Ace Combat 4 is a game that is about military action and war and airplanes and such but damn if it doesn't have a fuckawesome soundtrack and hell the story cutscenes being both from the point of view of a CIVILIAN having watched all the events of the game from the ground just trying to survive in their country taken over by an imperialist power who gets to know one of the main people you fight against rather personally is a hell of a way to do a story and it just...
it's good???
It throws everything into such stark relief that even when you do this one mission called "Emancipation" and you get this (admittedly rather cool) bit where the allied pilots and the radio station on ground in the city you just helped liberate and save from destruction start singing this national anthem together and it feels really great and triumphant and then
...you get the other side of the story, from the ground, from the innocents on the ground, trying to fight too, trying to survive.
It manages to rip away any sense of "FUCK YEAH WE'RE THE GOOD GUYS" and... you think about all the planes you just shot down over a city. all the people that you may not have fired at, but... might have ended up indirectly causing harm to...
It made the aftermath of every battle bittersweet, it took away any sense of "victory" and "righteousness" and... fuck I can't think of a better military game that sends such an amazing and poignant anti-war message that's just... so good.
I mean obviously mileage may vary but if you get a chance and can play that sorta game, I totally recommend playing Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies. It's... genuinely really great.
Fuck it, if you can't, but wanna see the story, pretty sure there's an LP online you could watch.
this bit's spoilery so it's CWed. Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies spoilery.
one of the final battles is against Yellow 13: the very pilot who shot down a fighter onto the narrator's house as a kid leaving him an orphan. The very pilot that kid got to know rather personally, and found out that they were ... just a soldier, that they actually weren't just an imperialist monster but... had their duty. They had friends, lovers, family...
Just like you, Mobius One, forced to fight in a conflict.
this bit's spoilery so it's CWed. Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies spoilery.
You're thinking "yeah I'm doing the RIGHT thing" but... you really come to realise that this battle, this war, is fought by men in very smart suits in board rooms who think of it like playing chess wiht expendable and replacable pieces who don't even think of you as PEOPLE, let alone alive...
and just happily pit you against each other, and don't even think about all the innocents slaughtered for their "acquisitions".
this bit's spoilery so it's CWed. Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies spoilery.
It never outright says this, it never goes "WAR IS BAD ARRRGH YOU ARE BAD GUY FOR LIKING IT". It ... just manages to get that across in a gentle, subtle way.
You and Yellow 13 fight. You win, Yellow 13 is shot down, doesn't eject.
The nation is liberated, the war is over... but so many lives have still been lost. and not once, not once did I feel like I had done "the right thing".
Mobius One was just a pawn after all.
this bit's spoilery so it's CWed. Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies spoilery.
What choice did you, as Mobius One, have? What choice did Yellow 13 have? what choice did the NARRATOR have??
Noone chose to fight this war, to invade this country, to liberate it...
The only people that had a choice really, were the people so far removed from the fighting that it was just... business effectively.
Oh sure the kid "chose" to join the resistance, and 13 chose to let him go when he caught him...
this bit's spoilery so it's CWed. Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies spoilery.
but really... those weren't choices really.
What else could the kid do to survive? He had to work, his uncle was an abusive drunk, he wanted his home back.
What else could 13 do? He couldn't refuse to fight.
What else could Mobius One do but duel 13? They had their orders and duty too.
The only choice any of these people get is their actions after their choices are decided for them.
this bit's spoilery so it's CWed. Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies spoilery.
Mobius One apparently disappears after this conflict, probably moves onto other ones, becomes legendary but never seems to ever take the limelight. Just... eschews it entirely.
Yellow 13 goes into that duel knowing he'll probably die, or at least not come away unscathed. I get the feeling that he chose not to eject, so he could rejoin his lover, and in some way atone.
this bit's spoilery so it's CWed. Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies spoilery.
When 13 finds out the kid is in the resistance, and finds him helping to sabotage their efforts, which is later implied to have possibly lead to his lover's plane malfunctioning and her being unable to eject when Mobius One shoots her down, he holds no grudge against him, he lets the narrator go, doesn't pursue him, doesn't lash out at him even when he sees him again.
he chooses not to hurt someone just trying to survive.
this bit's spoilery so it's CWed. Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies spoilery.
The kid, the narrator... for all of that, having survived it all, watch a man who was obviously the enemy, but how he somehow came to think of as a friend regardless, even if he had to fight against him, even if Mobius One did have to shoot him down, even if 13 was part of the oppressive occupying forces...
Still writes to Mobius One, not knowing WHO they are, or where, in the hope that maybe they'll get some answer...
this bit's spoilery so it's CWed. Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies spoilery.
...The story still resonates to this day with me, it still gives me chills thinking about it.
It's... not a happy or triumphant story. It's brutal, it's cold, it's harrowing... It's soul crushing honestly, but fuck if it isn't well written and executed.
like the PLAYABLE part is just like "FUCK YEAH LET'S SHOOT DOWN BADGUYS AW YEAAAHHH!!"
and it's a pretty great ps2 flight sim game, it controls well, it plays well, the radio chatter is good stuff, it even manages to look good too on a ps2!
But hten after every mission, you get this sombre, sobering music and this calm voice of someone having grown up through all this chaos much later after the fact writing letters, and... recounting THEIR story. not yours...