Two Japanese bestseller novelists discuss Metal Gear Solid V
In a discussion published on website Webnewtype, Japanese bestseller novelists Manabu Makime and Hitori Nojima (who wrote the recently published novels of MGS1, 2, and V) talk about the story of MGSV. It’s a pretty insightful discussion that is worth a read. One interesting part is where Makime mentions Huey and his role in the story.
Big Boss’ organization in V is absolutely a band of criminals in the eyes of the world order. They can be viewed as a kind of war mafia, interfering in world conflicts to make money. But it’s hard to see things that way when you’re actually playing the game. Viewed from the outside, everything they do is unacceptably wrong, but playing as them makes you see them as good people. That’s why I really like Huey’s (Emmerich’s) character in V. He always says the perfect thing to make you hate him at just the right time (laughs). He seems like the worst bad guy in the game, but viewed objectively that’s not the case. As a civilian, he’s actually closer to the player than any of the other characters. The things he says actually always make sense, but that just makes you hate him more.
People who’ve played through the game will probably remember the scene in which Huey is exiled from Mother Base, arguably one of the most memorable scenes in the game.
Nojima also cites an email sent to him by Kojima in which he explains some of his intentions with the story of MGSV and the way it ends.
Early video games never had much of a story. Metal Gear was among the first to add story to its gameplay. The player controls Snake, and together we’ve told this story over the years. As the series went on, the player jumped between multiple characters like Solid Snake and Naked Snake, and the story evolved into the legend that is the Metal Gear saga. In this final Metal Gear, it was only right to return the role of Snake, the main character, to the player. It’s saying that from now on, you make the story. It’s saying this is what it means to come full circle and complete a story. If this were a one-way medium like a movie, V’s ending wouldn’t have been possible, but this was a game. This made it possible. Taking a story we’ve told together over the years, and placing it in the hands of the player. That was the real intention behind V.
If the player wasn’t a doppelganger to Big Boss in V, that would have meant Big Boss himself dying later on. And long before V, back in the original Metal Gear, the player (acting as Solid Snake) had in fact killed Big Boss. That made it important for this final instalment that the player once again enters into the story and brings things full circle in their own way. I think it’s only at that point that the story truly belongs to the player. This is “creating the story together with the player,” something that can’t be done in traditional media like movies and books. This can only be done in a video game. That’s what makes V the culmination of everything we’ve always done since the original Metal Gear.
The rest of the discussion, where they talk about other story elements and various characters, is worth reading through as well (follow the link in the source section below).
Source: Webnewtype
The part about Huey is quite interesting. Never saw it that way before, about Diamond Dog being war criminals. It has made me think.
Diamond Dogs also do human trafficking using fulton recovery. it’s illegal right?
Some of those soldiers you encountered in the field must have family back in their homeland, but Venom Snake decides to take that away from them to be apart of his army.
But even if you fulton them without their consent, they stay in Diamond Dogs of their own free will =P I think Ocelot says it somewhere, everybody is there because they want to, if you want to leave, you can.
Yea you are right. I guess the Big Boss image has a major influence on the soldiers from around the world. Why else hang around on an oil rig in the middle of the ocean 😛
Thats exactly it, they all want to be there, leaving everything behind, because they are with Big Boss, the legendary icon.
Ocelot, the certified mind-bending hypnotist, you mean?
Yeah, I totally trust that guy’s words! XD
You gotta admit he is pretty good.
Pretty… Good… *faints*
The twist is, for a sadist that loves torture, he’s also a “pretty good” guy.
I didn’t see Huey’s opinion about Diamond Dogs was a sane opinion, or
the ‘opinion of a civillian’, like these 2 guys are implying. My
response to Huey’s last words in the raft wasn’t ‘your right, but screw
you’. I just didn’t value his opinion at all because I felt like Huey
just lost it. Killing Skull face (and how he reacted afterwards) and his wife and other behaviors showed he wasn’t mentally stable. And then being responsible for infecting/killing all those Diamond Dogs soldiers, and potentially endangering all humanity with a virus, trying to provoke the soldiers up against Snake during the
funeral scene for having to have to kill his own men, just showed me he
completely lost it.
However, I did think that Diamond Dogs, and by extension Snake were criminals.
I would’ve understood and maybe even agreed with Huey’s actions against
Diamond Dogs if he didn’t act like he lost it or at least just acted a
bit more rationally.
Yeah, although he was probably right that Snake was in the wrong by acquiring a nuke in PW.
Wasn’t it Huey that suggested to put the nuke on Zeke in the first place?
Edit: It was Miller that suggested it.
It was Miller right? Though Snake ultimately made the decision.
Ye, it was Miller, I looked it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov7FsBk9T68
Ah…David Hayter. The feels.
It was a rational decision, PW later went on to emphasize how they would never use it even if a nuke launched towards them. IMO, it was a huge international crime but not morally wrong, as long as it had good/trustworthy security. It offered up a nice fresh perspective on the whole “HE’S GOT A NUKE!!!” thing. MGS is all about perspectives. If another Hot Coldman incident happened, and MSF was gone just because they didn’t have a nuke, than the world would be screwed. It was rational thinking. At the same time, all it took was some clever planning from SkullFace to bring them down anyways. The twist was it wasn’t Cypher or any International nations/entities responsible like Big Boss feared, but SkullFace and his personal vendetta/will alone.
he may was, but how can i give something about the arguments from a guy who build several metal gears who were able to shoot nuclear weapons?
I like to think Venom allows them to write letters to their families to let them know what happened and that it’ll be alright.
Huey being the closest character to the player never struck
my mind. I remember Kojima said Otacon had that role on Metal Gear Solid and in
that case it was clear as the sun. In V though I couldn’t get that. Wouldnt’
that be in contrast with the identification the player is supposed to reach
with BB? Huey is a very selfish and mean character it’s difficult to feel
emphaty for. It’s true though that V is open to interpretation a lot more that
previuos installments. I you think of Otacon, he is an easy readable character by
the end of MGS, while after finishing V you can still argue on Huey’s faults
and merits, that proving how effective his characterization is. In my opinion,
Huey is the character who seems
most to be alive; you can feel
him thinking dinamically at the very moment that he is in scene; his changes of
mind, his fears, his lies. Such a great work!
Yeah Huey is the furthest thing from the player, and he really fricken sucks as a staple of outside world points of view interjected into Diamond Dogs when he is the only asshole on board, he is a compulsive liar, he killed Stranglove, he used his son, he did nothing but lie to Diamond Dogs, he sold out MSF, like honestly he is possibly the meanest character in the whole MGS franchise, I will have nothing to do with that piece of shit, even if you give a piece of shit character a few lines that are right it doesn’t make the rest of the shit that comes from his mouth true.
The interesting thing about him is that he was as good of a man as Otacon, but his actions leading to MSF’s downfall made him unable to bear the reality of what he caused, and so led him to a downhill spiral ever since of lies, misintent, etc.
Way off-topic:Don’t forget to watch El Clasico tonight.A battle between two giants.
lol thanks for the reminder. 🙂
Woow 0-4, Barca atomized them ! xD
Luis Suarez is a atomic bomb indeed!!!
Yeah, he unfortunately played the “crocodiles” at the last world cup, but it seems the croco does not bite anymore. xD This MSN config is just invincible !? Very impressive.
Thx for the reminder. 😉
Didn’t see it but I saw them play the day before. 2-1 Barca. I don’t usually watch soccer/football but it was an enjoyable match to watch.
If I, “The Player” is becoming Big Boss then.. WHY THE FUCK the game doesn’t give me the choice to either kill Huey or exile him? HUH? If there were choices in the game.. It would MAKE a LOT of sense if you’re “the player” and you’re becoming Big Boss.
Killing Huey wouldn’t fit in with the rest of the saga. You can kill Quiet though.
At least give me a choice of some sort.. killing quiet isn’t a big of a deal.. she’s a side character.
They did give you a choice, regardless of your evaluation of the character. In general you are given a lot of freedom in the game. But Huey can’t die in MGSV, because that would contradict his storyline as we know it.
Okay not Huey.. lemme at least HAVE anything.. I wanna feel as “The Player”! The whole thing of “oh, you’re big boss now.. you, the player can become big boss!” then let me choose how the story goes if i’m really big boss LOL this entire concept becomes meaningless if I don’t have any hand in the story.
???
You “HAVE” everything. The whole game is yours.
This is the most free and open MGS. You’re making all the decisions. Building your base, how you do your missions, building a nuke, etc
The open world part of the game makes the “Big Boss is you” thing actually work
In other games like the witcher you also have the freedom to roam the open world and make choices.. does that make me “The Player” become geralt? lol what a silly concept, trying to invent something from nothing. Read back my comment, I said “This entire concept becomes meaningless if I don’t have any hand in the STORY!” THE STORY.. what you mentioned are gameplay related stuff.
…You do realize that The Witcher is a role playing game right??
Metal gear isn’t the type of game that can give you important story choices, it has a really strong story and that has always been part of the games, it’s just not about making big story choices that will change the ending. You have so much choice in this game that so many players would have had really different experiences each time they go out on a mission, think about all the things that happened to you in the field, those things are what makes you big boss. Remember venom snake has all of big bosses experiences in his head and most of the decisions he makes relating to the story is what big boss would have done. You have the gameplay, everything that happened to you during missions is what makes you venom snake.
Big Boss not speaking much gives the player a big hand in the story, as it allows you to infer how/what hes interpreting from the events and how they are affecting him/you. And where the game really sements the concept is when Venom flips over the picture to reveal your name. At that point, denying that Snake is you is just self-delusion. Its something never been done before in games. Breaking the 4th wall in a meaningful context that ties deeply into the lore and series canon rather than “Mantis is so cool” gimmicks.
or.. the writers are lazy and don’t want to write a dialogue for venom snake lol.
Pretty sure it was a conscience/creative decision considering how much dialogue was in past games. Even this game still has plenty, just not from Venom.
Seems you have the ability to turn anything bad kojima does into a 4th wall breaking miracle.. with that mindset of yours, MGSV can’t be criticized in any way. Literally, anything bad Kojima will produce is gonna be a 4th wall breaking phenomena to you.. a bad thing is a bad thing, no matter how yo spin it. Wouldn’t it be better if we had more of kiefer sutherland’s voice acting? the answer will be YES. ;’/
Not really, I still feel MGS2’s execution and storytelling was pretty weak, despite its strong themes and ideas. Its my least favorite MGS, but its still a masterpiece in its own way; every MGS game is unique in how they excel. Me and you can state our opposing opinions on MGSV, which means its subjective. Criticism is for objective observations only. You can state if you prefer one thing over another, but its still subjective. The key into going into any piece of entertainment is to judge it for what it tried/wanted to do, not what you wanted it to do. In that aspect, MGSV is an unprecedented memorable experience, if not the overall best MGS experience. I still prefer 3 as the best, and I prefer how that game told its story, but I still love and appreciate what V did, because I was open minded while playing it.
And hell no it would not be better (IMO) hearing Jack Bauer’s voice breaking my illusion of the game, regardless of the game’s approach, you can’t have an iconic real life figure play an iconic animated figure, unless the voice is different enough. But that’s not the real reason, the real reason is because more dialogue would undermine all of his amazing facial performance (the real reason why he was hired, he can actually act without words). Dumb people who say they didnt want to pay him dont realize how much work he did for every single scene, being there and playing out Snake’s presence the whole time even if never saying a word. You’re going to spin this as me spinning how amazing Kiefer’s inclusion was, but the truth is that their execution of performance over words, less is more, really was another revelation of the game that completely justifies Kiefer’s recruitment over David Hayter. Though how Hayter was notified probably could’ve been better.
yeah, but the way HOW episode 46 just popped up was amateurlike and made me hate the ending at first.
That was done pretty purposefully. It adds to the interpretation of it all being in his head. The story is meant to be made with player participation in mind, as in the player makes up his own mind about the series goes.
you don’t get what i mean. and maybe you never will. the execution sucked. it sucked so hard.
I get exactly what you mean, I just completely disagree. It is subjective you know.
i think you are very ignorant.
You’re the only one displaying ignorance to different opinions.
However, I do agree that having more choices would’ve helped both the game in general and the “you are Big Boss” concept. I just disagree that it was needed in any capacity considering how far and beyond it goes with the open gameplay mechanics, the muted character, and the unprecedented endgame 4th wall break.
Sorry for my ignorance, but how killing Huey will trigger Time Paradox? Otacon is born already, so we don’t need Huey at all. 😀
Huey discovered that his son Hal was having an affair with his second wife, so Huey committed suicide by drowning himself in the family pool in 1997.
Omg! Where is it from? Maybe he was killed? 😀
MGS2 when Otacon was talking about his past blaming himself for his father’s death
you also have a choice to rescue D.D. (as a pup) or not as well.
Such a lust to kill… xD
if you want to make more decisions like that where you kill, should play Witcher, ME, Fallout, etc.
You don’t just go killing important characters in the middle of MGS timeline… But you can kill a lot of enemies if it makes you feel better.
Thx for the read Nyx :D.
I already can kill enemies in MGS1/MGS2/MGS3/MGS4 with the real big boss.. so how does MGSV differ from the real Big Boss and me becoming Big Boss?
What they should of done is give you the option to either “kill” or “exile” Huey. But if you pick “kill” you just get a time paradox and the only way to advance in the story is to exile huey lol
Because that would absolutely destroy the canon with Huey, that’s why.
I think you guys should watch this, I have played a lot of videogames throughout the years but to this day mgs3, is the first and if it wasn’t for mgs4 true ending, it would be the only game that has ever made me cry.
https://youtu.be/b5-ENYfHf8I
One of my favorite songs. I learned how to play it on guitar and everything.
Choosing a song from that poll is so hard :/
Woah, I didn’t notice it before :O. Yeah it’s quite hard indeed D: …
I wish I could choose
o All of the above
http://www.barcelonacheckin.com/img/stored_images/barcelona/articles_images/larryIndecision.gif i feel you brother
It’s not hard,it’s impossible!!!
I’d vote for this but it’s not an option – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN-sJRTG4YI
That’s an easy one – A phantom pain by Ludvig Forssell – oh wait a minute… 😉
(and as always music is the thing that lures me from passive reader to active commentor, so while I’m at it, kudos to Nyx and all who support this site. You’ve been my daily companions ever since I discovered this site about a year ago, thanks for that)
Thank you for visiting!
Hey there friend :), welcome to MGI ^-^ .
Hahahaha! Amazing! 🙂
“. This is “creating the story together with the player,” something that can’t be done in traditional media like movies and books. This can only be done in a video game” So this is what Kojima was talking about.. what a disappointment
With Huey, some of his opinions actually did matter and carried some considerable/thoughtful weight, but only during the time of your first playthrough, up until the trial. That long stretch of time where you (and Venom) weren’t sure what to make of him, but were hoping the accusations weren’t true, purely just because of past experiences together (for Venom it was just PW, but for the player, it was almost the whole series). Miller laying all these accusations on him throughout the game would’ve been no different if Campbell or someone did the same to Otacon. On top of that, he was being tortured and Miller nearly did severe damage to his already broken leg. We/Venom understood the torture needed to be done to a certain degree, but were uncomfortable watching. It was like watching an old friend in pain and seeing him slightly change. In retrospect though, it is almost impossible to get your mind back to before you knew everything Huey did, back when it was just accusations and nothing more. But for that first playthrough, there was conflicting emotions/thoughts and the scene where he’s being lowered in the raft does make you feel for him every time, because he genuinely believes in both his mistreatment and Diamond Dogs’ hypocrisy. He cannot accept realities so much so that he lives in his own fabrications of it.
i wanted to kill huey all the time because i knew he was an asshole. just remember what otacon told us in the previous games about his daddy. also the way he spoke, you could hear him lying. he’s a piece a shit that got what he deserved in the end.
Yes you can sense the hesitation and the lies, but you never knew why or the motivation. It could’ve been something noble like protecting his family, we had no idea. In fact, we still don’t know why he let XOF into MSF, we can only theorize or interpret. My interpretation was that Skullface used Strangelove as a way of controlling him. You say you always saw him as an asshole, I have a hard time seeing him anywhere in PW as one; he was basically another Otacon, right down to the morals of using nuclear weapons and being used to create WMDs. He mimiced a lot of MGS1 Otacon in PW. He had some issues based on Otacon’s descriptions sure, but I dont recall him saying anything to the degree of “major asshole” in MGS2. In fact, if I recall correctly, in MGS1 he took some inspiration from both his father and grandfather.
to be honest, when i played peace walker and found out about huey my first thought was ‘oh no hideo, please don’t put otacon’s dad into the history of big bosses evolution’. but he did. i always thought the game would have been fine with strangelove only, a declaration that she was responsible for all the metal gears in peace walker alone would have been fine with me. well things are different. but what i want to point out is, i never liked the presence of huey along to big boss anyway, so it wasn’t hard for me to hate the guy in the phantom pain.
it’s like a hispanic soap opera… huey’s appearance was totally unnecassary.
Disagree
you won’t need to.
Whatever that means
it’s a quote by big boss from ground zeroes
Out of context, completely meaningless.
I wish I knew Japanese to be able to read the MGSV novel, and maybe the others. Based on all their insight and interpretations, I’m sure it would make for a very interesting/engaging novel and viewpoints of the story. I wish there was a way to localize them for us; not sure if that’s even a thing with novels like it is with anime and games.
Off topic:
A few month before release day was a leak about story line. In this leak game have 5 chapter no 2 with repetitive mission on hard difficulty. Imo game should look that but war between Kojima and Konami destroyed this. Konami cut budgets and we know how it’s end. In first chapter almost every mission are in the game and whit the same number of episode.
Prologue : Awakening
Chapter 1 : Revenge
Episode 1 : Phantom Limbs
Episode 2 : Diamond Dogs
Episode 3 : A Hero’s Way
Episode 4 : C2W
Episode 5 : Over The Fence
Episode 6 : Where Do The Bees Sleep
Episode 7 : Occupation Force
Episode 8 : Red Brass
Episode 9 : Back Up, Back Down
Episode 10: Angel With A Broken Wing
Episode 11: Cloaked In Silence
Episode 12: Through The Hole
Episode 13: The Enemy Of My Enemy
Chapter 2: Dark Depths
Episode 1 : Hellbound
Episode 2 : From The Inside
Episode 3 : Bad Dreams
Episode 4 : Domination
Episode 5 : Old Bones
Episode 6 : Dangerous Wisdom
Episode 7 : State Of Exception
Episode 8 : Dirt Work
Episode 9 : Open Hands
Episode 10: Diamonds In The Sky
Episode 11: Ghosts
Episode 12: Playing With Monsters
Episode 13: Kill The Beast
Episode 14: Green Light
Episode 15: Coup De Grace
Episode 16: Lurking In The Dark
Episode 17: Open Minds
Episode 18: No Slaves
Episode 19: Club Of The Unseen
Episode 20: Two-Way Race
Episode 21: Traitors’ Caravan
Episode 22: Fire and Cold Ashes
Chapter 3 : The Costs Of Revenge
Episode 1 : Pestilence
Episode 2 : Phantom Pain
Episode 3 : Madness Of Men
Episode 4 : Three
Episode 5 : Isolation
Episode 6 : Severed Family
Episode 7 : Fatal Massages
Episode 8 : Voices
Episode 9 : Corrupted
Episode 10: Midnight Raid
Episode 11: In The Face Of Pain
Episode 12: The Beauty Of The Battlefield
Episode 13: Manufactured Skin
Episode 14: Homonculus
Episode 15: There Are No Heroes
Chapter 4 : Punishing Words
Episode 1 : Sins Of The Father
Episode 2 : Loyalty
Episode 3 : No Turning Back
Episode 4 : Metallic Archaea
Episode 5 : Sahelanthropus
Episode 6 : War Is Peace I
Episode 7 : Condition: Comatose
Episode 8 : War Is Peace II
Chapter 5 : Confrontation
Episode 1 : Pale Shadows Of Forgotten Names
Episode 2 : Truth: The Man Who Sold The World
Episode 3 : Demons
Epilogue : Demons In The Cold Of The Night
ah, some of those titles alone sound epic.
Most likely fake though.
If it is true I lost hope that Kojima is genius
Awesome chapter names. But if I remember correctly, back then a redditor admitted a day or two later that he had done it, just to see how fans reacted.
He had done it after chapter names were leaked, so it seemed like the real thing when they were amongst his fake ones.
Fans can create pretty believable stuff.
Do you have link to confirms this? I still believe that game should look like that. After 300h I know that something missing
I can try look for it when I wake up. I just sort of remember seeing that list before and I think someone said it was fake. It’s been a while though so I might remember it wrong ^_^.
This was the one:
https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/3fqwr4/mgsv_spoilers_main_mission_list_revealed/
“All right guys, so I hope nobody is going to hate on me for that, although I could understand if you do so, but my post from two days ago wasn’t real. It was me who created that mission list, since I wanted to see the reactions on it, without letting people know that it was me who wrote it. A big hobby and passion of mine is to write scripts and stuff because I am a big movie-lover.
It wasn’t my intention to fool you people in first place but to see it as kind of an experiment. Never thought it would become that big of a thing as that it would be posted on various sites. It really surprised me that even as I tried to make the mission names as vague as possible, many people got the idea I had behind some of the titles. I really took my time creating the list and worked around 3-4
hours on it – and I loved it since I am a big fan of the franchise.
It was humbling to see some guys saying they love the titles (especially the idea of Chapters 1,2,3,4,V because that is one of the few things I also liked much for myself) and saying it looks and sounds a lot like Kojima. Yet I feel so bad and sorry for having lied to you about that ‘leak’ because you are an awesome crowd. Since I don’t want anyone of
you to unsubscribe because of a false leak I thought it would be the best to reveal it was an invented thing.
I hope you’re not mad at me, and also that you enjoyed the list even though it isn’t real. Let’s stay strong for the last month of waiting and see how the missions will be names for real
And sorry again for my English, it wasn’t a lie that I’m Portuguese!”
Would’ve been cool if it had so many episodes ;D, but we can’t always get what we want. It was a good fake compared to earlier ones.
So I have no clue why this part have such bad story line
Its not bad, just different.
The same guy that leaked it also came clean.
That’s called phantom pain; there’s many variations of it 😉
Yeah you feel to, don’t you? Legendary series die in this part.
Legends are often much better than the real thing.
I always wonder why the first chapter contains so much missions.
Besides, MG chapters usually take place in a single location.
It definitely looks to me like they packed all in a heavy rush. It probably happened because if they were informed around, say, February, it would still be a very narrow window to finish all packaging / QA phases !?
Only heavy personal problems between Kojima and Konami could explain a that frenetic rush 🙁 .It is probably just me, but I think Kojima drove Konami that crazy because he tried to grab an extra year delay (or more, who knows).
He already did that with MGS4.
To me, if we had something like 30% more missions, all dispatched more homogeneously across 5 chapters, we would have got the right stuff.
Another very weird factor for me was that the release date announcement is so matching the Koji-Pro disbanding process.
Something obviously blew up around last March / February. Maybe I am wrong, but all this is so weird, I never saw Konami behave like that, specially towards Hideo !?
It was shortly after the release date announcement, but not right after. Things were swell enough over there for Kojima to do an episode or 2 of Kojima Station, and everything seemed fine. However, the comments he made at the release date announcement about how this is definitely the last MGS, seemed to foreshadow some of the trouble brewing. At the same time though, Ground Zeroes way back also foreshadowed things, so maybe it was just trouble happening for years that reached a climax a week or 2 after the announcement and major decisions were made. The CEO changes happened after the announcement. None of the drama had to do with the release date. Kojima just knew shit was gonna hit the fan once the new CEO takes over. I stand by the opinion that Kojima fully intended to release in 2015, from both his statements at TGS 2014 and the debriefing video, and with just how ridiculously polished the game is for a big open world game.
Hi Alex, glad to see we still have this very interesting divergence of opinion, hopefully helping both of us soon to understand WTH exactly happened.
Look, I think “ridiculously unpolished” sound rather excessive.
V has a big majority of extremely well tested UI, gameplay-wise features.
However, if you think it was so bad, how would you explain, knowing HK’s perfectionism and his strong habit to publish top-polished / rock-stable and pharaonic MGS’s, that he kept wanting to pull out V during 2015 in a such state ?
As you said, their war probably reached some kind of zenith / climax around March and begun at least a year before. Even not right after the announcement and between all HK efforts to try to convince the board, hardly negotiating, he got for sure the dead-line weeks before officially telling us. The studio disbanding info logically filtered few weeks after, but I am sure HK already had it since the dead-line became official. A lot of thing were unfortunately settled at this moment.
The GZ’s black light easter eggs implementation affair pretty confirmed that the battle begun during probably the ending of GZ’s dev.
You are also right to guess that HK initially planned to release in 2015.
Probably Konami’s board showed him some kind of animosity during GZ dev and the project got late until now, because they started to make things more and more difficult for Koji-Pro.
Even if that’s what he wanted years before, I am still rather convinced that he was not happy with 2015 anymore, seeing the title that late in dev.
I mean that I usually suffer a lot when HK shoot the dates but in this specific case, I did not have the same feeling.. I felt pretty happy instead to have it that soon, so something was not normal… 😀
In all cases, I guess we’ll both agree on how hysterically childish Konami’s modus operandi was during those past sad months, whether communication or even simply human-wise.
Yea some things are up in the air. I do feel though, compared to how early release date info was announced before for the past games, that they specifically decided not announce a date till they knew for sure they were going to hit it. Due to both the slight MGS4 delay and the huge trend we have today of AAA games getting delayed or launched broken. On top of that, so many preview events months ahead of launch always praised how polished and finished the game felt, as if it could’ve been release right then and they were just using the last 3 months polishing and ridding as many bugs as they can. AND, most cutscenes, performances and motion captures were done way ahead of launch. I think the only VO work done in 2015 was Ocelot and Miller intel stuff, which was early 2015.
The entire last year of development was probably just working out all the gameplay kinks rather than any kind of story or narrative vitalization. The development of V was just very different from past games; most of the story decisions and even cutscenes were done before GZ even released; we were getting substantial TPP footage before GZ, the Nuclear trailer and E3 gameplay demonstrations was 3 months right after GZ. Shit was done and getting made, they just spent a ridiculous amount of time polishing and it paid off with all the perfect scores it got mentioning how the gameplay makes up for any possible story or pacing issues. The level of stealth infiltration gameplay it has achieved is basically unprecedented. Its a game that spent loads of time on gameplay optimization, and it would not have been possible without the flexibility of FOX Engine allowing them to quickly change assets back and forth without getting into the code and taking a long time. Kojima wouldn’t really be able to mimic it in another game without FOX Engine or another engine like it.
Also, in early interviews he described TPP as less developing another Metal Gear and more developing something different that he just wants to do creatively as a creator, and squeezing it into Metal Gear (MGSV font is literally squeezed into the TPP font in the logo). The Phantom Pain was the main title and Metal Gear the subtitle, at least in Kojima’s mind; very different from past Metal Gears. I think it was the interview from when the Smithsonian Museum opened a games museum. From then on, I knew to look and approach this game as something very different, even though it was getting very traditional Kojima-esue trailers. You can’t really judge it the same way as you would other Metal Gears just because its so different and the approach was different. Kojima always says he doesnt just wanna be known as the “Metal Gear” guy, so the best way too look at it is, as a Kojima game, how does it stack against other Kojima games? Rather than thinking about it from a Metal Gear mindset.
Yeah, all this sound like a Konami’s admin board bloody dead-line rather than the traditional Koji-Pro release date.
I agree that most artwork was probably done. Although the missing things may have obliged them to present all this in a different order (like having the feeling that chapter 1 was literally filled like a plastic bag).
I do not really believe in explanations such as battle gear “too strong” or “Kingdom of Flies” breaking any balance here.
It is just a matter of fine-tuning Sahelanthropus AI by various ways available. Or just like slightly increasing damage level of its weapons for the simplest approaches.
They pretty heavily started mission 51’s dev, they could have figured out their balance BS way before reaching 30% as well.
Seeing the quantity of functionalities yet in GZ regarding character control, enemy AI (etc..) and how yet polished their were, I guess they had more level editing and cut-scene design tasks ahead.
GZ was a rather perfect proof of concept and V was principally awaiting more areas and story elements.
Most modern game engines (Unreal, CryEngine, PhyreEngine…) let you replace easily assets online / at run-time. They all let you as well check the game output on every targets in real time. You shoot from a dev pc, toward all client consoles and computers, yet to check for example if shaders behave the same. That’s sadly not always the case specially on PS3 because of various factors such as processing units endianness for example or performance differences more globally.
That said, the very smart tricks found by Koji-Pro in fields such as lighting make for sure the FoxEngine a gem. Their presentation at GDC 2013 was very instructive.
The FoxEngine is just made of very clever hacks and tricks to simulate real world as much and as fast as possible. Most of the other elements should be rather generic and common to many other engine. You know, they even usually publish in game conferences how they achieve this or that effect, often resulting in all finally sharing newest concept. I am not saying all engines are the same neither because they were all build according with order of priorities suitable to specific game titles.
In V, the night is so gorgeous and lighting looks so natural. What is interesting is that they admitted tweaking manually their resources in various situation…
I think this humanized them a bit 😀 otherwise we would go “man, Koji-Pro are all working machines” xD
The guy that leaked that, came forth and said he just made it up using mission names from the achievements leak while making up some of his own and ordering them the way he wanted. You can tell from the made up ones how they are the kind of titles to come from an enthusiastic fan. He just did it for fun than came clean soon after.
When it comes to legit leaks, the only thing you can take seriously is data that was mined from the PC version and proven by other data miners (if the leaker keeps secret how he found the data, than its fake). That’s how the Nuclear disarmament scene was found, data on The Boss’s scar which turned out to just be a skin rather than a flashback, and the Chapter 3 Peace title, which is where Mission 51 and the Paz stuff was originally going to be probably. Outside of data mining, you can’t trust info from an anonymous source, they have to reveal their connections like the novelists did recently.
How is retreading missions and playing to a weak interactive-narrative bringing things full circle?
I hope you’ve got more coming… NOJIMA!
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As someone who has played Metal Gear since the original on the NES, I’ve got to say I was extremely disappointed in the way MGSV’s story played out. With each installment the gameplay became more refined, changed and got better, but it was always the expanding canon and web of characters that had me dedicated to this particular franchise. While I understand Kojima’s attempt to emotionally invest the character into the entirety of the MGSV experience, it could have been done differently, could have been done better.
The rehashed missions of chapter 2 and the “true” ending of Phantom Pain feel like cheap cop out to me. As a rabid fan I speak for myself when I say I was really hoping to see a glimpses of fleshed out backstory concerning favorites like Gray Fox, Naomi Hunter, Eva, etc. Though 1984 might come a bit too early for some of this on the official MGS timeline, to NOT include these characters at all just felt like an insult. Perhaps my frustration with this game stems from the 3+ years I devoted to fantasizing about what this game might play out to be like, while media outlets continued to hype it out of proportion. The gameplay remains solid and is the best to date, I feel..but if I had to choose I’d probably pick Peace Walker over this solely because of the pacing and “tangibility” of its story set out to deepen scenarios and character development.
This whole MGSV story, cut content and Kojima leaving situation, reminds me of this (loooong) article.
A very interesting read that I would love to read one day something similar regarding the whole MGSV behind the scenes.
http://kotaku.com/the-messy-true-story-behind-the-making-of-destiny-1737556731