@Staude

Anything you didn´t understand about the story?

he was going to die anyway,
since he wasn't going to be a biological weapon let the poor old man die alone. XD.

but i agree this game is EPIC

@ Staude

100% agree with you man.

Best story and storytelling in gaming. MGS4 is basically in a league of its own, and oh my god how i lol at those comparing Deus Ex, Longest Journey or Beyond good and Evil to MGS4...LOL... you guys need to replace whatever brain you are using now with a functional one, really.

I think you need to actually play games with amazing stories, so you can see how retarded MGS4 is. Here's a previous post of mine, explaining some of the flaws Kojima's storytelling and design decisions have:

MGS' philosophic cutscenes do not bare much mental stimulation: The writing gives you everything on a silver platter while the gameplay let's you experience little (and that little bit is mainly 1-pony-trick shallow experiences).

The best way to explain something is to experience it which is basic pathology, teachers always use exercises, after explaining the thesis to the students to demonstrate it. This would let the students better absorb the information given. It's same thing for games with complex stories - the gameplay should be the driving force to immerse, experience and explain whatever the authors' intentions. Kojima doesn't take advantage of that.


One perfect example of Kojima's design flaw is MGS2: The handling of control/freedom of information and it's implications. Basically, In MGS2, the player experienced mostly one type of one-dimensional situations of control of information throughout the game, which is fine. The problem was when Kojima simply abused them, as if he thought the player wouldn't be able to understand those experiences: Solid Snake's apathy in informing; Raiden tackling with forgotten past and Rosemary's duty; The revelation of the Patriots, Colonel and AI; and the only multi-dimensional experience from all (as small and indirect it was), the actions of an entity controlled by controlled by another entity, which is... The patriots being the highest order, having Ocelote running with controlled info, whom was having Solidus tackle with things on a controlled info, etc... pretty much just a cascade of the same types of experiences.

When you notice, for so many experiences they're basically just the same type of experience with a different coating, except Raiden's past which I thought was good in portraying culture growth in a 'controlled environment' (though it should've been more interactive, not only because there too many dialogue spent on a 'small' thing, but it would also allow the player's knowledge to correspond with Raiden's when tackling the situation).

Possibly the worst part is near the end, when we had a long 15min cutscene explaining everything we experienced in the game!!! I'm talking about Colonel, Raiden and Rosemary's triage. that scene only needed to be 2-3min long, only explaining about the GW and Rosemary's and stuff like that...why would Kojima need to explain everything again???? And there still was both Raiden and Snake, in the end, stating the same thing in their epilogues, that thing being something mentioned more than once in the game.

Basically, Kojima thinks the average player is an idiot. Kojima is no genious.

Also, most of the dialogues presented in the cutscenes could have easily been done in a more interactive way, through interactive dialogues since many of the scenes were based on a typical question/answer scheme, which is simply perfect for it. Raiden's backstory should have been done so, with a small obligatory dialogue from Solidus (the one who would initiate that part).

Action-centric games are the ones that use, and are more excused on using cutscenes exclusively, because they are usually light on story and do not need to utilize methods on incorporating it on gameplay as much, which would also help the action gameplay be completely by itself, which is OK. Story-Heavy or Story-centric games (such as RPGs and Adventures), those are the ones that really need to put the story inside the gameplay. That's why many of them use outlets such as:

- NPC Interaction, a great way for interactive dialogue scenes, and leaving the player in full control.
- Optional content, necessary to spread the story without losing any amount. It would also give the player the choice to how much he wants to play it. It's also a great way to increase replay value.
- Story-specific gameplay, which is about features that are very story-related, but it's not optional and impacts the gameplay heavily. One example is Planescape: Torment's main character, the Nameless One, an 'immortal' which loses his identity and memory every times he dies. When the player(in control of Nameless One) dies, he doesn't lose the game, but he re-awakens with his entire memory removed. What better way to explain death, rebirth and immortality than to actually experience it in the game.

 That's why Adventure games, the most story-centric genre, don't have many cutscenes, believe it or not. They instead use ALOT of NPC interaction to keep the story going. Perfect example: Grim Fandango, an 18hours Adventure and only has like 30min of cutscenes in the entire game. As for RPGs: Fallout 1&2 (everything optional, amazing stories), Planescape: Torment (best story ever), Baldur's Gate 2 (Bioware's finest).

MGS4 and JRPGs are the aberrations of the Story-Centric games since they support heavily cutscenes, and that directly contradicts the Industry norm. But they're from japanese developers, so it's not surprising.

The gameplay of 'Planescape: Torment' does explain immortality, it's implications, and goes into depth for it; only the developers tried to show it naturally, and not convoluted (which is what MGS2 was like). In the beginning it is explained roughly (or rather, naturally) the immortality of the Nameless One. the player then will experience death, rebirth, loss of identity, immortality; and he will see the impact of the Nameless One's past, who he was, what he did, the evidences he left. The sporadic gain of memories from past lifes will leave the player wondering more about him, without ever having his questions fully answered.

In Planescape: Torment, to let the player experience directly the Nameless One's Immortality strongly adheres to the atmosphere and cohesion of the Story; The recollection of his memories, and try to pick up those few pieces often leaving the player wondering about his origins (how old is he?.... what is his name?...) strengthens the bond between them; Giving the player first-hand seat on the evidences and clues his the Nameless One's past lifes as he encounters those who knew his past identities; Everyone's sins, thoughts, emotions, Morte's search for redemption, only being able to decrease his own torment if Nameless One (the player) forgives him. I could go on pointing more. .. most of it is optional, but all of it makes Planescape: Torment a surreal experience.

No matter how big the game's script is (btw, Planescape's writing is divine), if it's used through NPC Interaction then it's already inside the gameplay, more so when it's games that have choices/consequences. Planescape has almost all of it's story (well, most of it) inside the gameplay by default.

I'm not saying cutscenes is bad, far from that. What I wrote was that when cutscenes take a BIG amount of gametime, it hurts the game experience. Instead, Kojima should have found ways to disperse some of the more unnecessary parts of the story, if he couldn't remove it at all. Maybe MGS4's story is actually a good one, but having 1 third of the game non-interactive is not praise-worthy.

@ shio

your post proves just one thing - you haven't played MGS4.
I mean, how retarded is that ? You come here arguing about a game you haven't played. I suggest you do, and who knows, you might even change your mind 'bout this game...you haven't played -_-

@Shio

you seem to be in denial

I already played it... my previous post was a rehash of a post I made before I tried MGS4, with some minor changes. I mentioned it because MGS4 is plagued by alot of what MGS2 was too, and pretty much all the points I made also apply to MGS4.

@el_rika , darthdevidem01

Then try to refute my argument. If you think you're right then explain your point and why I'm wrong.

It's easy to just say some guy is wrong without any facts or argumentation.

Actually no.. despite not having played previous installments of the series.. i really want to get a hold of them now though XD.. unfortunately i don't think the essentials are available here in europe.

I did watch the retrospectives before i started playing though, and i knew some of the overall theme.. was massivly surprised at the game. (knew it was gonna be good:P thats why i bought it at launch!)

@shio no i don't think i've played those games, but how do they make the mgs story worse ?

I would understand if they were really well put together like this (which you obviously disagree about) that you would like to tell people how good they were. But in either case a good game doesn't make other games worse. People need to stop that mentality as it is hurting the gaming industry.

@ shio

sorry, but english is not my native language, and while i understand it fully i don't speak it extremely well so it'd be a pain for me to start a coherent debate, sorry.

What i could tell you is that i see you have more of a problem with the actual way of telling the story in MGS(4) than the story itself. If you don't enjoy manga/anime complemented with Hollywood caliber camera and photography direction, than MGS4 is simply and truthfully not for you. Millions love manga style of storytelling, millions don't.
I personally do, and on the other hand i don't enjoy very much the NPC or text based way of telling the story which usually means that instead of going into a cinematic cutscene you stand there and read some text or listen to a badly animated character, with the [ultimately useless] option of giving a few answers that lead to the same outcome anyway. I don't consider this "interactive" storytelling, i consider it "cheap" storytelling from the obvious reasons that not every developer has the talent nor can they afford to invest 50 mil $ in MGS4 level of cutscene quality.

We have a wildly difference of perspective here, i don't think any debate would lead to anything constructive.

@ shio

sorry, but english is not my native language, and while i understand it fully i don't speak it extremely well so it'd be a pain for me to start a coherent debate, sorry.

What i could tell you is that i see you have more of a problem with the actual way of telling the story in MGS(4) than the story itself. If you don't enjoy manga/anime complemented with Hollywood caliber camera and photography direction, than MGS4 is simply and truthfully not for you. Millions love manga style of storytelling, millions don't.
I personally do, and on the other hand i don't enjoy very much the NPC or text based way of telling the story which usually means that instead of going into a cinematic cutscene you stand there and read some text or listen to a badly animated character, with the [ultimately useless] option of giving a few answers that lead to the same outcome anyway. I don't consider this "interactive" storytelling, i consider it "cheap" storytelling from the obvious reasons that not every developer has the talent nor can they afford to invest 50 mil $ in MGS4 level of cutscene quality.

We have a wildly difference of perspective here, i don't think any debate would lead to anything constructive.