Jake

Idle Thumbs 228: New Game Plus or Minus World

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I know who the character is in relation to MGS, but that doesn't really change my opinion on that stuff. It's like saying Quiet is naked because she has to breathe. 

 

Also, I know that I didn't really "beat" the game, but I'm up to mission 41 and Chapter 2 has just been a thinly veiled rehash of missions. They're still fun, but yeah. In any case, I'm not sure this game has an ending at all. Or it has the most endings of any game ever made.

 

Anyway, GOTY.

Chapter 2 works better if you think about it as an epilogue rather than a separate chapter. The threat is gone, the villain is dealt with. Chapter 2 is ostensibly an extended end sequence, with the few original missions actually being among the best in the game. Mission 43 in particular is spectacular from a narrative perspective.

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Nick is essentially saying that there's artificial filler content in the game that is poorly implemented, to the point that scripts are repeating when they aren't valid or are nonsensical. Or, that's how I'm hearing it.

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Nick is essentially saying that there's artificial filler content in the game that is poorly implemented, to the point that scripts are repeating when they aren't valid or are nonsensical. Or, that's how I'm hearing it.

 

Yeah, I mean, there are obviously a few "original" missions, but it's mostly been twists on Chapter 1 stuff. Which is fine, but to me it has the overall feeling of an unrealized chunk of game.

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I'd buy the player surrogate angle if

 

1) The camera was consistent about the times you were watching a scene with Big Boss in it, versus watching from Big Boss's eyes

2) Big Boss as a character didn't express complete disinterest in Quiet, thus having his own opinion instead of being a surrogate

3) I had the option to just not look or tell her to stop (yes there are limited camera controls in some instances, but not in others, and not very well made anyway)

 

I dunno, I'm especially passionate about this since I almost didn't buy the game because of it, yet it's probably one of the better games I've ever played. I'd be a lot less opinionated if the game was bad, but the fact that it's so good and yet missed the mark in such a huge way on this one thing really stings.

 

Edit: Nick, there are still a few brand new missions that are well worth playing.

Big Boss really doesn't express an opinion regarding Quiet given that he's ostensibly a silent protagonist. The player is actually able to kill Quiet the first time they fight her, and the cinematics that trigger later on only unlock depending on your bond level with her. So the player is ultimately responsible for how they treat Quiet. And while there are some situations where the game forces you to look at her in a particular way, they make up about two cinematic in the entire game. You have the option to not recruit her, to not use her, and to not have her be part of your story. I don't see how she clashes with the idea of Big Boss being a player surrogate in any way. She actually exemplifies that idea more than any other character. 

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Hmm, well my post exploded in BB code, so I'll just try this again...

 

Edit: I'll spoiler this just in case, a response to Jonmad17 regarding later Quiet related missions.


Except, if you don't bring her along, you don't get to play what I would consider the "real" ending to the game. Nothing else in the back half provides any closure near as well as her final mission. I feel like "You could just not use her" is a choice tantamount to the Spec Ops: The Line guys saying "If you didn't want to do bad things, you could have shut off the game." There are more than two cinematics in the game that force you to look at her in a certain way. The obvious two are the dance (which I skipped) and the shower scene (which I never got dirty enough to have) but if you're just sitting in the helicopter using your iDroid and she starts doing the silly yoga stretches, you can't really do much about it. Even the cinematics that aren't directly about her doing sexy things linger on T&A, even as she's kicking ass and taking names.

 

I dunno, even outside the Quiet stuff, I never felt the player surrogate stuff at all, but I think I have a different way of looking at games than most people. I play games to get to be someone else, so silent protagonists just don't interest me much. It's part of why Half-Life never really did it for me I guess.

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Yeah, I mean, there are obviously a few "original" missions, but it's mostly been twists on Chapter 1 stuff. Which is fine, but to me it has the overall feeling of an unrealized chunk of game.

And the thing is, most video games have that sort of thing going on. Especially when it comes to games promising a lot of hours to completion. I'm hesitant to say it's "okay," but we run into this problem where fans will defend the mundane or unimportant parts of a game's path / structure.

 

As big as MGS5 is, I really doubt the game is 100% built on unique scenarios and breaking revelations throughout. There's gonna be shit to slog through and to expect or perceive otherwise is naive.

 

Edit - Like at least with Mega Man games you're dealing with heavily themed stages. But those games are relatively short. Imagine if a Mega Man game tried to get stretched out to 20+ hours.

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Nick is essentially saying that there's artificial filler content in the game that is poorly implemented, to the point that scripts are repeating when they aren't valid or are nonsensical. Or, that's how I'm hearing it.

The game is structured in such an odd way. They're not original missions or presented as original missions, so repeating the story bits doesn't bother me. They're literally identical to previous missions but with prefixes that describe how they're different, [subsistence] meaning you find all of your weapons on site, [Extreme] meaning harder, etc. The weird thing is that they hide new story missions behind what should be optional content. So you have to play through harder versions of missions you already finished to see the new stuff. They really should have called Chapter 2 an epilogue and allowed you to do the new missions without those hurdles. 

 

It's a damn shame, because mission 43 and 46 are vital to the plot of the game, and most people won't see them because they already saw credits and won't bother replaying earlier stuff.

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The weird thing is that they hide new story missions behind what should be optional content. So you have to play through harder versions of missions you already finished to see the new stuff. They really should have called Chapter 2 an epilogue and allowed you to do the new missions without those hurdles.

 

Yeah, that's pretty much my point. "Chapter 2" isn't really what this is. They probably should have packaged the story missions as "Epilogue," and thrown most of these other missions into the "side mission" category.

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Yeah, that's pretty much my point. "Chapter 2" isn't really what this is. They probably should have packaged the story missions as "Epilogue," and thrown most of these other missions into the "side mission" category.

 

Agreed to that at least. I'd also love Subsistence, Extreme, and Total Stealth versions of every single mission in the game under there.

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Agreed to that at least. I'd also love Subsistence, Extreme, and Total Stealth versions of every single mission in the game under there.

 

Yep. Those missions are good! It's just weird that they didn't either wrap them in new narrative, or set them aside from the actual continuing story.

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This is not related to the ongoing MGS discussion at all, but I wanted to chime in to defend the Breckon family's basement pantry. My parents' house has a decent sized kitchen, but the cabinets never had enough room for everything. The solution was to have a pantry in the basement for extra stuff that didn't fit. I have lots of memories of my mom cooking dinner and realizing that she was running low on some ingredient. She'd ask me or my sister to run downstairs to get a bottle of ketchup or some flour or whatever. Maybe Jake's the weird one for not having basement ketchup...

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Since you guys brought up the weird cassette tape of a man pooping, I figured I'd throw this out there.  That tape is indeed real (I have one in my game), and actually can serve a purpose. 

 

At some point pretty early, you get an upgrade for your iDroid where you can add a speaker to it, letting you play tapes out loud in the world.  If you're hiding in a portapotty and a guard starts to come investigate, you can play the pooping tape out loud and the guard will stop investigating the toilet because it's obviously just someone pooping.

 

There are other tapes that have effects for playing them out loud.  Another example is that you can eventually collect tapes with guards saying "Enemy down" or something like that in various languages.   Should you raise an alert, if you can get within earshot of a guard and play the tape in the correct language through the speaker, the guard will think that another guard has successfully killed you and signal for the alarm to be cancelled.

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Yep. Those missions are good! It's just weird that they didn't either wrap them in new narrative, or set them aside from the actual continuing story.

I get the general impression that they ran out of time and money for chapter 2, so they just padded the game out with repeat missions. The title of the chapter is "race," but race and Western imperialism are much more prominent themes in the first chapter. It's like they had a longer game, realized that the scope was too ambitious, and just spent the little time they had left finishing the important cutscenes.

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One cool little thing about Super Mario Maker is that Koji Kondo made some new authentic old Mario music!*

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Other random Kondo fact: He did the music for Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic, so musically it was a Mario game from the beginning. And that reminded me of: SMB2 is a dream and SMB3 is a stage play so I'm hoping that a Really New Super Mario Bros on NX will have a twist ending where it is revealed that you have just been playing some random Mario Maker levels... Though that stupid subtle drop shadow** would give away the secret immediately.

* Learned that from Super Marcato Bros podcast 179

** Is it in there just to spice up the old graphics or did Nintendo want a clear visual element that says "Hey this is not an actual classic Mario stage!"

 

This music is so rad! I loved the Koji Kondo discussion on this episode. Can Idle Thumbs have a regular Nintendo Trivia segment?

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Huh, my admiration for Koji Kondo just rocketed up quite a bit. I actually didn't realize before this latest episode how much I appreciated his work to begin with.

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Yeah, the back half of MGSV is really oddly paced. I'm not disappointed with how it turned out, but it definitely feels like they intended something very different.

 

That said, the cut "actual ending" that's been floating around seems kinda terrible to me, so I'm pretty glad that wasn't included.

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Actually Jake, there is an Emmy--sorta--for podcasting: International Audio Festival

There's a part of me that hopes that Kondo was influenced by Todd Terje's It's Album Time.

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Yeah, the back half of MGSV is really oddly paced. I'm not disappointed with how it turned out, but it definitely feels like they intended something very different.

 

That said, the cut "actual ending" that's been floating around seems kinda terrible to me, so I'm pretty glad that wasn't included.

 

I do find it really amusing that the setup for that ending still happens, so they

watch the Metal Gear fly away and say "darn it Snake we gotta go get that back!!!" and then in terms of OFFICIAL CANON LORE just become procrastinators forever.

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So you have to play through harder versions of missions you already finished to see the new stuff. They really should have called Chapter 2 an epilogue and allowed you to do the new missions without those hurdles. 

 

It's a damn shame, because mission 43 and 46 are vital to the plot of the game, and most people won't see them because they already saw credits and won't bother replaying earlier stuff.

Small correction, you don't have to play through any of the harder versions of earlier missions to unlock chapters 43, 45 and 46.  I got them without completing any of the rehash missions.  They are totally optional.  You do, however, have to complete some side-ops I believe to unlock 45 and 46.

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I do find it really amusing that the setup for that ending still happens, so they

watch the Metal Gear fly away and say "darn it Snake we gotta go get that back!!!" and then in terms of OFFICIAL CANON LORE just become procrastinators forever.

Just until the Outer Heaven incident.

 

NICK. TURN THE GAME CONSOLE OFF RIGHT NOW. THE MISSION IS A FAILURE.

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Oh man I forgot about this until moments ago.

 

So before there was a Mario Maker there were ROM hacks for people to make their own levels. I dunno if this is the first automatic-Mario level, but it is one of the most impressive by a long shot. It has a medley of anime music playing to it. And all of the sounds from the level play along to the music:

 

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Worth noting that Koji Kondo does the Zelda music too, so he's got more to his style that just crazy ragtime and weird supermarket music.

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