Kojima, the driving force of Metal Gear is gone. What is left is a corporate committee who through focus testing and guesswork try to keep the franchise on the road roughly in the same direction it has been going and avoid crashing into stuff.
They will make any new version look and feel as much as possible as the previous games, only deviating for committee-approved reasons of monetization, trend chasing, or marketing appeal.
What they will not and can not do is to strap a rocket to the roof of Metal Gear Solid, take a hard right and drive the car off the road and into the hills and launch it over Mount Everest. They don’t have the will, the auteur ability, or the trust of the fanbase.
Kojima could do that, which is what made the franchise what it is today.
MGS is dead, but Konami owns the pelt. What comes out next is just taxidermy with animatronics.
What they need to do is take whoever the next director of the game is going to be, strap them to a chair Clockwork Orange style and mix the entire Criterion Collection and Evangelion for about a year or two.
Then just for good measure have them write a page of names and slap them anytime a name nears anything of normal.
Then, and only then, should they be allowed to start working.
This comment needs to become a copypasta. Not because it’s silly, but because it’s accurate and brutal.
try to keep the franchise on the road roughly in the same direction it has been going and avoid crashing into stuff.
Based on their last attempt they couldn’t even manage that. Have we already forgotten that as soon as Kojima left the company, Metal Gear Survive came out?
PS, Kojima has a really cool Instagram where he posts his thoughts and stuff he likes, if anyone is a big fan and wants to sub to him. Dude has some radical tastes lol
Fuck Konami
It’s gotta suck being the director of the next MGS game knowing that everyone knows you aren’t Kojima.
Kojima gone, Konami bad, usual rant - I’m glad for David reprising his role once again, if anything.
That being said, Snake’s saga is long over. Shouldn’t they try testing new waters with a continuation of Metal Gear Rising as well?
Yea, Warner Brothers got one of the Wachowskis to direct Matrix 4. 'member?
I hope this means we can get a sequel for Metal Gear Rising, Platinum games is still doing the same kind of game after all.
I thought they burned every bridge. I’m assuming they’ll abuse him bc he needs a paycheck.
Kojima burnt the Hayter bridge actually, he decided he wanted a big name Hollywood actor because he wanted it to be a cinematic experience.
No, that was just the first time he actually paid attention to the English VA. Kojima never paid much attention to the English VA in the MGS games. The Japanese VA had some interesting tricks like having the Solid Snake VA also voice Solidus and then having his father voice Old Snake for MGS4 (while the original did the mo-cap).
Rumour is that Kojima never really liked Hayter as Snake. And Hayter’s VA quality kept getting worse and worse. Compare his Peace Walker performance to MGS2, it’s like night and day.
As to his voice quality going down, I know it’s been a while since he did snake, but just watching this video I agree. Honestly, if I didn’t see him, and I just heard his voice at the end, I would assume it was a different actor.
The unrevealed plot twist shows that Sutherland wasn’t even voicing any version of Snake
Yup. If memory serves, Kojima had been pretty publicly trying to burn that bridge since at least MGS3 and allegedly (?) tried to use that as one of the conditions for “I am done with Metal Gear Solid and will never make another” that he kept doing during that era.
I want to say that Hayter hinted at it going back to MGS2 during some of his interviews the past few years, but can’t find any examples so assume that is a fever dream.
Such an iconic voice. Haven’t played MGS 5 but can’t imagine Snake without him
Honestly? I think Hayter is Snake, much like Kurt Russel will always be Snake.
But Kiefer actually can act (… when he is not struggling with his demons and tackling Christmas trees). And basically from MGS2 on, the decision was made that MGS should have pathos that is not “so is this intentionally funny?” a la “Can love bloom on the battlefield?”.
MGS2 sort of got away with it because Quinton Flynn is actually a pretty talented VA but… everyone hated Raiden because he was “the player” rather than “Snake”. Same gag as Otacon but people sort of realized it this time.
But MGS3? I am not going to claim that the issue was that Hayter “couldn’t do the voice” or whatever. The issue is that he just isn’t the kind of actor who can carry those scenes. And that is why we mostly had EVA (unknown, but likely a “real” VA/actress) and The Boss (Pearl Krabs) carrying the story with a lot of the more emotional scenes involving Naked Snake silent and in agony.
And MGS4 was the worst of all worlds. Between having the player mockery character fuck the fanservice version of Bastilla for no apparent reason and actually putting a lot of the pathos on Hayter and Meryl (Debi Mae West has a fairly limited range) and some random kid… yeah.
Which gets to MGS5. When Kiefer speaks, he knocks it out of the park. His career is largely built around taking REALLY mediocre scripts and somehow making us care about some obnoxious bully or a psychopath running around with a car battery. But apparently “lessons were learned” from MGS4 so it was mostly awkward silence while Kaz or Ocelot did the talking and… yeah.
Still, if you can get past the trademark Kojima misogyny, MGS5’s gameplay is miles beyond every other Metal Gear short of Rising. It does have the problem of trying to shoehorn in a progression/unlock system while giving you a silenced (later infinite silenced) tranq gun (and tranq sniper rifle) in the first three hours of actual gameplay, but that actually works with the general horrible pacing and lack of plot (and spoilers built in to the intro cutscene of every level…).
Although, if you have the option, play it on PC and fiddle around with one of the bigger mods. Doing more missions as OSP (start with no gear) and tweaking the progression so that the top tier stuff isn’t balanced around multiplayer goes a long way.
Still. 4 with a more talented VA (and a lot less fanservice) would have been so amazing.
Much like Escape from LA was shit compared to Escape from NY, the MGS series has gotten progressively more and more hindered by being built around a “… how did you not get sued?” reference to Kurt Russel in the 80s joke. Like I mentioned elsewhere, I really wish MGS had become an ensemble piece (and MGS2 was trying for that before the backlash). Rising being a character action game as Raiden is AMAZING. Imagine an IOI led Hitman-style game where you play as Meryl or Johnny infiltrating an enemy base. Or an Arkane led game where you play as The Cobra Unit with all their magic powers. And not having to keep going back to such a one dimensional character as the core of the series.
Also, just to make it clear. I am not shitting on Hayter. Bruce Campbell is one of my favorite actors (also was in Escape from LA…). He can do very short bursts of pathos but it was clear that Burn Notice was struggling when they had to rely on Bruce/Sam because Michael/Jeffrey was still learning how to act and it would have been INSANE to let one of the better tv actresses of all time (Sharon Gless) do anything other than play a one dimensional character. Not every actor is Lead material and that is fine. Because you need a lot more top tier supporting actors/actresses than you do “good” Leads.
I think he’s better as The Guyver. 😋
Rip mgs
