I’ve decided to replay the whole MGS saga in preparation for Death Stranding, to see how much Kojima’s style has changed, how his writing/direction has evolved. I finished replaying MGS1 a week ago, and took some notes. Perhaps some of you will be interested in discussing the game, have your own observations. Is it your favorite game in the series? Maybe I missed out some important info, got something wrong? Feel free to correct me. Let's start by looking at Kojima's photos from 1998 - damn, he was young then!
Major observations about the game
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Huge focus on storytelling. I was surprised to see how much of additional content is available from the start, there’s plenty of briefing videos in which we find out more about Snake’s backstory (fifteen huskies are his family, how cool is that?), members of FOXHOUND, mission objective.
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Laying out the groundwork. MGS1 sets the formula for the rest of the series – political-fiction resolving about the nuke, with bits of supernatural elements (Vulcan Raven and Psycho Mantis here), huge focus on themes, and positive, inspirational message targeted directly to the player, in most games in the series presented in the ending. I dare to say it seems like Death Stranding will follow the formula, Norman said : “It's a very positive video game, but scary and depressing at the same time.”
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Kojima said that they hadn't planned sequel, but we still have many story elements which are only mentioned in this game and are expanded upon later – factions inside the USA (Pentagon, represented by Jim Houseman, working behind’s President’s back and Military, loyal to the president, Gurlukovich is mentioned by Liquid, he was supposed to help him after launching a nuke, Solidus named after the credits by Ocelot).
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Inventing a genre… or not. As explained here, Metal Gear was not the first stealth game, neither the one from MSX or PS1. But it made stealth widely popular, due to the huge financial success of the game.
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Most “grounded” game in the series. There is not that much of craziness as in the other games in the series, besides Vulcan Raven’s shaman abilities and Psycho Mantis telekinesis everything is rater realistic. I always liked supernatural elements in the series, they give it special flavor.
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Ending. As mentioned before, direct message to the player is what makes Kojima games truly special, at least for me. In MGS1 we get to see David finally leaving his past as a soldier behind, revealing his name to Meryl and starting a new life. “Let’s enjoy life!” Later we get to hear Naomi, she urges us to do the same. BTW - Meryl was introduced in Policenauts!
Behind the scenes:
We all know Hideo Kojima but there are also other people worth mentioning. One of them is, without a doubt Yoji Shinkawa. He’s responsible for designing Metal Gear REX, creating Grey Fox etc. – he certainly is as important for MGS saga as Ralph McQuarie for Star Wars, perhaps even more).
There’s also Tomokazu Fukushima, credited as a co-writer, “setting design assistant” and “radio system script” – due to the lack of info about him, some fans seem to overestimate his role as someone who was “true genius behind the series” or something like that. From what we know, he was mainly helping in writing additional CODEC calls, everything else is just a speculation. Kojima claims to be responsible himself for story, setting, characters and relationships between them and I don’t see any reason not to believe him. At the same time, we know that he’s open for suggestions and reception of his own staff – MGS4 ending was changed because some of the members of the team opposed the idea of Old Snake and Otacon being executed, he also took suggestions from the team while working on MGS2.
And last but no least: Jeremy Blaustein. Responsible for translating the game, adding military jargon to the dialogues and naming CODEC – huge props for that. I recommend you this article, it shows his dedication for his work, it’s admirable. According to him, there was some drama in Konami (yes, the company had its problems even then) he was blackmailed by Scott Dolph, who started spreading rumors about Blaustein disrespecting the game by making changes to the script. Kojima was impressed by English version of the game, called it even better than Japanese, original. He also worked on Silent Hill games, that’s worth mentioning. Sadly, he turned into a hater, on his Twitter he’s being nitpicky about Kojima all the time, on various podcasts undermined the role of voice actors, claiming that other games are significantly worse in this aspect despite not even playing them, and called Silent Hill fans “idiots”. This post sums him up pretty well.
Inspirations behind the game:
- Neon Genesis Evangelion (giant robots + philosophical dialogues, characters dealing with their own trauma)
- Kanal by Andrzej Wajda (War is Hell, one of the most important tropes in the series, sneaking)
- El Topo by Alejandro Jodorowsky (introduction of the bosses was taken from that movie)
- Rambo: First Blood (Colonel and Snake relationship is very similar).
Remake:
The Twin Snakes was released on GameCube, made by Sillicon Knights, they used MGS2 engine and worked with Kojima Productions on cutscenes. They were directed by Ryuhei Kitamura- criticized by the fanbase, but it was Hideo’s idea in the first place, he didn’t want them to be exact same as in the original. While some of them are indeed ridiculous (Snake jumping on rockets… come on!), I dare to say some of them are superior.
Minor changes make Liquid Snake even more awesome: we got new bits of dialogue (“Snake! Come, kneel down and sacrifice yourself to this historic weapon! Consider it an honor… a gift, from your brother. Now you shall bear witness to the demon weapon that will drag the world into the twenty first century!”), and Cam Clarke’s voice acting is a little different, I prefer him in GameCube version. I recommend checking out Grey Fox death scene for example, it’s really well done. Fox voice actor was changed – I have no problem with that, but most fans seems to prefer the one from PSX version. Summarizing – it’s a mixed bag, the lack of Rika Munarakta's original music just hurts, it added so much to the atmosphere of the game. And let's not forget how awesome David Hayter is - he took half of his salary to brought back the original cast.
Kenji Yano He's a co-writer for Death Stranding. He wrote Peace Walker, The Phantom Pain, MGS1 and MGS2 novelizations, replaced Project Itoh - Kojima's friend who died from cancer. Sadly, none of the books were translated, but you can check out someone else's notes of his work on MGS1 book here.
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