Metal Gear/ Metal Gear Solid

Dii similes facti sunt caeco. Avaritia et superbia sni a pristinis cultoribus opprobrium, et contemptum. ^Translation  (The gods have become blind. Their greed and arrogance has awarded them disgrace and contempt from their former worshippers.)

Album vero prohibetur a sumptione prioris anni fructum sui laboris. ^Translation  (They forbade the true artist from receiving the fruits of his labor a year prior.)

Hoc anno autem propriam mercedem accipiet, et sustinuisti laborem in excretis sudavit. ^Translation  (But this year, he will be rewarded for the hardships he endured and the sweat he had excreted.)

   Et stercore quod falsum dici non idola.    ^Translation     (And the false idols can't say shit about that.)   

edited 20th Nov '16 9:57:15 PM by TargetmasterJoe

Some of you may remember that a fan group was planning to remake MGS 1 in the Unreal 4 engine, but suddenly stopped. Not because of Konami (for once!), but because they began to realize how difficult videogame development is.

However, since they already created a significant amount of content, they decided to take the project in another direction, and instead create a museum of sorts called "Metal Gear Solid: The Fan Legacy". They even managed to get David Hayter and a couple of other names from the franchise's history to lend some narration and insight, but no Kojima sadly.

edited 20th Nov '16 10:48:58 PM by SgtRicko

Yeah, probably understandable since Kojima's got his own projects in mind.

By the way, since no one noticed it the first time because I wrote it in Google Translate Latin to be sophisticated, At The Game Awards 2016, Kojima is going to accept the Industry Icon Prize that he wasn't allowed to get last year because of Konazi's lawyers.

   And Konami can't do shit about it.   

   I'd pay to get my hands on a vial of Konami's tears of rage over this.   

On a tangential note, funniest line in the whole article:

Ahh yes, the game starring a naked Norman Reedus, and something about ropes and sticks... got a feeling he's gonna try to make a game that makes Sons of Liberty's plot feel like a kindergarten schoolbook.

Well hey, if he is able to top the massive Playing The Player elements that MGS 2 contained, along with its overall deconstruction of the very medium of gaming itself, I'm excited.

I'll be honest, I doubt it. This really strikes me as an It Only Works Once trick. The timing was one of the key components of MGS2's post-modernist twisting and turning and now that it's been let out of its bottle it's not nearly as much of a surprise.

edited 22nd Nov '16 3:15:17 PM by Pulse

Phantom Pain being an example.

The overall theme of MGS 2 is about the power of cultural memory and how we shouldn't use the past to solve a present problem. MGS 2 deliberately uses the same story beats and narrative forms as MGS 1 only to subvert them and deny the player any chance of reliving those memories. The primary reason Raiden fails throughout the game is because he tries to approach the Big Shell the same way Snake approached Shadow Moses in MGS 1 is met with a different result everytime. Raiden himself was designed to be the Anti Snake whereas Snake was a badass who also a ladies man and is respected by his enemies, Raiden is a 'green-as-grass' rookie who is in way over his head who gets harassed by virtually everyone including Snake and is as best treated with contempt. It isn't limited to Raiden as almost everyone in the game is doing the exact same thing. Solidus Snake wants to be the next George Washington, Fortune is obsessed with her revenge, Liquid possesses Ocelot, etc but as a result of this they are way too predictable and they all manipulated by The Patriots into (re)playing the scenario of Shadow Moses in order to test data for their S3 plan. MGS 2 wasn't well received by fans and it took years for them to accept it but I think it is a good game for what it was.

Also, here is an article by A.V. club that talks about how MGS2 and Wind Waker are similar to each other in terms of themes.

And in the case of MGSV, it was all about making the player feel a sense of loss (Quiet's departure), incompleteness (the lack of a satisfying conclusion or definitive answers), and grinding repetition (you always enter and leave via chopper, you're always stealing supplies and kidnapping elite troops, only to dismiss them later, etc). Admittedly this is probably one case where Kojima probably should've included the Kingdom of the Flies mission. I know he was trying to make a point, but having a state of the art Metal Gear along with an absolute tyke-bomb of kid go AWOL and say "meh, not that big of a deal" is NOT something that should be left unresolved.

Jesus fuck FOB missions are hard. I've died several times just because of one spotting.

We Are Metal Gear

Darnit Triple-Q

BTW, in regards to the conversation I brought up earlier I removed all mentions of the pyrokinetic entity that supposedly gave Fury and Volgin their fire-powers from the game and character pages since it has no canonical basis.

Hi guys. Since I was never going to play these games (specially not the whole series), I decided to just look in youtube for a compilation of all cutscenes and important conversations. The first two games are kinda bland but when I got to the Solid series I finally could understand why people love the series, I got hooked into the plot and characters, even during the insanity that was MGS 2 . But then something weird happened. I've just watched MGS 3, the one considered the best of the series, the one everyone praises... and I think I might have enjoyed the previous two better?

Don't get me wrong, Snake Eater is great. Its plot is much more interesting and its main characters more well developed. Even the gameplay, which I only glimpsed, seems so much better it actually made me want to play it. Compared to the other two, MGS 3 is the superior game, no doubts about that. Yet, I was not quite as hooked. It really got me thinking on why. I concluded it was two factors: a lack of developed characters which leads to a boring mid game.

When I say "lack I developed characters", I mean numerically. Naked is surprisingly distinct for someone who looks and sounds identical to Solid, Eva is a great support and romantic interest, Ocelot is a lot of fun and The Boss is simply the best. But that is it. These 4 are everything the game has to offer, everyone else are kinda forgettable. The Codec crew is so uninvolved with the plot that they basically vanish from the "movie I watched^note which didn't occur in the previous games Volgin is just a psycho without interesting motivation or'' personality, Sokolov doesn't have much personality and the Cobra Unit are so bland the most developed member is the one who is not alive. Not only that but both The Boss and Eva are mysterious characters, which is cool, but means you don't really get to be invested on them personally until late in the game,meaning that for most of the game I was only really interested in two people, which is kinda boring.

This also effected the plot somehow, as during the mid game there was nothing really interesting happening besides Naked getting close to his goal. In the previous two games, the mid game was spiced up by sub arcs of sorts, concerning the minor antagonists and supporting characters. There were things like the combat with Sniper Wolf, the suspicion of Naomi and the search for Fatman's bombs. This times the closest thing to that are the constant meetings with Ocelot, but they are so quick and disconnected that they feel more like "standalone episodes" instead of a "story arc". This all made the mid game to not be very compelling to watch, in contrast with the other games.

Now, of course, this is a game, not a movie. It is not meant to be experience in the way I did. It makes perfectly sense that watching it like a movie would feel a bit lackluster. But the thing is this wasn't a problem with the other Solid games. I never felt I was missing something out by not playing ^note though most certainly I was, while here this feeling was overwhelming. After enjoying the other two games so much, it just felt weird the one I found a bit disappointing as the one that is considered the best.

Anyway, sorry guys for making this huge post out of nowhere. This was such an unexpected experience that I really wanted to write it down somewhere and, since I don't have a blog, I figured it might as well be here.

edited 6th Dec '16 7:25:51 PM by Heatth

n/a

edited 6th Dec '16 6:55:15 PM by Soble

You really gotta read the rest of it because I addressed these points in the second to last paragraph. I am aware the game was not meant to be experience that way which is most certainly the reason the game is somewhat disappointing. But I was mostly contrasting with my experience with the previous two games which weren't meant to be watched either but still translated much better to that format.

edited 6th Dec '16 6:56:14 PM by Heatth

Yeah, I read it, and responded to each point, sorry.

But then I thought, you're not exactly wrong and just erased it.

To cut a rant short, the first two games are far more cinematic than the third. Kojima always wanted to make movies and I think that reflects in the earlier two titles. They have a lot more exposition and dialogue, and the cutscenes/CODEC calls are longer, whereas there's far less to the gameplay. Possibly as a necessity due to the limited hardware at the time (if gameplay can't be top notch then the story and characters better be).

Whereas 3 focuses more on gameplay elements. The inclusion of the camouflage index, enemies having storehouses, attack dogs, etc. In contrast to pretty much every other game in the series the player actually has to "care" for Snake in Snake Eater. There's the possibility of defeating a boss by taking advantage of the clock on your PS 2. There's moments like catching the rare Tsuchinoko snake, and hearing Snake Eater while climbing up a ladder. I'd say that 3 had a much stronger emphasis on gameplay elements as opposed to the cinematic ones that the previous two focused on.

Which probably makes it fairly boring to watch.

Well, I didn't actually watch the gameplay itself, for most time, just cutscenes with some, heavily edited, gameplay to connect the places and for the bosses^note They did keep the whole stair climbing, though. So it wasn't exactly "boring", but not as gripping as the previous entries,

But, yeah the other two being more cinematographic explains it a lot. When this game is in its most movie-like (mainly the climax and ending), it really picked the place for me. It make sense the game that is considered the best of the series is the one that feels the most like a game, not a movie. I just wasn't expecting it, giving the fame of the series.

In contrast, MGS 4 is the most cutscene-heavy of all the games. Once the first two Acts pass, you'll probably be able to stay entirely caught up on the story just through the cinematics. A pity you won't be able to appreciate the beautiful nostalgia trip that was Act 4's return to Shadow Moses. Man, that was one awesome surprise during my first playthrough.

Peacewalker is another one that almost all of the story is told through cutscenes and audio tape recordings. Should be pretty easy to follow the plot, but personally I found it dry and boring that way.

And for MGSV? Just don't. Unlike the other titles, the cutscenes are few and far between, and the game either relies upon implied gameplay elements, audio tape recordings, or in-mission dialog to tell the more subtle details of the story. Plus, that title easily takes 50+ hours AT MINIMUM to reach the ending, with most of that being gameplay footage of Venom Fultoning anything in the field that isn't bolted down.

edited 6th Dec '16 7:29:32 PM by SgtRicko

I still find MGSV fun, hell FOB missions have a great challenge now.

Hmmm, MGS V is on Steam, so it is the most accessible one for me. It apparently wouldn't run on my PC, though. Still, might be worth picking on the Christmas sale and just refund if it doesn't work.

That said, the "movie" version of the game is over 9 hours long, so whoever made it clearly didn't use the cut-scenes alone.

edited 6th Dec '16 7:42:06 PM by Heatth

I think that maybe the sheer quantity of codec calls being forced into you during MGS 1 and especially MGS 2 makes the experience more watchable, there are lots of little things that you can optionally do in MGS 3 that show you the personality of the cast that I'm gonna guess the "movie" cut didn't put in.

There aren't enough cutscenes in the game to make a movie. There isn't enough story in the game to make a movie.

edited 6th Dec '16 7:44:55 PM by RunoEddie

Indeed. In the other games (most of) the codec crew was made integral part of the story, so even though all optional conversations were cut, their personality still came through. That clearly wasn't the case in the third. Though I don't think it is the only reason for the "lack of developed character" I mentioned. The Cobra Unit are remarkably bland, for example, in comparison with the previous games bosses. And there are very few enduring supporting characters that you meet during the mission, like Otakon or Emma. The ones you do vanish after a scene or two.

edited 6th Dec '16 7:48:48 PM by Heatth

Actuallly I think you'll dislike Guns of the Patriots the most. It has the worst of both cinematic elements and gameplay ones.

The cinematic side takes over and makes the game cutscene-heavy, and a lot of the gameplay is one-off gimmicks and tricks you'll never use again (except the Solid Eye and the Mark II). However, like 3, you still don't have developed characters, and a lot of the cutscenes are just world-building and exposition and references to things from older games. The only fleshed out characters are Snake, Otacon, Naomi, Ocelot, and another I won't spoil Akiba?. The main villains are some of the best gameplay challenges in the series, but they're literally mindless killing machines until literally after the fact when another character infodumps their pasts to Snake for no legitimate reason. You could remove them from the game's storyline and nothing would change.

So basically you get less gameplay for a somewhat underwhelming plot full of roadbumps. And if you didn't play the previous games or the earliest two, certain things like Raiden referencing Dr. Madnar (hell even if you have it's a fairly worthless reference), or the bit in Shadow Moses where Snake sees the rusted camera fall - well basically the entire Shadow Moses level will be full of nostalgia that you won't feel as a viewer (I mean, if you ignore theme of decay that permeates Guns of the Patriot and Snake's character arc).

And somewhere down the line you're going to see a giant robot fight and wonder what the hell Kojima was on. Gameplaywise the controls were clunky but you finally got to wield a dusty, antiquated version of the boss that you fought back in Metal Gear Solid. Storywise it was a giant robot fight that Snake frankly should have lost and it doesn't really make a lot of sense for Snake to suddenly be defeated and wait for death while Liquid tries to ram a giant phallic symbol into a pier, and for Raiden to cockblock him instead of just grabbing Snake...

Really the best thing about Guns of the Patriots is that Snake lives despite everything. IIRC there was some Word of God about how the original draft of the ending was supposed to have him die.

And also Otacon getting laid. Hope for lonely male gamers everywhere, even if it's a cancer-ridden doctor babe with nothing left to live for who only sleeps with you because she plans to end her life the following day.

On second though, no, being Otacon sucks.

edited 6th Dec '16 8:09:48 PM by Soble