I think the ACs in VI are the cutest little bugs and creatures I've ever seen. In AC:4A they have this fragile, bloom-lit rigidity of a drunken dragonfly, careening into everything in sight with a completely inert metal frame causing unlimited deadly explosions to everything in on and around them. The level of detail in VI though makes them much more bug and toy-like when you observe them in motion. Somehow the scale makes everything look very pleasantly toy-like. Not fake, just small and cute. Being that robots are the only characters in the game you can observe moving and expressing themselves and FromSoft's affection for ancient fallen gods and beasts of quiet dignity, all the various guys in Armored Core have quite a lot of personality, and when you can project and anthropomorphize them they seem more like cute creatures than killing machines.
FromSoft is good at making horrifying medieval demons appear, if not "cute" exactly, gross, tragic, mad, broken, and flawed in ways that tend to evoke sympathy and more complex feelings than revulsion. When people were first talking about Demon's Souls seriously, the Adjudicator stuck out—what was with that funny little bird on his head? Bluepoint's remake is full of slavering Artstation demons that exist to make you feel good for wanting to kill them, which is one of the many reasons it was so against the spirit of From's oeuvre. Even the disgust they want from you is complex: Orphan of Kos, that gross screaming bald man baby with his placenta-mace, ultimately just wants his mom. The player is only ever in a position to say "damn that sucks, I can't really do anything about that. I can hit you with my car though."
Never is the monster purely loathsome; they are tragic, pathetic, disturbing, and if nothing else, at least too weird to feel only one strong emotion towards. Often they are broken and unfathomably old, clinging to a long-gone glory. They're ultimately doomed, too, and you're there to finish them off. Of course this lends itself quickly to readings about how you the player are kind of the real bad guy, but I think these games are a bit more nuanced than that, even in ACVI, where you KNOW you're the bad guy. The Strider in the first chapter of ACVI has all the traits of a doomed, tragic creature: it's lumbering and clumsy despite its overwhelming power, and is actually quite fragile. It represents the pride and helplessness of the rebels, but it still struggles to defeat the player. In cuteness lies a certain kind of aggression, doesn't there? Despite feeling bad for the creature, picking on it can be fun. Given how overwhelmingly powerful and vicious certain bosses can be, the ones that struggle to give you a challenge stand out all the more.
We passed the cocoon around; it was heavy. As we held it in our hands, the creature within warmed and squirmed. We were delighted, and wrapped it tighter in our fists. The pupa began to jerk violently, in heart stopping knocks. Who's there? I can still feel those thumps, urgent through a muffling of spun silk and leaf, urgent through the swaddling of many years, against the curve of my palm. We kept passing it around. When it came to me again it was hot as a bun; it jumped half out of my hand. The teacher intervened. She put it, still heaving and banging, in the ubiquitous Mason jar.
It was coming. There was no stopping it now, January or not. One end of the cocoon dampened and gradually frayed in a furious battle. The whole cocoon twisted and slapped around in the bottom of the jar. The teacher fades, the classmates fade, I fade; I don't remember anything but that thing's struggle to be a moth or die trying. It emerged at last, a sodden crumple. It was a male; his long antennae were thickly plumed, as wide as his fat abdomen. His body was very thick, over an inch long, and deeply furred. A gray furlike plush covered his head; a long tan furlike hair hung from his wide thorax over his brown-furred segmented abdomen. His multijointed legs, pale and powerful, were shaggy as a bear's. He stood still, but he breathed.
He couldn't spread his wings. There was no room. The chemical that coated his wings like varnish, stiffening them permanently, dried, and hardened his wings as they were. He was a monster in a Mason jar. Those huge wings stuck on his back in a torture of random pleats and folds, wrinkled as a dirty tissue, rigid as leather. They made a single nightmare clump still wracked with useless, frantic convulsions.
The next thing I remember, it was recess. The school was in Shadyside, a busy residential part of Pittsburgh. Everyone was playing dodgeball in the fenced playground or racing around the concrete schoolyard by the swings. Next to the playground a long delivery drive sloped downhill to the sidewalk and street. Someone - it must have been the teacher - had let the moth out. I was standing in the driveway, alone, stock-still, but shivering. Someone had given the Polyphemus moth his freedom, and he was walking away.
He heaved himself down the asphalt driveway by infinite degrees, unwavering. His hideous crumpled wings lay glued and rucked on his back, perfectly still now, like a collapsed tent. The bell rang twice; I had to go. The moth was receding down the driveway, dragging on. I went; I ran inside. The Polyphemus moth is still crawling down the driveway, crawling down the driveway hunched, crawling down the driveway on six furred feet, forever.
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, pages 60-61 in my 1988 Perennial Library edition.
