Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

[dunno lah]

Nikita missiles coming back in style.

 

[sexbad?]

Alternative E3 walkthrough video (Japanese commentator):

Oh, boy! UI all over the fucking screen! Turret sections! AI companions that do all the work for you! Time slowing down almost to a pause automatically at any sign of danger! Missions that last five minutes! Levels situated around tiny desert camps! Automatic corpse disposal in the fucking dumbest looking way possible! I sure am hyped for Metal Gear Solid 5!

 

[Morgoth]

English narrator:

 

[Ivan]

Nice! I'm liking the Hitmanesque levels.

 

[J_C]

Alternative E3 walkthrough video (Japanese commentator):

Oh, boy! UI all over the fucking screen! Turret sections! AI companions that do all the work for you! Time slowing down almost to a pause automatically at any sign of danger! Missions that last five minutes! Levels situated around tiny desert camps! Automatic corpse disposal in the fucking dumbest looking way possible! I sure am hyped for Metal Gear Solid 5!

 

[Love]

Kojima sneaking in his trashed Silent Hill ideas:

Spoiler

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

http://gematsu.com/2015/07/solid-snake-japanese-voice-actor-kojima-productions-disbanded


It's like Konami was given a corporate lobotomy. "UUUUUUhh, mobile apps, PAAAAACHINKOOOOO."

 

[Akasen]

Do you even think they thought about the logistics of what they were doing? Like seriously, what do they plan to do after all this is over?

They keep trying to bring back Silent Hill for a tour, only for it to fail because the core team agreed to stop around Silent Hill 3. What makes them think they could continue Metal Gear Solid without fucking that up? Sure, Kojima has probably always wanted to quit working on the franchise to work on other things, but I doubt he wanted it to go this way. Furthermore, you'd have to be retarded to think any die hard fan would even be interested in the franchise after all this. And given how Kojima ends most games, this probably will do nicely to act as a last chapter to a long lived franchise (actually not really because MGS4 still exists to spite fans and was honestly not necessary in its intent).

This really baffles me. Like, what does this company think it's doing? This is so stupid, it should be punishable by seppuku.

 

[Bigg Boss]

I can't help but utterly despise Konami now. They appear to have pissed away what goodwill they had left. Hopefully someone decent gets the rights to their games. I know they supposedly have a strong market with casino/arcade machines and games like MGSV and Silent Hills must be expensive, but did they ever think of redoing some of their classics like Contra and Castelvania in 2D? It seems like with these big companies they always want to swing for a home run forgetting that sometimes you hit nothing but air. Why not put out several cheaper games on an indie budget instead of throwing millions at nothing but MGS? I can't understand these Japanese companies sometimes. It's like they exist in a giant bubble, forgetting other parts of the globe.

All that being said, I have to play Kojima's last MGS game. Even though I see a lot of things I don't like, I'm hoping to at least be entertained by it. I don't know if these developers know that mobile games are still shit. Konami isn't the company that people once loved. They haven't been for a long time.

 

[Alienman]

One extra big loss here is the fox engine..

Nice graphics, 60 fps on PC, open world, nice physics (cars, ragdolls)

 

[Bigg Boss]

They should sell it.

 

[Phage]

Kojima sneaking in his trashed Silent Hill ideas:

Spoiler

Not sure if you're trying to make a joke, but every MGS game has had supernatural horroresque elements and this game is confirmed to have a "Screaming Mantis"

 

[Love]

Why not put out several cheaper games on an indie budget instead of throwing millions at nothing but MGS? I can't understand these Japanese companies sometimes. It's like they exist in a giant bubble, forgetting other parts of the globe.

We still haven't established as to what the money was spent on in this game. Was it really development or also marketing like it is so often the case nowadays? I honestly can't fight the allure of such a super game in terms of budget, when it looks as fun as this. But you've got a point there, since Konami had nothing to show on past conventions but Metal Gear. They're eager to continue the series, but it seems they don't have another string to their bow. Kojima's attempt at Silent Hill generated a lot of attraction, why not let him at it?

 

[Trotsky]

MGS4 is an interesting conversation to had. It's a game that lacks a lot of substance to be honest. Graphically, it's sickening to look at because of the brown filter all over the screen. Gameplay-wise, it's terrible because of how little gameplay there is. There's a particular mission in that game where in which you have to tail some guy and not get caught whatsoever. Sure, stealth game and stuff, but this part of the game isn't interesting in the slightest.

Further, the amount of exposition they are doing is dense, and it's obvious why at the time. This was the last Metal Gear Solid, or so anyone thought. Every little plot detail that was never wrapped up would be getting wrapped up. Which meant that everything unexplained in MGS3 and MGS2 would get some form of explanation. Which meant a lot of explaining was being done to explain or re-explain things that happened in prior games. It was full of exposition and fan service. It makes me wonder what was going through Kojima's head as he sculpted the game with his team. Was the game made out of love? Out of anger towards the fans for wanting answers? Was he misguided in making the game? I doubt that one. So the only answer I have is that MGS4 and every perceivable fault is on purpose. It is not an accident and nothing of the game is an accident. Every little detail of that game must have been made purposefully by a man well aware of what he was making. And to a degree, it's beautiful. To another degree, MGS4 could have been a terrible way to end a franchise.

MGS5 took a while for me to really pick up on. It took me a while to understand what it was, why I should even be excited, and what I loved about these games in the first place. And in the end, I learned to love Hideo Kojima. May he either retire happy or create his own independent development studio and pursue some new IP (or retire).

Peacewalker was the worst game in the series but MGS4 was beginning of the end for Metal Gear Solid as a stealth driven, narrative focused, and thematically consistent game.

 

[Athelas]

Metal Gear Solid (...) thematically consistent game.

 

[Trotsky]

What's so hard for you to grasp? The first three Metal Gear Solid games had the same co-writer.

Questions like ‘who are The Patriots?’ and ‘was Big Boss good or evil?’ are only interesting if they aren’t answered, and the same goes for the supernatural elements that permeated the series pre-MGS4. Ghosts, vampires, psychics, mysterious organizations, moral ambiguity—all these things used to be part of the same, hard-to-pin-down universe of Metal Gear, when Kojima and his previous co-writer, Tomokazu Fukushima, seemed more interested in befuddling expectations than meeting them.

I find it suspicious that the Metal Gear universe took a turn for the worse when Fukushima mysteriously vanished after MGS3. Fukushima was not only the writer of MGS1, MGS2, and MGS3 (which may explain why they remain somewhat consistent) but he also wrote Metal Gear Ghost Babel, which is even more anti-American than MGS2 in some respects (Its plot is a modern take on the Babel myth, with the U.S. in the role of God, promoting ethnic chaos as insurance against being dethroned by a unified Third World.) which makes it doubly suspicious that the anti-Americanism of the main series took a nosedive at precisely the moment Fukushima left.

http://outsideyourheaven.blogspot.com/2012/04/decline-of-anti-americanism-in-metal.html

 

[Athelas]

Protip: when your video game plot requires elaborate treatises to be written that mull over the most minute of details to extract some vague, insubstantial thematical coherence, it's generally a sign that that thematical coherence is absent.

 

[Bigg Boss]

I'm reading that now. Interesting stuff. I wasn't aware of that writer contributing to the first three MGS games. Where did Fukushima go after he left?

 

[Trotsky]

Protip: when your video game plot requires elaborate treatises to be written that mull over the most minute of details to extract some vague, insubstantial thematical coherence, it's generally a sign that that thematical coherence is absent.

Ummmm no. The first three MGS games all feel as if they're part of the same universe/narrative. They're also by far the most popular and critically acclaimed.

The series falls off a cliff at MGS4. This isn't complicated because the writing team simply changed and for the worse. MGS4 brazenly retcons and destroys lore.

 

[Akasen]

You know, I just read a series of essays on MGS4 that really made me understand MGS4 not as a game, but as a piece of art. And really, it hurts. MGS4 is not so much bizarre as it is painful to look at once you truly realize what the message is. "Fuck you"

I shall link these three things from the site "Meta Gear Solid", which I pretty much know people probably know and pretty much suspect counter rebuttals to whatever is written.

The Long Dark Path to Metal Gear Solid 4

Kojima vs MGS4

MGS4: Sold Out - The Evidence

But personally, I like what's written here and I feel gives me an understanding of the pains Kojima goes through with these games. Though I feel the struggles he may have gone through just to make MGS4 was probably unneccesary

EDIT: OH! That's where I was getting quoted from (I thought the site was getting weird on me). Eh, whatever. Guy I'm quoting seems to be inline with what your dude is talking about. To whatever margin of error

 

[Phage]

Protip: when your video game plot requires elaborate treatises to be written that mull over the most minute of details to extract some vague, insubstantial thematical coherence, it's generally a sign that that thematical coherence is absent.

Only fucking morons require an 'elaborate treatsie' to understand the thematic similarities and plot of the MGS games. They really aren't that complicated at all if you pay attention.

 

[Alfons]

I haven't played a single MGS game and I know the plots are melodramatic bullshit filled with silly political commentary and elaboration on how hard war is on the ones participating in it. If you want a good military story watch/read Generation Kill.
Most importantly let's not forget that the future of the world presented by MGS has the president of the united states fighting a cyborg ninja on top of a destroyed giant robot. Why? Nanomachines son.

 

[J_C]

let's not forget that the future of the world presented by MGS has the president of the united states fighting a cyborg ninja on top of a destroyed giant robot.

And this alone proves why MGS is the best series on the face of the world. Like...ever.

 

[Alfons]

let's not forget that the future of the world presented by MGS has the president of the united states fighting a cyborg ninja on top of a destroyed giant robot.

And this alone proves why MGS is the best series on the face of the world. Like...ever.

Nah. Any funny self-awareness it does have is ruined by the hours, hours of overly serious, retarded, soap opera quality writing. They use all the dumb shit angles, all they need is a 20 minute cutscene of snake moping around that his daddy didn't love him.

 

[pippin]

It seems Konami deleted any Kojima reference from the (ps4) MGS5 artwork...