As the number one game series once owned by Konami, Metal Gear Solid (hereinafter referred to as MGS) has brought players countless joys and emotions, but with the break between its producer Hideo Kojima and Konami, this series was eventually erased by Konami. This time, let's talk about this game series full of regrets.
Konami and Hideo Kojima have a love-hate relationship
Since you want to talk about MGS, it must be inseparable from a topic: the love and hatred between Konami and Kojima. The main business of Konami Group can be divided into four categories: A. game business, including home console games, mobile games, card games and the cloud; B. Bo Qingge related; C. various large-scale entertainment arcade machines; D. fitness and sports industry.
From the 90s of the last century to 2005 was the golden age of the Japanese game industry, because the cost of game production was not so high, and the sales were guaranteed, so at that time Konami took home consoles as its main business, hideo Kojima made a name for itself with MGS1 in such a situation, and Nippon Factory was also the leader of the world video game industry in the true sense during this time. But since 2006, the wind direction has begun to change, when the European and American manufacturers on the PC through a large number of hardware changes, DIRECTX technology to change the dynasty, as well as the PC development environment of the honing technology, coupled with the follow-up capital layout operation, XBOX the first generation of the road, the European and American game industry finally began to shine in the XBOX360 era.
Due to the rapid development of graphics technology after 2006, concepts such as 1080P/60FPS have slowly begun to gain popularity, which has undoubtedly greatly increased the development funds and labor costs of the game. In the past, there may be a surplus of million-level sales, and manufacturers stuck to adapting to their own game styles and player groups, but with the change of market winds, the Japanese royal road or the second style is not as popular as before, and because of the increase in costs, the game profitability has become more and more difficult, these factors have gradually changed the Japanese factory from the dominant side to the backward side.
In this situation, the japanese factory that has a beautiful scenery and ease in the past is naturally difficult to adapt, and in the face of double competition in cost and technology, there have begun to appear such as market elimination, merger survival or the emergence of various TYPES of HD games, so we can see that the japanese factory large companies merge with each other, the Japanese factory game gradually becomes comfortable and small cost, the handheld machine suddenly rises, and the rise of mobile games that has continued until now. On the contrary, European and American manufacturers have accumulated a lot of technology and funds after years of training on the PC, so in 2006,006's Gears of War 1, 2007's Modern Warfare 1, 2009's God of War 3, and other well-known masterpieces are not ready to load, and after 2010, they have gradually changed the game industry into an open world map. In addition to Nintendo, Capcom, SE and other large manufacturers, most of the other small and medium-sized Japanese manufacturers are bitter.
Hideo Kojima, a well-known Japanese game producer, is not willing to see this situation continue. Coupled with the fact that MGS4 was developed for PS3, the gap between the final game's screen performance and trailer is not small (although this is related to the performance of the console itself, but it also includes various difficulties in development), these factors strengthened Hideo Kojima's determination to make his own engine, so the FOX engine was born.
However, unlike capcom's self-created engine, which has been successfully replaced by the PS4/PS5 era, although the FOX engine of the Kojima group is indeed very good in the performance of character modules and light and shadow, there are also insufficient model surfaces, physical computing power, etc. Such a high investment and low return project is naturally not what the general company management executives want to see. In the past, because the cost was relatively low, and the game industry had not changed much, it could still be safe, and once the development cost and the game market changed drastically, Kojima and Konami did not have a consensus on the future direction, the two naturally had contradictions. So there are the stories that we know later, Kojima and Konami frequently passing tricks, the doubts about the development time and high cost of phantom pain, the second chapter of phantom pain becoming an eternal regret, and even Kojima's departure from Konami, the two completely deadlocked, and other events, all of which are derived from such an environment.
The shock of the plot of the Phantom Pain Trilogy
As the final work of the series, Phantom Pain is strictly a BIG BOSS trilogy, starting with MGS3 and ending with Phantom Pain (although the follow-up of BIG BOSS will not be truly finished until MGS4). MGS3 tells that the naked snake is ordered to go to the Soviet Union to save the outlaw scientists and avoid the new nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of the Soviet Union, while the mentor THE BOSS also goes undercover with the Soviet GRU Woking to contact the sage's legacy, disguised as a defector with a small nuclear weapon as a souvenir.
While the rescue mission was tense, Woking suddenly test-fired a small nuclear weapon, and in the face of a full-scale nuclear war with the Soviet government, THE BOSS voluntarily sacrificed himself to disguise the incident as a vicious traitor, all of which he led the planning and had nothing to do with the US government. In the end, the play can only be played in the end, the United States launched the snake-eater action, ordering the naked snake to obliterate the BOSS, the game ending is extremely heavy and depressed, on the surface the naked snake completed the task to undertake the name of the BOSS and was praised, and the BOSS is forever stigmatized as a vicious traitor, but in fact, he is a true patriot. With the salute of the naked snake in front of the boss's grave, the player's emotional influence has also reached its highest point.
The parallelists tell the story of BIG BOSS after MGS3 and ZERO parted ways to build a borderless army in Costa Rica due to the horrific incident of children. In addition to encountering people such as Miller and PAZ, the main axis of the story nuclear containment has also been well explored, under the action of the powerful AI and the false launch signal of the walking nuclear weapon METAL GEAR, in the face of a hair-trigger nuclear war winter, the plot tension at the end of the game is still very tense even if it is only a static cutscene due to cost considerations, and people can't help but think about what nuclear weapons can bring to mankind, continuing the anti-war and anti-nuclear concept that Kojima wants to explore.
The original explosion point and phantom pain We can see a lot of heavy themes that Kojima wants to explore and the general game does not touch, such as boy scouts, whether to decisively sacrifice a small number of infected people in the face of group interests and risks, etc., and we can also see many discussions such as revenge, phantom limb pain, language domination, etc. At the end of the game, THE PERFORMANCE OF QUICK IS Caught and then escaped is also eye-catching, and everything makes people feel into the drama and shock.
The series is well played
As a series of works, the perfection of the gameplay is definitely one of the most crucial factors, and the improvement process from MGS3 to phantom pain is the most worth mentioning. Personally extremely subjective, MGS3 is actually just for the plot to play, whether it is the operation or the system is a generation that individuals are not very adaptable to, but compared to the first generation and the second generation, it can still be played. Objectively speaking, MGS3 sneaks into survival through a large number of item props and switching interfaces, and it is not difficult to understand why the PS2 era in 2005 will make many players happy.
Although it is a work that responds to the handheld boom and cost considerations, the more modern TPS operation experience, coupled with the collection and collocation fun of the base research and development system, is the generation that really began to make me enjoy the game. The phantom pain is basically the direction of inheritance and parallelists, but the introduction of open maps, and the improvement of many basic operations, such as running and terrain climbing, jumping, robbing enemy vehicles on the map, cultivating his own soldiers or partners to let him go out with you on missions, reducing the difficulty of stealth, etc., so that the experience from the parallelist system is taken to a higher level.
In order to cope with the mainstream open world trend, although Kojima still adopts the linear level + sequential method of the main line mission for the sake of the coherence of the plot performance, it also adds a large number of additional branch lines to collect growth elements, as well as the seamless map born for this purpose. For this kind of fusion of semi-open design, I personally raise my hands to agree, openness and linearity have their advantages and disadvantages, integration is also a good way, why do you have to copy 100% of the open world of Europe and the United States, running around the illustrated branch line is a good work?
Full of shocking phantom pain, imperfect second chapter, and regret
The phantom pain is shocking in all aspects, but due to the direction and resource policy between Hideo Kojima and Konami, it eventually leaves the regret of ep51 fly kingdom, and also makes people reflect on whether Kojima's mastery and use of project management is too romantic and craftsman. In the end, Hideo Kojima and Konami completely broke away, which doomed the phantom pain to always be an incomplete work, the second chapter full of artificial traces and the EP51 circulating on the Internet, for players who love MGS, in addition to regret or regret.