According to Ogura, continuing the Armored Core franchise was never in question as a number of staff members had interest in making a new title. The team wanted there to be a shorter gap between 2013’s Armored Core: Verdict Day and the new game, but with so many other games in the works over the years, the team felt it had limited resources to work with. Some of those other games include: Dark Souls 2 and 3, Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Elden Ring. The developers took each lesson learned from their time on those games and used those experiences to craft a new type of action for the Armored Core series. However this doesn’t mean the game will be completely different for returning fans, Ogura said Armored Core: Fires of Rubicon’s gameplay is meant to give players freedom and aims to keep the free assembly and customization fans love.
That customization will be key to overcoming the game’s difficulty, which is said to be slightly different from the difficulty of other FromSoftware games due to the trial and error of trying different part combinations. The mech assembly is also said to be more intuitive this time around as to be friendly to newcomers of the series. The story is also newcomer friendly and does not tie to any of the previous titles.
As for Miyazaki’s involvement, he acted as Fires of Rubicon’s initial game director. Miyazaki, along with co-director and producer Kenneth Chan, worked with others to create the game's map design, actions and many other core elements of the game’s foundation.
