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DTG on 09 June 2008
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shio said:
DTG said:
According to someone on GameFAQ's who stop watched the ending it is exactly 78 minutes long and is the longest cutscene in the game. The second longest cutscene is between 40 minutes to an hour.

EDGE and PSW exaggurated that's all there is to it. Whatever way you spin it none of them reach 90 minutes and only one of them comes relatively close.


78 minutes is awfully close to the 90 minutes mark, and another cutscene that's even bigger than any from MGS2 tells me Kojima is not a great storyteller.

IGN said this: "One of those things that Konami doesn't want us to talk about is the 'total length of cut-scenes'. Hopefully it won't be bending the rules to far to reveal that they represent about half of the content of the game."

So we are seeing atleast around 10 hours of cutscenes in MGS4!! Total fail.

 

 


I don't think that means Kojima is a bad storyteller. If a director decides to make a 26 episode tv series rather than a 2 hour feature film does that automatically make him a bad storyteller? No, but it allows him to focus more on character development and plot detail.

There is about 7-8 hours of cutscenes in my estimation. I completed the game fairly fast so it was roughly 50% of the content for me but like other reviewers mentioned it may as well be only 1/3rd of the game depending on skill level and willingness to explore. 

As it's been said before it's the second half of the game where the cutscenes begin to overshadow the gameplay. I think those that prefered MGS3's pace more will enjoy the first half of MGS4 which is more akin to that while MGS2 fans will probably enjoy the pacing of the final half.

I'm on my second playthrough now and I'm taking my time this time to explore and experiment so the cutscenes become less frequent as a result. The pacing is not without fault but the amount of story told in MGS4 easily surpasses all previous games combined in terms of scope. Unfortunate it is that many of these side stories are completely unnecessary fan service that simply detract from the overall integrity of the game.

Much of the pacing and storyline issues is a result of fan service. Considering Kojima decided to go that route he still managed to do an amazing job in maintaining the quality of storytelling through logical decisions. The question is whether the unnecessarily high ambitions of this all star cast story was really where Kojima wanted things to go or if he simply decided to tie things up all in the manner of some fan service or another.