Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26372030-20151206001252/@comment-25467429-20151207034428

^Whether the pods are real or not is not a question. Fact is, the F-22 when moving from experiment to production scrapped the ability to carry external devices of any kind (because of the stealth issue as well as the added weight's effect on its supercruise ability). They can't even carry external fuel pods at the moment. To return that ability would take work, i.e, a new model, hence my suggestion the one in the video would have to be either a deployed F-22 prototype (the YF-22) or a variant created to carry them like and F-22B or C (or I suppose they could just make stuff up and say it can, the same way the F-117A carries a gun when it shouldn't).

I never mentioned anything about reconing AC3 at all. Yes, AC3 story was about a simulation. But a simulation, as implied in the story and by definition, reflects actual real-world, or undestanding of real-world, technology, events, etc. In other word's Cohen's simulation reflected known and applicable technology of the time, and its trajectory. It was more storm forecasting than "if you shot Hitler when he was a kid" type of simulation. Seeing as how in AC3 you had shuttle launches still, that would imply that space elevators were either non-existent or highly infantile in sophistication or implementation to the point of not even being worth mentioning, such that a world with superplanes firing island-destroying lasers seeemed more plausible than a space elevator. That would mean that 7 takes place after AC3. Now obviously it's a game, but the understanding and theory behind space elevators is a lot older than AC3, surely older than concepts like the Electrosphere or the COFFIN system. So yes, I do suppose some retcon would be invovled if they want to make this both pre-AC3 and involving space elevators, a technology that itself would hold great potential as a catalyst for war. I think it would be easier to just put the game a decade or two past AC3.

As for Strangereal being confirmed, I haven't watched the event to see what was actually said about the game (I've been working all long shifts for several days straight now), so I can only take your and everyone else's word that is the case. I'm assuming no one else is assuming enything just because of the use of the names Osea and Erusea since Infinity does have Usea, making it entirely possible they could have this take place in the Infinity world several years later with the rest of the world falling to these new alliances under the Strangereal names.