All of this over a fucking touch-shooting game.
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Editorial:
A NEXT METAL GEAR COULD BE...
By Ravi Singh
Posted on March 1, 2009
2008 --What a year. We witnessed the fall of a peculiar PR agent, the release
of what should be the last Metal Gear title by Hideo Kojima, a couple of expansions
for it's online counterpart, and now already Kojima Productions used their typical
cryptic bullshit to suggst that A NEXT METAL GEAR will be on iPhone/iPod Touch
and can be summarized by a simple equation of ¡ + ! = (!). Of course, it makes
perfect sense!
Despite what would be ideal--ending the series--the reality is that there will
be a Metal Gear game until people stop giving their money for them, which has
yet to occur. What the next title, aside from the iPod touch-shooting game, will
be like is anybody's guess. The next Metal Gear title can be fucking anything
from an actual direct sequel to Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, to a
reboot of the entire series. Shit, who knows, maybe Kojima will stick to his word
finally and not only stay away from the series but make sure Solid Snake finally
has his rest.
DIRECT SEQUEL
Likelyhood - Very High
See also - Metal Gear 2, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons
of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Let's get this one over with. While Guns of the Patriots might have answered nearly
all the questions we had (including some we didn't) I'm sure there is room for
someone to throw some shit in. Oh, how's this?
"This is only the beginning, Snake. America will descend
into chaos... It'll be the Wild West all over again. No law, no order. Fire
will spread across the world. The people will fight... And through battle
they will know the fullness of life. At last... Our father's will... His Outer
Heaven... Is complete."
- Ocelot moments before his timely death
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Liquid Ocelot's greatest villainy ever--establishing a scenario for a sequel.
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With the Patriots out the question, the United States -- perhaps even the
entire fucking world -- will be like Iraq without Saddam's iron fist. There
will surely be all kinds of factions fighting to take control of the hole The
Patriots leave behind. The game can take place all over the United States, which
actually sounds pretty cool.
Hell, maybe this will open up the whole "CHANGE THE OUTCOME OF THE WARS" concept
that ended up being crippled; allowing Snake to either run or help one side
of the conflict would allow for the story to change dramatically. Now we got
several groups, and maybe only one of them needs to be some crazy fucktarded
nutjob group?
Oh, and Solid Snake? We never see him die, right? There we go. At the last minute,
Sunny hacked into his DNA using MS Paint and not only fixed the aging gene,
but also reversed his aging kind of like Benjamin Button. Of course! Wouldn't
that make the game more appealing to 14 year-old Japanese school girls than
some old man with his old face taking up the entire boxart?
Of course, they don't have to use Snake. They can ruin the whole thing about
Raiden finally getting his life back by having "the good guys" capture Raiden,
tell him how "the bad guys" are trying to take over what The Patriots left behind.
Make sure he has a beard and an even deeper voice than before. Also, make him
smoke. Otherwise everyone will call him gay and all the sexually insecure reviewers
will lower the score because he's "whiny."
LONG-GAP SEQUEL
Likelyhood - High
See also - Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Batman Beyond!, ...Tinman?
The problem with direct sequels is that eventually there's very little to explain
or deal with, especially when they're not planned -- much like a sequel to Guns
of the Patriots. A sequel that takes place twenty or more years allows for all
kinds of new things. That long of a time period allows all-new scenarios to
actually make sense, all-new characters, a few of the old... hell, maybe even
AI Solid Snake can give the main character (Little Gray? Sunny? Old Johnny?)
advice if Snake abso-fucking-lutely must be in the game for the fanboys. Oh,
and if the main character is Little Gray, make Raiden THE BAD GUY! What a twist!
Thar kind of shit never happened before in the series!
Metal Gear 3 for 3DO looked like it was going to be slightly different than
Metal Gear Solid ended up being.
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ALTERNATIVE SEQUEL
Likelyhood - Slim
See also - Metal Gear: Ghost Babel
Not only can they work on a sequel to Ghost Babel itself, but they can just
make Metal Gear 3 and ignore everything from Metal Gear Solid up to Guns of
the Patriots. This allows Solid Snake to be a main character and create all-new
characters and events that would not conflict the what was established in
the 'Solid series.
ALTERNATIVE 2D SEQUEL
Likelyhood - Very Slim
See also - Mega Man 9
Why the fuck not? Keep it low-budget, release it to PSN, Live! Arcade, and
WiiWare, then enjoy the profit.
NON-CANON TITLE
Likelyhood - Slim
See also - Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, Metal Gear Acid
This is quite possibly one of the best way for Kojima productions to make
a Metal Gear title with Solid Snake. They practically have the liberty to
do anything to the story, the characters, and even the gameplay.
REMAKE
YEAH I HOPE THEY REMAKE THIS SO THAT I'LL BE SURPRISED AGAI--oh wait.
(Image by Josh)
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Likelyhood - Moderate
See also - Metal Gear (NES), Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
This one is easy for a development team that doesn't have Kojima to pull
a story out of his ass. They take one that's already been pulled and work
around it. The classics are most likely to get the remake treatment since
only like three people actually played them.
Of course, how much of a remake might determine how much of the games will
be ripped apart. A slight touch up that would turn the 8-bit titles into
32-bit or even isometric "3D" would still allow the title to retain it's
story, locations, scenarios, and so forth. It would essentially be the same
game, but just with better visuals.
However, a full remake would not be the same game. Metal Gear Solid: The
Twin Snakes actually retained a lot of the original because the original
was, after all, a 3D title. Remaking a 2D title to 3D is more than just
taking maps and adding dimensions. In order for the new gameplay to work,
the maps, enemy locations, weapons, bosses and so forth must be fully revamped.
You also have the issue of the cutscenes. The original Metal Gear has like
two pages of dialogue. It's sequel has far more than that, but still significantly
less than Metal Gear Solid 4, which had a script around five times as long
as the average feature-length film. Perhaps it's actually easier to just
make an original installment from scratch than a remake?
RE-RELEASE
Likelyhook - Slim
See also - Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
It's quite odd that with the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS we don't
have any Metal Gear titles available. Is Hideo Kojima embarrased of his
classic titles?
RE-RELEASE HD REMAKE
It's like you had a hangover back when you played the original! (Image
from
Sonic Retro)
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Likelyhood - Unknown
See also - Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, Sonic 2 HD (fanmade)
I also expressed the issue with remakes. Re-releases themselves might
not garner support from even the dedicated fanbase whose eyes are so senstive
that the sharp edges of pixels would cut them open. At least that's how
they act. Nontheless, there is a way to make something old new again...
redo the sprites.
Imagine Metal Gear. Except instead of looking like an 8-bit game, it instead
looks like it's from an animation of sorts. It looks the same, but at
the same time, it looks like everything is drawn. Not only that, but it
has widescreen 16:9 support with at least a 720p resolution. This allows
the game to be marketed as "new," peaks the interest of people who have
and have not played the game before, and it does it all without that much
effort--compared to a full-on 3D remake.
PREQUEL
Likelyhood - High
See also - Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Metal Gear Solid: Portable
Ops
"There are some misunderstandings that [MGS4] is
the final Metal Gear game. But it's really the final chapter of the
Solid Snake story. That's all. There's still a lot of room for filling
in the gaps as far as Big Boss is concerned."
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He has a point. The team has 25 years in the game's storyline they
can work with. The problem, which Payton doesn't seem to realize, is that
these 25 years in Bg Boss' life has kind of been covered and does not
need to be depicted.
What "gaps" could possibly exist, unless they just make one and then half-assingly
fill it.
REBOOT
Likelyhood - Moderate
See also - Batman Begins, Casino Royale, Prince of Persia, technically
most Legend of Zelda titles
If Hideo Kojima had a time machine, this might have already happened with
Metal Gear Solid:
"Using cloning [as a plot device] was really cheating.
... I've said it numerous times, but Solid Snake fought against a
lot of strong foes back on the MSX, so we should've started from scratch
when we worked on the PlayStation. But we released it as a sequel,
so we had to bring out even stronger enemies. As a result, we had
to create an adversary with the same strength [as Snake] and we decided
to go with a clone storyline, but that's where things got difficult."
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This is a real good argument against a DIRECT SEQUEL. While a LONG
GAP SEQUEL might help things out by throwing the story into a time in
which new people are dominating the political scene, you still got the
problem of having past events fit in anyways. So why not start a new,
have Solid Snake be the main character, and shape everything accordingly?
A reboot gives the freedom to even allow Solid Snake to look and sound
completely different.
NOTHING
Wait, it says "Metal Gear Solid" on the box? Fuck, I'll buy two!
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Likelyhood - None
I don't know about you, but Kojima working on something new sounds exciting.
Even if it's a revival of an existing franchise such as Snatcher and
Zone of the Enders. Metal Gear has over six major installments, not
including non-canon and side story titles. Boktai had four, and both
Zone of the Enders and Snatcher has three. Re-releases are one thing,
but an entirely brand new Metal Gear? Give Snake a rest, Kojima. I mean,
Metal Gear will be showing up on iPhone and iPod Touch units soon in
a first person touch-shooting range styled game. What the fucks next?
Snake's Bowgun Training for the Wii? Fuck.
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