Today, Bandai Namco revealed a new developer diary video of its upcoming flight shooting game Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve.
In the video, we get to hear from Brand Director Kazutoki Kono, Producer Manaby Shimomoto, Creative Director Kosuke Itomi, Art Directors Keiichi Yamaguchi and Masato Kanno, and Development Director Akira Yasui, as they provide new details about the game.
We hear more about the setting and about how players will be able to experience the story from a first-person perspective with camera controls, with the narration focusing a lot on the everyday life aboard the Endurance aircraft carrier.
Graphics have been boosted considerably. Polygon count is six times higher compared to Ace Combat 7, and textures are 4k instead of 1k in resolution.
Massive weapons will appear as usual in the series, but they will be linked to one another, like the giant transport aircraft carrying something else that would be assembled at their destination.
We take a look at the new “Cloudy” middleware engine used to create layered clouds, on top of the lighting, engaged by Unreal Engine’s Lumen.
The video also introduces the tutorials and training mode that new players will be able to use to get acquainted with the controls.
While the game will have a great campaign, we can also expect an online mode that is defined as the biggest in the Ace Combat series.
You can watch the video below.
Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve will release in 2026 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S, following the announcement from a few months ago.
It’s the latest installment of the popular Ace Combat franchise, which culminated a few years ago with Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, that has broken all sales records for the series by shipping over 7 million units, after a period in which it remained dormant.
If you’d like to read more flight simulation news, you can find plenty in our latest roundup article from yesterday.
If you want to go further back, we have a handy overview video of the major flight simulation news in the past week. You can watch it below. As usual, leaving a like and a comment and subscribing to our growing YouTube channel is extremely helpful.
