I never knew I could be so enamored by clouds. There were times in my youth–typically sitting on a train or in the back of a car–when I would absentmindedly stare out the window at interesting cloud formations. Nowadays, phones, laptops, and handheld consoles tend to distract me from the world passing by, but in Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, clouds are its ever-present pièce de résistance.
For all the high-tech jets, explosive action, and melodrama at the game’s core, it’s the bountiful sky and its stunning portraits of a version of our planet at varying altitudes that truly grab the eye. Flying through a rain cloud as it douses the cockpit window with droplets of water never gets old, and simply cruising through the air is almost tranquil at times.
Yet Ace Combat 8’s clouds aren’t mere window dressing. From gauging your altitude by the density of the clouds around you to using them as cover to break a missile lock, Ace Combat 8 uses this technology to push the series forward in tangible ways that go beyond aesthetics.
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is one of the best examples of a game singlehandedly reviving a dormant series–and earning back its goodwill after the disappointment of Assault Horizon–so Ace Combat 8 didn’t have to change all that much to keep the good times rolling. It stays true to the series’ arcadey dogfighting roots while implementing a number of incremental improvements, making for a slightly more dynamic and intense experience as you go from sustaining heavy G-forces to unleashing a barrage of missiles.
The story is more prominent and also personal this time around, too, strictly focusing on the members of a single squadron amid a major conflict. Set in Ace Combat’s fictional war-torn world of Strangereal, the story begins as the Republic of Sotoa invades the Federation of Central Usea (FCU), quickly occupying much of the nation and scattering its military forces.
Outmanned and outgunned, the FCU relies on propaganda to keep morale alive. This is where the eponymous Wings of Theve comes into play: a legendary fighter pilot known for taking down dozens of enemy aircraft in the fight against the invading Sotoa forces.
Except none of the pilot’s legend is true.
War propaganda is nothing new, of course, but this immediately reminded me of Ukraine’s Ghost of Kyiv. This mythical flying ace was alleged to have shot down six Russian planes over the capital city of Kyiv back in February 2022. The Ghost’s exploits quickly spread like wildfire in the media and online, but two months later, the Ukrainian air force revealed it was simply propaganda to boost morale.
It’s easy to see how this might’ve influenced developer Bandai Namco Aces when creating Wings of Theve. But this is also an Ace Combat game, so it doesn’t take long for things to get weird. Top Gun has always heavily influenced the series, so just imagine a scenario where Top Gun: Maverick opens with Tom Cruise crashing and dying, then passing his spirit on to a new pilot who adopts the Maverick callsign.
For the rest of the movie, Tom Cruise exists as a dead guy in the new, silent protagonist’s head, passing on sage wisdom and sharing his jaded thoughts on the war with a melancholy similar to the most recent Wolfenstein’s B.J. Blazkowicz. Oh, and Top Gun is an anime now, too.
That is Ace Combat in a nutshell. A dead pilot narrating from inside your head might sound odd if you’ve never played the series before, but this kind of left-field choice is par for the course. Okay, maybe it has never gone quite this far–the Johnny Silverhand gimmick suits Cyberpunk much better–but it still fits the eccentric tone. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, and the story wouldn’t change all that much if it were removed entirely, yet I can’t help feeling oddly gleeful that it even exists.
Unfortunately, the basic premise doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. The pilot killed in the opening was the propagandized Wings of Theve, alleged to have shot down multiple enemies despite not opening fire on a single foe. Their famed callsign is now yours, but because this is a video game, it doesn’t take long to turn fiction into fact. The Wings of Theve isn’t an idea anymore; it’s a real pilot who’s gunning down enemies and turning the tide of war almost single-handedly, so anything interesting that might’ve derived from the propaganda angle is disappointingly absent.
Similarly, Ace Combat 8 lays the groundwork to comment on modern warfare in the age of social media, AI, and the mass sharing of disinformation, but all of these themes are ultimately window dressing. Social media is bad when the bad guys use it but good when the good guys do–this is the kind of social commentary you can expect.
