Category Archives: Metal Gear series

Metal Gear series in general

KojiPro not stealing any spotlights at this TGS

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Raiden wears a new hat

There was a time when any news surrounding Hideo Kojima and his production company would stir up excitement and flood gaming communities with speculation, but this year they’ve taken been pushed to the back thanks to lukewarm announcements about HD ports, a non-butchered aspect ratio, and the fact that Rising hasn’t been cancelled yet.

This is an incredible year for gaming, with major franchise titles dropping left and right — Portal 2, Witcher 2, Deus Ex 3, Battlefield 3, Elder Scrolls V to name a few — with the PS Vita offering something exciting on the hardware side of things.  A ton of interesting digital download content has been popping up (Magicka and Skullgirls come to mind, although I know there’s a lot more I haven’t gotten around to).  Established games like Team Fortress 2 and Minecraft continue to evolve and update, proving how effective patching and updating can be in a community.  So what is Kojima Productions doing to keep pace?

Kojima Productions can’t afford to be shuffled to the back, but it seems that they’re not worried.  Maybe they can afford to sit on their laurels and capitalize on old nostalgia for a few years, but considering how aggressive the market has become, I just don’t feel like they’re doing anything special.  “Transfarring” seemed to be a great idea before people heard about “Continuous Play”, but now it seems to be irrelevant.

The new FOX Engine could turn out to be a smash-hit, but Ugly Face Man (my own pet name for the poor guy) doesn’t look any better than current-generation models being shown off elsewhere.  Personally I trust that Kojima will have something great up his sleeve with the “taboo game” he’s hinted at for ages.  My hope is that he’ll make a triumphant return in good time.

Until then, we’ll have a ton of other great games to keep us occupied, I suppose.

Gabe Newell contradicts Kojima

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In a new interview with Gamasutra, Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson talk about their business strategy — or rather, their complete lack of business strategy, at Valve:

Gabe Newell: … our focus is really much on building something that’s cool, and then we’ll worry about monetization.  So we’re not going to worry about that until later.  Premature monetization is the root of all evil.

The entire 4-page interview is pretty much about how Valve refuses to give its employees titles, responsibilities, and how they generally don’t care about market research, but rather focus on simply recruiting people they want to work with and make stuff they think is cool.  This stands in contrast to what Hideo Kojima said previously about his experience with pitching ideas and creating projects, which was this:

Hideo Kojima:  Right now, it’s very similar to movies: You need a lot of money. So rather than doing what you want, doing what you like, you must have a clear idea of marketing and sales. That’s what’s happening to us with FOX Engine; you do not need be an expert in programming to develop a game, but if you have a question, you still need an expert on-hand to provide an answer.

Isn’t it sad that while Kojima — who already has his own production company — talks about how he needs marketing research and sales pitches, instead of being able to do what he wants, Valve is boasting about their “do-what-you-want” strategy and making millions of dollars of profit as a result?  This is exactly the kind of thing I examined in my Metal Gear Online vs Team Fortress 2 series, which I suggest you take a look at after you’re finished with the Newell interview [here].

I’ll conclude with another choice quote from Valve’s leader:

GN: Well, I think, at the end of the day, the challenge is to find exciting, worthwhile projects for smart people to do.  And then whether you’re doing it as an individual, whether you’re doing it as a small indie developer, or you’re doing it as a larger group, if you can answer that question you’re probably going to be successful.

Subsistence features will be in the HD Collection

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Here’s some great news for those of us worried that Kojima Productions were going to milk the “HD Collection” craze by giving us only the vanilla versions of the games first, and then later release “Metal Gear Solid HD Collection: Substitute“, which would include the final iterations of the games — namely, Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance and Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence.  So we dodged a bullet there.

In case you’re confused, this means you won’t be playing Snake Eater…

Snake Eater vs Subsistence

…But instead you’ll be playing with a camera you can swivel around, and the classic Metal Gear games that everybody likes to have but nobody actually plays because they’re boring and don’t have David Hayter doing the voice acting.

Our friend Ravi points out the lingering questions about the old MSX-era Metal Gear games included with Subsistence, such as aspect ratios and sharpness, but my big concern is whether we’ll be able to play Metal Gear Online!  What’s the point of releasing Subsistence if you take out its best feature?  I got to have my multiplayer!  Just kidding.

Also exciting is a screenshot about the Trophy icons:

Source: Joystiq, SnakeSoup

Metal Gear supposed to have been a squad game

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The more I hear Kojima talk about his original ideas for Metal Gear games, the more glad I am he didn’t get his way.  According to his Twitter, the game was originally supposed to have been a team infiltration game, as in the old movie “Wild Geese” — which, like me, you’ve never heard of before.  The quote:

While I was working on “METAL GEAR”, I wanted to achieve an infiltration as a team like “Wild Geese” when the point of view was changed from “a game to escape” to “a special-force game to infiltrate.”  It is because there is no way to infiltrate alone.  However, at that time, one-man infiltration was the only option because of the game character and the restriction on the hardware.

Thank God for hardware restrictions, am I right?  It’s things like this that really make me question whether Kojima really should be allowed to do what he wants with game design!  Maybe being stuck working on a series he doesn’t like for 10 years was a good thing after all!

For what it’s worth, the plot of Wild Geese bears some similarity to the original game:

A British multinational seeks to overthrow a vicious dictator in central Africa. It hires a band of (largely aged) mercenaries in London and sends them in to save the virtuous but imprisoned opposition leader who is also critically ill and due for execution. Just when the team has performed a perfect rescue, the multinational does a deal with the vicious dictator leaving the mercenary band to escape under their own steam and exact revenge. [via IMDB]

A multinational mercenary special-forces leader who sends his men to rescue somebody and overthrow a military leader, only to betray and abandon them after their mission was carried out successfully?  Where have I heard that before?

Looking at the movie poster, I can’t help noticing a slight resemblance to the artwork for the MSX portraits as well…

Kojima, you only stole from the best.

Tweets: [1] [2] [3]

Ravi Singh brags about playing Peace Walker HD

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After keeping it a big fat secret from us all, he’s now basking in the glory of his E3 experience and bro status with Ryan Payton.

You can read about it here.

No one likes a bragger, Ravi. Also, thanks. Looks like PWHD (which is what I’m going to call it from now on) is going to be a pretty respectable cash-grab from Kojima Productions after all. Right thumb stick for the win, I say.

As for “MGS3DS”, here’s my initial thoughts: it makes me sick.

MGS3DS is the kind of soulless experiment that illustrates what happens when the Japanese get a taste of success. That’s not racist — that’s just the pattern, they admit it themselves. Oh shut up. Look at how the team developing MGS: Rising decided to not only make the game a prequel but also a new genre, instead of continuing the series properly. That’s game design cowardice. Everyone’s too scared to innovate or take a step in a new direction, wasting perfect opportunities to make new stuff by just remaking the same old stuff for new platforms. Can you imagine a brand new Metal Gear game on the 3DS?

I can. I can imagine it being cool too. My imagination works like that.

The reason why the HD Collection is tolerable is because Peace Walker was begging to be ported to consoles from before it was even released. It really is a major installment in the series, and it deserves a wider audience. Giving MGS2 & 3 to the Xbox crowd feels right as well. But remaking MGS3 for the 3DS? Nobody was asking for that.

EDIT: It may seem contradictory to say that the Rising team is scared to take a step in a new direction while simultaneously complaining that they picked a new genre — a new genre sounds like a new direction, right? — but the issue is a fear of being compared to the “actual” series, or push the story forward in a new direction.

Kojima set up the plot of MGS4 so that it would tie up loose ends and give his team freedom to continue the series with a new story, not so they could shit out a spinoff prequel that hides behind a new genre to avoid being comparable to the major installments.

The Ninja As A Deus Ex Machina Phenomena

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The Ninja As a Deus Ex Machina Phenomena

We’re once again honored to have Mad Jackyl present us with a great article about the Metal Gear series — this time about how the recurring ninja character serves the plot of the games. The article is below the jump, so read on and please enjoy!

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“Devil Project” name thanks to me?

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On April 12th of last year I did a news update regarding (what was at that point being called) the “taboo” game. This site doesn’t have links to individual news pieces, but it’s on this archive page.

Since then he hasn’t talked about taboos, but has mentioned a “devil project” several times, leading many to conclude that they are the same game. As you can see from the picture in the archives, the image I originally decided to associate with the “taboo” project is—in fact—a devil!

What does this mean?

It means that Kojima has been reading my site, and after seeing that I made him look like a devil based on his statements, he decided to start calling his taboo project the “devil project”, of course! (Or, if you’re following the new translations of his Twitter feed, the “Ogre” project. But we know that Japanese people translate devil into ogre, so that’s just a tyny mistake!)

Does this also mean that my theory about the taboo/devil project is correct? That the game will be a remake of the original Metal Gear, but feature a ton of retroactive continuity? Which if he handles incorrectly, could force him to “leave the industry”? Probably. For now though, what are the odds of him calling it the devil project soon after I used that devil image? Spooky.

Also, yes, a bunch of new articles and stuff are on the way!

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