What's up guys,
Ace Combat Fan speaking
and welcome to the second episode of
Stuff About Ace Combat
In this episode, I'm going to answer
Valor Vanguard's question:
In Ace Combat: Zero, which ace style is actually canon?
But before I get to that, I will explain
what ace styles in Ace Combat Zero are.
But if you already know them,
you can skip to the time stamp on the annotation above.
On a personal note though, it surprised me that
even though Ace Combat Zero was released
a long time ago,
not many people understand what the Ace Style is,
how it works, and what changes in the game.
So I'm going to explain that first.
So enough talking, let's get to it.
The Ace Style is a unique system featured in
Ace Combat Zero.
and it is a reflection of how you, the player,
or technically Cipher, since he is the protagonist,
fly and complete the missions.
The three different styles are
Knight,
Soldier,
and Mercenary,
which is what Pixy is referring in the
first cutscene of the game.
To know what your ace style is or see how it changes,
you can check the little bar on the bottom part
of the debriefing scene.
See this bar?
That's what I'm talking about,
and I call it the "Ace Meter."
Now you know what it is
so let me tell you how it works.
You can change your ace style only
by the way you react to yellow targets.
You could destroy them.
The Ace Meter moves towards the Mercenary.
If you don't destroy them,
the Ace Meter goes to the Knight side.
When I talk about the target colors,
I'm talking about the three types of targets in the game:
The Reds,
the ones you need to destroy
in order to complete the mission.
Also seen in the HUD are the TGT.
The Greens,
which are military units
you don't necessarily have to destroy
but they give you bonus points.
And the Yellow targets,
which are either civilian buildings
or enemies that don't pose a threat to you.
As an example of a yellow target,
you can see this lovely windmill. I mean,
what threat could a windmill pose to a fighter pilot?
Another example of yellow targets
would be an enemy fighter
that was damaged during the mission
and is retreating from the airspace.
He's still an enemy but he doesn't pose any threat,
so now you know what the Ace Style is
and how it works.
For what difference does it make?
Well, you probably know that the story of the game
will change depending on your ace style
or the path you would take.
That is true and this is the most important thing
but that's not everything that changes
depending on your ace style.
The enemy squadrons that you face in Area B7R
in Mission 3, 10 and 16
will change depending on your path.
To take the Mercenary path,
you're going to face
Rot, Schwarze, and Sorcerer squadrons
respectively.
However, if you go in the Soldier style,
you're going to face
Grun, Schnee, and Gault.
And finally for the Knight style, you're
you're going to face
Indigo, Silber, and Wizard squadrons.
Another difference between the Styles
is in the dialogue of the missions.
There are subtle changes in them,
so I'm going to show you some examples
already in Mission 1.
And right after, there's also this one.
As a final example, I'll put this one for Mission 17.
Another change related to the Ace Style is
in the series of interviews.
You're going to interview the pilot of the squadron
you shot down in Area B7R
but obviously that would depend on the ace style
you were playing.
What is not so obvious though is that
even for enemies that you're still gonna face anyway...
It is the Gelb or the Espada squadrons.
They can say slightly different things
depending on which ace style you were.
Here's an example.
And the same happens to Espada 2
and Pixy's interviews.
Some slight changes,
it goes more like generic stuff
followed by ace style specific stuff.
Now just two notes before I go to the question:
Which ace style is the canon?
First, the Ace Style does carry over
when you clear a game or if you restart the campaign.
Second, the Mercenary style is the most difficult one
while Knight is the easiest.
Ok, now time for the question.
Which one is the official or the canon style
in Ace Combat Zero?
The answer for that is the Mercenary style.
Why? Because it's the most difficult one
and it's the only one that makes sense
from a story point of view.
Simply because it's the only style where
a character from Ace Combat 5 appear,
such as Pops, Bartlett, and Ashley,
which is later the leader of the 8492nd Squadron.
If the game is not playing in a Mercenary style,
the events won't connect to the Ace Combat 5 storyline.
And you could say that Ace Combat 5 didn't happen,
but then this is madness because
it looks like i'm talking something about
the Back to the Future movie.
Also supporting the idea that the Mercenary
is the canon style,
you can see throughout the game that
Cipher is generally referred to as
a bloodthirsty mercenary,
not just a soldier and even less a Knight.
To finish up, there is also another question:
What about those missions where you can choose the
operation when participating?
Which one is it?
Which one would be the canon operation?
That's kind of a gray area but
looking at the pre-mission screen.
The first operation that is mentioned in the briefing
belongs to the Mercenary style
followed by the Soldier and Knight styles.
And this means that Cipher did not fly and escort
the aircraft carrier Kestrel in Mission 4,
since that would belong to the Knight style.
But like i said before,
this is kind of a gray area.
The way i like to think about the Ace Style is
what probably happened is the Mercenary style.
And for both the Soldier and Knight styles,
they probably didn't happen
but they could have happened.
There was a possibility for that.
So that is a video about the ace styles
in Ace Combat Zero.
I hope I haven't missed anything and if I did,
please make sure you let me know in the comments.
I hope you're liking this new series
and see you in the next video!