I've been thinking a lot about the post from Victoria_R33d and Maxine_Work over the past week or so, and I wanted to put down some conclusions and conjecture I've drawn from them. These are things that kind of point back toward the original intent of this sub, and something a few people might find mildly interesting regardless of their position on the existence of any ruse. There's not going to be anything groundbreaking here, and since we are essentially modless, I'd kindly ask that we keep and territorial pissings to the myriad of other posts that are currently shitting up the sub. I can't stop you though, so if you can't contain yourselves and we end up having to wade through pages of back and forth between people who insist on being up each others asses, have at it I guess.
Anyway, I strongly believe the Victoria and Maxine posts were trolls, though obviously trolls with some sort of tact, and the fact that there doesn't seem to be any resurgence from them or any alts that resemble what they put out there, I have to assume it was a one shot to simply stir the pot. That said, the thing I found most interesting about Victoria's post in particular was the assertion that there exists some kind of in-canon continuity that could potentially tie together even the most fringe aspects of metal gear lore. I'm leaving Death Stranding out of this particular set of observations simply to stay on task, if you want to bring it up from here, it'll be on you, not me.
I think it's a fairly reasonable and widely held assumption at this point that Konami has no real intention of continuing the metal gear series going forward in the immediate future, and if they have any intention at all it will likely be through remakes and spin-offs. I've seen this both as an assertion that that is where the easy money lies, and as a sort of desire of the fanbase. This boils down to a mentality of, "Don't fuck up what was good about it, but we will give you money if you remake the older msx games / make stories like revengence that can be loosely connected without fucking up anything else." I have no qualms assuming from a business standpoint that this is likely the case for a company in the position of Konami.
This brings me to the sort of often unaddressed aspect of the post MGSV landscape that few people are willing to touch: The looming Metal Gear Solid movie. It's going to happen at some point, even if it's current iteration winds up in development hell, or goes awry. There will be a point where someone will shovel off the IP to be made into some sort of live-action media, specifically a standalone film, a film series, or even a limited run streaming service shit-show doled out in episodes. People involved in the ruse have gotten a lot out of pointing out the pieces of artwork commissioned for the anniversary as hype for the movie, but because Death Stranding looms closer on the horizon, few know what to actually make of any of the news surrounding the movie itself.
This is where Victoria's assertion struck me as something that might not necessarily apply strictly to the game world, and might not necessarily apply to connecting game worlds or any of the other leaps necessary to do so, but instead, it lead me to consider how something like the kopplethorn engine could enable the cinematic metal gear universe to unfold in such a way as to provide fans with the "missing links" in the series that Kojima has been so tepid in offering. If any film version of metal gear receives a Kojima stamp of approval, and it is well received, it will inevitably be accepted into the "grand canon" of metal gear, and as a result, will shape and inform the public perception of metal gear to an audience not intimately familiar with it's 30+ year history. If it is poorly received, it will still be obsessed over by those willing to obsess over anything related to the franchise, and will nonetheless be injected into discussions about the impact and legacy of metal gear on games and storytelling.
In this context, does it make sense that a metal gear movie that seeks to appeal both to new audiences and long time fans would perhaps tread on ground that the games did not cover, specifically to free itself from the "hard canon" of the games attached to kojima, while simultaneously adding some much needed continuity of thought to an at times overwrought plot? Would something like quantum VR allow us as viewers to tread over the pieces of the existing canon that we have not seen, even if it is implicit and not directly communicate as such over the course of a 90+ minute action film?
Some examples... It's easy to imagine that a metal gear movie might very well open on something that hardcore fans know occurs in the metal gear canon, but they in fact were never able to play. Consider that you could very easily open a film on a subject like frank jaeger, protecting a young naomi hunter, killing her parents, being sheltered by big boss, only then to flash forward to Jaeger being rescued by solid snake in outer heaven, and revealing the previous scenes to be a memory. Could the "remixing" of the canon be done through a kind of conceptual use of the kopplethorn engine, wherein we are treated to scenes we know well, but are tweaked slightly or layered in memory and interpretation, thus giving a much richer cinematic experience for the new and seasoned viewers of this franchise? Is there a possibility that the movie itself will be framed in such away that it can cover a lot of ground, but still be fresh and new to it's audience?
Just some thoughts, like I said, nothing groundbreaking. Really just looking to break up the monotony of discussing DS at this point. But I'll throw everyone that wants to a bone for the sake of it. Anybody gonna be pissed if Norman Reedus plays Solid Snake? That would be some shit, wouldn't it? *Pic of Kojima with 4 middle fingers up*
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