Chain, the Federation uses Cascadia's civilian airways to host military traffic, prompting confusion and disgruntlement from witnesses whose airlines are caught in the crossfire. The furball gets so intense that the Federation orders civilian flights to change altitude to avoid conflict, passengers are instructed to close the window shutters, and Air Marshals start confiscating phones to prevent the world from learning of the Federation's terrible management of Cascadian airspace.
  • As the war progresses, the Federation's credibility starts plummeting once they start employing tactics that eventually escalate into full-blown war crimes; doubly so once Hitman and Sicario seize and/or neutralize the Solana Communications Array in "Pillars of Communications", and the Federation can no longer censor civilian communications as easily as they could before.
  • In "Open Season", the Federation starts a massive forest fire to cover their retreat, prompting Cascadian firefighters to put out the fire. In response, the Federation higher-ups order their pilots to shoot down the firefighters, despite the pilots' protest. Their plan is rendered moot when Sicario cuts off their retreat and they're forced to surrender, with Diplomat and Comic bitterly noting that Grimmwood Forest burned for nothing.
  • After some minor debacles here and there, the Federation crossed the point of no return during Operation Anticipation, by deploying an utterly excessive amount of cordium-primed cruise missiles on Prospero, inadvertently causing a Calamity-like disaster by triggering a combined cordium-geothermal chain reaction along the Ring of Fire that results in multiple volcanic eruptions that devastate Cascadia and parts of the Federation. In response, multiple member states of the West African Concordat condemn the Federation and move to support Cascadia's independent forces, while the seizure of Federation assets in WAC's jurisdiction becomes justified; this coincided with mercenaries from the Periphery nations flocking under Cascadia's banner after being rallied by the charismatic Kaiser.
  • The final nail in the Federation's coffin is, ironically, not directly their fault. Minutes after news of the ceasefire between the CIF and the Federation reaches the front lines (not fast enough for the Federation to keep Presidia, much to their chagrin), a rogue Crimson 1 levels Presidia with cordium warheads. While his motivation for it was his unhealthy obsession with Monarch and his desire to defeat him once and for all, the world sees it as the Federation breaching the ceasefire out of spite of losing Presidia, causing so much political backslash that even the Federation's newer member states begin to secede in protest, leaving the bloc in its most vulnerable state since its founding.
• Heroic Mime: Monarch doesn't say a lot, and often it's his WSO Prez who does a lot of the talking. Other pilots lampshade this, sometimes asking him a question, then acknowledging that Monarch isn't likely to answer them anytime soon, with Prez even muttering that Monarch doesn't need to be told to shut up after Galaxy tells him to.
• High-Altitude Battle: Of course.
• High-Speed Missile Dodge: Your options for shaking incoming missiles are hard turns and either flares or an "AoA Limiter," which allows your plane to pull off tight-turning post-stall maneuvers.
• Hired Guns: The player is a mercenary pilot under the employ of Sicario. Many other (unnamed) mercenary forces appear throughout the Cascadian conflict, both as allies and enemies.
• Hit So Hard, the Calendar Felt It: The game takes place in 432 AC, or "After Calamity," an event that involved many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes in the Pacific Ring of Fire, the eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, large areas of land being submerged, and new islands forming.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Federation, in desperation, launches Cordium warheads at Prospero. Bad idea: it sets off a chain reaction around the Pacific Ring of Fire, causing a second Calamity and crippling the Federation's unity and ability to sustain the war effort, as well as driving the international community to take action against them.
• Hollywood Tactics:
  • Lampshaded and discussed in Mission 7, where several characters wonder why the Eminent Domain was so close to Cascadian waters without any escort, which is what allowed the Cascadian Coast Guard to overwhelm, board, and capture the battleship despite it being a state-of-the-art prototype.
  • Also lampshaded and discussed during Mission 19, "Red Sea". Captain Woodward feels he must break the Federation's line and force their main battlegroup to deploy into the open sea as soon as possible in order to hasten the preparations for Presidia's invasion. For this, he opts to use a tactic he refers to as "crossing the T", which he mentions goes against everything he knows about naval warfare. Comic explains to Diplomat that Woodward intends to run the Eminent Domain straight to the enemy line while they can broadside the battleship. Woodward adds that thermal interference is disrupting the ship's usual engagement distance, so he has to go gun-to-gun against other ships, boasting that the Eminent Domain's armour can take the punishment. It ends up working thanks to Hitman Team's aerial cover, and the Federation fleet is outright dumbfounded by Woodward's recklessness. Note that in real life, crossing the T is generally considered the ideal positioning for a gun-armed warship like Eminent Domain as it allows a ship to fire all of its guns while only allowing the enemy to fire their frontal guns and in a battle line, only even allowing the frontmost ship to do that, and thus would not be Hollywood tactics. However, what Woodward describes is essentially the reverse of that - he's crossing his own T to close the distance faster and simply counting on his armor being too tough for the Federation's guns to defeat, which is well within the realm of Hollywood tactics.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Your plane can carry hundreds of missiles, bombs, and a deep magazine of cannon rounds, much more than represented on the pylons.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The game has Easy, Normal, Hard, and Mercenary settings.
• Infinity -1 Sword: As soon as you enter the last quarter of the campaign, the F/S-15, the VX-23, and the ACG-01 Chimera become available for purchase. They're listed as experimental planes; they all have three special slots with varying numbers of hardpoints per slot, access to special weapons and weapon variants for the VX and ACG (the VX being one of the few planes that can carry MLAA-3s, for instance, whilst the ACG is one of the few that can mount anti-ship missiles), and high overall stats. That said, they're eventually outclassed by the two aircraft that are unlocked once you finish the campaign.
• Infinity +1 Sword:
  • The SP-34R, the first of the two experimental aircraft purchasable after clearing the campaign and the plane Frost Druid uses during Mission 12, is a literal bullet hose that's faithful to its designation as a ballistics platform. While it has no missiles whatsoever (not even STDMs) and its loadout is fixed, it has access to all types of gun pods and in extremely large quantities, ensuring you will never run out of dakka in most cases. It's also equipped with a railgun that oneshots most targets from a great distance, with a deceptively forgiving hitbox and faster projectiles than those used by enemy units. At 325,000 credits, however, it's the second most expensive plane to buy, only falling short of the very next plane...
  • The second post-game supercraft, the PW-MK.1 and Crimson 1's plane during the final mission, is likewise unlocked by completing the campaign and can be purchased for the insane sum of 485,000 credits. It is hands down the ultimate fighter plane, boasting extreme maneuverability that mocks everything else's weighty feel and comes equipped with the BML-U, which can lock onto dozens of targets and annihilate the opposition with a massive flurry of micro-missiles. Like the SP-34R, the PW-MK.1 also boasts a railgun for long-range sniping.
• Interface Screw:
  • Clouds are almost completely opaque, so the moment you fly into the cloud cover, it's instruments only. Flying through thunderclouds adds heavy rain, blinding flashes of lightning and heavy screen shake to the menu. Flying below them still impairs visibility to some extent due to the raindrops all over your cockpit windows.
  • Mission 15 ends with a massive one as the waves of Cordium missiles cause a second Calamity, coating your screen in dust and preventing most radio communications. The briefings and debriefings of this and the next missions have glitchy screen effects too, just to drive it home.
  • And again during the final mission, where Crimson 1 levels Presidia with miniature Cordium missiles and engages Monarch in a final duel. Late into the fight, a Cordium explosion from Crimson 1's craft knocks out your HUD functions for the last phase.
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople): Dialogue and background lore mention the existence of other nations, such as the Republic of Albion (Britain). The Pacific Federation's East Asian territories include Daegu (a city in South Korea), Magadan (a town and region in eastern Russia), and Ulaanbataar (capital of Mongolia). According to the side story The Good Daughter (not in game), the Federation also has territories in the Middle East and Africa, known as Bethlehem, Byzantium (another name for... Constantinople), and Malagasy (Madagascar).
• Ironic Echo: "It's only business. I'm sure you guys understand." Said first by Master Goose Squadron when they arrive late to defend the privateers Sicario took out in the first mission, and then repeated when they join forces with Frost Druid to kill Hitman Squadron to claim their bounty.
• It's Personal: Discussed: Frost Druid and her gang of traitors assert Sicario must have some kind of grudge against the Federation (to the point where Sicario's actions led to what amounts to a nuking. Sicario deny this, but it's implied she's correct, if Kaiser's strangely specific denial that he had anything to do with the old Cabal and his newfound patriotic fervor for Cascadia during the final battle for the Federation says anything. As for her and her flight, it's definitely personal, as Master Goose's flight lead (who Sicario have stolen the spotlight from at least twice) clearly has a lot of spite in his voice when he tells you it's just business.
• It's Up to You: There are a few missions where Monarch (and sometimes the rest of Hitman team) are handpicked to operate independently for high-risk missions. It's acknowledged that Monarch's skills are essential for the upcoming operation. Otherwise it's downplayed, your wingmen are nowhere near as efficient as you but a respectable number of ally kills are usually tallied on the results.
• Killed Offscreen: Gunsel's Squadron's lead is initially a woman mentioned in the dossiers and with a line in the 2nd mission. Sometime between Sicario entering Cascadia and the Sawaiiki strike, a male pilot takes up the Gunsel Lead role. That his only dialogue is about how Sicario's promotion chain works on lines of succession based on seniority (with the implication that Galaxy is next in line if Kaiser dies) gives a pretty big hint of how he got his new position.
• Kill Steal: Allied forces have an annoying habit of dealing the killing blow to targets you've spent the last two minutes softening up. Make sure to destroy whatever is in your sights as quickly as possible or your payout might well be a couple thousand credits lower than it could've been.
• La Résistance: Several paramilitary groups made up of nonmilitary forces (such as cops and park rangers), Federation defectors and civilians are helping the Cascadian National Guard and their mercenary allies.
• Large Ham: Kaiser can get quite bombastic at times, or "power tripping" as Diplomat says. Captain Woodward is also pretty hammy.
• Leet Lingo: The SP-34R, codenamed "Spear."
• Leitmotif:
  • Composer Jose Pavli makes extensive use of recurring themes in the soundtrack, such as Project Wingman's main theme found in tracks like "Clear Skies" at 1:58, intended to give a sense of freedom.
  • Pavli also made two videos (spoiler alert) highlighting how the Federation, Hitman and Crimson Teams, and Monarch and Crimson 1 themselves also have their own musical motifs. This even includes natural aspects, such as cordium (represented by Mongolian throat singing) and the sky itself.
• Lethal Lava Land: Mission 6 takes place in what used to be the Yellowstone Caldera before the Calamity, now a lava-filled Exclusion Zone where cordium is mined as a geothermal energy source. Prospero and other places across Cascadia (and even across the Pacific Rim) become this after the Federation bombards the city with cordium missiles in Mission 15, triggering a second Calamity. And Presidia after Crimson 1's attack at the end of Mission 20, setting the stage for the final battle.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Federation's prototype land battleships are wicked fast for their enormous size, armor strength and the firepower they probably mount. Too bad they're designed to dominate ground battles but get deployed against an opposing force that consists primarily of aircraft with ace pilots at the helm.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Aircraft with anti-air weapon slots can equip MLAA (Multi-Lock Anti-Air) missiles, capable of targeting multiple aircraft at the same time. The MLAG (Multi-Lock Anti-Ground) missiles do the same for ground targets. The Unguided Rocket Pod is similar, but fires either a rapid stream or a shotgun burst of unguided rockets rather than guided missiles, depending on if it's a regular or burst rocket pod.
  • Mission 15. The Federation launches wave after wave of cordium-laced cruise missiles against the city of Prospero. Despite Hitman's best efforts to intercept, enough make it through to their targets. One or two missiles would have been enough to level the city, but the plan needed more than that.
  • Mission 16 and Mission 21 have Monarch square off against superfighters capable of launching literal clouds of missiles. At first glance they will appear to be flares, until your "incoming missile" alerts light up.
  • The BML-U (Burst Missile Launcher-Universal) on the PW-MK.1 can fire a swarm of missiles at multiple targets so quickly that it makes a ripping sound more akin to a gatling gun. Whilst flashy, it can be difficult to use effectively, and more advanced planes are generally agile enough to avoid most of its volley.
• Made of Iron: Boss-level enemies are much, much more durable than standard enemies. A normal hostile plane goes down in two standard missile hits, advanced aircraft take three hits to kill, Crimson Squadron superplanes for instance require at least six. Each. Duel Bosses can take even more punishment, and the fact that all of these guys and gals are very hard to hit in the first place can result in failed missions not because you were shot down but because you ran out of ammo before they ran out of hitpoints.
• Magnetic Weapons: Railguns are among the enemy anti-air weapons, mounted on ships and other installations. And then Monarch encounters the SP-34R, which packs an experimental rapid-firing railgun in its airframe. The PW.MK1 has a similar weapon.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Mission 15. As wave after wave of cordium-activated warheads detonate on impact in Prospero, your radio starts to light up with civilian chatter as seismic monitoring stations and local scientists start seeing the first literal and metaphorical aftershocks of the Federation's assault. Even before that, basically everyone is scrambling to figure out what's going on and how to stop the missiles.
• Master of All: The ACG-01 Chimera may not have the absolute best stats among prototype aircraft, but it's still a top-tier plane that, most importantly, packs a ridiculous amount of weapons that can trivialize absolutely every conceivable mission type. Pesky airships around? ASM are here to save the day. Heavy ground assault required? Enjoy your 10 MLAG hardpoints with plenty of ammo. Furball ahead? MLAA spam to the rescue. You like long-range missile sniping? SAA missiles galore. You want bombs or gun pods? The Chimera got you covered. And of course it still has its standard missiles and more than enough agility to make it a great dogfighter. It even has access to the AOA Limiter if that's your thing. It's an expensive aircraft for sure, but worth every penny. The only thing it doesn't have, unfortunately, is Prez, due to being a single-seater.
• Military Mashup Machine: The Federation rolls out old prototype Land Battleships when defending Brite Fortress. While the battleships are covered in weapons and would be imposing against ground forces and could pose a threat to low-flying aircraft, by the time the defenders resort to rolling them out they have zero air cover and can be quickly picked apart by the swarm of aircraft above.
• Mission Control: Galaxy, your AWACS support aircraft, who gives you objectives and updates during a mission.
• Modular Difficulty: Before you start a mission, you can apply various modifiers to increase the difficulty. They do things like limiting you to your machine gun (Gun Runner), doubling enemy spawns (Double Time) or forcing you to leave your afterburner on at all times (Speed Demon). Of course, the community came up with the Halo-esque MAMO challenge — Mercenary with All Modifiers On (Mercenary being the hardest difficulty).
• Money Grinding: Similar to Ace Combat, completed missions can be replayed indefinitely, with the cash you rake in there being added to your running campaign's balance. Mission 13 is particularly popular to this end due to offering a ludicrous amount of easily killed targets that are mostly harmless to the player. Repeat this mission for a few hours and every airplane in the game is yours the moment it unlocks.
• Mook Maker: Aircraft carriers keep launching more hostile units until you take out the ship, making them instant priority targets even if they aren't officially labeled as such. They're very rare, though.
• More Dakka: Aircraft with ground-attack slots can equip additional gunpods for more lead-slinging goodness.
  • The SK.25U stands out among non-prototype aircraft for its ability to carry eight gunpods of any type, as well as having a main gun that acts like an HGP rather than an RGP.
  • The SP-34R experimental airframe goes from using its gunpod, to filling the sky with rapid-fire railgun rounds as it gets damaged. Its playable version has every single gunpod type in the game alongside the railgun.
• Multiple Life Bars: In a departure from its inspiration in Ace Combat, Project Wingman features boss fights that are recognizable by way of the priority enemies having their health displayed on the bottom of the HUD. While an enemy squadron can make up the boss health bar, there are cases where it's just one enemy that takes several phases to beat, as is the case with the SP-34R fought in Mission 12 as well as the rematch against its pilot in Mission 16. The final boss, Crimson 1, has officially 3 health bars, but has an extra one where just about every element on your HUD is turned off as you keep trying to shoot him down once and for all.
• Mundane Utility: Those airships covered in guns and missile batteries? Some of them have been converted to civilian use as airliners.
• Never My Fault: In the final battle, Crimson 1 blames Monarch for all of the death and destruction that befell the nation of Cascadia, even if the burning of Presidia was because of Crimson 1's use of cordium missiles.
  Crimson 1: You're a slave to history. Even after Calamity, you fight against the only order that can guarantee the safety of your people. You, solely, are responsible for this.
  Crimson 1: You drove me to this: this death and destruction over the Federation. Millions of lives lost... *Sigh* So many ghosts... Kill me, or be killed!
• N.G.O. Superpower: While having their own air force is not unheard of for PMCs, Sicario having their own AWACS is noted to be a luxury even some nations can't afford. And that's before getting into Sicario's SOF teams and armored group in what is supposed to be an aircraft focused PMC.
• No Blood for Phlebotinum: The Federation's invasion and occupation of Cascadia is because of Cascadia's rich cordium and geothermal energy deposits. Or as Kaiser puts it, "a country with unlimited energy at its fingertips."
• No Honor Among Thieves: Frost was a merc who fought in the The Oceania War who turned her back on her brethren for the Federation, and gets a hell of a lot of flak from your wingmen for the decision. Master Goose and his crew are quick to turn against Sicario once the Federation offers them a fat paycheck.
• Nom de Guerre: Naturally the Sicario pilots all have tac-names. Though some Cascadian pilots with a grudge assume yours is a egotistic self-appelation, your boss implies it's not.
  Assassin 1 | Kaiser: Monarch? There's a reason why we call him what we do.
• Noodle Incident:
  • How Hitman went from a five-man team to a three-man one is never explained.
  • Diplomat and Comic were apparently involved in an ill-fated money laundering scheme at one point.
  • Unlocking Monarch's profile in the codex reveals he was a participant in at least four previous conflicts before the events of the game: The Good Hope Dispute, Operation New History, Sinking of the "City on a Lake", and Hunt for the Maester. Despite in-game dialogue implying that at least two of these conflicts were historically significant, they are not elaborated on.
  • Something caused Monarch, Diplomat, Comic, and possibly Prez to join Sicario at the same time. Galaxy implies they all knew each other before and that it had something to do with Dip being told he's a shit pilot at the Merc Academy.
• Non-Indicative Name: The AOA Limiter module available on some higher-end planes actually removes limits on the angle of attack between the nose of your plane and the direction where it's moving through the air, so you can make much sharper turns.
• Nose Art:
  • Monarch's plane is decorated with a distinctive "crown" emblem^note Closer inspection shows it to be more like a stylized butterfly wing, complete with a (very thin) arrow underneath which may represent a butterfly's body., which the Federation military soon recognizes.
  • Dialogue lines reveal that Comic and Diplomat have their own insignias, with Comic identified by her "jester's hat" and Diplomat by his "peace symbol".
• Not the Intended Use:
  • Unguided bombs work very well against airships due to the targets being rather close to each other.
  • An In-Universe example happens when the Cascadian forces convert an unfinished stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere into an impromptu airstrip after the loss of Rowsdower Base in the wake of the Second Calamity. There are highways that also double as airstrips albeit they were intended to be while under construction, thus this trope still applies.
• Nuclear Weapons Taboo:
  • Nuclear weapons and proliferation do not exist in the game's world, since nuclear weapons would bring any large-scale conflict to a quick and messy end - presumably mass-disarmament happened some time prior to the Calamity, or they were never invented in the first place. But a fictional analogue comes into play in the form of cordium warheads, bright flashes and mushroom clouds included.
  • Averted in the Conquest mode, in which one of the available weapons is named "Experimental Uranium Freefall Bomb" and is a freefall nuclear bomb.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: Can be heard in the soundtracks related to Crimson Team.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • The ASM (Anti-Ship Missile) can take down almost anything that has "ship" in its name in a single hit at extreme range. It's the only thing it can do, but it does it really well. Because this target roster also includes the pesky airships, ASMs are a surprisingly versatile weapon worth bringing along on most missions. The only things it can't instakill are ocean-going battleships and aircraft carriers, which can tank one hit before the second sinks them (but there's only about three of them in the whole campaign, so it's hardly a problem).
  • The Railgun can destroy just about anything that isn't a boss in a single hit. The challenge in this case lies in actually hitting the target, so it's best used against slow stuff like, again, ships of all sorts.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Invoked and Averted. To keep their members safe from bounty hunters hired by the Federation, the members of Sicario only use their tac-names while operating in Cascadia. However, Frost manages to figure out who Comic and Diplomat are simply by looking into their career histories, as both were somewhat well known in certain circles before becoming mercenaries.
• Only in It for the Money: Hitman squadron (save Monarch, maybe) do not share Kaiser's Glory Seeker tendencies and only want to line up their pockets as much as they can, despite being already loaded according to Frost Druid; Diplomat proudly claims he bought his plane with his own cash, for instance.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Monarch's Heads-Up Display gets in on this at the conclusion of both Mission 15 and 20 when cordium warheads are used and cause calamity scenarios. Instead of the usual "Mission Complete" text box that appears at the end of the mission, the text box simply say "Mission Over".
• Optional Boss: The enemy fleet and their air cover in Sirens of Defeat. They're physically present, but only activate as enemies that attack you if you cross the red line. There's no special reward beyond the fairly sizeable amount of points that they're worth if you can take them all down, and they're harder to take down than an incoming veteran of other arcade flight games might think, especially their fighter support (see Boss in Mook Clothing).
• Police Are Useless: In "Sirens of Defeat", Federation radio chatter reports that the Presidia Police Department has infighting between pro-Fed and anti-Fed factions.
• Phallic Weapon: The PW-Mk.I carries its long-barreled Railgun slung under the fuselage, making it look very... excited.
• Power-Up Letdown: Some missions unlock airplanes that are worse performers than earlier models. The most frequent example is the SK.37, an expensive prototype plane that, despite better stats, is less useful overall than its predecessor model SK.27 due to its complete lack of anti-ground weapons.
• Propaganda Machine: The Federation relies on information warfare to suppress news about the war to its civilians. Cascadia launches operations to destroy its jamming equipment as well as stage daring attacks with civilians milling around to both wreck the Federation's jamming as well as achieve a propaganda coup.
• Punch-Packing Pistol: An unusual plane-based example in the form of the Heavy Gun Pod. Unlike the standard gun, which has a high rate of fire and deep ammo reservoir (2400 shots), the HGP's standard rate of fire is much slower and it has a shallow ammo pool (around 320 shots), but each bullet does around two-thirds the damage of a standard missile.
• Purposely Overpowered: The PW-Mk.I is something that can only be gotten after beating the game and costs a stupid amount of credits. However it is also as disgustingly powerful as its price tag would suggest, packing more mobility and firepower than any other plane in the game by a wide margin.
• Pyrrhic Victory:
  • Cascadia succeeds in gaining its independence from the Federation, but much of its land has been reduced to molten rubble and its two largest cities including their capital destroyed thanks to the Federation's usage of Cordium missiles. Cascadia will have a very long road to recovery, though it is somewhat mitigated by other nations lending support to their post-war reconstruction efforts. As for the Federation, it has lost much of its military power, suffered a massive blow to their international relations for using Cordium weapons on major cities and triggering a second Calamity, and its member states are implied to be considering seceding. The final text before the credits perfectly encapsulates just how much blood was shed for Cascadian independence, and whether it was all worth it:
  Cascadia is in ruins...
  The War has been Won.
  The Deal will be honored.
  • On the Federation side, the Federations push Cascadia and its insane rogue General out of the Federation mainland, but it's all for nothing as the Cordium detonations that turn public opinion against the Federation are deployed not long after.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: In the third act of the game, Kaiser makes his big entrance with an army of mercenaries, freedom fighters, war junkies, and anti-Federation combatants all over the world that he's been gathering up during the two months Time Skip, and together they assist the Cascadian Independence Force and the remnants of Sicario in taking the fight back to the Federation.
• Rapid-Fire "Shut Up!": Diplomat unleashes one at Crimson 1 during your second battle with Crimson Squadron. It ends with him smashing his console which temporarily disconnects his radio.
• Regional Redecoration: The Calamity caused major tectonic upheaval around the world that significantly altered the geography, especially in the Ring of Fire region; so far we've been shown that the western coast of North America is now separated from the mainland by the "Scarred Sea" (essentially a reopened Western Interior Seaway), a portion of southern China had also been detached from the rest of Asia, and it appears that the Malay Archipelago had simultaneously experienced considerable gains of dry land in the western half and lost several of its major eastern islands (namely New Guinea and the Philippines).
• Subtitles Are Superfluous: Downplayed. While there is an option to turn on subtitle for the game's dialogue, there are plenty of inaccuracy in the subtitle tex. Even the speaker's team color can be wrong in some of the subtitles.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • It’s mentioned in her file that Prez is Monarch’s WSO primarily because she is the only one in Sicario that can just barely withstand the high G forces from his method of flying. If you are piloting a two-seater during the final battle with Crimson 1, Prez cannot keep up after the first phase and passes out from g-LOC (Gravity-induced Loss of Consciousness).
  • The Federation is immune to criticism on the diplomatic stage due to their virtual monopoly over Cordium. The destruction of Prospero with Cordium-tipped missiles, which also caused earthquakes and volcanic eruptions throughout the Ring of Fire, is so horrific and destructive that the international community has no choice but to speak out against them, as the Federation legitimately threatened the safety of humanity.
  • While your IFF knows the difference between enemy and civilian targets, your seeker warheads don't. One mission requires manually checking your targets to avoid blowing civilians out of the air. Logically they should also recognize friendlies as well, but that's Acceptable Breaks from Reality. However, said civilian targets are converted military airships (or at least based on the same frame design), making it entirely understandable that your missiles can't tell them apart from actual hostiles.
    • Related to the above: don't build civilian airliners that are visually indistinguishable from military designs. Civilian air traffic over conflict zones is dangerous enough even with explicitly civilian airplane designs. Making them look like what's at the top of any enemy's shit list is just asking for a disaster to happen.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": Crimson-1's unhappy response to the Federation ordering him to pull out of the massive aerial battle in "Cold War", denying him the chance to avenge the fallen pilots of both the Fed force and his own squad.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Crimson 1 gives Monarch one in the final mission. Crimson 1 tells Monarch that he fought because he believed that his homeland of Cascadia joining the Federation was for the good of his country, and that him and his fellow mercenaries showing up had left the nation in ruins. He even points out how ironic Monarch’s name is, since he doesn’t fight for a country, and is a mercenary who fights for money.
• Red Filter of Doom: The presence of Cordium, weaponry or otherwise, is indicated with dark red filters. When the cordium-enriched missiles impact Prospero and Presidia, the entire scene becomes a deeper, dark red and orange. In a slightly less lethal example, the same happens during the fight to destroy Cordium reactors in an active volcano.
• Re Vision: It's implied General Faust's knowledge of whatever Cascada had that was so terrible, it made her go rogue is an additional reason as to why the Peacekeepers nuked Cascadia in the main campaign.
• Ruritania: This is typically how the Periphery nations are seen, as they don't have any cordium deposits or geothermal hot spots. This gives them very limited influence on the international stage.
• Salt the Earth: With cordium-tipped missiles, the Federation does this to Prospero, and Crimson 1 (acting independently) to Presidia.
• Scenery Gorn: The aftermath of cordium missile warhead detonations is a horrific sight to behold. That said, the aftermath of that can have a strange hellish beauty to it.
• Scenery Porn: Although it can be difficult to appreciate it while trying not to get killed by enemy missile spam, Cascadia boasts some spectacularly beautiful nature vistas in almost every mission. Considering that you're basically fighting over Fantasy Canada, it's hardly surprising.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After the burning of Prospero at the hands of the Federation and the realization that their real identities are known, Hitman Team planned on packing up and heading out of country. However, Stardust then presents two arguments that convince them to stay: The fact that they still have a contract, and a briefcase with something in it. ^note Whatever it is, even Prez says that "it's" too much power for one person.
• Set Bonus: Equipping the same special weapon to more than one hardpoint does more than increase the ammo cap; it also increases the number of shots that can be loaded at once for most weapons (a few, such as SR and SAA are always treated as having only two hardpoints, and carrying additional standard missiles does not add effective hardpoints for them), and is tied directly to how many targets Multilock ordnance can seek at once.
• Shiny New Australia: In the backstory, the Mercenary Cabal took over Oceania - heavily implied to be post-apocalyptic Australia/New Zealand - in a bid to take over the rest of the world.
• Shout-Out:
  • A wealthy city called Prospero burned to a crisp? The only thing missing is its mayor being a certain Magnus. To hammer it home, one of the elite squadrons faced in Conquest Mode is called Warhammer. Ironically, however, this shout-out is not a reference to Warhammer, but rather one of the official Discord server's moderators: Paul Prospero. Any relations to events in Warhammer are confirmed as purely coincidental.
  • The conical shape and red glittering particle emissions of Cordium engines is very similar to GN Tau Drives.
  • During Mission 4, one of the Cascadian soldiers heard over the radio chatter warns his partner that he is driving over a beehive.
    Cascadian Soldier: Oh Dust Mother, NOT THE BEES! [screams]
    • For added reference, the unlucky soldier getting stung is named Nick.
  • Many kickstarter backers have had their names or monikers included in the game as either enemy aces or ship names. That said, the game also includes names from across the media spectrum, with a certain airship called the R. Astley, for example.
  • Frost directly quotes Larry "Pixy" Foulke during your second battle with her in Mission 16:
    Frost: You fired up? Come shoot me down!
  • The backstory regarding the Mercenary Cabal and their (failed) attempt to establish a 'mercenary state' in Oceania seems to borrow the concept from Outer Heaven. Furthermore, there's a lot of chatter about how distrusted and vile mercenaries are, similar to Big Boss and The Boss's rhetoric that soldiers are treated worse than dogs.
  • Additionally, one of the mercs mentioned that during the Oceania War, the Lords in the Mercenary Cabal had 'Signatures'; ace pilots who ruled the battlefield in their names, referencing all the Featureless Protagonist aces who fought in the wars of Ace Combat series, with every one of them achieving legendary fame among allies and enemies in their respective wars.
  • Much like in Pulp Fiction, We never get to see what is in the briefcase that Stardust gives to Hitman Team to keep them in the war.
  • The mercenary Master Goose One is a direct reference to the callsign of Vincent Harling’s transport, Mother Goose One.
  • The flag of the Pacific Federation has a small star to the upper right of one of the bigger stars, just like Osea in Ace Combat 5 and Ace Combat 7. And those stars surround an even bigger and pointier star that is reminiscent of the flag of Emmeria from Ace Combat 6.
  • Just like the base commander in Ace Combat 7, the one at Wensleydale has to be woken from his sleep during the (night) attack. However he's competent, and like his counterpart in Ace Combat X, is able to identify the protagonist from the sound of his engines.
  • Diplomat's message to the Sawaiiki ATC is a reference to an actual conversation between a Rhodesian pilot and a Zambian ATC. During the same mission Comic is surprised to notice a yacht sailing next to the attack on the port, similar to the one in The Final Countdown that got caught up in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
  • The airbase used by Sicario for much of the campaign is named Rowsdower AFB.
  • The airframe design of the PW-MK1 resembles that of the VF-11 Thunderbolt, while its armaments, in particular its railgun and micro-missile launcher, is similar to the CFA-44 Nosferatu’s arsenal.
  • Sicario's two main fighter squadrons, Hitman and Assassin, were the callsigns of the central companies in Generation Kill.
  • Just like in Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies, an unfinished highway and its tunnels are used as an impromptu airbase, except it's the heroes who use it this time.
  • Some radio chatter from Ace Combat 04 is present, like "Die you S.O.B.!" and "Dammit, he's engaging me!"
  • Likewise, there is a piece of dialogue in Mission 11 "Cold War" that is a shout out to Osean pilot dialogue in Ace Combat Zero's "Mayhem" mission.
    "Let’s show those mercs what the Cascadian Air Force can do!"
  • Crimson Squadron as a whole is a big shout-out to Mobius 1's relation with Yellow Squadron:
    • On their first appearance, Crimson are being showcased as The Dreaded elite air force squadron that the game discourages you from engaging and urges you to instead just flee and make it past the return line. There's also a female member of Crimson Squadron who mentions that her plane’s performance might be sluggish, referencing Yellow 4's engine problem that led to her death. Also, perhaps coincidentally, the AO in which the mission took place is the Yellowstone Exclusion Zone.
    • An official Federation news bulletin is mentioned to contain a warning from Crimson to take Sicario seriously, alluding to how Yellow 13 talks about Mobius 1 after 4's death. Except where 13 praises the Ribbon for being a Worthy Opponent, Crimson thinks of the Crown as a filthy lowlife to the bitter end.
    • During Cold War and if Monarch chased off Crimson above Yellowstone, allies and enemies alike will drop their jaws upon witnessing Monarch not only holding off, but winning against the seemingly invincible Crimson.
    • Half of Crimson Squadron are flying SK.37s and the other half VX-23s, the game’s fictional counterparts to the Su-37 Terminator and the F-22 Raptor which were Yellow Squadron and Mobius 1's signature aircraft respectively.
  • Crimson-1's final speech is the nearly the opposite of everyone's favourite mercenary rival, Sulejmani. Whereas Crimson-1 tells you that you're nothing but a low-down dirty merc who fights for no cause and that his revenge is personal, Sulejmani openly crows that he is a low-down dirty merc who'll fight for no cause, but his revenge against you is personal.
  • Your AWACS will sometimes call "SPAMRAAMS out!" when you launch MLAAs at enemies; "SPAMRAAM" being a Fan Nickname for the real-life AMRAAM missile (which the MLAA is based on) originating from the Digital Combat Simulator fandom.
  • General Faust, the main antagonist of the Frontline 59 campaign is more or less a female Captain Torres, being a respected but unstable officer who goes rogue in an attempt to end the war on her own terms by enacting a mass-casualty event and whose subordinates follow her with near cult-like devotion. Her aerial flagship, the CDS Roosevelt also bears a resemblance to the P-1112 Aigaion.
  • AWACS Vita is a version of AWACS Bandog, giving zero respect to a bunch of reservists who are just cannon fodder. Like Bandog, the motley crew's fighting prowess impresses him into respecting them.
• Shown Their Work: When flying through a thunderstorm there is a chance for the plane the player is flying to experience something known as St. Elmo's fire, a phenomenon where plasma is formed along the leading edges of the plane as a result of powerful atmospheric electrical fields.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: In Mission 18, when Crimson 1 is blaming Hitman Team for the destruction caused by the Federation’s Cordium missile strikes, Diplomat responds by telling him to shut up. Multiple times.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • In mission 6, the manager of the geothermal plant insists to his employees that they must follow all procedures when storing the cordium before leaving the plant despite the fact that the plant is being bombed by the rebels. However, it's implied that he may be justified about this, for in mission 15, the Federation launches cordium warheads at Prospero that triggers a Second Calamity.
  • In Mission 13, an enemy battleship captain can be heard complaining about damage to his ballast tanks that'll take weeks to fix, all the while the base and the other Feds around him are getting curbstomped by the Rebels. Made worse when another Fed points out that they don't even need the tanks for anything important, anyway.
  • In Mission 16 "Wayback", when Hitman team gets ambushed by Frost and Master Goose Squadron, Diplomat suggests that the team flee from the situation. Galaxy reasons that the team doesn't have the fuel to make it, but Comic refuses on the fact that her stuff is still down at Rowsdower Base.
• The Sky Is an Ocean: True to their name, airships are essentially airborne battleships; they are installed with various types of defensive turrets they are completely defenseless without, are manned by a crew of multiple personnel, and are implied to have means of evacuation for crewmembers in case the airship takes too much damage.
  Vessel crew: Evacuate! Abandon ship!
• State Sec: The Federation Peacekeepers are a paramilitary force separate from the regular Federation Army comprised entirely of foreign recruits from the Federation’s vassal states, among them Crimson Squadron, that are known for their extreme loyalty and devotion to the Federation above their home countries. It is implied that they are the ones that pushed the Federation's military to launch Cordium missiles at Prospero, even killing Federation officers that refused to carry out the orders.
• Subsystem Damage: Ships and airships have their defense turrets marked as discrete targets. Blowing them up does significant damage to the main hull while also making them less dangerous. That said, you can also oneshot the entire thing with a carefully placed shot at the center of the ship, though this requires an extremely powerful weapon like the ASM, the UMRB or the Railgun.
• Super Prototype: Mission 12 has Monarch and Hitman Team run up against the SP-34R "experimental ballistic airframe." Packing high agility along with experimental weapons, this thing is a full-on Boss Fight.
  • Mission 21 has you solely face off Crimson 1 in the PW.MK1, which has the SP-34R's railguns as well as being able to perform a Macross Missile Massacre, and also comes with the ability to mount Cordium missiles.
  • The advanced superplanes are made by Icarus Armories, an Expy of Gründer Industries from Ace Combat.
  • "Prototype" is listed as a separate class for flyable fighters. These include the game's equivalent of the Su-37 and F-15 S/MTD, the VX-23, the Chimera, and flyable versions of the SP-34R and PW1.MK1.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Kaiser denies he had anything to do with the old Mercenary Cabal that got slaughtered by the Federation in the last previous global war (that the Cabal started), despite the fact every leader of the Cabal had some kind of name relating to royalty. It's implied whatever Cascadia promised him to turn him into a true-blue Cascadian patriot had something to do with restarting the Cabal.
• Take That!:
  • During the third encounter with Crimson Squadron, Crimson 1 paraphrases the infamous "Sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs" speech. Comic throws it back in his face by pointing out the obvious hole in that premise:
  Comic: Sheepdogs herd lambs to the slaughter, you asshole!
  • The "Express Lane" mission in "Frontline 59" is dedicated to pointing out the absurdity of Ace Combat's tunnel runs with everyone involved commenting how insane it is to fly a fighter jet indoors.
• Take Your Time: There are no time limits anywhere in the game. If you want to take it slow and cautious in battle, go right ahead. The only exceptions are escort missions where dawdling around for too long while your allies are being picked apart can result in failing the mission, but even there you usually have a generous amount of time to get things done.
• Taking You with Me: It's unlikely but possible for a shot-down aircraft to crash into its killer, dealing a fair bit of damage to the latter (although thankfully not as much as a full crash into the ground).
• Title Drop: By a scientist in Mission 12 just after the launch of the SP-34R. In-universe, it refers to the experimental advanced fighter development program by Icarus Armories that culminates in the PW-Mk.I fighter piloted by Crimson 1 in the final mission. Lampshaded by an achievement unlocked immediately afterward:
  He said it!: "He said the title of the game! In game! I can't believe it!"
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Bombs in Project Wingman leave a lot to be desired, due to a small blast radius and lack of guided options and the fact most enemy defensive emplacements are fairly spread out. Usually ground threats are best handled by air-to-ground missile options... but this gets thrown out the window on the rare occasions where you have to fight a Land or Naval Battleship. Both are host to countless weapon emplacements tightly packed together, and dealing with them through missiles alone can prove costly and repeated strafing runs for machineguns seriously risks taking tremendous damage. A single large bomb, however, can easily obliterate most if not all of the weapon emplacements on a single pass though, making them the quickest and most efficient method for at least that one enemy type.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable:
  • If you disengage from an enemy squadron and pull away to beyond visual range, there's a possibility that their A.I. will bug out and compel them to fly off the map's boundaries at high speeds, making it near impossible to catch up to them. This can become a problem if the bugged aerial in question is a priority target, as this will lead to a mission softlock in which you cannot proceed any further because there's technically still one target alive, albeit unreachable.
  • If you play the final mission with the "Double Time" modifier, sending one PW-MK.1 into the fourth phase while the other is already on its fourth phase will softlock the mission, meaning that the mission will not end even if there are no enemies left.
• Unobtainium: Cordium, a sort of geothermal energy resource that emerged following the Calamity. The war begins in part due to the Federation seeking to gain control of Cascadia’s rich Cordium deposits. It is also mentioned that the Federation is basically unassailable on the diplomatic stage, as they have a virtual monopoly on Cordium, and any criticism is met with trade embargoes.
• Unreliable Narrator: To the mercenaries, especially Hitman Squadron, the Federation are imperialistic invaders and conquerors. To the Federation air force, specifically the viewpoint of K-9 in Frontline 59, the Cascadians are separatists who commit war crimes and managed to spark conflict in the Magadan territory into joining Cascadia. Both sides throughout the different regions are seemingly in the dark toward the atrocities committed by their own side.
• The Unreveal: Aside from the money sent to Sicario, it is never shown exactly what the contents of the Cascadians' deal with them were.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Comic's reaction to the appearance of Frost Druid in the SP-34R experimental aircraft in Mission 12 "Midnight Light".
  Comic: Woah. This is new.
  Diplomat: New?! Is that all you can say?!
• Version-Exclusive Content: In October 2023, a Playstation 5 version of Project Wingman is released with the subtitle Frontline 59, referring to a set of extra missions exclusive to the aforementioned console. In turn, the Playstation 5 can only play Frontline 59 in VR, while the main campaign in VR is exclusive to the PC version.
• Villainous Badland, Heroic Arcadia: The in-game files mention several times that Cascadia is praised by tourists for its lush wilderness and forests, in stark contrast to the depressing and grimy mainland Federation cities.
• Wham Episode: At the end of Mission 15, the Federation resorts to launching missiles equipped with Cordium warheads at Prospero to stop the Cascadians' advance. This inadvertently triggers a second Calamity as the Cordium sets off a chain of volcanic eruptions along the Pacific Ring of Fire. The most chilling part is when your radio switches over to picking up chatter from the global scientific community as they start to see the event register on seismic sensors and the like, underlining just how much of a clusterfuck the Federation has just caused.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Frost has a very thick French accent, but her radio filter (upon the game's release) is so unaccommodating for her voice, that much of what she says is impossible to understand, leading to a lot of confusion as to what kind of accent she has.
• Whole-Plot Reference: To Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War. Both protagonists are mercenary pilots who become known by nobility-themed nicknames and are hired to fight against an aggressive and militaristic Federation. Both wars have their tides decisively turn after a massive air-to-air battle results in the Federation air force being decimated by the protagonist, and Federation forces grow desperate enough to use doomsday weapons on their own soil in a last-ditch effort to stop their defeat. And both end with an aerial duel against a Well-Intentioned Extremist rival who uses the aforementioned doomsday weapons for their own purposes.
• Wing Man: Monarch has Diplomat and Comic filling out his flight.
• With This Herring: In Conquest Mode you're tasked with liberating Cascadia, and you start out in a special variant of the MiG-21 Trainer. You have the basic cannon, basic missiles, and your single special slot has only one option besides 'empty'; weaponized drop tanks. Which you can drop four of. Per sortie. Fortunately you can buy assistance in the form of AI-controlled pilots and airships, and it's not too hard to earn enough Prestige to permanently unlock better planes for the mode.
• Wolfpack Boss: It's rare to fight boss enemies one-on-one. Boss battles more often pit you against full squadrons of Miniboss-level aces piloting extremely durable superplanes, with the prime example being the Federation's eight-man Crimson Squadron. Played straight in the final mission " Kings" if you're playing with "Double Time" modifier where additional PW-Mk.1's will show up while assisting Crimson 1 to take you down.
• Would Not Shoot a Civilian: One mission is about cutting off the Federation's aerial supply lines. Unfortunately for the Rebels, the Feds are using civilian air traffic corridors for their cargo planes, leading to an op zone littered with civilian airliners that must not be destroyed under any circumstances. Officially it's for PR reasons, but of course it's also because you're playing for the good guys, so catching civilians in the crossfire is right out. This might be done on purpose by the Feds, as Dip and Comic speculate they're using the civilians as human shields to make any rebels look bad if they accidentally (or otherwise) shoot down a civ.
  • However, it's also possible to sink a yacht that had the bad luck to be out sailing while the IF was attacking Task Force 1, although Cascadia still puts out a bulletin reminding pilots to avoid collateral - this time, because they don't want to antagonize the country the task force was docked at.
  • There are two choppers that are strongly implied to be used by civilian engineers during "Machine of the Mantle". If you don't shoot them down, your teammates likely will.
• Wretched Hive: The main cause of the Oceania War was due to the Mercenary Cabal attempting to turn the nation Oceania into their own independent state. The Federation, fearing the threat the Mercenary Cabal could pose, invaded Oceania before that vision could be realized.
• Yet Another Stupid Death: Conquest mode is infamous for the many embarrassing deaths that sent players back to square one time and again. The most common example by far is crashing into an airship. It doesn't matter if it's allied or hostile, alive or a wreck plummeting to the ground, pretty much every Conquest player can attest to these things regularly being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• You Bastard!: Crimson 1's final boss battle is tinged with a subtext attacking the player; Monarch is a Featureless Protagonist assumed to be a stand-in for the player, and his actions (slaughtering Federation forces, namely) led directly to the Federation's escalation, all the way to using psuedo-nukes on a civilian target and Crimson-1 nuking a capital city out of pure hatred. That said, it's very clear he's off his rocker at this point and is a major hypocrite.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: No matter how many cordium cruise missiles you shoot down in mission 15, the latent cordium in the soil will still react and cause the seismic events leading into the Second Calamity. This is justified, as while it's not detonating on the ground, all that primed cordium is still scattering into the air, and any cordium in the soil is bound to react with enough of it.