i watched someone play through the dlc on youtube
adds nothing to the story at all
kind of a cop out
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i watched someone play through the dlc on youtube
adds nothing to the story at all
kind of a cop out
Ooh, I'm going to add in all the "moral lines" in Spec Ops: The Line. That game's writing was pathetic, often leaving you no choice to advance the plot except to kill civilians (even if another option is actually availible), and then trying to make you feel bad for doing it. And the biggest "ooh, look at you, you bad person" moment with the whole "attacking a mass of blips" kind of loses its effect when you see it coming beforehand and choose not to attack the civilians, only to find that the game has no other way of moving forward.
Arc Rise Fantasia:
Nico's death....l'arc should have died....every character in that game wants to make out with him...so bland!
Really wanted Nico back on the team. People may not like his cowardice attitude but it is a personality that's nice to see since everyone else is brave, dare-devilish, or psychotic in most games.
Lost Odyssey:
Keloloans......seriously ....they were some enemy in blue dragon then I had to endure those lame creatures in that good game.:eep:
Blue Dragon:
Some sort of poop monsters appear in the game...I read there's a dinosaur (i believe it was) pooping these monsters out for you to battle......tasty?
Sad part is I couldn't make it past the first disk because near the end is a part where you have to repeatedly tap the "a' button......I couldn't beat that! :D
Star Ocean:
Edge got so whiny and so annoying after the alternate world got destroyed.
Haven't played the game yet but from what I've read that's kind of the point. The game itself isn't just supposed to make you feel bad, it's supposed to involve a meta discussion about the nature of wargames themselves. I find the concept fascinating and surprisingly underexplored especially considering how well Bioshock did it back in '07.Quote:
Originally Posted by Skyblade
The purpose of the game is to get you to subvert your standard reflexes and thoughts, and to make you come to realizations about it. But these hinge on gamer immersion.Quote:
Originally Posted by ShoebertoHaven't played the game yet but from what I've read that's kind of the point. The game itself isn't just supposed to make you feel bad, it's supposed to involve a meta discussion about the nature of wargames themselves. I find the concept fascinating and surprisingly underexplored especially considering how well Bioshock did it back in '07.Quote:
Originally Posted by Skyblade
For ExampleIn one situation, you're launching mortar volleys at enemies targets. Everything kind of pans away to a radar-type interface where you see the enemies as little blips. Eventually you find a whole lot of them clustered in one spot, and attack it. The result: That group is a group of civilian refugees, and you just killed them all, horribly.
You're supposed to feel all bad about what you did. The problem: If the player sees it coming ahead of time, and chooses not to attack the civilians, the game just stops. You can't do anything else. It ruins immersion, and it totally breaks any moral point. It ruins player agency and any attempt to teach the player a lesson, because the player isn't the one who made the decision, the game did.
For those who don't realize the situation and keep going blindly, it's fine. For the rest, it kind of ruins the entire point of the scenario. When you can think of a way out of a situation that the game doesn't provide, and it forces you to do something bad, and then chides you for it, it falls apart. When a civilian crowd closes in on you and your only method of dispersing them is to start firing into the crowd, what about the players who go "why can't I fire into the air, and see what that does"? The game can't chastise you for a decision you have no choice but to make, especially when it blatantly and painfully avoids obvious ways out. And this is where it fails.
It assumes that all players will make the exact same decisions, and then shows them how those decisions are wrong. And for the players who do make those decisions, it works. For the rest, it falls apart. It also is a bit of a jerkass thing to do anyway, because a ton of military forces are actually extremely careful about civilian casualties, making this more of a commentary on gamer's predilictions and behaviours than those of the military.
And, as it turns out, not all gamers are casual homicidal killing machines even in games. And for those who don't fit their profile, the commentary, the lessons, the entire premise of the game turns into nonsense.
That's like saying Solidus is a great guy because he raised Raiden (of course, there's that little snafoo about who put him in that predicament, but...).Quote:
Originally Posted by Bolivar
Anyway, the majority of MGS4 I kinda had a problem with. It was literally the first thing that popped into my head when I saw this thread.
-Raiden. I swear to God, am I the only person who would've rather had Raiden as he was at the end of MGS2, than the angst ridden pile of scrap we got? Raiden was advertised as like, the second coming of Gray Fox, and he spends most of his screen time in the game coughing up blood or acting his life was completely devoid of value (he says to Snake, a man who is literally MONTHS away from dying)
-Nano Machines explain EVERYTHING. Vamp's immortality, bringing Big Boss back to life, everything. It was kinda cool seeing how dependent the government became on Nanomachines back in MGS2, but they left a certain element of supernatural-ness.
-I agree with Wolf Kanno on how Big Boss is built up like this big damn hero. What was originally the tragic breakdown of a great hero is now the heroic crusade of the worlds most influential man, and the hero we've been following is just a pawn being used for the other side.
-The War Economy. Okay, so I understand that in MGS1, the reason they were making Metal Gears was not only a form of nuclear deterrence, it was also an economic plan to save Arms Tech, which was going under. That was a well thought out plot point. But from what I understand (bear with me, last time I played the game was in 2010), the idea of the War economy is something similar to that... but with PMC Armies and the SOP system (the term got thrown around so much it lost most of its meaning)? One of the huge appeals of Metal Gear is that despite its wacky moments it feels like I could watch the news and hear a rumor about a terrorist attack during the START 3 treaty, or a suspicious partnership between DARPA and Arms Tech. But to hear that Mercenary Armies with Tech comparable to the US military is all a part of some new form of economics never meshed well with me. Or that all forms of weapon authorization are regulated by tiny machines installed in our bloodstream. The NRA would never get behind that :p.
Blackwater
It was very thinly veiled that the Preying Mantis PMC was based off these guys. They do exist, and like the other political themes in MGS games, this actually is something that experts and academicians write a lot and debate about. The only stretch was really the numbers - over half active military in the world being private. It really isn't that far fetched, though, since a lot of the other functions of the military are being privatized at an alarming rate. If you read about Halliburton, they do an insane amount of things that our armed forces used to do in house.
MGS4 came out around the same time as the surge in Iraq and we were talking about a lot of these issues at my university at the time. I was able to take some of the stuff I learned from the game and contribute it back into class; specifically The Report from Iron Mountain.
And guns being ID-locked isn't science fiction. It's a neat little fact that they decided to work into a gameplay system... it's unlikely the majority of weaponry would one day be like that, but as with the other plot points, you never know.
I didnt mind the Big Boss plot twist. It's very metaphoric of each individual Metal Gear game where you find out youve been working for the bad guy (or against the good guy) all along. Pretty much every MG game does this and the fact that it decides to throw the same twist onto the overall series that it has been throwing at us in each individual game gives it a connected feeling.
That said I probably wouldnt like the game any more or less if BB had been the true villain all along.
We're actually closer to this than you think. War has been the most profitable business for almost a century. It is why the USA has been involved in pretty much every conflict since WWI. It is an inexchangeable part of global economy. This is also where ideals get thrown out the window and are replaced by economical goals. For example; in WW2 German tanks drove on oil supplied by American companies. Sound like madness yet? Don't underestimate how far people will go for power and money.Quote:
Originally Posted by Edge7
Point is; MGS does not make these things up. Information control, the Patriots, ID control, the War Economy; it's all real in some form or another.
Alright, I guess this warrants another playthrough. The whole idea just felt ludakris to me, but with this additional information I suppose I might get more out of playing a second time. I just remember at the time the whole thing seemed really overblown.
And as far as Big Boss goes; I'm not exactly saying that I hate the revelation that Big Boss wasn't a bad guy. That's typical of conflicts and ideologies; it's not merely a battle of good versus evil. My problem is that Big Boss went from morally ambiguous to what essentially feels like a crusader of justice. I'm not sure, it's just that ever since MGS4, Kojima's increased emphasis on Big Boss has made Big Boss the only true "hero" in Metal Gear (with most other characters being pawns or enemies). I admit that my feelings are out of personal bias for Solid Snake's character and I could just be jaded that my favorite character has essentially always been a tool for the Patriots, despite desperately trying to break out of that role.
I guess to sum up the conflict of MGS, Big Boss is a good man leading a crusade against the Patriots, Ocelot is kind of working for Big Boss by chasing the Patriots while pretending to be Liquid to pose as a villain who wants to take advantage of the Patriot's power, Snake is simply focusing most of his efforts on Ocelot, while occasionally worrying about the Patriots because the Patriots are a lawful evil force that control everything in the world.
This post was very "stream of consciousness", and I will probably edit it later.
I may as well explain my thoughts on Big Boss since I haven't exactly put my own position out there.
When I finished MGS1, I thought he was the most fascinating character in the game, and he didn't even show up. I wanted to know as much more as I could about him, and this was only compounded with how they further embellished on it with MGS2. I was almost worried that we were going to play as him and see it all in MGS3... I thought it would kill the mystery. But it was overall one of the most well-rounded and sastisfying gaming experiences I had.
I honestly cannot say that MGS4 repainted him in any way other than what I had come to expect from the previous games. Of course the Patriots were the bigger evil and his opposition to them was sympathetic. I can't imagine how that would have shocked anyone who played MGS2. But even in that game you saw that he was an extremist who would admit that he had made mistakes.
I can't say that Peace Walker changed any of that. When the game begins, he's already rejected the legitimacy of governments and has begun building his own PMC/"Outer Heaven." He explains his philosophy on what a Non-Governmental Actor can achieve and why he's doing it. The obvious contrast is with a real hero, Solid Snake, is that his methods only caused instability and brought the world closer to chaos. He's still exporting warfare and training child soldiers; but for a game's main story you need villains, even if your protagonist is an anti-hero.
So guys
What do you get when yo take three separate and completed puzzles and take all the pieces, shove them together in a chaotic heap, and then systematically mutilate each piece so that you can fit all these three puzzles into just one?
You get Metal Gear Solid 4, an irredeemable testament to bad writing.
Guns of the Patriots was the result of Kojima saying TWO TIMES that he was going to end the series. MGS1? Never intended to have a sequel. MGS2? Never intended to have a sequel.
BUT KOJIMA-SAN! PLEASE GIVE US ANOTHER GAME! MGS1 WAS SO GOOD THAT WE NEED ANOTHER GAME!
smurf YOU KOJIMA! MGS2 WAS TERRIBLE! YOU BETTER FIX THIS!!
OH GOD MGS3 MADE ME CREAM IN MY PANTS! PLEASE MAKE ANOTHER GAME!!
Kojima: Ya know what? Okay. Here is your game. The Patriots? It was Para-Medic. Ya know that funny lady who likes to tell you about crazy sci-fi movies? She was a psychopath. And Major Zero, the James Bond fanatic who wants to invent a snake-gun? He was the real villain the whole time! And that arm possession thing? Ocelot was just faking it the whole time. Oh and Big Boss isn't dead.
Now that I've systematically been butt-smurfed by every person on the planet, are you happy?
I despise MGS4. It is a nonstop stream of the sloppiest, most retarded retcons imaginable. It completely destroys the ending of MGS2 for no reason except contrived drama. It takes Raiden's whole journey in MGS2 and takes a huge crap on it because the fans don't want good writing. THEY WANT NINJA CYBORG ROBOTS WHO BEAT UP OTHER ROBOTS! YEAH NOW THAT'S AWESOME111111
And Meryl? I know she had a whole touching speech and revelation about how un-glorious war was. I know she realized her whole career as a soldier was pretty much a sham. But let's bring her back as a soldier and make her star in a scene so unrepentantly "war is the best!" that it spits in the face of her MGS1 character development even more.
What I'm saying is that the MGS fanbase is awful and should be ahsamed of itself. We pushed Kojima so far that he just sold out everything he believed in and gave us one of the worst narratives in video game history.
Kojima has stated they say its the last game for the same reason its called final fantasy, to make sure the team puts their all into the game as if it was the last time. I'm honestly surprised that anyone who saw the mgs2 ending wouldn't think there would be a follow up to the plot thread.
Its also a false understanding of the creative process. It's always iterative... there's never been a concrete finalized version of a story in a creator's mind.
Meryl's place in MGS4 was a meaningful application of what she learner from Shadow Moses. What she was doing and why she was doing it.
I think they're wonderful games and I'm sorry you don't get the same joy from them.
I don't know what you mean by that last bit. MGS1, 2 and 3 are awesome games. I was on an MGS forum for years and spent hours just searching through discussions about all the varied plot threads. Kojima's ideas have interested me for almost ten years now. Granted he isn't always the best at expressing his ideas but I commend his desire to intellectualize the video game market with stories about determinism, the dangers of nuclear weapons, and so-forth.
I only hate MGS4 because it is a complete slap in the face to everything that came before it. Kojima clearly had absolutely no goddam clue how to continue the story so NANOMACHINES and BS was slapped together and that's how the glorious MGS saga came to an end. It was a ridiculous string of convolution that undermined every character's personality and growth.
The game that I know of that doesn't meet my expectations.