Metal Gear Solid 4 post:#1067

[Scott_Arm]

MGS4 in particular tried to convey or express pain if you like in a similar manner as expressed in novels, literature or probably even poetry.

It is unfortunate though that this is considered "stupid", "overly dramatized" or "a failed effort".

I feel that the problem is that we are turning into insensitive people.

Yes, obviously if people feel MGS4 is poorly written and can't connect to it on an emotional level, it must be because they're insensitive, not because of a failing in the game.

 

[Nesh]

Yeah, but each story is basically the same one! Thats the whole problem, there is no variety. And i loled at scandinavia being war torn but its a game so...



Its not like that at all. If the stories would have been better executed and different from eachother i would have watched with interest. Its just that the story repeat itself over and over again (its the same basic story) with all the beats. The whole thing when they are towards you on the end of each boss fight is ridiculous aswell imo. Why is there so much stuff that gets repeated over and over again?

Couldn't the girls have gone "bad" another way than their village getting wartorn and them getting molested and then forced to molest people they know every single time?Its the same story, just change the mood the girl is into according to her name, switch the locations, and its the same story.

It didnt look like like that to me. First of all losing your own and death is a common theme in war.

First Story: A peaceful village is being attacked by superstitious nutcases and kill everyone. She is forced to slaughter her own family because she was considered to be possessed by a devil. There are many occasions in war where people and sometimes even children are forced to kill their own.

Second Story: Children were used and exploited by either the rebels or the government of Aceh. When they were of no use anymore they were left to die. The other children were eaten by ravens.
Her story reminded me of a documentary I have seen about some place (I think it was Cambodia?) where children are being exploited extremely inhumanly. They die from starvation, thirst, sexual diseases, walloping, etc. All these are left overs from a civil war. The ones that survive and grow up are filled with hatred and anger. Sometimes doing the same to other children as a sense of revenge.

Third story: Africa is indeed known for civil wars and conflicts. Due to Africa's problems, such as poverty, in many areas in Africa people have no sense of morals and values. Tribes and small states are often in conflict. Conflicts come from within as well. Crying wolf and her little brother were refugees. She accidentally killed her brother when she was trying to silence him so she wouldnt be heard by the soldiers. I ve read about a similar occasion in a book about the holocaust in Asia Minor. Similar things happened during the WW2 as well.

Forth Story: Screaming mantis escaped and got trapped into a torture chamber. She has been trapped for days. She has seen corpses of tortured victims. She was hearing their screams all that time and she fed on corpses to survive.

Since I ve heard about experiences, seen interviews and know people who have experienced war or coups, or murders, I viewed Kojima's attempt as a welcome narration. For me it is the best attempt I ve ever seen in a videogame.

The most common think the bosses have together is that they have experienced the dreadful consequences of war and they were young when they did

Yes, obviously if people feel MGS4 is poorly written and can't connect to it on an emotional level, it must be because they're insensitive, not because of a failing in the game.

Irrelevant to the title that attempted it and generally talking outside the world of the game I will answer:

Absolutely.

 

[woundingchaney]

Speaking particularly on the female boss stories I dont see how anyone could remotely feel an emotional connection to the characters.

Spoiler

The stories themselves are incredibly similar and lack any form of personal presentation. The character do not play much of a role in the game and only upon their death do we hear the sob story (by a third party none the less). The repetition of such material makes it all the harder to feel any emotional connection or longing for the characters. In a game that could use some serious revisions to narrative and storyline progression these segments are among the worst.

I enjoyed the game though I have given up on trying to post any relevant personal opinion of the title anywhere on the net. There are so many adamant "MGS4 is the pinnacle of gaming" fans that any criticism is immediately suggested to be user ignorance (a situation which of course can be correlated to a few other popular series).

 

[Cornsnake]

MGS4 has the same problem as MGS3. These characters are only there to serve as boss fights. They only share a similar theme as the rest of the cast, but outside of that they are completely separate. They can ad as many of these characters as they like, and start a boss fight when ever they want because these characters have no real baring on the main story line. This makes them stand out from the rest of cast that have very fleshed out story lines. I'd prefer it if had a more natural place in the story. Now they feel tacked on.

 

[Jesus2006]

Yes there is plenty of CGI in MGS4, atleast one of the cutscenes is not realtime rendered thus CGI, and the commercials are most definately CGI.

There is actually exactly ONE cutscene (a very big and long one) which is rendered in-engine (no CGI) but recorded afterwards (probably due to its length and size).
There are absolutely no CGI cutscenes and of course those videos showing "real actors" are not in-engine

 

[Duke]

Regardless my general perception regarding this is that our generation is less in touch with certain aspects such as the consequences of war. And there is certainly a generational gap between us and the previous generations who have experienced harder times than us.

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from and I agree.

I really wasn't touched by the stories or didnt feel sorry for the B&B women. Although I don't even know if Kojima wanted me to feel for them. Like Snake says.. something along the lines of "So I should care for these poor souls?"..

However, even though the scenes weren't touching, the stories did bring some thoughts up to my mind about the consequences of war and the horrible stuff that goes on in them. It's not only the soldiers fighting and killing each other, there's horrible stuff happening on battlefields and warzones that we never really hear of or give even a little thought for. Yeah, we see the occasional dead civilian in the news but really, there are horrible things happening to children etc. in these places and I felt it was kinda cool how a game got me thinking about all of that for the first time in a long time.
Yeah, I know there's this and that brutality going on but I never really think about that and for some minutes during this game I did and it was cool (although it did make me feel bad for the people right now in various parts of the world suffering).

I'm not saying it was some amazing never-before-seen shit and that Kojima is a god because of these stories of victims of war, I'm just saying that I did get at least something out of them unlike seemingly many others.

 

[StefanS]

Mod:
folks, let's stop having a go at each other's throat, be it directly or by proxy, or throwing passive-aggressive fits. On the account of me hating to venture in this thread full of spoilers, I'll lock it in a heartbeat without much remorse, should you guys prove to be unable to have a reasonable and civil discussion. (See only the mod team has the right to passive aggressiveness)

 

[djskribbles]

yeah, lets not argue with those who don't like the game, so we can continue discussion for those who do enjoy it.

 

[patsu]

Actually, in Splinter Cell: Double Agent there's a mission in broad daylight in a wartorn African city. In many ways it actually makes stealth easier than other missions, though.

The SC on ps3\x360 did this last year. Did not play like a FPS at all, the gunplay and ammo limitations (and allmost immidate penalties by the game) doesn't allow for that. You cannot pick up other weapons either, so if you would want to kill everybody, you have to CQC them all.

Are you talking about Mission 9: Kinshasa ?

I only saw one side of the battle though. The militia men were distracted by their off-screen enemies, so the sneaking was easier. In MGS4, I find it refreshing that you are caught literally in the middle of a shootout. It is easier because the militia in MGS4 would help you fight, and they distracted the PMC soldiers. But it also caused many to play the game like a standard shooter.

Spoiler

I like the part in Act 1 where we were supposed to escape from the Gekkos with the villagers in the same streets. I have not figured out how to clear that level if I want to go for "No alert" emblems. May be Gekkos don't count as alert ? They are not affected by Chaff grenades it seems.

SC followed strictly stealth game formula. Naturally, no one would play it like an FPS.

EDIT:

It's not so much 'you're playing it wrong' as 'if you play it this way, then you'll have a different experience'. If you're not willing to play MGS4 as a stealth game, then yeah, you won't enjoy it and you probably will have wasted your money.

That's right. I am not saying anyone is playing MGS4 wrongly. But I think it is strange to rate MGS4 against FPSes:
"The camera doesn't move as well other FPS games when in FPS view mode."
The game offers many different views for different situation. Even in MGO, we do see stunned knife or CQC experts making abundant kills in third person view. I think MGS4 has a lot of depth and it tries to bring in a new combat experience (e.g., in-game bosses in MP games). It is also up to the players to set their own goals (e.g., if one finds that the boss fight is too easy, then he could find faster/better ways to kill the boss faster).

The game may suffer because many people may simply find the easiest way to complete it without taking more risks.

 

[Daozang]

Does anything change (cutscenes, story) if you use your tranqualiser gun on the B&B instead of killing them in their human form?

 

[patsu]

Spoiler

If you tranquilize the beauties in beast form, you get their statues as reward. I don't know what you can do with the statues though.

If you tranquilize the beauties in their human form, you get their face camos (which may help later. e.g., in Act 3, tailing the resistance).

 

[Strange]

Spoiler

If you tranquilize the beauties in beast form, you get their statues as reward. I don't know what you can do with the statues though.

If you tranquilize the beauties in their human form, you get their face camos (which may help later. e.g., in Act 3, tailing the resistance).

if you collect all five
(4 from the beast forms and 1 from the frogs in act 1 by not killing any of them)

Spoiler

you get a very special weapon.
An incredibly funny one with the name of "Solar Gun"

oh yeah, there is definatly one scene with CGI.
it is the scene where you can notice a difference of fps between the top and lower parts of the game.
Pretty obvious that one of the parts was definately pre-rendered.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Spoiler

If you tranquilize the beauties in beast form, you get their statues as reward. I don't know what you can do with the statues though.

If you tranquilize the beauties in their human form, you get their face camos (which may help later. e.g., in Act 3, tailing the resistance).

You seem to have had a lot of playthroughs lately!

 

[Daozang]

Yeah! Patsu always seems to play every game in depth!
Whenever I have a game question, I'm almost certain he'll have the answer

 

[Cheezdoodles]

There is actually exactly ONE cutscene (a very big and long one) which is rendered in-engine (no CGI) but recorded afterwards (probably due to its length and size).
There are absolutely no CGI cutscenes and of course those videos showing "real actors" are not in-engine

CGI: Computer Generated Imagery, and refers to any visual image, whether static or moving, that has been either completely created by a computer system, or at least partly created or embellished by computers. The PS3\X360 are definately computers...


By definition its CGI. Its not realtime rendered, yes its using the same or similar assets to the game and the rest of the cutscenes , but thats beside the point.

Further, there are quite a few movies that use CGI, all the commercials.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Spoiler

I like the part in Act 1 where we were supposed to escape from the Gekkos with the villagers in the same streets. I have not figured out how to clear that level if I want to go for "No alert" emblems. May be Gekkos don't count as alert ? They are not affected by Chaff grenades it seems.

Im pretty sure chaff grenades work.

Spoiler

Anyways, you can shot the Gekko and not get an alert, if you use silencers and hide a bit. Just time your runs, or disable the gekkos by a few well placed shots and sneak a round them. I managed to time my runs without getting spotted, then hid beneath some shop stands to the left at the last gekko. Took out a chaff grenade, threw it, and ran past without alerts .

 

[RenegadeRocks]

CGI: Computer Generated Imagery, and refers to any visual image, whether static or moving, that has been either completely created by a computer system, or at least partly created or embellished by computers. The PS3\X360 are definately computers...


By definition its CGI. Its not realtime rendered, yes its using the same or similar assets to the game and the rest of the cutscenes , but thats beside the point.

Further, there are quite a few movies that use CGI, all the commercials.

Why do you keep bringing up commercials !! All of us can see humans in that, No where is it intended for anyone to believe that they are in-game visuals! Don't just say something for the sake of saying it.

And we all know that in this discussion CGI means prerendered and realtime is different from CGI for any gamer or anyone remotely knowing how games are made or played . PLEASE!

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Then dont make a big deal of one guy saying all this CGI made the game boring, and take it as a compliment on your beloved game as maybe he thought all the cutscenes where prerendered.

Dont say the game doesn't have CGI, when it does. It has a prerendered cutscene and tons of prerendered commercials. I dont care if its only one cutscene, dont say it doesn't have prenders, when it does. It may only have one, but it still has them.

 

[StefanS]

Thread going nowhere. Closed.