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Comment by remnant5 | Hacker News Reader

It's rather the other way around: Kojima was fed up with Konami's new management. The new CEO didn't really know anything about videogames or who Mr. Kojima was. He treated Mr. Kojima very disrespectfully, telling him that he wasn't really all that important to the Metal Gear franchise.

The new management is strictly business-focused. They believe that free-to-play mobile titles are the future. From a business standpoint, such reorientation may be the right thing to do. From a creative standpoint, this is unacceptable to someone like Mr. Kojima.

I don't know what you mean by "look at what was finally released of MGS5", either. The title was very well received by critics and sold very well, too - unlike Duke Nukem Forever.

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You sound confident in your narrative of the internal conflict inside Konami, treating is as established fact and not speculation. But, everything I have read about the internal conflict has not had the internal narrative of the individual players. (For example, this comprehensive piece at Polygon does not mention what steps Kojima took internally: http://www.polygon.com/2015/12/16/10220356/hideo-kojima-kona.... It does not have a narrative from inside Konami about who got fed-up with who, who initiated what, and how the power struggles played out.)

What have you read which gives more insight into what happened inside Konami? I think it's reasonable to assume that the changing direction of the company lead to the rift, but based on what I know, I cannot conclude that Kojima initiated his departure.

There was a report released on the conditions of working with Konami from Nikkei: http://kotaku.com/report-konami-is-treating-its-staff-like-p...

Likely won't be able to gain insight on exactly what happened inside Konami, and even those are personal anecdotes. I'm sure everyone has a good reason for what they did.

The insight from that report was included in the Polygon piece, and it does not include who-initiated-what between Kojima and Konami executives.

Just to add to the above comment: you cannot compare Duke Nukem Forever with Hideo Kojima, who has a proven track record of releasing games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hideo_Kojima#Works

He has produced more games than I have written pet programs.

As a long time MGS fan I can tell you that MGS5 was an unfinished mess. The rushed release and the unfinished product was much heavily criticised and discussed among the fanbase.

The most publicised issue is that the last chapter that was completely cut from the game, but the issues with the game go much further then that. One of the hallmarks of the MGS franchise is it long dialogue and cinema like cutscenes, however MGS5 has hardly any dialogue or significant cutscenes. Towards the end of the second chapter, the game forces you to replay old missions to progress with the main story. Many scenes just feel janky and unfinished, like the car ride with skullface where you sit and stare at each other for a few minutes while the theme music plays. One of the major overarching plot points is your characters descent into becoming a "demon", yet I feel that the game really failed to convince me that any decision I made was particularly evil. If Kojima had more time, maybe he could of done a better job with that.

The best scenes are the ones that made it to the trailer, if the rest of the game could of been at that quality it would of been fantastic. Perhaps the most disappointing thing about the game is that it clearly had a lot of promise and if Kojima was given the time he needed, it could of been an amazing game.

I was happy with the lack of cutscenes. MGS4's narrative basically collapsed under it's own weight in a (misguided, IMO) attempt to explain everything, which is a shame because the short gameplay segments in-between the cutscenes were quite fun.

I think splitting the prologue mission off from the main game and releasing it as it's own game hurt TPP. The core game mechanics are polished and fun in MGSV, so I'm happy with that. It was obviously released in an incomplete state, but it looks like that wasn't Kojima's fault. Maybe in a few years he'll be able to do a "director's cut" of it.

The cutscenes are there, sort of, and entirely optional. They are presented as cassette tapes (quite a few in fact) obtained throughout the game that tell the whole story.

I think that balancing plot and gameplay segments has been a problem with the series as far back as the second entry - I seem to recall there being a half-hour long, unskippable cinematic fairly early on in that game. And the plot itself is kind of a mess, which sapped a lot of my motivation to commit to the series.

At least MGS2 only has epic cutscenes at the beginning or end of each "chapter". That's actually bearable compared to MGS4.

MGS2 is my favorite entry in the series. It certainly had the most ambitious plot (about information control, and how being a soldier in a game is nothing like being a real soldier.), the mixed reaction to which made Kojima dial it back for all of the subsequent games.

It also has incredible production values, being one of the best looking games on the PS2 while holding an almost-solid 60FPS.

The series certainly has it's ups and downs, but on the whole I enjoy it. The worst parts are a silly science fiction-themed soap opera, but the best parts are some of the most compelling and exciting gaming I've ever experienced.

The game does not actually force you to replay old missions. You just have to complete certain side missions to progress in lieu of them. That confused me as well though - but I never had to complete any of those repeat missions and I completed the game. The game did not do a good job making that clear, however.

I would not call MGS5 an unfinished mess. I would call it unfinished, but that fact doesn't detract from it as one of the most innovative games I have ever played. I have never had the opportunity to truly "be" a character in a game before. When you're playing every mission in MGS5 - you are Snake.

You decide how every single objective is accomplished. Every mission can be played in a variety of varied ways. The fact that each mission felt so fluid and organic is a testament to the tremendous engineering and ingenuity that went into designing it.

Oh, but how I pine for the final chapter that could have been!

The only evil elements that I'm fully aware of is killing and developing a nuke. It seems way underdeveloped and not much of the game.

My first play through I played stealth and captured quite a few people for my base. If I didn't want the person then I just left them be, I only killed when I had to for survival or if required. For instance, I know of no way to capture a helicopter, so for those elimination missions you had no choice but to kill the pilots. My second play-through my style is to leave no one alive whenever I enter a mission, otherwise I avoid contact. I'm not even halfway through the story and the debris in my head signifying my demon level has lengthened quite a bit. Otherwise, I haven't noticed that much of a difference between the two sessions. Advanced equipment for the enemy has appeared sooner than before, but it's still way too easy. I wish there was a way to increase the difficulty from the beginning.

> As a long time MGS fan I can tell you that MGS5 was an unfinished mess.

I wouldn't say it was an unfinished mess. It was remarkably polished and bug-free for a modern 5-platform AAA game. If it had ended with Chapter 1 I think everyone would have been happy with the content and length of the game. Chapter 2 provides closure for a couple story lines and evokes the "Phantom Pain" of the title - you've achieved your revenge, but now what? Life goes on, it is not happily ever after. The repeated missions are "bonus" content that you are not required to do to unlock anything.

> I feel that the game really failed to convince me that any decision I made was particularly evil.

Maybe I'm just a Kojima apologist, but to me this is the genius of the game. You don't think you did anything evil - and it's true, the game doesn't let you do overtly, blatantly obviously evil things like killing the child soldiers or detonating your nukes against civilians (or anyone for that matter). But look at it from an outside perspective - you're building a nuclear-armed mercenary army out of kidnapped soldiers who get thrown in the brig and interrogated / brainwashed by Ocelot. An army that will hire itself out to the highest bidder. Look at the role of real-life PMCs in Africa like Executive Outcomes or Sandline International, or more recently the role of Blackwater in Iraq. Imagine if they had nukes.

Everything you do in the game makes sense and is justified when looked at while you're doing it, but you end up building this giant army that in reality would be a tool of neo-colonialist oppression used to ensure the smooth extraction of raw materials from Africa by multinational corporations.

I'm a fan of DDR and there are many others on the Internet. It seems like Konami doesn't want to take our money (no new products for home consoles in a few years). I'm very confused why that is. My guess was that they make more money in the arcade, and home machines were canabalizing that. It doesn't seem like a plausible theory. Very strange company. I wish they sold the IP if they didn't care about it and let someone else give fans what they want.

Many companies have that problem.

You have a skilled employee and suddenly they become a diva.

Now you have to put up with the stuff you don't like about them, but you need their skill.

For example: "Hideo Kojima originally wanted the boss fight to last one to two weeks but was told that this was impossible and not recommended." - http://www.ign.com/videos/2014/03/21/hideo-kojimas-top-5-met...

A boss fight that lasts for weeks sounds intriguing, depending on how the gameplay was handled. Obviously you wouldn't be sitting at your console for the entire time, so the "fight" must be broken up into large sections, each requiring hours to complete. In this case, where it's supposed to be a battle against a sniper hidden in a jungle... I can see how it would take weeks to find and end the bastard (no pun intended).

That boss fight was where I quit playing MGS3 and MGS as a series (yes, I know about the elapsed-time easter egg). I loved MGS1 and MGS2, but MGS3 lost me. I really liked the video-gamey gameplay in 1 and 2, where each room is more-or-less a puzzle to figure out and work your way through, with the radar telegraphing the puzzle's parameters. MGS3 made a major switch away from puzzle gameplay towards slow action, removing the essential radar and replacing it with careful player observation. The sniper boss fight was the epitome of this pivot, requiring you to slowly trundle through a huge jungle and look for a few tiny clues to find your enemy's position. For better or worse, I just don't have that kind of patience, especially when I want to be having fun.

I think it fits the style of the story more, and certainly it was well-received by players, but for me personally, I found it interminable. I watched a friend play MGS4, and its story was completely bonkers. Ground Zeroes literally made me sick to my stomach. I'm done with MGS and while I'll watch for what Kojima puts out next, I'm pretty nervous about it.

If you haven't beaten The End within two weeks of starting the battle, the next time you load your savegame a cutscene shows he has died of old age. He is replaced with a ninja squad you have to evade/defeat in the jungle.

You can also kill The End using a sniper rifle the first time you see him in the game (right after emerging from The Sorrow's boss "fight"). You have to snipe him while he's sitting in the wheelchair before he's taken away.

It's fair enough criticism, although I highly suggest you watch a video on why MGS3 was such a brilliant game, if you get bored sometime. I'll link you a decent video at the bottom, maybe you've already seen it. I wished more developers would make games that they want to make, rather than making games that they think the consumers want. Many studios do this, but many studio don't do this.. looking at Infinity Ward and Bungie.

I can't wait to see what Kojima puts out next, and I believe that Sony will allow him the freedom to do what he wants. Even if it isn't the most fun game in the world, there is a guarantee that it'll be wacky and challenge the general notion of what video games have become now. That's what makes it so exciting.

> Ground Zeroes literally made me sick to my stomach.

Because of the graphics/gameplay? Or the story? If it's the story, I think that's a good thing. It's a devastating critique of US foreign policy as it relates to extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, black sites, etc. Except for the very end, there's nothing that happens in the game that the US army / CIA haven't already done.

Yes, because of the story. Child rape; child torture; full-view, un-anesthetized surgery. No thanks.

FWIW The sniper battle vs The End (hoping that was his name) is legitimately one of the best boss fight's in any game I've ever played (if only for replay). Making it optional was very smart, but IMO it catches a lot of undue flak.

Really?

I don't remember it as something special.

Psycho Mantis or The Sorrow I remember as good, but the end was just "yet another boss" to me.

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