History of Metal Gear (1987 - 2021) | Documentary

[Music] do welcome back everybody i'm nick930 and today i want to share with you the complete history of metal gear [Music] what's that there's a revolutionary mobile nuclear missile system a nuclear-equipped walking battle tank the kind of metal gear if you will metal gear this will be a sneaking mission must not be seen by the enemy is that clear got it i'm ready to go we're out of time you've got to stop that thing it's been a while brother liquid you've got to stop it before it's too late to track him down look our ways of thinking might be different to me you're still a legend a hero i'm no hero never was and will be now i'll finish the work that father began i will surpass him i will destroy him what's wrong snake are you okay snake kept you waiting huh gear is a third-person stealth action video game series created by hideo kojima and the gaming division of a japanese entertainment holdings corporation called konami in practically each game players assume the role of a legendary soldier codenamed snake who is tasked with infiltrating enemy occupied territory with nothing but a sneaking suit and a pack of smokes though thanks to his advanced training he's able to acquire a number of helpful tools and powerful weapons to deal with the greatest of threats whether that be a squad of supernatural soldiers or a 40-foot tall nuclear-equipped bipedal tank the series has been celebrated for decades thanks to its rich storytelling its polished gameplay mechanics and its unmistakable style so much so that even those who don't consider themselves gamers will likely already be familiar with at least some aspects of it what's more the series is also responsible for helping to popularize stealth action in the video game industry and also help to usher forth the age of the triple a game so how has this nearly 35 year old video game franchise changed since its initial debut and where could it go next well to answer that let's begin by first looking at how the series was conceived back in the late 1980s in the early 1980s the arcade video game industry had entered into its golden age sci-fi shoot-em-ups like space invaders and asteroids proved to be immensely popular and inspired many soon-to-be legendary game designers to throw their own hats into the ring only further contributing to the growth of the medium there was tekoro fujiwara creator of capcom's sweet home who played a critical role in popularizing survival horror silas warner the mind behind one of the earliest stealth action experiences and of course shigeru miyamoto whose groundbreaking creations helped to bring the video game industry back from the brink meanwhile tech companies around the world raced to establish a firm foothold in the emerging interactive home entertainment space with a swarm of 8-bit gaming platforms flooding the market overwhelming american consumers and inevitably triggering the infamous market crash of 1983 but somewhat unaffected by this crash was the computer gaming industry platforms like the commodore 64 and zx spectrum saw large success in western territory throughout the course of the mid 80s while the msx platform dominated in japan and parts of europe hoping to capitalize on this opportunity a japanese entertainment company called konami began to distance themselves from arcade cabinet design and established the msx home computer division within their offices in osaka japan in entered 22 year old hideo kojima who despite studying economics in college decided to instead upset the societal norms of 1980s japan and pursued a career in the entertainment industry kojima had long been fascinated with the art of cinema and storytelling at a young age he would spend his evenings with his father watching all manner of film and was even encouraged to stay up late at night to see each movie through to its conclusion he spent most of his teenage years writing stories and screenplays in hopes that he might one day win an award for them and then be given an opportunity to enter into the highly competitive film industry but during his time in college kojima became enamored with the emerging video game medium and spent many of his off hours playing miyamoto's super mario brothers and a murder mystery adventure called portopia renzoku satuchin jinjikin then following his graduation from college he applied for a job at konami's osaka office hoping to break into the expanding video game development space and build his very own experiences for nintendo's famicom but when he finally received the offer he was assigned to work for konami's msx division instead while grateful for the opportunity he couldn't help but be disappointed he was determined to make a name for himself but the msx's technical limitations made that goal seem less obtainable his first project with the msx team was a sequel to an action-adventure platforming game called antarctic adventure hideo serving as the assistant designer contributed a great deal to the creation of this game allowing it to stand out drastically from its predecessor the first game was pretty bare bones with players simply needing to dodge a few obstacles along some glaciers but the sequel offered a plethora of changes including power-ups varied environments and even alternate endings dependent on the player's performance konami was impressed kojima had no prior experience after all and it became clear within only the first few months that he possessed a natural gift for this type of thing so to test him further they gave him something a bit more challenging to work on and had him take over as the lead designer for a side-scrolling platformer called lost world but when kojima presented this overly ambitious design document to the executives at konami they rejected the changes and decided to redirect kojima towards making a military combat title instead something that would be in the same vein as popular arcade shooters at the time like capcom's commando disheartened but still determined kojima began to piece together another design document you recognized early on that the msx's biggest handicap was its inability to display more than four horizontal sprites at once making the large battle sequences associated with games like commando impossible so to circumvent this issue you thought of a creative solution the game would still have soldiers but rather than feature non-stop open combat across a scrolling environment why not give players a chance to avoid the combat altogether he based this concept strongly around his love for the 1963 sturgess film the great escape where a band of pows attempt to escape from a nazi prison camp during world war ii and he aimed to deliver that same tension of almost being caught into a fully interactive experience by doing this kojima would be able to make even a single combative soldier on screen feel more intimidating than the dozens and other more conventional shooter games at the time kojima then presented his design document to the executives at konami with the working title metal gear intruder but to his dismay it too was rejected they had asked kojima to deliver an exciting action experience and were concerned that by forcing players to constantly avoid confrontation the game's hero may come off as cowardly and wouldn't appeal to western audiences kojima took his projected design and reapproached the concept he remained convinced that this new stealth action route was the way to go but rather than have a game over screen appear when the player was caught he incorporated a new alert phase giving players a chance to fight back or flee if they wanted to the new alert phase was likened to that of pacman offering a fresh change up to the pacing that would keep the player invested for longer and because of this konami agreed to greenlight production of kojima's directorial debut metal gear development for metal gear was handled by a remarkably small team of programmers and artists while kojima handled the core game design and writing a trio of programmers led by hiroyuki fugui worked within the confines of the slightly newer msx2 hardware to commit hideo's ideas to code this required them to piece together a detection system from scratch along with enemy patrol routes that would need to reset with each screen refresh meanwhile a pair of artists sculpted the pixelated halls of metal gear's industrial environment using a limited color palette of only 16 colors while also ensuring each character and level design didn't come off too much like a childish cartoon they generated hundreds of interconnected mazes using simplistic geometric shapes and angled perspectives to help give the walls a perceivable depth and then they worked with the programming team to balance out enemy patrol pathing and obstacles without overstepping the msx2's rendering limitations meanwhile lead sound designer eku mizutani and his team in the konami square wave club formulated the game's sound effects and musical score enhancing the action further with a dynamic soundtrack that would alter based on the enemy alert status it was a bold step for video game sound design as most titles during that time period just utilized a single audio track per level to save on memory but it proved to be a critical component of metal gear's unique atmosphere as these various development teams pieced together the gameplay experience hideo worked to formulate the game's narrative the core plot was simple the spy infiltrates a secure facility saves some hostages and stops a dangerous super weapon from destroying the world but even this seemingly straightforward narrative was uncommon for its time and would serve as a jumping off point for one of gaming's most beloved stories finally in the summer of 1987 after nearly a year of development konami released the original metal gear exclusively for the msx2 platform metal gear takes place in the then futuristic year of 1995 where a highly organized paramilitary force has established a militant state in southern africa called outer heaven fearful that this growing threat may possess nuclear capabilities an american special forces unit called foxhound is sent in to investigate but after the unit's most skilled field agent grey fox is captured rookie soldier solid snake is sent in after to rescue him and to ascertain the whereabouts of the rumored superweapon metal gear players assume the role of the rookie snake as they infiltrate outer heaven and search for clues pertaining to grey fox and metal gear's whereabouts along the way players will encounter a number of obstacles mainly enemy sentries security devices and a band of powerful mercenaries each with their own special quirks and cheesy nicknames to go along with them but as snake learns more about outer heaven and its powerful nuclear-equipped bipedal weapon the stakes are risen sharply and it becomes clear that not everyone can be trusted without spoiling anything metal gear's narrative was revolutionary for its time sure rpgs in the late 80s and 90s had plenty of rich narratives woven in but to have even a hint of that within the confines of an action-adventure game was highly unusual on top of that the game's big twist and clever fourth wall breaking would set the scene for the franchise moving forward but of course the real selling point back then for the original metal gear was not at story but rather its highly unique gameplay design metal gear at its core is a stealth action adventure where sneaking past enemies whenever possible is encouraged most of the game is played from a semi-top-down perspective and tasks players with navigating snake through maze-like level environments while avoiding detection from patrolling enemies if snake wanders into an enemy's line of sight then a red exclamation mark will appear over the alerted guard and the action will shift immediately to a fight or flight situation players can choose to either stay and fight off the alerted enemies or alternatively they can run off the screen to reset the alert status completely however if the player triggers a base wide alarm things get a bit more challenging as enemy reinforcements will appear in greater numbers and escaping to the next room won't necessarily help most of the time what's more enemies in metal gear deal some serious damage enough that a direct confrontation with multiple enemies at once will often end in the players staring at a game over screen to help even the odds players must be more patient in their approach and make use of an assortment of various tools and weapons collected throughout the course of their adventure upon deployment snake is armed with nothing more than a pack of cigarettes and a radio transmitter to communicate with a support team but the player explores enough of the game world and is sure to backtrack and open previously locked doors then they'll discover items that can make infiltration more manageable these items include things like infrared goggles to spot laser beams a mine detector to safely traverse mine fields and of course the cardboard box that could be used to hide directly in plain sight so long as the player remains still when using it in addition to these items players can also select between a few firearms each with their own distinct advantages and disadvantages the handgun for example fires slowly but will always fire in a straight line based on the player's orientation whereas the smg can fire fast but it lacks the accuracy other notable weapons and items include a remote control missile launcher useful for attacking enemies around corners a silencer to quietly dispatch enemies at range explosives to open up new paths and most important of all rations that could be eaten to replenish the player's health bar players can also increase their maximum health by locating a set number of pows hidden throughout the game incentivizing exploration even further the entire experience was well ahead of its time in 1987 taking elements only just introduced by metroid a year prior and combining it with a stealth action that silas warner had attempted back in 1981 and the end result is a game that remarkably over 34 years later is still enjoyable to play today the original metal gear was met with a decent amount of praise upon its release with many holding it up as one of the must play titles on the msx2 platform though a few like the games machine did point out that the visuals were lagging behind the competition a fair amount chalking it up more to the limitations of the hardware rather than the game designers themselves but even still metal gear proved to be a step in the right direction and now that he had finally released his first game into the world kojima was eager to make something new and entered into production on a blade runner-inspired graphic novel game soon after as kojima spent the better part of the next couple years on his new game konami looked at his past metal gear work and saw serious potential in bringing it over to western audiences the game was oozing with western themes after all from its hollywood action-inspired hero to its more mature military-based elements so without kojima and his programming team's knowledge konami transferred the source code of metal gear over to a small famicom development team in their tokyo office and then instructed them to create a port of the game within a tight three-month window overwhelmed this small five-person team got to work retrofitting the game's visual and audio design to function within the confines of the famicom's capabilities and even redesigned the intro so that it would stand apart from the original release due to time and hardware limitations they even had to tweak the climatic battle against the tx-55 metal gear replacing it with a far less exciting master computer instead the end result was a game that while similar failed to capture the magic of the original msx2 release so much so that kojima himself has disowned the port from the franchise however this didn't matter to western audiences up until this point they had never even heard of metal gear before and the game's unusual stealth action mechanics coupled with this addictive formula helped it to stand out tremendously metal gear on the nes quickly became a hit selling significantly more than the original release and konami were quick to greenlight a follow-up for the sequel they assigned another internal development team many of whom had just come off working on the third castlevania and pushed him to incorporate even more action-based elements into the gameplay convinced that the old commando formula would be received better by its target western audience kojima still unaware that the metal gear property was being continued without him finally learned of this supposed sequel when talking to one of the programmers involved according to an interview between kojima and former msx magazine kojima was approached by this programmer during a train ride to tokyo and asked why he wasn't leading the project gojima surprised that a sequel was even being made went home that evening and wrote up an entire design document for a true sequel to metal gear and had it approved by konami the following day this was at the tail end of development for snatcher a project that had proven to be more difficult than he had initially anticipated so much so that they were forced to abandon the last two acts of that game leaving the story with a major cliffhanger that would never be resolved even so snatcher proved to be another success for kojima and with it finally out of the way the team immediately turned their attention towards metal gear again and how they can improve upon that original formula but before this true sequel could ever see the light of day konami's nes team had completed work on their own project and in the spring of 1990 they released snakes revenge exclusively for the nintendo entertainment system in western territories snake's revenge which is now considered to be non-canonical takes place three years at the events of the original game with a new threat emerging from an unnamed nation in the middle east snake along with a small team of allies are tasked with infiltrating a hostile military installation where they soon discover that a line of mass-produced metal gear tank units are being developed along with a powerful new prototype metal gear that is capable of delivering a devastating nuclear attack worldwide the gameplay is also fairly similar to the original games with a focus on stealth action exploration and item management though this game did introduce a few new mechanics to help it stand out including a knife to defeat sentries with a single melee attack more variety in level environments and even the ability to interrogate certain enemies for information with successful interrogations contributing to the player's rank progression though despite these few changes snake's revenge didn't fare quite as well as his predecessor sales were much lower likely due to the lack of the name metal gear on the box art and its visuals had started to show their age especially with the super nintendo right around the corner still it did at least receive some praise from hideo kojima himself it was said on multiple occasions that while not canon with the core storyline he still enjoyed snake's revenge a great deal and felt it properly utilized the characters he had introduced previously but of course it was the true metal gear sequel from kojima's team that would inevitably steal the show introducing a ton of fundamental changes to the gameplay formula that would transform the metal gear series forever as i mentioned previously metal gear 2's development began soon after kojima had been informed of an unsanctioned sequel eager to carry out his own vision kojima pitched a sequel to konami that would be tailor-made for the msx and within the first month kojima and his team had entered into full production updating the visual design and enhancing the many gameplay mechanics that kojima had felt needed improvement then following a brief delay in the late months of development to assist with a snatch report kojima released the true next entry to the series metal gear 2 solid snake exclusive for japanese audiences in the summer of 1990 metal gear 2 takes place 4 years after the original game with the world's dominant super superpowers attempting full denuclearization in pursuit of peace and prosperity but after a crude oil shortage thrusts the world into economic turmoil a rogue militant state in asia called zanzibar land seizes control of the world's remaining nuclear arsenal and kidnaps a czech biologist who had been developing a solution to the world's dependence on petroleum with the world once again at the precipice of nuclear armageddon snake is called out of retirement this time serving under foxhound's new commanding officer roy campbell the mission infiltrate zanzibar land rescue the czech biologist being held captive and disable the enemy's nuclear arsenal from here things begin to strongly resemble the format of the original metal gear players sneak around a heavily guarded fortress search for key cards rescue pows and child soldiers and deal with absurdly over-the-top bosses but there's also a fair amount of subtle improvements incorporated into metal gear 2's narrative that help it to stand out for one metal gear 2 kicks off with a flashy cinematic intro cutscene highly reminiscent of a hollywood movies intro sequence something that was not at all common at that time additionally there's more nuance to the characters themselves especially solid snake whose brooding cynical personality is finally established thanks to the extended dialogue sequences he has with other characters other aspects introduced prior like fourth wall breaking gameplay elements involving using the game's manual to decrypt secret codes also make a return perpetuating a trend that would soon become expected of the series but one of metal gear 2's most important contributions at least in regards to its story is the major plot twist at the end revealing the truth about snake's origin and transforming the narrative from its cliche good versus evil into something a bit more complex coincidentally in the exact same way that george lucas's empire strikes back had transformed the meaning of the original star wars only 10 years earlier meanwhile metal gear 2's gameplay also features quite the overhaul so much so that it would serve as the fundamental blueprint for the series moving forward the general premise of the game remains the same as before players start with nothing but a pack of smokes and need to sneak around enemies and acquire gear as they search for clues to help complete their mission but now players can make use of an on-screen radar to navigate through enemy territory more easily the player appears as a blinking red dot in the center grid space that represents the current room shown on screen while enemy soldiers appear as blinking white dots that can now be tracked even when they're in an adjacent room off-screen this change allows players to see ahead of time whether they're going to run into an enemy when moving through a doorway that also enables enemies to travel from room to room as well which along with our new cones of vision makes use of the radar paramount to avoid detection to help balance out this powerful tool further enemy alert phases will automatically jam the radar showing only the alert level and time remaining before it resets if the player manages to escape the enemy's view for long enough an evasion phase will begin indicating that enemies are now searching the area this adds a great new dimension to the game's stealth action letting players essentially play hide and seek with the enemy and snake's new crouch and crawling maneuvers only add to this further but crawling isn't only used to squeeze underneath small spaces players can also use this new ability to minimize the amount of sound they produce as enemies can now hear the player when walking on certain noisy surfaces other changes include a more consistent visual style removing the awkward 2d elevator screens from before a redesign to the way card keys work simplifying the process of opening doors in the late stages of the game new ration types each restoring varying amounts of health and a number of new tools and gadgets like grenades a stinger missile launcher night vision goggles and a usable hiding place that's somehow even more absurd than snake's signature cardboard box metal gear 2's many improvements served to greatly evolve the metal gear series though its contributions went largely unnoticed due to the game's limited distribution within the japanese market metal gear 2 was met with high critical acclaim it was praised for its excellent storytelling along with its much cleaner execution of its gameplay elements with only minor complaints being directed towards its frequent reliance on backtracking when the game finally did manage to receive a u.s port it retroactively received unanimous praise from collectors and reviewers alike 15 some years after its release but long before players became aware of its existence metal gear 2 would lay the groundwork for one of the most popular and influential video games in the history of the medium [Music] following the partial success of metal gear 2 kojima once more stepped away from his magnum opus hoping to diversify his portfolio with titles outside of the metal gear universe and because both versions of the metal gear sequel had underperformed konami no longer felt it necessary to invest in another in-house sequel giving kojima the chance to continue the story when he felt the time was right during this hiatus kojima and his development team spent the early 90s working on a point-and-click adventure game that would marry western 1980 science fiction with social commentary regarding anti-asian sentiment born of films like kaufman's rising sun this project titled police knots would mark a distinct shift in creative control towards kojima whose storytelling capabilities he felt had been significantly limited by his lack of prior programming experience with the help of the scripting engine he designed he was now able to directly manipulate the game's musical cues and animations as he saw fit he finally felt in control of his vision and the resulting game was met with glowing reception within its limited japanese release following this initial launch kojima's production team spent the course of the next year porting the title over to the cd-rom-based 3do interactive multiplayer console the 3do was initially marketed as the next big step for the console gaming space with high-end graphics previously only achievable on pcs eager to take advantage of this kojima decided to take the metal gear series back out of retirement and began to jot down ideas for a metal gear 3. but 3do inevitably failed to live up to its lofty expectations and was quickly edged out only a year later by sony's groundbreaking playstation because of this metal gear 3 was redirected to target a playstation release instead and full production on the project began in the early months of 1995. meanwhile it's important to note that konami was also evolving around this time frame with the continued growth of its software development assets konami's corporate offices decided to set up a divisional organization with several regional subsidiaries each responsible for their own specialized intellectual properties the studio in tokyo for example became konami computer entertainment tokyo and had begun working on the survival horror series silent hill the old osaka office became konami computer entertainment osaka and kojima's team previously known as osaka development division number five were transferred to a separate office in tokyo and were subsequently renamed into konami computer entertainment japan with this studio refresh kojima's development team nearly tripled in size with roughly 30 some developers and multiple units all responsible for different aspects of the game's design most notably illustrator and lead graphic artist yoji shinkawa who helped to reinvent the design of metal gear's iconic characters with striking conceptual designs that have since become synonymous with the metal gear property with yogi's help the programming and graphic design team were able to more properly realize kojima's vision and began to sculpt models with a level of visual fidelity that was simply unheard of at the time snake for example was made up of nearly 700 polygons that's more than double the amount of polygons used by core's lara croft in the first several tomb raider games then add on top of that the phenomenal camera work smart use of motion blur and unprecedented cinematic presentation and it's easy to see why metal gear solid was primed to dominate the gaming space but it wasn't without its technical hurdles when deciding on how to properly realize this game's 3d atmosphere the goal initially was to have the game be played from a first person perspective delivering the most realistic experience as possible but kojima shot down the idea stating that the first person games in the market weren't smooth enough and would make most gamers nauseous he did still love the idea of being able to view the world from snake's eyes though and agreed to incorporate an optional first-person view button usable only when standing still the rest of the game would be rendered from a more traditional top-down perspective that would smoothly transition whenever the player wanted to peak around corners or crawl into a tight space to help dial in these many camera angles kojima and assistant director yoshikazu matsuhana recreated the game's level environments using lego bricks and would pan a small camera across the build until they identified the proper camera distances for each corner as these game environments started to come together programmers and artists worked collaboratively to create the most realistic stealth action experience possible kojima was adamant that the game be true to life and even had a research team flown out to meet with the huntington beach swat team in california for consultation on modern day firearms and military vehicles as development entered its second year the game started to enter a playable state early builds of the game focused on an exterior helipad that was seamlessly connected to an interior tank hanger a lot of work went into fine-tuning the core gameplay mechanics here including what the player would be capable of and how the enemies would react once the game logic was locked down steady progress was made in expanding the scope of the environment allowing the nuclear warhead storage building and initial dock area to finally take shape finally after three years of heightened anticipation the project was complete and konami computer entertainment japan released the third main line entry to the series metal gear solid exclusively for the sony playstation metal gear solid kicks off six years after the events of metal gear 2 with solid snake being called out of retirement once again to help prevent a nuclear catastrophe foxhound now controlled by series newcomer liquid snake and his army of genome soldiers have rebelled against the united states government and have taken control of a nuclear disposal facility in alaska called shadow moses their demands the remains of the legendary soldier big boss the lead antagonist for the past two titles refusing to give in to these demands the us pressures roy campbell to put together an infiltration team consisting of field operative solid snake geneticist naomi hunter data analyst mei ling and returning survival consultant from metal gear 2 master miller their mission to infiltrate shadow moses island rescue two high-profile hostages and confirm whether or not the insurrectionist possess the capabilities to launch a nuclear strike right from the get-go metal gear solid demonstrates a massive shift towards a more properly realized cinematic presentation key parts in the narrative are now highlighted with high quality cutscenes with varying camera angles and cuts incorporated to mimic a major motion picture film characters are also fully voiced for the first time with the most notable performance coming from a 28 year old david hater there are no heroes in war all the heroes i know are either dead or in prison one or the other but snake you're a hero aren't you i'm just a man who's good at what he does killing hater initially auditioned for the role of solid snake using his own natural speaking voice securing the part but after reading over the script and learning of snake's long and painful history he decided to inject more bitterness and contempt into the performance ultimately redefining the character and solidifying himself as one of the most beloved and iconic voices in video game history adding to this is metal gear solid's unforgettable musical score that seamlessly blends calm tension-building swells with suspenseful percussion-based action pieces double trigger after alerting an enemy [Music] and then of course there's the gameplay metal gear solid builds off of the previously established concepts and reworks them to function within the confines of a rendered 3d space sneaking past guards searching for supplies and hoofing it under a cardboard box all returned more or less the same though the increased range of movement and verticality literally adds a new dimension to it all with players able to climb up ladders navigate through air vents and press their backs up against walls to peek down hallways but this increased freedom is shared with the enemy as well but we're capable of spotting snake even if they themselves aren't visible on screen [Music] to help with this players are now shown every enemy's cone of vision on the radar display if a player is detected outside of this yellow cone then the enemy may enter into an investigative state where they'll check out the disturbance for a few seconds before returning to their patrol it's very similar to the way enemies reacted to sound in metal gear too but it's now expanded to include visual disturbances you might not expect like footprints left in the snow or hiding in a cardboard box that belongs in a different building simply put these soldiers aren't quite as easy to fool and will require slightly more finesse to slip by unnoticed though of course stealth isn't always an option sometimes snake just has to get his hands dirty and metal gear solid features lots of new combat mechanics too hand-to-hand combat is now built around a three-hit combo attack with two punches and a kick capable of knocking an enemy onto their back and if a player lands two of these combos they may temporarily stun the enemy without permanently killing them alternatively players can quickly flip an enemy over their back or grab them and use them as a human shield a helpful technique for players that want to drag a guard somewhere quiet and eliminate them without being noticed the game's firearms are also handled a bit differently this time bullets aren't just small ping pong balls anymore and fire at a more realistic velocity making the full auto famas a more practical weapon in combat encounters than the full auto weapons offered in the past metal gear solid also introduces the semi-automatic psg-1 sniper rifle that like the stinger missile launcher is locked to a first-person viewpoint where the movement keys are used to fine-tune the crosshair another weapon worth mentioning is the chaff grenade the chap grenade is a throwable explosive device that doesn't deal any direct damage to enemies but it can be used to disable a number of electrical devices around shadow moses island outside of that metal gear solid is remarkably very much the same as metal gear 2. in fact some argue that it's practically a remake there's the initial infiltration sequence where snake needs to crawl into a vent to enter a large tank hanger the battle was some sort of ninja the cryptic helpful messages over the kodak just call me deep throat boss battles with tanks and helicopters blowing open walls with explosives trapped doors invisible enemies that appear alongside snake in an elevator pretty much everything and this won't be the last instance of this happening either the rehash of these aspects is very much something kojima intended hoping to translate this idea of the monotony and endlessness of war though it also serves to reintroduce clever game concepts from before that many gamers especially in the west still hadn't had a chance to experience and now that it was finally in their hands they were blown away metal gear solid was an incredible achievement far beyond what anyone could have hoped for in 1998 the music the acting the graphics the stealth action the deep lore it was all overwhelming and thanks to brilliant marketing campaigns like pizza hut's pizza-powered playstation giveaway over 12 million gamers were able to try out metal gear solid's opening hour greatly contributing to the game's popularity surveillance camera when the game finally hit store shelves it managed to generate almost 52 million dollars in revenue within the first four months far exceeding the expectations of both konami and its developers accompanying these incredible sales members were a sea of glowing reviews with some like ign claiming it to be as close to perfection as possible the game was praised primarily for its gorgeous visual direction along with its outstanding story and character design that transcended industry norms and delivered a narrative that sought to rival the movie industry the only publication to really lay into metal gear solid was gamespot that criticized the title for its unstable frame rate its short length and its simplicity regardless metal gear solid was considered by most to be a masterpiece it has since won countless awards for its highly innovative design and continues to influence the design of video games today the developers decades later still trying to emulate the feel of its cinematic storytelling what's more metal gear solid had finally popularized the stealth action genre despite the concept having been introduced several decades prior and before long established franchises and newcomers alike using stealth action elements would begin to flood the scene harrowing in a golden age for the genre soon after metal gear solid's release konami computer entertainment japan worked on creating an updated version of the game for japanese audiences called metal gear solid integral this version includes a number of tweaks to the japanese playstation release of the game including an option to toggle between the original japanese voice actors and the english dubs new gameplay modes and skins to add replay value and a separate disc titled metal gear solid vr missions expanding the previously included bonus content with up to 300 playable stages with a special teaser for a planned mainline sequel integral was then ported over to the windows pc by an american based company called digital dialect a year later that sported options for higher resolutions and keyboard control however because of the nature of the pc platform this release of metal gear solid cuts out a lot of the playstation specific features fans have come to love from the game most notably psycho mantis's fourth wall breaking speech where he reads the player's playstation memory card but there's no denying that at the cusp of the new millennium metal gear solid shared a mutually beneficial relationship with the playstation platform boosting its popularity while simultaneously skyrocketing console sales and this partnership would continue with kojima's vision of the series's future about a month prior to metal gear solid's first release kojima was preparing to retire from his tale of epic espionage hoping to deliver his growing fan base something different but with the overwhelming success of his playstation debut he found he couldn't escape his fate and a sequel became the lead focus for him and his studio soon after then as they were studying the newly acquired playstation 2 development kits a request came in from konami's europe offices for a game boy color entry to the series kojima intrigued by the prospect of translating their 3d rendered gameplay back into sprite form agreed to take on the challenge and tapped graphic designer akuya nakamura programmer fukushima and lead director shinta nojiri to assist along with a handful of other support staff at various stages of development the goal for this project was to translate the newer metal gear solid experience into something that kids could play portably in the schoolyard the game boy color was tailored more towards children after all so a lot of thought went into making the game more kid-friendly while still maintaining metal gear's signature themes and style this resulted in some fairly bizarre story elements that kojima later admitted may have been a bit too extreme even for the metal gear universe though thanks to the efforts of nakamura the graphical design still managed to portray the world of metal gear in a faithful realistic way with complex sprite animation work that far surpassed other game boy titles at the time it took a relatively long time to complete with development efforts for metal gear solid sequel often taken priority but in the spring of 2000 metal gear solid ghost babble was made available to japanese gamers with european and american releases following only a week later ghost babble is another entry to the series that is not considered to be canon to the main metal gear storyline the story kicks off seven years after the original metal gear game with the theft of a us-funded metal gear project by a militant rebel group in africa called the ginra liberation front once more snake is called upon by a ceo roy campbell to help only this time snake is returning to the place where it all started outer heaven where this new milton group has mysteriously set up shop again the narrative as a whole is mostly on brand for the metal gear series snake begrudgingly comes out of retirement infiltrates a heavily guarded facility fights some wacky bosses and takes down a new type of metal gear mech though the inclusion of a number of brand new support characters and this attempted explanation for big boss's rebellion in the original game does part with the series's eventual canonical events and today it feels more like a fan fiction within the collection from a gameplay perspective ghostbabel makes the most of the gameboy color's technical capabilities and feels like a hybrid of the original top-down titles and the newer far more successful metal gear solid because the visuals rely on pixel art once more the camera is limited to only a top-down perspective though snake's abilities have been refined allowing him to travel diagonally and hug walls just like on the playstation another big change is how the game is split up into separate stages with the player being given a score based on the completion time and number of alerts raised to enhance the length of the title ghostbabel also includes a number of shorter vr missions and extra replayable scenarios that change up the patrol patterns of enemies and the location of key items it's a competent entry to the series through and throw especially in how it tackles the game boy's obvious technical limitations and the result was a solid critical reception many reviewers awarded the game perfect scores across the board commenting on the game's ambitious narrative and smart incorporation of metal gear's signature mechanics others noted ghostbabel's clever system link multiplayer mode that pinned two players against each other in an arena-style death match one of the earliest examples of stealth action multiplayer gameplay though while ghost babble was a remarkably successful game in its own right it would understandably be the next main line entry that the core fan base was most excited for back in the fall of 1998 konami computer entertainment in japan saw a rapid growth to both its staff size and its available funding metal gear solid was primed to be a hit and konami knew that fans would expect a more ambitious sequel from the studio responsible so in preparation they began to reorganize their many subsidiaries merging the aoyama studio with kce japan to form konami computer entertainment japan west while a separate manga focus studio shinjuku was renamed into kce japan east during this growth phase the metal gear team grew from 15 people to roughly 70 requiring additional management on kojima's part all the while kojima had already established a rough outline for where he wanted to take solid snake next with an ambitious new adventure set in the tumultuous middle east according to kojima the sequel to metal gear solid was initially set around a nuclear inspection near iraq where a line of new nuclear-equipped metal gear mix was rumored to be in development then as a prototype metal gear is being transported by an aircraft carrier returning antagonist liquid attempts to steal the weapon for himself to which solid snake responds many of these elements would inevitably make their way into the final game though because of the escalated tension in real world iraq during these early phases the action was ultimately relocated to new york city's harbor and the aircraft carrier concept gradually transitioned into a smaller tanker ship instead with a location now locked down kojima sent a field research team out to new york to capture photographs of the harbor and various landmarks that they intended to feature throughout the course of the game meanwhile kojima and the core sound designers decided that they would take advantage of the increased budget further and wrote to professional music composer harry gregson williams after hearing his accompanying score for the film the replacement killers williams intrigued by the opportunity to create a score for a video game agreed to participate and reimagined some of the tracks from the original game with a much fuller orchestral sound during this time the programming team was hard at work constructing a new engine tailor made for the playstation 2's 128 bit cpu along with the higher data capacity of its dvd roms the character models for example could now be rendered with exponentially more detail with snake alone sporting more than three thousand more polygons than his appearance on the playstation but there wasn't just an increase to geometry and texture quality that led to the sequel's incredible visual presentation the major focus of development for the next generation of metal gear solid involved capturing atmospheric elements that couldn't be properly shown before aspects like wind heat dampness and the cold were all things that the team spent a lot of their time highlighting using clever visual tricks and techniques like having rain splashes be tied to the character models as opposed to being rendered independently or generating mirror geometry underneath an alpha texture to simulate the reflections along the rain soaked decks the physical manipulation of the game world was another area that the programmers wanted to perfect and they ensured hundreds of props would react dynamically to gunfire and explosions ensuring players would feel as immersed as possible but pretty level environments and slick effects can only immerse the player so far to really build upon what they had already established with metal gear solid the team also wanted to greatly overhaul the game's artificial intelligence and have players face off against soldiers that could think and work together as a team to accomplish this military and firearms expert moto sada mori returned to provide consultation and had the programming team act out tactical swap maneuvers throughout their own studio teaching them how to hold firearms breach rooms and communicate under pressure these lessons paid off tremendously and with the help of new motion capture equipment the programmers were able to incorporate hundreds of unique and realistic animations for the various enemy soldiers greatly racking up the tension of each encounter with them as the months rolled on kojima opted to broaden his approach to the game's design and along with his co-writer fukushima distributed what they called idea notebooks to each member of the team they were then told to think of one good idea each day and write it down in their notebooks which were then looked over that evening by kojima and fukushima personally by doing this they were able to generate a ton of clever new gameplay mechanics to help set the sequel apart like hiding in lockers peeking around corners and vaulting over ledges all features that would soon be put on full display for the fans to judge themselves at the dawn of the new millennium hideo kojima and the rest of the developers at kcej west were ready to show off what they had been working on for the past two years production was incredibly tight-lipped up until this point with only subtle hints and teases like the concept art of metal gear ray and the vr mission disc but at e3 2000 audiences everywhere were finally given their first glimpse of the groundbreaking metal gear solid 2. the trailer featured 10 minutes of in-engine gameplay footage showing off the game's tanker location the new gameplay mechanics and all the beautiful visual effects that i mentioned before what's even more remarkable though is that these incredible graphics that were well beyond anything advertised for the ps2 thus far were also being rendered at a buttery smooth 60 frames per second an industry first for a major aaa action title as expected the hype mounted considerably following this reveal gamers everywhere now had a legitimate reason to purchase sony's next-gen playstation 2 console and it quickly became the most highly anticipated game of 2001 to deliver on its lofty promises though the development staff had to dial up their efforts significantly with long work hours often pouring over into the weekends to make matters worse it soon became apparent that the main tanker mission area would be too short to support the entire game so kojima decided to incorporate a previously shelved concept into the mix a second scenario that would see the player navigating a massive oil rig but that of course wouldn't be the only surprise kojima had in store for the series fans back when metal gear solid had first released a demographic study was conducted within a nearby school system to determine the type of gamers interested in the series what they found was that the female demographic had little to no interest in games starring older men like snake taking this to heart kojima came up with the idea to introduce an entirely new character to the series one that players would control exclusively throughout the course of the oil rig sequence of events this would serve two critical purposes one it would allow players to get to know the legendary hero solid snake from a new perspective and two it would inevitably serve a crucial role in establishing the overarching theme of the game itself kojima then went to veteran character designer yoji shinkawa and asked him to create a beautiful young man one that he hoped younger women might be able to relate to more yoji confused initially began working on some drafts for the character aiming to make him look slender and sexy while trying to weave in a sort of childlike innocence into the design the resulting character would prove to be highly controversial among the fans but it also remained a critical component for kojima's constantly evolving story that he wanted to tell it's for this reason that he made sure that the character remained as well guarded a secret as possible even some of the corporate konami offices were left in the dark toying with his fan base further kojima had a second e3 trailer put together in 2001 that showed several sequences that were never planned to be featured in the final release then with only a few months to go prior to release the united states were faced with the devastating september 11th terrorist attacks to remain sensitive to this tragic event the development team for metal gear solid 2 made a number of changes to the visual makeup of the game removing the world trade center from the distant skyline adjusting some of the dialogue and even cutting an entire sequence from the final act that would have shown massive destruction to manhattan island the scene itself wouldn't have actually shown any destruction to the world trade center though its imagery was enough that the developers felt it was more appropriate to just cut the scene altogether finally after three long years of development shrouded in secrecy konami computer entertainment japan west now known simply as konami japan released the hotly anticipated metal gear solid 2 sons of liberty exclusively for the playstation 2. sons of liberty begins two years at the events of the last mainline title with solid snake and ex-metal gear engineer hal emerick aka otakon working alone as their own anti-metal gear unit called philanthropy following the shadow moses incident the technical data of the old metal gear rex was mysteriously leaked to the public which inevitably led to the production of numerous copycat designs all around the globe so both otakon and snake feeling guilty for what they had unintentionally helped unleash make it their duty to put an end to the metal gear nightmare once and for all meanwhile the american government are desperate to cover up their involvement at shadow moses claiming that the terrorists at shadow moses were nothing more than a right-wing extremist group and that solid snake in his fringe philanthropy are not to be trusted they then commissioned the creation of their very own anti-metal gear weapon given the name metal gear ray that while not equipped with a nuclear payload is much more maneuverable than past models and even capable of amphibious travel philanthropy determined to expose this plan to the public set out to intercept the prototype during a scheduled transfer but soon after arriving a third party arrives at the scene hoping to steal the weapon for themselves and are accompanied by returning antagonist revolver ocelot ocelot along with his group of russian mercenaries then hijacked metal gear ray sink the ship transporting it and pin the resulting environmental disaster on solid snake tarnishing his reputation and making him an enemy of the state the game picks up again two years later with an entirely new character operating under the code name ryden his mission is to infiltrate a massive offshore cleanup facility called the big show that was created to clean up the crude oil runoff from the manhattan tanker incident ryden is a rookie soldier much like snake was in the original metal gear his only apparent experience prior has been vr training a bit of a fourth wall breaking nod to both the bonus vr missions and metal gear solid in general in fact much of metal gear solid 2's narrative structure borrows heavily from that of the previous game including ryden's infiltration method a squad of elite mercenaries with special abilities a run-in with a cyborg ninja and even the lead terrorists on site operating under the code name snake there's countless other similarities throughout and none of them are a coincidence driving the narrative to one of the most shocking reveals in the series and arguably all gaming this game's story explores a number of themes that place it way ahead of its time as it deals with the consequences of an information-based society including the threat of misinformation and censorship and most importantly the propagation of culture as opposed to themes expressed prior regarding the propagation of genetic information and that's just the tip of the iceberg the game is loaded with philosophical questions that have sparked countless analyses over the course of the past 20 years and its incredibly risky marketing misdirection only serves to further the point that kojima intended to make but regardless of how players feel about kojima's sneaky beaten switch metal gear solid 2 still features an expansive list of new features that greatly improve on the now firmly established stealth action genre the core of the gameplay remains mostly intact players sneak around heavily guarded facilities dodge patrols avoid surveillance cameras and face off against bizarre bosses but key abilities have been modified to improve player comfort and control possibly one of the best examples of this is the ability to freely aim weapons when using the first person view this change allows players to target specific enemy weak points with headshots predictably dealing the most damage and if the player is using a silenced weapon they can effectively dispatch enemies from range without raising an alarm this can be performed when standing out in the open lying prone or even when attached to a corner allowing for greater control in combat metal gear solid 2 also introduces the ability to peek around corners which is coupled with the ability to use the right joystick to manipulate the camera enhancing the player's situational awareness further to get out of a tough spot players can now perform a diving roll thrusting them forward over low objects and even knocking enemies down if timed properly to give players a stealthier route along the game's many narrow catwalks mgs2 also introduces the ledge fall allowing snake or ryden to suspend themselves from an elevated ledge provided they have enough stamina when sneaking past the enemy isn't an option players can once again make use of their close quarter combat abilities to deal with the threat including combo punches throws and grabs and now they can drag the bodies of defeated enemies to hiding places like around corners inside of lockers or off the end of a railing if players wish they can even climb inside a locker themselves building on the series's classic hide and seek formula speaking of which mgs2 also reapproaches the way enemy units respond to the player providing more believable interactivity to each encounter like with how mgs one's genome soldiers know the snake's footprints in the snow the russian soldiers in mgs2 will be able to spot the trail of blood left by an injured player they'll also help revive sleeping or stunned allies off the ground making hiding bodies even more important the alert system also introduces a new high risk high reward mentality if a guard bumps into snake for example the entire base doesn't automatically know where to find him only that one guard is aware of the intruder and they'll try to use their radio to call for backup so if the player is fast enough they can stop this call from ever going out either by taking him out or even shooting the radio directly on their person if the call does go out then much more powerful reinforcements will arrive on scene sometimes wearing heavy armor and riot shields players can always choose to stay and fight using the new precision aiming to target vulnerabilities or they can run and hide triggering an updated version of the evasion mode now instead of just walking around the area randomly like before enemy reinforcements will work together and perform a sweep and clear shown with a cinematic camera over top of the radar display during this time the enemy will carefully search every inch of the room including under crevices around corners and even inside of lockers if they fail to find the player the enemy status will return to a brand new caution mode in caution mode the enemies conduct patrols like always but with increased awareness the reinforcements will also fill in for deceased guards and conduct new patrol routes making the area more difficult to navigate the whole of the ai system is well ahead of its time rivaling stealth action titles released even today and the addition of new tools like the non-lethal tranquilizer gun diversionary centerfolds and empty ammunition magazines all provide players with enough options to slip through the game without killing a single person other minor changes worth mentioning include the ability to swim underwater escort friendly ai and the ability to sneak up on unaware soldiers and hold them at gunpoint to obtain items like collectible dog tags the whole game is pretty much a more polished version of the 98 title the pacing is rock solid the action is exciting and the boss fights all require players to experiment to lock down the most effective tactic overall metal gear solid 2 son for liberty once again dominated the sales charts within only the first few days it managed to sell well over a million copies worldwide with a cumulative 7.5 million as of writing making it the most financially successful entry in the series like its predecessor many reviewers also referred to it as a masterpiece giving it near perfect scores a lot of publications praised konami japan for their incredible achievements in technical prowess delivering state-of-the-art graphics that helped revolutionize the industry others complemented mgs2's highly polished gameplay design especially in regards to its deep artificial intelligence but sons of liberty's most apparent lasting legacy is undoubtedly its brilliant writing that continues to be the subject of discussion over two decades later with some developers drawing quite a bit of inspiration from kojima's incredibly risky misinformation campaign following its original playstation 2 release in america many other versions of metal gear solid 2 began to hit store shelves including ports for both the microsoft xbox and the pc that like its predecessor suffered from a few compatibility issues at first konami japan then released a brand new edition of the game titled substance that incorporated various minor changes from the japanese and european releases along with a number of new game modes to improve the package's replayability many of these game modes are basic challenges built around core aspects of the game like diffusing bombs with a coolant spray or sneaking past soldiers though there is a special bonus campaign called snaketails that aims to appeal to players disappointed with the main campaign's switch to rider but one of the most bizarre additions added to this version that was exclusive to the playstation 2 was a skateboarding minigame designed to advertise konami's evolution skateboarding metal gear solid 2 was an incredible achievement it improved its gameplay systems revolutionized storytelling and gaming upped the bar for graphical presentation and hugely contributed to the success of the sony playstation 2. but even more importantly it helped to perpetuate the idea of the aaa game delivering massive hollywood blockbuster level experiences to an interactive space and fans were unsurprisingly hungry for more [Music] after the monumental success of sons of liberty konami were eager to expand the metal gear property and looked for new avenues to help reach untapped markets one such market was of course nintendo who never managed to receive the first metal gear solid or sums of liberty on their newer platforms so konami's corporate office is inquired within the metal gear development studio regarding a potential spin-off or remake built to take advantage of the newer engine technology they had developed kojima not entirely against the idea still preferred to move the series forward instead fearful that his involvement in mass production of remasters and remakes might damage the brand then during e3 2002 kojima along with other executives from konami sat down with the president of a canadian developer called silicon knights whom nintendo's own miyamoto had held in high regard and they pitched having them work on a top to bottom remake of the original metal gear solid built to take advantage of the nintendo gamecube silicon knights agreed though they were skeptical about meeting konami's strict one-year deadline for development this was a major property after all and this would be the first title that they would work on that wasn't their own creation but even so they managed to get a functional prototype developed within only the first month of work and they were also given lots of support from konami japan's metal gear development team allowing them to form the backbone of the experience once they had gotten all the gameplay mechanics in place silicon knights then spent the better part of the year fine-tuning the visuals and converting over brand new cinematic cutscenes that were developed in-house at konami only instead of these scenes being directed by kojima they were instead handled by japanese filmmaker ue kutumura injecting a completely unique style this was of course a big departure from the style of the original metal gear solid though the decision was made by kojima himself who refused to have this be a shot for shot remake of the original title as the deadline for the project approached it became clear that the game wasn't ready for its planned holiday 2003 release so rather than try and rush the game out in an unfinished state konami made the difficult decision to delay the title and in the spring of 2004 silicon knights released their ambitious metal gear solid remake the twin snakes exclusively for the nintendo gamecube twin snake story is practically identical to the story in the original game players take on the role of solid snake and need to infiltrate shadow moses island to put a stop to a group of terrorists led by their leader liquid snake hence the whole twin snakes moniker but unlike the original game twin snake's cinematic presentation aims to up the insanity taking cues from popular action movies from around the time like the matrix snake and his enemies now flip off of ledges run along walls and skip across missiles in slow motion taking the series is already strange militaristic surrealism and cranking it up to 11. though despite its wild new direction it's worth noting that the improved graphical fidelity does provide the characters with a level of emotion that even the original failed to deliver what's more all the characters voice lines have been re-recorded by the original voice actors with much higher quality equipment than before this coupled with the technically superior visual design helps to deliver an experience more on par with players expectations in the early 2000s and the core of the narrative still remains practically untouched the gameplay on the other hand does deviate quite a bit from the initial design most of the item and enemy placement is identical and all of the general camera positions are still set the same way but twin snakes also incorporates all those new gameplay features intended for sons of liberty this means players can freely aim their weapons in first person perform at diving roles and will need to contend with smarter ai that will search in clear rooms on paper this sounds like it would only make the game better but it does introduce some balancing concerns the lege vault maneuver for example allows players to simply drop down from that upper balcony in the tank hangar letting players skip past a difficult camera placement and then you have the bosses like revolver ocelot that are far easier to defeat thanks to the first person aim mode even still it remains an enjoyable gameplay experience through and through and is a fine retelling of konami japan's genre defining classic upon release twin snakes received mostly positive review scores from journalists and fans alike it was praised for its cleaner presentation and smooth 60fps performance on the gamecube along with its many new gameplay features carried over from sons of liberty [Music] though there were of course those that felt the additional features hurt the flow of the action and robbed the adventure of its original charm the game has since developed a negative reputation in the metal gear community for having deviated too far from kojima's vision though because of its limited release its aftermarket value is skyrocketed making it quite the rare find in the retro gaming world back in 2001 following the conclusion of development for the second metal gear solid hideo kojima was prepared to retire for good from the metal gear universe he was exceedingly pleased with how sons of liberty turned out having spent many years dealing with constant rewrites in last minute edits and felt he had nothing else to prove with the metal gear property but the massive cliffhanger at the end of mgs2 left fans desperate for answers what did the future hold for characters like ryden was the orphan daughter rescued where were the patriots and what about solid and liquid's final showdown kojima sympathetic for his fan base decided to at the very least find someone worthy of carrying the torch but when he walked out of his office draft in hand and asked for a volunteer the room fell quiet not a single person raised their hand kojima then knew that it was up to him to see his story through to completion and once more assumed the director's chair now faced with the daunting task of surpassing his own critical masterpiece kojima considered where the series had gone so far and he tried to determine why he felt the desire to distance himself from the series in the first place then it dawned on him he wasn't growing tired of the world of spies and soldiers but rather the legendary solid snake himself his arc was complete and he had already become a legend many years ago so he decided to try something bold and tell the story of a different snake not solid not liquid not even solidus but rather the snake that started it all big boss pleased with this new direction kojima updated his original draft documents to reflect a newer setting serving as a prologue to all the previous entries his earliest drafts were inspired heavily by the cold war-era space race between the united states and the soviet union in fact a little bit of these space elements remain in the final production though a vast majority of these ideas did eventually get scrapped due to the hardware limitations at the time kojima was initially under the impression that sony's rumored playstation 3 was going to be made available as early as 2004 allowing the tech team to deliver yet another next generational leap but as the programming team worked on refining the engine the silence from sony's end made it clear that the next generation was still a few years out and they were going to have to make do with the playstation 2 instead this presented a major challenge for the team how are they going to convince gamers that this was the next major installment in metal gear without the benefit of some next-gen eye candy the answer came from an older concept of kojima's from the msx days when knocking around ideas for a metal gear 3 kojima had at one point wanted to build a fully immersive jungle environment for the players to travel through prior to reaching the main mission location but rendering an environment densely populated enough to appear like a true jungle was not something that was feasible back in the early 1990s it was barely even possible in the early 2000s but with the power of the playstation 2 and one of the most talented technical teams of its time kojima's vision could finally become a reality the programmers got to work completely reworking the mgs2 engine allowing it to render more complex level geometry dynamic ambient lighting effects and lots of dense vegetation while this was going on kojima updated his design document and made the new jungle environment a core aspect of the overarching narrative the space theme i mentioned earlier was dropped almost entirely and elements based around survival became a critical component the game's old 1960s theme also played a big role here rewinding the clock and forcing characters to contend with the type of weapons and technology available during that time it was a chance to finally reinvent the property bringing things back to basic and the best part is that kojima could actually build on the characters with only minor continuity restrictions to contend with outside of the writing room the programming team and art designers followed a similar design philosophy as they had with sons of liberty writing into idea booklets and generating clever ways to push the series forward as the new open-ended jungle environment started to come together it didn't take long for ideas like the camouflage index and animal hunting to materialize other ideas were born of old scrapped ideas that never made their way into metal gear solid 2 like underwater combat and a few of yoji's old character designs meanwhile the team in charge of the game's cinematics had to step it up a notch kojima's script involved even more cinematic sequences with more complex animations and movement to capture all this effectively the programmers were able to cram in more joints and pivot points into each of the character models allowing them to express more emotion than ever though the overall poly count of characters like snake only received a modest bump of about a thousand polygons an improvement but not quite the same leap we saw before it quickly became an incredibly ambitious development task one that surpassed the capabilities of the playstation 2. so they were forced to make the difficult decision to drop the game's frame rate down to 30 fps as they found the density of the game world to be more important to the experience than the smooth performance then after about two more years of development konami japan released their fifth main line entry to the series metal gear solid 3 snakeier exclusively for the playstation 2 with no release for the competing xbox consoles until much much later snake eater kicks off in the year 1960 with a solo infiltration mission to a remote region in soviet territory at the height of the cold war the player assumes the role of a seasoned combat veteran code named naked snake who is deployed by his new special forces unit fox under the direction of a former sas operative co-named major zero also part of this unit is radio support and local fauna expert paramedic and a legendary female veteran from world war ii known as the boss whose close connection to snake as his mentor has made her somewhat of a complicated mother figure to him after a successful insertion into enemy territory snake makes his way to an old ruined factory north of his position and secures a soviet scientist named sokolov who is willing to defect to the united states and share information on a deadly new superweapon but while enroute to the designated extraction site snake and sokolov run into none other than the legendary boss herself who then proceeds to disarm and critically injure snake kidnaps sokolov and then gifts two light nuclear devices to the leader of the crew forces commander volgan and then proceeds to test launch one of them shortly after bruised beaten and betrayed snake is rescued before succumbing to his injuries and is fixed up to go on a follow-up mission shortly after i'm still in a dream this new mission given the title operation snake meter is where the game truly begins the snake now mean to kill colonel vogel recover the remaining nuclear device rescue circle off again and kill his traitorous old mentor the boss ever loyal to the mission naked snake ventures back into the same jungles as before but falls down a figurative rabbit hole of action and espionage fighting off local wildlife russian patrols and soviet gunships along with the supernatural special forces unit cobra under the command of the boss herself along the way sneaky also introduces one of the more extensive love stories in the series with the introduction of the russian kgb contact eve or rather eva together the two worked to infiltrate the colonel's facility and put a stop to his insidious plot all while braving the elements of the game's uniquely survival-based themes another persistent theme throughout the game is referred to as scene which is essentially the idea that your concept of good versus bad is dependent on the scene or background in which you belong it sort of plays into metal gear solid 2's message regarding meme and how cultural identities are passed on all this is delivered with a slick new style inspired heavily by the likes of classic sean connery 007 films especially the fan favorite introductory sequence performed by vocal artist cynthia harrell the narrative is noticeably easier to follow than kojima's past two titles as well thanks to its return to a more grounded setting and time period but its contributions to the overarching plot provide critical insight into the events in the future and would inevitably serve to bring the saga to its proper conclusion snake eater also aims to transform the signature stealth action formula in a pretty drastic way for one it doesn't spend most of its time inside of narrow interior corridors and hangers but instead propels players out into the wilderness and challenges them to not just sneak past the enemy but also contend with jungle wildlife and other hazards as well to emphasize the game's survivalist themes snake eater introduces a new stamina meter directly below snake's health that will deplete over time at varying rates dependent on the player's actions lots of running jumping and fighting for example will drain the bar rapidly making it harder to aim in first person or recover from an injury it'll even reduce the time snake can spend swimming underwater or hanging from ledges so it's best to keep this meter maxed out as much as possible to replenish it players must consume food like rations though to tie into the new survivalist themes players can also hunt for their own food out in the wild using their weapons to stab or shoot creatures that can then be stored in the character's backpack another big change built into snake heaters the new camouflage index system in the top right corner of the screen players will now find the name of snake's currently equipped outfit and a percentage number that percentage is the camo index and indicates how effective the currently equipped outfit is at keeping snake hidden in relation to his location in the environment to keep this number high the player will need to access their backpack and choose from the available outfits to suit the situation a dark green pattern for example is best suited for washed green grass and vegetation and will keep soldiers from spotting snakes so long as he's keeping far enough away and moving slowly but the same camouflage obviously won't work as well along a rocky cliff face or inside of a building making camouflage swapping a common practice throughout most of the game snake eater also makes some minor tweaks to the core gameplay mechanics as well most notably the ability to grab enemies and interrogate them for information additionally players can now use the new knife to kill enemies instantly rather than choking them out like before building off of metal gear solid 2's bleeding system snake eater incorporates a new injury treatment manual where serious injuries are now persistent unless treated with a series of medical equipment taking a bullet will generally require the player to remove it with a survival knife disinfect the wound apply styptic powder and wrap it in a bandage but if it's not treated then the player will suffer detrimental effects like reduced weapon stability and stamina along with the reduction to their maximum health alongside all these new medical tools there's also a collection of other cold war appropriate gadgets and weaponry like binoculars explosives directional microphones various types of personnel sensors to make up for the lack of a traditional radar display and probably one of the most clever new additions a fake death pill allowing the player to trick the enemy into thinking that they're already dead so that they can revive themselves afterwards once the coast is clear all these tools are designed to give the player a fighting chance against the jungle elements though their age technology does make them more challenging to use than their more modern counterparts forcing the player to often rely on their natural instinct and cqc training to emerge victorious an aspect that many fans greatly appreciated as such snake eater was yet another major hit for the series it received an overwhelmingly positive critical response with reviewers applauding its beautiful visual direction its clever gameplay overhaul and its legendary storytelling fans loved being able to explore the origin of big boss and were blown away by the beautifully edited cinematic sequences but sadly it didn't fare nearly as well financially as its predecessor selling only about half as many copies as before these lower sales are believed to be attributed to the less aggressive marketing campaign along with the potential series fatigue brought on by sons of liberty and its whole ryden fiasco but for those fans still confident in konami japan's abilities they were treated to arguably the best entry in the series and one that would be made even better with its re-release over a year later [Applause] metal gear solid 3 subsistence introduced a number of major improvements to the snake eater experience chief among them being the first fully controllable third-person camera in the series this camera was initially pitched to kojima during the development of the base game but he argued against it wanting to keep each entry consistent in how they played but the larger gameplay environments and the lack of a proper radar screen made the traditional hybrid top-down camera a chore to play with and so kojima finally gave in and had the team of programmers working a standard over-the-shoulder perspective that had steadily become the industry norm subsistence also introduced the second example of competitive multiplayer in the series called metal gear online that pit two teams of online players against each other in arena-based death matches set at various locations from the main campaign while this may sound like a pretty basic implementation of multiplayer by today's standards this was quite the achievement back in 2005 especially when you consider that most playstation 2s required players to buy a separate online network adapter just to connect so for those players determined enough metal gear online as it appeared in subsistence was a pretty unique and fascinating experience and one that would evolve along with the rest of the series for many years to come now before we move any further there was one more title in the metal gear franchise released around this time back in 2002 shinto najuri was approached by konami executives to helm another portable entry to the series only this time they opted to build the game for sony's upcoming portable playstation that was set to be the most powerful handheld platform ever no jerry who was already assisting in scripting tasks for snake eater at the time got to work on a design document for this new portable title at first he considered just building a portable version of a metal gear solid game only scaled down visually to account for the psb's limited hardware specs but after discussing it with studio head kojima he decided to try something much more ambitious and reimagine the stealth action experience as a sort of digital board game instead aware that this would be a major departure the development team loaded up the game with references to the past entries in the series paying tribute to the series's history thus far and after a lengthy two-year development cycle they released metal gear acid exclusively for the psp in japan with later european and north american releases following the next year metal gear asset is easily the most unusual entry in the entire franchise it takes place in the futuristic year of 2016 after an airplane containing a number of high-profile u.s politicians is hijacked by a group of terrorists and their weird creepy marionette dolls snake having retired for the millionth time by now is called back into action and is sent to investigate a top secret research project called pythagoras that the terrorists are demanding in exchange for their hostages acid story is probably one of the darkest and yet strangest in the entire series though because it wasn't written by kojima it's also not considered to be canon even more odd than the game's storyline is its drastically different gameplay direction metal gear acid is a turn-based strategy game where players make use of a set of playing cards to determine actions and complete specific objectives the game is split up into individual stages each with different configurations of obstacles and enemies to overcome when the game begins players are given up to six cards in their hand and can use these cards to either move a set number of spaces on the game board or activate the abilities written on the card itself a handgun card for example can be used to fire at a nearby enemy or it can be substituted to move snake 3 spaces instead when the player's turn is complete the enemies will move around the board patrolling the environment on set turn-based paths unless they otherwise encounter a disturbance all the core mechanics from the metal gear series come into play here in one way or another and while it's certainly not the same as your typical stealth action experience it's a surprisingly clever design nonetheless but as expected the reception for metal gear asset was mixed upon its release many gamers were disappointed with the change to the gameplay mechanics and were hoping to get a portable metal gear solid experience instead however for those that did give the churn-based action a chance they found a remarkably deep and well-thought-out game within and praised the title for its creativity and execution immediately following acid's lukewarm reception nogeri and the team commenced work on a direct sequel that would evolve their controversial churn-based design the game titled metal gear acid 2 released in japan the same year as the first game's western release and featured a plethora of design changes the biggest and most obvious change was to the art direction that now offers a self-shaded style with a much brighter color palette and an interesting new lead character design the story also seems to have nothing to do with anything in the series prior players assume the role of a character named snake and are forced by the fbi to complete a mission for them to rescue his friends and clear a tarnish reputation the story by itself is much more ambitious than the first acid game though its lack of any real connection to kojima's narrative makes it stand out as a sort of black sheep in the metal gear franchise that being said asset 2's gameplay is a marked improvement over its predecessor its controls are simplified its mechanics are explained more clearly and it also features several quality of life improvements and fun additions to expand on its unique formula including double the amount of playable cards as a result metal gear asset 2 received mostly positive reviews with most of the praise coming from those who appreciated the risk taken with the original but for those players still not on board with acid's direction they would have to wait a little bit longer for snake to return to form the mid-2000s were a busy time for the metal gear franchise the success of metal gear solid 2 had skyrocketed the series's popularity and encouraged lots of projects to be made simultaneously within konami japan and abroad but i do feel it's worth pointing out what was happening throughout the gaming industry during this time frame too the original metal gear solid success had led to a boom in the stealth action genre that when coupled with the rapid growth and popularity of the hardcore tactical shooter and post-911 nationalism in the west allowed for an avalanche of special forces and black ops based titles to land on the scene one of the most famous examples of this is of course ubisoft's splinter cell franchise they took aspects of metal gear solid and the thief series to create a more grounded and authentic stealth action experience and was even cheekily given the subtitle stealth action redefined meanwhile io interactive had introduced their own clever spin on the formula with the start of the hitman series that took players out of the shadows and had them using disguises to infiltrate the anime by 2005 even first person shooters wanted in on the craze most notably the devil 7 game series and crytex far cry the genre was quickly becoming oversaturated and with its increased competition metal gear would begin to see declining sales with each new entry meanwhile the production effort within konami japan had started to get too unwieldy in 2004 alone they released three completely different metal gear games alongside other games not related to metal gear at all and kojima being the vice president within the studio was stuck managing all of these projects simultaneously alongside a multitude of other administrative duties aware of this konami decided to absorb many of its subsidiaries into the parent company assuming most of kojima's administrative roles in the process and kojima along with this team were rebranded into kojima productions in april of 2005. during all these internal restructurings the metal gear series pressed onwards with the main team working on an ambitious next-gen follow-up to the sons of liberty storyline while the psp acid team sought to finally deliver fans a traditional metal gear solid experience on sony's handheld this project now directed by masahiro yomamoto began production as a direct follow-up to snake eater with big boss returning as the main protagonist along with all the redefined gameplay mechanics and camera systems that went along with it but when they approached kojima with the idea he suggested that they try to take advantage of the psp's capabilities more and avoid trying to just emulate the main console series this eventually gave rise to the recruitment system where players could build a digital army and establish outer heaven connecting the narrative to solid snake's original mission in the very first metal gear to help make this connection konami hired japanese light novel writer kakuto mokomo to handle the story and australian artist ashley wood who had provided the artwork for a series of metal gear solid comics previously then after roughly a year of development metal gear solid portable ops was complete and released exclusively for the psp in december of 2006. despite not being written by kojima directly portable ops is a canonical entry to the series that seeks to explain what happened to snake or rather big boss following the events of metal gear solid 3. the game kicks off six years after operation snakier the snake being kidnapped and imprisoned in a north colombian prison cell at san geronimo snake is then questioned by one of fox unit's interrogation specialist the very same unit he served under before retiring with the help of a young roy campbell snake escapes imprisonment and then attempts to contact his old ally major zero to help piece together what has happened he soon learns that both he and xero have been marked as traitors due to their past involvement with fox unit and snake's only chance is to expose the true rogue agents and clear his and zero's name to do this snake stages an uprising throughout the peninsula recruiting stranded ex-soviet soldiers to his cause and together they work to expose the real traitors and dismantle their leader's goal of an independent military state called army's heaven unlike past mainline entries to the series portable ops narrative is told through new comic book style still images as opposed to the full motion cutscenes from before though many of the original voice actors do reprise their roles and the thematic elements and concepts presented throughout feel like quintessential kojima despite his limited involvement in the narrative itself even more impressive though is how much portable ops manages to emulate the core metal gear solid gameplay experience to function on the psp snake moves around just like he does in snake eater with options to sneak roll climb use cqc and aim weapons in first person however the default controls have been modified slightly to make up for the psp's lack of joysticks and rear triggers moving slowly for example is typically accomplished by pushing the movement joystick gently but now players need to awkwardly hold the triangle face button instead what makes this even more uncomfortable is the fact that the camera is now controlled using the directional pad meaning players may find it hard to sneak forward and rotate the camera at the same time aware of this fault in the controls the developers also reintroduced the radar display those now based more around directional sound indicating the direction of an enemy relative to the camera's orientation the inventory screens have similarly been modified using a much simpler four slot comma-row screen that greatly limits what snake can bring with him on a mission but probably the most detrimental change of them all is the design of the game's environments portable ops utilizes a series of small cookie cutter locations completely devoid of any real personality each area looks like a collection of harsh corners built out of the same prefab concrete texture with maybe one or two interesting rooms hidden within them this was no doubt done to account for the psp's limited rendering capabilities along with the shorter average play time of a player on the go but its resulting presentation does suffer as a result portable ops's real saving grace is its brand new recruitment system playing directly into the game's narrative players now have the option to kidnap soldiers in every level and deliver them back to their own private army once a mission has been completed players will return to a menu screen with various tabs to maintain the growth of their influence from here players can choose to deploy for a mission read mission reports or directly manage the placement of any captured soldiers into one of four distinct units the sneaking unit the spy unit the tech unit and the medical unit the soldiers placed in the sneaking unit will be available to play as in-game this includes big boss by default but also means players can choose to play as completely different characters each with varying stats and abilities like the ability to move around incognito among enemies wearing the same outfit the spy unit is more of a passive benefit to the player in that between missions they will provide reports to progress the story and let the players know where they can find valuable items in one of the available stages the tech unit serves as a sort of r d team if they're properly bulked up the tech unit will be able to develop weapons and tools for big boss's army that can then be equipped into the player's loadout prior to deployment finally the medical unit determines the speed and efficiency of the army's health and stamina regeneration which is important because a character's stamina cannot be as easily replenished as in snake eater and can even end a mission instantly if it's drained to zero what's wrong your circuit's gone dead it's all done to encourage players to swap off of snake and experiment with different play styles and if the player takes full advantage of all of portable ops's new mechanics they can efficiently recruit tons more soldiers to their cause and defeat any threat in their way in addition to being able to recruit soldiers from wi-fi hotspots portable ops also includes its own competitive multiplayer component where players can steal valuable soldiers from a defeated opponent's list of recruits metal gear solid portable ops while not quite as strong as its console-based siblings it's pretty impressive all things considered it builds upon the main metal gear universe albeit in only very minor inconvenient ways but even more importantly it introduces the army recruitment system that would be repurposed and perfected in later more successful entries what's more it gave psp gamers a more genuine metal gear experience to play on the go with some nicely detailed character models most of the core mechanics and plenty of replay value the game was met with mostly positive scores sitting in at around 80 to 90 percent and sold a quarter of a million copies within its first month though because it only was ever made for the psp it naturally never reached the same install base as the mainline titles and is often neglected when considering the overarching timeline of the story a second version of the game was released a year later called portable ops plus aimed to inject more content into the game though oddly this version cuts the originals campaign in favor of a mission replay mode instead likely intended for veteran players that just wanted to enjoy all the late game army management content which makes sense considering its much lower price point either way portable ops was another win for the metal gear property and its experimental new direction would become a major component of the metal gear experience in the future development for the next mainline entry to the metal gear saga began as early as 2005 with kojima productions now working with sony's next-gen console the playstation 3 and studying how to account for its unique multi-cell processor design the studio also brainstormed ways to make the fourth entry stand out from what they've already done in the past metal gear solid 3 had transformed the series bringing snake out into the wilderness and forcing him to use the trees and grass to hide this got the team thinking where else was there to hide and how could they make this new game feel like a generational leap pulling influence from hollywood films and perhaps another certain stealth action game series they landed on the idea to have players navigate through an active war zone setting an epic scene for snake's final story while many at kojima productions were excited to work on this new metal gear project kojima himself wasn't particularly thrilled he felt that he had nicely wrapped up the series with the third game and he was frustrated that players were not picking up on the subtext pertaining to the creation of the series itself but this didn't matter to some fans there remained an overwhelming demand for answers to the cliffhangers at the end of sons of liberty and the fan base demanded to know how it would all end so kojima decided to compromise agreeing to serve as the project's producer while series veteran shuya morada took over as the director a decision that was unsurprisingly met with an extreme level of backlash soon after murada may have contributed a great deal to the series narrative over the years but fans viewed metal gear as kojima's story and thus wanted him and only him to write the epic conclusion the backlash was so bad that some fans and i say fans loosely here even threaten kojima's life disturbed by this response kojima announced a few months later at e3 2005 that he would assume full creative control of metal gear solid 4. and he also confirmed that this would be the official ending for the saga concluding solid snake's journey once and for all he then demonstrated a proof of concept for what the team had already managed to accomplish with a sample of the game running off of the old snake eater engine demonstrating a new middle eastern setting and groups of ai fighting each other now that the fans were happy the developers got to work on one of their most challenging projects to date the playstation 3 had a very unique architectural design relying primarily on its many processor cells or more accurately it's synergistic processor elements to offload specific processing tasks physics simulation for example would be handled by one of these cores while animations are handled by another the entire metal gear solid 4 game engine was purpose-built with this asymmetrical processing in mind and because the game was set to remain exclusive to ps3 the programming team did not have to worry about planning for future ports greatly simplifying the process by taking advantage of the ps3 the programming team were able to incorporate a ton of new visual effects to deliver the series into a new era the poly count for characters for example was scaled up by a factor of three with snake's polycount being upped from the previous 4 800 to a stunning 14 000. the ps3 also enabled the developers to overhaul the lighting engine allowing for a simulated subsurface scattering by means of overlaid shader work and new self-shadowing effects providing a movie-like quality to each of the game's cutscenes this was then coupled with an exhaustive amount of fine details and post-processing effects that remarkably still hold up over a decade later but as always the graphics were only part of the full picture a lot of effort went into the gameplay design as well ensuring that its new war-torn setting was as enjoyable to play as it is interesting this involved reprogramming the game's ai to recognize the player's actions and adapt on the fly adding a brand new way to interact with the world once the system was in place they then looked for other ways to innovate and look to snake eaters camo index for inspiration with so few places to hide now camouflage would be critical for sneaking past groups of soldiers but they found that flipping through menus to change the player's costume was a tedious practice so to fix this they came up with the idea of an adaptive camouflage that would change its texture all on its own and thus the octogama was born tying into this new futuristic direction yoji shinkawa presented concepts for a new type of metal gear not a massive mechanized boss but rather an autonomous enemy type that snake would have to deal with throughout the game early consoles for this unit were more like miniature metal gear rex's but the sun evolved into the hybrid organic geckos that emit a loud cow moo and cicada screen as they march along the environment after about a year of development metal gear solid 4 was demoed again at e3 2006 showcasing its strange new direction along with a newer far older solid snake fans were ecstatic the visuals demonstrated real potential for the ps3 that had not necessarily started off on the right foot and that quintessential kojima charm present in the demonstration reaffirmed his involvement but the finish line for the project was drawing closer and the game was not just severely lacking in content but it was also riddled with bugs sparking fierce debates between kojima and his lead programmer in fact partway through the final year of development kojima even admitted that the game was only 50 complete so in order to meet the deadline kojima was forced to compromise on his much larger environments that he envisioned for the game and agreed to spend the final weeks of development polishing up the rest of the game finally in the early months of 2008 their most difficult and expensive project had been completed and kojima productions released their next main installment metal gear solid 4 guns of the patriots exclusively for the playstation 3. guns of the patriots takes place in the highly futuristic year of 2014 with the world plunged into a persistent state of war fought by several mercenary groups and pmcs snake having aged rapidly due to his unique genetic circumstances is called upon once more by his old co roy campbell who informs him that his nemesis liquid ocelot has reformed outer heaven this time as a mother company with control over most of the world's pmcs with this power liquid plans on hijacking an advanced battlefield ai system called sons of the patriots which he plans to use to monopolize the war economy further and resurrect big boss's vision of an army without borders to prevent this snake agrees to one final mission and is sent to the middle east where liquid is believed to be making his move along the way snake is reunited with some old faces including his long time partner otakon and merrell his romantic interest from the original metal gear solid merrell along with the rest of the soldiers on the battlefield are now enhanced via nanomachines to improve their combat and communication capabilities and all weapons are now carefully regulated via id tags that only fire if the tag matches up with the nanomachines of its user bipedal tanks called geckos have also replaced more conventional armored vehicles and can obliterate threats within seconds due to their increased power and maneuverability war has indeed changed and as snake continues along his journey he finds himself struggling to deal with this ever-present fact the game spends a considerable amount of time driving this point home mainly in regards to technology and society's over dependence on it but it also deals with its core theme of intent and will or more accurately the idea of sense this is kind of an evolution of the theme explored in snake eater with this failure to understand a person's true intent after they've gone and it's this misunderstanding that aids in generating the core conflict throughout the entire saga story it's a powerful plot though we can at times be a bit heavy-handed and even features over 100 hours worth of cinematic cutscenes to help drive its points home but for fans of the series metal gear solid 4 offers a significant amount of fan service dedicated towards the millions of players that have taken part in snake's journey over the past several decades but between the hours of cinematic sequences mgs4 does still pack in a lot of new gameplay features to enjoy too many of which offer a more modernized take on the series the game's camera for instance is now fully controllable by default and because the game was designed from the get-go to take advantage of this the level designs have a much fuller feel to them nearly every environment offers multiple routes to and from objectives encouraging players to experiment to find the best path to suit their playstyle one path for instance may be your typical stealthy route past patrolling enemies using cover camouflage and cardboard boxes to keep a low profile while another path may require the player to get involved directly in the fighting so that the player may win the favor of a group of soldiers and then use them to help clear the path forward there's a lot of different options here to toy around with ensuring that the player's experience in one section may be completely different from someone else's on top of this mgs4 also features more level variety thanks to the story's new multi-act structure including a war-torn middle eastern city a valley in south america the rain-soaked streets of eastern europe and a few other surprises each of these locations has a very distinctive look and feel along with their own enemy types and obstacles to overcome and to help aid and snakes traversal through these different biomes the player will need to master the use of the octocamo that will instantly change the coloration of snake's camouflage pattern to match the cover that he's touching it's a very clever device that ties in nicely to the game's futuristic themes and it simultaneously solves the problem of players need to tediously sort through different camouflage patterns in the sub menu whenever they crawl over a different texture another big change is solid snake's fancy new monocle the solid eye this device allows snake to make more sense of these chaotic war zones by accessing it in the item menu players can choose between three different vision modes normal night vision and zoom essentially folding in past equipment into a single item the solid i can also display on-screen information about nearby items and enemies though making it a handy tool when planning an attack another helpful display indicator unique to mgs4 is the threat ring that lets players keep track of soldiers moving nearby without needing to use the camera to look at them if that wasn't enough snake can also deploy otakon's newest metal gear prototype the mark ii that could be remote controlled to scout out areas grab out of reach items and even stun enemies with an electric shock there's a lot of great new gadgets to toy around with now but most of the time players will have to rely purely on snakes superior sneaking skills and combat abilities to reach their goal snake can once again run climb roll and crawl around on the ground but he can now sneak around in a crouched position roll to the side when in a prone position and he can even perform a new tactical slow crawl for when snake is feeling extra sneaky one of the best improvements though is the rework to the series's outdated shooting mechanics the metal gear series for the longest time has relied on using either an awkward lock-on system or a cumbersome first-person precision view but mgs4 finally allows players to aim over the shoulder like more traditional third-person shooters the old aiming methods are still available to those that prefer them though it's hard to compete with an aiming method where you can both move and aim with precision at the same time players can even aim their weapon after being knocked onto their back a trick that would have helped immensely in the past several games mgs4 also features a much larger selection of weapons to choose between thanks to the gun launderer named drebin and his armory on wheels at any time after meeting the character players can access a store menu and use a special in-game currency called driven points to purchase a weapon picked up off the ground by doing this drepen will remove the id tag from the weapon making it usable by snake and also unlocking the ability to apply attachments to it to improve its performance to earn more driven points players can either pick up weapons off of the ground that they already have duplicates of or complete special tasks like remaining undetected or only using non-lethal attacks which will later reward the player with an emblem and bonus points at the end of each playthrough finally there's the rework to the stamina gauge in mgs4 the stamina gauge from the past two games has been renamed into the sight gauge it serves the same fundamental purpose like slowing down health regen and impacting the player's ability to aim steadily but now it depletes based on stress not hunger if the player maintains a high stress level usually by engaging with enemies directly or standing in extreme temperatures then their psych level will steadily drop and if this happens snake becomes more aware of his accelerated age and will even stop to rest and reach for his aching back this psych gauge will even pop up during some cut scenes to indicate when snake has been made to feel old a persistent plot point that helps to drive the story forward wake up and face reality old snake [Music] metal gear solid 4 is yet another highly ambitious entry to the metal gear property it aligns itself heavily with its narrative in the hopes of keeping players immersed while also modernizing the aging stealth action mechanics to keep it competitive it also features more scripted action moments than any other metal gear title with some of the most insanely memorable climatic moments ever to grace the medium though it does simultaneously lose a bit of its charm in the process the metroidvania level designs the intimate singular setting and the emphasis on on-site procurement feels absent this time around and it's short scripted gameplay sequences bookmarked by incredibly long cutscenes only furthers this disconnect however reviews and fans were able to see past its faults and held guns of the patriots up as a masterpiece upon launch the game received overwhelmingly positive reviews with outlets like ign awarding it their highest possible score critics praised the game for its gorgeous visual design its beautifully written narrative and its well-designed new features meanwhile fans applauded kojima productions for the countless examples of fan service especially in regards to the game's tribute to the original 1998 classic most importantly though is that kojima's ending was epic and meaningful enough to appeal across the board and finally after nearly two decades solid snake could hang up his bandana and weave the world of espionage behind at the same time as mgs four's release kojima productions also released the next iteration of metal gear's online multiplayer metal gear online the gameplay remains very similar to what konami established with metal gear online on the ps2 players take control of various soldiers and team-oriented battles across environments featured throughout the single player campaign and then fight for control of specific objectives using a variety of weapons and unlockable skills it's important to note that a lot of the elements here were inspired by the popularity of new progression-based first-person shooters at the time mainly call of duty 4. because this multiplayer concept was still fresh for many ps3 gamers at the time and the metal gear property was so well known this multipart community flourished throughout its limited run but was inevitably shut down prematurely in 2011 during a natural disaster in japan that impacted the service directly following its reactivation the community steadily declined and by spring of 2012 konami officially canceled services though there does still remain a dedicated community who have since revitalized the online component using various unofficial modifications of the client the metal gear series also saw a few spin-off mobile titles around this time the first was an n-gage exclusive called metal gear solid mobile built by a british mobile game developer called ideaworks game studio in it players assume the role of solid snake following the events of the shadow moses incident with him and otakon hunting down metal gear prototypes in various rogue missions the game is built as a strange hybrid of the original metal gear solid and the visual elements of metal gear solid 2. though because cell phones at the time were much weaker and lacked proper control it's an incredibly difficult game to navigate through a year later kojima productions released their own mobile title this time for the ios the game titled metal gear solid touch takes a much more simplistic approach to its design in order to maximize its visual potential on the mobile platform and instead of featuring its own story touch retells the story of mgs4 by means of rather simplistic shooter gallery levels it's far less ambitious than its engaged counterpart it would serve as merely a distraction to audiences anxiously anticipating news on where the series would go next now despite kojima adamantly claiming that guns of the patriots was his final entry to the metal gear saga the series wasn't quite done yet solid snake's story may have ended but the newly established prequel timeline still had plenty of room to work with in fact kojima had already begun working on drafts for another prequel entry as early as 2006 that would serve as a more official follow-up to snake eater than the then unreleased portable ops this new design document that he had written was immense with tons of critical story elements that would help provide more context to mgs4's emotional finale before long the new portable project dominated the whole of kojima productions almost everyone who had worked on mgs4 became involved in one way or another and konami were eager to support the team seeing massive potential in the portable market space still and suggested to kojima that they target a less mature audience this time around as the lead demographic for portable devices like the psp were much younger than the audiences found on the home consoles kojima and his team agreed and sought to design the game in a way that might be more welcoming to newcomers including a more self-contained plot and a heavier emphasis on robots and drones serving as bosses as opposed to the traditional human enemies by 2009 this new portable metal gear project became one of their most challenging to date even more so than metal gear solid 4 with nearly 200 programmers artists writers and designers all collaborating to reinvent the series's identity once more all the while the studio's in-house game engine team used this opportunity to test the waters for what would later become their next gen proprietary toolkit experimenting with things like cloud-based computing and network features that would become key for later kojima production titles finally after nearly two years of full development the team released the next main line entry to the series metal gear solid peace walker exclusively for the playstation portable with ports to home consoles following a little over a year later peace walker takes place in the early 1970s soon after the san geronimo incident the snake having successfully cleared his and zero's name and the old fox unit having officially been abolished in its place zero snake and several other past allies formed a new organization called cipher with the intent of preserving the will of the now deceased legendary soldier the boss however disagreements regarding what her will actually was prompt snake to distance himself from the organization where he then establishes his own militant frontier aka an army without borders the game proper kicks off one stormy night along a colombian beachfront with snake training some of his new recruits in the art of cqc shortly after a strange man with a mechanical right hand propositioned snake in his army to assist in defending costa rica against an invading force a force that is believed to be funded directly by the cia snake is at first hesitant but after hearing an audio recording that suggests his old mentor the boss might still be alive he agrees to help in exchange for funding and the materials to establish a forward operating base in the middle of the caribbean with this new fob established snake in his unit set off to costa rica where they assist a local rebel group fight off a series of high-tech drones and uncover yet another plot to send the world into utter chaos by means of a walking bipedal death machine this story is surprisingly rich and deep for a mobile-based title with themes about the theory of nuclear deterrence and the pursuit of world peace being the center focus and all of this is delivered once more with some fantastic comic book style still image cinematics some of which can now be manipulated directly to immerse the player further it's a very clever design executed even better than in portable ops though the pacing is still hurt a little bit by the game's use of an episodic format especially when it rips the player away from the action with a 2b continued screen instead of just loading into the next scene automatically even so peacewalker serves as a critical component in piecing together the metal gear timeline it introduces several major characters like snake's close ally cosmiller the young rebel leader amanda and her stubborn younger brother chico atakan's father hal emrick and the mysterious paz peace walker also offers a secret bonus ending only accessible by completing a significant number of optional objectives which is used as the catalyst for the events in its eventual follow-up its gameplay design also greatly contributes to the evolution of the series taking lessons learned from both mgs4 and portable ops to create the ultimate metal gear on the go adventure like before peacewalker makes use of a conservative control scheme to account for the psp's lack of joysticks and rare triggers this was later rectified with the ps3 re-release but even so most of the game is tailor-made with the original limited control scheme in mind limiting the verticality of the environments and simplifying enemy combat encounters overall though unlike portable ops and its prefab looking level structures peacewalker does manage to squeeze in much more impressive environments to navigate through including thick jungles swamps military compounds and even a wide-reaching rock quarry to make the world feel even larger peacewalker also features interconnected level areas similar to snake eater with multiple routes to and from objectives by doing this each mission feels much larger in scale requiring players to traverse through as many as four different sections of the map just to reach the goal and there's enough variety throughout to keep any of these missions from feeling too repetitive on top of this peace walker also sees a few tweaks to the player's various abilities crawling for example is curiously not an option anymore limiting the prone stance to just laying still for hiding purposes the camouflage system has also been changed limiting players to only selecting outfits from the deployment screen before the mission starts as opposed to changing them on the field this encourages players to carefully choose the appropriate gear before booting up a mission reading over intel files and briefings to understand what type of terrain to expect and whether the task at hand calls for stealth or something a bit more confrontational speaking of which peacewalker also reapproaches how the series handles boss encounters each boss fight in the game involves taking down some sort of heavy armor unit whether that be conventional military hardware like tanks and helicopters or the far more challenging ai weapons controlled by a distinctive ai pod in these ai fights players can damage specific components along the robot thereby unlocking their ability to be stolen from the ai core after it's been disabled if enough of these components are stolen emmerich can use them to construct a prototype metal gear called metal gear zeke back at mother base a sort of hint of things to come and a requirement to achieve the game's true ending but these field operations are only a fraction of the full experience peacewalker also reimagines the popular army building metagame from portable ops to make it not only easy to understand but more practical for players to invest their time in players for example no longer need to drag individual soldiers they want to recruit back to a truck instead potential recruits can be instantly hoisted into the air by means of a fulton extraction balloon so long as it's done far enough from prying eyes this change allows for rapid expansion of the player's military nation which is crucial now that the various units of mother base play a more direct role in the action on the ground the spy unit for example now referred to as the intel unit can be called upon mid mission for support meanwhile the sneaking unit now referred to as a combat unit can be deployed on their own missions called outer ops where their collective combat rating will determine whether they return after a certain time with resources extra recruits or maybe special documents other new changes introduced in peacewalker include a player ranking system at the end of each mission more brutal cqc takedowns and of course a new focus on online cooperative play allowing players to trade collective soldiers and even play together with up to four players at a time overall peacewalker is a phenomenal entry to the metal gear saga one that finally takes complete advantage of the psp to deliver a real top top-tier gaming experience more in line with its console counterparts it received incredibly positive critical reception upon its release with some like former ign editor greg miller claiming it to be one of the very best titles in the metal gear franchise however not everyone shared the sentiment a few knocked the game for its sudden difficulty spikes and its awkward controls others felt the game shifted a bit too strongly away from its stealth action roots opting for more combat based action and removing fundamental features like the ability to crawl however these complaints were few and far between as most people generally liked the game which made the overall sales numbers even more surprising peace walker performed abysmally in its opening month well below konami's expectations the game sold alright domestically but western audiences had apparently started to drift away from dedicated portable gaming devices like the psp likely in favor of mobile phone devices instead in response kojima productions released an hd rematch of the game a year later available for both the ps3 and xbox 360 console and even bundled it together with hd re-releases of metal gear solid 2 substance and metal gear solid 3 subsistence by doing this peacewalker eventually saw a slow but steady recovery in its sail performance and it has since become one of the most highly regarded entries to the series but more importantly it set the stage for the saga's final entry thanks to its new story direction its many gameplay tweaks and the technology used to create it [Music] back towards the end of metal gear solid forest development ideas began to circulate among the younger staff at kojima productions about other potential projects they might want to pursue after its completion kojima was of course already brainstorming ways to continue the big boss timeline but many of the studio's members expressed interest in telling a different story one that would seek to redeem a character that they had long felt had been underappreciated in the series when approached with this idea kojima was hesitant he recognized the fanbase's dislike of ryden and suggested that they tell a story about metal gear's grey fox instead but many of the studio disagreed feeling that ryden's story between mgs 2 and 4 would be more interesting to expand on kojima seeing the passion the team had for this new direction for the series agreed to serve as the producer and delegated directorial duties to maneshi kimura kimura has had a long track record with the metal gear solid series he originally signed on to work as a texture artist and a model designer for the original 98 game and he worked his way up through the years to become one of the lead artists at kojima productions but this this would be his most difficult task yet taking the beloved metal gear solid property and directing a new entry specifically around one of gaming's most divisive heroes kimura decided to focus more on the later iteration of ryden that fans seemed to appreciate more and looked for ways to replicate the smooth acrobatics and swordplay from metal gear solid force cutscenes so that players could perform the same feats themselves to pull this off the animators and programmers put together a brand new animation rig using the still in development next-gen engine and put together a sophisticated sword swinging model that would provide players with complete control over the blade's swing direction from here they then started to experiment with an algorithm to split object meshes in real time allowing for total control not just over how the blade is swung but how the blade interacts with the world around the player once the system was in place the developers started to establish a number of dynamic props to cut through in the same way creating a playground of destructive objects it was a fun toy to play around with but as 2010 rolled around it became clear that the cutting mechanic wasn't going to be enough to carry the entire game the experience felt too linear too simplistic and the development team began to fear that it may not live up to the metal gear solid namesake due to its steep departure from the series roots what's more the lack of a solid direction made the development process chaotic with nobody really sure whether or not what they were doing was going to work partway through the year it became clear that the time and effort would be better spent supporting the peace walker project in its final stages but instead of just canceling this ryden project outright kojima put out a request to a neighboring japanese development studio called platinum games who we felt may be the perfect fit to finish the job platinum games around this time was a newer studio founded by several former capcom developers who had made a name for themselves thanks to their contributions to the creation of the resident evil franchise but even more recently than that platinumgames were responsible for creating the popular hack and slash action adventure game bayonetta and have also just wrapped up work on an incredibly fast paced third person shooter called vanquish kojima was impressed with these titles and felt the studio's strong japanese style and understanding of fast-paced hack and slash action would be the perfect fit for a game built around ryden so he pitched the idea to platinumgames who agreed and were excited to work with such a legendary property but when they received the code for the project in late 2010 they were treated with a complete mess the game engine kojima productions were building was still incomplete and it would take far too long to get the game into a playable state so they decided to start from scratch and use their own game engine instead and even reintroduced the cutting effect as they felt it was a key part of the game's signature style from here they began to rapidly piece together the rest of the game using lessons learned from their past projects building mostly linear environments but scaling up the insanity of each and every combat encounter throughout development kojima productions maintain complete control over the game's story and general aesthetic feeling it was important to the fans that they continued to have a hand in the metal gear universe finally after a lengthy troubled development cycle platinum games were able to finish the project and in early 2013 they released metal gear rising revengeance for xbox 360 and playstation 3 with the pc port following a year later metal gear rising takes place in the even more futuristic year of 2018 several years after the destruction of the patriot ai system and the war economy it produced the pmcs that liquid had tried to use to control the world have all fallen apart forming their own small renegade groups instead and the soldiers within these groups have undergone operations to enhance their bodies turning them into more machine than man the player assumes the role of ryden a cybernetic ninja himself who has since signed on to work for a private security firm called maverick security consulting but after a job in africa goes wrong ryden finds himself critically injured and vows to track down those responsible with the help of his support team at maverick ryden is equipped with a much more powerful cybernetic suit and is then deployed to the middle east to begin his path towards vengeance this game's story is much more simple and straightforward than the plots you'd expect with the metal gear property there's no real hidden subtext or political commentary or anything like that it's instead designed to deliver the coolest action set pieces possible coupled with lots of hard rock music composed in-house at kojima productions and sung by several different vocal artists as far as it's placed within the series's continuity metal gear rising is technically compatible with the past stories and is considered canon though it's not considered to be part of the main metal gear saga which is understandable considering the gameplay feels nothing like your traditional metal gear experience rather than centering around stealth action revengeance is a very straightforward hack and slash action adventure game the levels are all linear and split up by chapters and instead of remaining undetected for as long as possible the core gameplay loop involves performing the smoothest most impressive combos blending all aspects of ryden's arsenal to obliterate the opposition as always the game is controlled from a third person view perspective with a camera that is either fully controlled or locked in depending on the situation players can sprint really fast jump high into the air and slide to move around the environment quickly and can then effortlessly jump straight into some fast-paced melee combat without hesitation the player's primary weapon is ryden's high frequency blade that's powerful enough to cut straight through massive pieces of concrete and metal like tissue paper players can swipe their sword using either a light or strong attack either of which will typically get the job done but to finish off enemies with real finesse players can hold down the left trigger to activate blade mode where the action is slowed down and players can freely swing their sword in any direction that they want using the right joystick this allows players to target specific body parts along enemies cyborgs and robots useful for weakening their offensive capabilities though it could also be used to completely overkill anyone that the player wants chopping them into tiny pieces from top to bottom if an enemy is weak enough prior to being split into a billion pieces then a red icon will appear indicating that a weak point can be exploited when performed properly players can then execute a special finisher called a zendatsu where bryden will reach in and tear out the enemy's cybernetic spinal cord and crush it in his hands absorbing the fuel cell energy within as players progress through the game they'll also unlock new weapons for ryden to play around with including a long double-sided spear twin size and a pair of large powerful pincer blades each adding to ryden's repertoire of fast-paced melee combat to help bring the game in line a little bit more with classic metal gear games riding can also make use of more familiar equipment like grenades rocket launchers and even a cardboard box though its use is fairly limited considering the very few instances of stealth action throughout the campaign like with mgs4 mg rising also features its own in-game currency that could be spent in the codec menu to unlock special enhancements for ride-in like health upgrades fuel cell upgrades to extend the blade mode along with additional move sets and damage upgrades for each individual melee weapon metal gear rising despite its huge departure from the core metal gear formula was met with a very positive response from critics and fans alike reviewers complimented platinum for completely nailing the feel of the swordplay admitting that the game was a satisfying power trip with some epic moments and great music to go along with them the game was also praised for its clever boss designs with each one offering a unique challenge for the player and testing their ability to make use of all of ryden's capabilities to stay alive unsurprisingly there were still a decent amount of naysayers that felt that rising was the wrong direction for the series even prior to the game being released leaked images of the game's total hour count were distributed online in an attempt to devalue the product to which platinum responded by saying it was on par with their past projects like bayonetta but these type of viral tactics only served to market the game further resulting in solid sales numbers for the game slightly exceeding platinums and konami's expectations kojima himself was also pleased with the work platinum games did and even inquired about a potential sequel in the future using story ideas that they had pitched in the past but platinum having received several other competing offers from other publishers at the time decided to pass on the opportunity shutting down the potential for an entire hack and slash ryden spin-off series following the completion of peacewalker back in 2010 efforts to establish the studio's next-gen engine architecture escalated to being a top priority within the lead programming team they spent over a year testing its capabilities with metal gear rising but all the while they were intending to create a universal platform that would be used by all of konami's game development studios this engine referred to as the fox engine was first shown to the public at e3 2011 with a brief demonstration by kojima of a complex jungle scene complete with real-time shadowing dense vegetation and long draw distances it was far and beyond the technical level of their past work and fans began to theorize that the jungle environment shown may suggest a new big boss based adventure was in the works later that same year kojima teased an upcoming project on his public twitter account showing off screenshots of what appeared to be big boss sneaking through a middle eastern mountainside the tweet sent shockwaves to the industry as many had all but given up hope that they'd ever see another traditional metal gear solid after the fourth game though some remain skeptical arguing that the image may be teasing a brand new game property altogether then a week later kojima spoke with cnn's mark million regarding his recent tweets and clarified that their project given the code name project ogre was going to be entirely different from the studio's past work with an emphasis on large open-ended environments and player choice but he also warned that the project would be hugely ambitious and wouldn't be ready to play for a long time what fans didn't know is that kojima productions were indeed working on the next metal gear and that its massive scope was part of kojima's original plan way back in 2006. peacewalker was a great success both from a technical level and in how it was received after release but even so numerous corners had to be cut in order for the game to work on the handheld and its narrative was only a minute fraction of what kojima had written for it the full peacewalker experience was initially conceived as the fifth entry to the metal gear solid saga that would have told the story of the boss and her cobra unit during their time in world war ii but this later evolved into a direct follow-up to snake eater with big boss traveling the world to build his army ultimately branching into the events of the original msx games but the psp's limited hardware the untested fox engine and the desire to create a self-contained narrative limited the scope of the game to only a tiny portion of what kojima had planned so immediately after peace walker won gold work began on a much bigger sequel a sequel that kojima planned to be his magnum opus the metal gear to end all metal gears to pull this off right kojima productions decided to think outside the box and do things differently than they had in the past the game industry had changed a great deal after all with open world experiences dominating the triple-a market and to stay relevant the metal gear series was going to need to adapt as well so they started to expand their recruitment pool to outside the japanese game industry and hired talented developers from across the world to help contribute to a brand new open world stealth action experience as this new collaborative team took shape kojima looked at ways to revolutionize his storytelling abilities as well the new generation of metal gear he felt would need a new style of storytelling to go with it and so he opted to minimize his signature drawn out cinematic presentation as a way of letting players create their own stories through their actions instead kojima even sought out a new lead voice actor to take on the role of big boss replacing long-time series veteran david hayder with canadian actor kiefer sutherland instead claiming that the new voice would better suit the improved facial capture technology being utilized finally during an event celebrating the metal gear franchise's 25th anniversary kojima productions pulled back the curtain revealing to the world the next generation of the metal gear experience well with the help of the powerful new fox engine kept you waiting huh the response was overwhelmingly positive with fans praising the demonstration for its gorgeous visuals and robust overhaul of the core stealth action elements though many were left confused as to what exactly this game was was this the rumored project ogre with the jungles and the middle eastern mountains was it even part of the mainline saga all kojima would say is that it was a prologue for something much bigger adding to the confusion was another game announced by a swedish developer called moby dick studios a year later that featured a hospital under siege with lots of horror-based themes the project titled the phantom pain looked eerily like the visual design of ground zeroes and before long fans were able to piece together enough clues to confirm their suspicions as it turns out kojima had planned the whole thing there was no such thing as a moby dick studios and the phantom pain was in fact the subtitle for the next major entry to the saga metal gear solid 5 and ground zeroes would serve to whet the player's appetite beforehand with its release in spring of 2014 for both current and next-gen platforms ground zeroes takes place in 1975 one year after the peace walker incident in costa rica by this point big boss and his allies have amassed a formidable military force in the caribbean stationed on board their floating fortress outer heaven and as a result they've attracted the attention of their international neighbors then ahead of an inspection of their facilities by the iaea big boss orders his forces to hide any evidence of their nuclear capabilities including the salvaged metal gear zeke from last year meanwhile kaz miller receives word that the traitorous paz has been located and is being held prisoner at an old cia black site in cuba called camp omega eager to learn more from her the boss and miller formulate a plan to extract paws with a strike force once the nuclear inspection has been completed but after chico was captured trying to save paz himself big boss is left with no choice but to infiltrate the island alone on the eve before the nuclear inspection this is where ground zeroes picks up with big boss infiltrating camp omega under the cover of darkness whilst a mysterious strike force believed to be part of zero's cipher unit departs by helicopter to an unknown location after sneaking past a few centuries throughout the base big boss eventually discovers chico locked in the cell who seems to have undergone significant trauma at the hands of the formidable skull face he extracts the young boy and then follows a string of clues deeper into the base where he finds paws and exfiltrates from the area but during their journey back home it becomes clear that the rescue op was a setup cypher had used chico and paws to lure big boss away and then launched a massive attack on the msf's base of operations sinking it into the sea make matters worse paz was also rigged with multiple ieds and in a last-ditch effort to save big boss's life she leaps from the helicopter and is killed instantly [Music] but also inadvertently causes the chopper to crash with the fate of those on board left a mystery it's an incredibly powerful prologue sequence quite possibly one of the most ambitious setups in the franchise's history but what's most interesting about ground zero story direction is its much darker mature tone metal gear games have covered dark themes in the past most notably the grim backstories behind the beauty and the beast unit in mgs4 but ground zeroes takes this to a different level thanks to its extended audio tapes that reveal the brutal torture endured by the prisoners at camp omega another aspect of ground zero story delivery that i feel is worth mentioning here is the use of a new single tracked camera for each of the cutscenes likely incorporated to help seamlessly branch the story sequences into the gameplay which makes sense considering how much more immersive ground zero's gameplay design is ground zeroes and the game it proceeds offers the ultimate metal gear solid stealth action experience it takes everything that the series has established over the years and perfects it with more player abilities superior control and environmental interactivity many of snake's maneuvers return for this entry including snake's ability to crawl roll shoot using an over-the-shoulder aim mode and engage enemies with cqc but there are a few subtle changes incorporated to modernize all these moves even more the combat role for example is now just a dive allowing players to transition even faster into the prone position players can also sprint for the first time in the series which is important when crossing the much larger playable space the old on-screen radar display is also scrapped in favor of a new 3d spotting system allowing players to tag individual soldiers with permanent markers that can be easily tracked through walls the inventory system has also been redesigned adopting the comma rose from portable ops and reconfiguring it with a much cleaner ui that lets players quickly get to a specific weapon and swap out attachments on the fly ground zeroes also reimagines the codec as this weird holographic idroid device allowing players to research information on their current mission view a map of the area and even call for a helicopter extraction at designated locations there's a lot of great new additions to the gameplay but most of ground zero's new feel can be attributed to the larger scale of the play area camp omega is huge at least when compared to areas from past metal gear games and the player is no longer limited to following a scripted path to their objective the only goal is to find chico and paws everything else is entirely up to the player to figure out players can for instance sneak around in the shadows picking up on clues from groups of soldiers talking in the rain or they can grab a soldier and get them to talk with locations of key targets being revealed on the idroid has been updated players can even jump into the back of a truck scheduled to make a delivery and use it to infiltrate a heavily guarded position and when things inevitably get messy players are free to go in guns blazing blasting soldiers with whatever weapons they can find including emplaced anti-aircraft guns and heavy armor vehicles it's easily one of the most impressive opening sequences in the series to date as it encourages players to experiment to find the best possible method to and from the target objectives while simultaneously paying homage to some of the series's greatest infiltration missions though by itself it's one of the shorter prologues in the series and so the developers also included a number of alternate missions to play through with new objectives and different lighting conditions to take full advantage of the camp omega level environment missions include extracting different targets eliminating hvts and even rescuing hideo kojima himself all which adds several more hours of gameplay to what's easily the shortest standalone experience in the entire series but even so ground zeroes was welcomed with a warm response from game journalists and fans alike it was praised for its modernized approach to the classic stealth action formula providing players with seemingly infinite options to tackle their objectives while also delivering a gorgeous next-gen presentation but some were disappointed with the toned-down narrative aspects feeling the experience was watered down and catered too strongly to western audiences others criticized the depiction of sexual violence concerning the character paws feeling that its inclusion to the game was slowly for shock value but the vast majority of complaints concerned the game's short length and pricing structure with some questioning konami for charging for what was essentially the same as the old pizza hut demo from 98. regardless the stage was now set kojima productions would spend the remainder of the next year working on easily the most aggressively ambitious metal gear solid title ever made over the course of the next year the team at kojima productions went into overdrive the task of converting kojima's passion project into a fully playable experience was backbreaking as it was estimated to be hundreds of times larger than even the biggest metal gear titles before this was due largely in part to the game's new open world gameplay design with vast environments erected with an unprecedented amount of detail once the environments were established the designers then began to incorporate tons of interactive gameplay elements in an effort to emphasize the game's fun and creative nature kojima reveled in this playful direction and over the course of development hosted several light-hearted demonstrations via their v-log series kojima station but behind closed doors the production process had devolved into a nightmare scenario the scope of the project quickly grew to be way too big for the team of 250 developers even with the assistance of a newer los angeles-based branch that had joined up with them in 2013 as a result several hours worth of content planned early on was set aside and the studio focused solely on polishing up the gameplay to meet the series established pedigree but by early 2015 it became clear that the game was unable to meet its initial february deadline and the release was delayed by upwards of six months it was a costly decision and as a result konami decided that following the release of metal gear solid 5 they would undergo a massive reorganization of their corporate structure aaa game development just didn't make sense anymore for them especially with the significantly cheaper cost and higher profit margins available in the growing mobile space and so in april of 2015 konami and kojima released joint statements confirming the imminent closure of kojima productions marking the official end of kojima's involvement with both konami and the metal gear franchise the fan response was unsurprisingly negative with some even threatening to boycott metal gear solid 5 when it released bukojima along with several other of the game's voice actors reassured the fan base that they would all remain involved in the game to its completion and in september of 2015 kojima productions released the final entry to the saga metal gear solid 5 the phantom pain for ps3 ps4 xbox 360 xbox one and the pc the phantom pain picks up nine years after ground zeroes with the msf having been destroyed and big boss left in a comatose state can you hear me i need to tell you something please listen and try not to panic after finally awakening the player is informed that they have sustained irreparable damage from the helicopter explosion including an amputated left arm and several pieces of large shrapnel lodged into their skull they're then told that they're actively being hunted by someone and that reconstructive facial surgery is necessary in order to stay undetected but while recovering from the procedure the hospital falls under siege by an unknown military faction who proceeds to kill everyone that they encounter and with the help of a mysterious bandaged patient the player narrowly escapes death and is reunited with revolver ocelot with ocelot's help the player is reintroduced to the world of covert infiltration and reclaims the title of big boss from this point metal gear solid 5's story takes an uncharacteristic backseat to the gameplay they're still high quality cutscenes shot with that unmistakable kojima style but they're few and far between only occurring during critical moments in the story the plot revolves primarily around big boss building up his new army the diamond dogs and follows his and cause miller's quest for revenge against the perpetrators of the ground zeros incident along the way snake encounters a few new faces there's quiet a scantily clad assassin who refuses to speak a word code talker a navajo biologist who specializes in parasitology and eli a mysterious young british boy who commands a group of child soldiers in africa also returning to the mix is the chilling antagonist skull face who has since assumed full control of cipher and intends to control the world by means of a deadly parasitic outbreak along with a brand new bipedal weapon called sahalanthropus like with every previous metal gear solid entry the phantom pain is based strongly around a couple of core themes this time mainly revenge and to a slightly lesser extent cultural identity and race much of the action is driven by each character's lust for vengeance while highlighting along the way the cost to those unable to let go it's a decently strong story to build a game around but regrettably the new delivery method leaves a lot of its potential on the table much like with peace walker and with ground zeroes the phantom pain delivers the narrative on a mission by mission basis with traditional cutscenes only rarely making an appearance the opening sequence is long and story focused not unlike any other metal gear game but after the player is let loose in afghanistan the story essentially falls off a cliff of the 50 main missions available in the game only 12 of them are considered important enough to feature full cinematic cutscenes the rest are just standard infiltration missions that task the player with securing intel or sabotaging enemy operations what's even more curious is that after the 31st mission the game then begins to repeat itself with more challenging variants of older operations artificially lengthening the campaign and holding its true ending hostage for metal gear fans the phantom pain story is a rare miss for the series spared only by its solid voice actor performances that are featured prominently in optional audio logs and while it does technically lead into the original metal gear as promised there's an undeniable feeling that the project was just never finished on the bright side metal gear solid 5's gameplay is arguably the most enjoyable in the series to date the entire game is designed to be the ultimate stealth action sandbox with a seemingly endless number of ways to complete each mission before deploying players can freely customize various mission parameters this includes the insertion point and the time of day along with all the players gear weapons and their support team when satisfied with their selection the player can then deploy directly into the action where they're dropped off a few clicks out from the mission objective players could then choose to go in on foot or make use of phantom pains several new modes of transportation like tanks trucks and of course snake's body dehorse d-horse is unquestionably the best way to move about the world of the phantom pain not only is he more maneuverable than the game's many vehicles but snake can even roll off to the side of his saddle to bypass enemies one of many really clever tricks incorporated to expand snake's infiltration techniques d-horse can even be trained to defecate on command which can then be used to cause enemy vehicles to spin off the road and crash the player is looking for an even more metal gear method of transportation there's the d walker a miniature piloted bipedal mech that can be fully customized to use a variety of powerful tools and gadgets it's not necessarily the most subtle approach but it'll certainly make short work of any enemy encampments along the way for players fine with walking there's the buddy d-dog d-dawg one of my personal favorites is a small wolf cub that the player can find as a pup during one of their earliest missions after properly raising and caring for it d-dog can turn into a ferocious ally as he not only automatically tags nearby units through walls but he can also be equipped with his own tactical gear in order to neutralize enemies within this range which brings us to the updated enemy designs throughout the sprawling open worlds of metal gear solid 5 players will encounter several enemy controlled outposts of varying size and complexity by default these outposts are easy to deal with soldiers will often patrol on their own wearing minimal protection and so long as they don't spot the player or gets spooked by certain disturbances they can be easily dispatched one by one but as the player progresses through the game and begins to establish a reputation for themselves these soldiers will begin to adapt and will don heavy body armor bulletproof helmets and even inflatable decoys to try and fool the player additionally the enemies now operate on a new rotational schedule this means individual guards will actually take scheduled breaks and will even participate in shift changes where a relief unit will drive up and take over after a long day's work it's an incredibly dynamic system though if a player is observant enough they can exploit these troop rotations and slip through the enemy's defenses unseen players can similarly take advantage of the environment to outsmart their opponents and can wait for things like sandstorms to move without being spotted or rainstorms to limit what the enemy can hear by using snake's phantom cigar tool players can even fast forward to the late evening hours where some sentries have gone to sleep in their tents greatly reducing the chances of being spotted for players not quite as patient they may need to contend with metal gear solid 5's new and improved alert system just like back in metal gear solid 2 the enemy's alert status is contingent on how much information the enemy soldier is able to transmit back to hq if the player stops an enemy from firing their weapon or shouting out then they can avoid causing a scene but if a soldier does happen to squeeze the radio button and begins to call for backup then things can start to get messy not only will all the soldiers in the area converge on the player's last known position but enemy reinforcements may be called in from nearby outposts as well if the player happens to slip away at this point then they'll likely have to contend with all nearby military checkpoints being on high alert indicated by the red hue of the base name on the idroid map this can make traversing the area much more difficult however if the player manages to sabotage the enemy's coms equipment before things get out of hand then they can cut off the output's ability to call for reinforcements thus leaving them to fend for themselves the entire system is remarkably robust and well realized offering tons of replayability and opportunities to experiment with different tactics and the fact that the enemy is also seemingly learning and evolving it makes the action all the more satisfying to help stay ahead of these hostile forces players once again are tasked with building and maintaining their own personal private army this version of the base management metagame is hugely expanded upon making it even more well integrated into the gameplay than it was before the r d team in particular is especially important as a higher r d level is required to unlock some of the most useful armaments meanwhile the intel team has also been updated to show the player the approximate locations of enemies on the idroid along with information regarding upcoming weather events and other helpful tidbits but one of the most unique new features to the base management system is the inclusion of a new online invasion mode this mode allows players to infiltrate other players mother bases in an effort to steal resources and valuable staff members the catch is that the same thing can be done to your own mother base so it's worth investing in upgrading the base's security personnel and other defenses just in case now so far i've discussed a lot of what can be done in metal gear solid 5's gameplay but really we've only just scratched the surface the game is loaded to the brim with creative new strategies and techniques along with a seemingly endless amount of new items to research and unlock to make each replay even more enjoyable and audiences loved it the game was met with near-perfect scores upon its release with an overwhelmingly positive review rating on its steam store page along with plenty of perfect scores from major publications reviewers praised the game for its incredible amount of content and even claimed it to be the best stealth action video game ever made others praised the game for its gorgeous visuals and noted the smooth performance on the pc and next-gen consoles but after a few weeks of release public opinion began to shift something about the phantom pain felt strangely off which was made evident by the severe lack of narrative structure especially in the final half of the game others pointed out that half of the game's main missions were just repeats with a slightly higher difficulty needlessly stretching out the length of the game without offering anything worthwhile adding to this growing negative backlash was the discovery of the collector edition's secret mission 51 that depicted an unfinished act in the game where snake would face off against eli and saaho anthropus in a final epic battle on a tropical island because this unreleased episode took place canonically after the events of the base game many theorized that the episode was never completed due to kojima productions being closed down but konami later clarified that the episode in question was a concept that was dropped much earlier in development and was only ever intended to be a bonus expansion if anything else even if this is the case there's no ignoring the deafening absence of the traditional metal gear solid narrative throughout the whole of the phantom pain kojima had taken a big risk with this game's narrative direction hoping that by limiting the cutscene presence players may become more immersed into the role of big boss themselves this idea is so deeply ingrained into the game it's even the crux of the game's big reveal and while some fans may not have appreciated the game's unique style it has since become one of the most successful entries in the entire series a fitting end for one of gaming's most iconic sagas [Music] [Music] immediately following metal gear solid five's release the series creator hideo kojima reformed his studio kojima productions as an independent development team with no longer any ties to konami he was joined by nearly half of the development staff that had worked with him on the phantom pain leaving konami's own development team vastly understaffed and they soon began to work on a surreal new property that kojima had been planning to make for years meanwhile konami underwent some major internal restructuring to account for their new business direction the old kojima production studio was renamed to konami digital entertainment and job listings for an unannounced stealth action experience began to crop up as early as 2015. this project was put together primarily by those who had worked heavily on the development of the phantom pain many of the phantom pains assets and mechanics were repurposed only they were reconfigured to fit a brand new open world survival experience the idea was inspired mainly by the use of zombie-like enemies throughout the phantom pain it was a concept that hideo kojima himself had toyed around with from the past feeling that it would make for an interesting challenge but this this would be an entire game based around the concept over the course of the next several years the development team worked quietly on the game with only a few appearances at game shows and interviews to help explain where they plan to take the series then in february of 2018 konami digital entertainment released metal gear survive the final entry up to this point in the metal gear franchise metal gear survive is a non-canon reimagining of the events that occurred immediately following cipher's attack on the msf mother base as snake and his allies escape on board the helicopter a massive wormhole in the sky opens up and begins to suck up a major chunk of the mother based wreckage along with several of the soldiers these soldiers are then warped to a parallel dimension called dite that is essentially a dried up foggy version of the afghanistan map from mgs5 only this world plays host to an insatiable horde of zombie-like enemies called wanderers requiring the player and his unlikely allies to band together in order to stay alive it's undoubtedly the most absurd premise of any metal gear game to date which is saying something considering some of the stuff that's been discussed in this video already but even more disappointing is that it significantly lacks the spirit of the metal gear property there's no subtext regarding war trauma or nuclear deterrence here there's also no sign of iconic characters like snake or ryden or even any of the villains the story is instead hastily tacked on to a generic zombie survival premise giving it a very distinctive straight to dvd b-side feel which surprisingly is not as bad as an idea as you might think metal gear survive may not be a metal gear game in the traditional sense but what it does set out to do is actually design quite well most of the gameplay mechanics introduced with ground zeroes make a return here including the general controls and functions though they've been modified slightly to allow for new survival mechanics all of the players actions for example will now consume stamina similar to how the psych bar worked in the past games however this is now coupled with a new eating and drinking system that if not carefully monitored will reduce the player's maximum stamina and health levels survive also lets players craft and build prefab structures using materials found throughout the environment by using a melee weapon like a spear players can break down any object in the game world and then harvest the resources from that object to build structures back at home these structures range from basic necessities like a campfire a workbench or fences but will steadily evolve to include much more complex devices like a teleporter that can help make traveling between locations easier dead even more of a challenge to experience survive also includes a deadly fog around the perimeter of the map only accessible when equipped with an oxygen mask by doing this players are forced to work against the clock and are encouraged to make use of the series's signature stealth mechanics to avoid detection and complete the objectives as quickly as possible by today's standards metal gear survive doesn't necessarily introduce anything that fans of zombie survival games haven't seen a dozen times over but it's nonetheless an enjoyable cooperative survival game that ties in well with the gameplay mechanics introduced with mgs 5. even so the fan base was unsurprisingly not on board the game was met with an overwhelmingly negative response upon release with many frustrated by the new direction others faulted the game for its use of microtransactions claiming that the game's only reason for existence was from a business standpoint with none of the passion that had gone into each entry prior for those willing to look past the fact that the game wasn't a typical metal gear experience they complained that the zombie hitboxes were too inconsistent and that its game world was simply not interesting but no matter what the reason for disliking it metal gear survive was a commercial failure its sales numbers were abysmal just barely staying in the top 10 new game charts even in a relatively slow month for releases with survive's poor performance it became clear that aaa game development was no longer a worthwhile endeavor and as a result they folded in konami digital entertainment into one of their three new product divisions and redirected their focus towards more profitable ventures metal gear survive was more or less the killing blow for the once legendary stealth action franchise what started as merely a way to help promote an old japanese computer architecture steadily evolved into a household name with everyone gamers and non-gamers alike having at least heard of snake in his cardboard box stealth action excavates the series helped to usher in the age of aaa games with the introduction of the metal gear solid saga and continued to push the envelope by consistently challenging its fan base with new creative ideas even when faced with limited hardware the developers behind the series still managed to find ways to innovate updating the core mechanics and providing gamers with incredible new stories but as aaa development costs soared to new heights and fan demand reached a fevered pitch the series inevitably collapsed in under itself though not before providing gamers with one last epic adventure with some of the very best stealth action gameplay in the industry to date which brings us to today roughly 35 years after the series's initial conception where could the series possibly go from here rumors as of writing this seem to point to a potential metal gear revival soon with many theorizing that the american based game development studio blue point games could potentially have agreed to work on a remake of the original metal gear solid much in the same way that they had recreated shadow of the colossus and demon souls giving credence to this theory is a tweet from blue point's own official twitter on halloween night 2019 where they seem to be hinting at the return of dormant properties including metal gear solid this would make sense considering konami even more recently has expressed interest in licensing out its many owned properties to third-party developers much like they had done in the past with twin snakes to add even more fuel to the fire here solid snake himself mr david hader has recently hinted at a possible remake of the old metal gear solid games though he himself has not confirmed his own involvement and finally there's the most recent blue box studios conspiracy where an independent developer who has seemingly teased working on a reboot of the silent hill series has made occasional references to the metal gear series as well while promoting the highly secretive abandoned project this has prompted many kojima fans to theorize that blue box may be a secret fake studio much like the moby dick studio situation though the developer in blue box has repeatedly denied such claims leaving many to question what exactly abandoned is regardless of what ends up being true we can at least take solace in the fact that the metal gear series has completely transformed this industry for better or for worse and will forever remain one of the most iconic video game series of all time but what do you guys think which metal gear game was your favorite and if the series does return where do you think it should go next let me know in the comments section if these games interest you in any way and you want to give them a try you can pick up three of the original metal gear games using the links provided in the description that includes metal gear metal gear solid and metal gear solid 2 sons of liberty all of which were used to record the footage for this video i also wanted to give a special shout out to my supporters on patreon who've helped significantly in making this video thank you all so much for your continued support if you enjoy the work i do here and want to see more documentaries like this please consider joining the growing list of patreon supporters where you can get early access to new projects behind the scenes content shout outs and access to our private discord to chat and play games your support is hugely appreciated and of course don't forget to like and subscribe for more videos like this posted every week [Music] [Music] snake there's something i've really got to ask you it's why i followed you up this far have you ever loved someone that's what you came to ask no i mean i i was wondering if even soldiers fall in love what are you trying to say do you think love can bloom even on a battlefield [Music]

Channel: Nick930

Views: 469,932

Rating: 4.9424748 out of 5

Keywords: Metal Gear, Metal Gear Solid, MGS, History of, Konami, Kojima, Hideo, Snake, Solid Snake, Liquid, Solidus, Big Boss, The Boss, FOX, Stealth Action, Sneak, Stealth, Review of every, Retrospective, Analysis, Trailer, Development, Summary, Full, Fan, Favorite, Best, professional, High Quality, MGSV, MGS2, Remake, Remaster, Bluepoint, Sons of Liberty, Guns of the Patriots, Snake Eater, History of Metal Gear, History of MG, Nick930, Gamescom

Id: Vhk8DFLW5nE

Length: 167min 17sec (10037 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 30 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/pyrospade]

It’s such a shame the franchise ended in such a mixed note as mgs5 was. Gameplay-wise it was a masterpiece but the story was rushed out and it showed.

[u/kappa_expression]

Started watching this the other day when the good ol' algorithm recommended it to me. Man, I really wish I got to play this series in it's prime. I would've loved to be part of the hype trains leading up to MGS2 and MGS3 launches. It must've been wild seeing the jump from MGS1 to MGS2 as well.

[u/CookieMisha]

I gladly watched the entire thing. It was an amazing nostalgia trip, and now I have a strong urge to play the entire series. Too bad I have the entire legacy collection but not a PS3 to play it on

[u/45intheshade]

MGS5 was a great game but I always feel bad for people who say it was their only MGS game because it wasn't very "Metal Geary" imo. It was still a great game dont get me wrong but very different to the previous entries in a lot of ways. If you enjoyed MGS5 I really recommend checking the previous entries out too, especially MGS3.

[u/NintendoFan37]

Watched the video a couple days ago, its absolutely phenomenal! It even doesn't include major spoilers in it, letting those (like me) who haven't played the games still in the dark about the twists the game has. Announcer basically says stuff along the lines of "it wowed the audience with its twist ending" without actually saying what the twist it. Overall, a fantastic video and watch for anyone who has time to spare!

[u/Bolt_995]

I hope the 9th of September brings some great news for the franchise:

Metal Gear Solid remake from Bluepoint Games.

[u/JBL_17]

I would love to replay MGS 1 in HD like he has in the video, but I’m having trouble locating what he did.

I’ve found a few tutorials online but none match how good his looks. It can’t just be the GOG version natively, right?

[u/jeperty]

I know its kind of an unpopular opinion at least online, but I liked MGSV's story. It was just told differently than the previous games, relying on you to listen to dialogue between soldiers, and through the tapes. Some appearances were a little odd, but when isn't that the case in a Metal Gear game. The cut mission wouldve been cool but it didnt ruin the game not having it.

[u/righteousape08]

I want to plug futurasounds productions videos on mgs. He has so many great videos whether it's about the content of the games themselves or the context of the times or even the hard to figure out story beats. He deserves way more views than he has.