And I’m not the type to give Kojima that much credit to the intent of his narrative’s themes.
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I think that’s a very reasonable position.
I think MGSV does the best job reconciling a moral approach to the language of violence we’re so obsessed with in games. It’s not the narrative moralizing at odds with the mechanics of the earlier Metal Gear Solids, it’s not the forced narrative tragedy forced upon the player of Bioshock and Spec Ops: The Line, it’s deeply embedded into the game and it only very slowly ramps the player into its framework. It’s there whenever the layer is ready
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the supporting cast is still pretty poorly handled though even given that, it’s a huge blemish on a game that’s otherwise much better than it appeared
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I knew I was playing a villain right out the gate, and I recognize that the game leaves those kinds of moral choices largely in the gameplay choices you make. It’s why my initial instinct was to go full non-lethal and fulton everybody. The mission where you have to blow up tanks is what forced me out of that. Ultimately there’s nothing you can do gameplay-wise to keep from killing people at one point or another and the game does a good job ramping into that slowly. I’m sure Diamond Dogs atrocities will continue in greater severity as the game progresses
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regardless of overarching narrative themes, MGS2 was a lot different for me because in both chapters your initial goal is to sneak in, fulfill your objective, and get out. And the entire time there is an objective Best Way to play, both morally and technically, which is to never be seen, and to never kill anybody.
It’s kind of the opposite of TPP in a way. Because the narrative and gameplay both present you as naive, good-willing, and pacifistic.
Raiden comes into the mission having never been in combat, thinking he is doing good for humanity by saving the oil rig and performing his mission to retrieve data on Metal Gear and disarm the nuclear threat, which could lead to global disaster. Raiden as a character is there for the sake of peace, and on top of that the gameplay actively rewards conflict avoidance.
Mechanically, everything you do is made more difficult by engaging the enemy. The difficulty levels themselves are the strongest enforcement for this, with European/Extreme strictly preventing any sort of player-initiated combat, by ending your game upon an alert.
In MGS2, you’re playing the presupposed hero, reflected in the character, and in the supporting characters who feed you information and praise you when you do your mission and do the right thing. Pliskin is given as a direct contrast to Raiden, and the game is very intentional about making Snake the side character. Snake is the one who’s killed people. Snake is the war criminal. He’s jaded and he’s been through shit and he knows what’s in for Raiden, and Raiden’s clueless for the entire game. And it’s only through player actions, until the endgame subverts this, that the character kills people.
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MGS2 is such a good fit for 2001, and especially 2001, that Raiden enters as the naive player standin and is worn down, likely kills people as the scenario intensifies, is stripped of pretensions near the end.
Interesting how timely it is but how much of the '90s remains; the high-level conspiracies feel left over from The Matrix closing out the decade of the X-Files; MGS3 reacts backwards into something as fantastical but with a grounding in solid objects, in magnetic tape, in jungle and blood.
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maybe after TPP I’ll stream MGS2 and everyone can watch me eat shit because I’m really bad at the game
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damn i’ve been thinking about metal gear a lot too, just finished playing mg1/mg2 and replaying mgs1 for the first time in years
mgs1 seems nearly impossible in terms of tone and presentation! also i played vr missions for the first time and it’s just extremely hilarious that there’s this disc of hundreds of little puzzle fights stretching out the use cases for all of these tools in really cute ways when in metal gear solid proper you basically use each thing in like exactly two rooms to do two specific things and that’s it. like mgs1 feels like a really interesting and full space imo but it’s really just like 15 rooms long and only ~4 of those are sneakgauntlets and the other 11 are all just these wild setpieces
anyway i’ve been frustrated that i have to lug out my ps3 to play 2/3 hd but i just found out that i can just play them on xbone and they’re even on game pass so xbone is better than ps4 now
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I started 2020 by playing the switch ver of sonic 1 (drop dash baby!!!) and also by nearly breaking down by being suggested I should play someone other than isabelle in smash if I wanna get better and realizing that I’m cynical towards myself and that’s why I don’t try playing the game as hard as I could
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Still just plugging away at SaGa Scarlet Grace and ESP Ra.De when I get the time, and playing Lego Ninjago with the kid a bit each day.
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not me <----------- VITA OWNER
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I literally bought my Vita because I heard MGSHD was coming to it and then I bought a Vita with MGSHD so I could play my favorite game Metal Gear Solid 2 on a portable handheld and I love it so much
also I feel the same way about MGS1, when I first played it I sank a lot of time into VR missions before I ever touched the main story simply because I love the gameplay mechanics so much.
Which is why Metal Gear Ghost Babel is one of the best Metal Gear games ever made because it takes all of the mechanics of MG2/MGS and just makes a very fine tuned puzzle with the sneaking mechanics
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someone in the polycule, kyra aka dragon aka the best smash player in the group does ganondorf training where we do 1v1 on a Omega stage so it’s pretty much all neutral and they just wreck everyones shit because dorf can kill you in like 3 hits and has a sword. Isabelle should tbh be winning every match bcuz she’s a spacer and very good at keeping others away but I like to spam the fishing line because it gives me a huge dopamine hit whenever I catch anyone with it but it always leaves me open when I miss so I win like 1 in 10 matches if that. The point of ganondorf training is to think rather than react and I oughta play as someone who I don’t have such ingrained bad habits with bcuz even when I win I don’t really learn much.
also they have a smash Bros sound board on their phone and whenever someone does something IRL that’s the equivalent of walking into ganondorfs smash attacks they play his voice clip. we are all terrified of neutral ganondorf and can’t escape him
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I started up Dark Fall: Ghost Vigil!
It has an absolutely terrible opening that almost put me off the game…but I just passed a point in the game that makes me think that the opening was just a pretty gnarly tutorial? Because after the game wouldn’t shut up about doing ghost hunts and using ghost hunting tools in a very specific way, the suddenly shut up up all the radio talking and expanded in scope five times over.
So like, I’m going to need to play longer but I’m 90% sure this is slighter game than it’s predecessors, but also not the complete disaster it seemed to be when I started it.
Very happy to play more of this later.
I can’t remember if twin snakes or ghost babel was my First MGS bcuz I’m a nintendo baby but both are in a special place in my heart bcuz they introduced me to Mature Video Games
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twin snakes was the first metal gear i played too, and i decided to do it sort of on a whim! and then i loved it and played 2 and 3 and i don’t think i played psx mgs1 until after those?
it’s absurd how ugly twin snakes is when og mgs is so gorgeous
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my first Metal Gear game was…
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Portable Ops
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i am learning how to play devil may cry 3. probably not a good idea to play this while i’ve got a fever going.
the best part of metal gear 5: the phantom pain is when huey finally gets caught being the little snake he is and everyone’s like “bye loser” and they set him adrift on a raft lmao
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i will very likely play Ghost Babel first