Little fun fact, in the 3rd mission of the game you can go back to your crash sight and encounter one of Allmind's drones...she was onto you from the start.
"The resolve to cross the Rubicon" is a recurring theme with almost every single major character, including Iguana. It's so deliberate that it's _spelled out_ to the player when you encounter Nightfall Raven: "A Raven is a symbol of resolve." And, in Iguana's crowning moment where he shuts up both Ayre and Allmind, he finally does it. He completes his arc by joining Raven, Rusty, Ayre, Walter, and Carla as the only characters to possess the resolve to pursue their ideals, no matter the cost. Throughout the entire game, Iguana is held back by his insecurity, to the degree that every other character can _see_ it happening. Michigan gives him chance after chance with the Redguns, and even defends him when his MT grunts snark about him. Volta tries to talk him up and encourage him when he deserts from the Wall. Coldcall, rather than attempt to reassure Iguana, instead humors his insecurity as a sort of "fine, if you really want this, we'll see if you really feel better." There's no reason to think Allmind's interactions with Iguana are any different-she, too, can see that Iguana is a very capable pilot, and she, too, is _thoroughly disappointed in him_ when he can't get over himself during the first phase of your fight, while Iguana is still in control of Mind Gamma. In phase 2 she essentially takes the reins from him by crushing what's left of his human body (hinted to still be inside Mind Gamma) and assimilating his voice. His insecurity manifests in the way he pilots and equips his AC as well-he takes noncommittal long-range weapons and a shield, and he fights by cowering behind that shield the entire time. Even when Allmind equips him with Mind Gamma, he keeps that shield and pokes at you from behind it while fleeing from you. At the climax of his character arc, then, he finally overcomes this. The moment is explosive and changes the scene wildly, in almost every way FromSoft could manage to do so. Suddenly, he has the confidence to face you head-on: he uses primarily melee weaponry instead of kiting with a shield. Suddenly, he's wrenched control from Allmind. Suddenly, his helpers are gone. Suddenly, _the ringing in his ears is gone._ His resolve is rewarded with a total clarity of thought that he previously _did not have._ And, after he loses, he demonstrates his growth one last time: he admits that he was jealous of you. For a character so bent on his insecurity, so fixated on proving himself, _admitting envy_ is normally something they simply are incapable of. Iguana finding the confidence to admit this completes his journey as a character, and resolves his internal conflicts. Despite failing to kill you, he sounds like he's at peace with himself. Even if he _does_ kill you in that fight, he doesn't sound nearly as satisfied as he does when he dies. His "leave a spot for me in Hell" line sounds bitter, and unfulfilled.
When I fought him I literally thought "the only thing getting in the way of this grand scheme is the SALTIEST MAN IN EXISTENCE". I actually think it's clever by FromSoft, because it parallels the salt that drives the player to even bang their head against the bosses in these games. So the final battle is literally just two salt lords (the player and Iguazu) going at it.
He was Jealous, Envious and Hateful. The most honest and strongest negative feelings there are. No wonder he had the strength of will he was singular in his pursuit of vengeance against someone who, as he said, "had it all"
It’s impressive that Iguazu is written in such a way that not only the characters dismiss him but also the players aswell. The guy has made besting you his life’s mission: he sends assasins to kill you, he deserts just to ambush you. But the moment he leaves the scene , you put his existence in the back of your mind until he shows up again.
What made my playthrough special, was how Iguazu bit it in almost every appearance of that third playthrough. When I betrayed him and G4 at the dam complex, Iguazu got stuck on some terrain and got double stun-needled to death. When he ambushed me while taking care of the hacker bots for Carla, he got in between me and one of the two custom ACs or whatever they were that showed up.....and got blown the fuck up by my rifles and plasma cannons. Then when I took on G2 snail and he ambushed me again, he managed to land right inbetween me and snail as I charged in with the laser lance, prompting me to go "eh....might as well" and finish the combo so he was basically deleted before he could even say his lines.
I believe that the difference between 621 and Ayre pulling the trigger on Coral Release,and ALLMIND doing the same,is a question of on what terms the Singularity happens. I believe that ALLMIND was seeking to become the center of a gestalt intelligence,while 621 and Ayre ultimately seek to produce a vast network of linked individuals.
I personally feel that Coral release is a defence mechanism. Coral has a tendency to flock together. But doing that makes them susceptible to being burned all together. So when they can feel that a coral being is being killed near them, they begin the process of coral release to protect themselves. This means that someone had to die. I also believe that ALLMIND herself was a coral being. Which is why killing Iguazu and ALLMIND is the equivalent of Ayre and 621 being killed.
@@egoalter1276 I think this is actually quite intentional, the way the coral singularity pulses the rings at 34:00 really reminds me of one of the Eva rebuilds
the moment i started my 2nd playthrough and ALLMIND introduced herself and she added a new line and said "Raven....You've returned" thats the time I realized something was off.
Iguazus story is actually kinda sad In his arena bio its said he was augmented because of gambling debts He never wanted to be a pilot Both it and his augmentation were forced on him Additionally he obviously wants to do something great with his situation And you keep getting in his way Hes insecure and maybe doesnt even recognize himself anymore Hes nobody and wants to be somebody Doesnt make him less of a d**k But kinda adds some small context
Huh, well it seems like Iguazu was relying more on chance rather than will. Hoping that things would land on him, hence "why you?" and questioning "why it's not his turn to be the best." It's still a gambler's mindset, whereas Raven's is a deciding mindset
Being a gen 4 also made him hear Ayre, however he only heard an annoying sound and it made his head hurt. Later encounters he sounds bordering on psychosis about the sound in his head getting stronger everytime you show up and further drives him to hate 621.
@@arforafro5523I feel that Iguazu had his own voice, except he never made peace with it. And the voice reciprocated. Hence why he said screeches. He never understood that the voice in his head is a coral symbiote.
Edit: this comment blew up, I'm glad you guys also enjoyed the funny Iguana boi I absolutely loved Iguazu. Him just showing up while Raven is trying to kill Snail was hilarious. Snail is baffled by how it took mere seconds for his operation to go from business as usual to 'Raven and Iguazu going goblin mode in a garbage pit'
@@allinairhanson6886snail: now I just wait here and when raven is weake- (Raven appears) RAVEN: HEEHEEHAH FECK YOU!!! GOD DAMN IT, HOW THE HELL DID YOU- (Iguazu barges in) Iguazu: RAVEN! I OWE YOU A DOUBLE MAJOR ASS KICKING!! Snail absolutely fuming and malding at this point: I AM ARQUEBUS YOU UNEDUCATED MONGRELS, **PISS. OFF.**
I found out recently that the Iguazu river is known for having one of the widest falls in the world (not the tallest). This represents how iguazu’s story is told over 3 playthroughs and his motivations are for the most part shallow and petty.
@@Checheno1906Ever seen Niagara Falls? Now that's a scary waterfall. The horseshoe has the most water flowing over it than any other in the world. You can even walk along a platform in the cave behind, or get up close in a tour boat.
23:48 then it's quite an irony that Iguazu calling us "the only warm body they could find" and at the ENDING ending HE himself was the only AC pilot left Allmind could find
The fun thing about allmind being a major antagonist of AC6 is that its a trope as old as armored core itself, the first three games is about dealing with this AI that runs everything the same way all mind does on rubicon, but even more so. The really interesting part is that they represent opposing ideals. All Mind represents forced change, the idea that since change is coming anyway that we should direct it and bring it early so that we can control it. While the AC1 through master of arena AI represents the status quo trying to keep humanity alive by carefully orchestrating a stalemated war between companies. Its interesting how fromsoft can bring back ideas and radically change how theyre interpreted by changing barely anything about them.
Well I suppose they always like to do depth on AI who rule behind the world. Nineball, Controller and now All Mind. Each to their own agenda but ever striving for the right path they see.
I would actually say just AC1 and Master of Arena. Project Phantasma, the game in-between, is kind of the odd duck in the ps1 trilogy since you're actually going up against an organization trying to activate some pre-Great Destruction weapon and it has basically nothing to do with AI. You instead fight several times this nutty dude called Stinger. I think the real interesting thing is that AC2's story revolves around the protagonist from Master of Arena (or at least it's heavily implied to be him) trying to take things back to the ways of old, or rather, to bring back that continuous stalemated corporate warfare humanity was locked in for so long by the AI. Somehow, despite everything he went through, he came to a realization that maybe the AI he destroyed was right all along. Armored Core 3 and Silent Line also delve into AIs controlling everything, but 3's timeline is different. Just fascinating stuff all around.
DaemonXMachina proposed somethng on that idea as well. Though it's been a while I don't exactly remember exactly the ins and outs of it I DO remember that the AI OVAL has some surprises through the story that culminate in a big surprise.
@@SuperMoogyD Additionally Project Phantasma chronologically happens two years before AC1, while AC1 and MoA are stated to happen concurrently. So that being taken into consideration, and how the AI had been controlling everything for 50 years by then (assuming it was created during or immediately after the Great Destruction, since it claimed to have created the corporations, it should predate their rise to power) the whole affair was likely guaranteed to fail from the get go. Another very subtle difference in the 2nd timeline, ie 3rd gen, is that while Hustler 1 controlled everything from the shadows, the Controller, it's new timeline reimagining, was out in the open and public. A lot of the conflict was the various factions fighting over continued faith in the Controller's ruling guidance, or trying to break from it under the belief the Controller was degrading and that its failure was imminent.
Ok so, about the "human pilot being superior to AI piloted mech", I believe this is in relation to the concept of "Irregulars", something that's been almost a staple in most games within the series. In most of these, "Irregulars" tend to be extremely capable human pilots with the capability of overcoming basically anything thrown their way, most of the times through the sheer will to keep on. ALLMIND herself calls us an Irregular during the second phase of her boss fight. And even more than that, Iguazu manages to overpower her through his own will (and his level of salt), indicating that he might have the same potential as we do
Just to clarify and add on; Allmind does also specifically call Iguazu an irregular. It’s not in the cutscene but in the phase 2 combat dialogue as they argue, she calls him a mistake and an Irregular as well.
@@MrVictor1227 Being an "irregular" isnt exclusive to whether they are compatible for coral release, it may to ALLMIND however. Almost every AC game has an "Irregular" be it the player or other pilots. Majority of these irregulars are those who arnt affiliated with the mercenary orgs (like Raven's Nest, Collard and ALLMIND). Theres also cases where the pilot is a threat to the balance of power as OP stated, this applies to 621. Iguazu is the same in that regard. I think it is implied that Iguazu isnt the only conscious occupying the mech, but he is the one overpowering the rest, thus distrupting the balance of power.
Good video, but... I feel like you missed a couple of details, both about Iguazu and ALLMIND's plans. Firstly, Iguazu had another mention - a post-mortem appearance, of sorts - during your *first playthrough,* which both recontextualizes him and clarifies some details. If you choose to wipe out the Redguns towards the end of Chapter 4, you'll overhear a lot of chatter among them, and particularly from G1 Michigan, during the fight. At one point, one of them brings up G5 Iguazu, and another snarkily goes "Oh, that loser who ran away with his tail between his legs during Operation Wallclimber?" or words to that effect. Michigan, however, immediately tears into her, declaring that Iguazu was worth 'five of her'. Which isn't really surprising if you think of it - the Redguns are an elite corporate AC-unit, and those with numbered callsigns are elites among those elites. Iguazu didn't wind up as G5 due to family connections - he *was* an exceptionally skilled pilot, people just tend not to notice because of his whiny attitude and persistent insecurity. Before Raven comes along, those insecurities are mostly focused on Michigan himself, who he's mentioned to have actually started a fist-fight with in the past, according to their Arena-bio. More to the point, Iguazu apparently spends most of the game AWOL from the Redguns. He deserts around Operation Wallclimber, which is why you can find the wreck of his partner from the Dam-busting mission there, but not HIM. He apparently saw which way the wind was blowing and skipped out of that doomed attack - becoming an independent mercenary in his own right, hence why he can be found working as hired muscle for the Junker Coyotes in Chapter 2 of NG+. So, when you run into him at Depth 2 of Watchpoint Alpha during the first playthrough... he wasn't 'ordered there to ambush you'. He isn't working for Balam anymore. He literally infiltrated that highly-secure facility, *on his own,* just to have a final showdown with you. Hence why you instead meet an assassin there during NG+ - he already had his showdown with you back in Chapter 2, and knows he can't realistically beat you. Mind, by avoiding that fight, he manages to get all the way down to Institute City - again, by himself and without any kind of support from the corporations - and is thus able to drop in on V.II Snail during NG++... So, no, I don't think ALLMIND picked him just because he was all that was left. She wasn't scraping the bottom of the barrel. If she'd wanted someone else as her final champion, she would've taken steps to leave somebody else alive. She picked him because, underneath all those insecurities, he actually *was* an extraordinary AC-pilot, and also because of his seething hatred and one-sided rivalry towards Raven. See, a thing about ALLMIND's plans that was left out of the video, is her repeated focus on the importance of fights between humanoid weapons as a driving force of evolution. There's mentions of it in a few places, but most of it is between the lines. During your first playthrough, literally *all she does* is encourage fights between humanoid weapons. She provides you with a training-mode so you can learn how to fight humanoid weapons. She incentivizes you to fight humanoid weapons in the arena. And she sets up the 'Loghunt' reward-system, which tasks you with... seeking out and defeating humanoid weapons across your various missions, including many that are hidden in out-of-the-way places, and whom you'd have no reason to fight were it *not* for the 'bounty' she put on them. The final fight is the culmination of all those encounters. YOU are stronger for having gone through all that - you've sharpened your skills and improved your AC thanks to the experiences and parts that participating in the Arena and the Loghunt has provided you with. Meanwhile, her final weapon was clearly developed based on all that combat-data - all the fights in the Arena, particularly the 'Integration Mode' fights from NG+ and ++, all the Combat-Logs you collected for her, they've all come together in a single, super-charged machine, driven by her hand-picked 'Champion'... a man *singularly motivated* by a desire to kill you. That fight wasn't unnecessary, it was *essential* - the final trigger for Coral Release. Note, after defeating ALLMIND, Raven and Ayre don't have to DO anything. Coral Release happens as a *direct result* of them having won - that fight pushed them past some invisible threshold of evolution. Clearly, ALLMIND wasn't *expecting* to lose. She was expecting to win, and for that victory to turn Iguazu into the 'trigger' for Coral Release - your performance during the final fight exceeded her projections, hence you being an 'aberration'. However, in the fine tradition of David Xanatos, she'd made sure that even if she lost, she still won...
I mean, being told that Iguana's worth 5 MT's might be an insult to any AC pilot lol, and I feel like he's a Redgun in Balam by virtue of being an AC pilot. Us as an untested AC pilot were given the callsign G13 just for helping Balam out in clearing a dam after all. G3 Wu Huahai was able to get work with Arquebus after Arquebus won the struggle, while Iguazu was, what, being hired by junkies? Also, getting to depth 2 isn't all that difficult, and in NG++, he appears in Institute City after us, meaning he would have had an easy time going through depths 1-3 since we literally paved the way for him.
Im pretty sure Iguazu didn't went AWOL on the redgun....well not until after chapter 3 at least The wall climber operation could just mean that Iguazu decide to retreat AFTER Volta get destroyed instead of trying to finish the mission or die trying, thus, earning him the "coward" reputation. But then even, in NG+ chapter 2, he said he only take the Coyote commission as a "side job" probably to get the money to pay back the penalty of not finishing the wallclimber mission to Balam. In the ice worm mission, it's pretty clear that G1 still consider Iguazu as a part of Balam corp, even if he seriously have no expectation for this loser. In NG: it's clear that up until depth 2, Iguazu follow G1/Balam order to go down the depth until he realize that Raven is going to attack Balam, then decide to go AWOL just to ambush Raven. In NG+: He didn't go down the depth, instead hire an assasin to kill raven, and then disappear from the story entirely. We could assume that he sensed Balam never gonna win the fight and purely out of spite hire an assassin to kill Raven before he flee the planet. In NG++: It's pretty clear that he abandon Red Gun right after the Worm, consumed by hatred and envy. It took a bit of time, but he eventually managed to shadow Raven, through the trails of destruction, and barge right in the middle of our Duel with Snail. This is where Allmind, finally, noticed a certain crockroach.
@@Ceronia Ah, I forgot about the Ice Worm appearance... you're absolutely right, he can't have gone off on his own right after Wallclimber, but only AFTER that point. A bit unclear if he stuck with the Redguns all the way down into the Depths and only split off from them in time to (try to) ambush Raven, or did so at some point during Chapter 3 before heading into Watchpoint Alpha on his own. There isn't really anything to suggest that his side of the story should go any differently in NG+ and ++, until right at the end, is there? You meet him during Cinder Carla's mission regardless, he sends an assassin after you in Depth 2 regardless... perhaps, in NG+, he just winds up picking a fight with V.II Snail by himself and getting killed there. I'm not sure WHY he'd pick a fight with Snail, other than him just being immediately hateable on principle, but he DOES fire on V.II just as readily as he does at you during the three-way fight, so...
@@BlakeTheDrake In the brawl of 3 under the sewer. It's was made clear by the dialouge that Iguazu have no idea Snail was there. He only there because he tracked Raven down. "Ah, you were that stuck up guy in the iceworm mission. Cool, i can kill you too" Was his line....or something close enough.
Whenever I tell people Iguazu is favorite character, they always act so confused. To me, he's the most relatable character in the game; and it can be easily seen why with a simple analogy. Imagine you, an average joe, are just living your life when all of a sudden you get a new younger sibling. Initially, all is fine; however, as time goes on this younger sibling shows that theyre special. Theyre better at school, sports, socializing, whit, and just overall talent. And as life goes on, you maybe graduate high school with average grades, they graduate as valedictorian; you go to a community college, they get a scholarship to Harvard; you get a job in marketing, they become a world-renowned surgeon. At some point you have to ask yourself, "What makes them so special compared to me? We both were born the same parents, we grew up in the same house; so whyre they so much... better, than me?" Iguazu is obviously the older sibling here, and us, Raven are the younger sibling. We're both Gen 4 AC pilots but were simply, better, for some odd reason. And this just confuses the hell out of Iguazu; it gives him a massive inferiority complex that only makes the one he already had (from being a thug who was forced into Augmentation) even worse. Iguazu is the most relatable character in AC6 and I love him for it.
I’m a Warhammer nerd and Iguazu reminds me personally of a character from the franchise called Perturabo. He’s a master builder and inventor who tortured by his need to please others before himself. He’s made the leader of a legion of warriors that are siege masters, Perturabo accepts this role with no arguments but plenty of bitterness him and his 18 brothers are essentially demigods by human standards, being super humanly strong, smart, durable and barely age. However because Perturabo is so willing to do what he’s told inspite of his own personal objections he’s always tasked with grunt work. His men are always sent to the grinder, just the worst war conditions possible and because of how much of a bad reputation this gives them, and his own personal bitter attitude it’s instead his other brothers that get praise for all his hard work. Continue this pattern for several centuries and it’s no wonder he betrays everyone and turns traitor. He’s a man so bitter that he makes Black Coffee look sweet, so laughably petty, he hates the empire that never acknowledged him and he hates his brothers even more, he didn’t betray the empire for any ideals or morals, he betrayed them because “fuck you” And he’s one of the more popular Primarchs in the setting because for as bitter and petty as this man is people get it.
@@fist-of-doom487I esspecially love the scene in which his sister roasted him and called him out for what he was, and then was killed for that. Again, that was because he was a bitter manchild. Pretty much everything she said there was true.
for most their experience is this wast of time that dose nothing while showing up to do nothing other then annoy you. Kind of hard think positivity of a by design a waste of time.
The other side of this is also how Iguazu is among the few authentic depictions of the difference between being inferior and having an inferior complex. Being insufficient when compared to another is no issue, no problem, no condemnation… no villainy. But it’s when you dwell on it, simmer in it, allow it into your identity instead of reserving it as detached observation, suddenly this poison is given power.
there's another time you can encounter allmind at the very beginning of the game, in the mission where you have to eliminate the dafeng MT squad, if you go all the way to the back (where you land in the very first mission of the game) one of her invisible mechs will be there and Walter will comment on not being able to see it
@@astratan2238 IIRC, there's busted AC's in there too, which I'm fairly sure weren't there when you landed, suggesting the Ghost mech was camping the area.
ALLMIND is not supporting humans, it supports mercs. That is why her plan ends Humanity(O'Keffe was right) and seems like everyone is an augmented AC now. It's ending literally ends with "Engaging combat mode". VI Freud's merc heaven.
If you listen to Ayre between missions, she realizes that merging humanity with Coral is just a single step in evolution, and true human and Coral evolution must come from conflict and struggle. Coral release only ended the Balam-Arquebus War, but a whole new series of wars driven by Coral is just around the corner.
Allmind's idea for "saving" humanity was merging all of it with herself (her name is a pun). In the ending without allmind, all that human consciousness that can't merge with coral is just lost. Epic genocide ending.
@@maallos334mi8Yeah but the implication is that they can still kill each other. Kind of like humans today. Except now everybody is experiencing some mechano-body horror because everyone is an AC now. Maybe there are surviving humans elsewhere, who knows.
15:00 that actually gets foreshadowed a bit by Freud in the Fires Of Raven route, when he kills chatty he remarks that AI-controlled ACs are predictable and easy to destroy
Frued has a good reason to respond like this too because you can find a broken unpiloted AC that has footage of Frued having to fight off Allmind's assassination attempts
I found kinda poetic that one of the first things he tolds u is "Dont feel so special, u were the first warm body they could find" And he was the last warm body that Allmind could find, he wasnt special
I may have missed it but here is a lore bit on why Iguazu is so jealous of Raven/621. They're both Gen 4 augmented pilots. A generation that is seen as "obselete" compared to the more current ones. So here is Iguazu, near the bottom just struggling to be seen. And in comes Raven/621. A same generation pilot who can do what He can't.
Right, he doesn't have an excuse when it comes to Raven. Raven isn't a shiny new augmented human or a war hero that Iguazu can dismiss as having an advantage beyond his reach.
@@MrPikaGammer nah if any normal human can best an augmented pilot, then what's the point of augmenting a human in the first place? Freud is literally a different breed
It gets really creepy when you realise she's been keeping tabs on you since you first landed. During the mission where you dispatch the Dafung MT squad, you can go back to where you first set foot on Rubicon and find one of her stealth units examining the crash. People ask why you don't get log hunt data from downing it, but the logical answer is why would you be rewarded for taking out one of her hidden units?
Pretty sure the reason why All Mind focused on those 4 pilots is because Gen 1-4 augmentation had pilots infused with coral. They stopped doing that after gen 5, so later pilots are not able to make contact with the coral like Raven and Iguazu
The 7th generation was actually the first to receive augmentation via coral substitution technology (according to Swinburne's ARENA desceiption), but tbf I don't think we see any 5th or 6 th generation pilots in the game.
Earlier generation augmentation seems to have a marked, negative effect on the subject's "humanity." This probably means earlier augmentation probably had a high rate of development of psychological disorders, a la "You told me you could hear a voice in your head. That's a common side effect of old-gen augmentation." The coral usage is constant throughout the generations of augmentation but it seems that later generation had a massive increase of better preserving the mental state of the subject as usage of coral to augment them became more skilled, thus there was a loss of the capability to remain in contact with C-Pulse wave mutations of the coral (Coral ghosts like Ayre and Seria) indefinitely.
@@rockybirdy1529yeah, but gen 5 and 6 are marked as the generations where coral substitution were actively attempted for augmentations. Unfortunately the substitution only fully succeeded once generation 7 started. Generation 5 and 6 were referred as "Interim Generations" because the experimentations took so many lives.
@@SiamHossain7there is no such thing as Coral ghost, coral IRL are living organisms in the first place. Arye is locked down in a different facility by the PCA for a reason. But then 621 accidentally released her.
Iguazu is not a loser, he gave all he had to prove himself better than us. Why? Because when we met him we were nobody and he was a little more than a nobody, in fact, we were lower than him in the Arena. Then Raven got recognition, mission after mission, climbed the wall, killed the worm, etc. "What makes you so special?" "Why does it have to be you?" Are some of his dialogs He sees us as what he could have been, so he was trying to catch up, because if a nobody like us can do it... He can do it. But he couldn't, over and over he lost to us, yet he kept trying and he did get much better. From the battle at the Dam (if you attack him) to the battle against him with the Coyotes he must have leveled up to a Rank B or A, from a D rank in less than a year is very impressive. Considering he had been with the Redguns for 7 years it's amazing progress, G1 Michigan also respects Iguazu, if you attack the Redguns he speaks highly of him and does not tolerate the MT pilots speaking trash of him because he deserted. Maybe Allmind chose him because he was the last man standing on the G4< pilots and he got lucky, but didn't we do as well? when Ayre made contact with us for the first time it was pure luck. Of all the characters in Rubicon, I think Iguazu is the most human of all and the one that improves the most in skill second to us. Had he not been consumed by rage and jealousy he would have been a great pilot
That's what i love, he really is JUST LIKE US (the player), he may get knocked down but he stands back up determined to continue on To the point he went sicko mode in the final phase
@@darkjackl999 Exactly! but I see a lot of people hating on him because he always loses against us. They forget how many times we lost against Balteus, Sea Spider, ibis, etc. From Soft did a great job making him, a highly underrated and misunderstood character.
@@heifsadd that he was forced into 4gen augmentation to pay back a debt, which hella fucked Fighting wars he doesnt want to fight for 7 years And he lost his only friend, the only person he's connected with Volta to The Wall. And whats worse the "voices" being the players behind raven really are laughing at him He's not a hater dude is just in pain
Michigan was right. Iguazu is worth 20 Albanys. I kinda respect him when he killed me a couple of times during the very last boss. "Save me a spot in hell." All that dedication, all that submission to his own spiraling anger finally paid off in its own twisted way. A sad turn of events but he finally won.
I found iguazu annoying enough that i put his emblem on the bottom of one of my spring chicken legs (put snail on the other one) and went out of my way to introduce him to it whenever he showed up. He gets himself shot down at least five times in the ng++ timeline (mostly by you) and it seemed you finally got to finish him and snail off while allmind goes Terminator on thr rest of rubicon. Only for the final boss to decend with a familiar whiny voice. I literally shouted "HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO PUT YOU IN THE GROUND IGUAZU!?" Then introduced him to his emblem. Seriously that guy's symbol shouldn't be a rhino beetle, it should be a cockroach for how much he refuses to die
@@karlo2018now the name Head Bringer makes sense. I always thought the emblem seemed kind of strange but i never spared him enough time to look closely.
I love how subtle the changes are at first. ALLMIND seemingly acknowledges your previous actions despite the reset of the timeline. When I ran into Kate and noticed she was using the Mind Gamma AC, something I helped create in my previous playthrough, it broke my brain.
Allmind really didn't put much effort into disguising the truth about 'Kate Markson' there. Either it thinks we won't notice, or it's just really bad at this.
@@Sorain1 Or maybe it had to assign a reasonable name regardless of its intent for whatever reason. If it's not trying to hide it there's no story or world reason for it to assign a name beyond giving us a referral tool. If it's bad at hiding its plans then it wouldn't have bothered with a name, yet it still chose something reasonable.
@@Sorain1She's really bad at it. In the mission destroying the coral transport choppers, she mentions that Kate Markson will be running backup to get the choppers you missed. At 4 choppers, she goes "You are testing Kate Markson's patience."
I don’t think it’s Allmind knowing of some sort of timeline reset, but rather that you are a better pilot with each loop, thus the combat data it gathers from you is remarkably improved, each previous iteration could be seen as allmind running the numbers for the final outcome all beginning with those preliminary tests and arena fights as the data it is testing.
The fun thing about Iguazu is that this goes back to a scrapped concept from Dark Souls one, where the knight that frees you from the undead asylum was supposed to play a similiar role.
Best writing advice I've heard recently is this: the antagonist of any story isn't the character who wants the *opposite* of what the hero wants, they're the character who wants the *same thing* the hero wants, and will fight them to get it. It's that struggle which forces hero to confront the weakness within themselves and overcome it, and the villain's failure to do the same, that creates the satisfying climax of a heroic story.
I'm pretty sure Allmind actually contacted Iguazu before he attacks you and Snail at Institute city. When Iguazu enters the fight, he says "There you are, just like they said" Nobody else was supposed to know you were there, except for ALLMIND. She jammed basically all communications so that Snail wouldn't see Raven coming to kill him. So it stands to reason that she told Iguazu about Raven, just so that he would fight and get himself "killed". The reason might as well be his persistence on killing Raven, which would come in handy in case he went against the plan at the end.
ALLMIND deployed "copies" of dead pilots, Walter mentions fighting against copies of all the vespers. It makes sense ALLMIND told Iguazu were to find Raven so he could get himself killed along with Snail so ALLMIND could use him for the final fight. This is why ALLMIND offers us to join the loghunt program, the combat logs we gather are what ALLMIND uses to create the "copies" of pilots; that's why Iguazu says "This ghost of me won't last long" on he final fight.
In any other game, Iguazu would be the underdog protagonist, who is empowered and chosen by an AI as part of some kind of duplicitous bargain, who would then be betrayed by the AI after it’s gotten what it wanted from the ignorant rookie, only for Iguazu to finally complete their character arc and stand up for themselves and to the AI, proving that everything special about them wasn’t because of the AI, but because of their own perseverance and skill.
"In any other game, Iguazu would be the underdog protagonist" In Project Wingman he is Crimson 1, the main antagonist. Spoilers follow. The guy is so salty at you winning that he nukes his own home country TWICE. First halfway through the game to spite you for turning the war around, and then again at the very end immediately after peace is declared, just to spite you and set up a chance to 1v1 you over the bombed out flaming ruins of everything at the end of the game. They aren't actually nukes, they're actually a bit worse; in the game's backstory they set off a chain reaction that killed most of humanity. So, he's risking a global cataclysm, twice, because he's so goddamn mad and obsessed with beating you. It's hilarious because you're a silent protagonist; he just spouts off these salt-fueled rants at you and it's entirely one sided projection. At one point one of your wingmen finally gets sick of it and just yells at him to shut the hell up and fight them, it's not like they WANT to keep fighting his stupid ass all the time.
I just realized how Iguazu's first message is a huge ironic forshadow to his inevitable fate. He was the first warm body Allmind could find that also wanted you dead and he's inevitably going to be watching the Coral Release from the sidelines. That's crazy such a throwaway message has that twist of a meaning behind it.
Iguazu had more salt in him then a 2009 Call of Duty lobby and the fact that he completely overrode ALLMIND with his sheer overpowering salt just to have another go at 621 is truly amazing
There is one other place you encounter allmind on a 1st playthrough. It's small but adds a lot to the character. The first time you can actually encounter the invisible mechs is in the chapter 1 mission to destroy the dafung mt's. If you return to where you crash landed one of the mechs will be there. Kinda creeped me out just encountering that thing way back there when it just makes the wierd insect sound and attacks you. It's a small interraction but it goes to show how allmind been watching you since the very beginning. The mech wasn't there when you crash landed but by the time you steal a license and go on your 2nd or 3rd mission she already dispatched a drone to survey your crash site and possibly start spying on you.
@@brambl3014 no earlier than that, it's grid 135 cleanup. If you remember the tutorial you landed, walked a bit then flew up to a short tunnel and opened a door. The door leads to grid 135 which is where this mission takes place. Thinking back to the tutorial you went on the catapult well in "grid 135 cleanup" you start at that catapult area an go backwards. The entire mission is in that area but you can return to where you land by flying through the hole in the wall.
shouldn't we us but on Balam, you could notice a few destroyed mech around there, mean that they are they to either sabotage Balam group, or to spy on them
That final moment of iguazu rejects Allmind I think is the perfect microcosm of his trajety. Igazu isn't bad infact he's good he's a very good pilot, that's why he's surrounded by the best of the best, Mishigan even says that "Iguazu is worth 100 of you" to an entire MT division when they insult him, he could just never be The Best and his bitterness wouldn't allow for that and blinded him to all his other achievements, the moment when he finally throws it all away rejecting Allmind, his support, his anger, the voices, he's pride in that final moment, admitting that he knows how this ends, saying that now when you're at your weakest you always pull it back, that's when he shows how powerful he truly is and why he deserves the tital of final boss, he's finally at peace and quiet just fighting even knowing he can't win he isn't angry anymore and is one of only two characters (other being Rusty) to break to rule that once the AC is dead it's gone and not gonna do anything, because even when blowing up, instead of wining or screaming in anger he goes for one last swing at you (Apologizes for any mistakes my English isn't the best)
I think something most people miss that I think might be one of the key reasons All-Mind picks *those* 4 specific pilots- O'Keefe, Sulla, You, and then finally Iguazu is that all four of you are some of the more notably *troubled* merc's of the entire roster. O'Keefe (The Presumed first) has insomnia, eats shitty food, drinks shitty coffee, he's one of the most notably downtrodden characters you meet. Sulla, who has been so thoroughly fucked up that he literally only finds meaning in life through hunting people Then *You*, Raven, 621, one of hundreds of hounds that have been sent to die in Walters quest- you barely are a *person*. And then finally, Iguazu, the loser. Why is this important? Because you all are specifically the people All-Mind wants to help the *most*, along with your coral augmentations, and manipulatable qualities. Iguazu I think wasn't picked for no reason- rather, he was picked *because* he is such a loser. All-Mind gave the man with nothing *everything* through the exact process she wants everyone to go through- becoming one with her, becoming one with their *AC*. Iguazu is a loser that stands to benefit the most in the end. All of you were the exact downtrodden mercs that All-Mind is trying to lift up through her plan. Also- the reason All-Mind presumably fights you is that if *you* trigger the release, Ayre and *You* are the primary consciousness that is spread over the stars, and All-Mind is fighting you over the right to be the one who gets to pull the trigger and be at the end of the tunnel after all of this. Ayre and Raven or All-Mind and Iguazu- who is the duo that will be the major part of the hivemind duo. At least, that's what I felt was going on.
I think the trigger is the heightened state of mind a pilot in sync with the coral gets to during combat, resonating with the coral, causing it to coalesce and eventually propagate. The trigger was the fight with the machines at the end, so as you begin combat, All Mind had already won. The whole finding Raven to be an aberration is the effect of corruption of integrating Iguazu.
No, its because gen 1-4 augmented humans are created by introducing coral to their bodies so they can interface with their AC directly and makes them susceptible to coral symbiosis. Gen 5's and above do not use coral technology and are incapable of reaching Coral symbiosis.
I feel that the death of a symbiote - Ayre or Allmind is the key. When the coral convergence realises that a coral being has been killed near itself, it starts the process of scattering itself (to prevent it from being burned enmass or any other harm). Someone had to die. Iguazu and ALLMIND did.
@@anuragpradhan7500 I'd argue that Father Dolmayan not having any noted 'Secondary Symbiote' or whatever- he was *capable* of it but chose not to, meaning I think that it's not really required. Also- I don't think she thought of him as an Abberation because of Iguazu, Raven is notably a fucking oddball with their connection to Ayre I feel and they're strength, like Ayre and some other characters say: You are simply *too strong* to be normal and in some senses that's dangerous even up to All-Mind I reckon.
Great video. I think ALLMIND and its origin is some of the biggest mysteries in the game. We can only theorize upon analyzing its actions what its original purpose was, as there's nothing explicit. Also, someone recently commented on the Armored Core subreddit that Sulla has a perfect build for fighting Balteus (pulse rifle and bazooka). And it got me thinking. Balteus is deployed upon shutting down the Watchpoint. So Sulla was ready to shut down the Watchpoint himself, establish Contact with Ayre (something necessary for triggering the Coral Release) and then fight Balteus. It was probably planned to happen later, but we attack the Watchpoint ourselves and Sulla is quickly deployed by ALLMIND to stop us and do it himself. And it's only described visually. I was in awe when I realized that.
I didn't even realize that until you posted this. This is actually crazy that a simple build could actually tell a larger story than what is told initally. Well played FromSoft.
There's a destroyed craft in the area, one of the ghost things belonging to Allmind I think it's data talks about an old mercenary being the trigger. Or something like that, it's on top of the tall building that separate the first 2 areas. There also a secret ghost fight right at the very beginning of the game that seems to indicate that Allmind was watching you from the moment you landed, as you are one of the few augments that seemed compatible. So there more to it than just his build it seems.
@@DaemonetteBait yes, absolutely. Those are the most direct clues to be examined, but I just never saw anyone discuss Sulla's direct situaton at that mission, including his equipment. I think it simply adds to those things you mentioned
@@MataNuiOfficial right when I discovered that secret fight at the beginning of the game, coupled with Allminds new dialog saying we've returned I knew right away something was up with AllMind, and then NewGame++ the fight with Suila and the enemies and Walter Asks who tipped you off was different from the first time where Suila just doesnt respond but that alt encounter he says that we're dangerous meaning unlike the first time we fight him when he's cocky, the alt version he was warned from the get go don't take this one lightly and if ALLMind told him he's taking it dead seriouslly
@@sdbzfan1this is double interesting because in this timeline we already helped ALLMIND through Kate Markson. I guess when we defeat the Cataphract and the two Ekdromoi, ALLMIND decided we're dangerous, so when we attack the Watchpoint and Sulla is dispatched, he goes with a backup crew of ghost mechs just to be sure.
Here's something I found regarding Iguazu during Balam's failed assault on the Wall: You can find the remains of G4 Volta's AC on the left side of the battlefield. It has a log where Volta tells Iguazu "You picked a good day to go AWOL" Iguazu ghosted the Redguns on the day of the attack. Despite all the boasting he was doing, he was too afraid to actually climb the Wall and probably got Volta killed by not being there. He ran away, only to watch from the sidelines as 621 did it and claimed all the glory.
Things like this makes me wonder what he did to get Michigan really mad. Call it what you may, but G1 had the patience of a saint and still defended Iguazu during Balam's last stand against 621. The man had character and loyalty to his subordinates
I doubt G1 was ever as mad or cruel to Iguana as people say I think Iguana's inferiority complex made him believe that Michigan hated him@@TheNapster153
Meh, Juggernaut would've smoked both of them anyway, they were doomed regardless. Even Rusty was ordered to get the fuck out, let us weaken machine a bit more and then die (or just die) so Vespers could come back as a second wave and finish off Juggernaut.
@@exploertm8738Rusty managed to solo a juggernaut and whatever forces that blocked his path to the wall while still being capable of helping you in killing another juggernaut. Rusty didn't leave because of the dangers, but rather the fact that Snail hates you. Snail disregards the well being of his subordinates to a supernatural level. Considering Swinburne gets lobotomized for losing to you while surviving says a lot. So the Vespers was more than capable of taking the wall without you.
@@gokufromfortnite5600 Michigan seems like your typical "drill sergeant nasty", but he acts like a stern parent to the redguns. He knows he's not invincible, so he's basically pushing them to become the best so that when he does kick the bucket they can actually still do their jobs. Of course, his way of doing this leads to either blindly obedient soldiers or people who just hate his guts
I took Iguazu to be a complete joke and never paid any mind to him until the end of the 3rd playthrough, at which point he kicked my ass for a few hours, and honestly, it was pretty cathartic hearing him finally best Raven
Third playthrough made me feel bad for the guy, he was an ass but was also being driven mad by the voices of the Coral. He was a gen 4 just like Raven and every time he shows up after we meet Ayre he always mentions hearing "the sound" and his head hurting, by the time he shows up in Institute City and during the final fight he will go off on schizo ramblings about us doing it to him on purpose and laughing at his back.
Also... the mercenaries you beat in the game with ties to AllMind actually utilize AllMind weapons and equipment. You can even see this in the AC preset build registry. Sulla actually uses quite a few pieces of tech provided by AllMind, namely the Javelin missile series. O'Keefe (or VIII) uses AllMind equipment as well. It's interesting to see where these mercenaries and AC's pop up in relation to the greater AllMind plot. There is also Kate Merkson which is a particularly weird case because she doesn't pop up in the AllMind mercenary lists...but uses Mind Gamma's build. This is why I always believed the Kate was just AllMind, first you help create a truly powerful AC build for her, then she utilizes that build to fight on Rubicon. Edit: Another reason AllMind attacks you in the end is because AllMind can't comprehend the principle of choice and cannot leave the 'trigger' up to the choice of a human. In our earlier playthrough we may have suddenly sided with Ayre after doing nothing but corporate favors. We may have sided with the Rubiconians only to betray them for money. We, as players, make a lot of choices which all have a chance for us to pick one or the other. AllMind sees that if we remain in control of the decision-making, there will always be _A CHANCE_ we will turn our backs on release and not do it. AllMind can't let _A CHANCE_ exist and thus decides to absorb us to guarantee release, rather than leave it to chance.
During the final fight, Allmind refers to 621 and Ayre as "irregulars" - unpredictable outliers in the data that could pose a threat to the plan. I think this works into the reason why AI controlled ACs invariably lose too. Because they run solely based on logic and lack the spontaneity of choice. Allmind can't roll the dice without knowing how it will land beforehand.
Same with Iguazu too when he ambushes you underground after he deserts, unsure about the weapons but i do remember he has the Allmind arms equipped (rewrote to add important detail).
I'm surprised there weren't any mentions of the lore pieces that reference Iguazu. When they mention Headbringer in the Arena, it states he was a gambler that "always bet big and often lost" and basically only wound up getting 4th gen surgery by selling off his body to pay gambling debts. Not only that, but one of the art logs you can find, STV 5 (iirc only in NG++) shows Iguazu hiding from hired killers sent to collect on his debt. I think a lot of this background really, really builds upon Iguazu's characterization and ultimate appearance as the final NG++ boss. Not only was he willing to "Gamble it all" and cast the die, he was willing to sacrifice everything to win, including his humanity, making his jealousy and insecurity the perfect things for Allmind to prey on. Not only that, but him being early gen augmented, Gen 4, means that while he might not be impressive to us, he's still (as Walter puts it, albeit when directed towards Raven being Gen 4) "Just as good a pedigree as any other." And it allowed him to connect with the coral. Albeit, in what appears to be a much more hostile manner than Raven and Ayre. His entire life is built upon misfortune after misfortune after misfortune, cutting and hacking and ripping pieces of himself off and being forced to pilot and AC in the shit-end of butt-fuck-nowhere, Space, and he can't even do it well enough to get respect from those around him. Volta, arguably the only one who is chummy with Iguazu (due to their shared goal of decking Michigan), dies during the attempt to scale the wall. He's a gambler that's never won and the only thing he has left to bet is himself. He is the literal inverse of Raven. Raven, who we know has been crippled, borderline lobotomized by Gen 4 augmentation, and still wins damn near effortlessly. It makes Iguazu's last lines to Raven all the more poignant "I always envied you... the freelancer who had it all." Which equally ties into just how *shallow* Iguazu's mentality is and how little he understood Raven.
I had actually guessed the All Mind reveal right away. I had been talking to someone about I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. In it, the antagonist is a super computer that goes by AM which stands for different things at different points. So I hear a robot voice with an AM emblem and immediately started joking that All Mind was the master mind and it just kept making more and more sense for that to be true
Same. I was like, "oh, an AI that is cataloguing every piece of human equipment, tactics and even the coral. Yeah, this isn't going to go south at all..." (By the end I was also like, "we'll get stronger together, and then I'll defeat you when you turn on me, which I'm like 99% sure you're going to do, lmao.")
@@Eladelia For sure. Subtle enough to surprise some people and at least be believable that the humans didn't just shut it down while it was still in R&D, but odd enough that if you know tropes and you hear that robotic voice, you know it's going to do something sketchy in the future. Plus, we're already doing this path. We're starting to tinker with the idea of giving AI weapons and it's giving us scary results, like that USAF experiment that showed that when you try to cancel a mission you gave AI, it tries to cancel you, and I don't mean in the Reddit kind of way.
@@manictiger The evolution talk was a red flag too. Anything referring to improvements as evolution in a story will be the main villain and need killed.
yeah, if u played any old AC games, that is usually the true boss. I kinda suspected it from the start. Kate Markson, I was like, bruh u are totally Allmind.
Dude "Allgazu, The Ultimate Hater" is the most meta final boss ever. 10/10. Dude sends you hatemail and sends someone to gank you. FromSoft has lost their mind lmao.
Something to consider about human pilots being superior to AI. Think of it like a modern missile defense system. The automated systems make calculations and adjustments at inhuman speeds. But, there are many variables that are batter evaluated in real time by a human mind. Because the methods of evaluation are different. Both the human mind, and the automated systems are insufficient on they're own. But are devastatingly effective in tandem. This is why AM needs humans and cannot rely on its own AI systems. Because it cannot "think" like a human.
Because of AC I looked more into the US airforce and such, and sorta researched why human pilots haven't been phased out for AI controlled jets, and something came up like what you said about how humans plus a AI support system being far superior than the two on their own.
in Armored Core games of the past, it was a common theme to feature Super AI trying to control humanity. I believe Allmind's intentions when triggering the Coral Release was to both evolve humanity as well as take total control in the process. so that Allmind could continue to help and support humanity beyond the Coral Release. of course this would mean that free will had to go and it is kinda hinted in the game that Allmind views humans with a free will as a threat. the difference between Raven and Ayre triggering the Coral Release is that they just evolved humanity without taking control, preserving everyone's free will and their ability to make their own choices and forge their own destinies. Allmind wouldn't have done that, she would have evolved humanity but done so in a way to make humans more subservient to her. that's why Raven and Ayre come to blows with Allmind and Iguazu, that is why they ultimately fight.
25:15 There's a small detail missed here- in Operation Wallclimber there is a comms log you can find in the first area; it's G4 Volta's (the other Redgun from the Dam mission) final message to Iguazu. Among other things, he states that "[Iguazu] chose a good day to go AWOL". Iguazu was too much of a wuss to even try to climb the wall, despite all of his bragging. He chickened out when his colleagues needed him most. It clearly added to his growing inferiority complex towards 621.
@@samnunnink7575 He disappeared without permission on the day of the RG's attempt. It doesn't take much to connect the dots to where he was supposed to be going that day, but never showed.
I think my favorite part about the very end with Allmind is that she only turned on you because she no longer needed you to complete The Mission. She didn't consider that you might actually be willing to follow through with the plan, because you are human. When you defeat Iguazu, and her by extension, she asks what you will do. And you and Ayre promise her that you will still follow through with the plan, in spite of her betrayal. And it is in that moment she realizes that humans really can be trusted with their own futures.
What I liked about ALLMIND as a character was how she talked. She always talks in third person or with "we/us", but during the final Xylem mission she says "I will deal with them myself". This was the point where I noticed that she had gone full super villain mode, taking matters to her own hand.
The story telling of Fromsoft is just unmatched. It is always told via gameplay and despite the limited means of expression in this game, the compelling story still gets told. And their skill to connect their fiction with real life makes it even more relatable and romantic. I am struggling with this game at the moment but it's so enigmatic, and the player growth prospect is so strong, that it makes me want to trudge on.
Except that he actually takes out the Spiders partway through, specifically because they were supplied by Allmind, and he wants to have a one-on-one duel with you. In the end he finally overcame his insecurities. Sure, he lost, but at least he lost standing on his own two feet. He even relishes the fact that the voices and noises are gone.
@@baltzy1616 Those were ALLMIND. the entire fight he yells at her to leave him alone and then he's genuinely happy when you get to fight one on one lmao
I think gen 4 augmentation is to blame for a lot of iquazu's personality, water says it emotionally stunts you which explains a lot of his emotional immaturity and inability to deal with loss. Also, as someone who gets overwhelmed by lots of noise I can understand why he's stressed around you: the cause of the noise. I think his relationship with Michigan could be touched on as well, Michigan beat iguazu and iguazu joined the redguns just so he could get a chance at surpassing him.
Slight correction. 8:50 first time you can encounter the “Ghost Ac’s” is in mission “Grid 135 Cleanup” If you fly towards the back of the second room where the enemies are, you will see and can enter a tunnel that you used in the very first mission of the game. This will lead you back to your original crash site, and a Ghost AC is inspecting it. Walter even has additional dialogue. Also note the burning MT’s in the area.
I like how her mech's fighting style exemplifies the human > AI piloted robots. They primarily fight in stealth and rush you with numbers. Overwhelming you with numbers and surprise attacks because in a straight up fight, all it takes is a few well placed shots from low or mid tier damage weapons to stagger/outright kill the mechs.
Honestly as an insecure person (not to iguazu's degree but still),I really liked and related to Iguazu. That feeling of not being good enough, constantly feeling judged and how it can eat at you. and honestly this video and comments kinda shows who does and doesn't understand and share that feeling of insecurity. Me being a tad more emotional person, I didn't feel happy/great beating him when he asked what made the player so special because i could relate to having those feelings/questions. He feels like a cautionary tale of sorts about not working through your insecurities. But maybe as a side, it also shows how others might view insecure people. Because by example of the video and comments. You are laughing at him, you are calling him a loser. you are reinforcing his insecurities and fueling his spiral. But idk I could be way off base but that's just my overall unrefined thoughts about him. Idk how many if any actually any of my thoughts on this.
I think he's a loser, and I can admit to relating to him on some level at least when I was younger, what makes him a loser is his attitude, his sour and petty tone towards mostly everyone, the way he acts and goes about things, the problem isn't him being insecure, it's him letting his insecurity take reign of his life, YES he's in a shitty situation, YES he does have every right to be insecure, that doesn't mean he has to act like a bratty teenager, though his will is commendable, where does the line start between stupidity and determination? In short I THINK he's a loser because he is unwilling to accept his short comings and cannot hold himself accountable.
Yeah, there's definitely truth in there, if you feed into it via mockery you're not helping, but making it worse. Frankly, my first few times facing him I was more of the 'chill out dude' but gradually lost any kernel of respect when he kept acting the same. So you do have a good point there, but in some ways, he does to a level bring it on himself given his refusal to at least make an attempt to be better. Then again, we don't know his full story before we met him. Iguazu from when he first joined the Redguns might've been a prickly and slightly insecure dude on day 1, but only grew into who we knew him now from constantly being hit with stuff that fed into that insecurity
@@Furydragonstormerhe's both insecure and very obsessive. From what we do know of his past is that he picked a fight with Michigan and lost, he never let that go even during the events of the game. That grudge is still there but that's quickly superseded by you, he becomes obsessed with being better than you, even to the grave. He's 100% a tragic character but pretty much everything that happens to him is due to his obsession with you, his cocky nature and his insecurity. Ultimately if he just didn't pick a fight with G1 and later us due to him believing he was hot shit, his downward spiral wouldn't have happened. I do view him as rather tragic but feel no sympathy for him in the end, since it was all self inflicted.
I love when he overpowers allmind in the fight and the music partially cuts out to make it feel a lot quieter, it's like his will is so strong it even makes us resonate with it. And how relieved he sounds to finally have the silence makes me think he was unable to resonate with the coral as well as us resulting in it coming across as painful noise or something like tinnitus, his whole character feels like a tragic reflection of Raven and what could have been if events panned out differently for 621
During my first play through, during the fight at the tunnel where you kill Iguazu, I was laughing my ass off cuz he was so easy. And then he said his "I know you're laughing" line and that genuinely scared the shit outta me.
I must add, the description for all the MIND LETTER components specifically states that the purpose is to have the pilot be able to fully feel the world through the AC. Akin to having a nervous system in the AC for all senses to treansfer, in order to feel the world around. This might be more of Allmind's human side, since Ayre also wants to test it out in the virtual simulation. this could very well be Allmind trying to make bodies for this merger between humans and coral, to be able to cohabitate the ACs in a way that for both of them would let them fully experience the world for all it brings. In the end, the superiority complex and the inferiority complex of Allmind and Iguazu represents what the coral and a human will bring. Balance. In a sense they were close to being the equals of the Raven and Ayre. even if their individual components were so undervalued respectively.
Snail was doing the same thing, putting less and less of a person into an AC trying to figure out how much of a human element was needed. AI controlled ACs seem to always be worse than piloted ones because humans have the innate drive to survive and making the AC their actual body would likely increase that drive by quite a bit as you'd protect the AC even more.
The fact that Iguazu's 'ghost' can temporarily usurp ALLMIND in its own network is unsettling. His spirit is the strongest of anyone in the game, shackled by his own fear.
Iguazu was so sensitive to the coral that he could always hear it communicating from Coral engines. Then all he hears in the second half of the game is the Coral being burnt up and screaming, turning him mad, and ALLMIND needed someone with that sensitivity to Coral to track the progress of the Coral rebuilding.
I personally think G5 is a well-written character as well. People may get annoyed that he's always coming back and whining. But when you think about certain parts of his dialogue, he does reach his breaking point. He's constantly talking about voices in his head, and how everyone is looking down at him and laughing at him. So when Raven comes into the picture, a nobody essentially, he breaks and starts projecting. He says Raven is a nobody and not worth all his accolades. This mirrors G5's position in the Red Guns. He's a relatively high ranking Balam AC, but look at how he battles. He stays back and uses a pulse shield while shooting at enemies. I was intrigued about where G5's story was going, and I didn't think it would get resolved at all when going into NG+ and NG++. When he comes down as the final antagonist, I couldnt help but smile. He hated you so much, due to his envy, he ends up being the final challenge for Raven. I wasn't really annoyed to keep seeing him as the story went on. I just thought, damn, this guy hates Raven so much, that he will do anything to beat Raven. Also I kind of popped off when Igazu finally pushed back Allmind, and was relatively in control of himself for the moment.
You can't help but feel a bit proud of him, especially if you're not cheesing the final boss and can appreciate the challenge be brings. We've obviously had our moments. Rusty had me cheering when he said "I won't miss" and later "I won't stop!". And at the end of the game Iguazu gets his own iconic line "shut up... I'LL SHUT YOU UP!". The audio distortion and the actor's spitefully triumphant tone, along with the buildup throughout the game with Igauzu pathetically complaining about the voices in his head really make the moment shine. This game executes the "edgy anime" tone better than the best of action anime.
it's worth noting Iguazu does have a understandable reason for his hatred. Iguazu didn't join the Redguns voluntarily, he was pressganged into them. He had a string of bad luck and ended up in debt, a debt Balam bought off and forced him to get augmented and become a pilot. While some people on Rubicon know the story behind 621 and Walter, Iguazu doesn't. As far as he know this is a person who since coming to Rubicon has beaten him multiple times and succeeded at everything he's failed to do, all the while he believes them to be a free man, no debt, no superiors, and capable of choosing for themselves. Everything he wants but can't have.
My read on the whole Iguazu+Allmind thing is that Iguazu isn't the only one in there. Allmind's name is rather literal, she is All Minds. An Ai a the core but one that assimilates approximations of human minds via observation and interaction. The arena is the playground for this interaction, a means by which Allmind can better recreate minds based on how they interact in a virtual environment with real people. But she doesn't simulate people who are antithetical to her goals of coral release which is why she doesn't simulate Walter and why Carla has to actually hack her AC data into the arena program as a cheeky way to screw with Raven, something which Allmind admits was not planned. When Allmind approached Raven at the end I think it was to finally assimilate him and Ayer the same way she had assimilated so many other minds. But Allmind ran into a problem. She had assimilated a perfected copy of so many pilots, able to make copies of them and plug them into pilotless ACs. and one of the copies she had made was Iguazu. And Iguazu hates Raven. Hates him so much that Iguazu would never allow himself to be merged with Raven. The way I read it, the last battle isn't Allmind and Iguazu teaming up against Raven and Ayer. Its Iguazu's hatred and envy, his raw individual human negativity overpowering Allmind's grand perfect logical plan and seizing control to destroy the thing he hates. During the fight, there was a moment where Allmind says something to the effect of this being counterproductive, only for Iguazu to roar over the AI, screaming that he doesn't care about any of that, all he cares about is finally overcoming Raven. In a story about the power of the individual will, the conglomerated will of Allmind could never have maintained control when two individuals, their conflict, one's hatred and the other's instinct to survive, clashed. One last thing about the ending. I have a different read here too. Its not that all of humanity is being uplifted. Allmind needed all those minds, those copies, to upload into the Coral Release so that the following diffusion would also be a diffusion of those wills. But thanks to Iguazu's selfish determination ruining the assimilation of Raven and getting Allmind and all her stored copies destroyed, its only one paired will that goes into the coral release. In the last scene I don't think Ayer's "we"' is referring to all humanity, or the coral. Its the we of her and Raven. "We're everywhere. We're Anywhere." The ultimate triumph of the individual human will. One individual, human and Coral in perfect synch, spread across the cosmos in an uncountable number of mechanical bodies and systems. The next evolution in the galaxy. And do you really think the remnants of humanity, the corps and the dystopian government are just going to sit aside as this galaxy wide apotheosis of sentient machines come to be? As Ayer says: "Begin Combat Mode"
@@Jetstreamsamsbiggestglazer Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. And believe it or not thats also just another shot by the people who made Evangelion at telling the same goddamn story, this time with less depression.
I think you're right about what you said, with Raven just doing what ALLMIND wanted anyway in the final ending. But I think you may have forgotten something - the fact, that as you said, ALLMIND is a control freak. You did what she wanted, but *without her presence.* "Ultimately good, but a ruthless control freak" fits this perfectly. You did what she wanted, but removed her from the picture. She regretted that more than anything, IMO.
One thing though, I really love ALLMIND's eng voice, and Iguazu is probably the most human of all the characters in the game, you know, he's literally us when we first picked up this game and losing to every boss battle, until our will overcame it all.
I actually liked Iguazu's attitude in the first mission with him. I felt pretty bad after betraying him on NG+ and seeing him spiral with jealousy/hatred. I actually didn't betray the Redguns on NG++ in hopes he would stick with them but despite never doing anything to get on his bad side he still went nuts all the same. The game clearly doesn't expect you to like the guy but I just think he's funny 😅
I looooove how Allmind gradually came to the forefront. The early "glitches" tipped me off that something was going on here, and gradually I came to suspect that I was actually training skynet. Absolutely awesome!
i think i'm partially dyslexic because i saw Allmind and Nineball next to each other in your comment and thought for a moment that "Allmind" was an anagram of "Nineball"... i think i'm losing it
@@lornbaker1083 yeah, I remember 20 yrs ago, as a kid when I played the old AC games, I was like WTF? Nineball isn't a person, it's the AI that was running the Raven's Nest? Mind Blown
One thing I like about how Allmind develops as a villain is how her dialogue throughout playthrough 2 becomes increasingly ominous and menacing. As you help support the Mind Alpha program, which begins as a fairly benign attempt to build a better support AC by analyzing your fights with the tester and trainer, she says things like "ALLMIND is constantly improving with your assistance" etc. etc. But as you move on to crushing symbolic standins for the other major factions, The Corps, The Rubiconians, she says stuff like "We are nearing perfection." and "Soon Allminds evolution will be unstoppable." And other generic villain oneliners. Until eventually everything she says is shaded with menace and malice so that even the "welcome back, we expect great things from you" at the start of NG++ is vaguely threatening. Great stuff.
as an absurdist, I understand O'Keef. However, at the same time, humanity's strength has always been its ability to evolve, both through invention and through changing perspectives. Humanity in AC6 has stagnated. Humanity has had their lives taken over by megacorps that drain away the enjoyment of the human experience solely to increase profit margins. Humanity in AC6 is stagnant, and it needs to change. the problem arises in that forces like the corps, the PCA, and the Overseers are resisting that change, ironically forcing that change to be violent. the only reason I consider the 'true' ending to be a 'bad' ending is the fact that we make the choice to evolve away from the rest of humanity. It's the same reason I dislike the assimilate ending in ME3. To force change upon someone is to violate their right to self-determination. but it seems that it was already lost.
The fact that Iguazu's toxicity is so radioactive it caused an ascended AI to tilt mid-fight is truly a statement to the indomitable League of Legends player's spirit. Honestly my favorite part of Iguazu is when 621 beat ALLMIND, Iguazu said that he envied us; the freelancer who had it all. It's a point where Iguazu finally accepts that feeling of inferiority in comparison to 621 and faces it head on instead of trying to run away like he did to a lot of things in the story, and I believe there's a very human part to that. Another thing is that Iguazu kinda has a shonen protag vibe to his character. Think of this: what kind of character has so much willpower that even when their individuality is suppressed by a godlike AI they can still break free? Iguazu is stupid, impulsive, has a powerful ego and has insecurities which REALLY reminded me of parts of Naruto when he's a kid, except that this time, Iguazu's willpower is not a solution to all problems.
G5 Iguazu reminds me of the sort of rival decay we saw with Jared Messa in Zeta Gundam and Ein from Iron-Blooded Orphans. Basically rivals who can't win or keep up with the main character and rather than growing stronger from each defeat they grow weaker. Each defeat knocks another piece of their humanity out from under them until they have so little left that they undergo humanity erasing procedures in a last ditch effort to win. And they still lose.
I noticed Allmind's rise to prominence, then action. I ranted about it to my friend who knows armored core lore, and nearly freaked him out when online arena was announced as _nest._ AS IN RAVEN'S NEST, WHICH WAS PERPETUATED BY AN A.I., THAT SOME AC FANS MAY REMEMBER. I said that if ALLMIND'S final form was red and black, I'd freak the fuck out. It DID pull out a seraph-sized monster though.
Funny thing about that Seraph comparison. The one thing Allmind's fitting of that IBIS weapon's frame can't do? Turn into a plane to attack you. But in it's original Rubicon Research Institute fittings it could. It's the same frame Ayre uses in the Fires of Raven ending, the one that turns into a plane form to start the fight and for a few attacks on you. Allmind's stripped out the Coral reactor, the Coral weaponry, slapped on it's own energy based gear instead and given it a new color scheme. (Along with some slight mods to the frame.) That's also why Ayre grabbed the Ephemera frame with Coral weapons, instead of the machine she used in the Fires ending, it wasn't left open for her to use.
I like how Allmind comes out of nowhere. It feels we are doing something forbidden and walking down a shadowy path. Epsecially when she tells us to kill Snail.
That was my favorite part of her story. She's like, "We both know how this plays out; but what if we DON'T hand Arquebus the Plant on a silver platter?" It feels like using meta knowledge to subvert a scripted event, but you're not the one in control.
I think it's both endearing and tragic that the one time Iguazu is complimented in game is when he's nowhere to be seen. In the attack on the red guns near the end of the game, Michigan says something that shows he genuinely respected Iguazu on some level beyond just a soldier. "Iguazu's worth a hundred of you, which means, Albany, the merc's worth twenty of him!" I genuinely feel for Iguazu, and I wish he would listen to one of the other Red guns(forgot which conversation log it was tied to) when he said that he had a family that appreciated him, a family in the red guns.
I actually loved Iguazu as the final boss. The moment he made ALLMIND and Ayre disappear using nothing but his own spite was really magical. For a super AI's plot to be pushed aside like nothing by a man's anger, that sort of thing is really hype for me. I'm a huge sucker for the final fight between two beings standing at the apex of everything to be, not between gods or some other transcendent beings, but two humans. A completely different fight, but I love the final fight of Dark Souls 3 DLCs for the same reason.
The third route always felt the weirdest because it made it clear that ALLMIND was more or less aware of the NG+ loop and that it was basically taking care of things for you so you can do jobs for it. Then there's all the Ghost MTs everywhere in NG++. Edit: Something I wanted to add that I just remembered that adds to the 'ALLMIND might be aware of the loops' thing. Iguazu, during the final boss fight, says 'you killed me loads of times'. Mind you, you don't explicitly kill him outside of the first playthrough but even then it's just implied. But considering his ego, he might considering you trashing his trash AC as a 'kill' in his eyes. You wreck his AC twice in the first and second runs if you go the alternative route for one mission, then three in the third run. That's 7 'kills' in total and actually pretty noteworthy
I think Allmind did want control of the situation. During the battle, Allmind talks about us becoming one with her in the new future. It was a fight for who would be in control of the new age.
I keep getting weird looks when I tell people that Iguazu was my favorite character in this game, even over community darlings like Rusty and Ayre, but I’m glad there are other people out there willing to examine his motivations and development without just writing him off as a salty loser. Great video!
When I first beat NG++, Iguazu was out of so far left field that I was kinda angry. I didn't even recognize his voice till half way through the fight. I was also really annoyed that they killed Walter and Cinder off screen without any sort of character change or even letting them acknowledge what's going on. But after watching your video it opened my eyes to the juxtaposition of Allmind and Iguazu. And now I feel it would of diluted the moment if we did get more from Walter or Cinder. I'm definitely walking away now with greater appreciation of the ending.
Funnily enough the subject matter of "Your will as a human" is something that prevails all throughout Armored Core's history, in every game. 1st Gen was R and Nineball 2nd was Leos Klein 3rd was DOVE, Ibis, and the multiple paths of Last Raven 4th was first Anatolia's Raven and then Strayed's choice 5th was taking down Father and Reaper Squad And now, we have Allmind
Two observations -- the name "Allmind" itself foreshadows Coral Release, insofar as humanity merges with the Coral collective consciousness (literally an "all mind"); and Iguazu's voicemail, "You were the only warm body they could find," foreshadows his own fate with Allmind in the third ending (i.e., he was the only warm body she could find).
In a sense, All Mind is the direct evil counterpart to Ayre. She assists Iguazu in the same way Ayre assists 621 on his journey. They are complete opposites of each other. All Mind tries to control Iguazu while Ayre allows 621 complete freedom of choice to do what he wants. Even in the fires of raven ending where Ayre leaves you, she made zero attempt to try to persuade 621 nor did she talked down on him. She merely voiced out that she is sad that they couldnt work together anymore. Meanwhile, when All Mind lost control of Iguazu in the 3rd phase, she expressed regret for relying on Iguazu in the first place. Iguazu is also the complete counterpart to 621 as well. Both physically, and mentally. Throughout the entire game, He felt trapped and wanted to be free. He made really selfish choices that didnt really served any purpose besides wanting to kill 621. Even expressing to All Mind that he doesn’t give a fuck about her goals. He is willing to be used to achieve his revenge On the other side, 621 didnt really made any actions purely for himself. Throughout the entire story, 621 does things for the sake of someone else. Despite that, no matter what choices we make, 621 had the freedom of choice to do what we want the entire game. 621 is truly him. Raven. .
I assumed that when Allmind referred to studying 'integration' she was referring to the integration between Raven and Ayre, possibly trying to study it so she could replicate it. Given that coral seems to have digital qualities, which is how Ayre accomplishes her hacks, she could even be exploiting what she learns watching you to attempt to integrate Iguazu.
*FINALLY someone gets it.* Finally! It was so annoying to see people going "Allmind's motivation doesn't make sense, what is she doing?" When she literally. tells. you. She's high minded and sophisticated. Iguazu? Base as heck. Unable to control his envy.
I always wondered why Iguazu was chosen jnstead of someone like Snail, who would have been way more on board with a plan of such grandure. Iguazu wanted to improve, his insecurity was a poweful fuel for self improvement. Someone like snail already believes he is the best, so there is no room for 'evolution through conflict'. Allmind juat underestimated how beneath all Iguazus insecurity he wanted to be free more than anything. He never chose any of this and he was done being told what to do.
Btw iguazu got chosen because he’s gen 4 like you it wasn’t necessarily random if you look at some of the arena description of playthru 3 it states that after the previous test allmind surmised that making in AC out of older parts from gen 4 era is the best way too upgrade her allmind model AC’s because she wants Raven integrated but understands she a lone stands no chance against you so to take you she attempts too replicate your success with gen 4 iguazu
He's the only gen-4 augmented on the planet who is still purely gen-4. ALLMIND COULD have picked Snail for the one who it would use to initiate Coral Release were it not for two reasons: his further augmentations, and his ego. Snail considers himself as being Arquebus in its entirety, as if he's the only member of the Vespers that matters. He throws away elite pilots to use as bait, all to satiate his own ego at having captured and "re-educated" one of the most dangerous AC pilots on the planet. He's almost inhuman in how he acts and treats others. Iguazu was beaten down and desperate, he would take ANY deal for the chance to prove he's not weak. And that's what makes him easy for ALLMIND to manipulate. ALLMIND could never beat Raven with the candidates it had. Snail wasn't human enough, and Iguazu was far TOO human for ALLMIND to be able to maintain control over, and obviously Raven wouldn't be subjugated by ALLMIND.
Iguazu being assimilated by Allmind, with the context of the story made me remember the line he directed at Raven. "You were the only warm body they could find." Then he was the only guy left that Allmind could take to complete her goals, the only warm body she could find.
37:00 You say that Raven was prepared to carry out ALLMIND's plan anyway, so ALLMIND didn't need to attack them. But what if ALLMIND only attacked Raven because she had absorbed so many pilots who wanted Raven dead? That their desire for revenge was expressed by ALLMIND as simply tying up a loose end
It could be that. Or it could tie into how Coral Release seems to 'format' the Coral to match the triggering pair's relationship to each other. Allmind wants to bring order to chaos, to subsume all minds into itself. This would format all Coral and all humans to match the pairing that triggers the event. Allmind can't just, _let_ the chaos of individuals like 621 and Ayre continue. But once it can't stop it, Allmind still wants to at least get the secondary goal of unlocking that 'potential'.
@@Sorain1ayre and raven are two individuals working together in harmony and perfect unison ALLMIND and Iguazu parasitic. ALLMIND uses pilots and discards them when they're no longer of use. ALLMIND would have led to the destruction of everything if it was allowed to initiate Coral Release
The trigger that got me to keep an eye on ALLMIND is her NG+ dialogue when she says "Raven...You've returned." At that point, I knew something was up with ALLMIND as she had a much bigger role to play in the story.
My quick two bits on Iguazu and the Ice-Worm: He was ALREADY slated for that mission. Michigan may have joked about it being because of his back-talk, but the simple fact that he was in the call at all? Yeah, he was on the roster.
Iguazu as the final boss is like him being the exact opposite of Nine-Ball. Nine-ball is a game of pure skill, with the """pilot""" being a Hustler - one of immaculate skill, who cannot be defeated. Iguazu is a gambler who constantly loses. He says YOU got LUCKY. He get his ass kicked constantly and blames others. He manifests his defeat by being a defeatist and continues to lose. Nobody gives a shit about him (with the exception of Michigan), but he takes EVERYTHING personally. And if he manifested his anger, all his spite, all the frustrations and turned it into power, drive, something useful... well you get his giga blast in the final fight. Something truly impressive, and him finally letting his will be his. He got his win over ALLMIND, but ultimately your will is simply stronger than him.
This man took over Skynet with the sheer power of his inferiority complex.
Man has enough big mad energy to power planets!
AC is powered by envy no generator needed
It's like Vegeta, but instead of a self-pride struggle it's a desperate flurry of jealousy.
Lmfao. 😂😂
@@williamfallsbecame super because he really wanted it lol
Little fun fact, in the 3rd mission of the game you can go back to your crash sight and encounter one of Allmind's drones...she was onto you from the start.
That makes me think, how many "loops" has 621 done before the game properly starts?
i just did that right now
I did that the first time playing that mission because I was nosey 😂
@@toastgoats7545 We don't know what the "canon" playthrough is. So technically just one.
His hater energy is a better energy source than all the coral of Rubicon-3 combined.
Biggest hater in the entire sector of space I respect Iguazu much more in the end for his determination alone
Igauzu is a bigger hater than Snail 😂
My AC: "I don't even know who you are."
Instantly kills the 3rd final boss without thinking.
nah, test pilot is more determined than him,@@sydalg95
Coral is indeed strong, but salt, pure salt is stronger.
"The resolve to cross the Rubicon" is a recurring theme with almost every single major character, including Iguana. It's so deliberate that it's _spelled out_ to the player when you encounter Nightfall Raven: "A Raven is a symbol of resolve."
And, in Iguana's crowning moment where he shuts up both Ayre and Allmind, he finally does it. He completes his arc by joining Raven, Rusty, Ayre, Walter, and Carla as the only characters to possess the resolve to pursue their ideals, no matter the cost.
Throughout the entire game, Iguana is held back by his insecurity, to the degree that every other character can _see_ it happening. Michigan gives him chance after chance with the Redguns, and even defends him when his MT grunts snark about him. Volta tries to talk him up and encourage him when he deserts from the Wall. Coldcall, rather than attempt to reassure Iguana, instead humors his insecurity as a sort of "fine, if you really want this, we'll see if you really feel better." There's no reason to think Allmind's interactions with Iguana are any different-she, too, can see that Iguana is a very capable pilot, and she, too, is _thoroughly disappointed in him_ when he can't get over himself during the first phase of your fight, while Iguana is still in control of Mind Gamma. In phase 2 she essentially takes the reins from him by crushing what's left of his human body (hinted to still be inside Mind Gamma) and assimilating his voice.
His insecurity manifests in the way he pilots and equips his AC as well-he takes noncommittal long-range weapons and a shield, and he fights by cowering behind that shield the entire time. Even when Allmind equips him with Mind Gamma, he keeps that shield and pokes at you from behind it while fleeing from you.
At the climax of his character arc, then, he finally overcomes this. The moment is explosive and changes the scene wildly, in almost every way FromSoft could manage to do so. Suddenly, he has the confidence to face you head-on: he uses primarily melee weaponry instead of kiting with a shield. Suddenly, he's wrenched control from Allmind. Suddenly, his helpers are gone. Suddenly, _the ringing in his ears is gone._ His resolve is rewarded with a total clarity of thought that he previously _did not have._
And, after he loses, he demonstrates his growth one last time: he admits that he was jealous of you. For a character so bent on his insecurity, so fixated on proving himself, _admitting envy_ is normally something they simply are incapable of. Iguana finding the confidence to admit this completes his journey as a character, and resolves his internal conflicts. Despite failing to kill you, he sounds like he's at peace with himself. Even if he _does_ kill you in that fight, he doesn't sound nearly as satisfied as he does when he dies. His "leave a spot for me in Hell" line sounds bitter, and unfulfilled.
Yeah. The way you can see his personality and growth through both his build and fighting style, along with how they change at the end? Great stuff.
THIS is why Iguazu is my favorite character tbh- seeing him destroy the spiders and go wild with those giant claws was the hypest moment for me
Iguana 🦎
Amazing comment man
Amazing analysis, also, Iguana 🦎
Man literally too salty to be absorbed into Skynet. That's a real indomitable human spirit moment in all of this, and that's whats crazy.
He’s literally too toxic for any rational mind to comprehend. Iguana is a truly legendary hater.
@@Mustachioed_Mollusk The man picked a fight with the baddest thing in the room and didn't wimp out. I consider that a courtesy.
Petty spite is a powerful drive.
When I fought him I literally thought "the only thing getting in the way of this grand scheme is the SALTIEST MAN IN EXISTENCE". I actually think it's clever by FromSoft, because it parallels the salt that drives the player to even bang their head against the bosses in these games. So the final battle is literally just two salt lords (the player and Iguazu) going at it.
He was Jealous, Envious and Hateful. The most honest and strongest negative feelings there are. No wonder he had the strength of will he was singular in his pursuit of vengeance against someone who, as he said, "had it all"
“A chain made of human links is easily broken” Allmind should have headed her own advice
Im sorry to be a grammar nazi. Heeded. Its heed, which means to listen to.
That line had me like one of those serial killer's fangirls "she's so dreamy!! 😍"
It’s impressive that Iguazu is written in such a way that not only the characters dismiss him but also the players aswell. The guy has made besting you his life’s mission: he sends assasins to kill you, he deserts just to ambush you. But the moment he leaves the scene , you put his existence in the back of your mind until he shows up again.
I found it unimpressive that he was the final boss 😢
@@johntravolta8494 that was my favourite part
@@johntravolta8494 yeah we are suppose to go " who , why ? " when he appears.
When he showed up as the final boss, I legit was like "wait, who's this guy again?"
What made my playthrough special, was how Iguazu bit it in almost every appearance of that third playthrough. When I betrayed him and G4 at the dam complex, Iguazu got stuck on some terrain and got double stun-needled to death. When he ambushed me while taking care of the hacker bots for Carla, he got in between me and one of the two custom ACs or whatever they were that showed up.....and got blown the fuck up by my rifles and plasma cannons. Then when I took on G2 snail and he ambushed me again, he managed to land right inbetween me and snail as I charged in with the laser lance, prompting me to go "eh....might as well" and finish the combo so he was basically deleted before he could even say his lines.
I believe that the difference between 621 and Ayre pulling the trigger on Coral Release,and ALLMIND doing the same,is a question of on what terms the Singularity happens. I believe that ALLMIND was seeking to become the center of a gestalt intelligence,while 621 and Ayre ultimately seek to produce a vast network of linked individuals.
Individuality vs society
A core theme in the story of this game
I like it.
I personally feel that Coral release is a defence mechanism. Coral has a tendency to flock together. But doing that makes them susceptible to being burned all together. So when they can feel that a coral being is being killed near them, they begin the process of coral release to protect themselves.
This means that someone had to die. I also believe that ALLMIND herself was a coral being. Which is why killing Iguazu and ALLMIND is the equivalent of Ayre and 621 being killed.
Its literally bloody third impact... It would seem mecha themed media just gravitate towards the same story elements.
@@egoalter1276 I think this is actually quite intentional, the way the coral singularity pulses the rings at 34:00 really reminds me of one of the Eva rebuilds
No
the moment i started my 2nd playthrough and ALLMIND introduced herself and she added a new line and said "Raven....You've returned" thats the time I realized something was off.
Right? I could swear the line reading of 'Welcome back, Raven' is different too! It was a moment when I went 'Oh, snap, she KNOWS this is NG+!'
Thats kinda creepy, never noticed that lol
Yep. Also makes you wonder if she's referring to the original Raven or she already knows who you are. That "You've returned" has two meanings.
gives the theory that the entire thing was just a retelling of how the whole thing started@@paulkleihege1509
I held suspicions of All Mind knowing there are 3 endings and then when my NG+. I was like wtf I’m back and All Mind said that line it just clicked
Iguazus story is actually kinda sad
In his arena bio its said he was augmented because of gambling debts
He never wanted to be a pilot
Both it and his augmentation were forced on him
Additionally he obviously wants to do something great with his situation
And you keep getting in his way
Hes insecure and maybe doesnt even recognize himself anymore
Hes nobody and wants to be somebody
Doesnt make him less of a d**k
But kinda adds some small context
Huh, well it seems like Iguazu was relying more on chance rather than will. Hoping that things would land on him, hence "why you?" and questioning "why it's not his turn to be the best." It's still a gambler's mindset, whereas Raven's is a deciding mindset
Until I think the very end. The final phase of the final boss he finally went though with his will and it was enough to overpower Allmind.
Being a gen 4 also made him hear Ayre, however he only heard an annoying sound and it made his head hurt. Later encounters he sounds bordering on psychosis about the sound in his head getting stronger everytime you show up and further drives him to hate 621.
Getting augmented against your will because of massive amounts of debt. That sounds familiar
@@arforafro5523I feel that Iguazu had his own voice, except he never made peace with it. And the voice reciprocated. Hence why he said screeches. He never understood that the voice in his head is a coral symbiote.
Igauzu really was malding so hard that he sold his soul to a sexy AI just to get his ass kicked. 10/10 character
Rael
his cringe energy took Ayre and ALLMIND out during his 2nd phase part 2.
Crimson 1 moment
If I was Raven I would have asked AllMind if it giggles
@@Aaronpendargon*cringeson
Edit: this comment blew up, I'm glad you guys also enjoyed the funny Iguana boi
I absolutely loved Iguazu. Him just showing up while Raven is trying to kill Snail was hilarious. Snail is baffled by how it took mere seconds for his operation to go from business as usual to 'Raven and Iguazu going goblin mode in a garbage pit'
Best description of their actions ever
@@allinairhanson6886snail: now I just wait here and when raven is weake-
(Raven appears)
RAVEN: HEEHEEHAH FECK YOU!!!
GOD DAMN IT, HOW THE HELL DID YOU-
(Iguazu barges in)
Iguazu: RAVEN! I OWE YOU A DOUBLE MAJOR ASS KICKING!!
Snail absolutely fuming and malding at this point: I AM ARQUEBUS YOU UNEDUCATED MONGRELS, **PISS. OFF.**
@@allinairhanson6886 Iguazu is literally just "Goblin Mode: The Character"
I found out recently that the Iguazu river is known for having one of the widest falls in the world (not the tallest). This represents how iguazu’s story is told over 3 playthroughs and his motivations are for the most part shallow and petty.
The Garganta del Diablo, yeah.
Visite twice, still one of the most beautiful and terrifying sights I've ever seen
@@Checheno1906Ever seen Niagara Falls? Now that's a scary waterfall. The horseshoe has the most water flowing over it than any other in the world. You can even walk along a platform in the cave behind, or get up close in a tour boat.
@@davejones9469niagara is raven I guess haha
23:48 then it's quite an irony that Iguazu calling us "the only warm body they could find"
and at the ENDING ending HE himself was the only AC pilot left Allmind could find
Ouch, you're right
Insecure people project their own insecurities onto others. That is why they believe it to be the ultimate insult, since it is to themselves.
The fun thing about allmind being a major antagonist of AC6 is that its a trope as old as armored core itself, the first three games is about dealing with this AI that runs everything the same way all mind does on rubicon, but even more so. The really interesting part is that they represent opposing ideals. All Mind represents forced change, the idea that since change is coming anyway that we should direct it and bring it early so that we can control it. While the AC1 through master of arena AI represents the status quo trying to keep humanity alive by carefully orchestrating a stalemated war between companies. Its interesting how fromsoft can bring back ideas and radically change how theyre interpreted by changing barely anything about them.
Well I suppose they always like to do depth on AI who rule behind the world. Nineball, Controller and now All Mind. Each to their own agenda but ever striving for the right path they see.
I would actually say just AC1 and Master of Arena. Project Phantasma, the game in-between, is kind of the odd duck in the ps1 trilogy since you're actually going up against an organization trying to activate some pre-Great Destruction weapon and it has basically nothing to do with AI. You instead fight several times this nutty dude called Stinger.
I think the real interesting thing is that AC2's story revolves around the protagonist from Master of Arena (or at least it's heavily implied to be him) trying to take things back to the ways of old, or rather, to bring back that continuous stalemated corporate warfare humanity was locked in for so long by the AI. Somehow, despite everything he went through, he came to a realization that maybe the AI he destroyed was right all along.
Armored Core 3 and Silent Line also delve into AIs controlling everything, but 3's timeline is different.
Just fascinating stuff all around.
DaemonXMachina proposed somethng on that idea as well.
Though it's been a while I don't exactly remember exactly the ins and outs of it I DO remember that the AI OVAL has some surprises through the story that culminate in a big surprise.
@@SuperMoogyD Additionally Project Phantasma chronologically happens two years before AC1, while AC1 and MoA are stated to happen concurrently. So that being taken into consideration, and how the AI had been controlling everything for 50 years by then (assuming it was created during or immediately after the Great Destruction, since it claimed to have created the corporations, it should predate their rise to power) the whole affair was likely guaranteed to fail from the get go.
Another very subtle difference in the 2nd timeline, ie 3rd gen, is that while Hustler 1 controlled everything from the shadows, the Controller, it's new timeline reimagining, was out in the open and public. A lot of the conflict was the various factions fighting over continued faith in the Controller's ruling guidance, or trying to break from it under the belief the Controller was degrading and that its failure was imminent.
I came here to say this
Ok so, about the "human pilot being superior to AI piloted mech", I believe this is in relation to the concept of "Irregulars", something that's been almost a staple in most games within the series.
In most of these, "Irregulars" tend to be extremely capable human pilots with the capability of overcoming basically anything thrown their way, most of the times through the sheer will to keep on. ALLMIND herself calls us an Irregular during the second phase of her boss fight. And even more than that, Iguazu manages to overpower her through his own will (and his level of salt), indicating that he might have the same potential as we do
Because he is Gen 4 just like Raven right? I think
@@MrVictor1227he probably could be a candidate for coral release since gen fours were the last to use coral for augmentation
Just to clarify and add on; Allmind does also specifically call Iguazu an irregular. It’s not in the cutscene but in the phase 2 combat dialogue as they argue, she calls him a mistake and an Irregular as well.
Gundam newtype bullshit finds its way into all mecha
@@MrVictor1227 Being an "irregular" isnt exclusive to whether they are compatible for coral release, it may to ALLMIND however. Almost every AC game has an "Irregular" be it the player or other pilots. Majority of these irregulars are those who arnt affiliated with the mercenary orgs (like Raven's Nest, Collard and ALLMIND). Theres also cases where the pilot is a threat to the balance of power as OP stated, this applies to 621.
Iguazu is the same in that regard. I think it is implied that Iguazu isnt the only conscious occupying the mech, but he is the one overpowering the rest, thus distrupting the balance of power.
Good video, but... I feel like you missed a couple of details, both about Iguazu and ALLMIND's plans. Firstly, Iguazu had another mention - a post-mortem appearance, of sorts - during your *first playthrough,* which both recontextualizes him and clarifies some details. If you choose to wipe out the Redguns towards the end of Chapter 4, you'll overhear a lot of chatter among them, and particularly from G1 Michigan, during the fight. At one point, one of them brings up G5 Iguazu, and another snarkily goes "Oh, that loser who ran away with his tail between his legs during Operation Wallclimber?" or words to that effect. Michigan, however, immediately tears into her, declaring that Iguazu was worth 'five of her'. Which isn't really surprising if you think of it - the Redguns are an elite corporate AC-unit, and those with numbered callsigns are elites among those elites. Iguazu didn't wind up as G5 due to family connections - he *was* an exceptionally skilled pilot, people just tend not to notice because of his whiny attitude and persistent insecurity. Before Raven comes along, those insecurities are mostly focused on Michigan himself, who he's mentioned to have actually started a fist-fight with in the past, according to their Arena-bio.
More to the point, Iguazu apparently spends most of the game AWOL from the Redguns. He deserts around Operation Wallclimber, which is why you can find the wreck of his partner from the Dam-busting mission there, but not HIM. He apparently saw which way the wind was blowing and skipped out of that doomed attack - becoming an independent mercenary in his own right, hence why he can be found working as hired muscle for the Junker Coyotes in Chapter 2 of NG+. So, when you run into him at Depth 2 of Watchpoint Alpha during the first playthrough... he wasn't 'ordered there to ambush you'. He isn't working for Balam anymore. He literally infiltrated that highly-secure facility, *on his own,* just to have a final showdown with you. Hence why you instead meet an assassin there during NG+ - he already had his showdown with you back in Chapter 2, and knows he can't realistically beat you. Mind, by avoiding that fight, he manages to get all the way down to Institute City - again, by himself and without any kind of support from the corporations - and is thus able to drop in on V.II Snail during NG++...
So, no, I don't think ALLMIND picked him just because he was all that was left. She wasn't scraping the bottom of the barrel. If she'd wanted someone else as her final champion, she would've taken steps to leave somebody else alive. She picked him because, underneath all those insecurities, he actually *was* an extraordinary AC-pilot, and also because of his seething hatred and one-sided rivalry towards Raven. See, a thing about ALLMIND's plans that was left out of the video, is her repeated focus on the importance of fights between humanoid weapons as a driving force of evolution. There's mentions of it in a few places, but most of it is between the lines. During your first playthrough, literally *all she does* is encourage fights between humanoid weapons. She provides you with a training-mode so you can learn how to fight humanoid weapons. She incentivizes you to fight humanoid weapons in the arena. And she sets up the 'Loghunt' reward-system, which tasks you with... seeking out and defeating humanoid weapons across your various missions, including many that are hidden in out-of-the-way places, and whom you'd have no reason to fight were it *not* for the 'bounty' she put on them.
The final fight is the culmination of all those encounters. YOU are stronger for having gone through all that - you've sharpened your skills and improved your AC thanks to the experiences and parts that participating in the Arena and the Loghunt has provided you with. Meanwhile, her final weapon was clearly developed based on all that combat-data - all the fights in the Arena, particularly the 'Integration Mode' fights from NG+ and ++, all the Combat-Logs you collected for her, they've all come together in a single, super-charged machine, driven by her hand-picked 'Champion'... a man *singularly motivated* by a desire to kill you. That fight wasn't unnecessary, it was *essential* - the final trigger for Coral Release. Note, after defeating ALLMIND, Raven and Ayre don't have to DO anything. Coral Release happens as a *direct result* of them having won - that fight pushed them past some invisible threshold of evolution. Clearly, ALLMIND wasn't *expecting* to lose. She was expecting to win, and for that victory to turn Iguazu into the 'trigger' for Coral Release - your performance during the final fight exceeded her projections, hence you being an 'aberration'. However, in the fine tradition of David Xanatos, she'd made sure that even if she lost, she still won...
I mean, being told that Iguana's worth 5 MT's might be an insult to any AC pilot lol, and I feel like he's a Redgun in Balam by virtue of being an AC pilot. Us as an untested AC pilot were given the callsign G13 just for helping Balam out in clearing a dam after all. G3 Wu Huahai was able to get work with Arquebus after Arquebus won the struggle, while Iguazu was, what, being hired by junkies?
Also, getting to depth 2 isn't all that difficult, and in NG++, he appears in Institute City after us, meaning he would have had an easy time going through depths 1-3 since we literally paved the way for him.
Im pretty sure Iguazu didn't went AWOL on the redgun....well not until after chapter 3 at least
The wall climber operation could just mean that Iguazu decide to retreat AFTER Volta get destroyed instead of trying to finish the mission or die trying, thus, earning him the "coward" reputation.
But then even, in NG+ chapter 2, he said he only take the Coyote commission as a "side job" probably to get the money to pay back the penalty of not finishing the wallclimber mission to Balam.
In the ice worm mission, it's pretty clear that G1 still consider Iguazu as a part of Balam corp, even if he seriously have no expectation for this loser.
In NG: it's clear that up until depth 2, Iguazu follow G1/Balam order to go down the depth until he realize that Raven is going to attack Balam, then decide to go AWOL just to ambush Raven.
In NG+: He didn't go down the depth, instead hire an assasin to kill raven, and then disappear from the story entirely. We could assume that he sensed Balam never gonna win the fight and purely out of spite hire an assassin to kill Raven before he flee the planet.
In NG++: It's pretty clear that he abandon Red Gun right after the Worm, consumed by hatred and envy. It took a bit of time, but he eventually managed to shadow Raven, through the trails of destruction, and barge right in the middle of our Duel with Snail. This is where Allmind, finally, noticed a certain crockroach.
Well spoken
@@Ceronia Ah, I forgot about the Ice Worm appearance... you're absolutely right, he can't have gone off on his own right after Wallclimber, but only AFTER that point. A bit unclear if he stuck with the Redguns all the way down into the Depths and only split off from them in time to (try to) ambush Raven, or did so at some point during Chapter 3 before heading into Watchpoint Alpha on his own. There isn't really anything to suggest that his side of the story should go any differently in NG+ and ++, until right at the end, is there?
You meet him during Cinder Carla's mission regardless, he sends an assassin after you in Depth 2 regardless... perhaps, in NG+, he just winds up picking a fight with V.II Snail by himself and getting killed there. I'm not sure WHY he'd pick a fight with Snail, other than him just being immediately hateable on principle, but he DOES fire on V.II just as readily as he does at you during the three-way fight, so...
@@BlakeTheDrake In the brawl of 3 under the sewer.
It's was made clear by the dialouge that Iguazu have no idea Snail was there.
He only there because he tracked Raven down.
"Ah, you were that stuck up guy in the iceworm mission. Cool, i can kill you too"
Was his line....or something close enough.
Whenever I tell people Iguazu is favorite character, they always act so confused.
To me, he's the most relatable character in the game; and it can be easily seen why with a simple analogy.
Imagine you, an average joe, are just living your life when all of a sudden you get a new younger sibling. Initially, all is fine; however, as time goes on this younger sibling shows that theyre special. Theyre better at school, sports, socializing, whit, and just overall talent. And as life goes on, you maybe graduate high school with average grades, they graduate as valedictorian; you go to a community college, they get a scholarship to Harvard; you get a job in marketing, they become a world-renowned surgeon. At some point you have to ask yourself, "What makes them so special compared to me? We both were born the same parents, we grew up in the same house; so whyre they so much... better, than me?"
Iguazu is obviously the older sibling here, and us, Raven are the younger sibling. We're both Gen 4 AC pilots but were simply, better, for some odd reason. And this just confuses the hell out of Iguazu; it gives him a massive inferiority complex that only makes the one he already had (from being a thug who was forced into Augmentation) even worse.
Iguazu is the most relatable character in AC6 and I love him for it.
I’m a Warhammer nerd and Iguazu reminds me personally of a character from the franchise called Perturabo. He’s a master builder and inventor who tortured by his need to please others before himself. He’s made the leader of a legion of warriors that are siege masters, Perturabo accepts this role with no arguments but plenty of bitterness him and his 18 brothers are essentially demigods by human standards, being super humanly strong, smart, durable and barely age. However because Perturabo is so willing to do what he’s told inspite of his own personal objections he’s always tasked with grunt work. His men are always sent to the grinder, just the worst war conditions possible and because of how much of a bad reputation this gives them, and his own personal bitter attitude it’s instead his other brothers that get praise for all his hard work. Continue this pattern for several centuries and it’s no wonder he betrays everyone and turns traitor. He’s a man so bitter that he makes Black Coffee look sweet, so laughably petty, he hates the empire that never acknowledged him and he hates his brothers even more, he didn’t betray the empire for any ideals or morals, he betrayed them because “fuck you”
And he’s one of the more popular Primarchs in the setting because for as bitter and petty as this man is people get it.
@@fist-of-doom487I esspecially love the scene in which his sister roasted him and called him out for what he was, and then was killed for that. Again, that was because he was a bitter manchild. Pretty much everything she said there was true.
for most their experience is this wast of time that dose nothing while showing up to do nothing other then annoy you. Kind of hard think positivity of a by design a waste of time.
The other side of this is also how Iguazu is among the few authentic depictions of the difference between being inferior and having an inferior complex. Being insufficient when compared to another is no issue, no problem, no condemnation… no villainy. But it’s when you dwell on it, simmer in it, allow it into your identity instead of reserving it as detached observation, suddenly this poison is given power.
Tell the whole story, Wesley
@@radcut7404
there's another time you can encounter allmind at the very beginning of the game, in the mission where you have to eliminate the dafeng MT squad, if you go all the way to the back (where you land in the very first mission of the game) one of her invisible mechs will be there and Walter will comment on not being able to see it
Didn't knew about that. She is always watching man. ALLMIND is awesome and Iguazu is just annoying
@@MrVictor1227Checking this now, dammit..
Not only that, it’s checking out the spot where you crashed. She knew, man.
@@astratan2238 IIRC, there's busted AC's in there too, which I'm fairly sure weren't there when you landed, suggesting the Ghost mech was camping the area.
@@Sorain1 Illegal Entry is empty hallway. Grid 135 Cleanup has two MT wrecks, no ACs.
ALLMIND is not supporting humans, it supports mercs. That is why her plan ends Humanity(O'Keffe was right) and seems like everyone is an augmented AC now. It's ending literally ends with "Engaging combat mode". VI Freud's merc heaven.
If you listen to Ayre between missions, she realizes that merging humanity with Coral is just a single step in evolution, and true human and Coral evolution must come from conflict and struggle. Coral release only ended the Balam-Arquebus War, but a whole new series of wars driven by Coral is just around the corner.
i never realized how freud dream becomes reality while he doing nothing
“combat mode” is a mech mode where the pilot has full control of the mech, the other is “Standard Mode” when resting in the garage.
Allmind's idea for "saving" humanity was merging all of it with herself (her name is a pun).
In the ending without allmind, all that human consciousness that can't merge with coral is just lost. Epic genocide ending.
@@maallos334mi8Yeah but the implication is that they can still kill each other. Kind of like humans today. Except now everybody is experiencing some mechano-body horror because everyone is an AC now. Maybe there are surviving humans elsewhere, who knows.
15:00 that actually gets foreshadowed a bit by Freud in the Fires Of Raven route, when he kills chatty he remarks that AI-controlled ACs are predictable and easy to destroy
Me getting destroyed by 9ball for 2 hours straight:
Frued has a good reason to respond like this too because you can find a broken unpiloted AC that has footage of Frued having to fight off Allmind's assassination attempts
"Kate" fights pretty well when you meet her. I guess its is because ALLMIND is always learning
@@Airdeiswhere can you see this? Did I missed that part? 🙄
@@mikhmat in the jailbreak mission next to the one heavy MT Ayre tells you to avoid right near the start
I found kinda poetic that one of the first things he tolds u is "Dont feel so special, u were the first warm body they could find"
And he was the last warm body that Allmind could find, he wasnt special
That felt more like he was projecting.
I may have missed it but here is a lore bit on why Iguazu is so jealous of Raven/621.
They're both Gen 4 augmented pilots. A generation that is seen as "obselete" compared to the more current ones. So here is Iguazu, near the bottom just struggling to be seen. And in comes Raven/621. A same generation pilot who can do what He can't.
Right, he doesn't have an excuse when it comes to Raven. Raven isn't a shiny new augmented human or a war hero that Iguazu can dismiss as having an advantage beyond his reach.
Then comes Freud who is just a normal dude in an AC that somehow got his ass to the top rank
@@MaidenlessScrub I think Freud is in that spot BECAUSE he's fully human.
@@MrPikaGammer nah if any normal human can best an augmented pilot, then what's the point of augmenting a human in the first place? Freud is literally a different breed
@@MaidenlessScrub That does call into question the necessity of "evolving" the human race with coral. We might be losing more than ALLMIND realises.
It gets really creepy when you realise she's been keeping tabs on you since you first landed. During the mission where you dispatch the Dafung MT squad, you can go back to where you first set foot on Rubicon and find one of her stealth units examining the crash.
People ask why you don't get log hunt data from downing it, but the logical answer is why would you be rewarded for taking out one of her hidden units?
Pretty sure the reason why All Mind focused on those 4 pilots is because Gen 1-4 augmentation had pilots infused with coral. They stopped doing that after gen 5, so later pilots are not able to make contact with the coral like Raven and Iguazu
The 7th generation was actually the first to receive augmentation via coral substitution technology (according to Swinburne's ARENA desceiption), but tbf I don't think we see any 5th or 6 th generation pilots in the game.
Earlier generation augmentation seems to have a marked, negative effect on the subject's "humanity." This probably means earlier augmentation probably had a high rate of development of psychological disorders, a la "You told me you could hear a voice in your head. That's a common side effect of old-gen augmentation." The coral usage is constant throughout the generations of augmentation but it seems that later generation had a massive increase of better preserving the mental state of the subject as usage of coral to augment them became more skilled, thus there was a loss of the capability to remain in contact with C-Pulse wave mutations of the coral (Coral ghosts like Ayre and Seria) indefinitely.
@@rockybirdy1529yeah, but gen 5 and 6 are marked as the generations where coral substitution were actively attempted for augmentations.
Unfortunately the substitution only fully succeeded once generation 7 started. Generation 5 and 6 were referred as "Interim Generations" because the experimentations took so many lives.
@@SiamHossain7there is no such thing as Coral ghost, coral IRL are living organisms in the first place. Arye is locked down in a different facility by the PCA for a reason. But then 621 accidentally released her.
@@strayednine8859 that...explains why we don't see gen 5 and 6 pilots then
Iguazu is not a loser, he gave all he had to prove himself better than us.
Why? Because when we met him we were nobody and he was a little more than a nobody, in fact, we were lower than him in the Arena.
Then Raven got recognition, mission after mission, climbed the wall, killed the worm, etc.
"What makes you so special?"
"Why does it have to be you?"
Are some of his dialogs
He sees us as what he could have been, so he was trying to catch up, because if a nobody like us can do it... He can do it.
But he couldn't, over and over he lost to us, yet he kept trying and he did get much better.
From the battle at the Dam (if you attack him) to the battle against him with the Coyotes he must have leveled up to a Rank B or A, from a D rank in less than a year is very impressive.
Considering he had been with the Redguns for 7 years it's amazing progress, G1 Michigan also respects Iguazu, if you attack the Redguns he speaks highly of him and does not tolerate the MT pilots speaking trash of him because he deserted.
Maybe Allmind chose him because he was the last man standing on the G4< pilots and he got lucky, but didn't we do as well? when Ayre made contact with us for the first time it was pure luck.
Of all the characters in Rubicon, I think Iguazu is the most human of all and the one that improves the most in skill second to us.
Had he not been consumed by rage and jealousy he would have been a great pilot
That's what i love, he really is JUST LIKE US (the player), he may get knocked down but he stands back up determined to continue on
To the point he went sicko mode in the final phase
@@darkjackl999 Exactly! but I see a lot of people hating on him because he always loses against us.
They forget how many times we lost against Balteus, Sea Spider, ibis, etc.
From Soft did a great job making him, a highly underrated and misunderstood character.
@@heifsadd that he was forced into 4gen augmentation to pay back a debt, which hella fucked
Fighting wars he doesnt want to fight for 7 years And he lost his only friend, the only person he's connected with Volta to The Wall.
And whats worse the "voices" being the players behind raven really are laughing at him
He's not a hater dude is just in pain
I've been playing defense for my boy for awhile, show iguazu some respect, gen 4 is as good of a pedigree as any other.
Michigan was right. Iguazu is worth 20 Albanys.
I kinda respect him when he killed me a couple of times during the very last boss. "Save me a spot in hell."
All that dedication, all that submission to his own spiraling anger finally paid off in its own twisted way. A sad turn of events but he finally won.
I found iguazu annoying enough that i put his emblem on the bottom of one of my spring chicken legs (put snail on the other one) and went out of my way to introduce him to it whenever he showed up. He gets himself shot down at least five times in the ng++ timeline (mostly by you) and it seemed you finally got to finish him and snail off while allmind goes Terminator on thr rest of rubicon. Only for the final boss to decend with a familiar whiny voice. I literally shouted "HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO PUT YOU IN THE GROUND IGUAZU!?" Then introduced him to his emblem. Seriously that guy's symbol shouldn't be a rhino beetle, it should be a cockroach for how much he refuses to die
The cockroach line was very well put, brother is simply living out of pure spite
His emblem is not a beetle. Its a bunch of ants carrying the severed head of a beetle.
@@karlo2018 i did not notice that
@@jaygei_2641 can't take credit for it though, it was my buddy that came up with that line
@@karlo2018now the name Head Bringer makes sense. I always thought the emblem seemed kind of strange but i never spared him enough time to look closely.
I love how subtle the changes are at first. ALLMIND seemingly acknowledges your previous actions despite the reset of the timeline.
When I ran into Kate and noticed she was using the Mind Gamma AC, something I helped create in my previous playthrough, it broke my brain.
Allmind really didn't put much effort into disguising the truth about 'Kate Markson' there. Either it thinks we won't notice, or it's just really bad at this.
@@Sorain1 Or maybe it had to assign a reasonable name regardless of its intent for whatever reason.
If it's not trying to hide it there's no story or world reason for it to assign a name beyond giving us a referral tool.
If it's bad at hiding its plans then it wouldn't have bothered with a name, yet it still chose something reasonable.
@@Sorain1She's really bad at it. In the mission destroying the coral transport choppers, she mentions that Kate Markson will be running backup to get the choppers you missed. At 4 choppers, she goes "You are testing Kate Markson's patience."
I don’t think it’s Allmind knowing of some sort of timeline reset, but rather that you are a better pilot with each loop, thus the combat data it gathers from you is remarkably improved, each previous iteration could be seen as allmind running the numbers for the final outcome all beginning with those preliminary tests and arena fights as the data it is testing.
@@erwinlimawan3158 Ah, of course. Lore important dialogue that people who are good at the game will never hear.
My favorite trick.
The fun thing about Iguazu is that this goes back to a scrapped concept from Dark Souls one, where the knight that frees you from the undead asylum was supposed to play a similiar role.
Oscar Of Astora, and yeah I tbought that too!
Best writing advice I've heard recently is this: the antagonist of any story isn't the character who wants the *opposite* of what the hero wants, they're the character who wants the *same thing* the hero wants, and will fight them to get it. It's that struggle which forces hero to confront the weakness within themselves and overcome it, and the villain's failure to do the same, that creates the satisfying climax of a heroic story.
Hey, that's pretty good.
I'm pretty sure Allmind actually contacted Iguazu before he attacks you and Snail at Institute city.
When Iguazu enters the fight, he says "There you are, just like they said"
Nobody else was supposed to know you were there, except for ALLMIND. She jammed basically all communications so that Snail wouldn't see Raven coming to kill him. So it stands to reason that she told Iguazu about Raven, just so that he would fight and get himself "killed". The reason might as well be his persistence on killing Raven, which would come in handy in case he went against the plan at the end.
I think he was definitely on Allmind's list for Coral Release candidates.
There were like 4 names shown in the background when she mentions it.
ALLMIND deployed "copies" of dead pilots, Walter mentions fighting against copies of all the vespers. It makes sense ALLMIND told Iguazu were to find Raven so he could get himself killed along with Snail so ALLMIND could use him for the final fight. This is why ALLMIND offers us to join the loghunt program, the combat logs we gather are what ALLMIND uses to create the "copies" of pilots; that's why Iguazu says "This ghost of me won't last long" on he final fight.
You'll notice his AC has some upgrades from allmind as well.
In any other game, Iguazu would be the underdog protagonist, who is empowered and chosen by an AI as part of some kind of duplicitous bargain, who would then be betrayed by the AI after it’s gotten what it wanted from the ignorant rookie, only for Iguazu to finally complete their character arc and stand up for themselves and to the AI, proving that everything special about them wasn’t because of the AI, but because of their own perseverance and skill.
Just gotta make him more likable and you're spot on.
"In any other game, Iguazu would be the underdog protagonist"
In Project Wingman he is Crimson 1, the main antagonist. Spoilers follow.
The guy is so salty at you winning that he nukes his own home country TWICE. First halfway through the game to spite you for turning the war around, and then again at the very end immediately after peace is declared, just to spite you and set up a chance to 1v1 you over the bombed out flaming ruins of everything at the end of the game.
They aren't actually nukes, they're actually a bit worse; in the game's backstory they set off a chain reaction that killed most of humanity. So, he's risking a global cataclysm, twice, because he's so goddamn mad and obsessed with beating you. It's hilarious because you're a silent protagonist; he just spouts off these salt-fueled rants at you and it's entirely one sided projection. At one point one of your wingmen finally gets sick of it and just yells at him to shut the hell up and fight them, it's not like they WANT to keep fighting his stupid ass all the time.
I just realized how Iguazu's first message is a huge ironic forshadow to his inevitable fate. He was the first warm body Allmind could find that also wanted you dead and he's inevitably going to be watching the Coral Release from the sidelines. That's crazy such a throwaway message has that twist of a meaning behind it.
Iguazu had more salt in him then a 2009 Call of Duty lobby and the fact that he completely overrode ALLMIND with his sheer overpowering salt just to have another go at 621 is truly amazing
There is one other place you encounter allmind on a 1st playthrough. It's small but adds a lot to the character. The first time you can actually encounter the invisible mechs is in the chapter 1 mission to destroy the dafung mt's. If you return to where you crash landed one of the mechs will be there. Kinda creeped me out just encountering that thing way back there when it just makes the wierd insect sound and attacks you. It's a small interraction but it goes to show how allmind been watching you since the very beginning. The mech wasn't there when you crash landed but by the time you steal a license and go on your 2nd or 3rd mission she already dispatched a drone to survey your crash site and possibly start spying on you.
Is it the mission to destroy that AC delivered by student pilot?
@@brambl3014 no earlier than that, it's grid 135 cleanup. If you remember the tutorial you landed, walked a bit then flew up to a short tunnel and opened a door. The door leads to grid 135 which is where this mission takes place. Thinking back to the tutorial you went on the catapult well in "grid 135 cleanup" you start at that catapult area an go backwards. The entire mission is in that area but you can return to where you land by flying through the hole in the wall.
shouldn't we us but on Balam, you could notice a few destroyed mech around there, mean that they are they to either sabotage Balam group, or to spy on them
That final moment of iguazu rejects Allmind I think is the perfect microcosm of his trajety. Igazu isn't bad infact he's good he's a very good pilot, that's why he's surrounded by the best of the best, Mishigan even says that "Iguazu is worth 100 of you" to an entire MT division when they insult him, he could just never be The Best and his bitterness wouldn't allow for that and blinded him to all his other achievements, the moment when he finally throws it all away rejecting Allmind, his support, his anger, the voices, he's pride in that final moment, admitting that he knows how this ends, saying that now when you're at your weakest you always pull it back, that's when he shows how powerful he truly is and why he deserves the tital of final boss, he's finally at peace and quiet just fighting even knowing he can't win he isn't angry anymore and is one of only two characters (other being Rusty) to break to rule that once the AC is dead it's gone and not gonna do anything, because even when blowing up, instead of wining or screaming in anger he goes for one last swing at you
(Apologizes for any mistakes my English isn't the best)
@awhellnah__the fuck is a comma ?
@@reliantbelial2341ignore him
To think we could've had an AI uprising but the AI decided to install League into their system
Ah yes, the 'LEAGUE' huh😅
I think something most people miss that I think might be one of the key reasons All-Mind picks *those* 4 specific pilots- O'Keefe, Sulla, You, and then finally Iguazu is that all four of you are some of the more notably *troubled* merc's of the entire roster.
O'Keefe (The Presumed first) has insomnia, eats shitty food, drinks shitty coffee, he's one of the most notably downtrodden characters you meet.
Sulla, who has been so thoroughly fucked up that he literally only finds meaning in life through hunting people
Then *You*, Raven, 621, one of hundreds of hounds that have been sent to die in Walters quest- you barely are a *person*.
And then finally, Iguazu, the loser.
Why is this important? Because you all are specifically the people All-Mind wants to help the *most*, along with your coral augmentations, and manipulatable qualities. Iguazu I think wasn't picked for no reason- rather, he was picked *because* he is such a loser. All-Mind gave the man with nothing *everything* through the exact process she wants everyone to go through- becoming one with her, becoming one with their *AC*.
Iguazu is a loser that stands to benefit the most in the end. All of you were the exact downtrodden mercs that All-Mind is trying to lift up through her plan.
Also- the reason All-Mind presumably fights you is that if *you* trigger the release, Ayre and *You* are the primary consciousness that is spread over the stars, and All-Mind is fighting you over the right to be the one who gets to pull the trigger and be at the end of the tunnel after all of this. Ayre and Raven or All-Mind and Iguazu- who is the duo that will be the major part of the hivemind duo. At least, that's what I felt was going on.
I think the trigger is the heightened state of mind a pilot in sync with the coral gets to during combat, resonating with the coral, causing it to coalesce and eventually propagate. The trigger was the fight with the machines at the end, so as you begin combat, All Mind had already won. The whole finding Raven to be an aberration is the effect of corruption of integrating Iguazu.
No, its because gen 1-4 augmented humans are created by introducing coral to their bodies so they can interface with their AC directly and makes them susceptible to coral symbiosis. Gen 5's and above do not use coral technology and are incapable of reaching Coral symbiosis.
I feel that the death of a symbiote - Ayre or Allmind is the key. When the coral convergence realises that a coral being has been killed near itself, it starts the process of scattering itself (to prevent it from being burned enmass or any other harm). Someone had to die. Iguazu and ALLMIND did.
Or……because all these guys are 1st to 4th gen augmentation subjects that are infused with coral.
@@anuragpradhan7500 I'd argue that Father Dolmayan not having any noted 'Secondary Symbiote' or whatever- he was *capable* of it but chose not to, meaning I think that it's not really required.
Also- I don't think she thought of him as an Abberation because of Iguazu, Raven is notably a fucking oddball with their connection to Ayre I feel and they're strength, like Ayre and some other characters say: You are simply *too strong* to be normal and in some senses that's dangerous even up to All-Mind I reckon.
Great video. I think ALLMIND and its origin is some of the biggest mysteries in the game. We can only theorize upon analyzing its actions what its original purpose was, as there's nothing explicit.
Also, someone recently commented on the Armored Core subreddit that Sulla has a perfect build for fighting Balteus (pulse rifle and bazooka). And it got me thinking. Balteus is deployed upon shutting down the Watchpoint. So Sulla was ready to shut down the Watchpoint himself, establish Contact with Ayre (something necessary for triggering the Coral Release) and then fight Balteus. It was probably planned to happen later, but we attack the Watchpoint ourselves and Sulla is quickly deployed by ALLMIND to stop us and do it himself.
And it's only described visually. I was in awe when I realized that.
I didn't even realize that until you posted this. This is actually crazy that a simple build could actually tell a larger story than what is told initally. Well played FromSoft.
There's a destroyed craft in the area, one of the ghost things belonging to Allmind I think it's data talks about an old mercenary being the trigger. Or something like that, it's on top of the tall building that separate the first 2 areas. There also a secret ghost fight right at the very beginning of the game that seems to indicate that Allmind was watching you from the moment you landed, as you are one of the few augments that seemed compatible.
So there more to it than just his build it seems.
@@DaemonetteBait yes, absolutely. Those are the most direct clues to be examined, but I just never saw anyone discuss Sulla's direct situaton at that mission, including his equipment. I think it simply adds to those things you mentioned
@@MataNuiOfficial right when I discovered that secret fight at the beginning of the game, coupled with Allminds new dialog saying we've returned I knew right away something was up with AllMind, and then NewGame++ the fight with Suila and the enemies and Walter Asks who tipped you off was different from the first time where Suila just doesnt respond but that alt encounter he says that we're dangerous meaning unlike the first time we fight him when he's cocky, the alt version he was warned from the get go don't take this one lightly and if ALLMind told him he's taking it dead seriouslly
@@sdbzfan1this is double interesting because in this timeline we already helped ALLMIND through Kate Markson. I guess when we defeat the Cataphract and the two Ekdromoi, ALLMIND decided we're dangerous, so when we attack the Watchpoint and Sulla is dispatched, he goes with a backup crew of ghost mechs just to be sure.
Here's something I found regarding Iguazu during Balam's failed assault on the Wall: You can find the remains of G4 Volta's AC on the left side of the battlefield. It has a log where Volta tells Iguazu "You picked a good day to go AWOL"
Iguazu ghosted the Redguns on the day of the attack. Despite all the boasting he was doing, he was too afraid to actually climb the Wall and probably got Volta killed by not being there.
He ran away, only to watch from the sidelines as 621 did it and claimed all the glory.
Things like this makes me wonder what he did to get Michigan really mad.
Call it what you may, but G1 had the patience of a saint and still defended Iguazu during Balam's last stand against 621. The man had character and loyalty to his subordinates
I doubt G1 was ever as mad or cruel to Iguana as people say
I think Iguana's inferiority complex made him believe that Michigan hated him@@TheNapster153
Meh, Juggernaut would've smoked both of them anyway, they were doomed regardless. Even Rusty was ordered to get the fuck out, let us weaken machine a bit more and then die (or just die) so Vespers could come back as a second wave and finish off Juggernaut.
@@exploertm8738Rusty managed to solo a juggernaut and whatever forces that blocked his path to the wall while still being capable of helping you in killing another juggernaut. Rusty didn't leave because of the dangers, but rather the fact that Snail hates you.
Snail disregards the well being of his subordinates to a supernatural level. Considering Swinburne gets lobotomized for losing to you while surviving says a lot. So the Vespers was more than capable of taking the wall without you.
@@gokufromfortnite5600 Michigan seems like your typical "drill sergeant nasty", but he acts like a stern parent to the redguns. He knows he's not invincible, so he's basically pushing them to become the best so that when he does kick the bucket they can actually still do their jobs.
Of course, his way of doing this leads to either blindly obedient soldiers or people who just hate his guts
I took Iguazu to be a complete joke and never paid any mind to him until the end of the 3rd playthrough, at which point he kicked my ass for a few hours, and honestly, it was pretty cathartic hearing him finally best Raven
This ghost of me won’t last long, save a place for me in hell
Third playthrough made me feel bad for the guy, he was an ass but was also being driven mad by the voices of the Coral. He was a gen 4 just like Raven and every time he shows up after we meet Ayre he always mentions hearing "the sound" and his head hurting, by the time he shows up in Institute City and during the final fight he will go off on schizo ramblings about us doing it to him on purpose and laughing at his back.
I got my ass kicked until I realized you can just power through Allmind and dipshit Iguazu will instakill all his support when he takes over.
His tri-blade melee is trash balanced.
I got sick of dying to him and just brute forced it with dual gats lol
Also... the mercenaries you beat in the game with ties to AllMind actually utilize AllMind weapons and equipment. You can even see this in the AC preset build registry. Sulla actually uses quite a few pieces of tech provided by AllMind, namely the Javelin missile series. O'Keefe (or VIII) uses AllMind equipment as well. It's interesting to see where these mercenaries and AC's pop up in relation to the greater AllMind plot.
There is also Kate Merkson which is a particularly weird case because she doesn't pop up in the AllMind mercenary lists...but uses Mind Gamma's build. This is why I always believed the Kate was just AllMind, first you help create a truly powerful AC build for her, then she utilizes that build to fight on Rubicon.
Edit:
Another reason AllMind attacks you in the end is because AllMind can't comprehend the principle of choice and cannot leave the 'trigger' up to the choice of a human. In our earlier playthrough we may have suddenly sided with Ayre after doing nothing but corporate favors. We may have sided with the Rubiconians only to betray them for money. We, as players, make a lot of choices which all have a chance for us to pick one or the other. AllMind sees that if we remain in control of the decision-making, there will always be _A CHANCE_ we will turn our backs on release and not do it. AllMind can't let _A CHANCE_ exist and thus decides to absorb us to guarantee release, rather than leave it to chance.
I think it's pretty fitting that Allmind ended up being unwilling to roll the dice.
I just realized that Kate Merkson is a really interesting name too. Merk is slang for mercenary. Because she's descended from mercenary training data.
During the final fight, Allmind refers to 621 and Ayre as "irregulars" - unpredictable outliers in the data that could pose a threat to the plan. I think this works into the reason why AI controlled ACs invariably lose too. Because they run solely based on logic and lack the spontaneity of choice. Allmind can't roll the dice without knowing how it will land beforehand.
Same with Iguazu too when he ambushes you underground after he deserts, unsure about the weapons but i do remember he has the Allmind arms equipped (rewrote to add important detail).
Nice analysis
I'm surprised there weren't any mentions of the lore pieces that reference Iguazu. When they mention Headbringer in the Arena, it states he was a gambler that "always bet big and often lost" and basically only wound up getting 4th gen surgery by selling off his body to pay gambling debts. Not only that, but one of the art logs you can find, STV 5 (iirc only in NG++) shows Iguazu hiding from hired killers sent to collect on his debt. I think a lot of this background really, really builds upon Iguazu's characterization and ultimate appearance as the final NG++ boss. Not only was he willing to "Gamble it all" and cast the die, he was willing to sacrifice everything to win, including his humanity, making his jealousy and insecurity the perfect things for Allmind to prey on. Not only that, but him being early gen augmented, Gen 4, means that while he might not be impressive to us, he's still (as Walter puts it, albeit when directed towards Raven being Gen 4) "Just as good a pedigree as any other." And it allowed him to connect with the coral. Albeit, in what appears to be a much more hostile manner than Raven and Ayre. His entire life is built upon misfortune after misfortune after misfortune, cutting and hacking and ripping pieces of himself off and being forced to pilot and AC in the shit-end of butt-fuck-nowhere, Space, and he can't even do it well enough to get respect from those around him. Volta, arguably the only one who is chummy with Iguazu (due to their shared goal of decking Michigan), dies during the attempt to scale the wall. He's a gambler that's never won and the only thing he has left to bet is himself. He is the literal inverse of Raven. Raven, who we know has been crippled, borderline lobotomized by Gen 4 augmentation, and still wins damn near effortlessly. It makes Iguazu's last lines to Raven all the more poignant "I always envied you... the freelancer who had it all." Which equally ties into just how *shallow* Iguazu's mentality is and how little he understood Raven.
I had actually guessed the All Mind reveal right away. I had been talking to someone about I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. In it, the antagonist is a super computer that goes by AM which stands for different things at different points. So I hear a robot voice with an AM emblem and immediately started joking that All Mind was the master mind and it just kept making more and more sense for that to be true
FromSoft definitely wanted the player to pick up on ALLMIND as a problem early on.
Same. I was like, "oh, an AI that is cataloguing every piece of human equipment, tactics and even the coral. Yeah, this isn't going to go south at all..."
(By the end I was also like, "we'll get stronger together, and then I'll defeat you when you turn on me, which I'm like 99% sure you're going to do, lmao.")
@@Eladelia
For sure. Subtle enough to surprise some people and at least be believable that the humans didn't just shut it down while it was still in R&D, but odd enough that if you know tropes and you hear that robotic voice, you know it's going to do something sketchy in the future.
Plus, we're already doing this path. We're starting to tinker with the idea of giving AI weapons and it's giving us scary results, like that USAF experiment that showed that when you try to cancel a mission you gave AI, it tries to cancel you, and I don't mean in the Reddit kind of way.
@@manictiger The evolution talk was a red flag too. Anything referring to improvements as evolution in a story will be the main villain and need killed.
yeah, if u played any old AC games, that is usually the true boss. I kinda suspected it from the start. Kate Markson, I was like, bruh u are totally Allmind.
Dude "Allgazu, The Ultimate Hater" is the most meta final boss ever. 10/10. Dude sends you hatemail and sends someone to gank you. FromSoft has lost their mind lmao.
Something to consider about human pilots being superior to AI.
Think of it like a modern missile defense system. The automated systems make calculations and adjustments at inhuman speeds. But, there are many variables that are batter evaluated in real time by a human mind. Because the methods of evaluation are different.
Both the human mind, and the automated systems are insufficient on they're own. But are devastatingly effective in tandem.
This is why AM needs humans and cannot rely on its own AI systems. Because it cannot "think" like a human.
Because of AC I looked more into the US airforce and such, and sorta researched why human pilots haven't been phased out for AI controlled jets, and something came up like what you said about how humans plus a AI support system being far superior than the two on their own.
in Armored Core games of the past, it was a common theme to feature Super AI trying to control humanity. I believe Allmind's intentions when triggering the Coral Release was to both evolve humanity as well as take total control in the process. so that Allmind could continue to help and support humanity beyond the Coral Release. of course this would mean that free will had to go and it is kinda hinted in the game that Allmind views humans with a free will as a threat. the difference between Raven and Ayre triggering the Coral Release is that they just evolved humanity without taking control, preserving everyone's free will and their ability to make their own choices and forge their own destinies. Allmind wouldn't have done that, she would have evolved humanity but done so in a way to make humans more subservient to her. that's why Raven and Ayre come to blows with Allmind and Iguazu, that is why they ultimately fight.
25:15 There's a small detail missed here- in Operation Wallclimber there is a comms log you can find in the first area; it's G4 Volta's (the other Redgun from the Dam mission) final message to Iguazu. Among other things, he states that "[Iguazu] chose a good day to go AWOL". Iguazu was too much of a wuss to even try to climb the wall, despite all of his bragging. He chickened out when his colleagues needed him most.
It clearly added to his growing inferiority complex towards 621.
That’s not what AWOL means. AWOL means that you are absent without permission but also without intention to desert.
@@samnunnink7575 He disappeared without permission on the day of the RG's attempt. It doesn't take much to connect the dots to where he was supposed to be going that day, but never showed.
Makes me wonder if he feels guilty about G4 dying at the wall too.
@@burnttoast.2017Yeah
@@burnttoast.2017 Probably
I think my favorite part about the very end with Allmind is that she only turned on you because she no longer needed you to complete The Mission. She didn't consider that you might actually be willing to follow through with the plan, because you are human. When you defeat Iguazu, and her by extension, she asks what you will do. And you and Ayre promise her that you will still follow through with the plan, in spite of her betrayal. And it is in that moment she realizes that humans really can be trusted with their own futures.
What I liked about ALLMIND as a character was how she talked. She always talks in third person or with "we/us", but during the final Xylem mission she says "I will deal with them myself". This was the point where I noticed that she had gone full super villain mode, taking matters to her own hand.
The story telling of Fromsoft is just unmatched. It is always told via gameplay and despite the limited means of expression in this game, the compelling story still gets told. And their skill to connect their fiction with real life makes it even more relatable and romantic. I am struggling with this game at the moment but it's so enigmatic, and the player growth prospect is so strong, that it makes me want to trudge on.
Iguazu is not a loser. He's just a deeply troubled person. His story is very sad and relatable.
He sure fought like a loser at the end with 5 mechs to assist him against raven and then 2 sea spiders in phase 2.
@@baltzy1616 valid LOL
Except that he actually takes out the Spiders partway through, specifically because they were supplied by Allmind, and he wants to have a one-on-one duel with you.
In the end he finally overcame his insecurities. Sure, he lost, but at least he lost standing on his own two feet. He even relishes the fact that the voices and noises are gone.
@@baltzy1616are u dense lol, he destroys the sea spiders himself after being freed from Allmind
@@baltzy1616 Those were ALLMIND. the entire fight he yells at her to leave him alone and then he's genuinely happy when you get to fight one on one lmao
I think gen 4 augmentation is to blame for a lot of iquazu's personality, water says it emotionally stunts you which explains a lot of his emotional immaturity and inability to deal with loss. Also, as someone who gets overwhelmed by lots of noise I can understand why he's stressed around you: the cause of the noise.
I think his relationship with Michigan could be touched on as well, Michigan beat iguazu and iguazu joined the redguns just so he could get a chance at surpassing him.
Slight correction. 8:50 first time you can encounter the “Ghost Ac’s” is in mission “Grid 135 Cleanup” If you fly towards the back of the second room where the enemies are, you will see and can enter a tunnel that you used in the very first mission of the game. This will lead you back to your original crash site, and a Ghost AC is inspecting it. Walter even has additional dialogue. Also note the burning MT’s in the area.
I like how her mech's fighting style exemplifies the human > AI piloted robots. They primarily fight in stealth and rush you with numbers. Overwhelming you with numbers and surprise attacks because in a straight up fight, all it takes is a few well placed shots from low or mid tier damage weapons to stagger/outright kill the mechs.
Honestly as an insecure person (not to iguazu's degree but still),I really liked and related to Iguazu. That feeling of not being good enough, constantly feeling judged and how it can eat at you. and honestly this video and comments kinda shows who does and doesn't understand and share that feeling of insecurity. Me being a tad more emotional person, I didn't feel happy/great beating him when he asked what made the player so special because i could relate to having those feelings/questions. He feels like a cautionary tale of sorts about not working through your insecurities. But maybe as a side, it also shows how others might view insecure people. Because by example of the video and comments. You are laughing at him, you are calling him a loser. you are reinforcing his insecurities and fueling his spiral. But idk I could be way off base but that's just my overall unrefined thoughts about him. Idk how many if any actually any of my thoughts on this.
Great video btw, forgot to say
Interesting insight
I think he's a loser, and I can admit to relating to him on some level at least when I was younger, what makes him a loser is his attitude, his sour and petty tone towards mostly everyone, the way he acts and goes about things, the problem isn't him being insecure, it's him letting his insecurity take reign of his life, YES he's in a shitty situation, YES he does have every right to be insecure, that doesn't mean he has to act like a bratty teenager, though his will is commendable, where does the line start between stupidity and determination? In short I THINK he's a loser because he is unwilling to accept his short comings and cannot hold himself accountable.
Yeah, there's definitely truth in there, if you feed into it via mockery you're not helping, but making it worse. Frankly, my first few times facing him I was more of the 'chill out dude' but gradually lost any kernel of respect when he kept acting the same. So you do have a good point there, but in some ways, he does to a level bring it on himself given his refusal to at least make an attempt to be better.
Then again, we don't know his full story before we met him. Iguazu from when he first joined the Redguns might've been a prickly and slightly insecure dude on day 1, but only grew into who we knew him now from constantly being hit with stuff that fed into that insecurity
@@Furydragonstormerhe's both insecure and very obsessive. From what we do know of his past is that he picked a fight with Michigan and lost, he never let that go even during the events of the game. That grudge is still there but that's quickly superseded by you, he becomes obsessed with being better than you, even to the grave.
He's 100% a tragic character but pretty much everything that happens to him is due to his obsession with you, his cocky nature and his insecurity. Ultimately if he just didn't pick a fight with G1 and later us due to him believing he was hot shit, his downward spiral wouldn't have happened.
I do view him as rather tragic but feel no sympathy for him in the end, since it was all self inflicted.
I love when he overpowers allmind in the fight and the music partially cuts out to make it feel a lot quieter, it's like his will is so strong it even makes us resonate with it. And how relieved he sounds to finally have the silence makes me think he was unable to resonate with the coral as well as us resulting in it coming across as painful noise or something like tinnitus, his whole character feels like a tragic reflection of Raven and what could have been if events panned out differently for 621
During my first play through, during the fight at the tunnel where you kill Iguazu, I was laughing my ass off cuz he was so easy. And then he said his "I know you're laughing" line and that genuinely scared the shit outta me.
I must add, the description for all the MIND LETTER components specifically states that the purpose is to have the pilot be able to fully feel the world through the AC. Akin to having a nervous system in the AC for all senses to treansfer, in order to feel the world around. This might be more of Allmind's human side, since Ayre also wants to test it out in the virtual simulation.
this could very well be Allmind trying to make bodies for this merger between humans and coral, to be able to cohabitate the ACs in a way that for both of them would let them fully experience the world for all it brings.
In the end, the superiority complex and the inferiority complex of Allmind and Iguazu represents what the coral and a human will bring. Balance. In a sense they were close to being the equals of the Raven and Ayre. even if their individual components were so undervalued respectively.
I always took that as Allmind trying to figure out how humans perceive the world. If only to know better how to manipulate it.
Snail was doing the same thing, putting less and less of a person into an AC trying to figure out how much of a human element was needed. AI controlled ACs seem to always be worse than piloted ones because humans have the innate drive to survive and making the AC their actual body would likely increase that drive by quite a bit as you'd protect the AC even more.
The fact that Iguazu's 'ghost' can temporarily usurp ALLMIND in its own network is unsettling.
His spirit is the strongest of anyone in the game, shackled by his own fear.
Iguazu was so sensitive to the coral that he could always hear it communicating from Coral engines. Then all he hears in the second half of the game is the Coral being burnt up and screaming, turning him mad, and ALLMIND needed someone with that sensitivity to Coral to track the progress of the Coral rebuilding.
I personally think G5 is a well-written character as well. People may get annoyed that he's always coming back and whining. But when you think about certain parts of his dialogue, he does reach his breaking point. He's constantly talking about voices in his head, and how everyone is looking down at him and laughing at him. So when Raven comes into the picture, a nobody essentially, he breaks and starts projecting. He says Raven is a nobody and not worth all his accolades. This mirrors G5's position in the Red Guns. He's a relatively high ranking Balam AC, but look at how he battles. He stays back and uses a pulse shield while shooting at enemies. I was intrigued about where G5's story was going, and I didn't think it would get resolved at all when going into NG+ and NG++. When he comes down as the final antagonist, I couldnt help but smile. He hated you so much, due to his envy, he ends up being the final challenge for Raven. I wasn't really annoyed to keep seeing him as the story went on. I just thought, damn, this guy hates Raven so much, that he will do anything to beat Raven. Also I kind of popped off when Igazu finally pushed back Allmind, and was relatively in control of himself for the moment.
You can't help but feel a bit proud of him, especially if you're not cheesing the final boss and can appreciate the challenge be brings. We've obviously had our moments. Rusty had me cheering when he said "I won't miss" and later "I won't stop!". And at the end of the game Iguazu gets his own iconic line "shut up... I'LL SHUT YOU UP!". The audio distortion and the actor's spitefully triumphant tone, along with the buildup throughout the game with Igauzu pathetically complaining about the voices in his head really make the moment shine. This game executes the "edgy anime" tone better than the best of action anime.
@@person906 The music going almost silent when he says "They're finally gone..." after that massive explosion is such a good touch too.
@@person906Yeah when he tells everyone to shut up, I was just gliding around watching and said "damn, kinda sick"
it's worth noting Iguazu does have a understandable reason for his hatred. Iguazu didn't join the Redguns voluntarily, he was pressganged into them. He had a string of bad luck and ended up in debt, a debt Balam bought off and forced him to get augmented and become a pilot. While some people on Rubicon know the story behind 621 and Walter, Iguazu doesn't. As far as he know this is a person who since coming to Rubicon has beaten him multiple times and succeeded at everything he's failed to do, all the while he believes them to be a free man, no debt, no superiors, and capable of choosing for themselves. Everything he wants but can't have.
My read on the whole Iguazu+Allmind thing is that Iguazu isn't the only one in there. Allmind's name is rather literal, she is All Minds. An Ai a the core but one that assimilates approximations of human minds via observation and interaction. The arena is the playground for this interaction, a means by which Allmind can better recreate minds based on how they interact in a virtual environment with real people. But she doesn't simulate people who are antithetical to her goals of coral release which is why she doesn't simulate Walter and why Carla has to actually hack her AC data into the arena program as a cheeky way to screw with Raven, something which Allmind admits was not planned.
When Allmind approached Raven at the end I think it was to finally assimilate him and Ayer the same way she had assimilated so many other minds. But Allmind ran into a problem. She had assimilated a perfected copy of so many pilots, able to make copies of them and plug them into pilotless ACs. and one of the copies she had made was Iguazu. And Iguazu hates Raven. Hates him so much that Iguazu would never allow himself to be merged with Raven.
The way I read it, the last battle isn't Allmind and Iguazu teaming up against Raven and Ayer. Its Iguazu's hatred and envy, his raw individual human negativity overpowering Allmind's grand perfect logical plan and seizing control to destroy the thing he hates. During the fight, there was a moment where Allmind says something to the effect of this being counterproductive, only for Iguazu to roar over the AI, screaming that he doesn't care about any of that, all he cares about is finally overcoming Raven.
In a story about the power of the individual will, the conglomerated will of Allmind could never have maintained control when two individuals, their conflict, one's hatred and the other's instinct to survive, clashed.
One last thing about the ending. I have a different read here too. Its not that all of humanity is being uplifted. Allmind needed all those minds, those copies, to upload into the Coral Release so that the following diffusion would also be a diffusion of those wills. But thanks to Iguazu's selfish determination ruining the assimilation of Raven and getting Allmind and all her stored copies destroyed, its only one paired will that goes into the coral release. In the last scene I don't think Ayer's "we"' is referring to all humanity, or the coral. Its the we of her and Raven. "We're everywhere. We're Anywhere." The ultimate triumph of the individual human will. One individual, human and Coral in perfect synch, spread across the cosmos in an uncountable number of mechanical bodies and systems. The next evolution in the galaxy. And do you really think the remnants of humanity, the corps and the dystopian government are just going to sit aside as this galaxy wide apotheosis of sentient machines come to be?
As Ayer says: "Begin Combat Mode"
Why are human piloted mechs of higher potential than AI ones? Spiral Power baby!
raw raw fight the powah!
Don't believe in yourself Iguazu.
Believe in the me who believes in you.
It all ties back to NGE in the end doesnt it...
@@egoalter1276 or gurran lagan (or however you write it)
@@Jetstreamsamsbiggestglazer Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. And believe it or not thats also just another shot by the people who made Evangelion at telling the same goddamn story, this time with less depression.
I think you're right about what you said, with Raven just doing what ALLMIND wanted anyway in the final ending.
But I think you may have forgotten something - the fact, that as you said, ALLMIND is a control freak. You did what she wanted, but *without her presence.*
"Ultimately good, but a ruthless control freak" fits this perfectly. You did what she wanted, but removed her from the picture. She regretted that more than anything, IMO.
One thing though, I really love ALLMIND's eng voice, and Iguazu is probably the most human of all the characters in the game, you know, he's literally us when we first picked up this game and losing to every boss battle, until our will overcame it all.
I actually liked Iguazu's attitude in the first mission with him. I felt pretty bad after betraying him on NG+ and seeing him spiral with jealousy/hatred. I actually didn't betray the Redguns on NG++ in hopes he would stick with them but despite never doing anything to get on his bad side he still went nuts all the same. The game clearly doesn't expect you to like the guy but I just think he's funny 😅
hoped youd walk back and take another look at allmind! it's a more subtle and deeper character
I looooove how Allmind gradually came to the forefront. The early "glitches" tipped me off that something was going on here, and gradually I came to suspect that I was actually training skynet. Absolutely awesome!
Allmind and Nineball AI lives to benefit humanity in their own twisted way.
i think i'm partially dyslexic because i saw Allmind and Nineball next to each other in your comment and thought for a moment that "Allmind" was an anagram of "Nineball"... i think i'm losing it
Nine ball. God I remember that name.
@@lornbaker1083 yeah, I remember 20 yrs ago, as a kid when I played the old AC games, I was like WTF? Nineball isn't a person, it's the AI that was running the Raven's Nest? Mind Blown
One thing I like about how Allmind develops as a villain is how her dialogue throughout playthrough 2 becomes increasingly ominous and menacing. As you help support the Mind Alpha program, which begins as a fairly benign attempt to build a better support AC by analyzing your fights with the tester and trainer, she says things like "ALLMIND is constantly improving with your assistance" etc. etc. But as you move on to crushing symbolic standins for the other major factions, The Corps, The Rubiconians, she says stuff like "We are nearing perfection." and "Soon Allminds evolution will be unstoppable." And other generic villain oneliners. Until eventually everything she says is shaded with menace and malice so that even the "welcome back, we expect great things from you" at the start of NG++ is vaguely threatening. Great stuff.
as an absurdist, I understand O'Keef. However, at the same time, humanity's strength has always been its ability to evolve, both through invention and through changing perspectives.
Humanity in AC6 has stagnated. Humanity has had their lives taken over by megacorps that drain away the enjoyment of the human experience solely to increase profit margins.
Humanity in AC6 is stagnant, and it needs to change.
the problem arises in that forces like the corps, the PCA, and the Overseers are resisting that change, ironically forcing that change to be violent.
the only reason I consider the 'true' ending to be a 'bad' ending is the fact that we make the choice to evolve away from the rest of humanity. It's the same reason I dislike the assimilate ending in ME3. To force change upon someone is to violate their right to self-determination.
but it seems that it was already lost.
The fact that Iguazu's toxicity is so radioactive it caused an ascended AI to tilt mid-fight is truly a statement to the indomitable League of Legends player's spirit.
Honestly my favorite part of Iguazu is when 621 beat ALLMIND, Iguazu said that he envied us; the freelancer who had it all.
It's a point where Iguazu finally accepts that feeling of inferiority in comparison to 621 and faces it head on instead of trying to run away like he did to a lot of things in the story, and I believe there's a very human part to that.
Another thing is that Iguazu kinda has a shonen protag vibe to his character. Think of this: what kind of character has so much willpower that even when their individuality is suppressed by a godlike AI they can still break free?
Iguazu is stupid, impulsive, has a powerful ego and has insecurities which REALLY reminded me of parts of Naruto when he's a kid, except that this time, Iguazu's willpower is not a solution to all problems.
G5 Iguazu reminds me of the sort of rival decay we saw with Jared Messa in Zeta Gundam and Ein from Iron-Blooded Orphans. Basically rivals who can't win or keep up with the main character and rather than growing stronger from each defeat they grow weaker. Each defeat knocks another piece of their humanity out from under them until they have so little left that they undergo humanity erasing procedures in a last ditch effort to win. And they still lose.
I noticed Allmind's rise to prominence, then action. I ranted about it to my friend who knows armored core lore, and nearly freaked him out when online arena was announced as _nest._ AS IN RAVEN'S NEST, WHICH WAS PERPETUATED BY AN A.I., THAT SOME AC FANS MAY REMEMBER. I said that if ALLMIND'S final form was red and black, I'd freak the fuck out.
It DID pull out a seraph-sized monster though.
Funny thing about that Seraph comparison. The one thing Allmind's fitting of that IBIS weapon's frame can't do? Turn into a plane to attack you. But in it's original Rubicon Research Institute fittings it could. It's the same frame Ayre uses in the Fires of Raven ending, the one that turns into a plane form to start the fight and for a few attacks on you. Allmind's stripped out the Coral reactor, the Coral weaponry, slapped on it's own energy based gear instead and given it a new color scheme. (Along with some slight mods to the frame.) That's also why Ayre grabbed the Ephemera frame with Coral weapons, instead of the machine she used in the Fires ending, it wasn't left open for her to use.
@@Sorain1 Allmind stole our girl's machine from her, unacceptable!
I like how Allmind comes out of nowhere. It feels we are doing something forbidden and walking down a shadowy path.
Epsecially when she tells us to kill Snail.
That was my favorite part of her story. She's like, "We both know how this plays out; but what if we DON'T hand Arquebus the Plant on a silver platter?" It feels like using meta knowledge to subvert a scripted event, but you're not the one in control.
The fact that she says "I'll take care of Walter" like 3 times in that mission too as if she was genuinely mad at him for interfering.
I think it's both endearing and tragic that the one time Iguazu is complimented in game is when he's nowhere to be seen.
In the attack on the red guns near the end of the game, Michigan says something that shows he genuinely respected Iguazu on some level beyond just a soldier.
"Iguazu's worth a hundred of you, which means, Albany, the merc's worth twenty of him!"
I genuinely feel for Iguazu, and I wish he would listen to one of the other Red guns(forgot which conversation log it was tied to) when he said that he had a family that appreciated him, a family in the red guns.
I actually loved Iguazu as the final boss. The moment he made ALLMIND and Ayre disappear using nothing but his own spite was really magical. For a super AI's plot to be pushed aside like nothing by a man's anger, that sort of thing is really hype for me. I'm a huge sucker for the final fight between two beings standing at the apex of everything to be, not between gods or some other transcendent beings, but two humans. A completely different fight, but I love the final fight of Dark Souls 3 DLCs for the same reason.
The third route always felt the weirdest because it made it clear that ALLMIND was more or less aware of the NG+ loop and that it was basically taking care of things for you so you can do jobs for it. Then there's all the Ghost MTs everywhere in NG++.
Edit: Something I wanted to add that I just remembered that adds to the 'ALLMIND might be aware of the loops' thing. Iguazu, during the final boss fight, says 'you killed me loads of times'. Mind you, you don't explicitly kill him outside of the first playthrough but even then it's just implied. But considering his ego, he might considering you trashing his trash AC as a 'kill' in his eyes. You wreck his AC twice in the first and second runs if you go the alternative route for one mission, then three in the third run. That's 7 'kills' in total and actually pretty noteworthy
I think Allmind did want control of the situation. During the battle, Allmind talks about us becoming one with her in the new future. It was a fight for who would be in control of the new age.
I keep getting weird looks when I tell people that Iguazu was my favorite character in this game, even over community darlings like Rusty and Ayre, but I’m glad there are other people out there willing to examine his motivations and development without just writing him off as a salty loser. Great video!
When I first beat NG++, Iguazu was out of so far left field that I was kinda angry. I didn't even recognize his voice till half way through the fight. I was also really annoyed that they killed Walter and Cinder off screen without any sort of character change or even letting them acknowledge what's going on. But after watching your video it opened my eyes to the juxtaposition of Allmind and Iguazu. And now I feel it would of diluted the moment if we did get more from Walter or Cinder. I'm definitely walking away now with greater appreciation of the ending.
Funnily enough the subject matter of "Your will as a human" is something that prevails all throughout Armored Core's history, in every game.
1st Gen was R and Nineball
2nd was Leos Klein
3rd was DOVE, Ibis, and the multiple paths of Last Raven
4th was first Anatolia's Raven and then Strayed's choice
5th was taking down Father and Reaper Squad
And now, we have Allmind
God I get way too excited any time somebody makes a reference to SOMA.
Few games have stuck with me the way SOMA has.
I love it when a character/mechanic that seemingly is just a part of the UI turns out to be an actual, important character
Two observations -- the name "Allmind" itself foreshadows Coral Release, insofar as humanity merges with the Coral collective consciousness (literally an "all mind"); and Iguazu's voicemail, "You were the only warm body they could find," foreshadows his own fate with Allmind in the third ending (i.e., he was the only warm body she could find).
In a sense, All Mind is the direct evil counterpart to Ayre. She assists Iguazu in the same way Ayre assists 621 on his journey.
They are complete opposites of each other. All Mind tries to control Iguazu while Ayre allows 621 complete freedom of choice to do what he wants. Even in the fires of raven ending where Ayre leaves you, she made zero attempt to try to persuade 621 nor did she talked down on him. She merely voiced out that she is sad that they couldnt work together anymore. Meanwhile, when All Mind lost control of Iguazu in the 3rd phase, she expressed regret for relying on Iguazu in the first place.
Iguazu is also the complete counterpart to 621 as well. Both physically, and mentally. Throughout the entire game, He felt trapped and wanted to be free. He made really selfish choices that didnt really served any purpose besides wanting to kill 621. Even expressing to All Mind that he doesn’t give a fuck about her goals. He is willing to be used to achieve his revenge
On the other side, 621 didnt really made any actions purely for himself. Throughout the entire story, 621 does things for the sake of someone else. Despite that, no matter what choices we make, 621 had the freedom of choice to do what we want the entire game. 621 is truly him. Raven.
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I assumed that when Allmind referred to studying 'integration' she was referring to the integration between Raven and Ayre, possibly trying to study it so she could replicate it. Given that coral seems to have digital qualities, which is how Ayre accomplishes her hacks, she could even be exploiting what she learns watching you to attempt to integrate Iguazu.
*FINALLY someone gets it.* Finally! It was so annoying to see people going "Allmind's motivation doesn't make sense, what is she doing?" When she literally. tells. you.
She's high minded and sophisticated. Iguazu? Base as heck. Unable to control his envy.
I always wondered why Iguazu was chosen jnstead of someone like Snail, who would have been way more on board with a plan of such grandure.
Iguazu wanted to improve, his insecurity was a poweful fuel for self improvement.
Someone like snail already believes he is the best, so there is no room for 'evolution through conflict'.
Allmind juat underestimated how beneath all Iguazus insecurity he wanted to be free more than anything. He never chose any of this and he was done being told what to do.
Very well thought out analysis on Allguazu. Also, props for using the Torvus Bog theme in the background.
Btw iguazu got chosen because he’s gen 4 like you it wasn’t necessarily random if you look at some of the arena description of playthru 3 it states that after the previous test allmind surmised that making in AC out of older parts from gen 4 era is the best way too upgrade her allmind model AC’s because she wants Raven integrated but understands she a lone stands no chance against you so to take you she attempts too replicate your success with gen 4 iguazu
He's the only gen-4 augmented on the planet who is still purely gen-4. ALLMIND COULD have picked Snail for the one who it would use to initiate Coral Release were it not for two reasons: his further augmentations, and his ego. Snail considers himself as being Arquebus in its entirety, as if he's the only member of the Vespers that matters. He throws away elite pilots to use as bait, all to satiate his own ego at having captured and "re-educated" one of the most dangerous AC pilots on the planet. He's almost inhuman in how he acts and treats others.
Iguazu was beaten down and desperate, he would take ANY deal for the chance to prove he's not weak. And that's what makes him easy for ALLMIND to manipulate.
ALLMIND could never beat Raven with the candidates it had. Snail wasn't human enough, and Iguazu was far TOO human for ALLMIND to be able to maintain control over, and obviously Raven wouldn't be subjugated by ALLMIND.
Iguazu being assimilated by Allmind, with the context of the story made me remember the line he directed at Raven.
"You were the only warm body they could find." Then he was the only guy left that Allmind could take to complete her goals, the only warm body she could find.
37:00 You say that Raven was prepared to carry out ALLMIND's plan anyway, so ALLMIND didn't need to attack them. But what if ALLMIND only attacked Raven because she had absorbed so many pilots who wanted Raven dead? That their desire for revenge was expressed by ALLMIND as simply tying up a loose end
It could be that. Or it could tie into how Coral Release seems to 'format' the Coral to match the triggering pair's relationship to each other. Allmind wants to bring order to chaos, to subsume all minds into itself. This would format all Coral and all humans to match the pairing that triggers the event. Allmind can't just, _let_ the chaos of individuals like 621 and Ayre continue. But once it can't stop it, Allmind still wants to at least get the secondary goal of unlocking that 'potential'.
@@Sorain1ayre and raven are two individuals working together in harmony and perfect unison
ALLMIND and Iguazu parasitic. ALLMIND uses pilots and discards them when they're no longer of use.
ALLMIND would have led to the destruction of everything if it was allowed to initiate Coral Release
He proved that salt is a better power source than coral
The trigger that got me to keep an eye on ALLMIND is her NG+ dialogue when she says "Raven...You've returned." At that point, I knew something was up with ALLMIND as she had a much bigger role to play in the story.
Ironicall the title 'The Loser and the Supercomputer' sounds like a hell of a novel series.
My quick two bits on Iguazu and the Ice-Worm:
He was ALREADY slated for that mission. Michigan may have joked about it being because of his back-talk, but the simple fact that he was in the call at all? Yeah, he was on the roster.
Iguazu as the final boss is like him being the exact opposite of Nine-Ball. Nine-ball is a game of pure skill, with the """pilot""" being a Hustler - one of immaculate skill, who cannot be defeated. Iguazu is a gambler who constantly loses. He says YOU got LUCKY. He get his ass kicked constantly and blames others. He manifests his defeat by being a defeatist and continues to lose. Nobody gives a shit about him (with the exception of Michigan), but he takes EVERYTHING personally.
And if he manifested his anger, all his spite, all the frustrations and turned it into power, drive, something useful... well you get his giga blast in the final fight. Something truly impressive, and him finally letting his will be his. He got his win over ALLMIND, but ultimately your will is simply stronger than him.