Metal Gear’s 25th anniversary event to ‘shake up’ industry

Big Announce: There will be no more MGS! lol

Shocking announcement right here: Metal Gear Solid 5 comes to the XBOX 360

and launches first on Xbox.

I so want to hear that and see fanboy tears. that would be indeed “The shook”

Can’t wait. Hideo Kojima, the Voice of God. The Orson Welles of videogames.

he once was orson welles… now he is just an ed wood…. of video games.

@2 – I’m not sure that would shake up the industry, as just piss a lot of people off. Of course, if it launched first on 360, then that would mean the PS3 version would have to have extra stuff.

@2 that shit made me laugh out loud.

The Orson Welles of video games? Hahahahaha!

Bold words by Konami. Let’s hope they can live up to them.

I think they are goons show MGS 5 which would run on next gen. This is gonna be their next gen tech demo. In the PS2/Xbox days, many devs did that even before the hardwares were announced.

They basically said they would shake the industry with MGS4 reveal, but my ground didn’t shake.

My body is ready is be shocked.
Although I think ” the shock” is not some game, but something related to maybe the fox engine. With is industry leading ” transparent/translucent cloth ” tech , its definitely going to shock a lot of people.

The shock is he will make a game with no cut scenes.

idk why other gamers have to bitch about cut scenes, hes trying to tell a story. MGS5 for ps4 launch title!! @10 stop bitching about cut scenes , only reason the game had that many is because he was ending about snake. if you want a story with no story go play call of duty

@2 Grow the fuck up
post MGS HD Collection,Rising and the fox engine being used on both platforms everyone knows MGS5 will follow suit.No tears to see there… ass

People hating cut-scenes should just stop playing metal gear. Cut scenes are what makes MG what it is.

The problem is not exactly the cutscenes per se.

The thing is, in recent years game producers developed other, more interactive ways of telling the story. Traditional cutscenes don’t let one interact with the story, influence it, make choices.

@15 – well, then don’t play the Metal Gear games then. Those of us who love them, love them for what they are. There are plenty of games that’ll do things the way you like them. Go play those.

I love the cut scenes, the day a new Metal Gear comes out and Kojima has ditched the cut scenes in favour of “more interactive storytelling” will be a sad one for me.

@16, 17
Exactly, MGS4 rocked for me for that exact reason.

Wow, these so called MGS fans never fail to astonish me. It’s like fans of century-old cars requesting that innovation may by no means be introduced. Cutscenes in games are predestined to die out – it has always been a sign of immaturity for games to so desperately try to copy another medium (e.g. film). Also, why use cutscenes when you have nothing smart to say in the first place? The writing throughout the MGS series is among the worst in the industry. It’s a pseudo-postmodern jumble of disparate and incoherent elements tailored to satisfy a teenager’s philosophical needs at best. “Love can bloom on the battlefield”… “nuclear weapons are soooo bad”. Deep Shit!

And you know what? In spite of all that I still love the series for its gameplay, especially in those moments when it’s not desperately trying to be something that it’s not. It could just be so much more to the point and smart if they threw some of that terribly-written storytelling baggage overboard and started telling more of the plot through actual gameplay. The precondition being for fanboys to get over themselves and develop a sense of coherent and stringent storytelling.

A MGS cut-scene is like cramp during sex :-/

#19 Two long paragraphs. One stating “It could just be so much more to the point”

That’s irony folks!

#21 +1 XD

@21 – I apologize for arguing my point and not simply throwing a bunch of shit at a game in two sentences as seems to be usual in these territories. Let me rephrase that so you can understand: Lolz, teh MGS suxxx dix, cutscenes suck teh hard, Kojima = dumbass.

@19,
Very difficult to accept someones else’s opinion eh?
Most of the people who don’t understand MGS story and are playing it are either too busy playing the great game or are just plain retarded.

@21,
You know haters write the biggest paragraphs right? That’s also an irony. If they hate it so much, why bother writing about it.

@21 If two paragraphs is too much for you, then MGS would be an aneurism for your brain.

It’s far from the worst in the industry, but it’s still pretty terrible and barely at any sort of level of competent writing. It’s just that writing in video games in general is atrocious.

@25,
Any examples of glorious story writing (better than MGS)in games to back-up your claim of bad story in MGS ?

#20 Nah a Mgs cutscene is along the lines of having to stay at a lecture by a poor psychologist while having a bad trip..

@26, Angry birds.

@15
New ways of telling stories? How? By mashing X O O X and then spam triangle ? I would rather relax, have a coffee while I watch a nice cut-scene. And by the way if you miss that button mash you even get a Game Over. This “evolution” / “innovation” does not impress me, I am more of an oldschool gamer.

Best regards,

Bad story and MGS don’t go together. It’s just as simple as that. Say anything about MGS that you want, but calling it a bad story is just ridiculous.

@26 Most of the Ultima games.

Anything made by Obsidian, ever. (bar Alpha Protocal)

Anything written by Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman or Tim Schaefer.

The Longest Journey.

Portal 2.

Bastion.

Silent Hill 1 – 4

That’s just off the top of my head. More later, if you wish.

@30 The stories *are* atrocious.

They are convoluted messes. They are contrived, melodramatic, and made up as they go along. They break half of the most basic rules of storytelling to boot, and one in particular: Show. Don’t tell.

Convoluted and deep are not the same thing. Don’t mistake one for the other.

@29 My feelings exactly!

Convoluted melodrama or not, I along with many others enjoy the MGS stories and will more than likely continue to do so

Mgs fan (boys) are like Football team zealots or people who have nothing better other than an entertainment software to devote themselves to, no matter how many times you point them out the obvious, they continue to keep telling themselves the same ‘ner ner ner’.

What I find the weirdest about that stubborn denial is how they tend to use Gears of War as an example of ‘bad’ stories and storytelling, when the dramatic scene with Maria failing to reunite with Dom is almost identical to the ‘acting’ and ‘narrative’ of teh Boss and the rest.. Albeit, at least Gears of War has a bit realistic voice acting opposed to the tragically humorous David Hayter.

It’s likely that largely happened after the transition from MG to MGS, and that leading to it being associated with a certain corporation, I would expect massive drops in levels of zealosy if the series goes fully multi platform.

#33 It’s a game, some people enjoy it, some don’t. Simple

@33,
Yep,just because they hate it means its bad. Amazing analogy.
Of course, many of the haters just cant understand the story which spans MORE THAN 100 YEARS. Only people who know the complete saga can appreciate it.
Simpletons only want stories lasting one game, any longer and their save files in brains get overloaded.

@34 Exactly, I don’t understand the way some people think, it’s like “I dislike this game, therefore I will attempt to force it’s fans into following my opinion and mock all who don’t as ‘Over Zealous Fanboys’

As if we’ll suddenly go “I’ve seen the light, what a fool I was to enjoy this game! How dare I”.

*But I digress, mainly because in a little while a random person on the internet who disagrees with me will be along to insult me *

@34, 35 I love the games, out-dated as they may be now, because Kojima undeninably has an unique eccentric quality to both his game design and characters. Attacking people’s integrity to validate your opinion is utterly lazy thinking., and in my case you simply can’t play the “just because they hate it means it’s bad card” card anyway.

I “know the complete saga” just fine, thank you. It technically spans nearly 300 years (the formation of the “Sons of Liberty in the late 1700s) if you want to be fussy.

Just because I like the games doesn’t mean I have to like everything about them. Anyone with even the most basic amount of literary experience will argue that the game’s stories are atrocious on every meaningful level.

Your point (#34) about the story lasting so long isn’t even a valid one. It was supposed to end at MGS2. Fans demanded a conceptually concrete conclusion, instead of the open ended musings of MGS2, and thats why MGS4 was what it was. Kojima has said all of this on record, including the fact that he never would have written the story the way he did if he knew it was going to turn into such a convoluted mess.

How about you try to argue why it’s good, what it does well, or point out holes in my arguments, instead of relying on nothing more than lazy ad hominem remarks simply to bolster your personal egos, eh? I assure you I’m many things – conceited, stubborn, opinionated – but a simpleton isn’t one of them.

MGS *is* a story for simpletons. It might be convoluted as all hell, but there’s so much overbearing exposition in the games that any message it’s trying to convey has already been completely beaten into your skull by the half way point of the story, and well outstayed its welcome by the end of each game. MGS3 especially was the worst for this, which is ironic because the one thing that game got right over the others was the pacing of gameplay vs. cutscenes.

There is absolutely no subtlety or depth to any of the character”s depth or personal growth. The whole thing has spelt out for you, detail for detail, in case the viewer is too stupid to understand. A writer who underestimates the intelligence if his audience is an idiot himself.

I said I digress, take it up with another fan.

Kojima has mentioned the idea of a Metal Gear game that connects people before.

My fear that he is making a Metal Geat MMO is slowly rising. Base it in Outer Heaven, you play mercs who go out into the world on missions.

The advert that shows Big Boss saying he wants to recruit ‘You’ for the next Metal Gear game.

Jesus, I’m scaring myself :/

@38 Oh god, please no.

I actually totally agree with the Irishman on this one. As a fan of the series I feel like the game play is great, and gameplay>story. But to deny that the story is an absolute fucking mess(see post 36) is ridiculous. About as ridiculous as the story in question.

Nicely put Michael. I don’t know why people react in such a fanatic manner. It should have become rather obvious that some of the harshest critics of the writing in MGS are also some of the people who enjoy those games in spite of the gibberish storytelling.

It’s not that fans should not be allowed to enjoy these games. But there’s just no remotely plausible way to argue that the writing in these games is anything approximating good. It’s convoluted, pretentious, obnoxiously declamatory and melodramatic. And that is a matter not of preference but established (and admittely normative) standards of what makes up for well-constructed and stringent narrative storytelling.

As for games that sport some great video game writing. Michael has mentioned a few and Portal 2 would certainly be near the top in terms of both wittyness and making gameplay speak. Journey is another recent example that comes to mind which illustrates just how expressive a video game story can be with an absolute minimum (none at all, in fact) of dialogue. Shadow of the Colossus finds a similarly brilliant way to tell a fantastic story through actual gameplay rather than dialogue.

As I said, I enjoyed most MGS games thoroughly for some of their gameplay, lots of their originality and an interesting universe, which is, however, at no point done justice by the terrible writing these games sport. Of course, I would be lying if I said that I did not at some point think that the series’ story was actually good. But I was young, unexperienced with the basic tenets of narrative storytelling and, above all, willing to give in to nostalgic distortion for many years thereafter. That does not however mean that I can’t now accept my youthful ignorance of these elements for what it was and still like the MGS games for what they were – great games with some great ideas but abysmal writing.

@41 If I could “like” a post on VG247, you would have a million thumbs up. You put that far more eloquently than I ever could have.