Blu-ray has an impressive amount of space available to fit games. Metal Gear Solid 4 uses an enormous amount of data. As a result, it became the first PS3 game to utilize a dual-layer Blu-ray dis c. Instead of 25 gigabytes, the disc on which the game shipped holds twice as much data. Even though the game is about sixteen hours long, it includes a variety of locations, characters, and assets, ultimately justifying the amount of space used up.
While the exact budget is still unknown, Metal Gear Solid 4 is reported to have cost anywhere between 50 and 70 million dollars to make.
This is a particularly high number for game budgets in Even though the Metal Gear franchise was popular, Metal Gear Solid 4 was coming out exclusively on a new console with a low install base, making it a risk. Since Metal Gear Solid 4 takes place in multiple settings, the developers took trips to numerous locations; mainly Morocco, Peru, and Prague. Even though none of the countries are given names in MGS4 , the trips helped faithfully bring each of them to life. A small controversy sprouted around the game's release regarding review limitations.
The members of The Beauty and the Beast Unit rely on their mechanical suits to cope with their trauma, while Naomi and Vamp are kept alive by their nanomachines. The game deals with the trauma caused by war.
Many soldiers seen in the game suffer from PTSD, and many of the characters have had war forced upon them. Raiden's regained memories of his time as a child soldier made him unstable.
He couldn't tolerate reality and became an alcoholic who ran away from home. The Beauty and the Beast Unit all suffered from PTSD and each dealt with a separate emotion created and guided by fear, the personification of which is their leader, Screaming Mantis. Each Beauty's emotion is based on how they suppressed their fears when going through the traumatic events that shaped them. The Beauties were all haunted by the events which happened in their youth.
Snake experiences a great deal of trauma throughout the events of the game, and is still dealing with the traumatic events of his past. The gauge is affected by flashbacks, the actions of other characters, temperature and stress. When Snake is psychologically weak he can not recover physically. While The Beauty and the Beast Unit succumb to, and are ruled by their trauma, Snake and Raiden accept and overcome theirs and go on to live out their lives in peace. A recurring concept was "Haven".
Ocelot was to fulfill Big Boss's dream of a haven for soldiers. In a tweet posted in April Kojima revealed that he chose this as a theme because of his son talking about the HavenCo data processing company that was considered the smallest sovereign nation in the world and made headlines during Metal Gear Solid 4 's development. Old Snake wearing the OctoCamo. In Metal Gear Solid 4 , the player must navigate the game world in order to progress.
Using the series' traditional third person view with full camera manipulation, it allows the freedom to play in first-person mode or over-the-shoulder view. The shoulder view is switchable from right shoulder to left for easy corner maneuvering. A key change is that the CQC system has been completely revamped.
Several elements from previous titles return in modified forms. The player uses a new form of camouflage called "OctoCamo". The OctoCamo suit allows the wearer to blend in with any surface within a few seconds. A new monocular device called " Solid Eye " replaces the various binoculars and image intensifiers from previous titles. Similar to Metal Gear Solid 3 , Metal Gear Solid 4 contains a model viewer that allows Snake to change the pattern of the OctoCamo manually as long as the player saves the camouflage.
Just as in Metal Gear Solid 3 , Snake can be made to vomit by spinning him in the model viewer. Old Snake with Metal Gear Mk. A major item in the game is the Metal Gear Mk. II and later, the Mk. III , a robotic drone which allows him to communicate with other characters, in addition to the Codec radio system from previous games. It is also capable of engaging enemies using an electric shock, as well as providing reconnaissance.
II from the game Snatcher. Due to the lack of a rumble feature during much of the PlayStation 3 development, the game has been designed with a new feature: a white "threat ring" that visibly vibrates when sound is made nearby. If injured on the battlefield, cuts and burns will remain on Snake's skin.
The developers wanted to avoid putting the stress of Snake's age on the player, and gave him a muscle suit, allowing the player to move in a similar fashion to previous games.
A new "Psyche Gauge" which replaces the stamina meter that appeared previously. The Psyche Gauge functions as an assessment of Snake's psychological state. If Snake is in a combat situation, then his adrenaline will increase, and he can fire rounds off faster and receive less damage. However, if Snake is near something that smells bad or hears something debilitating in a cutscene, then the meter will lower making Snake's accuracy and movement speed decrease accordingly until it can be replenished.
At E3 , Kojima announced that he would be writing, producing, and directing the game alongside Muratya after substantial negative fan reaction, which included death threats. Kojima further stated that the game would take place several years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 2 and would feature an online battle mode. Kojima also announced that Meryl Silverburgh , Otacon , and Liquid Ocelot would be in the game and that Solid Snake would be the main character, as well as hinting that Raiden might make an appearance.
Kojima also stated that the game was to include connectivity to Metal Gear Acid 2 , though this was dropped as development progressed. In a June issue of Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu , Kojima stated that the reason that the PS3 was chosen as the format for Metal Gear Solid 4 was that the Metal Gear series has been brought up with Sony hardware, the Sony market, and through the support of Sony, making the choice a simple one.
Kojima also stated in the interview that he would not mind porting it to other hardware. A robot named Metal Gear Mk. II was also revealed, alongside Otacon. The magazine also featured an interview with Kojima where he stated that Raiden would be returning and that his appearance would be radically different. Kojima also mentioned that Snake would be in a war-zone with two groups fighting each other and that there would be a new element of "psychological warfare" featured in the game.
The full title of the game was announced to be Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots , and a trailer for the game featuring in-game footage of the new game engine made specifically for the PS3 was shown. Afterwards, Kojima demonstrated Metal Gear Solid 4 running off an actual PS3 development kit with a DualShock 2 used as a controller, which revealed the real time graphics the game would be using. Kojima demonstrated some of the lighting and effects possible with the PS3 game engine, stating that he "always wanted to do self-shadowing, but couldn't" before the PS3.
Yoji Shinkawa also appeared alongside Kojima, where they explained that a filtering effect would be used in the game that could not be done in the previous Metal Gear games. Kojima stated that "there's no sense of atmosphere [in the game], so on top of this we add a metal color and make it look like a movie on film.
Using various effects, we dirty it up. Kojima also demonstrated that Metal Gear Mk. II was being controlled by Otacon, who was far away from the battlefield. Kojima further stated that player choice would have a role in the game as the player would be able to make soldiers into friends or enemies. In an interview with Japanese gaming magazine Hype Magazine in September , Kojima mentioned that Snake had aged so much because he was a clone of Big Boss, resulting in him aging quicker than a normal human.
It was one of the best 8bit games ever made — but, unavoidably, of its era. Series ranking: 8. Another Metal Gear turns up, this time twinned with its guilt-ridden creator Otacon. Solid Snake duly takes out Rex, socks Liquid in his posh English jaw, escapes in a jeep, and then when Liquid makes a dramatic return — Foxdie hits him. Solid Snake survives and imagines a future free of this crazy stuff. MGS holds up surprisingly well.
The stealth is fast-paced with clear mechanics, and Shadow Moses is still a detailed, vibrant world. Series ranking: 4. I know. But the ideas are great, and the game underneath all the chin-stroking is even better. Series ranking: 5.
Naked Snake, who is not Solid, is double-crossed by his mentor the Boss as she defects from west to east. The political shockwaves mean that Naked Snake soon has a new assignment — assassination.
But, as always with Kojima, there's a sting in the tail. Solid Snake is back! As a pensioner. MGS4 is set in , five years after the Big Shell incident of MGS2, but in that time-frame Snake's clone body has begun to rapidly age: he's 42 but looks in his 70s. This is probably not the return fans of the gruff special operative were hoping for, but it puts a powerful symbol front-and-centre of MGS4 throughout: an old man in a world changed beyond recognition. Obviously, there are play-based limits to this, but Snake's failing body is emphasised repeatedly in his animations and in numerous small touches a particularly great one is how easily he runs out of breath in the high altitude areas of Chapter 2.
His state of mind is represented in-game by the Psyche meter, which lives below the health bar and is affected by everything from combat alerts to having a quick fag. When Snake's Psyche is low, his aim wobbles a lot more, and he'll even black out if it hits bottom.
Making this grizzled old chap a plausible action hero could have been a challenge, but it is achieved at a stroke with the dazzling Octocamo suit.
This is an outfit worn by Snake that changes colour and pattern to blend in with the immediate surroundings, and brings everything great about MGS3's camo system while removing that game's menu busywork. Octocamo works automatically after Snake holds himself still against a wall or floor, allowing players to adapt on-the-fly, but the visual and audio implementation remain stunning.
As Snake flattens against a surface, the suit's current pattern fades to black alongside SFX that mimics inhalation, pauses on black for a second, then blooms into the new texture with the sound of an exhalation. A game is born out of trying to squeeze Snake up against everything and find unusual patterns which can be saved. Even now, Octocamo takes the breath away: a lesson in how to reinvent a core mechanic with sumptuous style.
Old Snake also suits the role he has to play: "I'm no hero. Never was. Just an old killer hired to do some wetwork. MGS4 presents a world where the global economy has become dependent on warfare, specifically continuous civil wars fought by private military corporations PMCs.
These wars are not political but financial: military production and consumption is now what makes the world go round. This war economy is the result of series uber-baddie Zero's Patriot AIs, systems that act on his principles but have no capability for judgement. These are behind the Sons of the Patriots system: nanomachines in the body of every soldier that track and regulate them, as well as every other aspect of modern war. In-game, this finds a neat expression in Drebin's gun shop, which allows Snake to 'unlock' ammo and weapons - but only by contributing to the war economy himself.
At this point, it's best to pull back from the nitty-gritty of MGS4's plot and look at what it does in a wider sense. I have a theory that Kojima had previously shied away from reusing characters because, in MGS, many of them are really symbols instead.
An action game is not a great genre for complex or meaningful characterisation, and so MGS characters tend to embody a specific thing - whether that's an emotion, an ideology, or the player themselves. When such characters achieve resolution it is clean to the point of pat: Meryl realises she never wanted to be a soldier; Solid Snake realises there is more to life than being a soldier; Raiden realises he is his own man; Big Boss realises he is an unthinking weapon.
This context may explain why MGS4's major character-creation technique is combination. Almost everyone in this game is an amalgamation of others, even if only by proxy. The bosses are nicknamed the Beauty and the Beast unit, an all-female crew of 'beauties' traumatised by war. They are all chimera-like combinations of MGS bosses past. I could go on, because beyond the obvious references are a wealth of incidental links.
The surface interpretation is that, in an era where "war has become routine", the emotional trauma that creates such damaged individuals has also become routine. The unavoidable implication is that Metal Gear Solid is becoming routine in a wider sense, too, worn down by the repetition inherent to sequels. It's worth pausing over the concept of repetition, however, because the word has negative connotations that are too strong.
All games are built on repetition, even if only of the player's capabilities. To be precise, conventional design depends on repetition-with-variation, creating the game's core mechanics and building a structure around them. The human mind adores learning and then mastering new skills, no matter how frivolous. The core of MGS4's design is repetition-with-variation, not just to bring MGS's history to a climax but to make a point about the commercial video game formula.
Kojima stitches together a parade of Frankenstein's monsters that re-enact classic scenes in their image.
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