Caltrops - Gamerasutra - Re: What I didn't get

Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra

by Damocles 05/10/2003, 1:06am PDT

FABIO wrote:

So, the sabotouge of a hundred or so billion dollar, underwater, mobile facility that could control any information database in the world while being protected by dozens of bi-ped, amphibious nuclear battle tanks (that were supposed to make all other models obsolete, despite being considerably weaker than Rex) was intentional all so they could set up a prototype training program that may or may not produce soldiers on the same level as Snake (despite the fact that Snake had had over a decade of experience)? So everytime the want to crank out another Snake all they have to do is call up Ocelot, hire someone to put on a ninja suit and get killed, set up a multi-billion dollar facility to be destroyed, and arrange for yet another paranormal special op team of made up of hermaphroditic werewolves, telekinetic John Edwards's, and Unbreakable Bruce Willis's to go rogue in order to create a situation where the trainee has a 99.99999% of being killed during the excercise, thereby making the entire effort a giant waste?

Nope. The point was to record all this stuff, so Ocelot could turn it into the best VR training regimen evar. They only needed to build/blow up this stuff once. Remember, the point wasn't the actual event, but the experiences and information that derive from it. That's what Hideo was trying to show... that it's just information. Once Ocelot had the data (the disk of which Ocelot was waving around when Liquid took him over), he'd just need to clone up some more Snakes, train 'em using the data, and bingo! Super soldiers.

The digital thingies, on the other hand, wanted more than just Snakes... they wanted to be able to make any kind of person. Damned if I can remember the full rationale (I was boggling my way through all that shit, just like everybody else) but it was something about information being control or them not trusting weak humanity or information society or some bullshit like that.

(In other words, they're digital copies of Wired writers from the mid-90's.)

Fucking Kideo. If I had been hired full time to intentionally try to fuck up that game's story as much as possible, I still couldn't have done half the job he did.

The aggravating part is that I still think he could have done it properly. I'll agree he screwed it up, but it's even worse for being theoretically possible.

P.P.S. Vamp was the stupidest god damn thing ever.

The fight was interesting, though, if only for the "water you can't float in" bit. What really pissed me off was the Emma death. It was too predictable and too cursory...it felt (like too damned many games of this stripe) that the only reason she died was because they just wanted to have something to angst over. The character herself was somewhat unnecessary (Otacon could have served the purpose quite well himself), but the death just gave me the same "keerist, find a new plot twist" reaction as 99.9% of the anime/game deaths I see nowadays.

(I'm more impressed when characters don't die.)