Random Rants 76: Argh! Augh! Ahhh!

[Syno]

Honestly forgot Ace Combat was still an ongoing series.

 

[Dachs]

Honestly forgot Ace Combat was still an ongoing series.

It HASN'T been. Ace Combat 6 came out in 2007. They've put out some mobile/handheld games since then, and a few games set in the real world that most people didn't really like, but they haven't revisited the core Ace Combat setting in over a decade. We call it the Great Drought.

Reports from the console players who got the game two weeks ago are pretty good. The gameplay is apparently excellent (only real complaint is that friendly pilots never seem to do much, which is a little disappointing but not unexpected). The story is uneven at best, in the grand tradition of the Ace Combat games, but at least it doesn't seem to feature any dumb-meme lines ("dance with the angels!") or musical numbers ("the jouuuurney beeeegiiiiins, staaaaarts frooooom withiiiiiiiin...").

I'm excited.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Why would a game like that even need a story?

 

[Phrossack]

Why would a game like that even need a story?

Usually it's basically Star Wars: a big bad Empire makes a superweapon and it's up to a plucky little democracy/coalition/rebel group to defeat it with fighters.

That said, the idea of a continent collaborating to build a ring of absolutely COLOSSAL railguns firing seemingly nuclear shells to intercept an asteroid, and then one nation seizes it and uses it to get air supremacy over most of the continent, is pretty damn cool.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

That sounds like AeroFighters Assault 64. That was one of my favorites.

 

[Dachs]

Why would a game like that even need a story?

Usually it's basically Star Wars: a big bad Empire makes a superweapon and it's up to a plucky little democracy/coalition/rebel group to defeat it with fighters.

That said, the idea of a continent collaborating to build a ring of absolutely COLOSSAL railguns firing seemingly nuclear shells to intercept an asteroid, and then one nation seizes it and uses it to get air supremacy over most of the continent, is pretty damn cool.

In any Ace Combat game, there are two stories going at once.

The big story is the story of the war itself, whatever war that happens to be. That's what @Phrossack is talking about. Most of the wars in the Ace Combat games have their roots in two things: the superweapons created to destroy the Ulysses 1994XF04 asteroid and the fallout of their failure to completely destroy it. The asteroid fragments killed millions and caused famines and economic catastrophes in countries like Erusea and Belka, which brought aggressive military regimes to power that promptly began wars; other wars come from the conspiracies and machinations of the losers in those conflicts to try to take revenge on the winners. And in those wars, the superweapons were turned on the rest of the world: the Stonehenge cannons, the Excalibur laser, the Chandelier railgun, and so on.

The other story is the human element, which dominates the cutscenes before the missions and attempts to ground the high-flying air missions with emotional stories. In Ace Combat 4, we see the war through the eyes of an orphaned boy in occupied San Salvacion who becomes a sort of squadron mascot for the Erusean elite fighter squadron that opposes the main character. In Ace Combat 5, the perspective shifts to the other pilots in the main character's flight element as they undergo high drama and unravel a conspiracy to pit the world's superpowers against each other. In Ace Combat Zero, the secondary storyline is of a documentarian following the actions of the greatest ace of the Belkan War - the sort of ur-catastrophe of the Ace Combat setting - and his interviews with the pilots that that ace shot down, in an effort to get at what really makes a military legend. Ace Combat 6's secondary story was a sprawling mess with about a zillion different characters, and it was super...uh...memey for lack of a better word: the women trying to traverse the country to find their loved ones, the tank crew that does a less-likable (and way less-funny) version of Kelly's Heroes, the ace enemy pilot with no personality, the obnoxious wingman, and so on.

Apparently, the secondary storyline in Ace Combat 7, while definitely not as understated as the one in AC4, is significantly less memey than the last one, so I'm down.

 

[Syno]

Google is delivering all of my search results in French even though the language settings are still set to English.

 

[Arakhor]

In French?? Good God, man - do we need to send help?

 

[Syno]

The Quebecois may try, but they'll never take me alive.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Rant: The worst happened. She left, taking the mailbox key with her. I wasn't able to get downstairs before the mail carrier had already left in the truck. And when she came back she intercepted my bank card and opened the envelope and now she's mad.

 

[Arakhor]

She's angry that you got yourself a different bank account? On what pretext?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I don't know. She's just giving me the silent treatment.

 

[Lexicus]

Is it a crime in Canada to open mail that isn't addressed to you?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Do you have possession of the card? If she doesn't give it back to you, that is straight theft. Obviously this isn't as simple as calling the cops but that would be an option.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

She pretty much threw the card at me so I have it and she doesn't know the PIN.

 

[MaryKB]

Oh dear .. did you at least get your card? She can't keep that from you.

 

[Arakhor]

In the UK, anything that comes from a bank is marked "private and confidential". This is what I found for Canada, but I don't know how up to date it is. This obviously wasn't an accident.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

You must have better searching than I do. For some reason this was my top result when I tried to google it.

 

[Syno]

Rant: The worst happened. She left, taking the mailbox key with her. I wasn't able to get downstairs before the mail carrier had already left in the truck. And when she came back she intercepted my bank card and opened the envelope and now she's mad.

You know how to handle her. Placate and redirect. You have the card despite her anger.

Edit: Also, yes, opening mail not addressed to you is illegal in Canada. Essentially useless info in this situation.

 

[Arakhor]

You must have better searching than I do. For some reason this was my top result when I tried to google it.

As Dachs said, intelligence isn't just what you know, it's also how you go about finding things out.