Thursday, February 26, 2015

Armored Core: Berlioz and Supplice

"You're a fine warrior. Call me sentimental, but I wish we'd met under different circumstances..." 

     These were the last words of Berlioz after falling to the hand of Anatolia's Mercenary, a Raven from the National Dismantlement War that tore apart the worlds governments and established Pax Economica, oppressive rule underneath the biggest Corporations. Berlioz is an interesting character; in many ways he's symbolic of the Armored Core 4 universe, representing the intense loss of both the environment at the hands of Kojima pollution and the people of the world, facing both the obvious external conflict of scraping by a living at the behest of the greed of those who run the corporations and internal conflict regarding how to go about the dealing, how to put up with the loss and the sacrifice of the world and what direction to move towards. Berlioz worked for a corporation, but his charismatic nature and attitude regarding battle were somehow nobler than that and he respected his opponents. His motif overall is dark and somber, reflecting the state of the world in the verse, and contrasting in a way his attitude as a pilot: his NEXT, or his mech's, name was Supplice, which is defined as “the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason”, which more or less describes the struggle colonies around the world would have to deal with in the Pax.

 The motif of his emblem is that of a guillotine blade, with blood seeping from 'neath the fallen implement of execution, which complements the title of the mission in which he is faced, “Marche au Supplice”, literally translating to March to Torment, which references a movement written by Hector Berlioz in the 19th century and basically telling the story of a man to be executed publicly. The overall theming of Berlioz and his NEXT his quite somber and foreboding, reflecting elements of Dark Romanticism in it's reflection of both his defeat and the universal defeat of society as a result of conflict and strife born of man's greed, including the corruption of nature as the noxious byproducts of combat literally chew the scenery.  

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