A multinational European unit, the Durandal, and a rag-tag bunch of USN soldiers doing policing duty in Venezuela end up working together to foil the Zaftran plot.įront Mission 2 (2098-2102, released 1997) Jumping back in the timeline, Front Mission 4 followed up on the story of the first game, showing how Zaftra (a revanchist Russia, and one of the major conspirators from Front Mission) tries to pull the same trick twice by pitting the USN and EC (essentially our European Union) against one another using false flag operations. Like the Front Mission remake, it told a war story from the perspective of groups on both sides, but its drab graphics and uninteresting characters, especially on the European side of the game, weakened the attempt to create a multi-dimensional story. It was developed alongside the 2003 PlayStation remake of Front Mission and the 2005 online shooter Front Mission Online as part of a large scale “Front Mission Project” initiative, with the aim of expanding the story of the original game. Front Mission was a series with its own voice.įront Mission 4 (2096-2097, released 2003)įront Mission 4 was a mid-cycle PlayStation 2 tactical RPG that struggled to distinguish itself on any level, suffering from a rushed production schedule. But Front Mission was not just a direct Japanese imitation of Clancy’s work. This was much like what Clancy had done with his own work, and it carried the same hallmarks of late 20th century obsession with tech and communication. While it was obviously inspired by the work of Kunio Okawara (designer for such series as Votoms, from which Front Mission lifted its iconic roller dashing), it took its roots in military science fiction and wargaming and turned them towards near future real world settings. The series therefore broke cleanly with the space opera roots of giant robot fiction. The series’ technothriller focus, influenced by the original works of Tom Clancy in the 1980s, set Front Mission apart from other giant robot properties, and made the collaboration of former Front Mission and Metal Gear creators on Left Alive an understandable project.
This made it the cousin of near-future science fiction series like Metal Gear and Ace Combat: full of shadowy masterminds, false flag operations, the overwhelming presence of global communication technology, and troubling stories of the uses of biotechnology and AI. But Front Mission’s most distinctive feature was how it used war as a stage for technothriller stories.
Front Mission is, of course, best known for its “Wanzers,” bipedal mechs that feel more like walking tanks than the high flying super machines of games like Xenoblade Chronicles X or Armored Core 4.
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