Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve - Announcement Trailer Thoughts
- Skyward Staff
- 3 hours ago
- 16 min read
Updated: 3 hours ago
Three decades of context for the newest game in the series
Let's be honest. No one was prepared for the Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve to debut at The Game Awards 2025. Why? All official sources related to the Project Aces development team and Bandai-Namco Entertainment were rather airtight about information related to the development timeline of Ace Combat 8 or any potential release dates. There were many video game expos that have come and gone since Ace Combat 7 was released in 2019. The most high-profile flight action game series releasing its most important video in seven years at a video game award show was probably in no one’s cards on December 11th, 2025. This is quite the way for the now over 30-year-old Ace Combat series to take its next step.
Before we go on, watch the trailer below:
It has been two days since the announcement. The fever pitched hype has settled into high level hype, various content creators and media outlets have given their first impressions and even the crew at the Ace Combat Wiki had every molecule of new information added to their database within the same hour the trailer and official websites went public.
Skyward Flight Media also had time to scream, settle, think hard and produce an extensive article that combines the thoughts of two of our writers with the backdrop of 30 years of Ace Combat series context to the known facts of Ace Combat 8.
Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza and T.J. "Millie" Archer have interests deeply interwoven with the Ace Combat series. From playing the Ace Combat games of the 1990s when they were brand new to founding a forum-based Ace Combat database while they were in High School in 2005.
Get a drink, grab your Ace Combat series Spotify playlist and let's get started.
First Impression Quality
The announcement trailer for Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is an example of a hard lesson well learned. While there were light references to Ace Combat 8 via Project Aces staff social media channels and some interviews with gaming news outlets, hard facts about Ace Combat 8 were withheld rather tightly. The world was then given a single video trailer that summarized what people can expect within just one year.
Why does this matter?
The announcement trailer of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (2019) was released at PlayStation Experience 2015 on December 5th, 2015. Though it was all recorded using its in-game engine, it was a cinematic video with questionable quality voice acting and no representation of actual gameplay. Even the story was rather unclear. It very much felt unready to be shown. Something most likely unhelpful with the very real internal company struggle of Ace Combat 7's development behind closed doors.
From the public's perspective, the release of Ace Combat 7 was a somewhat rough trail of breadcrumbs to follow in terms of announcements and promotional material. The game was announced in 2015 with a release date set in 2017. It was then delayed to 2018, then delayed again to releasing on January 18th, 2019. Trailers showing gameplay and the story of the game appeared did not start appearing until 2017.
Ace Combat 8 debuting with a concise trailer that explains the premise of the story, the setting, introduces characters and showed some gameplay with a release date that is at most a year away is a massive improvement compared to the last promotional run. Even if Ace Combat 8 gets delayed to 2027, to the public this seems like it will be very different from arduous experience from 2015 to 2019.
A Fabricated Ace for Wartime Hope
Say what you will about the development cycles of Project Aces, but they have a decent track record of grabbing onto popular or upcoming real-world concepts, usually of technology, and incorporating them into their titles.
In the announcement trailer for Ace Combat 8, the player starts the story as the Weapon System Officer in an F/A-18F Super Hornet for the greatest ace pilot in the Federation of Central Usea (FCU). This pilot, Jan "Rex" Cope, is known as the Wings of Theve - the name Theve being the capital city of the FCU. Though the invading country, the Republic of Sotoa, has the upper hand in this war. Their lightning-fast attack eventually resulted in most of the FCU occupied by Sotoan forces and what remains of the FCU armed forces scattered. The FCU Navy is so badly damaged, the Wings of Theve and his wingmen operate from an aging aircraft carrier partially acting as a refugee ship.
The great hero of the FCU continues to fight on regardless. The existence of the Wings of Theve is so well known, even a squadron of skilled pilots from Sotoa known as The Shadows recognize the red wing logo on the tail of Jan's aircraft, referring to him as "Wings" in combat.
However, the unexpected happens. Jan "Rex" Cope is killed during a mission. The player survives the aircraft crashing into the ocean, they are rescued by allied forces, and the death of the top ace pilot is hidden. For the sake of keeping the legend alive, the player takes on the identity of "Rex" and continues combat missions.
An unidentified character in a suit discusses how the legendary Wings of Theve is no more than a social media tool - a weapon in modern day cyberwarfare - to fight for the narrative of the war. To project hope and resistance to the world as combat continues.
In the real world one such hero existed just a few years ago.
On February 24th, 2022, the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine sparking the next phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War. A significant portion of the air, land and sea forces of Russia pressed into Ukrainian territory to seize the capital city of Kyiv in just a few days. The Ukrainian government and military chose to stay and wage war against the invading force. Within the first week of the invasion, exploits of a lone Ukrainian Air Force pilot flying an aircraft more than three decades old circulated through social media and eventually world news.
This pilot, known as the Ghost of Kyiv, was not only surviving against a technologically and numerically superior military, but had shot down at least six aircraft in air-to-air combat. They would become the first ace pilot of the new millennium.
After the successful defense of Kyiv and as the war continued on, it was later revealed that the Ghost of Kyiv did not exist. They were the concept of an instant legend manufactured to raise morale during a time Ukraine's military and civilian population needed it the most. The exploits of the Ghost of Kyiv went far beyond the borders of Ukraine and became one of many things that people used to form an opinion on what was happening within the first phase of that war. To a degree it may have been a part of how the rest of the world viewed the war and the actions of individuals and nations to follow.
Having the start of the of Ace Combat 8 taking cues from the most recent combat aviation legend is a highly aware of global events decision by Project Aces. This is a great decision.
The Wingmen and Commands
When the player takes the persona of the Wings of Theve, they also become the flight leader of the FCU Navy FAS-830 Joker squadron. The player fights on with three wingmen under their command who are only known as Noise, Professor and Tasha for now.
There are two important points here.
First, the influence of Top Gun: Maverick. Between the hyper focus of various types of F/A-18s in the initial promotional media, the stylized flight helmets with the callsigns of each character prominent and the enemy ace flying a Su-57 Felon performing what seems to be a modified Kvochur Bell (Sotoa calls it a Parthian Shot apparently) it is hard to not notice the impact that Top Gun: Maverick had.
This seems to be Project Aces embracing this aviation enthusiast culture cue to further increase the enthusiasm around their latest project. A fair business move to utilize the cultural hype around the largest aviation focused movie that has come out since... well... the first Top Gun movie.
Second, in the brief flashes we have of the in-game user interface, there is a tell-tale sign of Wingman Commands returning to the Ace Combat series. As seen in Ace Combat 5 (2004), Ace Combat Zero (2006) and Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation (2007) in varying degrees, Wingman Commands are a quick select menu of actions that players can tell their wingmen to do in game. They can range from telling allies to protect the player from enemy attacks, dispersing the wingmen to find their own targets or even initiate a large-scale combined arms strike. Players press different directions on the gamepad to select these options literally "on the fly".
A return to Wingman Commands almost a decade later is a rather unexpected move. The question now is just how detailed will it be? Will it be as basic as telling allies to attack or defend the player like in Ace Combat 6 or will it be more detailed like in Ace Combat Zero where the player's ally could even be told to attack specific types of targets.
Building camaraderie through combat hits differently when you know that the allies flying alongside you are useful in combat. It is one thing to see your fellow pilots in cutscenes or as far off icons on your heads up display, but it is something entirely different when those allies are at your command and visibly pursuing enemies' players designate.
Multi-Platform
It is great to see that the Ace Combat series is continuing to release their games on multiple gaming platforms. The announcement trailer for Ace Combat 8 shows that it will be available on Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. That may sound like a weird statement, as it is just a given to release a game across as many platforms as possible these days. But for Ace Combat it has not always been like that.
Despite Ace Combat’s first game coming out in 1995 it was not until Ace Combat: Assault Horizon in 2011 that they released a game across multiple consoles and on personal computer. Every game before that was a console exclusive in one way or another. Even the games that came out between 2012 - 2018 were also platform locked.
It cannot be argued that Ace Combat 7 selling over 7 million units is also largely due to it being distributed on personal computer via Steam, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and even the Nintendo Switch.
Online Gameplay
According to its Steam page, Ace Combat 8 will have online player vs player game modes and online co-op. Something Ace Combat 7 suffered from within a year of launch was decline of activity in online multiplayer.
Despite being released in 2019, Ace Combat 7 is not a cross-platform game. The player populations of the four platforms it released on remained separate, quickening online multiplayer stagnation. The multiplayer for Ace Combat 7 consisted of two player vs player game modes: Team Deathmatch and Battle Royal. Each mode has a maximum of eight players fighting over 6 maps with limited options for customizing lobbies.
The player base will immediately draw comparisons to Ace Combat Infinity which offered much more variety in every way possible. Yes, that game was designed from the ground up with a different concept in mind, but it had a robust amount of online multiplayer content that kept its online community active for four years. All the way up until the game was shutdown by Bandai-Namco in 2018 despite the online activity being consistent.
Coming from Ace Combat Infinity online multiplayer's player vs player, competitive co-op, scoring based competitions, air races, raid boss style special events and variations of existing game types, the limited offerings of Ace Combat 7 seem jarring.
While there is no information to confirm this opinion, Ace Combat 8 having online game mode offerings similar to Ace Combat 7 seems likely. Looking at Project Aces' online multiplayer offerings from 2006 - 2013, what Ace Combat 7 offered is in line with what Project Aces has consistently produced. Ace Combat Infinity is truly the outlier.
However, the mention of online co-op on the Steam page for Ace Combat 8 is a major point of interest. Scrolling through social media, forums and Discord servers, it is one of the most discussed topics. Whether it is in the style of Ace Combat Infinity's competitive co-op, Ace Combat 6's limited set of co-op missions or the full four player co-op campaign of Ace Combat: Joint Assault (2010), at this point more game modes beyond limited focus PVP will be a net positive.
First Person View = Virtual Reality?
At the time of announcement, there is no official confirmation that Ace Combat 8 will have virtual reality support.
The promotional material for the game highlights first person view in cut scenes being an important part of the experience. In the trailer walking through hallways of a warship, being examined for injuries after a crash, sitting to eat lunch, - it seems like this human level of interaction will be a large part of Ace Combat 8's identity.
While Ace Combat: Assault Horizon had a few cutscenes where the player saw things from the first-person point of view of the protagonist, it was not something that was consistently used in a way that Ace Combat 8 implies.
In 2025, a game heavily relying on a first-person point of view can make people believe that it may be a virtual reality (VR) inclusive game. Also, because of Ace Combat 7's official VR support, it is natural that the question would immediately arise about Ace Combat 8.
After the release of Ace Combat 7, Project Aces has stated in many interviews that developing an Ace Combat game for VR would have to be handled a bit differently than their usual process. We also asked about virtual reality support in our 2019 interview with Ace Combat series brand director Kazutoki Kono. His response was:
“It is possible. Despite problems from a business point-of-view. We gained experience in the methods and know-how of how to create an Ace Combat specialized for VR. We’ve said this many times before, but if we were to create an Ace Combat game solely for VR, the storytelling and presentation will be completely different from previous installments. If it’s a product that requires that much effort, there needs to be a correspondingly high demand for it.”
With Ace Combat 8 currently touting the importance of first-person point of view and with previous statements about the next Ace Combat game needing to be designed in a specific way to make it feasible, it is hard not to jump the gun and say Ace Combat 8 may be designed for it. For now, let's wait for facts.
In the meantime, looking back at the virtual reality campaign for Ace Combat 7, you can see where Project Aces is coming from. Or at least in their implementation of VR at the time. For Ace Combat 7 they essentially developed a second game with its own storyline, a few bespoke weapons that had a helmet mounted display style implementation and an airshow style game mode where players can move around an aircraft carrier and direct aircraft to perform aerobatics on command. All of it standalone - detached from the main game and to this day is a PlayStation VR 1 exclusive.
Right now, there is no mention of Ace Combat 8 having any level of virtual reality support according to official websites or digital distribution website like steam. However, if it will, it would be beneficial for it to at least follow the now standard way flight arcade games incorporate virtual reality.
Just let players wear a VR headset to enjoy that experience during missions while all cutscenes or menu interactions appear flat screen in the headset. Other IPs have done this and seen success. Even modders creating tools like UEVR to play all of Ace Combat 7 in VR despite it not being purpose built for it have garnered far more support and positivity than outcry and negativity.
If the go-to option is another one-off platform locked VR experience, that may actually be somewhat detrimental. Though, there is another option. An example of that being Star Wars: Squadrons. That space flight game was fully compatible with flat screen and virtual reality headsets, even if the VR experience limited players to standing in the same position as the camera POV in flat screen gameplay while having players use physical controllers instead of touch controllers.
Looking at the flight game demographic since 2019, it is clear that people would prefer 80% to 100% of a decent VR experience rather than nothing at all.
Three Special Weapons
Ace Combat 8 shows combat aircraft carrying multiple weapons. Known as 'Special Weapons' within the series, these are secondary weapons that are used besides the traditional aircraft cannon and Standard Missiles that define this genre of flight action games. There are precision guided bombs, long-range air-to-air missiles, unguided rocket pods, etc.
Though each aircraft in the games usually has more than one Special Weapon to choose from in pre-mission selection, players are often only allowed to carry one of them into combat. Though there are minor exceptions to the rule like Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere (1999) and Ace Combat: Joint Assault, that is generally the rule for the series. Ace Combat 8 giving players the option to carry multiple Special Weapons at once is not an innovation, but a response.
Arcade flight action games created by indie game developers and/or distributed by indie game publishers have been more prevalent in the genre since roughly the mid-2010s. One of them, Project Wingman, which saw a high level of success after its release in 2020. It even went as far as far as getting onto game consoles, securing a PlayStation VR 2 port of a six-mission campaign.
One of Project Wingman's most notable features was the ability for all aircraft to carry multiple special weapons during combat. While Ace Combat 7 maintained its tradition of one special weapon used per aircraft in 2019, it is notable that flight action games that have come out since 2020 or started development around that time include the use of multiple special weapons.
Ace Combat 8 now including this function is certainly a response to its fan base that has wanted this ability for literal decades now. Some of the mods created for Ace Combat 7 are aircraft 3D model visual modifications that show fuel tanks and other weapons on the aircraft purely for the visual aesthetic while wishing for the functionality. But the timing of this is also clearly an acknowledgment of the current state of the genre and what its fans expect of it.
New Life for Existing Strangereal Lore
A key part of the identity of Ace Combat is its original world known as Strangereal. If there is one thing Ace Combat fans have wanted from the series it is to see more of the expansive world it has fostered since the 1990s - or since 2004 depending on how you view certain things about Project Aces' development goals. This original world known officially as Strangereal, is the perfect fictional setting for frequent, that massive, generation defining nation state versus nation state combat a frequent occurrence.
Thus far the two fandom shaking references seen in the trailer and mentioned on the official website are the Federation of Central Usea and the Republic of Sotoa. An interesting juxtaposition.
Sotoa is a nation that has only been a name on a map since it first appeared in November 2015. There is nothing known about this country beyond a passing reference or two in official lore books. Project Aces is known for re-treading both story locations, certain antagonists and themes, so having a truly unknown or new country could present new possibilities, fresh concepts and further expansion of the Strangereal world.
The screenshots of presumably two Sotoan military officers and the name reference of their nation's version of a Kubilt maneuver is about as much information as the fandom has known about it in the past 30 years. That is truly new, untrodden territory.
The Federation of Central Usea has been passively involved or mentioned in multiple games and official media since Ace Combat 04 (2001). If we want to get technical and include some retconning, since Ace Combat 1 (1995).
Seeing the FCU appear directly and not within the written lore or implied in game presence appeases the idea of new countries being brought forward in the world. But the FCU exists on the Usean continent. From where the Ace Combat series started and where it seems to frequently return to. The tried-and-true setting.
Frankly, our feelings on this decision are mixed. In fact, it opens up a discussion on a known part of Project Aces' decision making in regard to Ace Combat's identity.
Simmering Sentiments About Re-Treading Setting
The clean slate of opportunity brought by new nations being counterweighted by the Usean continent is... a choice.
This was a chance to have an Ace Combat entry on a completely different continent with a second new or barely known country. Something far from the long reach the Osean Federation since Ace Combat 5 or the ever-present specter of the deceitful Principality of Belka somehow being the near root cause of everything. At the minimum something away from the Usean continent.
We have deep love for the Ace Combat series, but the Usean continent has been the setting for at least six Ace Combat games now; if we are not counting certain non-canon games. Instead of the Federation of Central Usea, the player could have been flying and fighting with a nation much closer to Sotoa on the same continent or even on a completely different side of the planet. The basic facts of the story of Ace Combat 8 as we know it now would not have changed much.
It would have been a great way to push back against the sentiment of Project Aces re-treading, but with the Ace Combat series finally hitting a massive success with Ace Combat 7 after the tumultuous years that preceded it, going off the familiar path again is most likely something the development team is not interested in at this time. Maintaining focus on the well-known and developed Usea, continent is the cautious choice, but frankly, sometimes, it feels... tired.
Maybe it’s how long we’ve sat on Ace Combat 7 and wondered what was next. Maybe there has been so much time to think about where the next chapter could go, hardcore fans have derived just about every new storyline and mission that could happen in extensive detail. So, what first impressions do we get? Overly familiar tropes that we’ve experienced over and over again.
Maybe it’s the tired impression of post stall maneuvers from an enemy ace in an aircraft designed by Sukhoi. Maybe it’s yet another ultra-large aircraft that plays a key role in the story. Maybe it's the familiar exaggerated voice lines or the unknown soldier to true hero pipeline. When you think back on the storied history of the Usean continent and the Ace Combat brand's formula as a whole it is hard not to look upon the repeating notes and feel... tired.
Is this repetition, this “signature identity” really what the community wants and what the developers want to keep doing?
Closing: Riding on the Wind of Hype
All of that being said, Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza, T.J. "Millie" Archer and the rest of the Skyward Flight Media crew will be there for Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve on release day. And of course, we will be discussing Ace Combat 8 and previous titles from the series as we always have. Our excitement over this new game is real, it is positive, but it is based in reality and backed with facts.
We hope that this extensive article on our thoughts about Ace Combat 8 with the context of three decades of the how the Ace Combat series has played out is a nice entry in the ongoing winds of hype we are all riding within this moment.
...Oh, and if this is all Belka's fault again, we're flipping a table.
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