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Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of The Patriots 2.0 |OT| Kept you waiting, huh?

We should have killed him, we should have killed him, we should have killed him...


This is how I justify it to myself, Snake is and has been a soldier for several decades, he has killed many people, for him killing is as easy as breathing (I know I'm stealing this from somewhere, but I can't remember where) and in doing this he has become used to killing, that means that for other people to die he's the one that lives on. In that scene, with the gun, he feels that there's no more use to him, he's old, sick and doesn't have a lot of time to live, but how can you erase that instinct, that primal reaction to survive? He's a copy of the greatest solider that ever lived, the very reason of why he was cloned was survival, his survival, he lives on while others die by his own hand. After so many years of killing, he could end his life and stop the killing, but why not rebel against that, as he rebelled against so many other things, why not live and be a little bit happy for as long as he still has to live.
 
Ahh right, yeah, then in that case I agree with you. Snake would have gone through with it if he thought he had to, it's pretty weak how they make him chicken out.
well, that just means his desire of living won the fight. it's very hard for a human who wants to live to suicide. Big Boss allowed him to take the decision watching from somewhere. And when he saw he decided not to take his life away, he stepped in, killing himself in the process.
 

Mr. Fix

Member
My problem isn't that Snake lives, it's that he doesn't kill himself when he puts the gun in his mouth. I would have no problem if Snake learned about the side effects of the new FoxDie before he went to the cemetery. That's not what happens though.

I forget this part. But Snake still had FoxDie in him, right? And that would eventually spread, if he stayed?
 
Snake offing himself would have made me hate the entire game. Looks like I'm in some extreme minority there. To go through everything he does and then take the coward's way out. Snake is more boss than that. I thought the way it ended with him having a respite with Big Boss, as improbable as that may be (I stopped worrying about probability in the MGS universe with MGS2), was super fitting and satisfying.

That final shot of him kneeling before Big Boss at the cemetery with that moment of silence before the music calmly comes in is still burned into my mind to this day.
 

StuBurns

Banned
should have saved a few out of the hundreds of emails I got. I feel bad making fun of those people, but it was really pathetic. So much of their lives was dependent on MGS4 being PS3 exclusive. They HATED Xbox users more than anything else in the world. They didn't want Xbox 360 to have any good games, especially not MGS4. I would get emails almost every day that read like, "Please, please, PLEASE RYAN, please confirm that MGS4 will NEVER come to the Xbox 360 and will FOREVER stay on PS3! This is serious. Stop ignoring us! We are the TRUE fans blah blah. P.S. Tell Cliffy that Gears of War sucks."

Walking around Roppongi listening to 1UP Yours, Luke vs. Shane, and the constant static of the console wars, I felt like I was one of the guys on the frontline. It's funny to look back on, but at the time, it was annoying and distracting. (I remember one angry phone call I got from Sony when they caught wind of a rumor that MGS4 360 was real.) Thankfully now it feels like all consoles users are banding together to combat evil F2P, social games, slot-machine mechanics, Zynga, etc. That's all good, as far as I'm concerned.
Obviously it's hard to collectively blame a company, it's almost certainly not your fault, but there were decisions made that deliberately stoked the console warriors from KojiPro without question. That initial trailer that shows a clip of the Killzone trailer mentions the PS3 CPU and how it's key to winning the console war or something similar. Even really strange statements like Kojima claiming 50GB wasn't enough for MGS4 despite it ultimately being in the mid-thirties.

I do think it would have been cool to see it go to 360 and PC (the ultimate irony being the series actually started on MS's MSX). It's also kind of cool that it's basically the final huge third party exclusive we'll probably ever see (assuming Versus isn't). Thematically the game has a number of allusions it being a dinosaur in the gaming environment, an aging weapon dragged back into the existence to support a platform.

Until I played it, it seemed a very strange decision, but it feels like a game that was actually written with it's exclusivity in mind, bizarrely.
My biggest learning from MGS4 was don't answer every question about your fiction. That was the greatest disservice we could have done. I remember peeking into the TUS forums a month after MGS4 shipped and saw the damage we did -- there was no more discussion, no more debates, no more passion. Whether or not people liked all the answers, we explained every mystery and subsequently smothered the fun of our crazy fiction. Never again.
It certainly did. Trying to parse the story of SoL was a constant debate for many years, and while there are still questions from that game, anything that needed to be addressed was. It's a difficult decision though, what people want, and what they believe/claim they want, are often misaligned, but it's also a question of what the creator wants.

We have seen another MGS since, and we have Rising early next year, but we might be about to see the real next entry in the series in a couple of weeks, and if completely flushing out the loose-ends in MGS4 has allowed for a complete refresh of the series with 5, I think it'll have been well worth it.

I do believe we should have seen Snake die, the series has a compulsion of resurrecting characters randomly, there are story justifications, Ocelot's dad was psychic, Big Boss was rebuilt with cloned bits and bobs, etc, but it's irrelevant, because all it really does is nullify the importance of death. While I don't think it will happen, within a game, you could easily undo Snake's impending death, make him young again, but it would be the worst the thing. The series until that point need to completely be cleaned up to allow for something altogether new. I just hope that's what's happening.
No doubt. Although I like the wedding scene, if only because we had my mom scan her Bible at the last minute, which became the model used by Ed in the scene.
I don't understand the wedding scene actually, I don't get why it's out of the back of the nomad, you even have Snake at a graveyard, quite possibly near a church, wearing a suit. It was really strange not to have those events linked geographically.
 

Mr. Fix

Member
Snake offing himself would have made me hate the entire game. Looks like I'm in some extreme minority there. To go through everything he does and then take the coward's way out. Snake is more boss than that. I thought the way it ended with him having a respite with Big Boss, as improbable as that may be (I stopped worrying about probability in the MGS universe with MGS2), was super fitting and satisfying.

That final shot of him kneeling before Big Boss at the cemetery with that moment of silence before the music calmly comes in is still burned into my mind to this day.

I kinda feel this way too. The real cop-out would be to have him kill himself. Didn't Kojima want to do this in MGS2? It was like an obsession but with no real substance to it.
 

novery

Member
Snake offing himself would have made me hate the entire game. Looks like I'm in some extreme minority there. To go through everything he does and then take the coward's way out.

I think we should have double-downed on the FOXDIE / Snake Becomes A Walking Weapon of Mass Destruction idea. (In multiple senses, he becomes a Metal Gear.) That would make his death justified and heroic -- his last (and ultimate) sacrifice for humankind. *tear*
 

.la1n

Member
This is how I justify it to myself, Snake is and has been a soldier for several decades, he has killed many people, for him killing is as easy as breathing (I know I'm stealing this from somewhere, but I can't remember where) and in doing this he has become used to killing, that means that for other people to die he's the one that lives on. In that scene, with the gun, he feels that there's no more use to him, he's old, sick and doesn't have a lot of time to live, but how can you erase that instinct, that primal reaction to survive? He's a copy of the greatest solider that ever lived, the very reason of why he was cloned was survival, his survival, he lives on while others die by his own hand. After so many years of killing, he could end his life and stop the killing, but why not rebel against that, as he rebelled against so many other things, why not live and be a little bit happy for as long as he still has to live.

Your breathing quote is from Rambo.
 
I think we should have double-downed on the FOXDIE / Snake Becomes A Walking Weapon of Mass Destruction idea. (In multiple senses, he becomes a Metal Gear.) That would make his death justified and heroic -- his last (and ultimate) sacrifice for humankind. *tear*

Sure. If his suicide was for the "greater good," that would have worked. Not sure if I would have traded the ending we got for that, but of course it all depends on the execution.
 

Ein Bear

Member
Snake offing himself would have made me hate the entire game. Looks like I'm in some extreme minority there. To go through everything he does and then take the coward's way out. Snake is more boss than that. I thought the way it ended with him having a respite with Big Boss, as improbable as that may be (I stopped worrying about probability in the MGS universe with MGS2), was super fitting and satisfying.

That final shot of him kneeling before Big Boss at the cemetery with that moment of silence before the music calmly comes in is still burned into my mind to this day.

See, the problem I have with the scene is that he does take the coward's way out. Killing himself would have been the heroic thing to do, since as far as he knew, if he didn't do it then thousands, possibly millions, of people would die.

Other than that though (seriously, they should have just had Big Boss step in before he pulls the trigger), I like the ending.

Snake dying would have been a poor way to finish it - as a guy who was literally born to be a soldier, and has been fighting for his entire life, dying at the end would have been too... easy. A final moment with Big Boss, learning that he can still live a normal, peaceful life with the time he has left, is a much more fitting end for the character. His fight, and time with the player, is finally over, and he gets to live for himself, without circumstances/us forcing him to fight. His last few months, and his death, are private, and should happen off-screen.
 
See, the problem I have with the scene is that he does take the coward's way out. Killing himself would have been the heroic thing to do, since as far as he knew, if he didn't do it then thousands, possibly millions, of people would die.

Other than that though (seriously, they should have just had Big Boss step in before he pulls the trigger), I like the ending.

I would agree with that too. Big Boss stepping in to stop him from doing it would have been pretty great, this miraculous moment for Snake, but I still felt the ending was very cathartic. Definitely too wordy and long-winded, but cathartic.
 

BadWolf

Member
Snake offing himself would have made me hate the entire game. Looks like I'm in some extreme minority there. To go through everything he does and then take the coward's way out. Snake is more boss than that. I thought the way it ended with him having a respite with Big Boss, as improbable as that may be (I stopped worrying about probability in the MGS universe with MGS2), was super fitting and satisfying.

That final shot of him kneeling before Big Boss at the cemetery with that moment of silence before the music calmly comes in is still burned into my mind to this day.

Yes, this is the way I saw it as well.

Killing himself would have been the easy way out. Still, I don't see how not killing himself was a happy ending, his body would still be degrading and his final days and death would have been anything but pleasant. No real rest for someone who fought all his life.

Also agree about Big Boss, improbable but good. He was the only one who could have convinced Snake of anything, just like Snake was the only one whom Raiden would listen to.
 

Gregorn

Member
Fiiinshied my first playthough! I got 24% of the trohpies naturally and I'm still motived to go through again and get the rest.

The last line in the game is "The sun is rising" lol
 

novery

Member
I would agree with that too. Big Boss stepping in to stop him from doing it would have been pretty great, this miraculous moment for Snake, but I still felt the ending was very cathartic. Definitely too wordy and long-winded, but cathartic.

CQC HUG
 

Mr. Fix

Member
No. Where did you read that?

http://www.officialplaystationmagaz...wanted-to-end-it-at-every-step-along-the-way/

Creators feeling tired or trapped by their biggest success isn’t unusual. Speak to Kojima about Snake, though, and it’s a miracle the old soldier made it to MGS 2, let alone 4 and beyond. “Actually, I wanted to end it at every step along the way.”

"The sun is rising" lol

The fire rises.
 

StuBurns

Banned
The beauty of that final scene with Big Boss is it calls back to that bathroom scene in MGS1, Snake has no allegiance, Big Boss has been his nemesis, and his father (in the educational sense), as The Boss was to him. The war was over, and Snake's time as a solider was too, he was no longer obligated to follow BB, or to hunt him, he was finally allowed to decide for himself how he would relate to him. It was right to have Big Boss there, despite the huge logical leaps that had to be made to allow it.

I could do without the zero to one to one hundred garbage though.
 
As a huge MGS fan I'm loving all of the discussion in this thread, especially from you, Ryan. Thanks for the insight!

(Also: Can't wait for Republique!)
 
Imagine if they went with the ending where Snake and Otacon get executed.

With MGS5, one continuous environment would be better than splitting it up into acts like MGS4. It made the game feel a lot shorter than the previous ones.

Also, I hope they completely redo the animations. The recycled ones in 4 looked robotic and out of date, while the new ones (e.g. the sideways roll) looked really terrific.
 

Gregorn

Member
The fire rises.

I meant it in reference to this.

Metal-Gear-Rising-Revengeance-Logo.jpg


I have no idea if it was meant to be an intentional hint, it's probably just a coincidence.
 

StuBurns

Banned
Rising and Peace Walker were both in early development at the time I believe. MGS4 actually lists the releases until that point with two 'under construction'.
 

BadWolf

Member
See, the problem I have with the scene is that he does take the coward's way out. Killing himself would have been the heroic thing to do, since as far as he knew, if he didn't do it then thousands, possibly millions, of people would die.

Just saw it as hesitation, made Snake feel, you know, human (instead of some 'just do it' hero).

He would have done it unless Big Boss convinced him to live on instead.
 
Snake should have died, but not by eating a bullet -- suicide is not something he would do.

Drop the whole FoxDie WMD shit and just give me an after-credits scene of him back at his place in Alaska, taking care of his dogs; the camera starts to slowly pull away as he walks back to his cabin, a voice-over of Naomi/Otacon about "not being a prisoner of fate/destiny -- he slows his pace, clutches his chest and stumbles... he falls into the snow.

*cue 'The Best is Yet to Come' flute opening*

7J5WI.jpg


Bonus after-after credits Codec call:

"Hey, Snake. You there?"

"Snake?"

"Snake!"

"Snaaaaake!"

lol

Fiiinshied my first playthough! I got 24% of the trohpies naturally and I'm still motived to go through again and get the rest.

The last line in the game is "The sun is rising" lol

"The Sun... it's rising again."
 

PowderedToast

Junior Member
Fun to see the wellspring of MGS4 love in this thread. I remember checking GAF a few months after launch and being surprised at the outpouring of hate. Sure, the game's got problems, but I think it's a sum of its parts, and some of the parts are undeniably incredible.



Haha, yeah, lots of stories. One thing I recall was all the PS3 vs. 360 controversy at the time. (If you recall, it was much worse than it is now. I clearly remember having my family threatened by a fan when he became convinced that we were prepping a 360 version.) We had fun with it all though and put in a few easter eggs to stoke that fire, but I'm not sure anybody noticed...

As you all can see, Act III had the most problems. Credits goes to Shinta Nojiri for coming in at the very last minute and greatly improving it. He practically lived at the office for the final 60 days.

Overall, I remember being really worried about the game upon ship because of the cutscene-to-gameplay time ratio. I wanted the entire game to be like Act I & II, but I think the desire for a lot of special case fan-service stuff won out. I'm still really proud of the game and the controls, actually (they were drastically improved over what was originally intended to ship). Still don't have the urge to play it again though. Maybe on its 10 year anniversary?
maybe it's just me but i find this somewhat unclassy, almost like your retroactively parsing blame on others. maybe it's true that seemingly everything you didn't like during development turned out to be what the game was eventually criticised for, but there's something about taking responsibility as a collective development team, rather than "yeah i wanted everything that you guys wanted, but no one else did".
 

rvy

Banned
Drop the whole FoxDie WMD shit and just give me an after-credits scene of him back at his place in Alaska, taking care of his dogs; the camera starts to slowly pull away as he walks back to his cabin, a voice-over of Naomi/Otacon about "not being a prisoner of fate/destiny -- he slows his pace, clutches his chest and stumbles... he falls into the snow.

0428_f0rfb.gif
 

StuBurns

Banned
maybe it's just me but i find this somewhat unclassy, almost like your retroactively parsing blame on others. maybe it's true that seemingly everything you didn't like during development turned out to be what the game was eventually criticised for, but there's something about taking responsibility as a collective development team, rather than "yeah i wanted everything that you guys wanted, but no one else did".
Would you rather he lie?

"Nah guys, you're wrong, stalking the whistling guy was rad".
 
I just beat Act 1 (only got 2 bronze trophies so far...). It was all so much fun but god this game feels so undercooked. There just aren't enough scenarios or real-estate to fully utilize all the mechanics, if you know what I mean. I want more game, I wish this first act was triple the length, it would still never bore me. And it just gets even more depressing later, when you've got this big city and nothing to do in but watch a guy piss... and Shadow Moses with nothing but robots... and the big whatever it is in the final mission that you go into expecting something the size of a the tanker mission but it's like two sections long. The game is so much fun to play, but it's like they ran out of time to implement enough gameplay.

VR missions would have gone a long way here. MGS2 was a really small game but they filled the package out a lot more with inventive gameplay via the VR stuff.
 

novery

Member
Rising and Peace Walker were both in early development at the time I believe. MGS4 actually lists the releases until that point with two 'under construction'.

Hmm, I don't think that's true. We were all hands on deck until the very end of MGS4.
 
I printed out a 100+ page The One Who Knocks trophy tome.
731eef343db53c1b05cb12ccec41d142-813186350.jpg


I can post the doc if someone wants it

I would like a copy of this as well.

Can someone confirm for me... for the emblems that require a certain amount of time crawling or crouching, do you need to be MOVING in those positions?
 
Maybe Snake did pull the trigger, and when Big Boss appears, they're actually in the afterlife. Snake's conversation with Big Boss is what he needs to "move on," like a catalyst. Zero in the wheelchair implies that he's in hell. When Big Boss "dies," he actually "moves on" with Snake following him shortly after a brief moment of peace.

L O S T
 

StuBurns

Banned
Hmm, I don't think that's true. We were all hands on deck until the very end of MGS4.
It was reported that development 'officially' began in August '08, but Kojima had plans for PW earlier.
I want to reflect on this project’s schedule. I had PW’s plot design a couple years back but, we officially started the project August 2008. Then in September we had a project get-away. In December we got the details narrowed down for the project and the MGS4 staff came back to the studio safely after their long vacation. The story concept was solidified in March and narrowed down to a script in June. Then voice recording started the following month. In reality, the development period was only one year.

Do you remember what the two 'under construction' Metal Gears were? If it meant anything at all of course.
 
I would like a copy of this as well.

Can someone confirm for me... for the emblems that require a certain amount of time crawling or crouching, do you need to be MOVING in those positions?

For crawling you MUST be moving (or at least that's what I've always heard). That's why you need to find some wall to crawl into that doesn't automatically knock you up (pun intended).. For all of the others you don't have to move (or so, once again, I believe).

Also, I've just uploaded some videos and put them into the walkthrough regarding Emblems. Currently it's just regarding an easy way to get Blue Bird, how to get Battle Highs, getting praised by the Militia, what counts as a sideways roll and how to get the enemies in the Red Zone to respawn for hold ups, headshots and searches but I'll try to get one for each (or most) emblem eventually).
 
I just beat Act 1 (only got 2 bronze trophies so far...). It was all so much fun but god this game feels so undercooked. There just aren't enough scenarios or real-estate to fully utilize all the mechanics, if you know what I mean. I want more game, I wish this first act was triple the length, it would still never bore me. And it just gets even more depressing later, when you've got this big city and nothing to do in but watch a guy piss... and Shadow Moses with nothing but robots... and the big whatever it is in the final mission that you go into expecting something the size of a the tanker mission but it's like two sections long. The game is so much fun to play, but it's like they ran out of time to implement enough gameplay.

VR missions would have gone a long way here. MGS2 was a really small game but they filled the package out a lot more with inventive gameplay via the VR stuff.

Agreed, there are so many game mechanics in this game... there isn't enough game to do all that game!!!
 

Utako

Banned
My biggest learning from MGS4 was don't answer every question about your fiction. That was the greatest disservice we could have done. I remember peeking into the TUS forums a month after MGS4 shipped and saw the damage we did -- there was no more discussion, no more debates, no more passion. Whether or not people liked all the answers, we explained every mystery and subsequently smothered the fun of our crazy fiction. Never again.
I am not sure you're taking the correct lesson from this. Far be it from me to advise Ryan Payton, but here we go.

It isn't closure that killed the discussion – but the lack of imagination in the answers behind that closure. Ocelot
hypnotized himself to behave like Liquid?
Every fan I know hates that concept, but loved the implication behind Ocelot in MGS2
(direct possession of some sort)
.

If you want people to talk about your fiction, don't dash their imaginations. That doesn't have to mean that you leave things ambiguous or open-ended.
 

televator

Member
It's literally been years since I last played this game. A side effect of that is that I have no clue anymore about how to help out the rebel fighters win each confrontation. Even the Youtube vids that once showed me have long been buried.
 
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