Re: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Kojima has pretty much disrespected Solid Snake after his short reintroduction MGS 1. He was cast aside as a minor role in MGS 2 in favor of Raiden as the main character, and in MGS 4 he was reduced to dying a old man.
Solid Snake was a great character (in terms of popular appeal), but he could have been much greater if Kojima wasn't always in such a hurry to get rid of him.
And by the way, the conversation in this forum are nothing new. These issues have been discussed and debated ad nauseam in the PSU forum, Gamefaqs, and lots of other places
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Disrespected? Seriously?
When it comes to MGS2, there are many who think that becouse of sidelining him, Snake actually appeared more badass in that game, then in any of his other outings. Snake appeared always as a bit of a lost child in MGS games, couse everyone was always manipulating him, and there was always a multilayerd intrigue going on above his head, of which he was always ignorant (at least in the beginning). Most of the stuff Hayter says in MGS1 consists of dialogue lines like:
"Huh?", "What the hell?", "What do You mean?", "That's Impossible", "What the hell is going on?", "Who are You?", "How is this possible?".
This "lost child aspect" clashes a bit with his supposed gritty tough guy persona. In MGS 2 the role of the "ignorant, constantly aghast chess piece" was related to Raiden, which left Snake "free to being badass again" as my sister once put. Solid Snake was at his most awesomest in MGS2, especially as Plissken. He was always in control, he always knew what to do, and appeared when he was needed. He didn't say much but always knew what to say, and had that constant aura of mistique and gritty, gruff, Clint Eastwood-like badassery. This was Kojima intent after all. Lots of articles have allready been written on this.
As for MGS4, I allready wrote in my previous post why I don't believe Old Snake to be worst than "normal" Snake. And even if someone personally prefered the younger version, then still, calling Old Snake "a disrespect to the character" is frankly silly.
It wasnt that he was an older man. Its that we went from cool middle aged Snake to knocking on deaths door snake with no inbetween. We still had plenty of none " argh my back " years left of Snake to play as. Even if we get to play something in between the events of 2 and 4 it wont have nearly asmuch impact because we already know the future.
That's not what I am arguing with. I agree that there were still some potential stories with Younger Snake. But since Kojima though he was making an end to SS saga, taking the "war veteran" approach was the obvious one. I also would like to see another game with a Young Snake in action, but from the perspective of a game designer, this would simply be repetition. Especially since Big Boss and Snake are so similar, and we allready had Big Boss in MGS3. Dying Snake was a way to make things original, interesting and still badass.
). There are so many layers to both Solidus and Liquid. It would be nice to see them again in another MGS installment.
