Metal Gear occupies a very strange part of my life.
I think it's fair to say many of you are like me. With the big releases, there's the anticipation, the ritual of hitting refresh on all the local game subs and sites in hopes of new news, the almost unbearable wait for new trailers, the dim hope of an MGO3 beta, the list goes on. The list, of course, also changes with every release. Back in the lead up to MGS2, the ritual was "hit download, hope the trailer is done DLing when you're home from school," scour print magazines every month for new deets, and so on. It's changed many, many times, and each of us GETS HYPE in a different way. Personally, I intend to make the next couple months Metal Gear-y, with July and August being one game a week, in consecutive order, and a special event for each title (eating gummy snakes for 3, shutting off the net 'tech for a week for 2, etc)
And this is the last time I'll ever do it.
I remember, way back in 2008, this was a big deal. I treated it mostly in earnest, with always in the back of my mind that niggling desire for more 'Gear, and confident that at least MGS would be in good hands, so long as Kojima was the helmsman who made sure the New Team wasn't botching it up too bad, taking things too lightly, etc. I thought "yeah, this is the end of the Solid Snake era, but there's always the chance the series could start fresh, with Kojima moving on and only keeping this on-track and with a high production value." Now, there is no such doorman to keep the franchise safe, and I imagine most of the team whom I've come use to seeing in every title (So Toyota, Kenichiro Imaizumi, Yoji, Satoshi Hirano, hell, even Hideki "Johnny" Sasaki for fuck's sake.) willl be leaving with him. Any chance of an AC!D 3, a ZOE3, hell even a Revengance follow-up seem distant, and if not impossible then at least very different creatures than they would be if held to Kojima's scrutinising overseerdom.
This is, for all intents and purposes, The End of an Era. Since Metal Gear Solid 2, I've kept abreast of all the new titles, with the numbered Solid series being those tentpole "event" games for me that I look forward to years in advance. The joy and the wait and the dissection of the new material, all that is going to end. It may still subsist as curiosity, and a desire as always to stick by characters who've been with me for over half my life at this point, but the real deal, the old guard? That's gone.
So, to you fellow brothers in arms, I say let's make this the best we've ever had it. In these twilight days, let's all be more communicative, more open. Let's all find new ways to share our collections, our memoirs, our terrible attempts at the fabled Big Boss run. I'll leave you all with something I've taken away with me into the world because of this series, and hopefully we can all come away richer for our experiences.
"I'm taking it upon myself to send Zero... back to nothing. [...] It's not about changing the world. It's about doing our best to leave the world the way it is. It's about respecting the will of others, and believing in your own.
[...] This is good, isn't it?"
Submitted March 21, 2015 at 02:59PM by MedicinalSpectre http://ift.tt/1CJ0QY7
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