froghawk on 20/10/2024 at 16:32
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008)Inline Image:
https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2022/01/08/metal-gear-solid-4-guns-of-the-patriots-button-ve-1641602845318.jpgDirected and designed by Hideo Kojima
Produced by Hideo Kojima, Kenichiro Imaizumi, Kazuki Muraoka, and Yoshikazu Matsuhana
Written by Hideo Kojima and Shuyo Murata
Music by Harry Gregson-Williams, Nobuko Toda, Shuichi Kobori, and Kazuma Jinnouchi
Art by Yoji Shinkawa
Once again, Kojima declared that he was done directing Metal Gear games after Metal Gear Solid 3. Once again, he was not allowed to stick to it. The fans clamored for answers to the questions posed by their literal interpretation of Metal Gear Solid 2, and so a fourth title was announced. Kojima didn't intend for the series to end—he just wanted someone else to take over directing the games. He appointed his co-writer Shuyo Murata to direct the game, though his name was not announced at the time (the director was announced as Alan Smithee). The mere thought of Kojima not directing a new mainline Metal Gear Solid caused so much outcry in Japan that Kojima received multiple death threats.
And so, essentially at gunpoint, Kojima gave in and took over directing the game. He decided to ‘indulge' the fans by creating a game that's pure fanservice. Of course, that doesn't mean he changed his tune and stopped flipping off his fans — instead, he gave the fans exactly what they thought they wanted in order to show them that they didn't really want it. Or perhaps he was simply trying to answer all their questions in the most obtuse and unsatisfying way possible, just to stick it to them. You see, Metal Gear Solid 4 is the final Solid Snake game, just like the fans asked for — except Snake is old now — or at least appears that way. So old that you're forced to wonder why, exactly, he's still in the field, mirroring how Kojima was probably feeling about making the game. Even the game's washed out grey-brown visual aesthetic reinforces this.
The roles from Metal Gear Solid 2 have been reversed — now Raiden is the cool and competent one, but he isn't a playable character. You‘re made to watch him do the most badass stuff in the game from a distance while Snake crawls along, about to keel over at any minute. Snake now has a ‘psyche meter', which is evidently increased not only by killing, attacks, and alerts, but by bad smells and temperature extremes. As the psyche meter gets higher, Old Snake's aim and back pain get worse, and he is likely to vomit or pass out. Snake only has a year left to live, but it turns out he isn't actually old here —the game only takes place five years after Metal Gear Solid 2, after all. He's just aged prematurely, thanks to the nanovirus he was infected with in the first game. As a result, he's become a danger to everyone, as the virus will likely become a pandemic when he dies. He's become a walking time bomb.
The whole thing feels more than a little bit passive aggressive, but you can't really blame Kojima — anyone would be rightfully mad over getting death threats, and doubly so when related to something as ultimately frivolous as video games. And thus, yet another Metal Gear Solid title ended up being highly contentious. But really, the fans were essentially asking for something impossible — to answer questions that Kojima never intended to answer, and to make literal sense out of a meta-narrative which was never meant to be taken literally, somehow tying it all up with a nice bow. To make matters worse, Kojima's writing partner Tomokazu Fukushima (who was largely responsible for fleshing out all of the codec calls) left the project, leaving only Shuyo Murata to help with the writing. This led to a large and quite noticeable change in the writing of these games from here on out.
The result was a game in desperate need of an editor. Whereas Metal Gear Solid 3 was actually trying to be a video game for once, Guns of the Patriots goes full tilt in the opposite direction. It's the most cutscene-heavy game in the series, probably because Kojima finally had the budget to live up to his cinematic aspirations. Roughly half of the game's runtime is devoted to cutscenes. Granted, this choice of direction was probably at least partially due to the fact that Kojima reportedly wanted to make the game open world, but found the technology of the time unable to execute his vision. (He was later able to execute that vision with Metal Gear Solid V, but only after open worlds had become a trend.) As such, he wasn't very excited about the game side of things here, and instead decided to make an occasionally interactive movie.
The codec calls have been reduced to such a minimum that it makes me wonder why that feature was even left in the game (though it does allow for some psychotherapy sessions in the field with Rosemary from Metal Gear Solid 2 — a nice touch). The content that would've been explained in codec calls in previous titles has now been translated into fully animated cutscenes, which certainly makes the experience feel more cinematic. The problem is that these cutscenes are very poorly paced, filled with long awkward pauses and excessive repetition. A good chunk of the experience of this game is listening to a bunch of awkward slow talking where people endlessly repeat the same points with no music — especially in the mission briefings. Perhaps Kojima was actively trying to make it aggressively non-entertaining.
This would be all well and good if the narrative here was even close to being as interesting as that of Metal Gear Solid 2, but it isn't. The blatant meta and ludonarrative elements of that game are gone. I was personally hoping that all of that wildness would get dialed up, and the intro video seemed to point in that direction. The game opens by showing you what TV is like in this game's vision of 2014 (that's aged well), allowing you to flip through the channels, with each channel showing you a different program followed by an advertisement. It's surreal and bizarre, and clearly took a ton of effort to make. I was very much hoping that it was setting the tone for the rest of the game — but that was not the case (aside from new enemies called geckos, which are basically medium-sized metal gears which moo like cows).
Instead, the game opts for maximal ridiculousness. It's really remarkably coherent for what it's trying to do — it somehow manages to cram in every possible nostalgic fanservice nod it can muster without totally falling apart. Every former character that can possibly be reprised appears here — Otacon, Naomi Hunter, Eva, Vamp, Mei Ling, and more. Some of these reprises are executed in a totally absurd manner — for instance, Meryl returns, now commanding her own military unit. She is in a relationship with Johnny, the recurring character whose primary trait is his irritable bowel syndrome. Here, he is a woefully incompetent member of her unit, but he's also made into a perverted misogynist, making their relationship utterly puzzling and their climactic scenes together doubly ridiculous.
Liquid Ocelot returns from the second game, and is the primary villain here. His main goal is to obtain the body of Big Boss. There's an obligatory return to Shadow Moses from the first game, featuring a sequence where you pilot a Metal Gear (for the only time in the series) and fight an Arsenal Gear (the Metal Gear model from the second game, here piloted by Liquid Ocelot). The final sequence takes place off the coast of New York, calling back to the setting of the second game, and ends in a preposterous extended fist fight, calling back to the first. And, of course, many unexplained things from previous games (like Vamp's powers) are explained away by good ol' nanomachines.
Nonetheless, all of this fan service essentially undermines the plot and messages of Metal Gear Solid 2. By caving to the fans and giving into a literal reading of that title, it encourages fans to disregard its metaphorical elements. Raiden's character arc is particularly undermined, making it clear that he was unable to escape the cycle he was in, despite seemingly breaking out of it in his prior appearance. In essence, Metal Gear Solid 4 intentionally misses the point of Metal Gear Solid 2 because fans demanded it, and in doing so, it almost encourages them to further miss the point of the whole series. It's as if Kojima had given up here — he didn't even care if anyone saw the point of what he was trying to say, or if the fans even saw that he was giving them the finger. The resulting plot is still plenty convoluted in its own way — how could it not be?
All of that aside, however, Metal Gear Solid 4 does still have something to say. The central theme of the game is that Private Military Companies have taken over warfare and become the backbone of the world economy. War is constant, because without it, the economy will fail. Soldiers that work for these companies have all been enhanced with nanomachines, giving them increased abilities, and all of them are controlled by an AI called the Sons of the Patriots. This focus on the war economy is reflected in the gameplay — there's now an arms dealer who periodically shows up to sell you weapons and buy ones you've picked up off corpses. Despite the warfare, it is possible to play through the game without killing anyone, just as it was in the prior two titles.
What little gameplay is present here is mostly fantastic, with the exception of some forced cover shooter sections which feel out of place, generic, and surprisingly unimaginative. Otherwise, the game takes the gameplay innovations of Metal Gear Solid 3 to the next level, streamlining and refining them. A crouch walk function has been introduced, significantly speeding up the gameplay. The camouflage system has been streamlined — it now acts like a chameleon, blending with whatever surface you're pressed against (and there's even face camo). There are loads of new toys to play with, including a mini Metal Gear (based on the design from his 1988 game Snatcher) which you can send into battle as a scout. I wish the game gave players a little bit more time and real estate to play with all of them, but what's here is incredibly fun.
Instead of largely taking place in a single location, like the previous games, it switches up the series formula and takes place in five different places across the globe, each with extremely generic location names like ‘Middle East' and ‘South America'. The first two locations are war zones, and feature the most chaotic gameplay in the series as you sneak through active battlefields. The Middle East setting where the game begins felt especially topical at the time. The gameplay is very diverse, with each location focusing on a different gameplay style — for example, the game's third chapter (in ‘Eastern Europe'') is largely a stealth chapter, based around tailing someone. This variety keeps things fresh, but it can also leave each section's gameplay feeling a little underused, leaving you wanting more (with the natural exception of the tired cover shooter sections).
The bosses here are clear gameplay highlights. Once again, there is a crew of bosses set on killing Snake — in this case, they are a group of traumatized women who have been brainwashed into being obsessed with killing Snake. They are all wearing battle suits which make them resemble animals and give them special abilities. They're loosely named after the bosses from the first game, but with descriptors drawn from the third game's bosses— Screaming Mantis, Laughing Octopus, Raging Raven, and Crying Wolf — and weapons drawn from the second game's bosses. Their inhumanity relative to the bosses in previous titles is a further reflection of how mechanized war has become in this game. These fights are quite creative, and each fight has its own conceit. The first battle, with Laughing Octopus, is especially notable, as she blends into her surroundings and forces you to play a deadly game of hide and seek.
Many have spoken about how disturbing it is that the game objectifies these bosses so heavily, putting them in skintight outfits after you defeat them, with the camera lingering on their assets, after which you are told their traumatic backstories. I would argue that is exactly the point. Remember how I said the goal of this game was to give the fans all their fanservice and show them how they don't really want it? By putting this objectification in a really messed up context — these women are severely traumatized, have been through truly horrific events, and then have been brainwashed to the point where they no longer resemble human beings — a sense of intense dissonance is created in order to make the player uncomfortable. It's as if Kojima is saying ‘THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED, RIGHT? STILL LIKE IT?' Of course, it's hard to say for sure — it's not like Kojima hasn't shown similarly perverted tendencies without any commentary in the past, and I certainly don't want to erase or minimize that.
Perhaps I shouldn't be giving the benefit of the doubt here, but the whole game operates like this. ‘OH, YOU WANT MORE? OK, HERE YOU GO. YOU WANT EVERYTHING TIED UP NICELY? HERE IT IS!' You hated that Raiden wasn't a badass before? Ok, now he's a way over the top super-badass! You wanted to know who and what the Patriots are? Ok, they are AIs — and not only that, but the entire cast of MGS3 gets tied into their creation for extra fanservice. This was especially contentious, as what is done with those characters here seems to cast them as villains, whereas they seemed fun-loving and goofy in that game. However, this game isn't really casting them as villains — it's more nuanced than that, as subsequent titles make clear. The central conflict in the post-Snake Eater Big Boss games is that everyone who knew the Boss is trying to enact their interpretation of her will in the world, and everyone has a different idea of what that is. No one is truly bad, but everyone is a bit misguided.
As such, this game once again makes it abundantly clear that Kojima had already said everything he had to say in the first two titles and was ready to move on. Metal Gear Solid 3 got away with having nothing new to say on account of being a proper video game, first and foremost, and a very fun one at that — but since half of Metal Gear Solid 4's duration is cutscenes, it can't get away with that in the same way. Not to mention that, while there have been some gameplay improvements, the shooter segments of the game arguably feature the worst gameplay of the entire series. Despite all of that, Metal Gear Solid 4 is a good time on the whole. It certainly isn't boring, despite some iffy pacing. It's fun to play, it has some interesting ideas, and it's over the top in a highly amusing way. It may be far from being my favorite title in the series, but it's still worth a visit.
(
https://medium.com/@froghawk/metal-gear-solid-4-guns-of-the-patriots-2008-aed27f08c751)
Malf on 21/10/2024 at 10:42
I sometimes think I would like to replay MGS4 again. In my never-ending quest to do things the awkward way, it was actually my introduction to the series.
I'd sold my PS1 just before the first game came out, and never owned a PS2. When I bought my PS3, at the time there weren't too many first-party titles available, but MGS4 was one of them, and I'd always been keen to experience the other series that helped define the stealth genre after having started with Deus Ex and Thief 2.
The story definitely had a lot of WTF going on for me, and despite a lot of the characters and story-beats entering the zeitgeist, there was still a lot that at first confused me. But I was able to make sense of it as I played.
That is, when I got a chance to actually play.
Those cutscenes were ridiculous, and had no respect for the players' time. I mean yes, they let you pause them, but rarely were you allowed to skip them. And if you did skip them, you would be even more deeply confused.
It's a shame, because I've been forever left with the impression of a game that had incredible, fleeting glimpses of impressive gameplay, only to be interrupted by hour long cutscenes of teenage girls frying eggs on a plane.
froghawk on 21/10/2024 at 13:06
Oh man, I can't even imagine trying to make sense of this as my first MGS title - it's really not made to be a standalone game. Well, ok, I can, because I tried playing it after MGS1 and bounced off it pretty quick when it came out. Even having the context of the first game was nowhere near sufficient, given how intensely referential the whole affair is. But yeah, as I said, VERY poorly paced lol. Then again, what late Kojima game isn't? I don't feel like any real attempt was made at pacing any of the post-MGS3 titles except Peace Walker.
If anyone's wondering why I skipped writing up 3 - I intend to circle back once Delta drops.
Thirith on 21/10/2024 at 13:22
Is MGSV badly paced? I remember the sequence in the hospital trying the player's patience, but that felt like it was on purpose, and once you're past that point, I don't remember the game stopping you from playing it nearly as much as your average Kojima joint. It is possible that I simply don't remember, mind you.
Sulphur on 21/10/2024 at 13:28
Past the opening hours, MGS5's story doesn't really pop up as often as any other MGS. It's more like Peacewalker in that you choose a mission from the menu and then go do it with the toys you've chosen, so to some degree its pacing is up to you. It's also an open world, so the linearity of the previous MGSes doesn't figure in as much - which in my opinion was an overcorrection, because MGS4 aside, the regular story beats were some of the most enjoyable parts of the previous games. But the focus on gameplay isn't entirely unwelcome. It makes open-world stealth far more interesting than your run of the mill Far Cry game, and I'd say leaps and bounds better than any latter-day Ghost Recon, and that's a massive plus.
Malf on 21/10/2024 at 15:12
Interestingly, while I dearly love Phantom Pain (despite it being unifinished), I actually think Ground Zeroes is the better game, with less opportunity for power creep and a surprising amount of depth squeezed into its relatively small location.
Thirith on 21/10/2024 at 15:21
For me, they're very much two parts of a whole, and each has different strengths that are closely linked to their maps. Phantom Pain has a great self-contained map, but that self-containedness also limits what the game can throw at you and what you can throw back at it. I sort of wonder what an imaginary director's cut of MGSV would be like that had you go back and forth between the two. Chances are it wouldn't work at all, but it would've made for a fascinating tighter juxtaposition of the two.
froghawk on 21/10/2024 at 16:45
Well, ok, since we're here already... I guess I'll post the big boss trilogy reviews backwards!!! Spoiler: I don't believe it's unfinished...
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes / The Phantom Pain (2014/5)Inline Image:
https://image.api.playstation.com/vulcan/ap/rnd/202010/0205/xaOrA7ZIur35LkfIzxtOECFv.pngDirected and designed by Hideo Kojima
Produced by Hideo Kojima, Kenichiro Imaizumi, and Kazuki Muraoka
Written by Hideo Kojima, Shuyo Murata, Hidenari Inamura, and Etsu Tamari (The Phantom Pain only)
Ground Zeroes music by Akihiro Honda, Ludvig Forssell, and Harry Gregson-Williams
Phantom Pain music by Ludvig Forssell, Justin Burnett, and Daniel James
Art by Yoji Shinkawa and Ikuya Nakamura (Ground Zeroes only)
Kojima was evidently disappointed with how Metal Gear Solid 4 turned out — he had wanted to make it an open world game, but couldn't figure out how to make it work with the technology available at the time. For the fifth mainline title, he finally got to realize his dream, but only once the world had been flooded with the genre. I guess credit is still due for thinking ahead of the curve, even if it was trendy by the time he managed to deliver it. In order to execute his dream, his team had to create a new engine — the FOX engine. Kojima Productions intended to use the engine for multiple titles, but Konami dissolved Kojima Productions in 2015 and Kojima left the company, finally ending his involvement with the Metal Gear franchise. After that, the engine mostly ended up mostly being used to fuel the Pro Evolution Soccer series before Konami retired it in 2020.
The Phantom Pain was not initially announced as a Metal Gear Solid game — instead, it was passed off as a new IP being developed by Moby Dick Studio, headed up by Joakim Mogren — both of which turned out to be fictional. Evidently, Kojima felt he'd be better able to gauge the public's response to the engine if it wasn't initially attached to a popular franchise. The game was soon revealed to be Metal Gear Solid V, and that its release was to be preceded by a prologue entitled Ground Zeroes. Together, they would constitute the third title in the Big Boss trilogy, directly following Peace Walker.
Ground Zeroes is an intro segment, much like the Tanker in Metal Gear Solid 2 or Virtuous Mission in Metal Gear Solid 3, but it was released as a separate product because The Phantom Pain's development was taking so long and Kojima Productions wanted to have something ready around the PS4's launch. It's essentially the end of the Peace Walker story, and a very grim and extreme end at that — it does some absurdly brutal stuff with some of that game's characters, removing them from the picture. The sole level in this game is inspired by Guantanamo Bay, and the story tackles themes of torture and forced rape. It's all too brief to say it really earns these topics, and it definitely feels a bit edgelordy. Thankfully, that is its worst quality.
Many were upset about the $30 price tag for one map, but it really is incredibly replayable. The game is designed to allow player choice, giving you a massive variety of potential ways to approach its main mission. If that's not enough, there are unlockable side and hidden missions which give you different goals in the same map, and at different times of day. It's quite easy to spend 10-15hrs on just this one map. Players were thus understandably expecting more of that from The Phantom Pain, only to find that it contained only a few areas which were comparable in design to the Ground Zeroes map. Instead, its gameplay was focused mostly on capturing small outposts.
The Phantom Pain mostly takes place on two giant open world maps (Afghanistan and South Africa) with very few indoor areas, making the experience of the game feel very different from Ground Zeroes. While I generally tend to prefer the Ground Zeroes design of a small open area that you can learn inside and out, The Phantom Pain has a lot going for it. It's a big change in the formula of the series, with very few boss battles or cutscenes, as Kojima evidently felt that long cutscenes had become outdated. Many fans ended up feeling that the game went too far in the other direction — that there wasn't enough plot or cutscenes compared to prior entries. Certainly the plot feels a bit less significant to the overall story of the series than any of the prior mainline titles, but like the other Big Boss titles, it's primarily interested in being a game. Luckily, it is truly great at that.
The Phantom Pain brings back the enemy capturing (via balloon) and base building mechanics of Peace Walker. Capturing enemy soldiers and making them become your soldiers feels even stranger now that part of the game is set in Africa, making for some... awkward moments, to say the least. (The game also tackles the issue of child soldiers, as it needed to in order to explain how Big Boss started using them in the first Metal Gear, but it doesn't take any particularly bold stances on the topic.) However, Peace Walker's overall design was the opposite of The Phantom Pain's. Placing these mechanics in a giant open world with big missions makes it all feel quite fresh.
Every mission in the game is designed to feel like an episode of TV, complete with opening and ending credits. This acts as an excuse for Kojima to plaster his name all over the game — Konami may have removed his name for the box art and fired him, but he wasn't about to let anyone forget who was really responsible for the game. It also provides an interesting insight into the process by allowing you to see which writer was responsible for each mission. Kojima and Murata wrote all the missions which actually advance the plot, while newcomers Etsu Tamari and Hidenari Inamura were tasked with writing all of the filler missions.
On one hand, The Phantom Pain is an odd proposition. Its purpose in the wider plot of the series is somewhat preposterous, as it exists to fill in a ‘plot hole' from 25 years ago, explaining how Big Boss returned as the final boss in Metal Gear 2 when Solid Snake had already killed him in Metal Gear. I have no doubt that the original reason for this was just goofy 80s video game convention, and that this entire plot is some sort of retcon. Nonetheless, the solution it proposes is as convoluted and wild as you'd expect. It also exists to explain how Big Boss became a villain in the first place, given that the tone of its predecessors (Metal Gear Solid 3 and Peace Walker) was surprisingly fun.
On the other hand, it's a game about language. The plot is about vocal cord parasites which can wipe out entire groups based on the language they speak, but the game plays with language in much bigger ways than that. Many of the characters in the game are either silent or barely speak. After the events of Ground Zeroes, which undid all the work that Snake and Miller did in Peace Walker and sent them into a state of deep depression, there is a sense that they've descended deep into shame, and now live in a fallen world. Something has been taken away from them that they can never get back, and they feel that pain every day — a phantom pain.
The light and fun tone from Metal Gear Solid 3 and Peace Walker are gone, replaced with a strange darkness (despite the bright illumination of all of the game's environments). Almost everyone in the cast is either a villain or someone who is going to become a villain. Everyone on screen is being manipulated by someone off screen or even by someone dead, to the point that they can't even tell what any of their actions mean anymore. This makes the whole affair feel like a side plot being directed by forces that don't even appear in the game.
As I mentioned earlier, the previous games were filled with plot and cutscenes and light on gameplay, but this one is the opposite. Big Boss barely speaks, and when he does, his voice is wrong (series staple David Hayter has been inexplicably replaced by Keifer Sutherland as Snake's voice actor). Three villains return from previous games. Two of them don't speak at all, and the third barely speaks. There's a new character named Quiet who lives up to her name, as she is mute. Miller is now filled with deep rage, and his former jovial chattiness has been replaced by a foreboding air. Most of the plot advancement has been relegated to cassette tapes, which you listen to as you play the game.
This started in Peace Walker, which replaced the codec calls of previous titles with cassette tapes for a few reasons. Firstly, the levels were very short, so there was no space to stick all of the required dialogue in them. Secondly, the game was handheld, so you could listen to the tapes while doing other things. As Metal Gear Solid V is a large open world game, none of these things apply anymore. By allowing you to listen to the tapes during gameplay, their role has changed — it divorces the plot from the action onscreen, creating a feeling of disconnection. As for the content of the tapes, they delve into intense and excessive levels of detail around political context and plot mechanics while leaving the overall plot of the game somewhat obscure.
The open world feels quite empty. It doesn't feel like a true open world game — the game is designed around its main missions and side missions, and all there is to do beyond that is collect the occasional plant, rescue some animals, and capture some guard posts. It almost feels like the open world is simply there to give you something to do while listening to the tapes — now you can occupy yourself by traversing the landscape. The same is true of your Mother Base, a gigantic and ever-growing structure which you can now traverse (unlike in Peace Walker, where it was simply a menu screen)— but there is nothing to do there except in one room, aside from the occasional target practice. All of this contributes in a big way to a larger feeling of emptiness which pervades the game.
There's also a sense of displacement. Afghanistan is inhabited soley by Russian soldiers, without a single Afghani in sight — it's unsettling. Snake, Miller, and their crew have also been displaced — they are expats living on the open sea. The new home Snake and Miller attempted to build for themselves was destroyed, so their attempts to rebuild are permeated with paranoia. The sense of safety they established was destroyed in Ground Zeroes, and nothing can ever be the same again.
The gameplay in Metal Gear Solid V is the best the series has to offer — it's a sandbox that gives you endless tools to play with in extremely well-designed levels which allow for endless possible approaches. Unlike the first four games, which largely underused their gameplay mechanics and left you wanting more, Metal Gear Solid V drives its gameplay loop into the ground with filler missions and side missions. It gives you a perfectly designed triumph of gameplay and then throws it at you until you absolutely can't stand it anymore.
Some have proposed that this is commentary on Konami's demands, and the way they isolated Kojima and cut off his internet during the development... but I think it's more than that. It feels like a reflection of the world we live in today. We are all villains (‘there is no ethics under capitalism') — all complicit in the exploitation, oppression, and destruction that is essential to the operation of our society, and all being powerlessly manipulated by unseen forces. The amount of entertainment and distraction available to us is at an all-time high, but it ultimately all feels empty, unable to mask the depression and disconnection underlying everything we do. The world feels fallen, corrupted — as we stare down the impending apocalypse, we know we are past the point of no return. Everything starts to feel a bit purposeless. That is exactly the feeling this game creates, and it does so in a brilliantly subtle way, through the intersection of many smaller elements. Many of these elements individually seem like they may have been accidental, but when the bigger picture arrives, the intent becomes clear.
In a way, the world on display here feels like the inevitable outcome of the themes of information manipulation that Metal Gear Solid 2 explored. Kojima was concerned back then, but all of his fears came true — the post-truth age is in full swing, and no one can tell who is steering the ship anymore. There's no need for him to warn us about the future anymore — instead, he simply held up a mirror and showed everyone where we are. It's no surprise that many people didn't like it. To me, it feels like the most purposeful Metal Gear Solid title in quite some time.
The portrayal of the character Quiet has led to much criticism. On the one hand, it fits right in with this larger narrative — this is a male-dominated and male-destroyed world, and the only prominent female character in the game is a scantily clad woman who never speaks. This feels like it could be part of the commentary — both a criticism of how women are portrayed in games and of the patriarchy itself, in the same way that Metal Gear Solid 4 tried to make you uncomfortable by objectifying severely traumatized and broken women. I've drawn parallels with Evangelion in the past, and I think Evangelion 3.0+1.0 was making a similar statement. However, given Kojima's own history of portraying women in deeply questionable and objectifying ways, one must ask when the criticism becomes the thing it is trying to criticize, especially when your audience is prone to missing the point. He is always teetering on the edge with this one, and the game's camera will give you plenty of reason to argue that he's gone way over it. In other words — even if that is what he's trying to do, he can't have his cake and eat it, too.
Many also complain about the way Kiefer Sutherland replaced David Hayter as Big Boss's voice actor — and while there could be good plot justification for that, two things get in the way of it. The first is that the Japanese voice actor did not change. The second is that Hayter would've had to voice Snake in Ground Zeroes for this to really make sense (though I will not explain either of these things further to avoid spoilers). In any case, given that Big Boss had a British accent in Metal Gear Solid 4, there is no consistency whatsoever as to what Big Boss sounds like. It didn't make whole lot of sense to give him the same voice actor as Solid Snake to begin with, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to go back on that now, either. Nevertheless, it contributes to the uncanny nature of the whole affair.
Another source of controversy is the popular theory that the game is unfinished. Indeed, a bonus disc with some making-of materials contained a video of a partially-finished level which wrapped up the last major open plot point, leading many to speculate that Kojima Productions did not have time to finish the game due to pressure from Konami, but Konami claimed it was scrapped early on in development. With that said, the game is called ‘The Phantom Pain', and given the way the rest of the ludonarrative in this game functions, I would not be at all surprised if content was cut specifically to make you feel like something is missing, as the absence of that contributes to the overall feeling on display. There's also a good chance that it was being saved for DLC, but that plans for that were thwarted when Kojima was fired, though the game's community manager has refuted this.
As is, the game already has 3 different consecutive ‘endings' which cut to rolling the ending credits, only for the game to continue after — adding a fourth would've been preposterous. The last of those endings has you play the entire opening mission again — and while that mission was excellent the first time, it feels tedious the second time around. It's a fitting whimper for this game to end on — instead of fighting the giant flamethrower-dicked boss robot again, as was originally planned, we get more excessive rehash. This would not be the first time Kojima intentionally made part of a game frustrating and unenjoyable, and I'm sure it won't be the last. There can be no redemption in the world of this game — trailing off into nothing feels like the most fitting end.
There was also a title screen for a third chapter (entitled ‘Peace') found in the game's assets. While many have speculated that the game was missing an intended third chapter, it turned out that this was part of the game's multiplayer mode, which allows players to invade each other's ‘forward operating bases'. In that event that full nuclear disarmament is achieved in a multiplayer server, chapter 3 will occur — however, the game makes this literally impossible. It is indeed a meta-chapter.
As is, the second chapter largely consists of harder versions of earlier missions — versions that require total stealth, ‘subsistence' versions which drop you in with no gear and expect you to procure everything you need on site, and ‘extreme' versions with the difficulty dialed up (which I will surely never try for the already insanely difficult final boss battle). Indeed, this is yet another way in which the game feels bloated with filler content. Giant open world areas with only a few really fleshed out level areas, filler missions, rehashed missions, endless side quests... there's far more of this sort of thing than there is substantial story and level content. But, as I said, that all feels like part of the point. The Metal Gear Solid story had already been told.
In short, I find Metal Gear Solid V to be the most thematically compelling entry in the series after Metal Gear Solid 2, as well the darkest and most hopeless. If nothing more, Kojima finally found some new things to say with Metal Gear Solid V, which is something I can't say for the previous decade+ of the series. Perhaps the novel open world format inspired some new story ideas, or perhaps he'd finally resigned himself to being stuck with the series and thus found a way to bring in new ideas. It's got a big statement to make, but it does so in a nuanced and subtle way and from multiple angles.
As a game, it's the most polished and well-honed entry in the series. The plot is thin enough that it's easy to write off, but try looking at it from a different angle and you may be surprised what you find. It's a flawed game by design. There are plenty of things I could nitpick (why the hell do walking, riding a horse, and driving a vehicle all have different control schemes on a controller?), but the big picture is there. I'm glad Kojima was finally able to be free of the franchise. His final entry is a fitting ending for a corpse constantly reanimated past its due date. Konami has only made one attempt to continue the series without Kojima — the widely-maligned Fox engine zombie game, Metal Gear Survive. Thankfully, they quickly got the message and have made no further attempts at anything other than remasters and remakes.
As this game is enormous — much bigger in scale than the past titles — there's a whole lot more I could talk about here. However, I believe I've said what I uniquely have to say about the game at this point, and will thus leave my review ‘unfinished'.
(
https://medium.com/@froghawk/metal-gear-solid-v-ground-zeroes-the-phantom-pain-2014-5-587960a3d00a)
Aja on 21/10/2024 at 18:37
Quote Posted by froghawk
This would not be the first time Kojima intentionally made part of a game frustrating and unenjoyable, and I'm sure it won't be the last.
Wait till you get to Death Stranding.
Thirith on 22/10/2024 at 06:37
Having just been to Iceland, I should finally play Death Stranding.
