I love a mid-season upgrade.
As much as I’ve enjoyed Elden Ring, I’ve always thought the Lands Between don’t have enough giant robots stomping around—unless you count the Wandering Mausoleums, but that’s a philosophical debate for another time. Luckily, that’s a problem we might someday see solved thanks to modders like Zullie the Witch, a prolific Souls dataminer whose most recent work involves dropping a dang Armored Core into Elden Ring. Before you get too excited: No, it’s not pilotable. Actually, it can’t even move, but let’s give modders time to cook. Mechs need to take baby steps, too.
In the YouTube video showcasing the Armored Core’s sortie across games, Zullie explains that the crossover was possible because both games share the same development engine. In fact, it’s a lineage that FromSoft games have shared since Armored Core 4 in 2006, each game built on an offshoot of the same foundational engine. The most recent games have enough technical similarities that modders, in pursuit of their great and terrible designs, can already use some tools built for Elden Ring with Armored Core 6. It was those same tools that enabled the horror of porting CJ into AC6 less than a day after the game’s release. Isn’t technology wonderful?
That logic works in the opposite direction, too, it turns out. Zullie was able to port Armored Core 6 model assets backwards into Elden Ring with some assistance from Dropoff, one of the modders responsible for CJ’s nightmarish transformation into a jet-propelled war machine. The result: a 10-meter tall mech looming over the Lands Between. I’m happy to report that it’s a much nicer visual than CJ’s contorted battle-skeleton.
Sadly, the Armored Core only made it into Elden Ring as a stationary model. It doesn’t have any animations, and you wouldn’t be able to interact with it in any way. Still, Zullie’s video—which you can watch below—is worth seeing just for the thrill of looking at an Armored Core towering over Elden Ring landmarks. Who knew that the Limgrave lighting would do wonders for a mech’s complexion? Personally, I get a lot of joy from seeing General Radahn and the Armored Core 6 standing together. Look at them! They’re friends! Terrifying, warlike friends!
To be clear: this was only intended as a demonstration, and it shouldn’t be taken as an indication that Zullie has any plans of modding a controllable AC into Elden Ring. It’s safe to assume that a mod on that scale would be a huge project, even if AC6 and Elden Ring have the same engine under the hood. Still, it’s a promising sign that there’s plenty of potential in the technology shared between both games. Time will tell whether modders will ever turn our Tarnished into AC pilots, but it doesn’t hurt to dream about zooming around Altus Plateau in an Armored Core, launching missile barrages at Leyndell soldiers. Maybe I’ll even get to fight Malenia with a mech someday. Having a few missile racks and laser rifles might feel like I was on a level playing field for once.
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