Earlier this month, Amazon announced that it had ordered an animated series consisting of brief films based on video games like Cave AND Mega Man, called Secret level. Now we have our first look at the series trailer and it certainly looks like a brief film based on Armored CoreFromSoftware’s mech games starring none other than Keanu Reeves.
Secret levelwhich will be released on December 10, is the work of Tim Miller and the CGI studio Blur Studio, which was behind the first Deadpool movie and Netflix Love, Death and Robots sci-fi anthology. The fresh trailer showed off snippets of a few different brief films from the fresh series, and one of them definitely looks like three seconds of Reeves sticking his head forward in a sweaty robot cockpit.
Here’s the trailer:
Here’s the part that looks like Reeves:
And here is FromSoftware confirming that it is Armored Core history:
There are two reasons why this is so mind-blowing to fans. First, Reeves is amazing, and in addition to starring in timeless classics like Matrix, Jan WickAND Critical pointalso delivered an incredible performance as Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077showing that it is possible to bring talented Hollywood stars into a blockbuster video game in a way that seems elegant and profitable, rather than a low-cost way to make money (Idris Elba demonstrated the same thing in the game Phantom Freedom expansion last year).
But secondly, Armored Core is a beloved but relatively unknown video game intellectual property that could be tapped for an Amazon Prime adaptation. It’s a series known for its tense mech combat, brutal post-apocalyptic sci-fi settings, and effective but incredibly gritty writing and storytelling. And of course, its red robot eyes, which you can see in the teaser.
The pilots of these mechs are usually stoned and mixed with all sorts of weird body horror cyber-garbage, and their job is to stave off their existential crises by blowing things up with giant cannons. Reeves seems perfect for the role.
Last year Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon demonstrated each of these strengths and was excellent, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of phenomenon you’d expect to see from the start of a transmedia cameo, even a relatively minor one like a representation in an anthology series. Other FromSoftware games, including Dark Souls, Bloodyand mega seller Ring of Fire all seemed much more likely candidates.
What Armored Core What the fans lack in numbers, they make up for in ardent devotion. If you doubt that, consider this five and a half hour explainer on YouTube ON Armor Core VIA story that has over a million views. I assume this is Secret Level’s story Armored Core the entry will be shorter, but only slightly.
