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Tag: Artificial intelligence in fiction

  • Konami, Please Don’t Forget About Metal Gear Solid 4

    Konami, Please Don’t Forget About Metal Gear Solid 4

    During Wednesday’s Nintendo Direct, Konami showed off a new trailer for Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol.1. The upcoming collection of past Metal Gear games includes some of the earliest and biggest games from the popular stealth series. However, 2008’s Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots isn’t included, and I’m worried Konami isn’t going to include it in a future, theoretical Vol. 2.

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    Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 was first announced in May. The collection contains the first seven games of the series and will be released on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and 5, and (just announced earlier today) Nintendo Switch. These games aren’t being remastered and they aren’t remakes. Instead, this is a new collection of classic MGS games that will make it easier to play these older titles on newer platforms. The collection will also include screenplay books of each game and some other goodies, too.

    However, not included in this collection is the PS3-exclusive Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, which is a shame as the game is currently only playable via emulation or on original PS3 hardware. At one point, MGS4 was available to stream via PS Now, but that is no longer the case. While most other MGS games have been ported to multiple platforms, MGS4 remains locked to the PS3. Why? What is the reason for never porting MGS4 to any other platform?

    Why is Metal Gear Solid 4 only on PS3?

    If you ask the internet about this, and you’ll not doubt see some of this in the comments, a popular theory that is often spouted off as if it’s a fact is that MGS4 is incapable of running on anything but a PS3. But that’s not true. You can, right now, download an emulator and play MGS4 at 60fps without much trouble.

    And assistant producer of the game Ryan Payton suggests in Steven L. Kent’s book The Ultimate History of Video Games, Volume 2 that, at one point, MGS4 was actually running on an Xbox 360 and looked and played fine. Reportedly, that version never happened due to Microsoft’s console using DVDs and not Blurays. Konami didn’t want to spend the extra money on shipping multiple discs for the Xbox 360 version. This is more than likely the main reason MGS4 remained a PS3 exclusive and was even alluded to by former PlayStation boss Jack Tretton in 2008. Konami also said this was the reason in 2014.

    Now, in 2023, most consoles use Bluray discs and all of them support digital games—which can be as large or small as you want. So that problem is solved. Yet, I’m still not convinced Konami will actually bring MGS4 to modern machines or to PC. It’s certainly not easy to port a game to new hardware, especially one that exists natively on just one platform. Plus, this whole process wouldn’t be cheap, would involve a good deal of resources, and would likely require tweaks to how the game plays as it heavily relied on the Dualshock 3/Sixaxis controller. 

    Reports indicate MGS4 isn’t coming to more consoles

    Sadly, it seems Konami isn’t going to do the necessary work to help preserve this entry in the Metal Gear franchise. A previous report from Windows Central, which correctly revealed information about the Metal Gear Solid Collection and the MGS3 remake before release also stated that a potential Vol. 2 would not include MGS4, but instead would feature Peace Walker, Portable Ops, Metal Gear Rising: Revegance, and a few other spin-offs.

    Sadly, it seems Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots—with all its long cutscenes, weird live-action bits, creepy monkey, and cool stealth camo—will remain a PS3 exclusive. Likely due to technical issues, but also, maybe Konami just forgot about it. There are a lot of games in the series. It’s easy to forget one or two of them. I get it. I forget Metal Gear Acid exists.

    Still, I hope that one day, someone over at Konami remembers this game exists and that it deserves a second life on new hardware.

    Zack Zwiezen

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  • Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Will Include Five Games You Need To Play

    Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Will Include Five Games You Need To Play

    Image: Konami

    The official reveal of a Metal Gear Solid 3 remake was one of the headliners of Sony’s recent PlayStation 5 showcase, but it likely won’t be finished for some time. Fortunately, a collection of Metal Gear classics is coming to modern platforms this fall and it will actually include more games than originally expected.

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    Announced alongside Metal Gear Solid 3 Delta, Konami’s Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 will come to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC by way of Steam in just a few months, and the PlayStation store page (via Eurogamer) now shows that the original Metal Gear 1 and 2 will also be a part of the package, both of which laid the groundwork for a sprawling framework of political intrigue, Cold War paranoia, and a super complex family tree of guys named Snake.

    That means the entire thing will house the first give games in the espionage stealth series:

    • Metal Gear
    • Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
    • Metal Gear Solid (Including VR Missions/Special Missions)
    • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (HD Collection version)
    • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (HD Collection version)

    The first two games were on the MSX2, Solid was on PS1, and Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater were on PS2. This is essentially the 2012 Metal Gear Solid HD Collection which brought these same games (minus Peace Walker on the PSP) to PS3 and Xbox 360, but which isn’t currently accessible on modern platforms. The only game not included from Metal Gear’s initial 20 year run is Snake’s Revenge, the first follow-up to the original game that wasn’t actually directed by writer and creator Hideo Kojima.

    All of these games were previously delisted from older storefronts in 2021 over issues around “licenses for select historical archive footage used in-game.” Konami says the new collection will contain the original versions of the games with “minimal edits to copyrighted contents.”

    In either case, it’s a lot of Metal Gear, and if it’s on par with Konami’s other classic collections, will hopefully be a decent tribute to and preservation of the franchise. We don’t have an exact price or a specific release date yet, but it should keep fans occupied until the Snake Eater remake, for better or worse, finally arrives.

    Correction 5/26/2023 6:03 p.m. ET: Fixed the original platform for the first and second Metal Gear.

    Ethan Gach

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  • Kojima: MGS2 ‘Seemed Impossible To Release’ After 9/11, Nearly Quit

    Kojima: MGS2 ‘Seemed Impossible To Release’ After 9/11, Nearly Quit

    Hideo Kojima holds a spaceship figure at a gaming convention.

    Photo: Neilson Barnard (Getty Images)

    Those well-versed in their Metal Gear Solid trivia will know that the original ending for Metal Gear Solid 2 was changed before release. Scenes involving a massive ship crashing into Manhattan island were a bit too much in a very young post-9/11 world, with images and videos of planes striking the World Trade Center a constant in the media. In a recent interview, director Hideo Kojima talked about the complicated nature of releasing such a game after a world changing event and how it nearly drove him to quit Konami.

    Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty released in November of 2001 to much anticipation. As a series focused on “Tactical Espionage Action,” the games have never shied away from political themes, be they a part of the fictional story or commentaries on world events and history. While it’s been known for some time now that elements of the game were changed at the last minute due to the September 11 attacks, recent comments reveal that the stress and challenge of handling such a release were enough to push Hideo Kojima to quit Konami at the time. A conversation with Konami’s chairman, Kagemasa Kozuki was what convinced Kojima to stay back then.

    Read More: Metal Gear Solid 2 Retrospective: Be Careful What You Wish For

    Speaking with Shuka Yamada for IGN, Hideo Kojima described an awkward and tough situation after Metal Gear Solid 2, due to release in the Fall of 2001, contained images of the World Trade Center and other sites that were attacked on 9/11.

    9/11 took place in 2001 right before the release of Metal Gear Solid 2. We’d just sent off the master, but the game featured both the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It seemed impossible to release the game. I was called to the board of directors and they all turned pale when I explained the situation. Nobody would tell me what to do, with the exception of Mr. Kozuki, who tackled the issue.

    As I thought about what to do, I went to speak with Mr. Kozuki about possibly quitting the company. That’s when he told me: ‘When this game comes out and society has their say about it, they’ll be talking about you, its creator, and me, the person who sold it. I doubt they’ll say anything about anyone else. What will you do? I’m ready for whatever happens.’

    When I heard how far he was willing to go, I made the firm decision that we’d release it together. The rest is history.

    MGS2 would go on to receive critical acclaim. The game’s tactical stealth gameplay was a dramatic evolution of what came before it and its meta-narrative filled with postmodern themes about digital information, virtual realities, among many others, is still relevant and widely discussed.

    After MGS2 shipped, Kojima found himself in dire need of recovery. “I became completely exhausted, and I always end up in an awful state when I finish making a game,” he said. “After the first Metal Gear Solid, even after it was done I wasn’t recovering at all and ended up being passed from one hospital to the next.”

    9/11 and the themes of Metal Gear Solid 2 weren’t the only time Kojima would face the need to alter his work. As we found out during The Game Awards this year, Kojima rewrote the original story for the sequel to the narrative-driven, post-apocalyptic delivery-service simulator, Death Stranding; the game’s themes of loneliness, isolation, and world-altering events were too close to what we all went through (and are still struggling with). The Covid-19 pandemic followed Death Stranding’s 2019 release by only a few months.

    “Fiction changes when something that big happens,” Kojima told IGN. He continued:

    That’s why I completely rewrote [Death Stranding 2]. You can’t pretend that something this big never happened. While the games themselves are based on characters who are not bound by our reality, the players themselves have gone through the pandemic, and a story written before that experience just wouldn’t resonate with them in the same way, whether it was a fantasy story or a sci-fi one.

    Kojima Productions is currently working on Death Stranding 2. The company is also working on an unnamed game with Microsoft, a project Kojima says other publishers turned down; though he pitched the idea to a few places, he describes the game as requiring “infrastructure that was never needed before.” Other companies seemed to not be as into the idea, “they really seemed to think I was mad.”

    Whatever that new game is, let’s hope he’s not predicting an awful future for us yet again.

    Claire Jackson

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