Next year, I’ll be sitting on my couch with a controller in hand, but on my TV, I’ll be in the sky, chasing enemy planes through the clouds at 10,000 feet. In 2026, Bandai Namco will be released Combat Ace 8: Wings of Thevethe next game in the near future air combat simulation series.
Hours ago Game prizeswhich took place on December 11 in Los Angeles, I walked into a nearby hotel room and sat down with Kazutoki Kono, brand manager for the Ace Combat series, and Manabu Shimamoto, producer of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, to chat about the game. Since the previous game, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, was released in 2019, this will be the first game in the series to be released on this generation of consoles (as well as PC).
Ace Combat 8 includes a virtual affair packed with new features. The team behind the series, Project Aces, pushed the visuals to harness modern gaming hardware and developed graphics technology to simulate cloud physics (called, yes, Cloudly). Not only does this cause your plane’s wings to realistically track through the clouds as it makes its way through the sky, but this also allows for the tactical advantage you’ll have when picking off an enemy plane from a distance with its jets after leaving the cloud bank.
This is the kind of grounded realism that Project Aces sought, which is why they interviewed former fighter pilots to advise them on the modern realities of fighter aviation.
“What they told us is that going to drag is very scary; [they] “Completely avoid it,” Shimamoto said through a translator. “Which means that the players and the pilot in the game actually have much more courage than the pilot of a real fighter plane!”
Jokes aside, it reflects the fine line that the Ace Combat series walked between bondage simulator and unrealistic arcade game. It gives the games serious stakes while smoothing out some of the more boring flying facts (not to mention the nearly endless array of missiles).
“We’re moving toward a certain level of reality, but we want to give the player a lot of decision-making agency in Ace Combat 8,” Shimamoto said.
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Ace Combat 8 simulates real-world aircraft in a Strangereal fantasy setting.
When to keep it real and when to get weird
The consulting pilots provided the Project Aces team with air combat details they could incorporate to enhance realism—such as the ability to spot distant enemy aircraft from sunlight reflecting off their cockpit, much like the flash of a sniper scope in first-person shooter games like Battlefield 6. But this realism is tempered by another feature of the Ace Combat series: its Strangereal setting is a world of fictional nations that host an ongoing war that somehow oscillates from game to game.
Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve takes place 10 years after its predecessor in the somewhat distant future of 2029. The Central Utilization Federation (FCU) has been defeated and completely subjugated by the Sotoa Republic. The player, an unnamed pilot, wakes up floating in the ocean after a fierce air battle, only to be rescued by an old aircraft carrier filled with the last strongholds of the FCU forces.
Forced to stand back in an old plane, the player begins Ace Combat 8 in a volatile situation with a scattered crew that will be approached by their regular pilot. The Project Aces team is clearly seeking more personal onboard experiences in contrast to fast-paced aerial combat. To add to the feeling of the underdog, the player character takes on the mantle of Wings of Theve, a heroic pilot from yesteryear.
On the aging aircraft carrier Endurance, the game’s setting, players will grow their bonds with the ship’s crew between missions.
The Strangereal setting in the Ace Combat series has become a beloved element of the series. Filled with vague counterparts to modern states and multinational alliances, the nations of Eusia, Osia, Erussia, Sotoa and others seem straight out of George Orwell’s 1984, yet the fantasy veneer gives the games license to stage international confrontations of high stakes and melodrama.
In each game in the series, players deal with twists and turns in global politics and military transformations. All of this is the result of extensive, intense background lore and world-building that may not even be represented in the game.
While still in the planning phase of the game, the team actually pulled out the Strangereal map to plan the invasions. Kono said they played the roles of different nations as they invaded and launched counterattacks across the geography of their world. All of this contributes to the game world but cannot be seen. For example, the team has built up the culture and history of the hostile nation of Sotoa, but players may only get hints of that in the nation’s flag.
“I would say 10% of the planning that is done is what you see in the game,” Kono said.
Project Aces, the team behind Ace Combat 8, has developed new technology Cloudly to create advanced cloud effects for players to fly through.
What to take and what to change from our world in Ace Combat 8
Cloudly technology and new graphics in Ace Combat 8 push the game closer to realism, and the game’s series of fighter jets are accurately recreated from their real-life counterparts. However, the Project Aces team fell short of reality in certain areas. The game’s Strangereal setting allows them to shape their use of war technology that deviates from real-world battlefields in specific ways to make playing more enjoyable for players – something they learned from how players interacted with previous games.
“In Ace Combat 7, we’ve already included a lot of drones [unmanned aerial vehicles]“But the feedback we received from fans is that they really enjoyed the man-on-man fighting experience through radio chats, debates and heated conversations,” Kono said.
Even with the real world of aviation turning to drones and launching missiles at enemy planes unseen on the far horizon, Ace Combat still needs to maintain a level of gameplay for players to enjoy.
“There will always be a line of reality that we want to aim for. However, we still cannot go to that line at the expense of the player experience. The player having fun will always be a priority for us as a game design philosophy,” Kono said.
The F-18E fighter jet is well suited to aircraft carriers, and is therefore the game’s mascot.
While the game will be released sometime next year, there are other aspects that the developers couldn’t talk about, including how many planes will be in the game. But both Kono and Shimamoto agree on one thing: their favorite plane.
“Ace Combat takes a lot of real-world fighter planes and incorporates them into the game, so of course I love them all. But I’ll specifically mention the F-18E Super Hornet,” Shimamoto said.
It helps that the F-18E features heavily in the trailer, and it’s no coincidence that it’s one of the most popular carrier-based aircraft. It fits the settings of Ace Combat 8 on its aircraft carrier. As the director of the Ace Combat series, Kono admits that he tends to fall in love with the plane used as the main visual element of each game – like the hero you see on the box art – as he spends so much time looking at it that he begins to notice and appreciate the subtleties.
“For example, when looking at the nose cone of the F-18, I noticed this little hole,” Kono said. “What is the purpose of this hole? Or the way the bolts line up, or where the parts meet. I started to notice that kind of thing.”
When I’m on my couch, controller in hand, I’ll do my best to look for details like this, but something tells me I’ll still be stuck dodging enemy Republic of Sotoa planes trying to take advantage of those beautiful cloud edges.