Man, that "Raven, what is your wish" line from Nine Ball is fuel on the fire of the "the Nine Ball AI infected Leos Kline via his human+ augs before it was destroyed" theory

If there is unrest in the Raven's Nest management will hold a pizza party to quell it.

I miss all the weird peculiarities of gen 1 like giant flesh bugs and an ancient stone ruin that’s conveniently vast enough for ACs to traverse through.

Shape Memory Alloy OST does things to my brain and im here for it

Imagine playing Armored Core because you want the smoke.

I thought the implication was that Hustler-1 was hiring Boss Savage? Especially after they explored Hustler-1 further in MoA. "The Corporations, the ACs, the Ravens' Nest. All of these are controlled by ME. For the purpose of recreating the world and humankind with it. Such is the duty to which I've been entrusted."

I think the reason Raven's Nest isn't killing you in your sleep or blowing up your hangar is deniability. They really wanna make it look like you got unlucky and died on a mission in order to not alert the other Ravens that the Nest is the kind of organization that wants to blow up their own employees for doing too well. It needs Ravens to fall in line as agents who maintain the stagnant corporate warfare order, willingly or not, and not a lot of Ravens would be willing to work for anyone if they knew the Employee of The Month award is in fact a bomb under your bed.

But you, as an irregular who caused the demise of two major corproations and are threatening to cause major change in the world, (willingly or not) need to be dealth with in a way that keeps the other Ravens unaware of the Nest's true nature. I also suppose it's that risk assessment that makes them use Boss Savage instead of Hustler One until the Nest's own survival becomes a risk.

I also believe that the playable Raven, i.e. you, know the Nest's nature and at least by final mission is aware of the trap, because after destroying the second set of enemies, a cutscene door opening automatially puts us into the second part of the level past the floating mines that the playable Raven completely ignores. The Raven knows it's a trap coming in and they intend to destroy the Nest once and for all.

Well,  given what Boss Savage said,  the last few missions were clearly a series of thinly veiled assassination attempts. Unless the Raven from AC1 took a few too many blows to the head in his younger days, he absolutely knew what was up by the time Boss Savage mentioned that he "was out of line and went overboard", and was actively trying to bring Raven's Nest down before it could kill him. The only thing he wouldn't definitively know until the very end of "Destroy Floating Mines" is where Hustler One fit into the whole picture,  because unlike Leos Klein, he didn't have the experience of killing his ass only to see him again a few missions later. But once that he blew up the two Nine-Ball units and heard the computer telling him not to approach, then it would've made sense. He's standing in Raven's Nest HQ, two Nine-Ball units just tried to kill him, AND there's this weird computer sitting here in the back that's been mocking him the whole mission.

Also,  according to the Armored Core 10 Works Complete File,  AC1 and Master of Arena are happening at the same time to two different pilots. The difference is that Leos Klein had personal beef with Hustler One and ended up digging up "his" entire origin (with the help of Elan Cubis of course) while trying to get enough information to track him down and eliminate him. It's even strongly implied that Hustler One went from simply wanting to eliminate a threat to almost wanting Leos to figure it all out since it directly asks him if he's finally managed to piece it all together. And when they do finally meet each other,  Hustler One  comes right out with it and confirms what Leos has been suspecting, as well as explaining in full what its purpose is.

don't forget the novel for the first game known as Armored Core The Fake Illusions.

28:11 my theory as to why ravens nest still helps us outside of missions is because RN is a very public company, if they started denying service and payment to ranking ravens, even going so far as to kill them, it would become a puclic scandal.
So its better for them to maintain the idea of neutrality, if a raven dies in a mission that was too much for them, that can't be blamed on RN

How have I been replaying this game for literal decades, and only just now realized that the AC who tries to kill you in "Mop Up Chrome Remnants" is Boss Savage from earlier? All this time and the voice and AC name somehow never clicked in my brain.

I will say that the idea might be that as a player, the raven doesn't quite catch onto Raven's Nest trying to kill them, but notices some things are wrong and that SOMEONE is after them, possibly one of the corporations hiring Boss Savage, but in reality it's Hustler 1/The Controller, an AI designed to try keeping order in the underground cities after the union of corporations starts not trusting eachother with the control of Raven's Nest. The AI sees the player(s, since all 3 games are happening at roughly the same time) as something that needs to be eliminated, but doesn't want to do it outright and call attention to the possibility of people rebelling, which is why the final mission could be an emergency call after fighting Savage before the player can piece together what he said, a last ditch effort to eliminate the player in the base itself with Nineball being the one to "save the day" if the player fails. It doesn't want to send out Nineball as that makes it too obvious that there's foul play from Raven's Nest if ANYONE else manages to intercept something.

I'm not a huge lore buff myself, I've just watched a lot of stuff on the Armored Core games, especially from Armored Core Lore...

The end of AC1 always felt kinda "Giant Space Flea Suddenly Out Of Nowhere" to me. But that may just be PTSD from having attempted the final mission in an AC that wasn't "+6'd" or even just properly built for the mission. Stupid moving boxes.

To use one of my favorite quotes from Saint's Row the Third, I like to think Boss Savage coming after "us" in the second "Mop Up..." mission and using all that, presumably surplus, weaponry, is just a case of "People can go a long way to be A-holes."

I started my AC journey with Nexus followed by Last Raven, after that I went for Gen 1, 2, missing elements of Gen 3.
So I'm glad you haven't forgotten about those bonus lines from Nexus Revolution remake. :]

My theory for Savage's behavior is this. He realized the true nature of Raven's Nest/Nineball/Hustler One and RN (or should I just say DOVE at this point?) is either fully aware of it, or has serious reasons to assume that he knows of this secret.

Therefore, Boss Savage is actually getting blackmailed to do dirty jobs when Nineball is too busy elsewhere (even though it has body doubles to spare, but still has to keep up the facade of being just one dude) or sent to his personal suicide missions just in case.

I'm leaning towards Nest not being absolutely sure, but trying to eliminate him just in case. That would explain Boss's tendency to be flashy and "incompetent". He fails missions on purpose to look "stupid" enough to not be considered a threat. He knows that Nineball will go ballistic on him, our "Ace" Raven protagonist or anyone else that gets too influential.

Our protagonist Raven might be pretending to be a "good boy" by coming back to RN Garage for similar reason. He keeps up the charade not to save his potential income, but his own butt.

Possible explanation for why DOVE just does not cut off supplies to his potential threat and let him starve or whatever.
It's just a piece of programming. It has no option to disobey its own command to provide Garage Service to employed Ravens. Yes, even if it is programmed to run an oppressive dystopia, while piloting multiple copies of an overpowered armored core... this Artificial Intelligence is actually Absolute Incompetence when it comes to dealing with reality.
Which lets players fight back, defeat it and push the plot of the games forward.

Great video RC, very pleasant to watch and analyze fellow Raven's thought process. :]

My view on it has always been that the AIs in the series want to keep acting from behind the scenes, in a way that's plausibly deniable.  Yes, the Nest could have sent Hustler One after you at any point.  But that's a level of escalation that might not be necessary.  Even if it DOES lose other pawns in the process.

That also explains why it keeps giving you support: If it stopped giving Ravens support the moment they became a potential problem, then would Ravens continue to work for the Nest? Would the Nest be more likely to lose control over the others? It's an interesting question if you assume that yours is not the only location that the Raven's Nest operates in.  Which would just make you into a localized problem, lowering your overall significance.

Also, I always thought that the Controller in AC3 seemingly being designed to fail, forcing humanity to pick itself up and pull itself together again, was an interesting twist for the series.

Your content is genuinely so freaking good. I love Armored Core and am hoping you cover Armored Core in your current fashion.

You cannot hope to defeat Stinger.

My understanding is that, R and Husler One are both the Ravens' Nest AI to keep control and using the Merc's and the Corps as pawns in its scheme of control as it sees fit to keep balance, you are conscidered as one who brings only chaos or one who wields too much power, hence the line, "you are totally out of control" fit the narrative that RN is behind Boss Savage, but one could argue the Corps themselves are used as tools, so in the end its all RN pulling the strings, putting the Corps against eachother to the benefit of the AI and using the Merc's as the direct arm of the AI or minmaxing the war between Corpo's

Boss Savage was always a kick ass kind of Raven. Do Wild Cat next that guy carries a lot of Human Plus lore.

One guess I have to explain why the Nest doesn't overtly kill you sooner is they don't want to tip their hand. If they start taking out mercs who are being too successful they're going to have internal issues. Having Hustler 1 be an open hitman also might cause issues, so they work with proxies. Similarly, if they take out a merc using their repair facilities it would make everyone jump ship to other providers for their own safety. As for why the Raven keeps working for them, similarly they can't act too openly and need a repair facility, with few options after how much damage they've caused the corps. It's a sort of cold war of who blinks first, as the Nest tries to kill them and the Raven takes payment to keep their AC running while they figure out a plan