He has his own DLC in 13-2(it's horrible,don't buy it).
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Games Where the Main Character Should Have Been Different
- Thread starter Kriken
- Start date
CharminUltra
Member
OP got it so right.
Fuck you, Raiden. You lousy, whiny-ass character.
Fuck you, Raiden. You lousy, whiny-ass character.
This is a tough choice, let MGS4 exist and then Rising gets created or MGS4 never exists but Rising doesn't get made...
I'd allow MGS4 to exist. At worst it puts a huge dent on the MGS legacy, at best its a mediocre MGS. Rising is excellent so it deserves a chance to exist.
Solid Snake falls in love with some random military chick after knowing her for a few hours. He's either hella thirsty or the series as a whole has melodrama, take your pick.
InfiniDragon
Member
Pretty sure the "SE forced Matsuno to add Vaan" thing that Wikipedia has been peddling has been debunked six ways from Sunday.
Very early into XII's life Matsuno had Basch's design for the MC, but it was still the character of Vaan (called Aqua really early on). He didn't become the Basch we know plot-wise until the game became more ironed out. Vaan was changed to the character we know as the devs made him less grizzled in the storyline.
Matsuno has said Vaan was intended to be the MC and he was intended to be the "observer of great events". Basch as we know him was never the lead.
bigbaldwolf86
Banned
Came to make sure FFXII was mentioned. Leaving satisfied
Northern Lights
Banned
Killzone Shadowfall Lucas Kellan holding on to the biggest L next gen for main character leads.
RealDeadOne
Member
Apollo's got some serious Raiden syndrome going on. DDoesn't matter how good or bad the replacement character is, the favor is always gonna be for the old character because of the memories people associate with that character.
See Phoenix to Apollo, FFrank West to Chuck Green, Dante to Nero, Dante to Dante, and classic Sonic to New Sonic.
The problem is when devs give in and return to the old character too soon. If you're introducing a new character you have to stick with them until the audience gets used to them. Look at Altair to Ezio for example. They stuck with him and now he's the most popular AC character.
DerZuhälter
Member
Half-Life.
Gordon should have been the clichee hot scientist with big boobs. But still silent and without a first person body. Especially the Half-Life 2 eye technology would have found the perfect use with horny NPC men desperately trying to sneak a peak, and constantly loosing their train of thought.
"Gorgina! You need to attach... attach... these two big... rods"
"Dr. Kleiner!"
"Huge juicy... big"
"DR.KLEINER"
"Ah.. Sorry there Alyx. Just got carried away!"
Gordon should have been the clichee hot scientist with big boobs. But still silent and without a first person body. Especially the Half-Life 2 eye technology would have found the perfect use with horny NPC men desperately trying to sneak a peak, and constantly loosing their train of thought.
"Gorgina! You need to attach... attach... these two big... rods"
"Dr. Kleiner!"
"Huge juicy... big"
"DR.KLEINER"
"Ah.. Sorry there Alyx. Just got carried away!"
Catalix
And on the sixth day the LORD David Bowie created man and woman in His image. And he saw that it was good. On the seventh day the LORD created videogames so that He might take the bloody day off for once.
MGS2's story wouldn't be nearly as provocative, or even relevant, if Raiden were not the lead character.
However... I'm confident that making Raiden a woman would've been a smarter choice in the long run.
However... I'm confident that making Raiden a woman would've been a smarter choice in the long run.
I'd say they should've just written Connor better. A native american assassin is a way more interesting perspective than just... i dunno... british guy?
Conner isn't terrible.
Conner is actually the most realistic protagonist that series has had, sadly that made for a boring assassins creed, combined with boring gameplay.
"why doesn't conner know anythin'"
Because he shouldn't?
Why?
Not rhetorical, I'm just wondering what sort of differences would result from making Raiden a woman.
It would be a good reality.
Stealth_Cobra
Member
There was a point to MGS2 ?
You mean the "brilliant" game about an AI system designed to censor the net that decides the best course of action to test his net-censoring abilities is to sink two tankers , one filled with oil , the other filled with marines, so he can frame Solid Snake for the deed ... Then allows a mentally unstable cowboy with split personality disorder to hijack some badass nuclear super weapon for the next part of their very elaborate plan. Already very credible as a setup.
They that AI proceed to spend the next couple of years building a bogus facility that doesn't clean Manhattan bay, instead they use it to build a gigantic battleship underneath. Then they try to coax a fringe group of terrorists into hijacking the facility, to capture the president and to gain nuclear capacity. But it's all part of their "brilliant" plan, of course.
Now they can finally test their net-censoring prowess by coaxing Raiden, an unstable recruit with personal problems, into completing a mission, by the power of ... a Colonel Cambell AI that has the gift of being able to say "Raiden, you must complete your mission" to motivate raiden, and with the help of his naggy girlfriend .
To test the boy's progress , they hire... A fat man ... on rollerskates to put live bombs all over the place, bombs which can blow everything apart if the young recruit fail. But the recruit manages to disarm the bombs, mainly because of Pliskin's involvement, although he was not "featured" in the simulation. That's right ,he would have failed without Pliskin... But let's ignore that.
In the end , their plan is a "resounding success". I mean, it's of no consequence that the president is killed during the mission , the big shell is destroyed and the oil gets spilled back into Manhattan bay , that Arsenal Gear crashes into Manhattan (hope your net censor program works, cause you got some heavy censoring to make everyone in New York forget about that ship that blew up half the town) . Remember how the revelation that the US had been developing REX created a huge international incident ? Now the US will have to explain to the whole world how they were developing a gigantic nuclear submarine city and it got hijacked by terrorists ? But the mission is clearly a success , because AI Cambell managed to make a recruit finish his mission by giving him basic orders like "Raiden, you must disarm the bombs". Clearly, this will help tremendously in terms of building the program's ability to "create context" and censor the net. Clearly, MGS2 is the pinnacle of video game storytelling , a subtle masterpiece of coherence and brilliance that is the equivalent of the best works of modern and antique literature.
There's a reason why the events of MGS2 aren't really mentioned in the rest of the series, and why Kojima ran back to the 60s and back to Big Boss's tale after MGS2... He had no idea how to salvage that plot. And as much as he tried to do something coherent with MGS4, the harm was done and imho, the modern day timeline was forever altered out or relevance due mostly to MGS2's nonsensical plot.
But alas, I'll give credit where it's due. The sheer surrealism of the premise, setup and exposition creates an interesting feeling in regards to how the players feels. You question what you are experiencing, if any of this is real, trying to find meaning to it all. In that regards, the game does feel post-modern, an an experiment about what it feels to be a gamer, playing a character and being coaxed into achieving something, forced to continue, not really knowing who you are, why you are fighting and so on. As an experiment, it works, especially the end sequences where reality starts to fall apart, and honestly, if the game would have ended being a VR simulation all along, it would have been a great game, but the fact it's actually part of the canon of a series that prides itself on it's storytelling really bugs me to no end.
Sinking a tanker, destroying half of Manhattan, doing all of this would have made sense if it was Raiden being strapped into a VR chair experience a "Solid Snake simulation". Sadly, Kojima didn't want to make sense, so he made the events happen in his real canon story, which imho destroys the canon's integrity... Well, it was the first step in destroying the integrity (we got signing mechs more advanced than Ray in the 70s nowadays).
They that AI proceed to spend the next couple of years building a bogus facility that doesn't clean Manhattan bay, instead they use it to build a gigantic battleship underneath. Then they try to coax a fringe group of terrorists into hijacking the facility, to capture the president and to gain nuclear capacity. But it's all part of their "brilliant" plan, of course.
Now they can finally test their net-censoring prowess by coaxing Raiden, an unstable recruit with personal problems, into completing a mission, by the power of ... a Colonel Cambell AI that has the gift of being able to say "Raiden, you must complete your mission" to motivate raiden, and with the help of his naggy girlfriend .
To test the boy's progress , they hire... A fat man ... on rollerskates to put live bombs all over the place, bombs which can blow everything apart if the young recruit fail. But the recruit manages to disarm the bombs, mainly because of Pliskin's involvement, although he was not "featured" in the simulation. That's right ,he would have failed without Pliskin... But let's ignore that.
In the end , their plan is a "resounding success". I mean, it's of no consequence that the president is killed during the mission , the big shell is destroyed and the oil gets spilled back into Manhattan bay , that Arsenal Gear crashes into Manhattan (hope your net censor program works, cause you got some heavy censoring to make everyone in New York forget about that ship that blew up half the town) . Remember how the revelation that the US had been developing REX created a huge international incident ? Now the US will have to explain to the whole world how they were developing a gigantic nuclear submarine city and it got hijacked by terrorists ? But the mission is clearly a success , because AI Cambell managed to make a recruit finish his mission by giving him basic orders like "Raiden, you must disarm the bombs". Clearly, this will help tremendously in terms of building the program's ability to "create context" and censor the net. Clearly, MGS2 is the pinnacle of video game storytelling , a subtle masterpiece of coherence and brilliance that is the equivalent of the best works of modern and antique literature.
There's a reason why the events of MGS2 aren't really mentioned in the rest of the series, and why Kojima ran back to the 60s and back to Big Boss's tale after MGS2... He had no idea how to salvage that plot. And as much as he tried to do something coherent with MGS4, the harm was done and imho, the modern day timeline was forever altered out or relevance due mostly to MGS2's nonsensical plot.
But alas, I'll give credit where it's due. The sheer surrealism of the premise, setup and exposition creates an interesting feeling in regards to how the players feels. You question what you are experiencing, if any of this is real, trying to find meaning to it all. In that regards, the game does feel post-modern, an an experiment about what it feels to be a gamer, playing a character and being coaxed into achieving something, forced to continue, not really knowing who you are, why you are fighting and so on. As an experiment, it works, especially the end sequences where reality starts to fall apart, and honestly, if the game would have ended being a VR simulation all along, it would have been a great game, but the fact it's actually part of the canon of a series that prides itself on it's storytelling really bugs me to no end.
Sinking a tanker, destroying half of Manhattan, doing all of this would have made sense if it was Raiden being strapped into a VR chair experience a "Solid Snake simulation". Sadly, Kojima didn't want to make sense, so he made the events happen in his real canon story, which imho destroys the canon's integrity... Well, it was the first step in destroying the integrity (we got signing mechs more advanced than Ray in the 70s nowadays).
Midnight Bliss
Member
She sounds like a child. I was expecting her to have a hot mature milfy voice. But who am I kidding, you shouldn't be watching cutscenes in most games anyways, because skipping them usually improves the experience.
Toriyama would be hailed has some type of deity.
Black good ff protagonist with minimal amounts of racism.
Holy shit
CharminUltra
Member
Oh yeah, aside from the monumentally shit-tastic excuse for a character that is Raiden, my personal pick would be Terra from Final Fantasy VI. She's actually a pretty decent character, nothing amazing, but likable enough. Having said that, I always wished Locke had been the main character. I certainly used to think he was back in the day before I actually got to play it (edit: because literally everyone I saw playing the game used him). Regardless, he was always a permanent fixture in my party simply because I thought he was cool and amusing.
DarkoMaledictus
Tier Whore
EDIT: So a "it was all a dream, opps, VR dream" would amount to a better ending and game instead of the original ending? There are some interpretations like that, the original ending fits the game fine though.
Off the top of my head:
Miranda should have been the main character of Grandia 3 instead of her son Yuki.
Raquel should've been the main character of Wild Arms 4. And, oh, it should've had just a different plot entirely. Yuck.
McBain should've been the main character of Legend of Heroes 5. Oh, wait, he was, the game just refused to acknowledge it.
Your player character should've been the main character of the White Knight Chronicles games instead of just a blank avatar there to watch Leonard and the other cast members bore you.
Miranda should have been the main character of Grandia 3 instead of her son Yuki.
Raquel should've been the main character of Wild Arms 4. And, oh, it should've had just a different plot entirely. Yuck.
McBain should've been the main character of Legend of Heroes 5. Oh, wait, he was, the game just refused to acknowledge it.
Your player character should've been the main character of the White Knight Chronicles games instead of just a blank avatar there to watch Leonard and the other cast members bore you.
Echo should have been the main character of Shadow Fall. Besides making a much better campaign (story, more variety, longer) and funner multiplayer in a future sequel, I hope Guerilla or the Mercenary devs have her be the star, with the Helghast.
Kellen was kind of supposed to be the way he was, as a supposed blank slate like Tyran said, but there should have been way more development once he started realizing the price of war.
Kellen was kind of supposed to be the way he was, as a supposed blank slate like Tyran said, but there should have been way more development once he started realizing the price of war.
MGS2 would have had to have a completely different story were Solid Snake the main character. It essentially would have been a different game. Actually, during an old episode of the Kojima podcast, David Hayter said his idea was that Kojima should have made it sort of like Godfather II, concurrently taking the player through one storyline as Solid Snake and another as Big Boss during the Cold War. That would've been cool.
Every Splinter Cell after Chaos Theory or at least Double Agent should have moved onto a different protagonist. Instead of making Sam basically a different character and even retconning his age and history, Ubisoft should have just retired the character. They probably should have some storyline starting with Chaos Theory involving Sam training a protege, and then eventually moving on to a role similar to Lambert's. Maybe Ubisoft is afraid they can't write another character as good as Sam, but it would've been better to play as someone new with Michael Ironside barking orders at you. And no not Sarah. That makes no sense.
Dishonored: Daud. He (or at least Michael Madsen's voice) made for a much more interesting protagonist than Corvo. Fit really well with the setting and gameplay style. Or at least they should have given Corvo an actual character to begin with. Arkane had no reason to use a silent protagonist for this game, not when Corvo has an existing reputation within the world.
Every Splinter Cell after Chaos Theory or at least Double Agent should have moved onto a different protagonist. Instead of making Sam basically a different character and even retconning his age and history, Ubisoft should have just retired the character. They probably should have some storyline starting with Chaos Theory involving Sam training a protege, and then eventually moving on to a role similar to Lambert's. Maybe Ubisoft is afraid they can't write another character as good as Sam, but it would've been better to play as someone new with Michael Ironside barking orders at you. And no not Sarah. That makes no sense.
Dishonored: Daud. He (or at least Michael Madsen's voice) made for a much more interesting protagonist than Corvo. Fit really well with the setting and gameplay style. Or at least they should have given Corvo an actual character to begin with. Arkane had no reason to use a silent protagonist for this game, not when Corvo has an existing reputation within the world.
Er, what? How do women act?
No. Fuck anime Dante
We need LESS of him, not more.
Er, what?
He was made feminine because some fans asked Kojima to make the main character attractive, IIRC, but it also forms a neat contrast with the gruff Snake.
Hideo Kojima basically wanted MGS2 to be the iceberg to Metal Gear's titanic. That's why it isn't a VR simulation or a dream or whatever; he wanted to leave the canon with this colossal mess that nobody would be able to bring together. The only character MGS2 gave a satisfying conclusion to was Raiden, the new guy who just wants to be free from all this Metal Gear shit. He now is in control of his destiny and can be happy with his wife.
Problem for Kojima is, it didn't work. So the man went backwards in time with MGS3 to avoid having to deal with it. And when the series still didn't end, he had the conundrum of creating a conclusion to the very mess he had made... And he couldn't do it. MGS4 couldn't do it; it had to create convoluted explanations and there was still tons of shit that was just ignored like Arsenal Gear crushing Manhattan. Rising couldn't do it; it just said "fuck it" and went into the future with a story that deliberately ignored everything and was deliberately fun and over-the-top. And now Kojima is going back in time to tell Big Boss's story again because the alternative is poking the MGS2 bear again.
Oh, and Raiden? Mutilated and forced into an imitation of a fan favorite character, forever stuck in battle as a crowd pleaser. If you see him as parallel to Kojima...
I don't like Metal Gear Solid 2, but I understand what it was trying to do. There was also a general theme of "unreality" through the game, but that's another topic.
Astro Monster
Banned
Gears of War would have looked better without all the characters being fat.
Fat shaming!!
rocketskates
Member
I don't think honestly anyone (including me) who suggested a Fran-centric FFXII was serious, mainly for the reasons you mentioned. She's Balthier's Chewbacca.
We just love her voice. And bunny ears.
Ni No Kuni. Oliver really grated on my nerves quite a bit. Make Drippy the main character or something. I understand that he's a kid but could we have someone less mind-numbingly dense please.
Yes.
Yes.
Femmeworth
Banned
Elizabeth should have been the protagonist of Bioshock Infinite.
Sub_Level
wants to fuck an Asian grill.
The plot revolves around an Illuminati-esque group not only trying to recreate Solid Snake, but to show that given the right context (in this case a stealth action videogame) people will do anything without question. Raiden must defeat the final boss of the game and stop Metal Gear because he has to. It is his role and the player's role, and in the end neither of them can do a damn thing about it no matter how much they want to play as Snake. The game ends with Raiden throwing away the player and becoming his own man. There is actually a feeling of optimism when all is said and done with Snake reinforcing that even though the mission was forced on Raiden, both he and the player could decide what to take and pass on from it.
And then MGS4 ruins it...
MGS2 was created for all the people who would list it in this thread.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-2YuPGYabw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-2YuPGYabw
1st post strikes again.
I'd just add, "and Fran".
Baltheir and Fran, pirating, going on adventures, hunting for treasure, getting wrapped up in politics between warring nations, flying an airship. So much potential with just those 2 characters.
Yep. The story goes that Kojima actually didn' t want to continue, or didn't want to keep directing Metal Gear after MGS1, or at least didn't want to do it that soon, but Konami had to have another Metal Gear with Kojima at the helm. Konami is probably the main reason the franchise is what it is now, that and Kojima being unable to find a suitable successor to carry the brand. So Kojima tried to make the story unsalvageable, and he did, but people fucking bought it anyway.
I'm willing to allow that Raiden was a huge chump in MGS2, largely because I think that by the time MGR rolled around he'd come a long way from that, and that Raiden being a loser in MGS2 was the point of his character.
But acted and sounded like a woman? COME ON.
Sub_Level
wants to fuck an Asian grill.
There is nothing unsalvageable about where MGS2 ends. The game is has the most open-ended ending in the series next to MGS1 actually. It doesnt write the story into any corners. I keep reading this and it is simply not true. They even made it a point to literally tell the player "hey these patriot guys might not even be real anyway".
RealDeadOne
Member
Metal Gear Solid 2 is really the only game that can generate this kind of conversation.
Whether or not you like it or think it's shit, the fact that there's so much content both from a game play perspective and a narrative perspective to critique is a feat no other game has performed.
Even games with complex stories and messages usually leave with one possible interpretation and not much room for extrapolation.
Whether or not you like it or think it's shit, the fact that there's so much content both from a game play perspective and a narrative perspective to critique is a feat no other game has performed.
Even games with complex stories and messages usually leave with one possible interpretation and not much room for extrapolation.
The leading man
Sub_Level
wants to fuck an Asian grill.
Hear, hear
Even if half of the conversation surrounding MGS2 is 2deep4u reading-too-much-into-it bullshit, it's still exponentially more than most other games including ones that deliberately attempt similar forms of mind-fuckery, 4th wall breaking, bait-switching, and conveying a message.
50 years from now someone is going to load up MGS2 on their retro wrist-watch hologram emulator and wonder why the hell they're not playing as Snake. And the magical ruse train will leave the station once more.
It's not salvageable because a giant ship crashed into Manhattan offscreen and killed thousands of people, the president died, the US government is obviously guilty of conspiracy with no hope of a cover-up, etc. Everything is upended and nothing can be the same. It also takes the piss out of Metal Gear Solid by exaggerating all the game's flaws: Convoluted and silly plots with the Patriots, cartoonish and inexplicable villains in a serious setting with Vamp, long and pointless and even nonsensical codec conversations, etc. I legitimately cannot figure out how to make a decent sequel to it because the entire point was that everything was fucked up. You can make a game following it, sure, but it's not going to be able to address it solidly.
I really would have liked that better. Not only would it mean not having an AI companion, but it would have also changed the context of the story for the better and the focus for the game better with those crazy tear powers.
Oh, and it might have let the Songbird actually do something.
Wait, are you sure you're talking about the same game as us?
RealDeadOne
Member
Man, the only game that has more tiny, sometimes pointless details in the aanimations, controls, environments and AI is MGS3.
Captain Jack
Banned
But if you never play the DLC you'll never find out the deep backstory of the weird chocobo merchant lady who transcends space and time. Totally worth the cash.
MrSaturn99
Member
fuck these two
I actually found it interesting how part of this thread turned into talking about Raiden's role and his importance of making MGS2 the game we know.