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Before “Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve” releases next month, fans of Bandai Namco Entertainment’s classic fighter-pilot video game franchise have a few weeks of backstory to brush up on via live-action prequel project “Hour Zero.”
Launching its first episode Tuesday, the four-installment short film is a first-of-its-kind project for the video game studio, which will reveal the plot going into the upcoming eighth “Ace Combat” game.
Per Bandai Namco Entertainment America’s description for “Hour Zero”: “Three strangers survive the opening days of the Republic of Sotoa’s invasion of the Federation of Central Usea. Josh Holloway stars as a pilot with nowhere to land, Brandon Routh as a doctor who saved his enemy, and Tamlyn Tomita as a news anchor silenced for telling the truth. Told in reverse and grounded in the family lives of its three leads, their stories count down to the moment when their normal lives were shattered and war began. Their story sets the stage for the narrative players will experience in the deep, engaging Campaign Mode in ‘Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve.’”
The project was produced when “Ace Combat 8″ was already relatively far into the game development process, and Holloway had some questions before he agreed to join. Up to that point, his only experience working with a video game studio was voicing a character in 2007’s real-time strategy game “Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars and that was cinematic footage for the game itself, not a live-action project.
“At first I had a little reservation,” Holloway tells Variety. “I was like, a video game? I’m not sure. Because I’d done one a long time ago, but it was kind of on the cheesy side a little bit because it was just an internet game. It wasn’t a big thing. So I was a little nervous about it, but I loved this game as a teenager. I remember playing the first ‘Ace Combat’ games because they would be in the arcades with the big simulator, and I just loved it back then, and then I kind of went away from gaming for many, many years. So when they brought this up, I was like, I know this game, of all things, because I don’t know any games. And I’d seen ‘Maverick’ not long ago, so my interest was piqued again towards this type of genre, so I was really interested. I just had some immediate questions.”
And once he saw the effort Bandai Namco planned to put into this, Holloway was sold.
“I was like, ‘What’s the production value? I need to see a script. Do they have me sitting on an apple box with a toothpick in my hand, or is it an actual fuselage?’” Holloway says. “And when I got into it and found out how really well done and well prepared they were to do this, I was like, OK, this sounds like fun, and I can have my fighter pilot moment. Once I saw the production value and how he was going about it, I was like, oh yeah, I’m in. Let’s do this.”
Set for release Oct. 2 across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S and PC, “Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve” takes place amid the lies, conspiracies and gossip that obscure the truth behind an ongoing war and the legendary ace fighting to reclaim the Federation of Central Usea from the Republic of Sotoa.
“I wrapped around my character first, and the story and how he fit in that,” Holloway says. “So I was like, OK, I’m the OG pilot from way back. I’m a little older. I’m responsible for everybody. I’ve seen a lot of combat, a lot of death and I’m responsible for these kids. So that brings the stakes because I’m a father. I have children. I’m a leader. I’ve led for many years in my industry and stuff, so I understood all that. And also my father passed not long ago, so I really brought all the stakes. That’s what I had to do in my job as an actor. Now, what’s it going to look like?”
Holloway and the Bandai Namco team worked with an actual fighter pilot to advise on the logistics of shooting.
“Sometimes in a small frame, a lot of emotion and too much movement doesn’t translate,” Holloway says. “So how do I bring that intensity without going bananas and making it not work? Because this is a new thing for me, being inside a cockpit. How is he going to look when he’s making those turns. How much? How difficult is it? How many Gs are you pulling? What does it really feel like? It was amazing in our production that they had a real pilot there with me, and he’s telling me, ‘If you’re pulling that G, your body is actually gonna be grunting. You can’t even help it.’ I’m like, oh shit, really? So that was really amazing information to have on the layering of the look and the stakes that you’re bringing.”
The “Hour Zero” story will continue to unfold across three more episodes (releasing Sept. 17, Sept. 23 and Sept. 29) before “Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve” is released.
English (US) ·