Matias Torres
Gunnery Officer
Operation Fisherman
Alicorn
- "The world shall be horrified by the number of lives we will take. Only then will they let go of their weapons... Weapons that would have taken the lives of ten million!"
- ― Captain Matias Torres
Captain Matias Torres (マティアス・トーレス Matiasu Tōresu) was a decorated former member of the Erusean Navy and commanding officer of the submersible aviation cruiser Alicorn.
Torres boasted a long combat record with the Erusean Navy, having served in multiple conflicts on the Usean continent. He became a key figure during the Lighthouse War after rebelling against Erusea and fighting Osean forces, attempting to nuke the Osean capital of Oured.[1] While he claimed his goals were in service of the "salvation of ten million" (referencing the lives that he believed would be lost if the Lighthouse War continued), and alleged that his plan was to horrify both sides into ending the war,[4] the truth of the matter was that Torres simply wished to kill a million people with a shot from beyond the horizon, deeming it to be "beautiful" and "elegant."[2]
Torres is the main antagonist of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown's DLC missions: "Unexpected Visitor," "Anchorhead Raid," and "Ten Million Relief Plan".
Biography
Early life
Torres entered the Federal Erusean Naval War College on January 4, 1991, after earning his undergraduate degree. He was then commissioned as an officer in the Erusean Navy on December 15, 1994. On January 15 the following year, he earned the Four Years of Continuous Service Medal. Over the next nine years, he was assigned to different ships in the Federal Erusean Navy, including many vessels in the "invincible" Aegir Fleet:[1]
- March 1, 1996—reassigned to the cruiser Fenris
- October 1, 1996—reassigned to the destroyer Herne
- April 1, 1998—reassigned to the cruiser Fenris
- May 1, 1999—reassigned to the cruiser Tethys
- July 1, 2000—reassigned to the cruiser Enyo
- June 1, 2003—reassigned to the battleship Tanager
On July 11, 1997, during the Usean coup d'état, the Erusean Navy awarded Torres with a medal for hitting an enemy ship 30 km (19 mi) away in the middle of a storm as the Herne's gunnery officer.[1]
On January 15, 2001, Torres was awarded the Ten Years of Continuous Service Medal.
At some point by 2003, Torres was promoted to the rank of Captain on the Enyo. He was awarded another medal on March 16, 2003, for helping to rescue the crew of a destroyer that sunk in an accident.[1]
Continental War and aftermath
After he was assigned to the Tanager on June 1, 2003, Torres led the vessel in combat during the Continental War. On November 23, 2004, the ISAF Air Force commenced Operation Rough Seas to destroy the Aegir Fleet.[5] The Tanager was sunk in the battle,[5] but Torres rescued as many sailors as he could from the sinking ship. His efforts earned him a medal on December 24 as well as the title "The Hero of Comberth Harbor" among the Erusean forces.[1]
He was reassigned to the Erusean Navy's headquarters five days after the Tanager sank, and remained there until the end of the Continental War. On the day the war ended—September 19, 2005—he was reassigned to the Naval War College, likely in a leadership or instructor role. During this time, Torres earned the Sixteen Years of Continuous Service Medal, on January 15, 2007. He remained there for five years before being placed on house arrest and losing his rank on April 8, 2010, reportedly for "disseminating dangerous ideas" at the college. On May 10 of the same year, he entered the Erusean military reserves.[1]
The Alicorn incident
On January 4, 2015, Torres returned to active duty. He was reappointed his rank of Captain on June 7, and due to his skill at naval gunnry, he was assigned as the head of the pre-commissioning crew on the submersible aviation cruiser Alicorn on December 2. The Alicorn finished outfitting and sailed out for its first sea trial on October 9, 2016, during which time Torres conducted tests to determine the operational limits of the Alicorn's SRC-03a strategic rail cannon.[6]
Later on in the sea trial, the Alicorn accidentally ran aground while submerged on November 10, 2016, leaving the submarine at a 15 degree tilt.[4] After a two year search for the missing submarine, both Torres and the Alicorn's crew were finally found at the bottom of the sea—698 days after the initial grounding—and were rescued on October 9, 2018. Of the 356 crewmen that had embarked, 330 were rescued.[1] 30 of the Alicorn' sailors later chose to leave the crew, though the remaining 300 chose to stay. They, along with the submarine, then transferred to the Erusean Royal Navy's reserve fleet on November 3.[7]
At some point, the 30 crew members who had departed the crew began to operate as undercover agents for Torres, conducting sabotage, cyber propaganda, and dissemination of false intel. It is therefore assumed that his plan to kill one million people had already formed around this time.[1]
Lighthouse War
The Alicorn was not originally part of Erusea's combat doctrine for the Lighthouse War. It was officially commissioned into the Erusean Royal Navy on August 11, 2019, the day after Erusea lost the Njord Fleet in Snider's Top in a desperate attempt to plug its deficit in its naval power.[7][8] By September 4, the Alicorn was deployed to Artiglio. Torres ordered one of his agents, Edgar Saxon, to feed false intel to Osean brigadier general Howard Clemens regarding supposed weapons of mass destruction aboard the submarine.
On September 4, 2019—just as Torres had planned—Osea launched an assault-and-capture operation to seize the Alicorn while it remained in port, hoping to secure evidence of WMDs. Torres rebelled against Erusea after being ordered to scuttle the Alicorn, disobeying orders and leaving port. He declared his alleged intent during a speech over the radio—to stop the war with his own extreme measures, by using the Alicorn's nuclear projection capabilities to kill untold numbers of people in the Osean capital of Oured, horrifying both sides into throwing down their weapons.[4] He ordered the submarine's crew to eliminate the incoming Osean fleet and dispatched a detachment of four aircraft from his air wing in what appeared to be an attempt to deploy a WMD, but was really just a diversion for the Alicorn to submerge safely without being pursued by Osean forces. The aircraft, meanwhile, were intercepted and shot down by the Long Range Strategic Strike Group's flight lead Trigger while escaping the area.[4]
On September 10, Torres deployed several SLUAVs towards LRSSG at Anchorhead during Operation Domino as a guided artillery fire drill for the rail cannon, in practice for the future nuclear attack on Oured. Torres contacted his agents during the operation in order to transport the necessary nuclear shells to the submarine. Following the battle, the Alicorn docked and resupplied at the city in preparation for the attack on Oured.[1]
By September 14, Torres moved the Alicorn into the Spring Sea and around Erusea's sound surveillance network, reaching the Azalea Seamount in the region PX80443. The Alicorn began to head west towards Peony Trench to avoid being attacked before it could fire. Torres's ultimate goal was to fire on September 19. Victory celebrations of the Usean Continental War would be in full swing in Oured, and thus attacking on the anniversary would maximize casualties. Torres's spies in Osea deployed terminal guidance drones disguised as advertisement UAVs by the 14th.[2]
- "Don't you see, Three Strikes?! Ten million lives will be saved at the cost of a mere million lives! Don't you see? Don't you see?! Landing a clean shot on a difficult target! That is what makes it elegant! That is true beauty! ... Alas, you don't see, Three Strikes! Of course you wouldn't!"
- ― Torres to Trigger[2]
On September 14, Osea initiated Operation Fisherman, an operation to sink the Alicorn. Osean ASW planes laid a sonobuoy barrier in front of Peony Trench, locating the Alicorn underwater with the help of a magnetic anomaly detector mounted on Trigger's plane. Torres had anticipated this move, and used jammer buoys to generate noise in the MAD's signal. Destroying the buoys would let the Oseans detect the submarine again, but doing so set off explosions underwater, generating enough underwater echoes to allow the Alicorn to escape at full speed. The sub raced for the trench, but it was quickly re-detected by the MAD. A task force of three Osean destroyers and a single cruiser launched four VL-ASROC anti-submarine missiles at the sub, damaging its ballast tanks and forcing it to surface.
Torres deployed every trick the Alicorn had in its arsenal during the ensuing engagement—including its twin railguns and barrier drones—but they were all disabled by Trigger, along with the sub's ballast tanks. Additionally, David North contacted the Osean Air Defense Force and managed to get electronic warfare aircraft scrambled over the capital, jamming the Alicorn's terminal guidance. In his most risky gambit yet, Torres committed perfidy by faking his own surrender, causing the Oseans to disengage. Torres immediately launched barrier drones to block their paths and deployed the Alicorn's rail cannon, beginning to manually aim the cannon in a last ditch effort to destroy Oured. Trigger managed to weave through the barriers and throw the cannon off its intended angle just slightly with a missile, causing Torres to miss. Furious, Torres ordered the next nuclear shell to be loaded.
The Alicorn's fire control systems were malfunctioning, and therefore the barrel could not be adjusted manually. As his last attempt to carry out the planned attack, Torres ordered the stern of the sub be purposefully flooded, partially sinking the Alicorn to elevate the barrel just enough to hit his target. He then had a heated exchange with David over the radio, during which Torres revealed how in his mind the true beauty of the plan was to end a million lives with a difficult shot from beyond the horizon, and how he believed that David's goal of sinking the Alicorn with all 300 hands aboard was no different to his killing of a million people. He continued to berate Trigger on how the Osean pilot could not see the beauty in his plan.
Before the cannon could fire again, it was destroyed by Trigger. Delusional to the end, Torres still clung on to his goal by spending his final moments laughing maniacally before the eruption of the Alicorn's lithium-ion batteries steamed him alive,[9] killing him and ending his machinations and the threat to Oured once and for all.[2]
Character design
- "At [the time of development], I was really into serial killer stories, like Manhunt, MINDHUNTER, and other detective dramas about serial killers. From there, I started binge-watching documentaries about real serial killers. Watching that stuff, I felt like a serial killer. Characters like that—that's something Ace Combat has never had before. So I told [the development team] that I want to do that."
- ― Kazutoki Kono on the development of Torres' character[10]
Kazutoki Kono has described Torres as the "most evil" character in the Ace Combat franchise.[11] His English voice actor, Armen Taylor, explained that lines such as his "crisp white sheets" line from "Unexpected Visitor" were in the audition, and that they helped him "[peek] inside Torres' mind."[12]
During a development interview in 2021, Kono revealed that a large inspiration for the character of Torres was a fascination with true crime and serial killer media he had been experiencing during the development of the SP Missions.[10] During the same interview, Kono also noted that during the initial drafts by writer Masahide Kito, Torres' time stranded underwater inside the Alicorn after it disappeared was over three years; Masato Kanno noted in response that it was in fact "much, much longer" than three years, though declined to specify a timeframe.[10] Kanno further clarified that he was the one who had decided to make Torres the captain of the Tanager; he supposed that the Tanager would be the most recognizable ship from the mission "invincible Fleet," which he in turn believed was the most iconic and memorable fleet battle in Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies.[10]
Gallery
Radio portrait
Artwork on the Season Pass trailer
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 SP Mission 02: "Anchorhead Raid", Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 SP Mission 03: "Ten Million Relief Plan", Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown.
- ↑ Armen Taylor on Twitter: "Excited to announce that I play Matias Tores, Captain of the advanced submarine, Alicorn in the new DLC for ACE COMBAT 7."
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 SP Mission 01: "Unexpected Visitor", Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Mission 06: "Invincible Fleet", Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies.
- ↑ Tago, Hisaharu [@Tagotch] (2 June 2020). https://twitter.com/Tagotch/status/1267828092405309446. X.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 https://youtu.be/XGJa5fkOWB4
- ↑ Mission 11: "Fleet Destruction", Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown.
- ↑ Tago, Hisaharu [@Tagotch] (2 September 2024). https://twitter.com/Tagotch/status/1830536044145484193. X.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 「ACE COMBAT™ 25th Anniversary」 Development Staff Exclusive Interview Part 2
- ↑ "Interview with Ace Combat brand director: Kazutoki Kono" by Ace Combat Fan on YouTube
- ↑ Armen Taylor on Twitter: "It was in the audition, and I’m really glad it was. I often find there can be a line or two that really helps me understand exactly who the character is (their worldview, their sense of humor, etc.) - and that was one of those lines. It was a peak inside Torres’ mind."