Poll: What is your opinion on the Metal Gear Solid storylines?

Daedalus1942

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FROGGEman2 said:
OK, I originally wrote this, but now I'm so ashamed of it that I'm going to rewrite it.

Do you like the Metal Gear Solid Storylines?
Yes. I think Hideo Kojima is one of the most creative minds working in the videogame industry.
 

FROGGEman2

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Daedalus1942 said:
FROGGEman2 said:
OK, I originally wrote this, but now I'm so ashamed of it that I'm going to rewrite it.

Do you like the Metal Gear Solid Storylines?
Yes. I think Hideo Kojima is one of the most creative minds working in the videogame industry.
This thread has been revived so many times and it's beautiful.

One of THE most creative minds? Whoa. That's high praise.
 

Daedalus1942

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FROGGEman2 said:
Daedalus1942 said:
FROGGEman2 said:
OK, I originally wrote this, but now I'm so ashamed of it that I'm going to rewrite it.

Do you like the Metal Gear Solid Storylines?
Yes. I think Hideo Kojima is one of the most creative minds working in the videogame industry.
This thread has been revived so many times and it's beautiful.

One of THE most creative minds? Whoa. That's high praise.
You don't agree? How he's woven his stories in amongst the thread of actual factual events?
 

FROGGEman2

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Mar 14, 2009
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Daedalus1942 said:
FROGGEman2 said:
Daedalus1942 said:
FROGGEman2 said:
OK, I originally wrote this, but now I'm so ashamed of it that I'm going to rewrite it.

Do you like the Metal Gear Solid Storylines?
Yes. I think Hideo Kojima is one of the most creative minds working in the videogame industry.
This thread has been revived so many times and it's beautiful.

One of THE most creative minds? Whoa. That's high praise.
You don't agree? How he's woven his stories in amongst the thread of actual factual events?
Well, he has and quite well, too. But, woven is the key word here, when characters gain magic superpowers and shoot lightning and control the weather no one blinks an eye.
 

Daedalus1942

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Jun 26, 2009
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FROGGEman2 said:
Daedalus1942 said:
FROGGEman2 said:
Daedalus1942 said:
FROGGEman2 said:
OK, I originally wrote this, but now I'm so ashamed of it that I'm going to rewrite it.

Do you like the Metal Gear Solid Storylines?
Yes. I think Hideo Kojima is one of the most creative minds working in the videogame industry.
This thread has been revived so many times and it's beautiful.

One of THE most creative minds? Whoa. That's high praise.
You don't agree? How he's woven his stories in amongst the thread of actual factual events?
Well, he has and quite well, too. But, woven is the key word here, when characters gain magic superpowers and shoot lightning and control the weather no one blinks an eye.
Lol... I just like his take on fighting proxy wars, and how the storyline revolves mainly around events that happened during the cold war.
Some of his shit makes no sense in the real world, but in the context of the Metal Gear Storyline, everything is explained. Nothing is unresolved or makes you go "huh?"
 

GloatingSwine

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Meh.

I could put up with the nonscience of the first game because it was a fun knockabout romp, but after the second one it all just turned bleeeeh. Too top heavy with all the implied conspiracy stuff and what seems to be a traditional tactic for Japanese storytelling when it is trying to appear deeper than it actually is of hinting at loads of cool and important shit happening but never actually having it impact on the player in any concrete way. (Zone of the Enders is also rife with this, with about three different Omniscient Councils of Vagueness all working against each other but having minimal impact on what you actually do, especially in Fist of Mars, but I think the absolute king of it is Xenogears).

So, overall, no, I don't really like the MGS story, though I do like the first and third games in isolation from the rest.
 

L3m0n_L1m3

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I never understood it, and frankly didn't care to understand it. MGS4 was a massive letdown IMO, I don't want to play as my grandpa in a video game.
 

dunnace

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I adore the storyline of MGS3 and I rate it as probably the most engaging storyline in a game I've ever played. I also like Portable Ops. I'm not too familiar with MGS1 's entire storyline but what I've played I liked, and MGS2 had a great plot UP TO A POINT where it suddenly went batshit insane for the last half an hour or so.

Tomorrow, I shall learn if I like MGS4.

EDIT: Oh, and as for my opinion of Raiden, I don't mind him, but compared to Snake his character is less "badass". it's hard to feel cool when your wife keeps nagging you to get home and make the tea.
 

Rshady

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I guess the story woud be ok, if the writing wasn't so long-winded. The monologues seem to always go on for hours, which is always a sign of poor writing :D. The storylines in MGS (IMO) have always detracted from the gameplay, which makes it more of an irritant rather then something to enjoy. I voted hate :p.
 

Siegreich

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tiredinnuendo said:
The story is poorly told, constantly repeated to make sure you got it, explained 600 different ways while Kojima was still deciding which versions to retcon out, and really at the end of the day wasn't all that special.

Gamers generally accept this because we're not used to stories taking place in games. Sure, we have "action movie" or "generic space opera" stories a fair amount, but it's rare to get anything more complex, so people fawn over MGS's storyline as the Sophie's Choice of our medium. The problem therein being, as already expressed, that Kojima had (at its bones) a relatively simple storyline going, but he's so bad at telling it that the complexity goes off the scale.

So no, I didn't care for it. You get the same "epic" moments in a bankrupt storyline game like Gears of War, with the added advantage of getting to spend most of the game playing the game. If you have to spend over seven hours explaining something that I could break down in twenty minutes, you're doing it wrong.

- J
Not used to storylines in games, what the hell are you talking about? The current market may be full of braindead shooters, but alot of us do delve into rpgs quite a bit and those are noting but stories.

Back to the point metal gear may be somewhat convoluted, but it's still an incredibly satisfying story.
 

tiredinnuendo

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Siegreich said:
tiredinnuendo said:
The story is poorly told, constantly repeated to make sure you got it, explained 600 different ways while Kojima was still deciding which versions to retcon out, and really at the end of the day wasn't all that special.

Gamers generally accept this because we're not used to stories taking place in games. Sure, we have "action movie" or "generic space opera" stories a fair amount, but it's rare to get anything more complex, so people fawn over MGS's storyline as the Sophie's Choice of our medium. The problem therein being, as already expressed, that Kojima had (at its bones) a relatively simple storyline going, but he's so bad at telling it that the complexity goes off the scale.

So no, I didn't care for it. You get the same "epic" moments in a bankrupt storyline game like Gears of War, with the added advantage of getting to spend most of the game playing the game. If you have to spend over seven hours explaining something that I could break down in twenty minutes, you're doing it wrong.

- J
Not used to storylines in games, what the hell are you talking about? The current market may be full of braindead shooters, but alot of us do delve into rpgs quite a bit and those are noting but stories.

Back to the point metal gear may be somewhat convoluted, but it's still an incredibly satisfying story.
First off... damn. Super-necropost.

I didn't say that games don't have stories. I just said they weren't anything all that special. Stories aren't the main point of games, and it's sad how many people can't accept that. You name one game with the storytelling power of The Godfather or Sophie's Choice and I'll take it back.

Also, just to stop anything too easy before it gets started, any RPG that I can distill down to "Evil Corporations. Good Earth. Gather a party to save the world." doesn't have a stellar story.

- J
 

Siegreich

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tiredinnuendo said:
Siegreich said:
tiredinnuendo said:
The story is poorly told, constantly repeated to make sure you got it, explained 600 different ways while Kojima was still deciding which versions to retcon out, and really at the end of the day wasn't all that special.

Gamers generally accept this because we're not used to stories taking place in games. Sure, we have "action movie" or "generic space opera" stories a fair amount, but it's rare to get anything more complex, so people fawn over MGS's storyline as the Sophie's Choice of our medium. The problem therein being, as already expressed, that Kojima had (at its bones) a relatively simple storyline going, but he's so bad at telling it that the complexity goes off the scale.

So no, I didn't care for it. You get the same "epic" moments in a bankrupt storyline game like Gears of War, with the added advantage of getting to spend most of the game playing the game. If you have to spend over seven hours explaining something that I could break down in twenty minutes, you're doing it wrong.

- J
Not used to storylines in games, what the hell are you talking about? The current market may be full of braindead shooters, but alot of us do delve into rpgs quite a bit and those are noting but stories.

Back to the point metal gear may be somewhat convoluted, but it's still an incredibly satisfying story.
First off... damn. Super-necropost.

I didn't say that games don't have stories. I just said they weren't anything all that special. Stories aren't the main point of games, and it's sad how many people can't accept that. You name one game with the storytelling power of The Godfather or Sophie's Choice and I'll take it back.

Also, just to stop anything too easy before it gets started, any RPG that I can distill down to "Evil Corporations. Good Earth. Gather a party to save the world." doesn't have a stellar story.

- J
I'd have to say Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3 and 4 both feature a rich cast, good setting, great atmosphere and some of the most unique and brilliant stories in gaming.
 

tiredinnuendo

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Siegreich said:
I'd have to say Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3 and 4 both feature a rich cast, good setting, great atmosphere and some of the most unique and brilliant stories in gaming.
Meh.

I would say that either of those titles have decent stories *for a video game*, but I wouldn't sit down and read the Persona series.

Maybe it's how we're defining "story" that is gumming the understanding here. A story is made up of a few things: storyline, pacing, and narrative. Storyline is simply the basic plot points (a la Persona 3 being basically Dark City).

Narrative is the way these points are expressed and the perspective they're expressed from. This is the difference between Snow White and Snow, Glass, Apples. It's also the reason that Memento works, because if you told the story forward, it wouldn't be very good.

Pacing is how well the narrative relays the story, how drawn in the viewer/reader is, and how "stuck" in the world they feel. A good video game example would be Batman: Arkham Asylum, which had a pretty meh storyline and while the narrative was okay, it was the pacing that sucked people in and didn't let them go.

To apply all this to the original topic this thread discusses, MGS4 has a terrible storyline, a passable narrative, and awful pacing. The story itself can be distilled down to "sew up every plot point with retcons and nanomachines", and the pacing, as already mentioned, requires Kojima to spend way too long over *and* re-explaining the same godawful plot points of his story in case we didn't completely understand the way the system works yet. The narrative.... obviously works for some folks, I guess, but it's not enough to save it.

- J