'Ace Combat' series director Kazutoki Kono (left) and friend (right).

Bandai Namco

With Ace Combat 8 on the way later this year, we’ve had the first developer diary for the game, which has seen the return of a familiar friend.

Apart from the important things like upping the texture resolution on the plane models from 1K to 4K, and the fact that this will be using Lumen for the lighting, it’s the return of the JPEG Dog that has brought joy to my heart.

Specifically, it’s in the shots where series director Kazutoki Kono is talking about the game, and the much-loved JPEG Dog is in the background (shown above).

What’s doubly hilarious about this is that they have a lifesize cut out of Cosette’s dog in one of their meeting rooms at Bandai Namco.

When this dog first appeared in the genuinely excellent Ace Combat 7, the internet collectively lost its mind.

However, the story behind the dog’s appearances was actually a sad one, as it was the deceased pet of one of the game’s developers, known as Toraji.

All that meme goodness aside, Ace Combat 8 does look very good, and the gameplay shown does appear to be extremely close to how Ace Combat 7 worked, which is no real surprise, as they both use Unreal Engine.

The team also talks about bringing back the various fictional fighter planes that have appeared across the multiple decades of the history of the series.

Considering that we’re still in the Strangereal setting, I’m hoping we see a return of the X-02S Strike Wyvern, as I had a lot of fun with that in Ace Combat 7.

Ace Combat 8: The Wings of Theve will be released on multiple platforms later this year.

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