The Metal Gear situation

 

I promised I would talk about this a while ago but the truth is that I really didn't want to. In fact, I wanted to bury my head and pretend that Konami would fix everything in the interim but- I mean what was I thinking, this is Konami we're talking about! Part of it was blind optimism, and the rest of it was fear that if I accepted the rank incompetence of Konami I would also be accepting the terrible danger all upcoming Konami projects are in under a publisher that clearly has no idea how to quality control anymore. But reality isn't a matter of picking and choosing what seems comfortable, it's about sitting down in front of the meal prepared, undercooked and worm ridden as it is, and bearing everything. So I have to take my medicine and admit- Konami have absolutely screwed the pooch with the easiest of it's upcoming projects, the straight Metal Gear Ports.

If we are to accept the recent gall over everyone's inability to remake Knights of the Old Republic then we should damn near pass out from sheer flabbergastedness by the fact that simple HD ports lay outside the ability range of one of Japan's premiere development studios. Or perhaps it would be fitting to say 'former, most premiere'. Konami did a fine job whittling itself down into a studio focused entirely on mobile and gambling machine ventures, keeping all our favourite franchises hostage in the interim. I think mostly the world was praying for heroes to swoop in and nick the Metal Gear brand right out from under them- but that's just not how it works in our damnable capitalist society, now is it? That's probably what led to that false optimism when Konami, a proven mediocre publisher, decided to do anything with it's licences. We accepted the gruel, now we have to swallow it down.

The Metal Gear Master Collection proposed a brand new introduction into the classic franchise sans the name of Kojima on the box art because apparently we're all still petty about that after all this time? Although I suppose the original team must be grateful not to have their name handy on such a blatantly undercooked horror show of a port that somehow managed to achieve even less than an emulator could do on a tight schedule. These ports are ripped from the decent 360 era HD collection and propose little else to that formula other than a slight update to the menu screen when starting. The actual work they had to do, bringing Metal Gear 1 and 2 along for the ride, is the most rudimentary emulator job feasible carrying none of the basic classic re-release tools one would expect as enforced by the literal decades of retro renewal ports we have to compare with.

Tools such as The Metal Gear Solid original not supporting mouse control on PC (Which the GOG version absolutely did) were not even considered at launch. The highest resolution possible appears to be 720p for a lot of the games, with anything higher resulting in ugly stretching- which is only acceptable for about one single player in the world. Me. The one PC gamer who still has a 1080p monitor. (Fear my backwards ways!) There is nothing in the way of substantive configuration options in the games menus, (Just like FF7R- do Japanese players just never alter their settings or something?) the textures look untouched from the original package, there's no boost mode to speak of for the classic games or even save states. One ongoing problem seems to be an inability to switch from Windowed to Fullscreen (A problem the team intend to patch in later- that's premium apparently...) and no way to exit back to the menu midgame... It's essentially the lowest effort port one could feasibly make.

You could threaten a talented team with a life time imprisonment to make the worst product possible and they wouldn't have screwed up this badly. You know why? Because they would have tried, and that tiny modicum of effort, even to a destructive end, distinguishes that theoretical assignment with what Konami has delivered to us. People have already rushed to point out that the GOG Metal Gear Solid has more features. The HD collection for 3, 2 and Peace Walker (PW is nowhere in this package) runs at a smoother 60 with seemingly better textures. For a 'Master Collection' there doesn't seem to have been any effort put into 'remastering' whatsoever, which I guess explains their marketing approach- sticking the announcement for these games at the end of Metal Gear Solid Delta and riding off that game's hype.

But whilst we're on the topic, do you think this debacle paints the development of Delta in any different light? I've already raised my dissatisfaction with the fact that from everything we've seen Konami appear to be going the absolute safest route they possible could by recreating everything from the original game one-to-one, even borrowing audio files from the original. (Come on; even Persona 3 Reloaded hired the old musicians to play slightly updated versions of their old tracks!) But somehow safety even seems to be a risk at the Konami offices, and that was before they were tasked with actually creating anything. Now I don't know- we could end up getting a technical nightmare the likes of which sullies the Metal Gear name forever more. All I wanted was for my literal favourite game ever to walk in the sun once more, and the Monkey Paw prophecy is winding up for a haymaker retort to my foolish ambition.

To play complete Devil's Advocate, to the point where I've travelled to the pearly gates, enrolled in their most prestigious university, shirked all solicitation in order to focus on my studies and then pushed myself directly into application to pass The Extraplanar Bar for otherworld affairs in order to serve as lead attorney in Satan's trail- maybe this is a 'priorities' situation. As in, maybe key resources were deprived from the Master Collection and funnelled into Metal Gear Solid Delta under the belief that they were more deserving there. That would, at least, give the hope that The Master Collection died so that Delta can live. But even that is giving a lot of credit when, in honesty, sacrificing the re-release of universally beloved classic games would be a marketing nightmare by most's reckoning. You would have to be certifiably instituionable to champion such a terrible gambit when this whole movement was designed to rebuild the Konami image out of the dumps in the first place. Could the big K really be that incurably dumb?

Shame as it is to say, I can only hope they are. Because at least in that case we can hold out for some sliver of hope as it pertains to the future of Metal Gear. Right now I can't help but think of what Kojima must be making of it, matured and moved on as he is, looking back on the dissolution of his name-bearing franchise with a conflux of vindication and existential sadness, like watching one's progeny fall to illness. Konami is that illness, unshakable and malignant, seeping off the lifeforce of a property fans have kept living in their hearts for years now- and they are a terminal affliction. Coupled with the dogs-dinner of the Silent Hill revival currently happening, (Did you know the 'interactive TV show' has a Battle Pass? Yeah, kill me.) it's becoming soberingly obvious there is no redemption path for the bloodsucking vampires over at the big K. And the desiccated corpse of Metal Gear will be their debris in the year to come.