Metal Gear Solid's story; touchy subject.

[Enigmatic_Apple]

I have noticed that I have been ostracized from multiple messageboards for daring to question the pure awesome of Hideo Kojima writing and directing abilities.

Don't get me wrong.

I don't think Metal Gear Solid has a bad story, but it is not the best this industry has to offer. Maybe it's just me, while a lot of my peers were playing Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid, I was playing the Fallout series and Half Life. It just kind of frustrating to me that people won't even LISTEN to any other view on MGS other than MGS > God. I understand, you had a cool experience with it when you were 12 years old. That's great. But if I placed someone with Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VII now, someone that is older than 13, I really doubt they would find them to be as amazing as a decade ago. Fallout or Half Life are still interesting to me though, even now.

Maybe some games aged better for me than others.

Again though, this is all just my opinion, I don't expect to change anyone's views on it. I would love to hear what you guys think though?

Do I have some good points? Should I castrate myself for thinking up this blasphemy?

 

[danimal1384]

your thoughts on the MGS storyarc not being divine are by no means blasphemy. while i would generally agree that the story is very complex and well written, these by no means should make it untouchable. there have been better stories out there, and of course much worse, like everything from final fantasy, no matter how much i might like them. however, it could all come crashing down into shitville if MGS4 ends up being a frozen shit-sicle. we shall see in the end what happens, and i hope it meets our expectations, though as a whole, story expectations have been on the decline lately. people are willing to sacrifice story and plot in exchange for cheap thrills and easier gameplay, which is a crime in my opinion. but hey, i'm not always right either.

 

[The Irrelevant Gamer]

The only reason Metal Gear Solid seems to have such a good story is because it is a video game, and standards are not high in the industry. If it was a book, or even a movie it wouldn't be thought of as any more than an action movie/spy thriller with some really bad cliches used as main plot points.

I like the games, but don't understand how so many people can constantly fellate Hideo Kojima as if he is some kind of god.

 

[soladrin]

the stupid names for bosses and such turned me off to much.. never finished a MGS game though im not stealth action fan to begin with anyway.

but enigmatic apple, i cant agree on what you said about fallout 1 and 2 (cant speak for half life, never played, yea burn me) because i first played fallout 1 when i was 8, and loved it, now 10 years later, i still play them both, and i still love every aspect of them, and the story in Fallout is good, just the backstory alone is great (if you dont know any details apart from, there was a nuklear war, go read the Fallout bible because your missing out)

 

[Alchymist]

You shouldn't feel that you have to love the story in MGS, like in most cases it's a matter of personal opinion. It's one of the better stories imo that I've seen in games and has aged a lot better than titles but it's still not that great a story when comparing it to other things from outside of the industry.

 

[soladrin]

if you go outside of the industry, theres hardly any game that can compare, books always beat games, i prefer books to actually, they just dont last me that long :\ i always finish them within a day.. (500~600 pages)

 

[shadow skill]

For a game I think the story is well done MGS has a better story than most of the games you mentioned, Half Life while a good game really does not have a story persay simply because it uses the crappy tactic of silent protagonist which simply does not work period. You can't tell a story if the focal point is totally silent and everyone else in the game basically talks around you. Games are interactive by their nature so its not really possible to hold them to the same standards as passive media like books or movies.

 

[gcacho]

I've always admired MGS' classical structure. It's the only game I know that has a unified time and place. It all takes place on Moses Island and if you're good enough the game and events in the story almost take place in real time. The game supposedly takes place over a night if I remember correctly and the game can be beaten in that same span. It adds to the effect I guess.

 

[Enigmatic_Apple]

the stupid names for bosses and such turned me off to much.. never finished a MGS game though im not stealth action fan to begin with anyway.

but enigmatic apple, i cant agree on what you said about fallout 1 and 2 (cant speak for half life, never played, yea burn me) because i first played fallout 1 when i was 8, and loved it, now 10 years later, i still play them both, and i still love every aspect of them, and the story in Fallout is good, just the backstory alone is great (if you dont know any details apart from, there was a nuklear war, go read the Fallout bible because your missing out)

I made a mistake and edited it, I meant that I can't really pick up MGS or Final Fantasy VII NOW and be as amazed as I was younger. I really love the back story of Fallout and Half Life. It's most likely not fair though, I have a bias for nuclear apocalypse stories.

 

[Katana314]

Well you have to at the very LEAST admit, that when people actually thought Call of Duty 4's plot was anywhere in the direction of "decent", Metal Gear Solid is good.
But I will have to confess this much: Metal Gear Solid has a very good story, but it's not always told so well. Entire conspiracies are explained hastily even if the player wasn't quite able to understand everything that was said. And there's no further discussion of how such-and-such happened, and it seems like your objective never changes either as a result of everything that was said to you.
*SPOILERS*
Furthermore, a lot of it seems quite implausible. MGS2: The entire reason for stealing Metal Gear RAY, setting up an oil field and taking dozens of hostages as well as killing the president, and knowingly wasting the lives of hundreds of soldiers...was to TRAIN RAIDEN TO BE A SOLDIER? People, the guy still can't sense a gun behind him! You've kinda wasted your efforts!

 

[Enigmatic_Apple]

Well you have to at the very LEAST admit, that when people actually thought Call of Duty 4's plot was anywhere in the direction of "decent", Metal Gear Solid is good.
But I will have to confess this much: Metal Gear Solid has a very good story, but it's not always told so well. Entire conspiracies are explained hastily even if the player wasn't quite able to understand everything that was said. And there's no further discussion of how such-and-such happened, and it seems like your objective never changes either as a result of everything that was said to you.
*SPOILERS*
Furthermore, a lot of it seems quite implausible. MGS2: The entire reason for stealing Metal Gear RAY, setting up an oil field and taking dozens of hostages as well as killing the president, and knowingly wasting the lives of hundreds of soldiers...was to TRAIN RAIDEN TO BE A SOLDIER? People, the guy still can't sense a gun behind him! You've kinda wasted your efforts!

I can agree. I feel like both Metal Gear and Halo had good stories but were not told well in some cases. In terms of Sci Fi I would prefer Dune to Halo but in terms of it's religious influences and the very interest "journey" the Covenant were taking I felt set up a cool backstory. Metal Gear Solid 1 had some initially strong cool basis in terms of story but I'm sorry MGS2 just dropped the fucking ball. It wasn't complicated, it was just a convoluted mess. Told extremely poorly. Raiden was also a pansy. I didn't even realize he was a guy into about an hour in. When Rose came in I thought "coo I'm a lesbo" then when the president grabbed his crotch and said "you're a man!" I quivered into a ball and questioned my sexuality for years.Just kidding. Kind of.

Call of Duty 4 was fun. I can't say the story was impressive or coherent. A bit on the random side in terms of organization. I was really enticed by the aftermath of the nuclear explosion though. Stumbling out of the crashed helicopter and collapsing in a destroyed playground with the omnipresence of children's laughter while the towering mushroom cloud loomed overhead, tearing away the buildings and the foundation of the city; really created an amazing atmosphere.

 

[sergeantz]

I liked MGS for the Playstation and thought it had a really well-written story, if a little far-fetched. After the first one, though, everything seemed to spiral out of control. Honestly, though my knowledge of the MGS2 storyline is kind of secondhand. I stopped playing after beating Fatman and realizing that I would have to play as Raiden for the rest of the game. That alone showcases the fallibility of Kojima's storytelling.

 

[gcacho]

What I liked about COD4 was the rawness to it and that nuke part was part of it. I appreciated how unflinching it was when it looks at modern warfare and it sort of made me empathize with the soldiers in the Mideast. I used to read stories about friendly fire or folks getting advertantly bombed. I always wondered how a mistake like that could happen. Then I tried that level on the AC-130 gunship and it was pretty hard distinguishing friendlies from tangos. I thought man I wonder how hard this would be in real life. Anyway, this probably has strayed from the point.

 

[Eskim0Bob]

My opinions:

When I first played MGS1, I thought ok thats kinda cool... MGS2 story I didn't like so much. (and the fact that MGS4 is going to be the sequel mainly to MGS2 has me praying :x Trailers look amazing though.) But when I played MGS3

*SPOILERS*

and when I got to the end where you have to kill Boss. I seriously almost cried. And at the end when you hear Ocelots phone call about how he found plans for Metal Gear, and when you read the epilogue.. I was hooked. I still think that MGS3 has one of the best story lines I've played in a game.

Half-Life story is amazing as well. I cant wait for Episode 3 I think it would be cool if there was an expansion where Alan Shepard was released to save freeman or something , an then he gets put back in his abyssal prison >

CoD4 STORY wise is decent, but gameplay it is amazing. I cant get over the part with the nuke :O

Ive never played Fallout or Final Fantasy 7 so I cant comment.

 

[Gildedtongue]

Unfortunately, Final Fantasy 7 opened the floodgates for the whiney emo hero. No, I don't want some Herculean, unfeeling superman, but at the same time, I'd like a hero who actually seems somewhat qualified for the position. VIII really went against the grain, as why would a whole core of mercs decide to follow the leadership of a man who hates himself, not once, but twice?

But, sadly, storyline is usually the last thing added to a game, the plot is mostly to take you by the hand and lead you to the next encounter and shoot more people. I wonder if anyone's ever thought of the amount of psychological trauma a person would go through after a campaign in an average FPS, or RPG. How many lives you've snuffed out, how many people were out to get you. I'd almost love to see Half-Life: Epilogue Episode, "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder." Have Isaac and Barney come in to give you your meds, Alyx trying to soothe you, while all you see are phantom civil protection, eventually making a Vortigaunt do some electro-shock therapy on you. Then again, I might just be being silly.

 

[soladrin]

the stupid names for bosses and such turned me off to much.. never finished a MGS game though im not stealth action fan to begin with anyway.

but enigmatic apple, i cant agree on what you said about fallout 1 and 2 (cant speak for half life, never played, yea burn me) because i first played fallout 1 when i was 8, and loved it, now 10 years later, i still play them both, and i still love every aspect of them, and the story in Fallout is good, just the backstory alone is great (if you dont know any details apart from, there was a nuklear war, go read the Fallout bible because your missing out)

I made a mistake and edited it, I meant that I can't really pick up MGS or Final Fantasy VII NOW and be as amazed as I was younger. I really love the back story of Fallout and Half Life. It's most likely not fair though, I have a bias for nuclear apocalypse stories.

well im a lover of nuklear apocalypse

also, Halo in the games isnt told that well, i agree, and thats why i read the books, wich made it so much better.

but for me, a good story line is hard to find.. im really picky

 

[Pyrrian]

I find that a lot of video game stories try to disguise themselves by adding all sorts of twists, tricks, and complexity. The problem is that those don't make a good story. They can be part of a good story, but you also need so much more. Context, for instance, is an oft-lacking element of game stories. Why is this happening now? Is if effecting the rest of the world? Why isn't the rest of the world doing anything about it? Why is it only now that there is someone powerful enough or in a position to stop what's going on? These things can be extremely important to telling a good story, because a good story makes you involved and part of something - I don't see how you can do that very well if you feel you're the supreme hero of the galaxy, bashing along through those irrelevant enemies and being the sole person doing anydamnthing.

Sometimes a simple story is a better one. I think Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies was done wonderfully. You have a simple story, a unique perspective, a good narrator, with good lines, and it doesn't opt for the "horrors of war" story so common in war-games. It's all pretty straightforward, but for the whole game you see a certain inevitability coming, and the closer you get to it, the more you wish there was some way around it. Yet you know it's going to fall to you.

It helps that even though you're super-ace, almighty, there's always something going on elsewhere. Battles, plans, staging, people living their lives. You're the hero, but the game makes it pretty clear you can't be everywhere at once. That's pretty good.

 

[Katana314]

What I liked about COD4 was the rawness to it and that nuke part was part of it. I appreciated how unflinching it was when it looks at modern warfare

Oh, PLEASE. I guarantee you have never seen Saving Private Ryan.
The fact that it never ONCE empathized with the enemy troops more or less neutralizes your point. Besides, you don't care if Private ______ dies. From all you see, he had no mother or family. He wasn't a person. He was a man with a gun, but no face. FAIL.
I admit the nuke part was pretty good. But that was the only part that I felt had any attempt at tragedy in war.

 

[shadow skill]

The point of Raiden is two fold, from a logical standpoint it will become very difficult to keep Snake going because he is getting older and older they have already established that the cloning program was a failure, and then there is the issue of FoxDie. It was actually quite smart to introduce Raiden when they did because it allows them to change characters entirely in the future without having to fudge everything else they have done prior. The second reason within the plot of MGS2 itself is actually not hard to understand at all, the Patriots consider Snake to be the perfect weapon however cloning is not an effective means of preserving the qualities that make him such a great tool. They brought in Raiden because he was the only one of Solidus' adopted children who managed to survive; he was therefore the strongest candidate they had for an agent that could actually get rid of Solidus. They also realized that his relationship with Solidus was similar to that of Solid Snake and Big Boss and Big Boss and The Boss. It would stand to reason that if they wanted to try and manufacture a Solid Snake like individual they would place their potential candidate into a situation similar to that which served to form the Solid Snake we know by MGS2 with respect to combat ability. They needed to test the theory though if it proved effective they would be able to develop a program to train non clones to be more Snake like in their abilities as fighters.

In the end the game is still very much about Solid Snake even though it is told more from the point of view of Raiden rather than Snake himself.

 

[Final_Assassin_42]

You are now ostracized.









Kidding.

I really like MGS1's story. MGS2...It's good, just not my favorite. The ending's confusing as shit. MGS3 made me cry. I'm enough of a man to admit it.

Eh, you like what you like.