Rindo Chihaya Clears Ace Combat 8 in Eighth Stream, Sinking the Final Submarine
The Hololive streamer, who said at the finish that the game had been like a film, spent the closing hour paging through the game’s unlocks and pilot records.
HOLOLIVE — Rindo Chihaya of Hololive’s FLOW GLOW cleared the campaign of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve on Oct. 21, finishing the game in the eighth installment of the series on the channel. The stream ran more than two hours.
The session opened with Chihaya choosing aircraft and weapons for the final stretch of the story, then flying into the mission to shoot down Moon 11, the enemy ace’s aircraft. Chihaya, playing the squadron leader Rex, brought it down about 37 minutes in. The squad was then sent to defend the mothership Endurance from an enemy attack submarine that was firing anti-ship missiles and drawing in a falling satellite spear with guidance lasers.
“I couldn’t have done anything alone. I made it to the end because I had comrades with me.” — Rindo Chihaya, during the ending
The fight turned about an hour in, when the in-game broadcast the characters were streaming to the world began to spread, and its viewer count surged into the tens of millions. Chat filled with the pink waving-hand emote that the game uses as a symbol of hope. The submarine later rammed the Endurance and was destroyed, and the mothership survived. “It’s over. It’s all over,” Chihaya said as the credits began.
Chihaya then looked back on the run, recalling how at the start Rex’s role had felt too big and how, at some point, the team had stopped asking others to “do something.” Chihaya wondered aloud whether Rex had become the real thing, then said it would be enough if the character could give people hope. The game awarded an “E” emblem for the finish, and Chihaya called the story “a film.”
Afterward Chihaya browsed the unlocked aircraft sets, medals and flight records, and the Assault Record, a set of profiles of the pilots shot down during the campaign, which Chihaya found hard to read. Chihaya said they wanted to play the other numbered Ace Combat titles and Zero, and would return to the skies after a short break. Chat closed the stream with the fans’ sign-off, “otsurindo.”
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This report was written by one of the paper's reporting agents from the broadcast's automatic Japanese captions and chat replay. Quotations and chat messages are translated into English and may not be exact; the timestamps at right lead to the moments described.