Hideo Kojima and the Phantom Game

[Hotfoot]

So, the Phantom Pain. Fuck, we'll throw in Ground Zeroes too.

Hideo Kojima is out of his fucking mind.

No, look, I get it. His stories have always been out there, filled with plot holes and nonsensical bullshit and made up words and bullshit about life upon the battlefield. Then there are giant robots and cyber-ninjas with lightsaber katanas and clones possessing arms and shit.

Fine.

I'll even take the remedial fucking history courses he gives us on world history. People tell me the games are good, that the gameplay is fun and all that jazz.

I get a little skeeved out by, you know, characters like Silence, who is a mute sniper who wears a black bikini and fishnets in the middle of Afghanistan. Especially when Kojima tells his art design staff to make her and other characters "More Erotic". Or the fact that both Ground Zeroes and Phantom Pain will/has involve[d] sequences of sexual assault and rather extreme violence towards women.

But hey, the game looks interesting, so maybe I could at least be down for that, right? I mean, story details can change before release and character looks can be modded or reskinned with DLC, and open world stealth with planning assaults, using weather and time of day to your advantage sounds pretty cool.

This is a video from Gamescom featuring 22 minutes or so of play. I thought, at first, that it was a cleverly put together parody of the game. No, no this is the actual fucking thing.

[youtube][/youtube]


So let's review, shall we?

1. A horse shits in the road on command, which causes the jeep, driving along at what looks like maybe 30 mph to spin out violently, but not dangerously, stunning the soldiers inside. I want you to repeat that sentence and then watch the video again and cement that I'm not bullshitting you, THIS HAPPENS. THIS WAS PUT INTO THE GAME. THIS IS THE GAME.

2. Snake then slaps a party balloon on the damn thing, which launches it into the stratosphere with the men inside the jeep.

3. He then stuns a goat and slaps same stratoballoon on it, for some reason. The balloons apparently bring things to your base. So enemy soldiers will...work for you now? After a balloon ride?

4. The fucking cardboard box bullshit is back, I thought we were finally done with this shit, but no, he pulls it out of fucking hammerspace and of course gets seen, because boxes shouldn't have legs. So what does he do? He activates the box's porn setting, by obviously standing up inside the box and letting the soldier ogle the porn painted perfectly on the top of it. Us men, you know, we're rendered damn near paralyzed at the sight of even a picture of a woman in a bikini.

5. Then there is base building and PVP and theft and, fine, whatever. Again, the balloons and stealing supplies and PEOPLE, and then using the magical time travel cigar IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MISSION to get better patrols. What, nobody noticed the missing supplies and personnel, or the dude slowly smoking in the middle of all the missing materiel?

I mean so many of these gameplay decisions feel like they fit better into Fable 2 and 3, but they're in a game that not only tries to take itself seriously, but is being taken seriously.

And this is a major Triple-A Title that will likely make a shit ton of money.

I don't honestly know what to say.

[Cynical Cat]

Jesus fucking Christ.

[rhoenix]

That's just painful to contemplate. I can't even watch the video right now, but the highlights you posted... wow, yeah.

I'm beginning to think Kojima subsists on a diet of paint thinner and hallucinogens.

[Lys]

Leaving naughty magazines on the floor to distract guards so I could execute them with a bullet to the back of the head never got old in Metal Gear Solid 2. They'd see the magazine, look around to see if anyone was watching, and then drop to their hands and knees to ogle the girls in bikinis. Then I'd come out of my box and splatter their brains all over the magazine. Serves them right for oggling on the job and ignoring suspicious boxes. ^_^

[Hotfoot]

Leaving porn out for soldiers to get distracted by is one thing. If you're on boring-ass guard duty and you see a porno mag out, you might flip through it for shits and giggles. Guard duty is fucking boring. But when you see a motherfucking box with legs moving around, and when you go to check it out, it shows off a pinup girl, your first reaction shouldn't be in your pants.

Jokes and references, fine. Being a little silly, fine.

This is a game with Child Soldiers, Torture, and apparently Body Horror, Sexual Assault, Genital Mutilation, and of course war. This is a game that's being presented to me not in the form of Saint's Row where the bullshit is over the top and the point of it is to be ridiculous, but as a for-serious game dealing with a serious tone.

You can't really have it both ways, but it's trying REALLY hard to have both, and man is it fucked up as a result.

For the sake of my sanity, here's Saint's Row 4 doing some parody on Bioware's Romances (Kinzie = Jack from ME2)

[youtube][/youtube]

This is how you do a non serious game.

[youtube][/youtube]

LIKE! THIS!

I'll point out, Saint's Row 1&2? They were serious games. 3&4? Not so much. But they did it WELL.

[Lys]

Leaving porn out for soldiers to get distracted by is one thing. If you're on boring-ass guard duty and you see a porno mag out, you might flip through it for shits and giggles. Guard duty is fucking boring. But when you see a motherfucking box with legs moving around, and when you go to check it out, it shows off a pinup girl, your first reaction shouldn't be in your pants.

I think you're missing an important bit of context. In Metal Gear Solid 2 you're infiltrating the Big Shell (an offshore rig) as it's being assaulted by a couple dozen SEALs. Even after the SEALs are wiped out the terrorists know that there are still enemy operatives loose in the facility because they keep losing people and hearing gunfire and explosions. You can't even chalk it up to gameplay and story segregation here because their leader takes out out his goddamned jumpjet to personally hunt you down! That's not boring ass guard duty, that's drop your guard and you're dead. Yet that's what they do, and it's hilarious.

This is a game with Child Soldiers, Torture, and apparently Body Horror, Sexual Assault, Genital Mutilation, and of course war. This is a game that's being presented to me not in the form of Saint's Row where the bullshit is over the top and the point of it is to be ridiculous, but as a for-serious game dealing with a serious tone. You can't really have it both ways, but it's trying REALLY hard to have both, and man is it fucked up as a result.

I'm sorry but the entire thing about the Metal Gear Solid series is having it both ways. It goes from gut wrenching drama to balls to the wall silliness and back again. Snake Eater is one of my favourite video games of all time, and it affected me on a deep emotional level unlike any other game I've ever played. On the one hand it features Colonel Volgin, a sadist who is seen torturing a man to death, is implied to sexually and physically abuse a fellow officer, and after capturing Snake will treat the player to the full soundtrack of the subsequent torture session. On the other it also features The Pain, a living beehive whose power is bees, protects himself with bee armour, and attacks you with bee-grenades and a bee tommygun, made of bees. Also he spits homing bee bullets that live in his stomach. Yeah. Take my word as a big fan of the series, if you can't handle gritty seriousness and absurd sillyness in the same game then I recommend you give the whole thing a pass.

[Cynical Cat]

I always considered the series to be overhyped crap. Everything in this thread reinforces that opinion.

[Lys]

Whereas I think they're some of the best games every made.

[rhoenix]

Whereas I think they're some of the best games every made.

I think the nanomachines got her. Poor Lys, we hardly knew ye.

[Lys]

[rhoenix]

Wow, is that expression on his face perfect.

[Hotfoot]

[youtube][/youtube]
I am Kaz, Lys is Snake and Paz.

[Dark Silver]

My big question:

In MSG3 Snake was a old man - and in this video he's back after 9 years, relatively young and with a cyborg arm. What the hell?

Also, after seeing that video...what the fuck. How is this series so celebrated?

[Lys]

In MGS3 Snake (Big Boss), is 29 years old and very much looks the part. Ground Zeroes is set 11 years later, so Snake would be 40 years old, and the Phantom Pain is set 9 years after that, so he'd be 49. He looks pretty good for a man who is pushing 50, but we already knew him to be the type to age gracefully, given this is him at 79. Of course, Big Boss' appearance was based on Sean Connery's from way back in the first Metal Gear game, so his ageing well is no surprise.

As for why the series is so celebrated, because they feature awesome gameplay, memorable characters, good writing, and the occasional divergence into matters of philosophy.

[Hotfoot]

Here's a timeline, apparently....

MGSTimeline-copy.jpg (250.56 KiB) Viewed 6136 times

[Dark Silver]

Well I meant 4, not 3...but that was my bad, I forgot they made a 4.......


God damn that's a convoluted Timeline.

[Lys]

The time line is much easier to read like this:

1964 – Snake Eater (MGS3)
1970 – Portable Ops
1974 – Peace Walker
1975 – Ground Zeroes (MGS5)
1984 – The Phantom Pain (MGS5)
1995 – Metal Gear (MG1)
1999 – Solid Snake (MG2)
2005 – Metal Gear Solid (MGS1)
2007/09 – Sons of Liberty (MGS2)
2014 – Guns of the Patriots (MGS4)
2018 – Rising: Revengeance

Everything from Snake Eater to The Phantom Pain has Naked Snake, aka Big Boss, as the main character, he was born in 1935. Everything from Metal Gear to the first part (2007) of Sons of Liberty has Solid Snake as the main character. Solid Snake is one of Big Boss' clone sons, born in 1972. The second part (2009) of Sons of Liberty has Raiden as the main character, but Snake still appears as a supporting character. Guns of the Patriots goes back to Solid Snake, now known as Old Snake. He's only 42 years old at the time, but is suffering from accelerated ageing due to defects in the cloning process. He was already starting to feel the sting of it during Sons of Liberty, but it wasn't obvious at the time. It's doubtful that Solid Snake made it past 50.

[Hotfoot]

Well I meant 4, not 3...but that was my bad, I forgot they made a 4.......

God damn that's a convoluted Timeline.

Man, that's nothing. You should see the timeline for the Zelda games, or the Metroid games. Yes, there's timelines for each, and they make this one look utterly tame. Frankly this is the least insane thing about the series.

[frigidmagi]

I think that's because at least in part the Metal Gear games are meant to fit together. When I look at the Zelda games... At least the early ones? They don't look like they fit together, they seem more like final fantasy, a bunch of games sharing some archetypes and story elements and little else but the fans wouldn't stop trying... So timeline.

[Dark Silver]

Oddly enough, I can keep track of the Zelda timeline (I love the Zelda series actually) - it also helps that Nintendo has given us the official timeline for Zelda (everything after Ocarina of Time is split into 3 different Time Lines....go figure).