By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
billy07 on 25 April 2008
Edit Thread
rocketpig said:
billy07 said:
rocketpig said:
billy07 said:
rocketpig said:
Yes, there are ideas. The problem is that they're poorly acted, poorly written, and poorly implemented. That whole "storytelling" thing kinda flies right over Kojima's head.
But your idea of a mature storytelling seems to be "less is more" which is clearly not the case in philosophy. If you want to have a truly indepth knowledge of philosophical ideas and subject matter you need to expose them in long winded text. They should be present either fleshed out completely or not at allb if they're going to be dumbed down as they were in MGS3. You can't do philosophy "gracefully"with allusions or such, that's simply touching upon the subject matter not exploring it. There's a difference between presenting idea's and providing in depth review of the subject matters.

 


Then Kojima should write a philosophical text and stop torturing us by trying to force ideas into a media that doesn't work well with his ideas.

You say that, but what I do not understand is why cannot Kojima just implement his philosophy into his games for those who like it and those who do not can play others games, about 99.99% of video games which don't follow the formula of Kojima's games? Why should Kojima give up on injecting heavy philosophy into his games for fans who appreciate it just to satisfy others such as yourself who could easily chose to play any of the thousands of games out there? Why he should cater to the majority when every other gaming company is doing that already?

 


All I'm saying is that if he wants to be a videogame developer, he should work within the confines of that media to make it as great as possible. After all, that's what a true artist does. He works with the materials at hand and makes something brilliant with it. He doesn't try to convert a painting into an orchestral piece.


 But then how do you define the confines of video games? They're clearly very elusive because video games have become somewhat of a merger of all entertainment mediums and a large proponent of that change has been Mr. Kojima.

 Even if we just look at the original MGS game which almost all of us can agree was a bruilliant game it defies the definitions of video games set before it. It contains roughly 3-4 hours of playtime. It contains roughly 4 hours opf cutscenes which is about two and a half times the length of an average movie. I don't know how long the script was exactly, but I'd wager it was somewhere around 400 pages long, longer than most liuterary works held in high regard. What Kojima had apparently created with MGS was a game with more gameplay than most titl;es in the 8 and 16 bit era, more cinematics than any movie save lord of the rings and more script than most works of literature.  If you look at most action games of today, his influence is clear as games are becoming more and more cinematic and "movie like" following in the foot steps of MGS.

 With such a broad scope it is hard to circle a line around gaming and exclaim "this is it" Most games today are just as much cinema and literature as they are games even if not toithe degree that MGS is. So having franchises such as MGS (specifically 2) that inject a heavy dose of philosophy into their cinematic storytelling is no different to me than having a thick book that juggles an adventorus narrative coupled with heavy moral reasoning. 

The days where video games were referred to merely as "games" are coming to an end, most games in todays high def cinematic landscape are just as much "video" as they are "games"