The Metal Gear Solid series
I can sit here with an annoyed look on my face - while waiting for a cutscene to end - but I would still have to admit that Hideo Kojima is kinda sorta brilliant.
Anyway, there's going to be some spoilers for the "Metal Gear" series.
I'm definitely not the best person to talk about him. I've only played the "Metal Gear Solid" series. Even of those, I've only played the first one, "Guns of the Patriots", and, recently, "Phantom Pain" - I, IV, and V - though I've seen a lot of Let's Plays for IV, because IV is so weird. I also watched a Let's Play of "Snatcher", and I remember "Snatcher" being vaguely interesting.
Even then though - and I can imagine gamers being furious by this - I largely ignore cutscenes. I have a robust reading list this year, so I just read books while the cutscenes of "Phantom Pain" run on, only looking away when a cutscene was genuinely interesting (Huey Emmerich's character arc is fascinating, and the quarantine stuff are just great). So unless the gameplay dramatically changes the experience of the games (and I think this is probably true of III, "Snake Eater"), I feel I know enough about Kojima's oeuvre to make an observation. ("Death Stranding" though seems completely out of my ability to talk about unless I play it.)
Here's the thing: I think Kojima's defining feature is that he has a good grasp of story structure. I'm trying not to shit on people, but I think this is really rare in video games. "Snatcher" has a story and characters. The original "Metal Gear Solid" is just a really ... solid ... story. Even "Guns of the Patriots", the really weird one, has a story, if you ignore all the PowerPoint scenes, it's just that the PowerPoint monologuing and the character stories clash horribly with one another. All the talk of nanomachines, war economy and AI don't fit with the touching story of Meryl discovering love.
We can shit on Kojima all we want on the unusualness of his stories, but they're all consistent. Even when compared to the "Uncharted" games, which is one of the earliest games I can think of where you're invested largely in the story, Kojima's storytelling holds up well. From what I recall of the Naughty Dog games, they're really interesting in the beginning, and then they just slowly fall apart towards the end; there's nothing really philosophical about them or their themes, though Joseph Anderson has really convinced me that Nathan Drake has excellent character growth in some of the games. In contrast, in the "Metal Gear Solid" series, Snake goes to accomplish a thing, there are twists and turns, he accomplishes the thing, but there are larger implications about humanity and the nature of war.
This, however, may be my inner Otacon talking; I generally find Japanese games more interesting. It's odd, but Western video games - not all, obviously, but the ones that get the most attention - are very character-based. But, I don't give a shit about the characters when playing a video game. Arguably, you don't give a shit about the characters in any other art form either. Tolstoy doesn't demand you like Anna Karenina, Melville doesn't demand you like Ahab, what's more important is that they're interesting. We may not empathize with the figure in Edvard Munch's "The Scream", but he is an interesting focal point for the scene around him. So to me, I don't really give a shit about Kratos or John Marston; I'm more interested in what they're doing.
Interestingly enough, I think the greatest character in Western video games is Commander Shepherd. Whenever anyone has a discussion about Commander Shepherd, they talk about their predicament and the implications of their actions, rather than some piddly moral "choice" they have to make. I think that points to the uniqueness of the medium: we end up talking about what happens in the game and we're less curious about what the game is about (because what something is "about" is ultimately really boring).
Which is why, this time around, having been thoroughly disillusioned by "Guns of the Patriots", I find "Phantom Pain" really interesting in parts: I think Kojima's "story" is always very whatever, but the world that he builds is always really interesting. When people talk about a "world", they often expect something with a consistent logic to it. That's not the importance of what Kojima accomplishes. He creates an aesthetic world, not visually, but more in the sense, this is a world where violence and destruction are rewarded above all, and Kojima, and his writers, are able to paint a picture where every ounce of energy and willpower in this world is spent in making bullets, weapons and soldiers. It's a cold world where man is slowly bent into a machine, whose sole purpose is to kill.
The gameplay supports this interpretation. A soldier is either an obstacle you have to get around by incapacitating or murdering, or is a tool to help you make money. One of the primary objectives of a mission is scouting - as in, painting, in your view, what is a valid target for your obliteration. You as the gamer eventually obsess over the killing statistics of the weapons you use. There are children in the game, but they are a contrast - you instinctually want to care about them, but ultimately they, too, are obstacles in the way of your mission.
Yes, it's a videogame, so it has to be this way, but, whether Kojima intended this or not, this is a very valid interpretation of the game. At the end of the game, you become an efficient, resource-destroying and resource-siphoning machine. Just like Venom Snake, you become heartless, losing all identity.
Which goes to another Kojima staple: that none of his fucking games make sense. "Guns of the Patriot" is the worst offender, with Ocelot pretending to be Liquid Snake for some reason and no one calls him out on his bullshit. Kojima seemed to like this idea so much, of a man pretending to bear the imagery of another man, so much that he put in the twist that Venom isn't actually Big Boss (the god of soldiers from whom our favorite Solid Snake originates from), he's actually some guy, and the real Big Boss is doing some thing in some other part of the world, so there are TWO guys doing wacky mercenary hijacks all over the world. And then there's the wacky coincidences where individuals keep making more and more wacky ways to deploy nukes, beginning with REX, a dinosaur that steathily launches a nuke (makes some sense), the Shagohod, a tank that launches nukes, and now the Sahelanthropus, which is literally an Evangelion mecha and a nuke in itself. Why not just build, like, really stable, really consistent, really diffuse and remote systems that don't attract attention to themselves, to shoot nukes?
And while we're talking about wacky "Metal Gear" inventions, why ... does the very deadly, "language-transmitting" virus also transform people into superpowered monsters, when ... you should just sell ... the virus itself, which has an extremely high transmission rate and lethality? In fact, fuck nukes, why not deploy the virus? I'm sure Skull Face explains the what and why really well, which explanation I ignored to read, but I'm not particularly interested in finding the ways Kojima tries to explain why it has to be this and not that.
That's kind of the charm, though, of Kojima, his not making sense. Again, what makes his world interesting is aesthetic, and not in logical consistency. The mere fact that humans are spending so much of their intellect to weaponize literally everything they can put their hands around instead of, you know, accomplishing world peace by solving food shortages and curing disease, is so fascinating. The fact that all these actors are really smart and understand the source of human suffering and the complexities of global conflict while still believing the only solution is to make more weapons is Kojima commenting on the madness of his, and somewhat our, really stupid world. Because that's one of the major themes of the "Metal Gear" series: madness, as caused by megalomania, as caused by a need to control.
As a result, "Phantom Pain" has two really great moments: the quarantine and the trial of Huey Emmerich. On the former, basically some guy makes a really deadly virus and sets it loose in the player's base. You, the player, have to kill your fellow soldiers so they don't infect anyone else. Sure, they're blank NPCs that don't have any personality, but that's the thing about videogames: you are playing a character and not yourself. You're free to ascribe any feelings you want onto the situation, but the game is directing you to a certain range of emotions. And you do begin to feel bad for these people who are pleading for their lives and must die for the very sin of existing.
Huey Emmerich's trial, though, is incredible. I actually spoiled it for myself and thought the event was going to be really stupid. I didn't think Huey had any reason to betray Diamond Dogs. But the game actually makes it clear: he always perceives himelf as the victim, and so he believes it's impossible for him to be responsible for the consequences of his actions. He loves building weapons and he takes the side of the person who will allow him to most easily build weapons. The game builds up his madness, as a person who refuses to acknowledge the blood he has shed by his own hands, and then the game builds up Diamond Dogs' madness as a group who uses violence to solve their problems, particularly the problem of Huey. It's a great juxtaposition, one which Venom handily resolves by leaving him to the mercy of the sea because he realizes there is no moral judgment in war. If Kojima deserves praise for anything, I would say it should be for these two scenes: we the players are addicted to the intensity of violence, but Kojima set up these scenarios where you confront only the consequences of violence, which is death and loss, in a really organic way.
I think, now that I've come to grips with this, that art doesn't need to make sense (it helps, though!), I can call Kojima a great director of videogames. Auteur? No - I think we need to rethink what that word even means for this medium (in fact, I wanted to write an article on "auteur-ism" in videogames but decided there was no gas in it). But for the time being, he makes interesting games, which is probably the best compliment you can give to an artist. I might have to check out "Death Stranding". When it's on sale.
Remaking Metal Gear Solid IV: Guns of the Patriots
So, Kojima, I implore you to create - well, once you're done with your existing commitments - a remake of "Guns of the Patriots". Now is the time.
I remember playing "Guns of the Patriots" a lot; I've played it so much when I was a decade younger that I can firmly say it's a bad game with good mechanics in it. The actual game itself is way too short. Of the "good" / salvageable levels, the Middle East and the latter part of South America, they lack depth. Shadow Moses is great because the game constantly throws unique obstacles at you.
All of the bosses are terrible too, gameplay-wise and design-wise. Raging Raven has been described as "shooting blobs on a screen"; Laughing Octopus is a yawn-inducing hide-and-seek game; Screaming Mantis is a one-trick pony; and Crying Wolf is actually pretty solid.
And, as I already mentioned, the cutscenes are just ... terrible. "Phantom Pain" putting the heavy talking / technical explanations into cassettes helped portion the game out.
But the game, beneath its bloat, is hiding something really brilliant. "Guns of the Patriots" is the finalization of the "man is machine" arc. Everyone has some kind of weird piece of technology in them. Humans are optimized to wage war. Nations are only interested in perpetuating an eternal state of war for their economic interests. The madness of the "Metal Gear" series is cranked to 11, and so there should be a really frantic, crazy game depicting that.
"Phantom Pain" proved to me that you can totally redo "Guns of the Patriots" in a great way. "Phantom Pain" is lean and mean, with two really well-fleshed-out areas composed of really interesting interactions between player and environment (Angola-Zaire being a bit more boring than Afghanistan). You feel like you are actually there, the God of Soldiers, bringing down edicts on the heads of the enemy.
I think almost everything in "Guns of the Patriots" would have to be redone except for the story. The levels, the bosses, the enemies (the Frogs add almost no variety to gameplay), and Drebin's shop (which has the ability to completely ruin the game) should all be redone to make a more engaging game. And, because it would essentially be all new, I think the game would be quite profitable, much like the "Final Fantasy 7" remake.
Kojima, because you're totally reading this: get to it.
Oh, it's getting remastered.