Play the end of act 3 cutscene. The first part where snake and liquid fight on a dock is in-game. Then there is a clear transition to FMV where the screen goes blank for a second. When it comes back its a pre-rendered video until the end. This is when liquid is on a boat and talks about his brilliantly named "guns of the patriots" program.

If you people don't believe me, then try it. Wait until liquid is on the boat and meryl is bringing in the US military. You can't zoom, and you can see tons of macroblocking and posterization. Its really that easy. But I'm sure Leo-j will continue to claim its all in-game for some reason, just as he thinks the entire game is 60fps and the cooking egg scenes are in-game.

Good point about the camo. I forgot about that. Anyway, like I said, I don't care. I'm just want to know why the Mark II doesn't appear.

Still, the gun bit doesn't really make sense when compared to the Mark II... wouldn't the game essentially have to run two engines to accomplish this? At the very least, wouldn't the game have to delete the Mark II data on-screen?

Either way, it doesn't make much sense. The gun is simply replacing the weapon model Snake is holding while the other requires deletion of data for no apparent reason.

This would also go with the briefings. You obviously wouldn't be able to use the FaceCamo because the cutscenes are running on pre-set animation scripts. Example: Act IV briefing. *spoiler, will be in black* Snake gets his face burnt, he can't show his burnt face to Jack (can't spell the R name) if he's got FaceCamo on, right?

Again, that is different. One is reverting a model back to a default for a cutscene while the other is deleting on-screen data. It doesn't make sense.

Actually, being on two different displays, you probably have to add in a script to get the Mark II to show up on that screen. And you see in first person when moving the Mark II around. So it probably doesn't display it at all...but yes, I tried everything to get it to show up on the other screen...no dice. :/

No, because if they're in-game, it would be two different cameras, that's it.

Just like any split-screen co-op game. You just plug in two camera points and run the scene as-is. It would require more work to delete the robot.

It's not much work at all, yes, but you would still have to add in code to get an object from another screen to show up in the other one. That's how processing works. You tell the computer what to do. You don't make two planes and expect the computer to know to display an object from another plane on the next one when it goes out of the plane into the other.

They're not deleting anything, they just didn't add in the code to show the Mark II. I'm no programmer, but I'm pretty sure if you don't add in the code to do something, it's not going to happen. Also, like I said, you're viewing in first person when you're Mark II. How do we know whether or not they even have the Mark II rendered in that scene? It might just seem like it from the camera and moving stand point.

Mark II textures might not be rendered at all in the briefings.

Is this meant to be some kind of attack on MGS4 , i've never seen a thread like this dedicated to a single game.

Let MGS4 have it's success and stop being haters , it really disgusts me.

Yes, that's precisely what we're doing here.

Having a pre-rendered scene or two is one of the worst offenses a game can commit, therefore it prompted the creation of a thread to hate on the game.

That's just it, you wouldn't have to "add" in any code. If the scene is real-time, it's running a 3D environment. Everything is already there. You place a camera at a point and tell it to render that environment. It would require more work to remove something that is there than it would just to let the Mark II appear on the second screen.

To put it in another perspective, you don't think split screen co-op games are running two different engines to show what is on-screen, do you? It's all in the same environment with two different camera perspectives.

As for not putting textures on the Mark II, that is possible but since the Mark II is textured for other scenes, it would require no work to just tell the engine to use those textures. Plus, when you're the Mark II, you can use your tentacle thingy, which is textured and it still doesn't appear on the other screen (tried that, too).

Overall, it just doesn't make much sense.