[Grant Dempsey]

MGS is finally going full-on into immersion culture. Whatever this game's equivalent to Mother Base is, you'll be able to access it, customize it, probably set little weapons development projects in motion, etc., on mobile devices, so that you can get your GZ fix even on the rare occasion that you've acted on the crazy thought of getting some fresh air.

[Grant Dempsey]

I doubt that it's going to be an "important" part of the game experience, or at least that it'll be more important than MPO's "Find recruitment hotspots!" feature. It's probably just going to be a way of letting you micromanage your arsenal and your troops the same way you'll be able to in the game itself, in a special little Mother Base app. And maybe they'll throw in a cute mobile-specific minigame mode, so you can take some of your non-Snake guys through five to ten minute stages, or something.

[Grant Dempsey]

I hear there's some kind of base building feature!

[Grant Dempsey]

It's got to be clear enough that being MGS is what really makes the prospect of an MGO interesting. I mean, yeah, American players turned it into M4-headshot-mania: The Game, but like elvis said just a little bit above me here, they were sort of hijacking the game in turning it into that, not just letting the game arise in its own form. And what I think is interesting on top of that: my impression is that most of the American, M4-crazy players nevertheless understood that they weren't playing, say, Call of Duty and even chose to play MGO, instead of Call of Duty, largely because of that, because it was different, because it wasn't "supposed" to be a typical online shooter game. I suppose my point being, I think the problem of American players wasn't that they wanted MGO to be something other than it was; I think their problem was that they wanted it to be pretty much what it was, but they just didn't/couldn't figure out how to engage it as such, so every time, without fail, they'd play the game in that one way they could: runnin'-'n-gunnin'. And their really annoying seriousness about it all wasn't simply a passioned insistence on making sure the game was M4 Adventures, but a whole other gaming-cultural issue altogether (our general American preference for kinds of atomistic individualism, our social obsession with using games--not just video games--as a way to prove ourselves against others including teammates, etc.).

I don't think even American developers would boil MGO down to something all about headshots. I think American developers would be very self-conscious about being faithful to the MGS identity. If anything, they'd just bring more rigor into the system design that might make an MGO that isn't just quirky, but highly functional in its quirkiness.

Or American players really are just terrible souls and American developers are the devils on their shoulders, and that's that. I dunno.

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

Whoa, Big Boss has a horn in the last scene of the trailer.

[Grant Dempsey]

Wait, never mind, sorry, my video quality was bad.

Heh, for a second, I thought something really strange was up. Big Boss with a horn would've been quite a thing.

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

it's no good!

i can't do it!!!

[Grant Dempsey]

adi's heading in a direction kinda-sorta-but-maybe-not-quite like the direction i want to go, and i'm not sure whether this should motivate me to post or to feel like i don't quite have to

in other words: could you be the one to finally finish me

i don't even know who you is anymore

[Grant Dempsey]

Basically, I think MGS4 (which I say rather than "MGS" because I think it is especially the case in MGS4, even though I am also inclined to think it's the case in general) purposely constructs an experience of "consequences for Snake's getting seen" that aren't exactly based in a pushing-through-resistance model of gameplay, and to assess that experience according to that model, then, is just to orient oneself insistently towards the game as though it were something it isn't (even trying to be).

Not that pushing-through-resistance isn't part of what it tries to offer as an experiential possibility. But pushing-through-resistance isn't The Experience it tries to offer; it's only part of that. And it is highlighted in particular moments, as moments (like the Act 5 opening). But it is an experience maybe directly opposed to other experiences the game tries to offer (like in Act 2), and the game needs some relative freedom from that model in order to offer those other experiences.

The game shifts emphasis from itself, as offering resistance to player progress, onto the agency of the player, becoming a space in which that can play itself out. The player's navigation, even negotiation, of options in the mechanics and certain psychological pressures inherited into the gameplay through the gameplay's contamination by the terms of the narrative, is in the spotlight, rather than the player's cunning problem-solving (and/or risk-taking) with respect to sentries who need to/should be avoided if success is to be achieved. So you get a stealth playground, and it's a stealth playground for a reason, not a stealth game, if that means something only ever to be assessed primarily in terms of Snake vs. sentries, as opposed to Snake vs. Snake. What Adi's saying about something that very much opens itself up to "What if...?" exploration is part of this.

What an awful post. That's all I'm doing right now.

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

To be honest, I'm less interested in Knowing whether Big Boss isn't or may be lying and more interested in seeing what interpretation somebody might generate that's predicated on the assumption of Big Boss's lying. In other words: DAIS, what makes you ask that question?

It honestly isn't a question that occurred to me to ask of the narrative. I do think it's tremendously important to keep always in mind that what Big Boss offers is an account, rooted in a perspective, and not the truth. I do think it's tremendously important that Zero is disempowered in precisely such a way that he's not only never allowed to speak for himself, but also the only primary MGS antagonist disallowed to speak for himself (i.e., the only primary antagonist who has no this-is-why-I've-done-all-this monologue). And the characters who inform us about Zero all obviously have non-objective reason and inclination to make either a world-dooming monster or a sad failure out of Zero in their telling. MGS4 wants us to know we're missing something.

But yeah, it hasn't occurred to me before to wonder what it could mean if Big Boss were deliberately misrepresenting anything to Snake(/the player).

[Grant Dempsey]

The OnigawaraV thing outed itself as a fake, by the way.

[Grant Dempsey]

Aaand here's a glimpse of the next trailer: Not for the Future

Kojima also says, "Trailers these days has lots of explosion, crash, destruction, and fall. I intentionally avoid those elements in my next trailer."

I don't know about the rest of you, but boy am I gonna miss Explosion, Crash, Destruction, and Fall. They're my kind of people.

I imagine this means we're looking at a dialogue-heavy trailer, which means in turn that maybe we do have a good chance of finding out in this next one what's up with Big Boss's voice.

Not for the Future is an interesting line to tease us with. One of the things I find most interesting about MGSV so far is its bizarre position in the series' chronology, not just with respect to the narrative timeline, but the series' progression as a series as well. It's the Fresh Start for MGS, but it's apparently an interquel; it's coming out of Ground Zeroes, but it's Not for the Future; Big Boss is different enough to be recast (if that's what's up), but the game as it's been presented to us so far is largely about his being haunted by his other games (if Mr. Whale-song Fire Ogre really is the Mantis-induced Volgin-ghost vision he/it seems to be); etc.

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

That sounds vaguely like the Terminator theme to me.

On June 6th, we'll Know.

[Grant Dempsey]

Oh, cool, now Kojima says there's going to be a lot of gameplay footage in this upcoming trailer. We'll get the answer to the voice problem, and we'll get a good taste of the game as a game. I guess I was prepared for more teehee what do you think THIS could beee material.

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

I mean, it's also cool, because it means that aborting a mission actually has to be played out as a retreat. It's not like PW, where you can just Fulton anybody anywhere, even indoors. To be picked up by the chopper, you have to call it in and move somewhere it can actually land because that's where it's going to be, rather than conveniently where you're already standing. Like, the GZ Camp Omega mission: the chopper's not going to land in the middle of the camp for you. You still have to get back out of the camp yourself to meet the chopper. So in general if you're indoors or in any tight space at all, well, tough shit: go outside, get to a clearing/helipad/whatever, if you want out of the current mission, or at least if you want out of it and you want to keep anything that you might've already picked up in it or whatever.

I like the thought of actually having supply raid missions or something: get in, get stuff, get out, get evac. As Diamond Dogs'(/the player's) way of maintaining supplies in general. MGSV's equivalent to the Drebin system.

I mean, I'm just making this up, but.

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

Also,

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

"Among visitors saw the trailer, esp Yumi Kikuchi started sobbing right fr the start and cried too hard to get back to radio show for a while"

"I'll depict "Revengence" in MGSV but isn't "Vengeance" that ends once killed. I'll depict "Chain of Revengence" that lies b/w groups(race)."

"E3 used to be really big ten few years ago. The world biggest intense festival where all creators from the world gather once a year."

"There were fellows share common passion and there's positive future. I'm expecting this E3 will get back such hype."

Joys & Sorrows, brought to you by Hideo Kojima

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

Just to have it here:



Either there's another trailer coming or those last minute edits Kojima tweeted about making the other night just happened to cut the very slides he'd tweeted previously as peeks at the game's E3 presentation. I don't see Not for the Future or Not for Love in this one.

[Grant Dempsey]

I thought the same thing. I hear it's Troy Baker who's playing him.

[Grant Dempsey]

[Grant Dempsey]

I'm also inclined to take Eli as Liquid right off the bat. He looks to be the right age, and the caption "A Youth who Curses his Fate" suggests he's got the right disposition, to be Liquid. One thing that's cool about this is that it isn't just his relationship with Big Boss that would be of great interest at this point: it's his relationships with Kaz and Ocelot too, considering he goes on to murder Kaz so that he can impersonate Kaz in MGS1, and Ocelot eventually dies impersonating him in MGS4. Talk about three men with bound fates, huh.