Story is actually quite simple to explain. ♥♥♥♥ after mission 2 or 3 you get a full ass recap in the form of a news broadcast. Not the game's fault you're barely smarter than a box of rocks.

dude 7 was so boring i QUIT TWICE.... and i know its the prequel to 8...

Story is basicaly the PEAK of Ace Combat right now, easily so, and i DID play the ORIGINAL JAPANESE ACE 3 MIND YOU! For a long time NO OTHER ACE TITLE, Not even PW, could rival that. Ace 8 started a bit slow, but became epic soon after.

The only part one COULD dislike is the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ "a ghost speaks to you constantly"

Damn bait used to be believable , have my award thanks for the laugh

Ah AC7. The game that made you change squadrons 4 times and being all over the place? Only good thing about that game was the JPEG dog , The lead singer from Nickelback using the princess of Erusea as a flare and the hot tomboy mechanic.

Bait. 7's narrative can barely be called a story, it's a bunch of random themes and plot threads jumbled together. Literally the writing equivalent of throwing random ♥♥♥♥ at the wall.

Originally posted by Meteor 303:

Bait. 7's narrative can barely be called a story, it's a bunch of random themes and plot threads jumbled together. Literally the writing equivalent of throwing random ♥♥♥♥ at the wall.

ok this is just as bad as the original post though
The eruseans dislike osean influence on the continet, they attack the oseans, you are a newly minted osean hot shot, you get assigned to a squadron and kill some guys, the erusians want harling dead but politically if you shot him it's better and you were closest to his plane, also they hacked half the government satillite network (sounds crazy but is actually pretty doable, if you can hack part of it, the only question is why only half) and since the IFF data runs through that part they make it look like you shot harling, you go to plane jail, which is hardly less unreasonable than laser plane, plane jail does its job too well so they give you a gun since if you tried to turn it on them they COULD just turn it off, you go and attack the erusians, base commander is blackmailed into pardoning you for good behaviour and you go to long squadron (now with 1.2~ more hotshots), where you attack the erusians, the oseans realise the satillite network is hacked and destroy the erusian part, but in response the erusians destroy the osean part, erusia fractures into civil war because anarchists (as usual for ace combat), so you go and kill some erusians. DRONE! nevermind.

ace combat 8 for reference:
The sotoans are hungry, so they try to steal your food and kill civilians. You are somebody who knows how to fly, the sotoans destroy the FCU's entire government and you get picked up by a carrier. Super ace john dies and they don't have enough pilots so you replace him, and they call you john super ace. you attack the sotoans. they somehow doctor thousands of images so your first attack on theve fails but you realise they hacked your carrier so you just start lying until your attack works. You resume killing sotoans until you are downed in rebel territory. They worship you as their god. So they give you a plane, which doesn't have a gun, even though they have guns, what's the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ point of the plane guys???, you leave, and go attack the sotoans. they make more satillite but you stop them before that word becomes plural (also, if their economy is ash how did they produce nearly indestructible superweapons and giant murder satillites?). Anyway, you resume attacking the sotoans until you kill their commanders. Their military collapses, super ace JANE shows up and assumes control of their airforce, you kill their entire airforce, and then they die, pretty much.

Originally posted by -=EDF=- Kouta Seto:

dude 7 was so boring i QUIT TWICE.... and i know its the prequel to 8...

Story is basicaly the PEAK of Ace Combat right now, easily so, and i DID play the ORIGINAL JAPANESE ACE 3 MIND YOU! For a long time NO OTHER ACE TITLE, Not even PW, could rival that. Ace 8 started a bit slow, but became epic soon after.

The only part one COULD dislike is the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ "a ghost speaks to you constantly"

frankly, I think 7 handled majesty better. Shadow 22 feels very shoehorned in 'oooh, be afraid of this guy' and tewy barely shows up, mihaly earns his fear. the land battleships have like no feats in comparison to the arsenal birds, they just keel over whenever they show up. That said AC8 beats 7 in every other regard but cool special weapons, though not as much as I think some people think.

WHAT ??! is a nice history , beside , at the end theres a link to Ace combat 3 , kids today knows nothing about good games , go back to lego batman kiddo

The story of 8 is a lot easier to follow, 7's story is a jumbled mess of what feels like at least 3 storylines. That being said I didn't care much for 8's story or characters. In comparison I think 7 had more likeable characters and even mini arcs like Full Band's was more interesting than Baxter, Tasha or Coster. Same with the AWACS, Dealer is very one note. Longcaster had roughly a third of the missions (10, 13 if you count the dlc) Dealer is featured in and is way more memorable.

Neither 7 nor 8 touch the stories of AC 3 and 4, despite having a bigger production budget, especially 8. I like 5 and 0 (0 being my favorite game) but their story are very corny.

AC7's story quite bluntly sucked the ♥♥♥♥ off a car bumper. The only exception was the Alicorn trilogy DLC. AC7 put you in three different ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ squadrons, had you hopscotching all over Usea in a story that just felt like "Ace Combat Greatest Hits" and had all of the memorability of a PS1 A1 Games release. Its' mission design, soundtrack and DLC are the only things that redeem it in my eyes.

The whole story of Trigger is forgettable and it didn't really interest me then, and it doesn't interest me now. You could have made AC7 in the same way as the international release of AC3 and I'd notice, and ergo, miss out on nothing. All of the characters save Rosa, Mihaly and Mr. Nickelback are forgettable, including the beloved tomboy Scrap Queen which this thread reminded me of.

Acting like AC7 was this spectacular magnum opus compared to AC8 is ridiculous. AC8's not perfect, I'll admit it had its' low moments and the final mission was definitely the worst boss level in AC history, save Assault Horizon.

For reference, I consider AC3 JP, AC5 and AC0 to be the trinity of the best games story-wise for Ace Combat. AC6 is still good, and I'll give AC4 credit, even though I personally feel it's glazed like a donut in a vat of sugar glaze.

I will never understand the people who ♥♥♥♥♥ about AC8's story being corny or cringe. Welcome to Ace Combat - take a number or take an AMRAAM and ♥♥♥♥ off.

AC7 didnt have the DEI thing going on, this game became furry-wonder-land

I really liked the characters, they are my favorite part of this game storywise.

I never really appreciated the story of an AC game tbf, but with this one it was noticeable how many times I needed to hold down the skip button thats my only real issue. The story was fine enough, the dialog was truly terrible in only a way you can expect from heavy handed, and overly poetic Japanese writing, but it's nothing that was abnormal for the franchise, so I won't fault it. If you liked AC lore and story you probably liked this too.

All in all, it's not my favorite AC game, it's not my least favorite, it's just a other AC game, and like 30 years in that's an issue onto itself. I don't think more cutscenes solved that problem.

Originally posted by totoro:

Originally posted by Meteor 303:

Bait. 7's narrative can barely be called a story, it's a bunch of random themes and plot threads jumbled together. Literally the writing equivalent of throwing random ♥♥♥♥ at the wall.

ok this is just as bad as the original post though
The eruseans dislike osean influence on the continet, they attack the oseans, you are a newly minted osean hot shot, you get assigned to a squadron and kill some guys, the erusians want harling dead but politically if you shot him it's better and you were closest to his plane, also they hacked half the government satillite network (sounds crazy but is actually pretty doable, if you can hack part of it, the only question is why only half) and since the IFF data runs through that part they make it look like you shot harling, you go to plane jail, which is hardly less unreasonable than laser plane, plane jail does its job too well so they give you a gun since if you tried to turn it on them they COULD just turn it off, you go and attack the erusians, base commander is blackmailed into pardoning you for good behaviour and you go to long squadron (now with 1.2~ more hotshots), where you attack the erusians, the oseans realise the satillite network is hacked and destroy the erusian part, but in response the erusians destroy the osean part, erusia fractures into civil war because anarchists (as usual for ace combat), so you go and kill some erusians. DRONE! nevermind.

I'm talking about the actual characters in the story, not the worldbuilding around it. You got complete randos like Georg who show up out of nowhere and the game acts like we're supposed to know him and even gives him a portrait, because he was supposed to play a big role in the original script before the writers replaced 99% of his screentime with random drones.

Or how the game very obviously sets up Tabloid to be Triggers wingman, but then you end up with that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Count instead. Now granted I think Count is one of the few decently written Characters in the game, but that still doesn't explain why Tabloid gets hinted at being important, disappears, then reappears right at the end of the game and says like two lines.

The story is full of stuff like this. Introduce a new theme or character, then don't fully explore it before discarding it in favor of the next thing, repeat. Sometimes that process plays out over the course of only a single mission.