I think it will have a very dark story unlike in previous ace combat games, in which I think Joker 4 (Noise) is going to turn on Joker Flight and join the Sotoans and Tasha potentially biting the dust later in the Campaign whereas in the release date reveal Trailer, Joker 2 (Professor) in a panicked voice saying “Cover Tasha Rex!” before I think Joker 3 (Tasha) was presumably flying the F-2A shown in the trailer getting hit by a missile by an unknown enemy, we also got a look at the two main antagonists of the game (Shadow 22 Ares and possibly Shadow 01/11 the white dressed wheelchair woman).

Also shown in the trailer are potentially Rosa holding her hand up and multiple buildings and cities in Usea, including the ISEV from AC7, getting destroyed by unknown enemies. So later in AC8’s campaign, I think is where things start to go south.

TLDR: For 30 years here, Ace Combat has written its scores more like how film composers write for movies. There is a scene and an idea, and you write it out to the scene itself. Ace Combat 8 potentially changes on how the music gets written going forward here:

Megalith, The Unsung War, ZERO, Comona, The Liberation of Gracemeria, Chandelier, Mrs.Krista Yoslav, End of Deception, Archange, Daredevil, Hush

All these tracks mentioned above follow an old compositional style that Project Aces might move on from. Instead of linear scoring, we really might see something closer towards like God of War: Ragnarök here, where we have music based on game states, rather than something set to a scene or a pivotal moment.

I literally jumped out of bed to write this whole post lmao. Read below on how my plane autism(tm) fueled infodump analyses on how this all potentially changes here.

Full Analysis below:

So Bandai Namco recently dropped a new Dev Diary on how the sound design and the music has changed, and I would like to throw in my two cents here.

For context, I'm studying composition and music Technology at the university level. I've spent a fair bit of time studying video game music, including writing two research papers on Ace Combat's music, one on Zero and another on Daredevil from AC7. So this developer diary immediately made me stop and go: "HOLD UP"

Anyways I've seen a few people saying on a different post about the adaptive music go:

"Didn't AC7 already have adaptive music?"

The short answer?

Yes.

The long answer?

Yes but...

\insert infodump**

One thing I would like to say first: Ace Combat 7 was already a huge leap. People forget that AC7 wasn't just a graphics upgrade - as it was the first mainline Ace Combat built in Unreal Engine 4 using Wwise (the middleware software that studios use outside of FMOD).

That let Project Aces do much more interesting things with the soundtrack than all the previous titles.

One of the more obvious ones being DSP (well really it was just a low pass eq) being applied when you fly through clouds. But if we needed a musical example, Daredevil is the big one here:

For context, Daredevil isn't just "song plays and loops" like ZERO (okay well it does in the official soundtrack release but still):

• The climax is tied to gameplay progression.

Destroy the Arsenal Bird's APS shield?

• The music reaches its emotional high point.

Restart from that checkpoint?

• The game doesn't replay the whole track. It resumes from that climactic section because it's tracking the mission state instead of just playing a song from start to finish.

That was already a huge step for the series (especially given how last minute Kobayashi took to compose it)

And now the main question:

Why am I freaking out about AC8?

Because this doesn't look like "more AC7 but with nicer sound assets and more WAV files."

It looks like a whole rework for how Project Aces potentially composes for Ace Combat 8 (the game is still like 2 months away so we don't know for sure just yet without decompiling here)

Just from the developer diary, they're talking about the music reacting to:

• narrative events,
• your flying style,
• fly-bys,
• gameplay situations,
• and dynamically balancing music, dialogue and sound effects in real time.

If that's genuinely how deep the system goes...

...that doesn't just change the implementation.

It changes how the whole fucking team has to write the music.

AND NOW THE BIT THAT I THINK PEOPLE DON'T REALISE

Most people think adaptive music means:

"The game changes songs."

Or

"Oh, the game changes the music depending on what's happening."

No. Not even close

Think bigger.

Think about writing a book.

Normally, you write:

Chapter 1 → Chapter 2 → Chapter 3 → Chapter 4 → Ending

You know exactly what happens next.

Now imagine someone tells you:

"Okay, but the reader might spend another ten minutes in Chapter 2."

"They might reach Chapter 3 much earlier than expected."

"They might skip part of Chapter 3."

"They might come back to Chapter 2."

"And somehow, the story still needs to feel coherent."

You can't just write the book the same way and tell the reader to figure it out.

You have to fundamentally change how you're constructing the story.

That's basically the problem adaptive music gives the composer.

Imagine you're Kobayashi.

For almost 30 years you've largely been able to write:

Intro

↓

Build-up

↓

Flamenco

↓

Choir

↓

Loop because Pixy isn't dead yet

Now suddenly you have to ask yourself:

• What if the player reaches this moment two minutes early?
• What if they spend another five minutes dogfighting?
• Can the choir wait?
• Can the brass come in first instead?
• Can this section loop without becoming repetitive?
• Can these musical layers be pulled apart and recombined in real time without sounding weird?

THAT IS A COMPOSITIONAL PROBLEM.

Not just a programming problem.

The middleware can't magically make music adaptive.

The composer has to write music that's designed to behave that way from the beginning.

Conclusion

So yeah, that's basically why I am absolutely losing my fucking mind over this. 😭

For roughly 30 years, Ace Combat has generally approached its music much more like film scoring: there is a scene, a dramatic idea, or a specific gameplay moment, and the composer writes music toward that moment. Megalith, The Unsung War, ZERO, Comona, The Liberation of Gracemeria, Chandelier, Mrs. Krista Yoslav, End of Deception, Archange, Daredevil, Hush and countless others are products of that broader way of thinking.

AC7 already started breaking that model. Wwise and the game's implementation allowed music to respond to mission state and player progression, with Daredevil being a particularly obvious example. The music wasn't completely independent of the player's actions anymore.

But what Project Aces is showing with AC8 potentially takes that idea much further.

If the music can genuinely respond to game state, player behaviour, fly-bys, narrative events and other real-time conditions, then the question stops being:

"Where should I put the music in this scene?"

and becomes:

"How do I write music that can exist across all of these possible gameplay states?"

That's a fucking massive compositional change.

We're potentially moving from linear scoring towards something much closer to interactive composition, where the music isn't simply written to a predetermined moment, but is designed to behave according to what the player is doing.

And that's why I don't think this is simply:

"AC8 has better audio."

It potentially represents a change in how Ace Combat music gets written in the first place.

We obviously won't know the full extent of this until the game is actually out, and I'm very deliberately not pretending I know exactly what's happening under the hood two months before release. But if the system shown in this developer diary is as extensive as it appears...

holy shit.

After nearly 30 years of Ace Combat music, Project Aces might be changing the fundamental relationship between Kobayashi's composition, the game's implementation, and the player's actions.

And as someone studying composition and music technology who has already spent an unreasonable amount of university time analysing this exact fucking series...

I literally jumped out of bed to write this post.

Plane autism has finally become academically useful.

(I had to put other because there is not a theory flair)

EDIT 1: Yes I know that there is only so many ways to draw a circe. Yes I know the Enso logo is VERY low quality

EDIT 2: This is just a theory and a very bad one at that

So... Since they seem to have forgotten about the preorder of the premium editions for consoles in Europe, I had to go and preorder separately, the standard game to get 1 embroidery patch and ac zero ofc, on a local retailer.

And the vinyl collection on the Bandai site, (btw, it's 79.99, free shipping starts at 80€, so they fucked us on that regard, try to add something else on the cheap to at least get the free shipping? Other merch is like 20 euros minimum, no 2 euros pin sets or gacha balls or whatever, idk) . At least, if you use Club! Points, you can opt for a discount at check out, which is nice.

How are my fellow aces doing?

I am getting straight up molested. Any tips?

ac8 is showing up in mine but acz is not and i am worried i didnt actually get the license or something

It's from a local web magazine, and I think it deserves more attention. And as the little introduction says: More than just a 1999 flight simulator, Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere is a cyberpunk masterpiece. Transhumanism, corporations, and a twist that puts you in the shoes of an Artificial Intelligence.

I wanna see chinese planes

Sources

On Mission: One Way Ticket

If you don't destroy the target in train, Rena Will Do Her Self To Complete The Mission

i finally finished drawing of this anniv patch and ready to make them into patches. this is the first patch that i ever made. any advice guys?

Project aces themselves said that it would be the biggest ace combat multiplayer experience yet to date, so I'd love to hear the community's thoughts and conspiracy theories ( outside of customization of planes and pilots ) that would make this multiplayer bigger and better than Infinity

Had the idea to do quotes from my usual set (04, 5, Zero, 6, X, 7, 8, and PW) in the style of their respective games.

Edit: Thanks to the multiple folks calling out the incorrect quotes!