I played four hours of Ace Combat 8, and now I feel like a real fighter pilot

Date:
Thu, 04 Jun 2026 13:30:00 +0000

Description:
We spoke to the development team behind Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve celebrates about its impressive cloud tech, storytelling, and more.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter A lot has happened since the release of 2019s Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown . Of course, the elephant in the room is the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of which on the video games
industry is still being felt today. From the explosion in engagement when
many people were forced to stay inside and quarantine, to the massive contraction with seemingly endless studio layoffs and closures happening now.

With the world as isolated as it was, there was a need for human connection. That became the underlying theme of the upcoming entry in the Ace Combat flight sim series, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve . I recently played four
hours of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve and spoke with director Kazutoki Kono about the games storytelling, the franchises three pillars, and the possibility of a virtual reality mode. Latest Videos From Watch full video here: A New Direction ACE COMBAT 8: WINGS OF THEVE Announcement Trailer - YouTube Watch On The events in Ace Combat 8 take place 10 years after those
of the previous game. The war between the Federation of Central Usea (FCU)
and the country of Sotoa rages on.

Players control an initially nameless man whos the co-pilot of the legendary ace aviator Jan Rex Cope, leader of the FCUs Joker squadron. After Rexs
death, the player adopts his Wings of Theve callsign in order to carry on his legacy. Rex has to maintain the facade that the original is still alive, as his presence inspires hope and boosts morale within the squadron, and instils fear within opposing forces. You may like Pragmata review: hacking combat shines in a spellbinding lunar setting Pragmata is one of the most original games I've played in years, and I'm not just talking about its unique puzzle combat The 26 best Xbox Game Pass games in 2025

Its a markedly different shift in tone to the story in Ace Combat 7 , which revolved around the protagonist clearing his name after being falsely
accused. Ace Combat 8 s development began during the middle of the pandemic, and Kono said that he sent a message to narrative director Sunao Katabuchi asking if he was interested in coming back on board, to which he agreed to.

We were both wearing masks back then, and we began to talk about the sort of narrative structure and what we want to achieve, Kono explained. While he and Katabuchi didnt have anything in stone quite yet at that point, one of the messages that Katabuchi sent stood out. [Katabuchi] said, I think the theme for Ace Combat 8 should be the connection between souls of people. Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. (Image credit: Bandai Namco) During my time with the game, one of the big changes that I
immediately noticed was the use of actual animated cutscenes similar to what youd see in a first-person shooter like Call of Duty . In Ace Combat 7 , almost all of the cutscenes were relegated to still images with a narrator explaining ongoing events. This time around, we actually get insight into Rex's psyche. This approach was much more engaging, especially since the supporting wingmen in your squadron are also quite colorful.

Ellington Baxter is a dependable teammate whose steadfast personality keeps the group level-headed, while Tasha Seversky is the pink-haired young hotshot that treats war like some sort of game. When they talk, their portraits
appear in the top right corner, like Star Fox , and they add a lot of entertaining moments in between the intense dogfighting. The three pillars (Image credit: Bandai Namco) According to Kono, the franchise has three pillars: photorealistic skies, enemy engagement, and the experience of being an ace pilot. In my demo, I flew through above the blue ocean across the skies, encountering plenty of clouds along the way. And every time I flew
into a cloud, my screen would be peppered with these impressively realistic water droplets. What to read next The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales trades turn-based combat for real-time action The 28 best Xbox Series X games to play right now Forget Marvel's Wolverine and God of War Laufey Ive played Onimusha's sword-fighting State of Play demo, and I think it could be the sleeper hit of 2026

Kono said that the clouds were rendered with an in-house engine called Cloudly, which helps make authentic layers. Not only did the development team want to make the clouds beautiful, but also give them function to help players.

When water hits the cockpit, that in and of itself is a sign to the player that they're now inside of a cloud, and oftentimes when you see rain or
you're feeling rain in the cloud, that means you're at low altitude, he explained.

Kono continued, Whereas if you have very thin clouds, you're at higher altitude, so you can actually use the visual cue that the cloud is telling
you to gather information that you can use for gameplay and decision making. (Image credit: Bandai Namco) The series continues to reiterate on its
existing systems, including flight and combat. In fact, Kono said that there was an overhaul as to how damage is calculated. In prior games, there were containers called blocks that were active targets that would recognize hit
and collision. In Ace Combat 8 , however, there are now elements outside of these blocks that can actually take damage.

There was certainly a lot of trial and error to go from that older system to redefining the rules in how players can engage with and damage objects in Ace Combat 8 , he explained.

The aforementioned new cinematic cutscene direction serves the third pillar, and the first-person point-of-view is meant to provide a hero experience. The team took several steps to make them feel as realistic as possible.

When recording the voice actors, there were three different microphones in
the studio with them to capture a more encompassing sound. Additionally, the sound was captured in 7.1.4, emulating a home-theater setup.

Kono said, It gives the player the sensation of becoming and immersing themselves in this idea of an ace pilot. So every system and mechanic that we have needs to feed one of the three pillars. Mission complete (Image credit: Bandai Namco) I played through several missions. Mission 4, The Fall of the Numbered Fleets, felt like a standard mission, where I was tasked with taking down a once-friendly fleet that turned on the FCU. Admittedly, Im not the
best at playing Ace Combat games. My sense of direction is often tested, but Ace Combat 8 does a good job of providing plenty of tutorials and markers to help ease you into the controls.

Here, I was shooting missiles and machine gun fire into enemy planes and dropping bombs onto naval fleets. It felt incredibly cathartic and satisfying when the green pop up in the middle of my screen kept saying HIT and then finally DESTROYED.

Mission 11, Maximum Payload, was a visual stunner. This mission was nothing but pure skies, where I was tasked with taking down two gigantic transportation cargo with eight separate engines each. As these cargo planes were using the clouds as cover, I followed suit and constantly experienced
the condensation and droplets scattered across my screen, showing off the power of the Cloudly engine.

Mission 9, The Land Battleship Blocklade, was by far my favorite one. As the name implies, my squad and I had to stop a hulking land battleship fitted
with anti-air guns from advancing. Its sole weakness was its armor-plated tracks, where my allies would deploy suicide drones to blow off the armor while the aerial forces would destroy the exposed tracks. So not only did I have to fight off enemy planes, and the battleship itself, but I also had to guard the drones so that theyd make it to their destination.

It was a multi-faceted mission that felt insurmountable. On top of that, part of the mission was to detonate pre-planted bombs on three buildings around
the battleship so itd be immobilized. Of course, something goes wrong and it was up to me to manually destroy the buildings. Despite how relatively grounded and realistic the series is, this mission felt like something out of an anime. The teamwork and camaraderie felt palpable throughout this entire mission. Going virtual (Image credit: Bandai Namco) You know what would make missions like these even more exciting and immersive? Virtual reality! Ace Combat 7 had three exclusive VR missions, but it seems like this feature isnt currently on the cards for Ace Combat 8 .

Kono cited the challenge of developing for VR. When doing so, youre essentially rendering twiceone for the left eye and one for the right. As opposed to a flat screen experience, developing for VR takes more than twice the computing power to render.

However, VR was considered at one point. Kono explained, Do we scale back the graphics and the performance of the game to one half of what it could potentially be in order to accommodate the VR experiences? or do we use all
of that computing power and put it on the screen and create the best possible flat screen experience that we can?

The team decided on the latter, and Kono revealed that resources are being poured into multiplayer, which he called the franchises most fleshed out yet (with more details coming soon).

Ace Combat 8 s release syncs up perfectly for the franchises 30th anniversary. Ace Combat 7 is the highest-selling entry in the series, but I feel like Wings of Theve will be able to overtake that. Despite being a cult-classic franchise, its still going strong decades later. The Ace Combat franchise never had an easy development cycle, Kono smirked. We are
constantly scrapping and building.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve launches on October 2, 2026, for PC,
PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and Series S. Follow TechRadar on Google
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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/gaming/i-played-four-hours-of-ace-combat-8-and-now-i -feel-like-a-real-fighter-pilot


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