This'll mostly be a review of the story.

To be clear, I think Armored Core 4 was an aggressively mid game. A mid game with interesting foundations, but a mid game nonetheless. Everything from its mechanics to its story were major nothingburgers that stand out among not just this franchise, but the catalog of one of our medium's most storied directors. While iffy on a lot of For Answer at first, to say this game grew on me would be an understatement. I've nearly completed it 5 times at this point, finished every mission on normal and may return to finish everything on hard. Great and fun game.

I think the thing that 4A consistently does better than even the great works that Miyazaki would go on to direct would be the feeling of dread present. Miyazaki's games are known for their dread, but all with a tinge of hope as to not feel completely devoid; I think someting like Bloodborne stands as an example of this, and a game more hopeful than most give it credit for. While 4A does retain this lingering sense of hope, he hadn't quite found his footing as far as organically weaving it into the narrative.

For Answer is, however, the master of the simultaneous desolation and sentimentality that characterizes Miyazaki's style. His Ueda influences are as clear as ever, with the giant, spectacular Arms Fort fights, the meditative nature of the setting, and Kota Hoshino's complementary OST feeding into the quietude and desolation that Miyazaki so loves to imitate and integrate.

Nowhere is the dread more present in For Answer as it is in the game's endings. While I wish at least one of the final bosses was good or fun, I think the endings prove better than anything the sheer uncompromising and unforgiving nature of For Answer's world. It's a giant, massive allegory for Thompson's trolley problem. You can imagine just how much pressure weighs on the shoulders of Thermidor and Wynne D.

"Is this really my fate? To lose... everything?"

"To treasure a life... is that something to laugh at?"

"You think it's your right to choose who lives and dies?"

It's much harder to be a good, or event a decent person than to be a bad one, and nowhere is it more evident with not only the aforementioned two, but yourself as well. You can imagine just how much pressure even living in a world as hopeless as this is putting on Strayed. It's a wonder they didn't break sooner than they did prior to siding with Old King, like an actual genuine marvel of human willpower, and it's also even more disheartening to know that "Destroy Cradle 03" is probably the easiest mission in the whole game. Strayed breaks under pressure and decides "fuck it lmao" and takes the easy way out: to fight for absolutely nothing whatsoever, for the world is fucked either way. I can respect idealists like Wynne D and Thermidor (and hell, even Old King to a certain extent) because they at least tried to fight for what they believed was right, even if, as per Thompson, the only options were to kill or let die (or whatever the hell the Closed Plan was). I finished the third ending instilled with a sense of dread (and frustration at Arteria Carpals), knowing that no matter what, this world is doomed, and that Strayed fought for absolutely nothing in the end. An ironic twist on the platonic ideal of the Raven that is so pushed in the series, even more so if you have the WG core equipped in that final cutscene: Strayed flies off into the sunset on a pair of false raven wings to bring death to billions for no good reason.

Then the game takes you to credits, in which you hear the title screen theme: 'Someone is Always Moving on the Surface'. An apt description of what I took away from this game. Dim as it may be, the faint hope that is so characteristic of Miyazaki's style prevails. Despite the plague, famine, and desolation that has befallen Earth, someone is always moving on the surface.

"Is that your answer? So be it..."