I hope this means we can get a sequel for Metal Gear Rising, Platinum games is still doing the same kind of game after all.
I don’t think it will be the same without Kojima. Did everyone forget how Konami completely gave up on gaming a few years back?
Well, they never really did. They just more or less stopped making A-AAA games and got rid of Kojima. The Castlevania remasters and the pachinko shit continued. I want to say their football game also continued?
But… they are getting back into “gaming”. So even those who “remember” no longer have anything to complain about?
The other aspect is their nasty break-up with Kojima. Which was VERY much amplified because of how many game journos are massive Kojima fanboys and how the rest more or less said “Well, labor rights are good to care about”. Because, ignoring the Kojima love fest, Konami:
- Stopped funding someone who wasted massive amounts of money motion capping horses and making women strip down so he could motion cap them in the nude (yup)*
- Finally let said problematic asshole recast the fan favorite voice actor… but didn’t give him an unlimited budget so Jack Bauer only got paid for like six lines of dialogue (in fairness, the audiologs had a LOT more Kiefer).
- Fucked around with security and opsec to make it really hard for staff that would soon be laid off to find new jobs on the company dime. This is fucked but “only kind of fucked” by Japanese corporate standards.
- Released a game without the last mission. Because The Island of Eli or whatever the fuck has no indications of being this massive “half the game” that people claim and was likely going to be about 5-20 minutes of gameplay and cutscenes comparable to when mother base got zombied.
But also? People still get super excited for a quantic dreams, ubisoft, or blizzard game. So worker abuse and sexual abuse are not factors in terms of whether a publisher/dev is “good”.
So yeah. Getting the fan favorite back is going to go a long way. The MGS1-3 remasters are god awful (and somehow worse than the HD Collection a decade or so ago?) but considering the big complaint people have with MGS-Delta is “the color balance is not warm enough”, time will tell.
*: Seriously, I think the absolute best thing that ever happened to Kojima was that he was mostly “heads down” during the #MeToo phase of the pandemic. Although, part of me REALLY wanted him to get a Silent Hill just because, of the ideas we know he had, it would lead to the greatest holy war of all time as the Silent Hill fans and the MGS Fans fight it out. And Bloober would still be too stupid to stay quiet and would catch all the strays.
The MGS1-3 remasters are god awful (and somehow worse than the HD Collection a decade or so ago?)
Konami has been clear from the beginning that the Master Collection is mostly just the HD Collection but on modern systems. It was always referred to by them as a rerelease and not a remaster. I think the announcement of Metal Gear Delta: Snake Eater got people confused about the scope of the Master Collection.
Edit: From the initial press release when Konami announced the Master Collection: “The Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection allow fans to play the games as they were, as first released on the latest platforms.”
I feel like a lot of these problems could be fixed with proper management. Just because Kohima creates interesting worlds in video games, doesn’t mean that you should let him do everything he wants. It seems like Konami themselves creates that environment. But also, maybe they are actually going to try hard to recapture what MGS meant for a lot of people. I personally like the mixture of very serious plot with completely insane elements, like zombies, vampires, ninjas, and a white haired black guy with a monkey addicted to coca cola that sells you guns.
I thought they burned every bridge. I’m assuming they’ll abuse him bc he needs a paycheck.
Kojima burnt the Hayter bridge actually, he decided he wanted a big name Hollywood actor because he wanted it to be a cinematic experience.
Yup. If memory serves, Kojima had been pretty publicly trying to burn that bridge since at least MGS3 and allegedly (?) tried to use that as one of the conditions for “I am done with Metal Gear Solid and will never make another” that he kept doing during that era.
I want to say that Hayter hinted at it going back to MGS2 during some of his interviews the past few years, but can’t find any examples so assume that is a fever dream.
The unrevealed plot twist shows that Sutherland wasn’t even voicing any version of Snake
No, that was just the first time he actually paid attention to the English VA. Kojima never paid much attention to the English VA in the MGS games. The Japanese VA had some interesting tricks like having the Solid Snake VA also voice Solidus and then having his father voice Old Snake for MGS4 (while the original did the mo-cap).
Rumour is that Kojima never really liked Hayter as Snake. And Hayter’s VA quality kept getting worse and worse. Compare his Peace Walker performance to MGS2, it’s like night and day.
It’s gotta suck being the director of the next MGS game knowing that everyone knows you aren’t Kojima.
Kojima gone, Konami bad, usual rant - I’m glad for David reprising his role once again, if anything.
That being said, Snake’s saga is long over. Shouldn’t they try testing new waters with a continuation of Metal Gear Rising as well?
Such an iconic voice. Haven’t played MGS 5 but can’t imagine Snake without him
Honestly? I think Hayter is Snake, much like Kurt Russel will always be Snake.
But Kiefer actually can act (… when he is not struggling with his demons and tackling Christmas trees). And basically from MGS2 on, the decision was made that MGS should have pathos that is not “so is this intentionally funny?” a la “Can love bloom on the battlefield?”.
MGS2 sort of got away with it because Quinton Flynn is actually a pretty talented VA but… everyone hated Raiden because he was “the player” rather than “Snake”. Same gag as Otacon but people sort of realized it this time.
But MGS3? I am not going to claim that the issue was that Hayter “couldn’t do the voice” or whatever. The issue is that he just isn’t the kind of actor who can carry those scenes. And that is why we mostly had EVA (unknown, but likely a “real” VA/actress) and The Boss (Pearl Krabs) carrying the story with a lot of the more emotional scenes involving Naked Snake silent and in agony.
And MGS4 was the worst of all worlds. Between having the player mockery character fuck the fanservice version of Bastilla for no apparent reason and actually putting a lot of the pathos on Hayter and Meryl (Debi Mae West has a fairly limited range) and some random kid… yeah.
Which gets to MGS5. When Kiefer speaks, he knocks it out of the park. His career is largely built around taking REALLY mediocre scripts and somehow making us care about some obnoxious bully or a psychopath running around with a car battery. But apparently “lessons were learned” from MGS4 so it was mostly awkward silence while Kaz or Ocelot did the talking and… yeah.
Still, if you can get past the trademark Kojima misogyny, MGS5’s gameplay is miles beyond every other Metal Gear short of Rising. It does have the problem of trying to shoehorn in a progression/unlock system while giving you a silenced (later infinite silenced) tranq gun (and tranq sniper rifle) in the first three hours of actual gameplay, but that actually works with the general horrible pacing and lack of plot (and spoilers built in to the intro cutscene of every level…).
Although, if you have the option, play it on PC and fiddle around with one of the bigger mods. Doing more missions as OSP (start with no gear) and tweaking the progression so that the top tier stuff isn’t balanced around multiplayer goes a long way.
Still. 4 with a more talented VA (and a lot less fanservice) would have been so amazing.
Much like Escape from LA was shit compared to Escape from NY, the MGS series has gotten progressively more and more hindered by being built around a “… how did you not get sued?” reference to Kurt Russel in the 80s joke. Like I mentioned elsewhere, I really wish MGS had become an ensemble piece (and MGS2 was trying for that before the backlash). Rising being a character action game as Raiden is AMAZING. Imagine an IOI led Hitman-style game where you play as Meryl or Johnny infiltrating an enemy base. Or an Arkane led game where you play as The Cobra Unit with all their magic powers. And not having to keep going back to such a one dimensional character as the core of the series.
Also, just to make it clear. I am not shitting on Hayter. Bruce Campbell is one of my favorite actors (also was in Escape from LA…). He can do very short bursts of pathos but it was clear that Burn Notice was struggling when they had to rely on Bruce/Sam because Michael/Jeffrey was still learning how to act and it would have been INSANE to let one of the better tv actresses of all time (Sharon Gless) do anything other than play a one dimensional character. Not every actor is Lead material and that is fine. Because you need a lot more top tier supporting actors/actresses than you do “good” Leads.
