Metal Gear Saga Vol. 1

Sunday, March 5, 2006 » gaming thought

EB called me the other day to tell me my pre-order bonus for Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, the Metal Gear Saga Vol. 1 DVD, had arrived. It even had my name on it when I picked it up, which was very kind considering that my previous EB (in Santa Barbara) seemed to employ an alternate policy of just giving my things away to random customers.

The main content of the DVD is a five-part overview of the five released [canon] Metal Gear titles. It's hard to say what Konami's target audience was when they put this together, since it keeps switching between some great interview segments with Hideo Kojima giving background info and details on how he came up with each installment, and an overly-dramatic narrator who keeps providing plot recaps and raving about the series's success, like he's trying to get viewers all caught up. The narration also curiously glosses right over the Japan-only Metal Gear 2, which receives the least attention out of all the five games. If they were really trying to fill people in, that would have been a good opportunity.

So, not as probingly in-depth as I would have liked. Still, at least the Kojima interviews are informative. The part I found most interesting was when he revealed this bit on Metal Gear Solid 2:

The original plot for the game was very different. The setting was Iran and Iraq, and the story focused on nuclear weapons inspections; Metal Gear was rumored to be hidden behind closed doors and inspectors were being denied access. [...] But about a half year into the project, the Middle East started to heat up again and we realized we couldn't develop a game like that.

Personally, I think that would have been a much more interesting game. For some reason I always found the Big Shell a bit dreary. It would have been great to see Snake in a more exotic location (although I guess that did eventually happen in Snake Eater). The Iraq nuclear weapons inspection thing is a little creepy, though, especially considering that Kojima came up with the plot back in 1998.1

There's also this interesting explanation of Raiden's origin:

After completing work on the first Metal Gear Solid we conducted a survey by gathering a group of women that don't normally buy games. So based on the results of this survey, we intended to begin planning for the next game. A number of junior high school girls participated, but one response stood out: "I hate games about stupid old men!" "They're so worthless!" "I can't stand them!" Asked if she would buy a game like MGS she wrote, "No way would I buy this stupid sort of game!" The team became very depressed. Character artist [Yoji] Shinkawa and I asked ourselves what we could do to fix this problem. So with the users in mind we came up with the new lead character "Raiden."

I suppose it's impressive that they'd make such a huge change to the game in pursuit of one demographic, but wouldn't it have been more logical to poll some existing fans as well? Also, I wonder who they polled to come up with MGS4's geriatric Snake, and how that group of non-gaming women feels about that.

1 According to The Document of Metal Gear Solid 2.