BiGBoSSMk23
A company being excited for their new game is a huge slap in the face to all the fans that liked their old games.
I wanted to take a moment and get a few thoughts I had on the series in general (and a little bit of 4 in particular) off my mind.
I was just replaying Sons Of Liberty for a bit of trophy hunting, since I figured it's my favourite game of all time, "how come I don't have the platinum? Come on, son!"
Yep.
I couldn't help but find myself in total fucking awe of how proudly 2 wears its "videogame" badge, and what a monumental achievement that game was for its time, and for the industry years on. All over again, this game has me gushing as a series fanboy.
And it got me thinking.
What happened to 4? Why couldn't I, I don't know... Get to reconcile it with 2's immaculate realization?
It had the makings of 2's proper follow up, it had that legendary E3 trailer hype.
So, this is what I think, partly, it came down to:
MGS4's overall quality can be attributed of a number of often overlooked facts influencing it's development:
1. Hideo Kojima being held creatively hostage for far too much time. He probably needed (wanted!) to pass the torch after MGS2. (No place for Hideo!)
2. Sony and their PS3 spec fuckery. 4 was supposed to be open ended/seamless battlefield early on. Was supposed to be the system showcase, like MGS2 was for PS2 years on. They ended up with awkward cuts in between levels and a frankly disparate use of available hardware resources.
2-a. Lost in translation. Amidst all this reassessing of the project's scope, the team was taking on the deliberate task of "westernizing" the game. The Japanese have a terrible track history of wanting to assimilate anything from the West. I'm not saying they shouldn't have taken notes, but that should've been it, really
3. Stemming from point #2, they were scrambling to finish the project, and in doing so botched a lot of the writing and characters' arcs. (Tomokazu Fukushima's mysterious departure didn't do them any favours) We ended up with a comparatively dumb story, riddled with plot enabling mcguffins, that did little to comment on 2's brilliance and cultural relevance.
Of that epic 15 minute trailer that propositioned so many culturally relevant topics, that had Metal Gear fans the world over flooding the internet with their enthusiasm and anticipation, that promised so much with its premise and that eerie yet tangibly realized atmosphere (surely the spitfire combo of Shinkawa, Fukushima and Kojima's genius), was merely a faint trace by the game's release.
MGS4 is still, in many ways, a more traditional Metal Gear game, and in my opinion, a better Metal Gear than V. But it's a pained, and deformed effort; one marred by what you could call the turning point in Kojima's favourable run as Konami's cash cow (for the better, let's be real).
The moment in Peace Walker when The Boss' arc started getting retreaded and Big Boss' presumed understanding of her sacrifice started getting construed to shoehorn a contrived villainy origin, I had already lost faith in the end of his story arc (and the beginning of Solid Snake's) delivering the emotional resonance of 3 for me.
For me, I didn't feel Kojima's heart was in it with PW and beyond. Whatever channel he managed to find through Metal Gear for his creative well, he seemed to have lost it, and was really only doing it for the fans and Konami's moneyed behest.
And that's where I stand as a long time series fan. Holding my Limited Edition copy of 4 with melancholy, and optimistically eager to see what Death Stranding has in store for us.
What about the rest of you, who voted MGS4 GOTY twice? Where do you stand?
I was just replaying Sons Of Liberty for a bit of trophy hunting, since I figured it's my favourite game of all time, "how come I don't have the platinum? Come on, son!"
Yep.
I couldn't help but find myself in total fucking awe of how proudly 2 wears its "videogame" badge, and what a monumental achievement that game was for its time, and for the industry years on. All over again, this game has me gushing as a series fanboy.
And it got me thinking.
What happened to 4? Why couldn't I, I don't know... Get to reconcile it with 2's immaculate realization?
It had the makings of 2's proper follow up, it had that legendary E3 trailer hype.
So, this is what I think, partly, it came down to:
MGS4's overall quality can be attributed of a number of often overlooked facts influencing it's development:
1. Hideo Kojima being held creatively hostage for far too much time. He probably needed (wanted!) to pass the torch after MGS2. (No place for Hideo!)
2. Sony and their PS3 spec fuckery. 4 was supposed to be open ended/seamless battlefield early on. Was supposed to be the system showcase, like MGS2 was for PS2 years on. They ended up with awkward cuts in between levels and a frankly disparate use of available hardware resources.
2-a. Lost in translation. Amidst all this reassessing of the project's scope, the team was taking on the deliberate task of "westernizing" the game. The Japanese have a terrible track history of wanting to assimilate anything from the West. I'm not saying they shouldn't have taken notes, but that should've been it, really
3. Stemming from point #2, they were scrambling to finish the project, and in doing so botched a lot of the writing and characters' arcs. (Tomokazu Fukushima's mysterious departure didn't do them any favours) We ended up with a comparatively dumb story, riddled with plot enabling mcguffins, that did little to comment on 2's brilliance and cultural relevance.
Of that epic 15 minute trailer that propositioned so many culturally relevant topics, that had Metal Gear fans the world over flooding the internet with their enthusiasm and anticipation, that promised so much with its premise and that eerie yet tangibly realized atmosphere (surely the spitfire combo of Shinkawa, Fukushima and Kojima's genius), was merely a faint trace by the game's release.
MGS4 is still, in many ways, a more traditional Metal Gear game, and in my opinion, a better Metal Gear than V. But it's a pained, and deformed effort; one marred by what you could call the turning point in Kojima's favourable run as Konami's cash cow (for the better, let's be real).
The moment in Peace Walker when The Boss' arc started getting retreaded and Big Boss' presumed understanding of her sacrifice started getting construed to shoehorn a contrived villainy origin, I had already lost faith in the end of his story arc (and the beginning of Solid Snake's) delivering the emotional resonance of 3 for me.
For me, I didn't feel Kojima's heart was in it with PW and beyond. Whatever channel he managed to find through Metal Gear for his creative well, he seemed to have lost it, and was really only doing it for the fans and Konami's moneyed behest.
And that's where I stand as a long time series fan. Holding my Limited Edition copy of 4 with melancholy, and optimistically eager to see what Death Stranding has in store for us.
What about the rest of you, who voted MGS4 GOTY twice? Where do you stand?
