The rumours are back

 Kept us waiting, huh...

I mentioned it all in passing for a previous blog, but familiar names and assumptions are beginning to blow over the rumour ramparts and I don't know if I'm fully ready to accept them as gospel just yet. I've been mislead and burned before, by the promises of the excitable, declaring the imminent arrival of the one thing I've yearned for more than air itself, more than continued existence on this miserable planet. I've seen high quality renders proving the exsistence of such a project, only for the downright impossible to happen and for that to be a total misdirect to something else entirely, dark and grim spat out from the soulless gaping maw of that abyss called 'Konami'. And I've seen the absolute heart of hopelessness, where it's been clear that the current caretakers of this franchise, storied though it once was, are totally and completely incompetent at their simple jobs- costing us all for their folly. But now, I am once again going to bite the bullet and believe- in the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake.

Metal Gear Solid 3, for me, is hands down the best Metal Gear Solid game, and perhaps my favourite stealth game and action adventure narrative of all time. It provides an incredible Russian forest adventure dotted with evocative characters, distinct boss encounters, unforgettable environmental switch ups and exciting narrative climaxes that match and trump your best action adventure films at every turn. Hideo Kojima clearly went out of his way to adapt a James Bond style story for the players, and ended up creating a better narrative, deeper characters and more satisfying pay-off than any James Bond era has managed to date- and what's more he even leapfrogged himself! To this day MGS 3 provides one of the most satisfying completely bookended narratives that leans on no other game within it's franchise in order to strike with full passion- and yet somehow it still provides a solid ground for stories to branch off of it- hence 'Peace Walker' and MGS V.

Which is why some part of me, even before this age of high quality remakes, yearned to return to that time when I first discovered a product that quite literally changed the way I looked at storytelling forever. I'm not sure what I really wanted, except for the game to return to me as beautiful as how I saw it in my heart- which I argue the title already is, but if a studio wants to spruce it up to the brim I'm not going to complain, now am I? Although when that studio is, unfortunately, going to be Konami- then I have to hiss through gritted teeth a little. Konami have an... interesting relationship with the Metal Gear franchise... in that I'm mostly sure they've been trying to kill it by actively making terrible products. Metal Gear Survive is pretty much Redfall levels of misguided and ill-conceived from the moment go- in ways that even a totally clueless rube who doesn't know Kojima or his work couldn't get wrong unless it was intentional.

Because there really lies the rub of the matter, doesn't it? As much as I want to see this game brought back to life, I know that original spark of being was carefully nursed into existence by the hands of the auteur who birthed it. Hideo Kojima himself, the mastermind, has his eye of quality when it comes to everything from narrative to camera angles to gameplay systems, and his team are like a perfectly functioning body- bringing his vision to startling reality. They're also entirely cut off from the Konami body, separating the parent from the child that he and his team raised. Even during the lead-up to MGS V's release, a single trailer that wasn't directed by Kojima but rather a marketing team stuck out like a sore thumb for lacking purpose and intelligent visual design. How bad will that look when used to bring an entire Kojima originated narrative? Will it ruin what I once loved about Metal Gear to start with?

In my mind there's several areas where a Metal Gear Solid 3 Remake could totally fail to hit the mark, and the first is in the direction of the cutscenes. Kojima has an increadibly well trained cinematic eye when it comes to how he frames cutscenes, what information to present and how to present it, it's what makes his legendary 30 minute cutscenes worth every second. Anyone else given that task will have to match his mastery of intent and shot importance, as well as his creative approach to keeping action moments feeling exciting even when the controller isn't in our hands. Most game development teams don't have a traditional cinematographer on board, so right away this is an issue that the team are going to run up against. And given how important those cutscenes are to any self respecting Metal Gear game- that's a mistake they can't afford to make.

Then there's the gameplay itself; I'm tempted to say that what's functional doesn't need to be fixed, but I just know that's never going to fly for a remake. I just worry that any modern game designer, with his mind set on being 'intuitive' and 'streamlined', is going to look at the cumbersome camouflage system and just scratch their head. Afterall, we're talking about a system wherein the player needs to pause and go through several menus to change their gear in order to blend in with an indistinct piece of floor that dynamically shifts so often that they'll be back in that menu after a couple of steps. It's bloaty and bizarre, but there really is no solution for what was something of a revolutionary concept of it's time, notable for what it could do not so much for how it achieved that. I fear the solution is exclusion, and that would cut at my very heart if it became true. 

Finally there's the narrative. The story of Metal Gear Solid 3 takes place in the throes of a cold war where the covert operation of one fledging CIA agency has the potential to thwart the eve of thermonuclear warfare. It's a deeply politically sensitive narrative that casts aspersions at Russia and the US with equal vitriol, and even makes China the butt of the joke along the way somehow. If the entire purpose of a Remake is to signal boost a property so that it's brilliance can be seen by a wider and newer audience, then MGS 3 is just asking for trouble. People can't separate art and fiction in the modern day, this game will merely have to start it's intro for people to become irate and offended by the hypothetical villians that Kojima makes out of every side in his interwoven and masterful narrative. It's going to ruffle feathers like no other, I know it already.

Of course, the even darker side of me should be worried about the potential of microtransactions and a live service multiplayer mode stuck on the side with DRM and 'always online' functionality; but I'm choosing to ignore that possibility. (Even if this is Konami we're talking about.) In all honesty we have no idea what an MGS 3 remake would potentially bring us, just that it would have the potential to revive a franchise killed stone dead by Konami themselves, which makes this feel a little macabre under a certain lens. But damn me and damn it all if I'm not rubbing my hands waiting for the best anyway. Praying, beyond prayer, that there's some lone visionary still present at Konami, a sort of 'foetal Kojima', with just a budding cusp of that talent capable of bringing back that special something to this incredible entry in a legendary franchise. Damn, I am going to be so disappointment come next PlayStation direct, aren't I?