Trivia / Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown

• Acting for Two:
  • Mihaly's granddaughters Ionela and Alma are both voiced by Saori Hayami in Japanese and Cristina Valenzuela in English, though Alma is never heard speaking unlike her older sister; outside of Voice Grunting, Alma's voice can only be heard when the Shilage Sisters are shown singing together with Cossette.
  • According to Max Sterling himself in this thread at the Hard Light Productions forum, Sterling provides the voices of both Fencer and Seymour.
  • Marc Diraison spends all of Mission 16 voicing two characters who are in the same car; Captain Karl and General Édouard Labarthe. Both end up dying at the end of the mission.
• Actor-Shared Background: Joe Zieja attended a military academy before joining the Air Force then going into intelligence gathering. Here, he voices Full Band, who's part of an air force and dabbles in intelligence gathering, though he's a convict and gains confidential information through dubious means.
• Ascended Fanon: Back in Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, fans made up a red snake emblem for Ofnir Squadron to match Grabacr Squadron's yellow snake, even though Ofnir's emblem never showed up in that game. Come this game, the red snake emblem is officially canonized as part of the Su-37 Ofnir skin that came along with the Experimental Aircraft Series DLC.
• Dummied Out: Unpacking the Unreal Engine 4 files from the PC release reveals quite a bit of cut content in various stages of completion including^note the data can be seen here in three parts: Part 0, Part 1, and Part 2:
  • Three additional VR stages including taking out a Free Erusean fuel depot in Roca Roja, an assault on Erusean naval forces trying to join Free Erusea, and preventing the Free Eruseans from acquiring a ballistic missile submarine from a base in Anchorhead.
  • Other aircraft in various stages of readiness, some of them likely enemy-only if completed, including the EA-18G Growler, Ka-27PL Helix A, and Mi-24P Hind E, none of which are seen in the base game, though both friendly and enemy EA-18Gs show up in the DLC missions.
  • The names of the MQ-99 and MQ-101 — Wasp and Vogel, respectively. Conspicuously, the similar-looking drones deployed by the Belkan-modified Arkbird in Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War were also called Vogels.
  • AWACS callouts for shooting down specific kinds of planes. Many of these (or at least similar callouts) are used in the DLC missions.
  • Additional SP weapons including Fuel Air Explosive Bombs (FAEB), ECM pods, Multi-Purpose Burst Missiles (MPBM), and deployable UAVs of your own along with a set of parts to boost their firepower, endurance per use, and how many you actually get. These were later revealed to be a part of the first set of DLC, featuring the ADFX-01 Morgan, the ADF-01 FALKEN, and the ADF-11F Raven.
  • A clear explanation of what MRP stands for — Military Result Points.
  • A variety of additional objectives for nearly every mission to either spawn more aces or reward more medals.
  • An additional Menhir defensive line in Mission 12 (Menhir 8).
  • An alternate version of Mission 4 where Sea Goblin isn't wiped out, or at least not before meeting up with Harling.
  • Additional objectives involving the mass driver in Mission 17.
  • Models and dialog that indicate that at some point in the game's development, Trigger was going to carry out at least part of the anti-satellite attack personally.
  • An entirely different version of Mission 4 where the radar would have been avoided using clouds (in different patterns for Easy, Normal/Hard, and Ace difficulties), which is still mentioned in the mission briefing, and if you were spotted, you could still continue by destroying the radar site, patrol boat, or fighter that spotted you before it could radio in.
  • Someone or other outright saying "I'm the one who killed Harling." Additional dialog pieced together later indicates that this was Georg, who is a very minor cutscene-only character in the final game, and that they would later spill the beans entirely — he was a mercenary contracted by Erusea to assassinate Harling while disguised as an Osean pilot, and would later, likely in the cutscene with Avril and Tabloid on the boat, admit to everything and the irony that the very pilot he framed wound up saving his life on Tyler Island. This was likely cut to instead push the drone angle. Some bits of this original version are still in the game — the person who initially shouts "Friendly fire! I saw it!" sounds a lot like Georg and there's a fifth F-14D that enters the map and lazily follows Trigger, not dissimilar from Pixy during "The Stage of the Apocalypse" in Zero, and in the original version, this F-14D would likely have been the plane to take the shot that Trigger was framed for instead of a drone-controlled F/A-18F as in the final version. What's more, there are specific entries for "ally_f14_Georg" and "wp_msl_ms04_GeolgMissile" [sic] in the files for Mission 4.
  • An alternate cutscene where Sol Squadron would've shown up in Mission 11, which the other pilots of the LRSSG briefly discuss the possibility of but which never happens in the released game.
  • A great deal of other unused dialog.
• Fandom Nod: The fandom meme of Belka and its technology being responsible for every major conflict in Strangereal is referenced in-game when it is mentioned that Belkans are frequently stereotyped as conspiring warmongers. And, once more, Belkan technology and lingering resentment from the events of the Belkan War are major background influences that eventually culminate in the Lighthouse War.
• Meme Acknowledgement: Kevin M. Connolly, the voice of Bandog, has made it clear he loves the solitary memes.
• The Other Darrin:
  • For her cameo at the end of the final mission, Kei "Edge" Nagase is not reprised by either of her AC5 voice actresses (Wakana Yamazaki and Karen Strassman). Instead, the role is assumed by Seiko Yoshida in Japanese and Julie Ann Taylor in English.
  • AWACS SkyEye's appearance in the VR campaign has him voiced by Jiro Sato in Japanese and David Lodge in English, as opposed to Masaki Terasoma and Neil Howard respectively.
• Schedule Slip: The game was initially teased back in December 2015 while Ace Combat Infinity's popularity in microtransaction sales proved to be enough to start investing more time and resources into Ace Combat 7's development. Various Bandai Namco divisions pegged for the game to release in 2016, but were foiled when it was delayed to 2017. Then, shortly before 2017's E3, Project Aces announced that Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown would instead come out in 2018, with no certainty on which time of the year they would release it. The August 2018 Gamescom trailer eventually revealed the release date as January 18th of 2019.
• Sequel Gap: No matter how you slice it, Ace Combat fans had to wait quite a while for this entry. Released in early 2019, the most recent "high-profile" release prior to AC7 was — depending on one's views — either Ace Combat: Assault Horizon (2011) or Ace Combat Infinity (2014), with Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy (a remake of Ace Combat 2) also arriving in late 2011/early 2012 and then receiving an Updated Re-release in 2015. The gap widens significantly if one only thinks of Skies Unknown as a sequel to the last numbered installment in the franchise, 2007's Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation, given it was the last non-remake title to even be set in Strangereal until 7.
• Technical Advisor: Because the game's plot revolves around a Space Elevator, the producers of the game consulted with an actual Japanese company that plans to build a space elevator (most likely Obayashi Corporation) to ensure that the game's depiction was accurate to real life.
• Tribute to Fido: Cossette's Golden Retriever (aka The JPEG Dog) was a real dog named Toraji who belonged to one of the developers at Project Aces, and was filmed directly as part of the game (contrary to popular belief, his appearance in the game is video through motion capture — he was simply commanded to sit still, and he was so well-trained that he appeared to be a static image). Sadly, Toraji passed away soon after filming and before the game itself came out.
• Troubled Production: As explained by producer Kazutoki Kono, the game faced serious challenges. The concept of the game sat on the shelf for two years due to Bandai Namco's focus on Ace Combat Infinity' free-to-play business model. After 7 was finally given the go-ahead, the project was restarted after the game's announcement at PlayStation Experience 2015. Kono was dismayed at the lack of progress or a clear design goal and felt that the game was "boring", which led to several delays. Executive Meddling resulted in multiple attempts to have Kono removed from the development team. It was only in late 2017 that the game began to take shape with the team expanding and Manabu Shimomoto joining as a second producer, but executives were skeptical and considered cancelling the game. Kono convinced them to let the game's development continue, and the team worked in a frenzy to complete the game.
• Uncredited Role: Since this game is a non-union work, the English cast does not appear in the credits, leaving fans to piece out together tweets from various voice actors, Bang Zoom! Entertainment's Instagram post and corroborations with previous roles.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Brownie's character portrait was designed with shorter hair and sharper facial features◊ in the E3 2017 demo build before her final look◊ was settled upon.
  • Datamining gamers also uncovered several Dummied Out elements to the game still within the files. Of note are references to someone confessing to killing Harling; further investigation strongly indicates this person was the Belkan named Georg who Avril mentions near the end of the game, an extra defense zone during the Stonehenge mission, and mission elements that seem to imply that at one point that it would be Trigger himself who destroyed the Erusean satellite network in Mission 15.
  • On the topic of Georg, his character is at the center of a rather large What Could Have Been: He was originally intended to be a mercenary fighter pilot contracted by the Eruseans to assassinate Harling and set Trigger up for the fall; you can actually hear some of his uncut lines during Operation Lighthouse Keeper (he's the one who initially shouts friendly fire and accuses Trigger). He would then experience a guilty conscience when Trigger saves him and Avril on Tyler Island, and would spill the beans about his role to Avril, citing the irony of being saved by the very pilot he had framed in the first place. Ultimately, however, the plot was written out in favor of the drone plotline and Erusea's electronic warfare capabilities.
• Word of God: Keiki Kobayashi's vision for the ending credits song, "pensées", was for it to be a folk song anyone could hear while dining at a bistro in a low-lying part of the city. He also iterates that the song mentions a flower that had lost its fragrance, which to him is a metaphor for people who lost something important to war, with the act of painting walls with these flowers symbolizing hope for the future.
• You Look Familiar: While the English cast is uncredited due to 7 being a non-union work, you can still recognize some voices that belong to veterans of the series.
  • Karl, the Osean captain tasked with driving General Labarthe to the rendezvous point during Mission 16, may sound familiar to anyone coming in from Ace Combat Infinity — he's Marc Diraison, the voice of AWACS SkyEye. Better yet, he also voices said General Labarthe in a very distinct voice from Karl. Unfortunately, you don't get to hear them for long; the helicopter Karl commandeers near the end of the mission is blown to smithereens by a missile once you complete the mission.
  • The LRSSG briefing officer heard from the end of Mission 10 up to the Battle for Farbanti in Mission 15 is voiced by Jamieson Price in English. Fans of Ace Combat 5 may recognize Price as the briefing officer for the Sand Island Airbase in that game, leading many to believe the casting choice is not coincidental. It's entirely possible this is the exact same guy as before, now lending his talents to the LRSSG nine years after the Circum-Pacific War. It should be noted, however, that the Japanese version is a subversion — said briefing officer is not voiced by Yuji Machi.
  • AWACS SkyEye in the VR campaign, though not voiced by his original actor, still has a voice easily recognizable to Ace Combat veterans — he's David Lodge, who previously appeared as Goodfellow in Infinity and AWACS Eagle Eye in Ace Combat Zero.
  • D.C. Douglas returns to the series as Dr. Schroeder, well over a decade after having voiced AWACS Ghost Eye in 6.
  • Ditto for Beau Billingslea, who voiced Swordsman from 5 and Anthony Palmer from Zero. Unlike those two, Colonel Johnson dies in the mission he first appears in.
  • Steve Blum — Jack "Heartbreak One" Bartlett himself — also comes back to Ace Combat as High Roller, though he doesn't get to show that signature boisterous voice off for long as The Gambling Addict gets killed on his second sortie with you.
  • Dan Woren once voiced President Harling in 5. Harling, now a beloved ex-president, goes unvoiced in this game, though this didn't deter Woren from coming back to the series... as the unlikeable asshole that is McKinsey.

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