"Sis... you fool."
Due to its Darker and Edgier tone, it's no slouch that there's a good number of gut-wrenching moments throughout the game (especially if you're completing all story paths).
- The Omega Ending. Turns out, the Player Character, Nemo, was an Artificial Intelligence, and the whole game was a simulation by Simon to see if Nemo can kill Dision. All five ending show that yes, Nemo will kill Dision. And now that the simulation has served its purpose, Simon purges the program, and goes on to instigate the corporate war between Neucom and General Resource.
- The simulation showed that Nemo was an intelligent being capable of forming bonds with its fellow pilots. But that meant nothing to Simon, as all that he cared about was that Nemo would kill Dision. And Simon, whether it was out of fear that Nemo would warn the others of his treachery, or because he no longer needed it, purges the Nemo in the simulation, and creates a fresh copy that he intends to release out into the world to carry out his plan.
- Just about all of Nemo’s companions have tragic fates, no matter what route it takes.
- Out of all of Nemo’s companions, Fiona has the worst fate of them all. In four of the five endings, she dies, but the ending in which she lives is not a happy one. Her sister, Cynthia, is shot down and killed, and as she’s looking at a holographic projection of herself with her sister, an AI version of Cynthia tries to contact her, but Fiona rejects the AI as being her sister, and throws the projector to the ground and cries (pictured above).
- Cynthia doesn’t have it any better. In her ending, her sister is killed during an Ouroborus attack, and when she finds out that the man she admired does not in fact support his ideology of Brain Uploading, and is only out for revenge, she defects from the Ouroborus to bring it down.
- While Rena Hiorse has at least one happy ending, the rest are tragic, and she still has to go through hell to get to it. In all of the five routes, Rena is subjugated to Mind Rape by Dision, to get her to fly the Night Raven. Its eventually discovered that she was only a child when she test piloted the Night Raven, and when she inadvertently revealed its existence in an interview, it lead to General Resource to cut their losses, which included killing Yoko Martha Inoue, leading to Dision on his mad quest for revenge.
- In the UPEO-General Resource route, when Dision betrays the company and reveals that he’s the leader of the Ouroboros organization, Keith Bryan laments to Nemo that he’s not the Dision that he knows. What Keith doesn’t realize is that he’s right about Dision not being the man he knows, but not for the reasons he thinks.
- In the penultimate UPEO-General Resource-Ouroboros route mission "Memory Error", Keith Bryan pulls a Taking You with Me on Rena flying the Night Raven, and Nemo is forced to shoot him off the plane, killing them both.
Keith: "Buddy... I'll see ya later..."- The worse part about the UPEO-General Reosurce-Ouroboros route is that everyone dies. Rena? Dead. Fiona? Dead. Keith? Dead. Erich and Cynthia? Maybe. But worse of all, Dision completely loses it on this route, and Nemo is forced to shoot him down.
- Erich’s possible death in the UPEO-General Reosurce-Ouroboros route (even if you didn't kill him) is a Player Punch to those who have played Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown given that he is also Jaeger’s son.
- Abyssal Dision may be the Big Bad of the game, but that doesn’t make his life any less tragic. The real Dision has been Dead All Along, and the Dision that Nemo encounters is a Brain Upload of him that survived General Resource’s terrorists attack. No matter what route Nemo takes, he dies, with the UPEO-Neucom route ending having him call out for Yoko to save him before being blown to smithereens.Dision: "Save me... YOKOOOoooo-" *BOOM*
- To make matters worse for Dision, this is exactly what Simon Orestes Cohen was hoping for. He wanted to see if Nemo could indeed kill Dision, and the simulation showed that Dision will die no matter what Nemo does.
