@Purple:
We'll see if that holds. First, sure, maybe it's less than other games, but on the other hand I will gladly trade long bouts of exposition-filled cutscenes impeding the flow of the game for cassettes of exposition-filled audio with cutscenes for the important parts of the game. IGN and gamespot's reviews kinda imply that it's less meaty of a story because it's less in-your-face to fit better with the whole "choose your adventure" feel.
Yeah, when put in that perspective, I'd rather have things gel with the choose your adventure kind of feel.
And, well, for as many "awesome" and "memorable" moments MGS4 had, it had one hell of a trainwreck of a story that's supposed to close all the threads in the future. Even if the story isn't "as good", so long as it closes the right threads and is more condensed, then that's fine with me.
I didn't mind some of the long cutscenes in some of the games, and I think they did pretty well in 3 (weird dialogue aside). It's 4 that I have problems with.
It's one of the things I never get tired of ranting about. The other being Smallville.
MGS4's story and the hype built around that game in general left a bitter taste. "It's the last game! Better get ahold of it! (and by "last", we mean final segment of the story, not last ever but we're not gonna clear that up for a while for hype sake)." Even more confusing given how the final fight of the game played out like it was a trip-down-memory-lane kind of send-off, by going through footage of all the previous games.
Call the hype marketing or whatever, it just serves to piss people off. Even more so when the final product isn't that great.
And then I read an interview were one of the writers/developers felt proud to tie up all the loose ends, calling it clever.
Tying those loose ends with the same answer (being nanomachines) is not clever. It's the exact opposite.
Why in the world are there only two codec channels in a game for PS3 when MGS1 had tons of them? Even more aggravating when one of the codec frequencies in 4 constantly told you to watch your psyche gauge. I spent half the time in 3 going through codec conversations because of how interesting and informative they were, such as talking about guns or some of the politics of the time period. Both of which I didn't even have much interest in to begin with!
I read that it's because they pretty much packed the blu-ray discs for MGS4 with everything else and just "couldn't fit more conversations on them."
There didn't seem to be that big of a problem with creativity with the limited hardware of the PS1, but given all the space and possibilities of PS3, Kojima probably felt the need to use it all for what it was worth, except there wasn't as much out-of-the-box thinking there. Although there were some hilarious moments (Otacon's "switch the discs" comment after fighting Crying Wolf, or Psycho Mantis's cameo), but there was still an empty feeling to the game.
I sound bitter lol but I had my fun with the game. The gameplay was solid and fun, and was primarily why I always came back for playthroughs. If only the story was as rewarding and worthwhile.
@KageKageKing:
I like how they didn't include the original Metal Gear games from the NES.
And of course the ultimate Metal Gear was made in the 84 and not in 99 or 2009 or even 2014.
Haha yeah that always seems to be an anachronistic detail they like to skip over. Zeke alone in Peace Walker looked like a zone of ender kind of product. Nevermind the awkward moment of seeing the clunky Metal Gear Rex in MGS1, which takes place in 2005.