Armored Core (PS1): A Reliquary Review

Disclaimer: Armored Core is over 20 years old. Expect spoil­ers here.

-Introduction-

Over the years, thou­sands of games have come out across mul­ti­ple sys­tems. Literally thou­sands. Some are of ex­tra­or­di­nary val­ue mon­e­tar­i­ly, some are of equal val­ue in terms of con­tent. Some peo­ple col­lect them, hop­ing to as­sem­ble a vast col­lec­tion of ar­ti­facts and items of im­mense val­ue and pow­er to some­one who knows what to do with it. You might say I am one of these peo­ple, but I would scoff at the no­tion. I am not a mere col­lec­tor, seek­ing to dec­o­rate my shelves with the relics of for­got­ten con­soles and peoples.

I am a Treasure Hunter. I seek items of in­cred­i­ble con­tent val­ue, items for­got­ten to time, items of mys­te­ri­ous pow­er and ori­gin. I store them in my reli­quary.

My Name is Xavier Harkonnen, I seek the trea­sures of the past so I might learn from them; the gems of yore, the lost trea­sures, the cursed relics of dead cul­tures and stu­dios, with each hold­ing lessons with­in them that we can re­flect upon and ap­ply to our own mod­ern de­sign prin­ci­ples. It is my goal to share with you some of the ar­ti­facts I have col­lect­ed, en­cour­age you to seek them out, or to re­treat from them should they cross your path. And dis­cov­er what the hard work of those from the past can tell you to help your­selves and oth­ers in the future.

You can see my past writ­ing in this vein here, aimed at help­ing fel­low hunters of the mun­dane and the mag­i­cal. But for now let me show you a trea­sure I val­ue great­ly, for said con­tent more than for mon­e­tary reasons.

Armored Core, for PlayStation 1

Originally made by the or­der of monks at the tem­ple ‘From Software’, Armored Core is the first in a long line of mech pi­lot sim­u­la­tions that Sony con­soles tend to brim with. Legends even say that it is some­how also the ear­li­est known pro­to­type of Dark Souls, a very hefty claim in­deed. The first game was quite com­mon, how­ev­er due to the na­ture of the late 90’s game in­dus­try with re­gards to dis­tri­b­u­tion, the oth­er sub­se­quent games of the PS1 gen­er­a­tion be­ing much hard­er to come by, but I have them. Because of course I do. 

Despite ana­log con­trol slow­ly rolling out across the PlayStation along with the rum­ble fea­ture, Armored Core sports no ana­log con­trol, and would­n’t un­til lat­er in the fran­chise. The re­al­i­ty of the ear­ly ti­tles is that you use all of the but­tons on the con­troller for some­thing over the course of play. The face but­tons con­trol your dash, at­tacks, and swap weapons. The shoul­der but­tons al­low you to strafe and con­trol your Y‑axis targeting.

You are your­self in this game, a face­less pi­lot who has just tak­en the test to join the most elite mer­ce­nary cor­po­ra­tion on the post-apocalyptic Earth. Oh yeah, by the way this, is a post-apocalypse set­ting. The cor­po­ra­tion in ques­tion is called “Raven’s Nest” and its pi­lots are called “Ravens.” The test is­n’t ter­ri­bly dif­fi­cult, but if it‘s your first time you may have trou­ble at first get­ting used to the Y‑Axis shoul­der con­trols, and us­ing the slide me­chan­ic in­stead of air boost.

Armored Core leans to­wards the very dif­fi­cult. A From Software game, hard? 

“Never.” I hear you say.

All the jokes to be made aside, not every­one who plays it will be able to beat it, for one rea­son or an­oth­er. Perhaps your kit is sim­ply in­ad­e­quate for the chal­lenges you face, maybe you sim­ply aren’t good enough, or sim­ply you find it hard to com­pete against an ex­treme­ly hos­tile AI play­er who is not bound by the same re­stric­tions you are. More on that later.

-Getting Started-

After pass­ing the test to join Raven’s Nest, you are giv­en a bit of mon­ey to get start­ed with. It is­n’t much, but maybe you can swap out one of your shoul­der parts for some­thing else. The mech you test­ed in is gift­ed to you as a starter mech, called an Armored Core. You’ll re­ceive job of­fers to pro­tect var­i­ous lo­ca­tions from en­e­my at­tacks, at­tack out­posts that you could have been hired to pro­tect, re­cov­er lost tech­nol­o­gy, de­stroy lost tech­nol­o­gy, elim­i­nate a new type of liv­ing weapon, and more. The jobs you take and the haz­ards you will face de­ter­mine your pay rate, with the most dan­ger­ous mis­sions be­ing the most re­ward­ing. This is the life of a face­less profiteer.

You’ll re­ceive emails from the mys­te­ri­ous ‘R’ who tells you that he is your friend, and of­fers you ad­vice and ex­tra in­for­ma­tion on cer­tain jobs that you’d oth­er­wise would­n’t have been privy to. He makes con­tact on your be­half in some cas­es, and he ad­vis­es you when you should like­ly not get in­volved as things could spin wild­ly out of con­trol. This is what it feels like to be a mercenary.

You also have the pow­er to buy new equip­ment and cus­tomize your Armored Core — called an AC for short. Each limb is a class of part and comes with dozens of types for each, across mul­ti­ple styles, al­low­ing to­tal per­son­al­iza­tion and cus­tomiza­tion. Hundreds of thou­sands of per­mu­ta­tions are pos­si­ble. You even have the abil­i­ty to cus­tomize your em­blem and the paint job for all your AC’s parts. For once, you aren’t play­ing the badass pi­lot, you sim­ply are the badass pilot.

Finally you de­cide that it’s time to leave the Nest and go kill some fuck­ers to earn some of that sweet sweet dosh to pimp your ride. You go on a mis­sion and get your ass kicked, but you some­how eke out the win. And the best part is you earned 20,000 cred­its! Until the de­duc­tions screen pops up and you wind up with some­thing clos­er to 10,000 or less. 

Ammo cost, re­pair cost, ser­vice tax, spe­cial de­duc­tions for col­lat­er­al dam­age and un­in­tend­ed prop­er­ty dam­age. This is­n’t the glo­ri­ous leg­end of a mech mer­ce­nary that you signed up for, this… this is like be­ing a real mer­ce­nary. You have to learn to bud­get and shit if you want to get by, al­though get­ting bet­ter and not get­ting shot up as much next time is most cer­tain­ly an option.

-Your First Days-

In the be­gin­ning you will find that you are bound by a num­ber of re­stric­tions that are par­tic­u­lar­ly frus­trat­ing, like de­spite be­ing able to load heavy ma­chine guns and mas­sive ar­tillery can­nons on your back, you can­not fire them while in mo­tion. You must in­stead stop mov­ing, take aim, lock on, and fire. Something that just takes too long and leaves you open to en­e­my fire. The only way around this stip­u­la­tion is to change your equip­ment. By switch­ing out your legs to quadrupedal spi­der legs, or sim­ply tank treads, you gain the abil­i­ty to fire while in mo­tion, al­though your ac­cu­ra­cy is­n’t al­ways the best and you lose the abil­i­ty to dash.

In the be­gin­ning, you will at­tempt to jump or fly every­where us­ing your jump jets. You must quick­ly learn to ig­nore this im­pulse, and in­stead dis­cov­er the fast-paced world of Dash-Slide com­bat. Holding for­ward and the dash but­ton will al­low you to move more quick­ly in a di­rec­tion by slid­ing. However by com­bin­ing this with clever d‑pad move­ment, and the strafe but­tons, you be­come a ser­pen­tine speed night­mare, un­leash­ing a tor­rent of hell fire on those seek­ing to kill you. At least you do with your held weapon, sure would be nice if you could with your shoul­der weapons.

In time, you will find weapons that suit your pre­ferred style and dis­cov­er what equip­ment suits the way you want to play and fight. The best part of this fran­chise has al­ways been its ex­treme lev­els of cus­tomiza­tion. Light and su­per fast legs or slow but heav­i­ly ar­mored legs. Do you opt to be hard­er to kill with thick­er ar­mor at the cost of speed, or do you sac­ri­fice ar­mor and risk be­ing torn apart like tin­foil to dash like the wind? The choice is yours, and you must choose some­thing that works for you.

-The Daily Grind-

As the mis­sions progress, the jobs get more dan­ger­ous, more di­verse, and come with big­ger pay­outs. However, dur­ing a cer­tain part of the game you will find your­self caught in the mid­dle of a war be­tween two pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions: Chrome, inc, and Murakumo Millenium. A par­tic­u­lar mis­sion set makes you choose al­le­giance in the con­flict, and de­ter­mines the path of the mis­sions you re­ceive go­ing for­ward from there. At one point you will re­ceive the re­quest to at­tack a cer­tain base, or de­fend it. This is where you un­know­ing­ly pick a side.

The con­flict spins wild­ly out of con­trol as each cor­po­ra­tion at­tempts to throw dif­fer­ent types of Super Weapons at one an­oth­er, from giant-sized mechs to or­bital space can­nons, and you’re caught in the mid­dle ei­ther help­ing them or try­ing to stop them. 

…And maybe it would be a bit eas­i­er if you could fire your god­damn shoul­der weapons while mov­ing! Am I Right!?

Anyway, you’ll even­tu­al­ly make var­i­ous de­ci­sions about your kit based on your av­er­age de­duc­tions each mis­sion, swap­ping out sol­id pro­jec­tiles for en­er­gy weapons to cut cost at the ex­pense of ammo count and stop­ping pow­er. Changing out your gen­er­a­tor to get bet­ter out­put and en­er­gy lev­els, bet­ter thrusters for more oomph. Better tar­get­ing com­put­ers to let you lock-on far­ther and tar­get with­in larg­er ar­eas. As dead­ly as your mech will be­come, you must be vig­i­lant to make it more and more dead­ly as time goes on, and as new parts be­come avail­able to you.

You’re forced to think on the fly out on the bat­tle­field, to strate­gize, and act ac­cord­ing­ly to not only achieve mis­sion suc­cess, but to do so with min­i­mal de­duc­tions from your fi­nal pay. You are in a nev­er end­ing bat­tle with the red ink of the ledger, just as of­ten as en­e­my mechs. Just like a real sol­dier of for­tune I sup­pose, al­though a te­dious de­sign choice. It’s cer­tain­ly an in­ter­est­ing fea­ture that forces you to think about things dif­fer­ent­ly and evolve your ap­proach as the game pro­gress­es. One par­tic­u­lar load out will not suf­fice through­out the en­tire game. You must be flex­i­ble. And you must fig­ure out how to fire your god­damn shoul­der can­nons, while moving!

-Story-

You would think a game like this would have a su­per ba­sic sto­ry, so you can go out and blow shit up with great gus­to, but you’d be wrong. The sto­ry in Armored Core is sur­pris­ing­ly com­plex al­though not su­per deep. You live in an era af­ter a cat­a­clysmic war, called the “Great Destruction, that de­stroyed the sur­face of the Earth, forc­ing the pop­u­la­tion into vast un­der­ground cities. It is be­lieved to have been caused by the pro­lif­er­a­tion of ad­vanced weapon sys­tems and a va­ri­ety of dooms­day weapon used dur­ing the war with lit­tle care.

Corporations rule over every­thing in this set­ting, even the mon­ey, CC (Chrome Credits), is named af­ter one of the Mega-Corps. Each of them has a deep and bit­ter ri­val­ry as they seek to gain the most pow­er through ex­per­i­men­ta­tion, re­search and de­vel­op­ment, and re­cov­ery of the lost tech­nolo­gies left over from the Great Destruction. All of this comes to a head as one corp wipes out the oth­er in a mas­sive bat­tle that you end up de­cid­ing the out­come of with your actions.

After a time you be­gin do­ing mis­sions for in­de­pen­dent fac­tions as things slow down, but even­tu­al­ly you are charged with a sim­ple sound­ing mis­sion on be­half of the Raven’s Nest itself. 

Remove some ex­plo­sives from a location. 

You do so, but find your­self de­scend­ing down a mys­te­ri­ous el­e­va­tor shaft, where you come face-to-face with the most pow­er­ful, skilled, and high­est ranked Raven of them all… “Hustler One”. He‘s a to­tal badass, and is im­pos­si­ble to hit even when you lock onto him. You are bet­ter off not fight­ing him, in all hon­esty. Actually if you just run past him you will beat the game sim­ply by en­ter­ing the fi­nal area. Even if you kill him, you must fight an­oth­er in­stance of him in the same mis­sion. Yes, you read that cor­rect. Also you are at a se­vere dis­ad­van­tage against him be­cause un­like you he can fire shoul­der weapons while in mo­tion!

You see! It can be done!

The end­ing it­self is large­ly noth­ing to speak of, de­spite the greater sto­ry of the on­go­ing con­flict, and the things in­volved are told through mis­sion briefs, pre- and post-mission mail­ers, and mi­nor di­a­logue seg­ments at the start of each mis­sion or dur­ing mo­ments where the mis­sion pa­ra­me­ters are forced to change dras­ti­cal­ly. There are only three cut scenes in the game, and the sto­ry bits you get from them are very vague and not informative. 

So the real trea­sure was the Ass you kicked along the way! ~End

-Technicals-

The graph­ics are typ­i­cal of the PlayStation 1 era, and even then are not phe­nom­e­nal by stan­dards. The graph­ics ap­pear to be as min­i­mal as pos­si­ble to al­low as many mod­els, and the game has a large num­ber of mis­sion types and maps with a sound­track that can get you su­per pumped for the fight­ing ac­tion, mak­ing you feel cool, or tracks creep­ing you the fuck out. Such as the mu­sic in the long pipe which I swear has some­one say­ing ran­dom phras­es now and then in Japanese, and it creeps me out every time I hear it.

You are able to fight oth­er play­ers in split screen, and use the oft-neglected PlayStation Link ca­ble to fight some­one on a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent PlayStation if had all the hard­ware avail­able. I imag­ine this would have en­abled mag­nif­i­cent tour­na­ment bouts and it’s a shame that such or­ga­nized fights nev­er came about as far as I know in any ma­jor shape or form. The ACs them­selves are de­tailed, and the parts are var­ied enough to let you make your own unique de­sign that is­n’t just a re­hash of some­thing al­ready in the game. It even al­lows you to recre­ate the ACs of the game’s most fa­mous and skilled NPC pi­lots to take their ma­chines for a spin.

-Should You Even Bother Playing It?-

Yes, you should. I have played the first Armored Core on and off for years, as well as the lat­er en­tries in the se­ries, and each is quite good. They al­low you to ex­pe­ri­ence the type of com­bat you de­sire and build badass ro­bots to wreck shit with so long as you don’t mind pay­ing the vir­tu­al bill once the smoke clears. I’ve nev­er met some­one who played it that did­n’t like it, al­though it is like­ly they ex­ist. If you aren’t in­ter­est­ed in pick­ing up the first en­try for some rea­son, every PlayStation gen­er­a­tion has its own Armored Core or three, but there is a great deal of dif­fer­ence be­tween each num­bered en­try, and the way the se­quels are re­leased can be confusing.

If you like it enough to pick up one of the se­quels in the same con­sole gen­er­a­tion, you can trans­fer all of your parts, and your char­ac­ter to the next game. This makes play­ing all three of the first gen­er­a­tion games feel like a tril­o­gy ad­ven­ture, fea­tur­ing you as your own orig­i­nal char­ac­ter. Mind you, this will lead to dis­cus­sions of what things are canon and aren’t. But you can sort that out on your own time, it will be more fun that way.

-What Can We Learn From It?-

As some­one try­ing to de­vel­op games now, what can a twen­ty year old game tell us that we can ap­ply to games go­ing forward?

1. Graphics Aren’t Everything: Even among peo­ple who like Armored Core, the graph­ics of the first gen­er­a­tion, es­pe­cial­ly the first game, are not great. However, they get the job done. Through the over­all pre­sen­ta­tion, Armored Core is able to get its ideas across quite ef­fec­tive­ly. You know the dif­fer­ence be­tween all your weapons and parts, you get how the dif­fer­ent ammo types change with par­ti­cle ef­fects, and the HUD is clear to read and easy to un­der­stand. While hav­ing the best, most ad­vanced, most photo-realistic graph­ics is a grand no­tion on its own, it is an un­nec­es­sary ex­pen­di­ture. Making a game as pret­ty pos­si­ble can risk putting pre­sen­ta­tion above the ac­tu­al qual­i­ty of play. You can save mon­ey and time mak­ing sure the graph­ics are as good as they need to be to get the point, and so­lid­i­fy­ing pre­sen­ta­tion to tie every­thing together.
2. Name Brand Soundtracks Aren’t Everything: Many games in­sist on hav­ing a sound­track full of ei­ther orig­i­nal mu­sic com­mis­sioned specif­i­cal­ly for the game in ques­tion, with ob­scene num­bers of tracks for every mood, every mo­ment, every sit­u­a­tion, or a ros­ter of li­censed mu­sic from fa­mous mu­si­cians, or at least well known artists. While there is noth­ing wrong with this prac­tice, Armored Core gives you a va­ri­ety of dif­fer­ent mu­sic that is orig­i­nal, but seems like it was pro­duced cheap­ly in-house as the mu­sic works as sit­u­a­tion­al mu­sic for the back, and not as sound­track you could lis­ten to on the go. Armored Core’s cheap­er sound­ing mu­sic se­lec­tion makes you feel creeped out and ner­vous, as things tend to fit the at­mos­phere more, and some tracks still get you pumped like you’re in a clas­sic mecha ani­me. This is an­oth­er mo­ment where you can save on de­vel­op­ment costs.
3. Control: I have been play­ing Armored Core for years, and the con­trols have al­ways seemed a bit weird at first. But once you get used to them, they seem the per­fect arrange­ment to make your AC dance across the screen in a flur­ry of boost slide strafes and weapons fire. Even in lat­er it­er­a­tions of the se­ries, the con­trol stayed re­mained fa­mil­iar, clear­ly play­ing to the in­ter­ests of the es­tab­lished fan base. Your con­trols need not be in­tu­itive at first, and its ok for them to seem dif­fi­cult to ac­cli­mate to at first. It’s more im­por­tant that the con­trols are per­fect for the type of ac­tion and mo­tion you want your play­ers to be able to per­form dur­ing the game, es­pe­cial­ly at high lev­el play. If your game is fun, or is sim­ply very much up your cus­tomers al­ley, they will adapt to the con­trols, and they will be es­pe­cial­ly pleased when they get good with those con­trols and are able to per­form im­pres­sive feats. Having the abil­i­ty to remap but­tons, though, nev­er hurt anyone.
4. Story: Your sto­ry­line need not be im­mense­ly deep, it does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need a large cast of di­verse and in­ter­est­ing char­ac­ters with in­ter­est­ing char­ac­ter de­signs, and the over­ar­ch­ing nar­ra­tive does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to re­volve around your main char­ac­ter. That sto­ry can sim­ply be that of a per­son who was at the wrong place at the wrong time and is now wrapped up in events be­yond them, whether they like it or not. A min­i­mal­ist sto­ry can be told sim­ply through brief­in­gs, post- and pre-mission com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and sim­ple five sec­ond di­a­logue bits. At the end of the day, it is the play­er’s sto­ry. It is up to them to play it out and in­ter­pret it as they see fit. Your sto­ry can be sim­ple, or quite com­plex with min­i­mal­ist pre­sen­ta­tion. Either can work so long as the game is fun and can cap­ture and hold the at­ten­tion of the play­er. A sto­ry just needs to fa­cil­i­tate a player’s engagement.
5. Game play: Game play is the cen­tral fo­cus of Armored Core. You are a mer­ce­nary mech pi­lot, with all the pros and cons that go with it. However, you have the abil­i­ty to grow more skilled in your ACs han­dling and your own skills by chang­ing your kit, and with ex­tra prac­tice (a prac­tice mode is avail­able to test new parts). The game presents it­self in ex­act­ly the right way to get its ideas across with­out con­fu­sion, the ac­tion bits get you pumped even if con­sid­ered sim­ple by to­day’s stan­dards, the qui­et tense mo­ments are tense as well, and mis­sion va­ri­ety keeps thing in­ter­est­ing. No mat­ter how good your sto­ry or in­ter­est­ing your char­ac­ters, if your game is­n’t very good or very fun then no one will care. Whatever an­gle you pur­sue in terms of game play type, it must be fun enough for your tar­get de­mo­graph­ic above all else. Thus you must have a clear un­der­stand­ing of your tar­get au­di­ence and what they like. Scratch their itch, but don’t pander.
6. Difficult Isn’t a Dirty Word: Armored Core is a very dif­fi­cult game. I have only beat­en it once, and even then I was un­able to de­feat the afore­men­tioned Hustler One. As a re­sult I was nev­er able to at­tain the top rank­ing spot, and the fa­bled ti­tle of “Nine Breaker”. From Software have been mak­ing ex­cep­tion­al­ly dif­fi­cult games since long be­fore Dark Souls was a glim­mer in a de­sign­ers eyes, and they have cre­at­ed won­der­ful games with fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries de­spite min­i­mal pre­sen­ta­tion. A clear knowl­edge of their tar­get au­di­ence and what that group wants or re­sponds to was clear­ly cen­tral to some of these de­sign choic­es. These choic­es are what turned Armored Core from a strange sin­gle play­er game from a de­vel­op­er you like­ly nev­er heard of, to a pow­er house fran­chise and helped make From Software a house­hold name.

-Extra Credits-

Within the Armored Core sto­ry, you will hear tales of mod­i­fied hu­man pi­lots im­plant­ed with var­i­ous cy­ber­net­ics to make them bet­ter and tougher pi­lots. This is re­ferred to as the Human Plus pro­gram, with the pi­lots who are mod­i­fied be­ing re­ferred to as a “Plus”.

There are eight mod­i­fi­ca­tions that you can gain: the abil­i­ty to use a long range radar grid with­out a radar at­tach­ment equipped, Missile and Elevation in­di­ca­tors for the radar, in­creased turn­ing speed, in­creased move­ment speed, in­creased en­er­gy me­ter cap, re­duced boost­er en­er­gy con­sump­tion, the abil­i­ty to fire sword waves from your en­er­gy sword, and the abil­i­ty to fire shoul­der weapons while in mo­tion us­ing hu­manoid and re­verse joint­ed legs. 

So all you have to do is be­come a Plus. How so?

You be­come a Plus by be­ing shit at the game. No lie. You use up all your ammo, and get your AC de­stroyed sev­er­al times, rack­ing up over ‑50,000cc in debt. Upon reach­ing this num­ber you are treat­ed to a cut scene con­firm­ing that be­cause you are such a shit­ty pi­lot that they are go­ing to make you a Plus. Repeat sev­er­al times to get all of the Plus up­grades. You get one per com­ple­tion of the goal of los­ing ‑50k.

You are now the ul­ti­mate badass, with cy­ber­net­ic hand­i­caps al­low­ing you to fire more quick­ly and ma­neu­ver more ef­fec­tive­ly while still bring­ing heavy weapons to bare.

Plus sta­tus car­ries over with your game save to the se­quels. You might think that los­ing bad­ly at the game to get up­grades to make it eas­i­er is kind of like cre­at­ing an easy mode. You’d be right. And yet… almost every Armored Core play­er does it! You’ve made the game in­fi­nite­ly less dif­fi­cult be­cause now you don’t have to be so thought­ful in your at­tacks and advancing.

The abil­i­ty to slide longer, hard­er, faster and stronger while ma­neu­ver­ing changes the game dras­ti­cal­ly. Suddenly pre­ci­sion con­trol is far more im­por­tant as you fight with your own mo­men­tum and move­ment to keep your AC fac­ing the en­e­my and locked on while you dance around the bat­tle­field and un­load on them. While this might have been the case to an ex­tent be­fore, it is now even more im­por­tant and at play. Git bad, then git gud. Make your mech dance, and al­low your to guns sing.

-In the end-

Seems need­less to say af­ter all this, but Armored Core is most def­i­nite­ly a sol­id ad­di­tion to any­one’s col­lec­tion and I high­ly rec­om­mend play­ing it at some point. You can find Armored Core on the PSN for the price of a McDonald’s com­bo meal, and PlayStation 1 em­u­lates quite well if you find a phys­i­cal copy. So you have very lit­tle ex­cuse not to at least give this one a go, even if you lack a PlayStation 1.

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Xavier Harkonnen

Game Dev work­ing on ac­tive project at [Undisclosed Studio], Center-Left, I post ran­dom thoughts and goofy shit that amus­es me. Support Spacenoid Independence.

Latest posts by Xavier Harkonnen (see all)

• Parasite Eve (PS1): A Reliquary Review — March 22, 2019
• Armored Core (PS1): A Reliquary Review — August 12, 2018
• Xavier’s Guide On Game Collecting: Part 2 — The Adventure Begins — May 28, 2018