In a recent issue of CG World, Armored Core VI got a decent breakdown of its mecha design, and openly credited Shoji Kawamori.
More importantly, we have another confirmation of what Shoji Kawamori specifically designed in the game. Namely that of the HAL 826 parts that you unlock after the “Good” ending (shown above).
Admittedly, anyone with eyes and a passing familiarity with his work would have been able to figure this out beforehand, but this is different because it actually specifies what Kawamori made.
The only previously confirmed designed parts were from Takayuki Yanase’s Twitter account showing that he created the parts for Steel Haze Ortus.
So having Kawamori’s original line art revealed (show above) and having him clearly credited for that in the pages of CG World is both a big deal and actually welcomed.
As Kawamori explains via his Twitter account (show below), and also in my interview with him from 2015, he was one of the original team on the first Armored Core game back in 1997. He also coined the name “Armored Core” too. He’s been with these games since their outset, so he clearly cares about his work on them.
Kawamori also reveals some lineart of the SOL 644 boss from the “Bad” ending of the game in his Tweet, so that’s also another design confirmed to be his (shown below).
All of this just makes the whole bizarre ambiguity on who designed what in Armored Core VI positively baffling. Not to mention that none of the mecha designers were mentioned at all in the pre-release promotion.
The article does also cite Kazutaka Miyatake’s work on the game but doesn’t specify what he designed, although most of us are pretty sure he penned the Ephemera parts.
To be honest, it would be wonderful to see a design credit for every part, weapon and enemy in the game. Both in terms of the external mecha designers that were hired as well as the internal FromSoftware artists.
After all, mecha designers such as Takayuki Yanase started out at FromSoftware, so who knows who else may graduate from the studio to become the next big mecha designer.
It only goes to show that proper creative accreditation in video games has a depressingly long way to go.
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