Metal Gear The Soild Ground Pains Zero Five Rising The Backdown

[Bells]

So... Metal Gear 5!


I've finally give in and returned to the console scene with a brand new PS4 =3

Also i got MGS Ground Zeroes wich i'm yet to play but have dipped my toes in it a little bit. I've also decided to go back and replay all MGS games that are related to this storyline on the PSP ( So... peace walker... but i'm totally going to play Portable ops and ACID too... ) and i just ordered an copy of MGS 3 for the DS (hope it's good!)

From what i understand (MGS lore is only second to Kingdom Hearts on WTF levels...) this is the ''Big Boss'' Trilogy, right?

It goes Peace Walker, MGS 3, MGS 5... correct?

So, the game for me is the clear definition of ''standing at the doors of next gen''. Not quite there yet... but i can see the potential. And on that front i'm satisfied. It plays super smooth and the audio is great... still getting used to playing with a PS controller after so many years on PC though...

So, is anybody here looking forward to that? Anybody playing Ground Zeroes?

I heard all about the ''10 minutes speed run'' stuff... and quite frankly, i'm not worried. From what i read you can totally spearhead the game and dash to the end if you want to.. and you can beat it in 1 hours just fine... or you can actually explore all the missions and the map you get and you can easily pull out 6-7 hours out of it... for a 30$ game of high production value that's ok.

And if you go for 100% without a guide or walkthroughs you can easily double that...

Now, here is what i'm curious about... the reason for the voice change.

The timeline here is MGS 3, Peace Walker and then MGS 5. which leads into the world of MGS 4... at the end of MGS 4 snake is no more. he is done and the world is changed. Enough that it leads into the world of Rising with Raiden.

And metal gear Rising did quite well. Even on PC... proving that a MGS 5 pc port is not out of the roadmap.

So... Indulge me in this... do you think it is possible that we will get a MGS 6 down the line that culminates with Big Boss and Solid Snake getting some face-to-face time?

[greed]

So... Metal Gear 5!


I've finally give in and returned to the console scene with a brand new PS4 =3

Also i got MGS Ground Zeroes wich i'm yet to play but have dipped my toes in it a little bit. I've also decided to go back and replay all MGS games that are related to this storyline on the PSP ( So... peace walker... but i'm totally going to play Portable ops and ACID too... ) and i just ordered an copy of MGS 3 for the DS (hope it's good!)

From what i understand (MGS lore is only second to Kingdom Hearts on WTF levels...) this is the ''Big Boss'' Trilogy, right?

It goes Peace Walker, MGS 3, MGS 5... correct?

So, the game for me is the clear definition of ''standing at the doors of next gen''. Not quite there yet... but i can see the potential. And on that front i'm satisfied. It plays super smooth and the audio is great... still getting used to playing with a PS controller after so many years on PC though...

So, is anybody here looking forward to that? Anybody playing Ground Zeroes?

I heard all about the ''10 minutes speed run'' stuff... and quite frankly, i'm not worried. From what i read you can totally spearhead the game and dash to the end if you want to.. and you can beat it in 1 hours just fine... or you can actually explore all the missions and the map you get and you can easily pull out 6-7 hours out of it... for a 30$ game of high production value that's ok.

And if you go for 100% without a guide or walkthroughs you can easily double that...

Now, here is what i'm curious about... the reason for the voice change.

The timeline here is MGS 3, Peace Walker and then MGS 5. which leads into the world of MGS 4... at the end of MGS 4 snake is no more. he is done and the world is changed. Enough that it leads into the world of Rising with Raiden.

And metal gear Rising did quite well. Even on PC... proving that a MGS 5 pc port is not out of the roadmap.

So... Indulge me in this... do you think it is possible that we will get a MGS 6 down the line that culminates with Big Boss and Solid Snake getting some face-to-face time?

I think a remake of the original Metal Gear with Big Boss as the villain and Solid Snake as the hero is possible.

also not playing Ground Zeroes cause some of the spoilers put me off.

Spoilers Lots of rape stuff with Paz and apparrently she gets killed off by a bomb hidden in her vagina. I mean really Kojima? The second part of that was a SOUTH PARK EPISODE.

Oh also bells the Big Boss series goes MGS3 > Peace Walker > MGS5
Portable Ops is out of continuity like Ghost Babel and the AC!D games.

[Bells]

Just as i truly believe a new ''HD collection'' will be released for the PS4 or at least MGS 4... i also trully beleive we will get ''strider-like'' remakes of the first games of the franchise...

I read the spoiler, i did not know it was THAT but i knew Kojima went for the gut punch... so i'm not really put off by it as i want to see it in context, is that confirmed in that level of detail?

I mean, Ground Zeroes is a huge commentary on Guantanamo and just the opening scene has a character (unnamed for spoilers) using a hole in his chest to store a earphone jacket... and we have the whole deal with Quiet... i must admit i'm curious to see whole picture Kojima thinks he is painting with all of this...

[Solid Snake]

1: Don't play Peace Walker, it's fucking awful.

2: Based on everything I've heard, don't play MGSV: Ground Zeroes either, it is also atrocious.

I'm named after Solid Snake because MGS used to be favorite videogame series of all time and even I am telling you, you will sleep so much better at night if you just pretend Kojima ended the series with MGS4.
(...And then he gave the series to the folks who actually did something decent with it with Revengeance.)

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

I pretended it ended at metal gear solid with a brief reprisal for Snake Eater then faded to obscurity again.

Works out pretty well.

[Bells]

well, i know the whole deal in MGS4 and i honestly think i was better served by watching and reading than playing it.... i've played Peace Walker before and story wise i just find it dull... not... like... horrible. Just Dull. That being said... i barely reached the halfway point in that before setting it aside... so there is that too.

Gameplay was fine though... moster hunter with recruting and rocket launchers really...

Now... i know there are two types of experiences... there is ''This was poorly done and it's bad because of it'' and there is ''I don't like this and it's bad because of it''. I try to keep an open mind when hearing and reading about it... because specially in gaming media, it is VERY common to mix those two badly. Also, the reviewing press for this game seems really poorly managed to me thus far...

It reminds me of Spec Ops the Line, where not only the game media around it was bad... the game was also fully willing to take me to a very unconfortable place. But it was done really well that in the end, it's pretty much one of my favorite games of all time...

gameplay is bland as plaid... but just the storytelling makes it worth it.

Now... with THIS new MGS... i dunno, Kojima usually has his Hype made for him much more than he makes it himself... but it really does seem like he is testing to see just how much can he really get away with in his games now... i have to admit that intrigues me... i just don't know if it was/can be done well...

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

it really does seem like he is testing to see just how much can he really get away with in his games now..

He has pretty much outright stated he really really wants to work on shit other than the Metal Gear series after all these years. Hasn't quite committed to leaving it entirely 'cause he cares for his work and doesn't want it to be taken over by blithering idiots.

Catch-22 and all that.

[Bells]

So... just played it.

And let me be blunt and clear and crude... FUCK the people who finish this thing in under a hour and call it quits. I've played the stealthy game stealthy and i was banging at 3 hours when i finished it on normal... and then i learn that my completion rate was 9% !!!


Now, to address snake's point since i saw the ending, i'll go into spoiler territory. If you want to learn for yourself in the game, don't read. But if you don't mind the spoiler follow along...



At first i thought you were wrong... because Paz didn't have Bomb in her privates, it was in her guts. And in the end sequence... of course... there is no time for pain killers, so it's gut surgery by hand. And it's quite gruesome... the bomb gets disposed off and that seems to be it...

Then, at the very last minute paz wakes up and reveals there is ANOTHER bomb... her words are ''It's in my....'' and then she jumps off the helicopter and it explodes. It's nothing nuclear, but it's more than a grenade for sure... it takes the Helicopter down...

Thing is, Paz's face is not scarred. Her belly was crudely cut and stitched together, like something thaat WAS supposed to be found... it was just brutal. But they make note to show that her head is shaved and her face is clean... so when she says it's in her ''...'' well... yeah... you know what she is talking about.

The game drives it home super hrd, it's not subtle at all... how it is pointing fingers to the treatment of POW's and Guantanamo bat as a whole... it is literally screaming ''look at this'' over and over at you...

Sexual humilation, psycological forcibly induced trauma, indentity deconstruction, deprivation, sexual humilation, dehumanization, the entire deconstruction of a human being is being exposed raw in this game... mostly in audio-only files.

Early on it is introduced very clearly that Paz has suffered sexual abuse while being tortured for information. The end game however reveals that the rape was by Chico, forced by the main villain (Skull face, who only appears in the beginning and in audio). That alone is nuts... but you see how it mentally breaks paz apart and completely destroys chico's identity as a person... there is some Stockholm syndrome taking place, some characters are shown boderlining dementia and complete dissociation from reality...

You can rescue other prisioners too... when i did the first one, just hearing the desperate cries for rescue they put in there was enough for me to go into ''big boss mode'' and ''no man left behind'' was the goal of the day...

You cannot grasp the story by just playing the main mission. It is not possible. And i dare say that if you play Phantom Pain later on without playing this, you will miss out on context and information... there is some severe World building going on here and it's gruesome as fuck.

you need to listen to all the audio logs (easy enough to do while you scout around with your binoculars tagging stuff) to get a feel of the timeline this game is trying to tell... some severe fucked up shit is going on in Ground Zeroes.

And if they keep this line of thought going... this will lead into Phantom Pain that will land perfectly into the storyline of the first Metal Gear game... not MGS... the first metal gear.

[BitVyper]

I mean really Kojima?

I don't understand how Kojima's work being creepily sexist is even a surprise anymore. The MGS series was absolutely rife with it.

Edit: I pretend MGS never happened at all and that we got five more Snatcher games instead.

[Bells]

after playing... i'm not sure i can say that it is... sexist. It's absolutely brutal... but i got a bigger ''this is the horror of war'' vibe from the whole thing.

just another spoiler that i forgot to mention...

Before it is revealed that Paz had an explosive device inserted into her privates it is very strongly alluded that she also suffered genital mutilation as part of her abuse and torture. Maybe as part of the procedure. Can't tell if it was part of the whole process with her or if it was an isolated instance.

It's cruel, cold and quite disturbing... but i didn't see it as Fetishistic, i saw it as twisted.... fucked up. And the point that this game is trying to make such blunt parallels with real life war stories is really what irks the most... that it's not necessarily an overblown fantastic notion of the truth... it is presented more like a raw view of the stuff that happens in these war scenarios... all condensed and compressed into a quite nightmarish scenario really...

[Jagos]

... Holy shit...

Kojima just decided to say "Fuck it..."

Bit, just a reminder, Snatcher was based off of hentai games of the time. Sexuality is handled differently in Japan and given the subject matter here, Kojima is taking a HUGE risk in showing you what can happen on the battlefield.

We hear about this stuff on the news, particularly with the women being raped by superiors in the military but we haven't seen that in a video game. We haven't seen the Gitmo prisoners as they were tortured. The point here is that MGS 5 seems to be making a game about exactly that.

The only other game that was doing anything similar to this was The Fall of Fallujah and that was about the experiences of the soldier and received a HUGE backlash, forcing its premature termination.

Now we're really going to see how brutal war can be... In a video game.

I don't think anyone is going to be ready for this...

[Kyanbu The Legend]

after playing... i'm not sure i can say that it is... sexist. It's absolutely brutal... but i got a bigger ''this is the horror of war'' vibe from the whole thing.

just another spoiler that i forgot to mention...

Before it is revealed that Paz had an explosive device inserted into her privates it is very strongly alluded that she also suffered genital mutilation as part of her abuse and torture. Maybe as part of the procedure. Can't tell if it was part of the whole process with her or if it was an isolated instance.

It's cruel, cold and quite disturbing... but i didn't see it as Fetishistic, i saw it as twisted.... fucked up. And the point that this game is trying to make such blunt parallels with real life war stories is really what irks the most... that it's not necessarily an overblown fantastic notion of the truth... it is presented more like a raw view of the stuff that happens in these war scenarios... all condensed and compressed into a quite nightmarish scenario really...

As a ZOE fan even I can second this. it seems a good number of the games he's worked on so far are geared towards this and how terrible we as a species can really be.

[Bells]

Also worth mentioning Rainbow Six Patriots, that literally retreated into the shadows when it was pretty much done for a few more years just to avoid backlash over similar topics...

Just to make it perfectly clear for those who didn't play it yet... the game makes it crystal clear, explicitly so... that Paz is an Enemy Combatant in this ''shadowy'' prison and is being treated as such. It's not out of the blue... you are given context... but the game unfolds to show you just how ugly that context really is... and it is quite dark.

[BitVyper]

after playing... i'm not sure i can say that it is... sexist.

It pretty much sounds like Kojima's weird thing for torturing women to a tee. I can't even be that bothered by it, I just don't understand how anyone can be surprised by it anymore. It's a Kojima game; it will have partial ENF (total ENF if Raiden counts hur hur) and it will have vaguely (or sometimes explicitly) fetishized tortured/brutalized women. That's how Hideo rolls.

Edit: Like no, I'm not even saying it makes his games something you shouldn't play (the GAMEPLAY in his games, on the other hand...). Do whatever you want, just, well you should be pretty aware of what you're getting into by now.

[Jagos]

So we're just going to ignore the child soldiers and all the other craziness in the MGS games?

[BitVyper]

So we're just going to ignore the child soldiers and all the other craziness in the MGS games?

Well.... he's not doing anything like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxRF3qO0p5o) with child soldiers. At least I hope not.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

I wouldn't call it a fetish. Sexual intent would be more apparent if it was. for example the tank top Ken easter egg in ZOE2. And her space suit in that game.

with MGS5, he's going for a more darker and more surreal story about the horrors of war.

WYCSzu-FmPw


EDIT whoops wrong vid... there we go this is the one I was thinking about. 9:43

[Ryong]

Well.... he's not doing anything like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxRF3qO0p5o) with child soldiers. At least I hope not.

I want to say he was trying to pull off some meta crap about perverted gamers, but then it was too sexual and so whatever meta commentary there could be was lost.

[Bells]

Well.... he's not doing anything like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxRF3qO0p5o) with child soldiers. At least I hope not.

uhmmm... debatable.

I totally see your point though, but if you accept Chico as the sole persona for child soldiers in that game... here are some spoilers of things that are done to Chico in Ground Zeroes.



1- He can't walk because his ankles were locked by metal bolts surgically inserted through his feet. This seems to be how they keep the POW's from running away.

2- All prisioners (and thus chico) are kept in cages. Not cells, but specifically cages... and they are reminded of the fact that their holding cells are cages on purpose and repeatedly during interrogation.

3- He was forced to rape Paz... so there is that...

4- The whole time he is kept with earphones on and you don't know why... he also thinks Paz is dead... until snakes listen to what he is listening and it's just a loop tape of Paz being tortured over and over with music in the background.

5- He keeps the earphone jacket attacked to a hole on his chest while not connected to his walkman (i don't know if this has meaning... it's just fucked up). Makes the case for his mental well-being at this point...


You can say that Chico is a child only in age (he is 13...) due to his life and all that he has seen... but it is still very much so a kid.

I might be off by a mile here... but i think that perhaps Kojima drives certain brutal scenarios for women because, in a sense, it irks us more... it hits harder. At least this seems to me like what he would be going for...

We see a rugged soldier full of scars and being tortured and we are kinda desensitized about that. Specially in entertainment media. It's ugly and may be very graphical but it doesn't really... makes you shift in your sit uncomfortably, y'know? At least not in an average generalization of the facts... and Paz is not just any random girl either she is an able and highly trained fighter in her own rights. With motivations, goals and overall a personality of her own...

I dunno, i think if they replaced Paz with, let's say Raiden (who, BTW, had his whole body ripped apart from jaw down to be made into a cyborg... but that was never really shown) and kept all the events the same... it would still be fucked up and just as ugly. It just... somehow being Paz adds an extra layer of uncomfortable...




With all that being said... and changing gears a bit... the runnign theory is that David Hayter is actually involved in MGS5.

The ongoing idea is that he is ''Raiden 2.0'' and that MGS 5 is the final game that links directly into the very first Metal Gear game. Under that notice, Big Boss would meet during MGS 5 the kid named ''Solid Snake'', and that would be David, as it would make more sense to have 2 Snakes in a game if they had different VO's... being the same guy would be weird, specially since the age difference would be beyond apparent.

Here is the catch though... Solid Snake was born in 1972 and Phantom pain is going to take place on 1984, making Solid Snake 12 years old. So either there is a time skip in the end and you have David as snake, or he is not really in the game but Big Boss takes snake with him in the end of MGS5.

[Solid Snake]

I'm all for a game that confronts harsh realities of war (I think Spec Ops: The Line is a good example of a game that accomplishes just that.)
And I'm even all for a game that confronts sexism in modern society. I don't think rape, if it's handled appropriately, sincerely and with tact, should be off-limits. I think with the right approach, you absolutely could make an experience that exposes the awful misogyny and condemns it.

This just doesn't feel like Kojima's actually condemning misogyny, though. It feels more like Kojima's relying upon the thin excuse of "War is Hell" to include degrading moments that just don't add any value.

Like, I don't mind the notion that MGSV would explore how traumatic it'd be for a young woman like Paz to be raped. I haven't played Ground Zeroes, so I don't know whether Kojima used the proper tone and tenor of conveying this information to the gamer, but if the right writers and game designers show appropriate deference while tackling the subject matter, it can be really eye-opening for a predominantly male audience to be confronted with a truly hideous side-effect of war that's rarely explored in a medium that tends to merely celebrate rampant acts of chaos.

...But sticking in a bomb in her vagina?!?
That doesn't add anything to the conversation, it's just sexually degrading because "Paz is a woman, therefore let's put the bomb in her lady-parts!"
I mean, from a plot perspective the bomb could be anywhere, even outside her body, and so long as it goes off and kills her, it serves that narrative function.
I mean, imagine the narrative equivalent if Paz simply changed genders. No writer's going to put a bomb in a man's urethra. It's stupid.

It's unfortunate because there's actually topics MGSV is exploring that I want more video games to explore, more games absolutely need to take lessons from Spec Ops and try to tackle the harsh, ugly realities of what war is really like as opposed to glossing it up for an audience.

But there's a way to do that without delving into unnecessary levels of misogynistic sexual depravity. And the problem when the envelope is pushed too far is that you're left wondering whether a particular depraved scene or a particular discomforting plot twist is present because the writer's making an unambiguous statement against that conduct, or if the writer isn't trying to have his cake and eat it too, relying upon a generic Anti-War message to provide moments of depravity for the audience that reinforce regressive norms and tropes. Of course the female character who's tortured is going to be reduced to a sex object! Of course she's going to be raped! Of course we're going to explicitly reduce her to her genitals! Of course she's going to be tortured more severely than the boys!!!

[Overcast]

...But sticking in a bomb in her vagina?!?
That doesn't add anything to the conversation, it's just sexually degrading because "Paz is a woman, therefore let's put the bomb in her lady-parts!"
I mean, from a plot perspective the bomb could be anywhere, even outside her body, and so long as it goes off and kills her, it serves that narrative function.
I mean, imagine the narrative equivalent if Paz simply changed genders. No writer's going to put a bomb in a man's urethra. It's stupid.

I know the whole concept is a little strange on its own, but I will say that there is a great deal less room and elasticity in the male urethra to put bomb material. You'd do one better to put it in their rectum, which is also the preferred area to rape a man at.

Oh and that has actually been done, I didn't know that till you inspired me to look it up. It is actually one of the only known incidents of body cavity bomb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_al-Asiri

Of course the female character who's tortured is going to be reduced to a sex object! Of course she's going to be raped! Of course we're going to explicitly reduce her to her genitals! Of course she's going to be tortured more severely than the boys!!!

Historically yeah. I mean sure male rape in war has also been considered somewhat regular as well, but women for longest time were considered one of the many spoils of war. In the hypermasculine presence of soldiery this kind of thing has kept up to the modern day even as we have written laws forbidding it. Take into account that the setting of this game is a black operations center in a prison where we extradite people whom we don't want to include under constitutional laws and is under occupation by a military force that doesn't qualify for Geneva protection you are looking at the darkest side of pseudowar. It is practically ancient times, no law but power applies here.

From what I'm getting from others since I can't personally play this game due to my lack of a system, this is all implemented in a fashion that is ultimately not done in a fashion that glorifies all this. It presents it. That is the kind of thing that I ended up getting from Spec Ops, and if the same is being done here then even if there is a small suspension of disbelief needed then what they want it is for you to digest the atrocity. Recognize it, and find your opinion.

I'd like to play it so I can get a better view of the matter, but it seems like for want of one detail you aren't even willing to do that much. Which I think is somewhat disheartening, especially considering how hard of an opinion you are setting forth.

I feel like you should go in neutral and try to give it a chance to sicken you personally. See for yourself if any of this foolishness has the value you say you want tied to something like this. Then hating it seems a lot more presentable.

[Jagos]

This just doesn't feel like Kojima's actually condemning misogyny, though.

That's not his job. All that's happening here is that he's presenting what happens on the battlefield. Female soldiers can be like Boss or they can come out mad like the members of the Beauty and the Beast unit. A battlefield isn't sunshine and roses and if you want real life stories, there are indeed ones about how the US double taps civilians while Iraqis left bombs in fecal matter.

It feels more like Kojima's relying upon the thin excuse of "War is Hell" to include degrading moments that just don't add any value.

You may not like the value there but this isn't a story that's holding back from what's been presented. It's not holding your hand and if you thought war was hell before, it's about to get worse now. The value is in presenting a game that's actually going to present some very unpleasant things and take a lot more risks with its story than what's been presented before.

Sure, we've had child prostitutes, and unlikable characters. But this is something that I doubt movies are even doing thanks to sticking to a set WWII style formula which doesn't seem to be Kojima's intent.

You can't just dismiss it simply because you don't like the premise.

I haven't played Ground Zeroes, so I don't know whether Kojima used the proper tone and tenor of conveying this information to the gamer, but if the right writers and game designers show appropriate deference while tackling the subject matter, it can be really eye-opening for a predominantly male audience to be confronted with a truly hideous side-effect of war that's rarely explored in a medium that tends to merely celebrate rampant acts of chaos.

Snake... There will never be a right tone. Art and games are subjective. There's no deference to the subject matter. He's presenting a story, he's interpreting it in his way, and you either have to accept that story, or move on. If you want to make a story yourself and avoid these issues, you can do so. But that's the way he's choosing to make this story. He decided on your spoiler there. He decided that this unmoves you as a player. That killing 500 soldiers is nothing but when you see what happens to a woman in such a manner, it shocks you and makes you think twice.

That doesn't add anything to the conversation, it's just sexually degrading because "Paz is a woman, therefore let's put the bomb in her lady-parts!"

I mean, from a plot perspective the bomb could be anywhere, even outside her body, and so long as it goes off and kills her, it serves that narrative function.

You've just defeated your argument. A bomb outside the body is easily defused and dealt with. One inside the body, with no anesthetic, in a battlefield, is not. Then to have a second bomb as a sort of "double tap" serves the purpose of showing you an unnerving truth about the enemy here.

No writer's going to put a bomb in a man's urethra.

Yes. They stick it up his ass or have a crazy person put the bomb in their stomach. Batman did one part just to show you the type of people Joker brings to him.

It's unfortunate because there's actually topics MGSV is exploring that I want more video games to explore, more games absolutely need to take lessons from Spec Ops and try to tackle the harsh, ugly realities of what war is really like as opposed to glossing it up for an audience.

And just as much, they turn down games like Fall of Fallujah to ignore an actual soldier's experiences. And if the Beauty and the Beast unit didn't clue people in, there's a lot to explore with the fragility of people in games, sex be damned.

But there's a way to do that without delving into unnecessary levels of misogynistic sexual depravity.

That's entirely subjective and no one knows "just the right amount" to avoid sensibilities and sensitivities. The point is to knock you on your ass and realize that you feel something for this character. She didn't deserve this but this is what Fate gave her and it was a bad hand. Hell, I just finished the Phoenix Wright series and it's amazing what that story has in terms of murder plots and how people react to such a thing. It's believeable, and it's a lot more than just Phoenix Wright screaming "Objection" yet it's rated T for Teen.

And the problem when the envelope is pushed too far is that you're left wondering whether a particular depraved scene or a particular discomforting plot twist is present because the writer's making an unambiguous statement against that conduct, or if the writer isn't trying to have his cake and eat it too, relying upon a generic Anti-War message to provide moments of depravity for the audience that reinforce regressive norms and tropes.

Snake, if you're taking an "anti-war" message out of this, that's on you. You're rambling about something which is an assumption of Kojima's work and not based in the reality of the world he's presenting. I'm not here to interpret Kojima's vision and think that's nonsense actually, but it's pretty apparent that you don't want to deal with these issues and this seems more like trying to sidestep it for something that is more along the lines of being the norm you're used to versus facing the fictional reality he's presenting. Yes, "War is Hell". A woman can be abused on the battlefield. A man can be raped. Bombs can be hidden inside you and if you don't find them, you can die. For every action, there's a reaction.

And a story can indeed be uncomfortable and try to elicit emotions by throwing you off-kilter and presenting unpleasant events in a fictional setting.


Of course the female character who's tortured is going to be reduced to a sex object! Of course she's going to be raped! Of course we're going to explicitly reduce her to her genitals! Of course she's going to be tortured more severely than the boys!!!

Somehow, I highly doubt that if a male character was given poison in his urethra, a bomb in his ass, or something even close to exposing how disposable men in fictional setting are, you'd care.

Maybe that's why the idea of a female soldier being mutilated 20 ways from Sunday elicits that response. Maybe that's what he was going for. Just like how using a child soldier to commit the torture makes us think twice about how screwed up this world is.

Maybe that's the reason he did this... Just a thought.

[greed]

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

It's not realistic. It's stupid. It's exploitative. And it's stupid. I don't play MGS for THE GRIM DARK GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FUTURE 1970s. I play it for goofing around and fighting giant robots and weird super humans. Kojima can go fuck himself, this game is pathetic and creepy.

It's a fucking vagina bomb and loads of gratuitous rape, don't dress it up as an intelligent statement about the horrors of war. It's hack job of a good series. The best I can think of Kojima after this is he's back to trying to force Konami to give him something else to do again. But honestly I think it's just him being creepy.


Hope nothing like this creeps into Rising 2.

honestly between this and the creepy as rat scene in Witch and 100 Knights that really interrupted my enjoyment of that game it's been a bad month for creepy sex things in games. At least all Dark Souls had in that area was the hilarious magical coffin of wonder.

[Jagos]

It's a fucking vagina bomb and loads of gratuitous rape, don't dress it up as an intelligent statement about the horrors of war. It's hack job of a good series. The best I can think of Kojima after this is he's back to trying to force Konami to give him something else to do again. But honestly I think it's just him being creepy.


If you read what I said as an "intelligent statement of war" you misread.

[Overcast]

I'm willing to meet you half way here greed since I haven't played it yet and am pretty open to being persuaded if you could give me a clearer image about what in the presentation is driving you off the deep end with ughs. Was it the somewhat ridiculous presence of that vagina bomb? Is the rape shown in game directly in front of you so that it is obviously in some way fetishistic and exploitative? Do you just not like it present at all in games you play? It is a pretty common line so I can get that.

My boyfriend for example says that Pixar films are exploitative because they actively chase after triggers to make you cry before moving to a happier ending as a means to garner positive acclaim. When you use exploitative are you saying that the presence of the rape and such is only in there to create the psychological response some of the other people who played the game are having?

I only ask because I really do want to know your input, and your reality check post didn't really get it across as much as I'd like and I feel like you do have something you want to say clearly about all this.

[Krylo]

I think all the 'it's making a statement' stuff would have more weight if this wasn't something Kojima did in highly sexualized ways, like, all the time.

I mean, once or twice you might go horror of war or whatever, but when he's torturing and sexualizing tortured women in pretty much every MGS game I think we can pretty much just say it's Kojima's fetish.

[BitVyper]

Literally makes bosses whose emotional trauma makes them do sexy poses and try to make out with you to death. But only after you strip off (most of) their clothes by beating them up so that they're disempowered. Gives you an easter egg that lets you look under the clothes of a 16 year old warzone survivor. Has an entire sequence of play that exists for the express purpose of letting you watch Emma squirm about in discomfort.

[Bells]

so, it's already pretty obvious we are in spoiler territory, so if anybody wants to experience this by themselves before putting their minds to rationalize this, i suggest bailing out of the thread from now on...

just to keep the conversation concise i'm going to limit my own comments to just say a few things... first on the basis of the reality of the scenario:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgically_implanted_explosive_device

Then, @Greed and @overcast i don't think playing the game would change your opinions. Honestly. i'm pretty sure you guys would still think the same way as you do right now... albeit perhaps a bit polished. by reading your comments after playing it, to me at least, it seems you guys understand what is in there, but you lack a layer of ''polish'' to the context.... your mind if filling blanks on something you heard about. Again, i don't think that playing the game is going to change that... but if you have any curiosity of the context to the scenes i'm going to suggest you guys to NOT look at Let's Plays of it on youtube, but instead... look for the audio logs.

here is one you get when you beat the game

Zi5118dawhc

This is the method in wich any and all agression to any character in this game is delivered. You never see a SINGLE visual scene or mistreatment, it's all audio only and text only...

and for whatever value you make of any of Kojima's depiction of female roles in his spy and war stories... my mind always goes back to the nudget of fact that ''any women i saw suffering in any capacity in a MGS game were able, capable, and sometimes more able and more capable than some of the men you engage directly in the game'' ...i honestly can't assess on my own if this has any real weight in a larger figure, but the consistency of my perception of this stuck with me for now...

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

It's not realistic. It's stupid. It's exploitative. And it's stupid. I don't play MGS for THE GRIM DARK GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FUTURE 1970s. I play it for goofing around and fighting giant robots and weird super humans. Kojima can go fuck himself, this game is pathetic and creepy.

It's a fucking vagina bomb and loads of gratuitous rape, don't dress it up as an intelligent statement about the horrors of war. It's hack job of a good series. The best I can think of Kojima after this is he's back to trying to force Konami to give him something else to do again. But honestly I think it's just him being creepy.


Hope nothing like this creeps into Rising 2.

honestly between this and the creepy as rat scene in Witch and 100 Knights that really interrupted my enjoyment of that game it's been a bad month for creepy sex things in games. At least all Dark Souls had in that area was the hilarious magical coffin of wonder.

At the end of the day, I can understand why you and many others are upset about this. there's a common miss understanding that MGS was this funny comical series that never really was suppose to be Dark. except it's was likely always meant to be a serious story. But poor execution lead to a huge miss understanding on that part for many fans.

So for fans like that, this game and a few others is a pretty big shock.

[Solid Snake]

I just don't understand why "a grim look at war" requires the inclusion of brazenly misogynistic story elements.

You can have a grim, depressing, "War Sucks" story thematically with a female character who's a living, breathing person and not just a sexualized, disempowered victim or a conventionally attractive, woefully underdressed pinup doll. Kohima achieved just that in MGS3 with The Boss, and while she wasn't implemented perfectly, her whole storyline was basically "War Sucks, my life was ruined by war, but I'm not just here as some object for men to claim and kill and fight over."

You can tell a story about war being awful -- you can even have a story where the undue consequences of war against women are gracefully explored. You can't do that in the same game where your protagonist has an inappropriate date with an underage girl. You can't do that in the same game where one of your female characters is deliberately wearing hardly any clothing and heavily advertised to an audience of predominantly teenage boys. You can't do that and simultaneously try to court the men in your audience who are attracted to your game precisely because it depicts women in sexually degrading ways. You can't try a serious, grim commentary on rape and abuse in the same series that also frequently shows **the protagonist** ogling his female costars, staring at their breasts, and viewing them as sexual conquests.

There's just basically a disconnect there that makes MGS the wrong kind of series to include rape in a storyline, because it fetishizes so much else about women and the story's so comedic and over-the-top ridiculous that the audience basically dives in anticipating more juvenile humor. If MGS always had a more consistently serious tone, like Spec Ops did, maybe it'd all feel less jarring. As is, Kojima's most respectful move would be to avoid the subject entirely, and insofar as he might actually desire a feminist commentary, the best he can do given his series' history is to write more women with agency who aren't sex objects like The Boss.

MGS is a crazy ass ludicrous narrative with bee-superpowers and mind-readers and nuclear equipped mechs and NANOMACHINES and clones. It is a fantasy series that takes a lot of fantastical liberties and it's a great place to show empowered women, not so much to explore why they're disempowered and victimized in reality.

EDIT: TLDR Version: Kojima's fucked up too many times in the past for him to be trusted handling these kinds of themes maturely, so instead of even trying if Kojima really did want to try a theme that'd have a positive impact from a social justice perspective he should've just stuck to trying to write female characters in his fantastical storylines with agency. Less of every woman in the series who wasn't The Boss, and more female characters like The Boss. Get rid of the awful costumes and awful developments in the series that sexualize women, and concentrate on making them people in a cohesive anti-war narrative.

That'd at least be a start.

[Bells]

Snake... it doesn't require it. It just has it. Actually.... i don't even think it has it to be honest...

And the female characters are living, breathing persons... able, capable fighters that show as much competence (some times more) than male characters. Both as good and bad people. That's all in there...

But if you actually think MGS is a fantasy series... dude... c'mon now... you are misreading the entirety of the franchise. It has fantastical elements to it... it has sci fi elements to it... but all the way back to the first game, even before MGS... it's a war spy thriller. Closer to a grittier james bond / rambo mash up then anything else really...

[Solid Snake]

Snake... it doesn't require it. It just has it. Actually.... i don't even think it has it to be honest...

And the female characters are living, breathing persons... able, capable fighters that show as much competence (some times more) than male characters. Both as good and bad people. That's all in there...

But if you actually think MGS is a fantasy series... dude... c'mon now... you are misreading the entirety of the franchise. It has fantastical elements to it... it has sci fi elements to it... but all the way back to the first game, even before MGS... it's a war spy thriller. Closer to a grittier james bond / rambo mash up then anything else really...

There's nothing gritty or realistic about James Bond, it's a juvenile male fantasy wish-fulfillment series at its core.

(But comparing MGS to James Bond absolutely does indirectly prove my point re: both series being godawful places to try to seriously explore the consequences of sexual assault. Can you imagine if James Bond of all people was tasked with rescuing and aiding a woman who had been raped and tortured in a military camp? James Bond, like MGS, is an example of a series that should never try to tackle feminist themes in the context of a gritty "War is Hell" storyline, neither series is at all the right place for that.)

Just because a story's set in something vaguely akin to 'Earth' as opposed to Westeros or Middle-Earth doesn't mean it isn't fantastical. A better example of a gritty war spy thriller that's actually trying to take itself sort-of seriously might be Splinter Cell (I've never played a Splinter Cell game so I wouldn't know.) But at least Splinter Cell doesn't have all the fantastical elements that make Metal Gear Solid utterly unrealistic.

...And, the female characters are "living, breathing persons?" Have we played the same Metal Gear Solid titles? MGS4's Beauty and the Beast team struck you as a team of capable women with agency?!?

[Overcast]

Taking in the evidence as presented and processing it a bit more. It definitely is present that there is a lot of bleedover from the other games and their lead developer making a presence in this one psychologically. If this game had been redesigned and presented without relation to MGS or Kojima in total I'm trying to figure if it would be taken the same way, because his history of Kojimaness is apparently not helping, which I will not deny is totally a thing.

Is it as much of a thing in this game though? I mean from a purely subjective standpoint does it seem that way? I'm biased myself because honestly most of what I know about MGS is through various cutscenes and wikipedia articles so my mental image of the games is much more white washed and medical, I don't have the Kojima sexist factor in my brain quite so heavily.

I'd like someone who is though to really break it down in the ways this game in particular continues the history of outlandishness from the past, and maybe moreso how it doesn't. Bells is doing a pretty good job of the latter but I think I could use more evidence of the former if someone can present it, instead of just referencing all the times Kojima done fukd up before, or at least using it as a segue to help me grasp how it happened this time without it being particularly general and more microscopic.

[Bells]

@Snake on the Not-James bond thing..... i said grit[ier] ...c'mon now dude...

And the opening sequence of Snake Eater also kinda goes against what you are saying right there...

On the MGS4 though, i cannot comment, that's the one i didn't play. I know ''of'' it, but i lack the context of having played it or even watched a full LP of it... i Know the Boss though... and Eva... and Even Paz... i want to say Naomi, but i don't know if MGS4 negates that...

@overcast actully even i would like to see someone bringing that... i mean, i'm hardly a ''scholar'' of the lore here... i just know what this cone vision has given me to see thus far...

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Best I could do was try and reason with what he tried to do. I'm more familiar with his work on the Z.O.E series then MGS.

Is there even anyone here that's familiar enough with the series to give it a thorough break down?

[Solid Snake]

Is there even anyone here that's familiar enough with the series to give it a thorough break down?

What do you want a breakdown of? I'm familiar with every canon game in the series except Ground Zeroes.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Basically a summary of the series as a whole with maybe the inclusion of dev interviews.

[BitVyper]

Basically a summary of the series as a whole

MGS1: Metal Gear?
MGS2: Snake? Snake! SNAAAAAAAAAKE!
MGS3: You've created a time paradox!
MGS4: Metal Gear!

[Jagos]

I just don't understand why "a grim look at war" requires the inclusion of brazenly misogynistic story elements.

Really, dude? "Misogynistic" story elements? Which do you have a problem with here? The fact that someone died in a game or how they died? I seriously want to get to the bottom of this way of thinking and why people seem to get into panic mode when there's some 18+ stuff in a game. Maybe it's my D&D upbringing, but we dealt with stuff like this in a game meant for teenagers and even then it just seems like a misreading of how a story works.

You can have a grim, depressing, "War Sucks" story thematically with a female character who's a living, breathing person and not just a sexualized, disempowered victim or a conventionally attractive, woefully underdressed pinup doll. Kohima achieved just that in MGS3 with The Boss, and while she wasn't implemented perfectly, her whole storyline was basically "War Sucks, my life was ruined by war, but I'm not just here as some object for men to claim and kill and fight over."

And he achieved that with Quiet, Eva, and other women that have gone on to be very powerful. But Boss died beautifully and that story was one of tragedy for Snake, was it not? He had to kill his mentor. He's seen the tragedy of war and he has to live on with the memory of what he did in the Fog of War. Not every story involving a female is going to end like this. So what is it? Do you want every story to end with a beautiful death for the female characters or is there something else you don't want to deal with here?

You can tell a story about war being awful -- you can even have a story where the undue consequences of war against women are gracefully explored. You can't do that in the same game where your protagonist has an inappropriate date with an underage girl.

... This wasn't a date... Why are you bringing that up?

You can't do that in the same game where one of your female characters is deliberately wearing hardly any clothing and heavily advertised to an audience of predominantly teenage boys.

You're making an assumption here that women won't play the game... And why are you acting as if you're going to change Kojima's mind here? That's just odd...

You can't do that and simultaneously try to court the men in your audience who are attracted to your game precisely because it depicts women in sexually degrading ways. You can't try a serious, grim commentary on rape and abuse in the same series that also frequently shows **the protagonist** ogling his female costars, staring at their breasts, and viewing them as sexual conquests.

Who's courting men here? These are fans of the previous installments, a built in fanbase of which you're a part of. How are you just neglecting one gender to say that men are the only ones hurt here when obviously there may be a few women to have a say on this? This isn't an appeal to men at all. It's a grim story, I'll give you that much, but what are you talking about?

There's just basically a disconnect there that makes MGS the wrong kind of series to include rape in a storyline, because it fetishizes so much else about women and the story's so comedic and over-the-top ridiculous that the audience basically dives in anticipating more juvenile humor.

Snake, I haven't played MGS since 1 because I haven't had the consoles. There were indeed humerous moments in the game but it always told some brutal stories about some characters messed up in a number of ways. That's just like saying King Lear was "funny" because of one of the scenes in Act 1 while ignoring the rest of the game. Maybe it's the nostalgia talking but are you sure that MGS didn't show signs of some darker and grittier content as Bells has stated?

If MGS always had a more consistently serious tone, like Spec Ops did, maybe it'd all feel less jarring. As is, Kojima's most respectful move would be to avoid the subject entirely, and insofar as he might actually desire a feminist commentary, the best he can do given his series' history is to write more women with agency who aren't sex objects like The Boss.

So all of the women he's written before with tragic backstories just don't count? Why should he write more women in authoritative positions while ignoring the soldier types that have made the world and died on the battlefield on both sides of the conflict? You're doing a disservice to the series by trying to pigeonhole a person's creativity because it unsettles you.

MGS is a crazy ass ludicrous narrative with bee-superpowers and mind-readers and nuclear equipped mechs and NANOMACHINES and clones. It is a fantasy series that takes a lot of fantastical liberties and it's a great place to show empowered women, not so much to explore why they're disempowered and victimized in reality.

So here's the Billion $$$ question... Why can't that be explored? And why should every lady in the MGS-verse be just like The Boss instead of characters exploring different themes, different story arcs, and having different endings to their stories both tragic or not?

[Ryong]

... This wasn't a date... Why are you bringing that up?

You can go on a date with Paz in Peace Walker and she'll be in her underwear.

I think she also poses for camera shots?

...But then again, she's also not underage, she's aware that she looks younger than she is and uses that as part of her fake identity.

Never played a whole lot of Peace Walker, though, but I know that's a thing.

---------- Post added at 10:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:15 PM ----------

Maybe it's the nostalgia talking but are you sure that MGS didn't show signs of some darker and grittier content as Bells has stated?

MGS1 tends to set a serious tone, most of the time.

MGS2 has a lot of meta crap and is rather silly or over-the-top several times, is otherwise serious.

MGS3 focuses on war being terrible for soldiers.

MGS4 is a clusterfuck of everything.

Peace Walker is about trying to make war less terrible for soldiers.

Rising, with its comedic over-the-top everything has a guy kidnapping children, removing their brains and then training them to use in robotic assassins.


MGS is a crazy ass ludicrous narrative with bee-superpowers and mind-readers and nuclear equipped mechs and NANOMACHINES and clones. It is a fantasy series that takes a lot of fantastical liberties and it's a great place to show empowered women, not so much to explore why they're disempowered and victimized in reality.

The Boss is literally the best soldier in existence who sees a bigger potential on an apprentice of hers and then participates in a crazy plan, with a great deal of self-sacrifice, which will set in motion a drive and a way for her apprentice to make her wishes come true, even if she doesn't live to see it happen. It ultimately fails, I guess, but hey.

On that note, I'd like to, eventually, discuss why women portrayed in roles where they endure things are regarded as weaker than if they were independent. Take Final Fantasy 10's Yuna as an example, who faces the self-sacrifice for the greater good with a smile, is alright with being marked as an enemy of the only religion there is in the world, which is also part of the government and is regarded as being in a weak supporting role and then in the sequel she's independent, eye-candy and definitely not as smart, but she's making her own choices so she's strong!

EVA switches between being a femme fatale, a scatterbrained beauty and a capable soldier, because she's a damn good double-agent.

Para-Medic is also a ridiculously powerful woman, being the main force behind the Les Enfants Terribles project.

Paz is

I can't argue about others because I honestly know the most about the events leading up to MGS1 and 2 than anything else.

[Bells]

Between Naomi, Meryl, Boss, Para Medic, Eva and Paz... while the man are out punching each other in the nuts in an eternal loop of non-ending dick-punchery they are... pretty much... setting the wheels of the world in motion with their actions... and sacrifice in some cases.

Surely you have your B cast of the Beauties, Sniper Wolf and Mistral...

[Solid Snake]

...But then again, she's also not underage, she's aware that she looks younger than she is and uses that as part of her fake identity.

Like with Nowi from Fire Emblem, claiming that a character is in fact "older than she looks" as a justification to include sexual content with a character who legitimately appears underage is creepy as hell.

...But yes, presumably Paz is actually approximately 24 years old when Peace Walker happens. She's just pretending to be younger. I just don't think that counts for anything, because instead of doing all that convoluted bullshit Kojima could've just concocted a character who actually looked her age.

Anyway, I'm working on a long-ass "Women of Metal Gear" synopsis but that's going to take me a while longer, I'm still only about halfway into MGS2.

[BitVyper]

Like with Nowi from Fire Emblem, claiming that a character is in fact "older than she looks" as a justification to include sexual content with a character who legitimately appears underage is creepy as hell.

Much as I find loli icky and creepy and all that, you have to be a little bit careful with this logic or you start getting into the opposite problem like what happened with obscenity laws in Australia and small boobs (although it was actually a LITTLE more complex than that). Much as I find the whole thing gross and don't even really like talking about it, I have to kind of make myself remember that they aren't real people and be okay with it at least as long as the narrative isn't going on about how hot it is that she looks like a child. Because that happens, and at that point fuck you, I'm gonna talk about how gross it is. But for a character just looking like a child, yeah it's lolicon bait and there's no point pretending it isn't, but going against it too hard is attacking people who are mostly harmless, and shaming anyone who happens to have that body type, because once again we're making everything about a female character come down to whether or not her body type is acceptable.

The main thing is, I don't think lolicon is contributing to any kind of systemic child abuse issue the way that beauty/beast bosses contribute to a culture of chauvanism. If anything, having it as an outlet probably takes some business away from actual child pornography.

[Bells]

you see... if in Peace walker Paz looked super young but her real age, or her looking young, was only mentioned in like... a guide book released after the game... or something like that... or even the game's manual... then i would call bullshit on that. Because she is a character in fiction and it's not ''Paz look 16 within the plot'' it's ''her creator wrote her looking 16, but he explained somewhere else that she is not''. That's different.

But they actually made a point of connecting her age and look as a lore point in the plot... i mean, you can find that of poor taste or dumb design, those are absolutely fair statements to make... it's pretty much flavor text for the game world really, so it doesn't really need to be there or like that... it's just the creative vision of the designer of the game as table dressing... but i wouldn't go as far as calling it deliberately creepy y'know?


As far as the beauty and beast thing goes... the background story was that Kojima initially wanted them to be just flat out naked. And they are pretty much poster childs for shellshock as the plot explains them... in fact, their mental instability is part of their design as backdrop as to why they were turned to ''beasts''... that does not mean the whole white room thing isn't creepy though.



You see... i'm absolutely sure we will be back here to talk about Quiet once Phantom Pain releases... considering what Kojima did with Paz and how he is putting this story down, i wouldn't be surprised at all about it...

[greed]

you see... if in Peace walker Paz looked super young but her real age, or her looking young, was only mentioned in like... a guide book released after the game... or something like that... or even the game's manual... then i would call bullshit on that. Because she is a character in fiction and it's not ''Paz look 16 within the plot'' it's ''her creator wrote her looking 16, but he explained somewhere else that she is not''. That's different.

But they actually made a point of connecting her age and look as a lore point in the plot... i mean, you can find that of poor taste or dumb design, those are absolutely fair statements to make... it's pretty much flavor text for the game world really, so it doesn't really need to be there or like that... it's just the creative vision of the designer of the game as table dressing... but i wouldn't go as far as calling it deliberately creepy y'know?


As far as the beauty and beast thing goes... the background story was that Kojima initially wanted them to be just flat out naked. And they are pretty much poster childs for shellshock as the plot explains them... in fact, their mental instability is part of their design as backdrop as to why they were turned to ''beasts''... that does not mean the whole white room thing isn't creepy though.



You see... i'm absolutely sure we will be back here to talk about Quiet once Phantom Pain releases... considering what Kojima did with Paz and how he is putting this story down, i wouldn't be surprised at all about it...

Making them all women was kinda off putting and terrible though. Also no MGS has never been a serious or gritty anything. It's has always been a goofy, dumb over the top spy action thing, with fantastic realist elements mixed in for flavour. The crap in MGSV is like if someone jammed I dunno audio of McClane's wife being raped by terrorists in Die Hard 2 or something. It's not just tasteless and abhorrent, it does not fit the series at all.

Also Bells I've seen video I know what's in the game.

Look if you can ignore it and enjoy the game then that's great. But it's not in anyway a good thing and the game would be better without it, and it says terrible things about Kojima as a person.

[Solid Snake]

Regarding Paz: Having just typed "Paz Metal Gear Official Art" into a Google image search, I promptly wanted to stab my eyes out with a rusty kitchen knife.

But, like, Bit: I am willing to accept that sometimes accusations of lolicon can go a little too far. I have absolutely, throughout the course of my life, met women who were 18 or older and who appeared, at first glance, to be 15 or younger. In no way would I ever advocate that all women must appear a certain way in order to pass some censorship test, that would defeat the entire purpose of creating a safe space in fiction for feminists to write female characters that were free of patriarchal societal constraints.

But Paz? Paz from Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker?
She is not that kind of example.
(And as an aside, even if she did look her asserted 'real age' of 24, I still would feel rather uncomfortable with what Snake's capable of doing with her during their creepy-as-fuck voyeuristic 'date.')

[Ryong]

Like with Nowi from Fire Emblem, claiming that a character is in fact "older than she looks" as a justification to include sexual content with a character who legitimately appears underage is creepy as hell.

It is.

But that's not exactly the deal with Paz. Nowi behaves like a child but since she's actually thousands of years old she can totally date and marry.

Paz pretends to be a idealistic, harmless, innocent 16 year old exactly because she's a spy who needs to be the least threatening possible...And she plays upon the notion that all men are perverts, I suppose.

Unfortunately, I don't know if she ever does show her true self, so yeah.

I guess I should add: I in no way support the portrayal of the Beauties and how most official art of Paz involves her wearing nothing but her underwear. That's just unnecessary sexualization.

Making them all women was kinda off putting and terrible though. Also no MGS has never been a serious or gritty anything. It's has always been a goofy, dumb over the top spy action thing, with fantastic realist elements mixed in for flavour. The crap in MGSV is like if someone jammed I dunno audio of McClane's wife being raped by terrorists in Die Hard 2 or something. It's not just tasteless and abhorrent, it does not fit the series at all.

In MGS3, aside from Snake's obsession with killing and eating every animal he finds, everything is handled pretty seriously. Yeah, sure, some people have magic powers, but that's just the way it is.