Video Game / Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve

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It is the year 2029. The Federation of Central Usea is at war with the Republic of Sotoa and their mysterious squadron of ace pilots known as the Shadows. A war that they are losing.

The player takes the role of a naval pilot fished out of the ocean by the aging carrier FCU Endurance. Undermanned and isolated, every able fighting body is needed, so this newcomer is assigned as the Weapon Systems Officer of ace pilot Jan "Rex" Cope, the legendary "Wings of Theve." However, their first battle together goes terribly wrong when The Rival ace known as "Shadow 22" (Ares) shoots them down, causing them to crash-land in the ocean.

Despite the two surviving the crash, Jan is unable to escape from the pilot's seat of his sinking plane, and before drowning he tells his WSO to start swimming and make it home alive, passing onto him his callsign, "Rex", and his mantle as the Wings of Theve. Rex may not know it yet, but he's about to become the best ace pilot of the Sotoa-Usea War, and he's got the whole ship's crew backing him up—because to his newfound wingmates, the Endurance, and Central Usea, "Wings of Theve" is more than just a title, it's a symbol of hope that even when facing the darkest of shadows, the light of victory yet shines on.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is the twentieth official title in the Ace Combat franchise. It was announced during the 2025 Game Awards in December, with a scheduled release date of October 2nd, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam.

Previews:

• Announcement Trailer
• ACE COMBAT 8 Release Date Announcement Trailer
• Deluxe Edition Trailer
• Walkthrough Trailer

The prelease materials contain the following tropes:

• Ace Custom: The announcement trailer shows Cope flying a customized F/A-18F Super Hornet.
• Airstrike: Impossible: It's not an Ace Combat game without the player character flying into a tunnel, and just like in past games, Rex's teammates are just as surprised when Rex flies into one and flushes out ground targets waiting inside.

• The Alleged Boss: Endurance's real CO, Captain Gordon, is described as easygoing, and delegates naval ops to XO and fellow Captain Jessica Pike.
• All There in the Manual: Brand Director Kazutoki Kono also teases that the game only has 10% of all planned lore displayed, one example being Sotoan culture and history.
  • Aces at War: A History 2029 is released with the Ace of Aces and Collector's Boxes editions of the game. It will amass 212 pages, topping its predecessors by close to 50%.
  • Averted by Word of God in terms of the idea of a Lore Codex to get newcomers up to speed with the timeline; this is ultimately a standalone work.
• Arc Welding: With linking connections primarily to Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies, and Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere in mind, Sunao Katabuchi penned both this game and two short stories for Aces at War 2029:
  • "Dark Blue," whose release tying in to 7 was a long time coming since TGS 2018 and will be published online on July 27, 2026, 1100 JST at Katabuchi's request. It will be Avril Mead–centric and a giant welder.
  • "軌跡 (Kiseki)," the other one, more adjacent to 8.
• Boss Remix: Every dogfight with the Shadows has standout music tied to the game's main Leitmotif, in the vein of Zero's Round Table engagements.
• Breaking Old Trends: For the first time in Ace Combat history:
  • The main character is a naval aviator rather than part of any air force,^{Kei Nagase-shaped caveat}She was the JMSDF protagonist of the No Export for You Ikaros in the Sky novel, set in the Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Alternate Continuity. as well as a Guy in Back instead of a pilot at start.
  • The F/A-18 is the cover/canon plane, as well as the first game since 6 that the F-16 is NOT the starter plane, but the F/A-18C. Bonus points in that the F/A-18C in 8 is the first time the starter plane has two engines and two tailfins.
  • As explained in the Walkthrough Trailer, you can equip more than one special weapon on your plane a la Project Wingman.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: The FCU Endurance is based off of the USS Hornet, an Essex-class carrier that was first built in World War II and as such is much smaller and more obsolete than any other carrier seen before in the Ace Combat series.
• Captain Obvious:
  Lux Lunae: Wings of Theve! You're not welcome in the Sotoan skies!
  Tasha: They opened comms?!
  Coster: They... sure did.^{Japanese line}オープンチャンネルの周波数だ("Open frequency.")
• Central Theme:
  • True Companions. The Endurance ship setting and Wingman Command feature both serve this purpose, and Kazutoki Kono, the series Brand Director, even admitted some parallels to Macross.
  • The power of propaganda, from the use of social media to the titular Propaganda Hero who's the centerpiece of the conflict.
  D.D.: Sharing information isn't always about telling people the truth.
• The Charmer: Cope hanged onto this trait, owing to his own charisma. Again, told by the website.
• Continuity Cameo: Rosa Cossette D'Elise, in a Call-Back to her ending pose, waves her hand to the sky while on water, as shown by the release date trailer. And there are a select others.
• Continuity Nod: The Usea National Anthem -Hymn of Liberty- returns in Aces at War 2029.
• Cool Helmet: All members of FAS-830 get them in the style of Top Gun, courtesy of D.D.
• Conveniently Empty Building: The Walkthrough Trailer shows that the plan to help destroy the land battleship Xanthos is to detonate a trio of buildings—Heaven's Center—laying in its path. Comms indicate that the city has been evacuated beforehand, but the explosives team's detonation proves insufficient, so it falls on Rex to destroy each of the hotel (with a helping heap of shells and anti-tank mines) to collapse in Xanthos' front and bring it to a stop.
• Cool Plane: As is a given for this series. Thorough research was done on present and projected future aviation tech for original planes, while keeping in mind Acceptable Breaks from Reality and maintaining verisimilitude. There's even a whole Aces at War 2029 section devoted to stuff thought up by the Japanese Ministry of Defense's Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Agency.
  • The ones highlighted specifically in the announcement trailer is the F/A-18F Super Hornet dual-seater that Rex and Cope fly, and the Su-57 Felon that Ares flies in before shooting Rex down.
  • An Expy of the Arsenal Bird from Skies Unknown can also be seen in the announcement trailer. It's a continental jumbo transport named the Podarge.
• Dead Person Impersonation: Heavily implied to be the case for Rex impersonating Cope. After Cope gets shot down, Rex gets named the "Wings of Theve" and is handed a helmet with the exact same decoration as on Cope's and even flies planes with similar decorations.
• Debris Attack: A new mechanic shown in the Walkthrough Trailer is called Chain Destruction/Reaction effect. Destroying enemies and structures, especially the gigantic Podarge transports, can result in debris flying off and causing further damage to nearby enemies.
• Declaration of Protection:
  Kate: Calling all landing force units: Above you flies the Wings of Theve. No harm will come to you.
  Baxter: Careful what you promise, Kate, that's a hard check to cash.
• Defacement Insult: Kate is shown examining a Wings of Theve wall emblem crossed out with a red X, whatever reason that entails, in the release date trailer.
• Elite Mooks: The walkthrough trailer shows Battle Intros with Boss Subtitles from previous games like The Belkan War and Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy, evoking the former on purpose, are back for named enemy squadrons that have better planes and tactics. The Shadows are also an entire unit—1st Special Operations Wing, 11th Tactical Squadron—of elite pilots, with 22 (Su-57) and 55th Unit "Lux Lunae" (MiG-31B) squadrons shown so far, along with other planes in the paint scheme whose digits are in the hundreds.
• Event Flag: Mildly fusing Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War and Electrosphere, Rex can order wingmen to select paths, spare/kill certain enemies, and perform variably in objectives, changing the fates of smaller characters and their presence in later plot events.
• Evil Cripple: A woman implied to be the Sotoan officer in charge of the invasion is shown to be confined to a futuristic wheelchair in the Release Date trailer.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Tasha's pink dye mellows out to her natural blonde over the course of the campaign.
  • Time-Passage Beard: Initially neatly slicked back in hair, Coster gradually develops messy hair and facial stubble as shipboard conditions worsen.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Cope cynically believes this of the Wings of Theve, claiming that the whole thing is little more than a story made up for morale purposes. The official Ace Combat 8 overview on Bandai Namco's website even states that the legend is a lie fabricated to help keep morale up for the FCU.
  Cope: He's a mass delusion fabricated by the rumor mill of social media.
• Flower Motifs: Identified as an anemone, the flower seen at 1:50 of the release-date trailer plays Rule of Symbolism that is only entirely explained at the ending.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: General Resource LTD.'s logo can be seen at 1:16 of the announcement trailer, if faintly.
• The Gambling Addict: Cope was this while on his off days, as the game website reveals, yet only sometimes neglecting his debts.
• Gender-Blender Name: Tasha's English-rendered in-game surname is the masculine Seversky. Downplayed as it is the result of Inconsistent Spelling; her given Japanese-transliterated name says "Severskaya." The issue is documented here.
• Grasp the Sun: The walkthrough trailer shows Usean citizens perform a symbolic gesture by holding their hand above their head and spreading out their fingers.
  Hands to the sky, everyone! Hope is within reach!
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Kate wears athletic tape and support braces like they're running out, a testament to her grueling engagements in the past and across the campaign. The website explains that she keeps flying despite her injuries to keep morale up.
• Guy in Back: Rex starts out as one to Cope.
• Happy Ending Override: Downplayed, since things don't immediately break down; the otherwise unified Usea faces distrust of its central government, is plagued with both economic and postwar turmoil, and plunged into war for the first time—as far as we know—by foes outside its borders. The post-Lighthouse War peace ultimately lasts for about a decade, and salting the wound is seeing the International Space Elevator, the very casus belli of the aforementioned conflict, getting halfway wrecked.
• Hired Guns: Who your alternate Player Character will be in the multiplayer mode Ace Combat Online, as explained in the Deluxe Edition trailer.
• Homage: Mission 9's land battleship Boss Battle was the brainchild of the dev team's mech designer, who imagined Godzilla-esque Scenery Gorn. Katabuchi and Kono both discussed this early. Toku and Animesque influences were in mind as well, the basic prompt essentially "Let's make a kaiju movie" and the dev team bewildered when Kono first proposed it. More fitting is the mission's capital-city setting and the myriad parallels to particularly Shin Godzilla:
  • Swarms of a specific Car Fu (trains/trucks) to weaken the monster, as part of Suicide Missions performed by dedicated teams (Hydra there, Deathless and Immortals here).
  • Building-sized explosive Booby Traps that grind their goliath targets to a halt.
  • Both beasts get defeated not by annihilation, but immobilization.
  • Spawning drones from its 3D printers is arguably analogous to Godzilla's 5th Forms.
• Hope Bringer: The ailing FCU invokes this to boost morale, using inflated kill counts and social media manipulation to sell the Wings of Theve as a symbol of hope to its populace. Though the pilot who's been saddled with the title is very critical of the whole scheme, it's apparently worked well enough that, once he's killed, Rex is quickly made to take up the mantle in order to keep the narrative going.
• Hub Level: Between missions, the player will have on Endurance conversations and interactions with fellow wingmen in party, eatery, premission, hangar, takeoff, and briefing scenes. You can only rely on QTEs to get your way though.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Rookie, Pilot, Veteran, and Elite—in the vein of Ace Combat: Assault Horizon. In a rare twist, all are available at game start, and true to older roots, Harder Than Hard Ace mode is unlockable after first playthrough.
• Internal Homage:
  • Not the first time The Rival ace pilot flies a Sukhoi in service of an apparent People's Republic of Tyranny and is known by his modex callsign more, let alone shoots you down (this time real, complete with the Su-57 change from All Just a Dream). One soundtrack is titled "Nightmare".
  • So many to 5 that one would get a bullseye by calling this "Not Your Parents' Unsung War":
    • You serve The Federation as a four-man squadron leader (promoted to replace your downed predecessor senior) whose canon aircraft is a US-based naval plane flying against a nation on the Verusan continent.
    • Yuktobania waging war, and a Yuke woman as an ally.
    • A kinetic Kill Sat.
    • One of your wingmen is a rock fan.
    • YES/NO dialogue question prompts.
  • A mobile Drone DeployerSuperweapon commanded by a Blood Knight top officer intends to raze a capital city to the ground, chased by a two-flight protagonist squadron. The vehicle begins unloading railguns, protective drones as a Drone Deployer, and is armed notably with Magnetic Weapons, and causes havoc through long-range artillery fire. This vehicle, through cooperation with specialized groups, is entrapped and defeated, with a Clipped-Wing Angel boss section. At least this is base-game and not Downloadable Content.
• Joke Item: While shown in cutscenes in various past games, the Top Gun: Maverick DLC in Ace Combat 7 introduced a Super Hornet that has the ability to drop its extra fuel tank, which mechanically served no practical function beyond looking cool. The drop tank returns, and still has no practical use in combat.
• The Juggernaut: The Walkthrough Trailer shows that the land battleship is practically unstoppable, and that one tactical method to stop it requires destroying a series of buildings to collapse into its path.
• Legacy Immortality: The announcement trailer sets up that the Wings of Theve isn't a single individual but a title secretly passed on whenever the last bearer is killed in action.
• Lore Codex: Assault Records return in greater detail for named enemy aces, in Author's Saving Throw fashion.
• Manipulative Editing: Using his smartphone, D.D. doctors Endurance photos to inflate the actual number of shipboard fighter craft to keep morale up.
• Mildly Military: Rex's wingmen Tasha and Noise walk around in half-undone flight suits, with Tasha also having pink hair. A brief trailer scene shows Tasha with High School algebra homework.
• Military Mashup Machine: The release date trailer briefly shows off the land battleship which looks to be just that, a literal battleship the size of several city blocks mounted on treads and capable of crushing buildings as it moves.
• Monumental Damage:
  • The Release Date Announcement trailer shows the Lighthouse taking substantial structural damage by an unknown aggressor.
  • The Walkthrough trailer shows the setting up of elaborate giant IEDs against the Xanthos land battleship, inevitably to the consternation of some.
• Mook Debut Cutscene: The walkthrough trailer shows that Elite Mooks are introduced with their name and insignia displayed.
• A Mother to Her Men: Kate Evans is this to a T, as the website explains that she presents a brave face always, even flying while injured.
• Multiple Demographic Appeal: Character designer Yusuke Kozaki suggested Tasha be a Rose Haired Girl on these grounds (or airspaces), a never-before-seen trait in Ace Combat women.
• Non-Specifically Foreign: Cope's country of origin is listed as unknown.
• Nostalgia Level: Producer Manabu Shimomoto teased that the whole campaign, being a Milestone Celebration, will do this in subtle ways, even hiding Easter Eggs throughout. One example: "The Fall of the Numbered Fleets" displays a newly civilized Newfield Island, once mired in water through the crater, with a modern circular port and thriving with fisheries, and reverses the factions' positions—FCU (which once led ISAF) airstrike against invader-held ports and airbases (Sotoa in Erusea's place), boasting the energy of 04's Mission 08 "Invincible Fleet".
• Press X to Not Die: Quick Time Events are present during cutscenes onboard the Endurance, similar to Assault Horizon. The Walkthrough Trailer shows a prompt to stand at attention when an officer calls for attention during a mission briefing.
• Protagonist Title: "Wings of Theve" is the nickname of your predecessor which you inherit.
• Qurac: The Republic of Sotoa is expressed as this in a Famitsu interview, which ties Ares' internally named "Parthian shot" to Sotoan culture. Other credible indicators:
  • The khanjar on the Sotoan female officer's uniform torso.
  • Sotoa and Iran both being republics with green-white-red flag colors, with the portional sword harkening to the historical Lion and Sun.
  • Its history being nomadic tribes and chieftainships, plus clan rule and desertification problems.
  • Character names like "Ishaq" (the first land battleship's captain) and "Soliev" (5th Fleet commanding officer) having Middle Eastern/Central Asian roots.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Endurance XO Jessica Pike stated that they have a Critical Staffing Shortage and both its crew and the pilots that make up FAS-830 "Joker" Squadron are this, owing to her uncompromising Pragmatic Hero outlook.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: The announcement trailer shows a black Su-57 with deep orange trim. The HUD labels him as Shadow 22, his TAC name appears to be Ares, dialogue refers to him simply as "22," and he makes short work of Jan's Super Hornet.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: The Endurance crew is subject to this in the three-month Time Skip, including the formerly all-pink Tasha.
• The Smurfette Principle: Tasha and Kate are the only women of their respective flights. Doubles with Two Girls to a Team; they are part of the wider strike fighter squadron FAS-830.
• Space-Filling Empire: Doubles with The Alliance: The FCU has become Usea-encompassing, with impliedly almost all nations part of its flag, per the Famitsu article.
• Spirit Advisor: Despite dying in the literal first mission and that being the reason you got the hot seat, Cope continues to accompany you as a (tonally) ghostly disembodied Greek Chorus. Developer Kono describes him as the “voice of God [who] narrates you through the story.”
• Tagline: Other than the above two provided, the Web Commercial (30-Second Version) gives more:
  • "Your inheritance—false wings, or hope alive?"^{Japanese line}託されたのは偽物の翼かそれとも希望の翼か
  • "The long-awaited newest entry in the series."^{Japanese line}待望のシリーズ最新作
• Take Up My Sword: The announcement trailer reveals that Cope knows that he's not going to be able to escape from his pilot seat when you both get shot down. He pulls the ejection seat and tells you to start swimming and make it home alive.
• Theme Naming:
  • Playing cards. Joker Flight flies alongside Queen and Jackpot Flights, and is commanded by AWACS Dealer. As well, Operation Gaffed Card.
  • Religious and Mythological Theme Naming:
    • Ares (Shadow 22) is one of the top-named War Gods in any pantheon; his is Classical Mythology.
    • A giant Cool Plane featured in the trailers is named after Podarge from Classical Mythology.
    • Enso Order's name and open-circle emblem reference the Zen Buddhism in terms of the circle's work-in-progress ontological perfection, enlightenment, and the infinite potential of the void.
    • Xanthos, the first land battleship, is a divine immortal horse, the offspring of Zephyrus the west-wind deity and Podarge the harpy (that name used as the Cool Plane continental lifters—yet again Classical Mythology.
• Tragic Keepsake: The announcement trailer shows that after Cope's Super Hornet gets shot down, Rex takes Cope's dogtags from his body, and Rex's new Super Hornet is painted with his emblem in Cope's memory.
• Vague Age: Invoked by the developers on Tasha's, with her High School algebra homework being touted as the one worth drawing conclusions from.
• Variable Mix: In-game music will react to player actions and have a particular style whenever missions are over, Word of God states.
• War Refugees: While there are plenty of people aboard the Endurance, the majority of them are untrained civilian refugees.
• Weather Gameplay Mechanic: The cloud mechanics returns from AC7. Flying through clouds will result in your plane starting to ice up, and even be put at risk of getting struck by lightning in certain levels.
• What the Hell Are You?: If Rex chose to shoot down all of Shark Squadron:
  A. Webb: Hey you, Baxter's sidekick, just who the hell are you?
  Baxter: You'll see, all in due time. Hey Webb, don't let the sharks bite.
• You Are in Command Now: The announcement trailer shows Rex ends up becoming the leader of the Wings of Theve squadron FAS-830 "Joker," Carrier Air Wing 6.
• You Are Number Six: Many of the Shadows, as shown with Lux Lunae, identify themselves just by their plane numbers.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Spoken near-verbatim by Coster when Xanthos continues operating by way of thrusters despite all the FCU's skyscraper-sized Booby Trap efforts.