5 Reasons You Should Move on from Metal Gear
Editorial by Ravi Singh, Posted on May 3, 2018
The anger over Metal Gear Survive has been hilariously overblown to the point where fans arguing for a fair take are being compared to people who want to hinder free speech. A good amount of it is a genuine dislike for the game—fair enough, what I played of it I did not care all that much for—but a lot of it boils down to the frustration over the fact that Hideo Kojima and Konami have parted ways and moved on.
Really? This is a good thing, folks!
It was supposed to end ages ago
I’m not even going to get into the fact that Sons of Liberty was supposed to be the last Metal Gear game directed by Hideo Kojima. Nor will I point this was the case for Snake Eater.
“Actually Big Boss, it is not good. I want to know what happened in 1994 like where the fuck were you when Kurt Cobain died? Really hope this is covered in the next MGS! Hello? Big Boss?”Instead, I will talk about Guns of the Patriots.
Nearly every fucking thing got wrapped up by Guns of the Patriots in 2008. It was sold as the “epic conclusion” to the series. The fact that you got Metal Gear games after the fact should be treated as an “extra.” You don’t need a Metal Gear Solid 6 because you didn’t even need Peace Walker or Metal Gear Solid V. But hey, you got them anyways. “This is good, isn’t it?”
We already know how it ends anyways
Anyone bullying Konami’s social media people need to lay the fuck off. You might be barking at me right now about how it’s “their job” and that they will “report it to their higher ups” or something and… well, you’d be half right, so I give you that.
You are right; it is their jobs. If you take pleasure in making it difficult for people who have fuck-all to do with what you’re angry about (and indeed, they themselves could personally be upset about), congratulations! Do you feel a sense of relief every single time you reply to their Tweets and posts with “FUCK KONAMI”? Are you better now having done this multiple times than before? Who am I to stop such a simple boost to your self worth. Hell, Konami’s social media team might be happy to know they have that power.
Other than that I must be the bringer of some bad news: no, this will not get reported to the higher ups because the powers that be clearly do not give a fuck about what any of us think about their business plans. So much so that even in the chance that your digital rage was reported, it would likely be given no response, or a metaphorical shrug.
Which brings us to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. You are most likely never going to see Chapter 3. It’s a done deal. Konami is not interested.
Even the idea that Chapter 3 might have been cut out last minute is questionable since nothing else seems to have been data-mined from the game that’s of considerable size. Even in what you probably consider to be the most “finished” works out there, lots of stuff ends up in the cutting room floor.
“WTF I can’t believe they shipped MGS2 UNFINISHED FUCK KONAMI when are they going to PATCH THE FAMAS BACK INTO MGS2 and ALSO let us PLAY AS SNAKE IN PLANT?!”Data mining has revealed a lot of this stuff, which can be used to learn about content that was planned. A member of The ‘Soup community found data in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker giving credence to the argument that it started off as Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops 2. Metal Gear Mk.II was supposed to be in Metal Gear Solid. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty was going to feature a scene of Arsenal Gear crashing into lower Manhattan. Act 3 of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was supposed to include sneaking around sewers. This isn’t just the Metal Gear series, mind you. The beta dump for Sonic the Hedgehog 2 revealed zones that would never see the light of day (until fans recreated them in a remaster as an Easter egg and as an entirely new zone in a new game).
Snatcher fans from 1988 when they hear people complain about cut content from MGSV.So we are missing the Kingdom of the Flies mission from The Phantom Pain… is that what you want released? They showed us what was completed and as a result, we now know what happens. This is not like the original Snatcher, where adding the previously unreleased Act 3 to the CD-ROMantic version actually provided a new conclusion to the plot. Not only do we know what happens in Kingdom of the Flies, but we know what happens after it due to the game having provided a timeline of events leading to Metal Gear.
Kojima can finally work on an original title
Do you know when was the last time Kojima created an entirely new fictional universe to write and direct an entire full-length game for? Policenauts in 1994. It would be twenty-years after Policenauts when Kojima would direct P.T. Assuming Silent Hills would not be related to the existing Silent Hill titles, it would have been Kojima’s first non-Metal Gear title since the 1996 Policenauts remake on Sony PlayStation and SEGA Saturn.
An “original IP” is something Kojima has wanted to do for ages. It’s why he wanted to stop at Sons of Liberty, then Snake Eater and then Guns of the Patriots. It’s why he explicitly told IGN that The Phantom Pain was his last Metal Gear.
So now we have a situation where Kojima has no choice but to create an entirely new game. He has the full backing of Sony Interactive Entertainment, along with Guerrilla Games’ Decima game engine.
You’ve had plenty of Metal Gear games to enjoy. Let the artist work on something else, damn it.
There are other stealth games out there
Seriously, you should play Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.I’m assuming you have played all the Metal Gear titles already. Oh, you have not? Then there are already Metal Gear games out there for you to play! Game preservation is sadly an ongoing issue especially when copyrighted materials are involved so I can sympathize with that so for those of you who just want ports on modern platforms: I get’chu!
Assuming you have played through the series though, just as Sam Fisher remembers Snake fondly, so can you. Metal Gear as a series has inspired a lot of games to either incorporate a stealth element or have its gameplay entirely dependent on it. We can always look back fondly on our experiences with the series, but how about the legacy it has in advancing stealth-action in the gaming industry?
We already have existing series that carry on to-date. Deus Ex and Hitman have had recent releases. Fisher was recently spotted in DLC for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands which could mean a new Splinter Cell is planned for development. Alien: Isolation and Resident Evil 7 are survival-horror titles that have incorporated stealth mechanics.
Then there are the more indie ones. Mike Bithell, known for Thomas Was Alone, released Volume in 2015 and if you were a fan of Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions, you’d feel right at home. Never Stop Sneakin’ is a parody of the entire genre. The upcoming Espire 1: VR Operative sells itself as “Metal Gear Solid meets GoldenEye 007.” Want to sneak around and eat office furniture? Not the Robots might be your game. Miss David Hayter and Jennifer Hale? They’re both in République, which was directed by Ryan Payton and has just been released for VR.
It’s healthy
Maybe Metal Gear means a lot more to you than it does to me, which is weird considering I run the very Hideo Kojima fansite you’re reading this on (and receive absolutely no advertising revenue from). Perhaps it is easier for me to accept the end and look forward to the future? As a fellow fan, I say that the game series has suggested you to move on, as early as the original Metal Gear Solid but explicitly so in Sons of Liberty and Guns of the Patriots.
There are a lot of themes going on in the Metal Gear series, but something you see pop up a lot is the idea of moving on. Leaving behind a legacy. Empowering the next generation.
Maybe you don’t like how the Metal Gear series is doing under new direction with Pachislots and Survive. Then again, it probably won’t be like this forever, nothing lasts forever after all. Still, it is great to see such a tremendous legacy influencing new games and the stealth genre being taken in multiple diverse directions by passionate teams. What’s your muse? What do you want to do in life? We know what happened with Big Boss and Solid Snake. It’s time to accept that it’s over and move on. Put that negative energy into something positive and constructive. Who knows, maybe whatever it is that you find yourself doing now, or even sometime in the future, will leave behind a legacy as great as Metal Gear‘s.
That seems like brighter situation in general than wanting something like Metal Gear Solid 6: Iranic Contra or a full-on remake of an experience you’ve already had.