The cutscene direction is so dry. I could have gone for so much more Troy Baker Ocelot and villain monologuing. Kiefer’s Snake is also just a total void of charisma and personality after Hayter’s run ended with “hnnngh… banana factory…”
It could be the case that the cutscenes suffered from the production issues but the unfinished chapter 3 (edit: here I mean to refer to the officially released unfinished cutscenes) is as dry as anything. It could also be the case that they wanted to silo the camp into the margins of the sandbox. But it’s definitely not of a piece with the first four, where everything is unmistakably drenched.
He nails the Carpenter pastiche and pockets of camp in Death Stranding, though, I watch Higgs in LA every few months. Happy fucking DOOMSday, Sam!
All true, the cutscene direction falls off a cliff and it’s committed to leaving the storytelling style murdered in 4 dead and buried.
The text of MGSV is in the action and the expanded systems depth and even-drier presentation made the native game jokes read much more strongly. All the goofy items and juxtaposition, D-Dog and D-Horse and Huey with the tunes. Is that intentional goofiness camp?
(chapter 3 isn’t unfinished, it’s just the ever-present conflict between the length of game the systems allow, some players demand, and the narrative production can deliver being forced in favor of play, following the rest of the game. I’d make the same choice as they did but allow myself a bit of direct player-talk to try to message the intent better)
the tone and direction of the game is dictated by its form and its place within the wider series and has nothing to do with “unfinishedness.” it’s a long, slow side mission in which little of narrative consequence happens, starring a brainwashed guy with false memories and a conditioned identity riding a horse through the mountains at twilight or crawling in the dust doing bad things of minimal importance, mainly conveyed through the weight, intimacy and duration of the gameplay. the stoic and conflicted triad at the heart of mgsv doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for theatrics, but there’s a whole lot of touching and grabbing and close breathing and long eye contact. it’s easily the most homoerotic game he’s ever made.
Those elements feel more akin to levity in a James Cameron or Michael Bay movie.
Camp is about performance and the performances are dramatically reigned in even by relatively grounded MGS1 standards.
Unless… the player is performing the camp, which is certainly my experience of Metal Gear Solid 5: Peace Walker and MGS V. But I unapologetically love the old cutscene direction even when it’s spitting in my face e.g. MGS4’s feature-length finger gun fuck you.
I don’t think the cutscenes detracted from the camp-through-play at any rate.
There’s literally nothing gayer than the narcissist you idolize psychically dismantling you for his own ends and leaving you as the external hard disk that recorded and endlessly replays all his weird traumas and beefs forever while you silently roam the countryside as a ghost.
yo hit me up with a primer on camp theory. i think sontag wrote something on it? i’m working from a mostly adhoc understanding and just going “now that’s camp!” whenever it feels right
the development and release of it, as a performance, is camp to me. i know kojima felt like john waters tweeting to people they would be ashamed of themselves if they really knew why quiet wore a bikini instead of clothes. that or he’s really stupid
I don’t think the ‘good because it’s awful’ definition of camp applies to 5. Sontag’s expounding on its exaggerated qualities and camp as a celebration of non-serious styles triumphing over substance doesn’t quite hold either in this case.
As with irony, a lot is riding on how we interpret, or how Kojima intended, certain elements. I can buy an argument for camp in 5 but it’s definitely more prevalent in other MGS imo.
Earlier games may have been camp at the time of their release, but with the benefit of hindsight, I think the only pure camp games are Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and possibly Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.
