Dormammu, i've come to bargain
There's nothing more sad than being a die hard fan of a franchise that was all but killed in the executive backrooms of some staunchly little business deal. It's demeaning, scrabbling around in the dirt begging for new coverage or interest, singing your flat-note tune about how "back in your day this franchise was the bees knees." Saints Row fans are a few short months away from that reality after the inevitably disappointing DLC drop for their game is followed by a 'We're moving on and am likely never going to touch this franchise again until at least 2028- bye!' message. But Metal Gear fans weren't even given the courtesy of a proper goodbye, in any of it's outings. The last Metal Gear outing was Survive, pretty much a desecration upon a corpse we didn't even know was in the ground yet, and before that came Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain; which quite famously didn't actually have an ending. When do we get our closure?
If Konami gets to have their way, we would never be given a new game in the Metal Gear pantheon purely because of some childish dispute between Kojima and some unnamed executive that millions of fans now suffer for. They don't want to touch that franchise with a ten-foot pole, and honestly I don't think anybody really wants them to change their policy on that either, because even after all these years the distaste of what Konami have become still sticks to it's image. Nothing short of a total rebranding and rebooting of all of it's major franchise could dig their reputation out of this pit, which is part of the reason why I take news of an upcoming remaster for MGS 1,2 and 3 very suspiciously. I mean I've mentioned these rumours before, but now that they're building up and we coming to face the reality that they might, in fact, be real; the defences need to go up as we ask ourselves just exactly what it is we're willing to accept from Konami.
Because as simple as a remaster pack would be, so simple that there have already been three or so packs of their kind in Metal Gear's past; the very vindictive nature of Konami leads us to believe they'd find someway to screw it up. "What's that? People just want to play the Metal Gear they remember? Well how about we get some mobile dev to make rough approximations of the game that they liked. How is Grove Street Games doing for work these days?" Maybe they'd go to sell each game together for some ridiculous $70 price point. Maybe they'd really go the 'scorched earth' route and put in new skins that need to be bought for Snake. Or crap, maybe even restrict some of the unique skins that are already in the base game so that they can't be acquired without extra funds. What I'm basically saying is that a Metal Gear Remaster would need to be a celebration of the franchise to be good, and I don't there's enough love in all of Konami to celebrate anything. They're a company without a soul.
Metal Gear Solid 1 would be the most interesting of these purported remasters, because as far as I can tell that original has never been touched up since it's launch. The Nintendo Gamecube saw a remake of the game that added weird cutscenes that some felt distracted from the style of that original classic, but even that has been left out a lot of the collections that came later on in the franchise's life. Personally I would love to see that classic touched up again, but I feel this is probably more of a 'Resident Evil' type situation where the company just wants to pretend that the remake was the original all along. Not least of all because it's probably easier to touch up a Gamecube game than it is a PlayStation 1 title; even if that means the Remaster won't accurately convey the evolution of the franchise. But you'd have to be seeking care and attention to pay any credence to that nonsense; and I don't think Konami have either of those affectations in their company dictionaries.
Metal Gear Solid 2 is another matter. That is a classic which has been in collections that have transcended their original platforms to wind up on Xbox! Whereas complications with policy and software means that MGS4 will likely never be ported off the PS3, and thus will remain unplayable for the foreseeable future, MGS2 can rightly wind up wherever it wants as soon as someone is willing to port the thing. Nintendo Switch, PC; heck, you might as well put the thing on the Ouya! It is a classic of the franchise, being the game to successfully pull a bait-and-switch on it's entire audience, and seeing that running on modern resolutions will be a great send-up to the Matrix-inspired age of pop-culture from which that game spawned. Also we'll get to see a naked Raiden doing cartwheels whilst cupping his genitals in 4k. What more can you ask for?
And then there's Metal Gear Soild 3, the myth, the legend; the mountain goat carcass being feasted on by a white-rumped vulture. I don't need to tell you how much I adore Metal Gear Solid 3; it's literally my favourite game of all time and I take any effort to work upon it very seriously. During the PSVita remaster, I was actually somewhat disturbed by the game's addition of crouch walking. (Not least of all because it allowed people to circumvent the vulnerability of crawling whilst still moving stealthily and quickly; upsetting a carefully designed balance.) For the life of me I cannot conceive what Konami would possibly do with a remaster, but I feel like anything more or short of just porting the HD collection, would be a mistake that I will complain incessantly about. I will buy it though. Whatever the damage, there's no escaping my inevitable purchase.
Each one of these games are going to be manhandled by Konami in an attempt to earn some cred back with the community they've shunned, whilst simultaneously stomping on Kojima's legacy by removing all of his names from the box art, because at this point that's just company policy. They'll probably cut any corners that they can in order to try and maximise return for the least amount of investment, and somewhere down the line this effort will tie back into their cynical NFT projects that I have not forgotten the team tried. I will not allow the wool to be folded over my eyes when it comes to Konami, both who they are and the many globules of crap that they stand for as a company, because one singular good release does not erase the years of actual super-villain level conduct the company has been responsible for. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if this remaster was a Metal Gear level conspiracy to try and brain wash the community into associating the talents of that legendary series with Konami, despite literally no one who worked on those games still being present in any part of Konami. Maybe they want to subliminally plant some sort of mind-control code in our head to make us more susceptible to pachinko machines and grubby MTX schemes. What? Why are you looking at me like that?
I am not crazy! I know Konami have scrubbed all the Metal Gear box arts of his credits. 'A Hideo Kojima game', as if I would ever forget that. Never. Never! I just- couldn't prove that they had done it. They covered their tracks. They printed out brand new physical copies of MGS V with a clean byline. You think this is something? You think this is bad? This? This- chicanery? They've done worse. Those employees! Are you telling me that people who spoke out about being mistreated at Konami just happened to also get blacklisted from every tech company in Japan? No! They orchestrated it! Konami! They monitor their employees movements twenty-four seven so that they can stamp down on 'excessive lunch breaks'! And we ignore it! We shouldn't have. We go out to buy their games everytime they stick 'Metal Gear' on the box even without Kojima's oversight. What were we thinking? They'll never change. They'll never change! Ever since they were founded! Always screwing employees out of a competitive wage! But not our Konami! Couldn't be our precious publishers of Metal Gear, Silent Hill, Castlevania and Suikoden! Burning their employees dry! And now they get to publish a Metal Gear Remaster? What a sick joke! We should've have stopped them when we had the chance, we should have done something. And you, you have to stop them, you-
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