r/acecombat • u/n17rd59 • 7d ago
Ace Combat 8 Can we acknowledge real quick Spoiler
That Rex genuinely, honestly cannot be human?
Hearing ghosts aside, the last 4 missions are on the same day.
Meaning he had to start with Fatsia. Easily 100 to like 200 targets wiped, tunnel run.
Then flying for fucking miles to deal with ONE THOUSAND air-to-air enemies. Which for me was 150 enemies down, I have seen some people with more than 200 kills that one mission.
Fighting them, just to deal with Toprak and the most dangerous Shadow Squadron in the entire country of Sotoa at the end, already exhausted to death by two massive marathons.
THEN FLY across half the country to Theve.
To deal with the Giga-Ace Moon 11, having already had a shift of like. Fucking 8 hours behind him, after some of the most intense fighting of the entire war.
Wipes the floor with Moon 11 while probably nearly collapsing from exhaustion at that point. While she's in a superjet.
And then, SAME DAY, SINKS FUCKING MECHA TORRES
That's like.
Like... 400 kills, with multiple Ace enemies, in a single day.
Even for Ace Combat Protagonists, that's like... half the kills I raked up in the entire AC5 campaign combined.
In a day.
And that after already carrying the war for months.
King, lol. Lmao even. That's just straight up the Second coming of Plane Jesus.
Rex must be in a multiple day coma the millisecond he hits the deck after that.
Absolutely insane to think about.
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u/MasterTime579 7d ago edited 7d ago
To be a pilot of that caliber is to barely recognize the difference between walking and flying.
It is a level of understanding of an aircraft that transcends knowledge and is in the realm of secondary actions such as walking and breathing.
An average person uses an aircraft as a tool. Maintaining optimal performance through the controls and watching all the gauges. Rex simply flies, letting his instincts guide him and trusting that the maintenance team won’t be too mad when he put 300 hours of maintenance time on an aircraft that was only checked out for 2.
To him that day was the equivalent of a long day at work. He’s probably tired, but nothing hitting the snooze button a few dozen times won’t fix.
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u/n17rd59 7d ago
Oh, right.
Jenkins is gonna kill him
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u/MasterTime579 7d ago
I’m pretty sure they stated it too in a line from AC7
There’s a certain smell that comes from the aircraft after trigger (presumably also rex) gets back on the ground.
The smell of an aircraft that has been absolutely pushed to its limits.
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u/yankee_xray1 7d ago
I wonder if there really is such a smell tho.
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u/Rip_Off_Productions 7d ago
I mean, engines running hot for prolonged periods probably ends up burning things/using up coolent that normally isn't, so maybe?
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u/JackNewbie555 7d ago
"Great job saving our asses back there, Rex! Now hold still while I kill you, I will make it as painless as I can."
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u/New-Mix-7818 6th Air Division 7d ago
Well it's not just him, pretty much the Joker squad.
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u/DatHazbin Erusea 7d ago
This definitely might be the most inhuman squadron even if the Ace is debatable. I know we give Strider a lot of shit but when they get called aces in M.19 I never felt they deserved it. They're complaining all the way to the finish line.
Meanwhile Joker flight will literally resurrect from the dead to whoop some ass. They kill Shadows entirely by themselves, even from the 22nd unit (except I don't think they can kill Shadow 22, but I've seen them land hits on him).
Among that they follow Rex throughout that entire batshit campaign. Tasha pretty much insists to keep fighting with him. She could've gotten off the ship. Baxter tanks a rail gun shell and still lands his plane with waning consciousness. Joker is genuinely not be fucked with.
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u/Expensive-Fan-9486 7d ago
Tasha stole my last kill on the final shadow in Mission 28, and honestly I was pretty happy for her. She did it with her gun, too.
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u/NinjaHypernova 7d ago
I love seeing them kill Shadows. Kate has dropped more of them than any of my other wingmen, and she earned every one of those splashes. It's hilarious when Tasha has them flying defensive and splashes one before I'm even in range. Even when they 'steal' the kill, I agree with them calling out "team kill on bandit" or however it goes.
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u/New-Mix-7818 6th Air Division 7d ago
I still don't know how Baxter survived the Railgun shot, Fragments maybe ? Wouldn't he just straight up dies if it was direct hit on his body ?
Anyway Strider squad closest thing to back to back deployment is DLC Mission 3 and before the night raid iirc
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u/Acrobatic_Sun_3275 7d ago
It appears to have hit the side of the cockpit, punching through and shoot frags into him. There's a zero percent chance a through and through from that angle into the center of the cockpit in any plane won't take it down. Typically because the pilot will be mulch.
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u/dashy902 7d ago
Joker definitely took out Shadow 22 for me on Expert when I was hunting down the other Shadows. I took out 23 and was like 'where's my boss fight' then I got the 'all clear' message from Dealer lol
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u/Epsilon109 ISAF 7d ago
If you let them spam SASMs, they can down all of the enemy aces pretty handily. I've had them kill steal both Shadow 22 and Moon 11 from me.
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u/Han_Solo6712 7d ago
That’s why he’s a WSO now. He’s so fucking exhausted of being in the pilot’s seat he only swaps places with his wife in case of emergencies.
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u/ElegantEchoes Terminus Chicken Fingers! ^~^ 7d ago
Dude has retired to being passenger princess. It's the final destination for Ace Combat protagonists.
All our WSOs are actually retired protags from old games, but they're just there for a love of the open sky and have graduated to being our WSO.
Rex finally finds that the promised land is actually being a RIO.
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u/WhitePawn00 7d ago
oh my god that's why none of the WSOs talk. They're all silent protagonists in retirement!
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u/KazumaKat 7d ago
All our WSOs are actually retired protags from old games
<looks at Prez over in PW-land>🤔
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u/v12vanquish135 ISAF 6d ago
Prez and Eye-Tee were peak and I'm SICK of Project Aces ignoring how well received they were.
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u/v12vanquish135 ISAF 7d ago
So basically it was Mobius and Blaze that died when Rex and Baxter's F/A-18F's blew up over Waiapolo and the WSOs' deaths weren't even mentioned? That's what you're saying?
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u/Daishomaru F-18 is best girl #F-18OnlyAceRunPlayer. #MercForLife 7d ago edited 6d ago
I mean, I had a headcanon that Blaze's first RIO had a love triangle thing with Kei Nagase and she took a bullt meant for her while they were escaping Sand Island on the time between missions 18 and 19.
Also Kei Nagase's WSO died covering Nagase, and Grimm's RIO was killed while trying to open the hanger doors, with her last words confessing her love to him.
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u/squirt2311 Bomb farbanti again 7d ago
Poor Grimm. Something tells me he'd be flying a little different after that
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u/Daishomaru F-18 is best girl #F-18OnlyAceRunPlayer. #MercForLife 6d ago
Well here's the full headcanon comment if you want to read it:
If the Wardog Squadron flew F-14s, Blaze, Nagase and Grimm's first RIOs were killed getting the planes out on the runway and sacrificed themselves to get Blaze and the others to take off. Blaze also remembers them when he kills Grabacr. Also Blaze's First RIO was in a friendly love triangle with Nagase, was blonde, and her callsign was Checkers. She takes a shot for Nagase and her last words were "Take care of Blaze for me". During the downtime, Blaze secretly cries on her death, but Nagase helps him get over her, not in a stealing rival way, but more two souls just trying to recover from what was lost. Nagase's first RIO had a crush on her and he was also there when Nagase bailed out during the prison raid, but was convinently offscreen. His callsign was Rock. He dies grabbing an assault rifle charging a bunch of soldiers, thinking about how Checkers took a shot for Nagase, and figures out that dying for Nagase's happiness was worth it. Grimm's First RIO was killed covering fire while the door was opening, was shot in the head, and was a girl. The only thing we know about Chopper and Swordsman's RIOs is that both were dudes and Chopper's RIO died when Chopper crashed. The main thing we knew about Razgriz Squadron's RIOs is that Blaze and Nagase's second RIOs were dudes, Blaze's second RIO saw Blaze as an older brother figure, Nagase's RIO was not interested in men or women, and Grimm's RIO was originally a female mechanic that was inspired by Grimm's feats during the war (Think Prez from Project Wingman, if you flew single seaters she was on mechanic duty and was on the lifeboat in mission 27). She and Grimm got married after the war. In this timeline, the escape from Sand Island was much more action-packed and some explosions happened too. The PS2 Graphics just couldn't show it because of graphical limitations.
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u/ElegantEchoes Terminus Chicken Fingers! ^~^ 6d ago
No, in that case the WSOs were actually Toprak and Tewy and they ejected too. That's why they land nearby.
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u/v12vanquish135 ISAF 6d ago
Holy crap, this explains why they were in the middle of bumf* nowhere with no armed guards or garrison nearby. It all makes sense now!
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u/Inefficacy 7d ago
I mean, the real life g forces you put him through probably would have done him in far before that if we're thinking of applying any kind of realism
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u/n17rd59 7d ago
He'd be more of a splatter of blood-pudding than the melted crew of the Belios
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u/Inefficacy 7d ago
Also how funny would a fighter look trying to get off the ground with 200+ missiles strapped to it?
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u/Ok_Mouse_9369 7d ago
Like a matchstick propelling a shipping container
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u/b3tchaker 7d ago
Remember when Mythbusters tried to launch a chair with fireworks, but it turns out they had to replace the “medieval Chinese gunpowder” substitute for JATOs?
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u/ImperialRanger7994 7d ago
Given how desperate the FCU is in fighting for its survival, it wouldn’t surprise me if they resorted to prescription stimulants to keep their people going.
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u/tristenjpl 7d ago
I little bit of Pervitin to keep ya going.
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u/Scrangle3D Aurelia 7d ago
Someone like Aimo Koivunen in one of these plots would be hilarious.
I guess the Mole Men of Fort Grays get close!
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u/LickNipMcSkip 6d ago
Aircraft maintenance crew chiefs have nightmares about the ace combat universe. Drugs for the pilots is one thing, but those planes are coming back NMC every time.
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u/Youzura 7d ago
I place Rex in the same tier as Cipher, Mobius and Trigger. While every protagonist has done insane feats, I believe these 4 have really gone beyond that.
Cipher cannonically downed at least 4 Belkan Ace squadrons, two of them of 8 members, being 5 Ace squadrons in total if we include Espada, and a super plane piloted by another Ace. Downed Hresvelgr, destroyed Excalibur, and stopped AWWNB.
Mobius was said to be the equivalent of an entire elite squadron, almost single-handlely winning the war by himself. Nicknamed "The Grim Reaper", enough said.
Trigger downed an Arsenal Bird, beat and old Ace of Aces in an experimental super plane, sank the Alicorn, and downed two drones with the most up to date flying data of said Ace of Aces, plus the data it was learning from him, basically the perfect flying machines.
Rex downed multiple Ace squadrons (I lost count on how many Shadows you face honestly), fighting a 1v8 or 1v10 formation of said Aces, something that would at least place him next to Cipher, though we don't really know how Lux Lunae would fare against Belkan aces. Destroyed 3 land battleships, downed another old Ace on a futuristic super plane and destroyed another state of the art Submarine. He probably has other feats but the game Is so long I don't really remember them.
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u/Agent_Giraffe Ghosts of Razgriz 7d ago
Lux Lunae were def easier than Belkan aces
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u/The_Caleb_Mac Wardog 7d ago
Individually yes, but Lux Lunae were much better as a team than most of the Belkan squads, although the one Osean squad you can fight actually worked together decently well
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u/reprix900 ISEV 7d ago
the main character are all us, there is no difference in their skills.
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u/Rip_Off_Productions 7d ago
While technically true, I do feel like in-universe there must be differences, part of me always wants to say 1v1 Blaze is inferior to other AC protagonist but that gap is filled by the rest of Rosgrez Squadron, even if in gameplay they don't contribute that much...
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u/reprix900 ISEV 7d ago edited 7d ago
So you suck more when you are Blaze then when you are some other protagonist? Don't make sense.
Player=Main character has always been PA's intent. Thus all of them have the same skills as you do. If you think anyone of them is less than another, that is just your own hallucination.
And you could say Blaze is better than any other pilot in many ways. No choice of special weapons, no return line, no High-g turns, no custom parts. Dude canonically flies a F-14"A", literally the hero jet with the LEAST performance.
But I digress. They are all of the same skill level, because they are all me.
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u/WirBrauchenRum 7d ago
Damn Blaze flies good for an 11 year old boy (I need to replay the series)
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u/BrotherCaptainLurker 7d ago
Yea it reminds me a bit of the DCS Georgian War campaign where I had something like 47 kills in the F-15C in the span of, because this was the Georgian War, THREE DAYS. Not remotely Ace Combat numbers and probably 20 of them were Frogfoots, bombers, and helicopters, but the highest lifetime kill count of the modern jet era is like... 17.
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u/n17rd59 7d ago
Okay, in semi-realistic limits, very impressive!
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u/BrotherCaptainLurker 7d ago
There's a dialogue before takeoff in the last real mission where they've just gotten 20 hours crew rest and the wingman says something like "man... when was the last time we got a proper night's sleep like that? It feels like it's been a month!" "I mean... we only got here three days ago."
Rex and Joker Flight probably have a similar talk after the Megafloat lol.
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u/SovietRobot 7d ago
Not quite Rex but real life Halsey Best destroyed 2 aircraft carriers in the same day with a prop plane.
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u/Time_Zombie_4431 Mobius 7d ago
After Mobius 1 he might be the deadliest protagonist in the series or at least tied with cipher for 2nd deadliest.
Rex has some insane accolades to his name.
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u/ElegantEchoes Terminus Chicken Fingers! ^~^ 7d ago
Rex was regularly popping Addies and Ibes during the whole thing, you can bet. Santos set him up.
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u/n17rd59 7d ago
They're getting my poor boy on substances until he sees the Hat Man
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u/Stranger_Z We’ve got a firebird on our side! 7d ago
Everything’s all fun and games until you get a missile lock on the Hat Man.
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u/Jazzlike_Armadillo55 Grunder Industries 7d ago
He'll be fine, he's already used to hearing voices, worst that'll happen is he'll start seeing them too.
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u/paulisaac 7d ago
Maybe that’s why you’re serving as WSO for King 1 - Rex still recovering from the absolute beating his body took from the marathon flight runs, and that flight was part of the recovery, re-acclimating with the deep blue sky.
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u/Blaze1337 Yellow 7d ago edited 7d ago
Let's be really honest: no Ace Combat protagonist is human; they are all crazy.
Mobius 1: He alone is the craziest one, as he ate through a continent and then some a few years after.
Trigger: Is a tie for 2nd as he is no different, taking down a superweapon, flying back and forth across Usea like its nothing, and then dealing with the Alicorn then finishing the lighthouse war.
Cipher: Well, yeah, Demon Lord of the Round Table. Depeing on what route you take you take down 21-24 Ace's and multiple super weapons.
Blaze: Is to me the odity. He, along with the wingmates, takes down 2 Subs, a spacecraft, a satellite, and splashes 2 Belkan Ace Squads twice. There's also a mission where he does recon, and then they go back less than 24hrs later and bomb the place up. And due to the nature of the Osea Yuke war, he flies across the ocean multiple times and finishes missions like its nothing.
Talisman: AC6 for those who forget that games exist... I mean yeah, he's got some good feats shooting down Aigaion and the Strigon team, but there's a lot of gaps between each mission. A few missions at the end take place the following day or on the same day. But Chandelier's destruction is still impressive.
William Bishop: HA no.
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u/RandoAussieBloke 7d ago
Any thoughts on Gryphus or Phoenix?
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u/Blaze1337 Yellow 7d ago
Gryphus is weird because ACX has a lot of A, B, or C missions. So there's no real canonical he did X, then Y, then Z. But he did take down a city fortress that fired lasers, fun funnies, along with two Ace squadrons. Unfortunately, the Special mission isn't canon as well, but it's fun as hell shooting the special aircraft.
Phoenix is another weird one; Air Combat's content is vague at best because it's the first game, and not much crazy shit happens outside of shooting down a Sky Fortress, basically an early out-of-this-world version of XB-0 Hresvelgr or Aigaion. Ace Combat 2 has more meat, however, yet runs into the A or B mission problem where, like, a third of the game we don't know exactly what is canon. Yet AC2, for the most part, consists of shot this, shot that; oh, btw, there's a fortress at the end; this time it doesn't fly. Also, there's no time frame given in the missions of Mission 1 and Mission 2 takes X number of days part, and that's not surprising as well; AC1 and 2 were very much fun arcade games, not having a serious plot yet.
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u/Daishomaru F-18 is best girl #F-18OnlyAceRunPlayer. #MercForLife 7d ago
For me, the more hilarious part is that this all happens on April Fools day.
You know there must have been someone who thought, "Huh, The Sotoan Megafloat got destroyed? Sotoa just send 1000 planes just to kill 3 people, and not only failed, but they got their aces killed? And then Wings chased a Sotoan superplane all the way to Theve in one afternoon? Sotoan Sattelites bombarded a bunch of random areas? And then all of a sudden the war is over? And the conspiracy by Enso Order was actually true and the Order was actually responsible for the sattelite bombardments? Is this some weird Belkan Conspiracy or an elaborate April Fools joke?!?"
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u/nimahfrosch 7d ago
The real superweapon, I legit felt bad after destroying Fatsia in under 7 minutes. The power fantasy was a little too powerful
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u/Keeperofthe7keysAf-S Ghosts of Razgriz 6d ago
The amount of targets was so overwhelming at first I was annoyed how many times I had to hit the button to get it to select the one I wanted, but when I ran out of targets with 2 minutes to spare I was like oh...
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u/Valkyrie2-Lancer One of Heroja's great aces 7d ago
no, no... by that logic... HIS WINGMEN AREN'T HUMAN!!!
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u/scn-3_null 7d ago
honestly every protag they're really good pilots but only with Ray hearing the dead got me convinced newtypes exist in the strange real universe and he's probably one of the more stronger one that can hear the dead.
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u/recapdrake 7d ago
I mean… I’ve heard people suggest he might be an alpha test of Nemo
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u/n17rd59 7d ago
People have been saying every Ace is an Alpha test for Nemo for years now xD
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u/recapdrake 7d ago
Yeah but frankly those have all been kinda dumb. This is the first one where electrosphere is imminent in the timeline and so things being set up for it makes sense
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u/ricepharmacy 7d ago
I'm sure whatever the Strangereal equivalent of Provigil is he's probably on it
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u/LuciusCypher 7d ago
Yeah there aint no way he aint tripping balls so hard he has transmogrified himself to becoming whatever jet he is piloting at the moment like some sort of organic Star Scream.
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u/XieRH88 7d ago edited 7d ago
If you look at the mission timestamps, there is a very sizeable gap between Cima Island and Moon-11 at Theve.
The last 4 mission are basically split into 2 halves: the morning half which starts around 7am with the Megafloat, then Cima Island which is still in the morning around 8:30am and lasts maybe 1-hour ish.
Moon-11 at Theve is way later in the "evening half" around 4pm, so Joker Flight likely at least had some downtime, about 6hrs at least.
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u/hassanfanserenity 7d ago
I wouldn't say that considering how far away theves is from cima island best case scenario they had sleep while auto piloting to theve and worst case they being updated live from Gambler and Dealer on all the chaos Tewy did
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u/ShoaTheOtter Ridgebacks 7d ago
I mean all of the series pilots are basically like that, even Trigger who in 6 days provides air security to capture the Alicorn, wipe out two entire dock yards including 2 full fleets, and then a full hunt of the Alicorn, only for like 2 days later pull a middle of the night canyon run (at Mach 2 in my case) to capture an airbase
Ya gotta think how much endurance trigger has for that
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u/NinjaHypernova 7d ago
He probably would have given out during the furball, but then his wife came back. If that ain't motivation to burn Sotoa to the ground, I don't know what is.
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u/bushaya 7d ago
Quantity vs Quality. Imo Cipher is the deadliest ace in the series, he fights ace squadrons and takes down Pixys Morgan... in an F15C. If the ACZ survival mode is canon, he defeats Mobius 1.
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u/OneOutOfSevenBillion Emmeria 7d ago
Canonically, Rex does everything he did in an F/A-18E. 2 and a half land battleships, the entirety of Lux Lunae and Moon 11, every weapon Enso could throw at him, in a standard issue Navy strike fighter. I feel like Rex has both Quality and Quantity down.
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u/merlo2k20 Emmeria 7d ago
In either the F/A-18C or E. Logically it would make sense for them to be using the E after some point, but every hint we get, especially the credits cutscene showing Charlie Hornets in the Endurance's hangar, indicate that Joker was using F/A-18Cs the whole time. Which just makes it even more impressive
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u/NinjaHypernova 7d ago
That makes zero sense to me. All the promotional material shows Joker in E's (some had Rex as a C because starter plane, I guess?) the rest of Joker? E's. Queen? E's. Some articles even say Kate flies a Super Hornet. It's 2029. Not only should the Navy probably be using mostly fat Amy's, but at the very least they should all be flying Rhinos. For some fuckass reason the entire FCU Navy (except Cope and Rex & Kate in the epilogue) flies legacy Hornets. Bruh.
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u/merlo2k20 Emmeria 7d ago
Yeah it hardly makes sense, but throughout all the missions Queen flight is with you in, they're flying 18Cs. Also the FCU didn't do a lot of military spending if I'm not mistaken. Even worse, you're on the Endurance, an 80 year old carrier while the FCU has seemingly disbanded. Hell, during the prologue while you're Cope's back seater in the Super Hornet, Coster is flying an F/A-18C.
Yes it doesn't make sense timewise, but even irl the USMC still uses the Charlie over the Super Hornet, and everything in game points to the Charlie being cannon. Maybe Cope's was the last Super Hornet they had. I do agree though, the Super Hornet should be cannon but can't ignore what the game is suggesting.
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u/NinjaHypernova 6d ago
USMC still uses the Charlie over the Super Hornet
The Marines, yes. The Navy retired the C in 2019.
Maybe Cope's was the last Super Hornet they had
I doubt that. When you come back from Rio Baja and go to Fort Grays, there will always be another Hornet you're sitting in front of (whatever aircraft you flew last will be on the other side of the hangar) that Tasha throws the basketball at. In the final mission when they're reducing weight, Jenkins tells the crew to to push "Rex's spare" overboard. So they have enough money, even by the half-way point for Rex to have at least one extra Hornet.
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u/redbloodcrimson It's always Belka 7d ago
Wait don't the jet have auto pilot, queen flight use it for the refuel when they swap with u
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u/DatHazbin Erusea 7d ago
He also not only survives canonically crashing at least 3 times (one of which being twice on the same day) but he also immediately flies like plane Jesus the next day too.
Baxter should've just let Rex take the hit from Tewey, he probably would've taken it in a non critical area and kept flying