Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots theme by Xazzi
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| Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots | |
|---|---|
 North American cover art | |
| Developer(s) | Konami Digital Entertainment |
| Publisher(s) | Konami |
| Director(s) | Hideo Kojima |
| Producer(s) |
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| Designer(s) | Hideo Kojima |
| Programmer(s) | Yuji Korekado |
| Artist(s) | Yoji Shinkawa |
| Writer(s) |
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| Composer(s) |
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| Series | Metal Gear |
| Platform(s) | PlayStation 3 |
| Release | June 12, 2008 |
| Genre(s) | Action-adventure, stealth |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots[a] is a 2008 action-adventure stealth video game developed and published by Konami for the PlayStation 3. It is the sixth Metal Gear game directed by Hideo Kojima. Set five years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty,[b] the story centers around a prematurely aged Solid Snake, now known as Old Snake, as he goes on one last mission to assassinate his nemesis Liquid Snake, who now inhabits the body of his former henchman Revolver Ocelot under the guise of Liquid Ocelot, before he takes control of the Sons of the Patriots, an A.I. system that controls the activities of PMCs worldwide.[1] The game was released on June 12, 2008.[2][3]
Guns of the Patriots received universal acclaim, with praise for its gameplay, graphics, characters, and emotional weight, while criticism centered on its plot as convoluted and its emphasis on cutscenes. The game garnered Game of the Year awards from several major gaming publications. It is one of the most significant titles for the seventh generation of video game consoles, as its release caused a boost in sales of the PlayStation 3, and had sold six million copies worldwide by 2014.
Gameplay[edit]
In Guns of the Patriots, players assume the role of an aged Solid Snake (colloquially referred to as Old Snake), using stealth, close-quarters combat, and traditional Metal Gear combat. The overhead third-person view camera of earlier games has been replaced by a streamlined view and over-the-shoulder camera for aiming a weapon, with an optional first-person view like a first-person shooter at the toggle of a button.
A further addition to gameplay mechanics is the Psyche Meter. Psyche is decreased by non-lethal attacks and is influenced by battlefield psychology. Stressors (including temperature extremes, foul smells, and being hunted by the enemy) increase Snake's stress gauge, eventually depleting his Psyche. Adverse effects include difficulty in aiming, more frequent back pain and the possibility of Snake passing out upon receiving damage. If Snake kills too many enemies in a short amount of time, he will have a vision of Liquid and vomit, greatly reducing his Psyche. Among the available methods of restoring Psyche are eating, drinking, smoking, and reading an adult magazine.[4]
Snake has a few gadgets to aid him in battle. The OctoCamo suit mimics the appearance and texture of any surface in a similar fashion to an octopus, decreasing the probability of Snake being noticed. Additionally, FaceCamo is made available to players after they defeat Laughing Octopus. FaceCamo can be worn by Solid Snake on his face and it can be set to either work in tandem with the Octocamo or instead mimic the face of other in-game characters. To get access to these unique FaceCamos, players have to complete certain in-game requirements first. When the FaceCamo is worn with OctoCamo, under ideal conditions, Snake's stealth quotient can reach 100%. The Solid Eye device highlights items and enemies and can operate in a night vision and a binocular mode. It also offers a baseline map, which indicates the location of nearby units.[5] The latter function is also performed by the Threat Ring, a visualization of Snake's senses that deforms based on nearby unit proximity and relays them to the player.
Metal Gear Mk.II (later replaced with Mk.III), is a small support robot that always tags along with Snake, offers codec functionality and a means to the in-game menu for a large part of Snake's mission. It can be remotely controlled to stun enemies, provide reconnaissance and interact with the environment.[6] Its design is based on the namesake robot from Snatcher, a game designed by Hideo Kojima. It is also controlled during the beginning of each separate "Act", although the player is not able to utilize its capabilities during this time.
Whenever the Drebin menu is available, weapons, attachments, and ammunition can be purchased via Drebin Points (DPs), awarded for on-site procurement of weapons already in the inventory and by initiating specific scripted events or destroying Unmanned Vehicles. The conversion rate between weapons and DPs depends on current battlefield conditions, with more-intense fighting yielding higher prices. Drebin would also purchase items from the player at a discounted price, especially at certain points in the story and certain days in real life. The game may also be finished without killing anyone, using non-lethal weapons.
The Virtual Range, similar to the Virtual Reality training of previous titles, functions as a test facility for weapon performance and gameplay controls.[4]
Synopsis[edit]
| Fictional chronology in Metal Gear |
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Setting[edit]
Guns of the Patriots is set within an alternate history timeline in which the Cold War continued into the 1990s before ending before the turn of the century. The events themselves take place in 2014, five years after Sons of Liberty,[7] and form the final chapter in the storyline covering the character of Solid Snake, providing conclusions to the events that led up to Guns of the Patriots.
The world's economy relies on continuous civil wars fought by private military companies (PMCs), which outnumber government military forces. Soldiers are equipped with nanomachines that monitor and enhance their performance on the battlefield, controlled by a vast network known as the Sons of the Patriots (SOP) system. Revolver Ocelot, missing since the events of Sons of Liberty, is possessed by the will of Liquid Snake and re-emerges from hiding to launch an insurrection against the Patriots, a secret cabal that manipulates global affairs from the shadows.
In the meantime, Solid Snake is experiencing accelerated aging and has about a year left to live. He is living on board the airplane Nomad with Dr. Hal Emmerich, nicknamed Otacon, and Olga Gurlukovich's daughter, Sunny, a child prodigy in computer programming. Since the aftermath of the Big Shell incident, Raiden has drifted away from Rose, who had apparently suffered a miscarriage with their child and gone to live with Snake's former commander, Colonel Roy Campbell, and has become a cyborg ninja fighting against the Patriots. Meryl Silverburgh commands a PMC inspection unit in the U.S. military, which includes Johnny Sasaki.
Plot[edit]
After learning that he has only a year to live due to Werner syndrome-like symptoms, Snake is tasked by Campbell, now working with the United Nations Security Council, to assassinate Liquid Ocelot. In a Middle-Eastern war zone occupied by one of Liquid's PMCs, Snake meets Drebin, an arms dealer who injects Snake with nanomachines to use the latest weaponry, and Meryl. Snake reaches Liquid, but the latter transmits a signal that incapacitates those nearby with nanomachines. Snake sees Dr. Naomi Hunter, who departs with Liquid.
In South America, Snake locates Naomi, herself a captive of Liquid. She explains that Liquid plans to use the biometrics of Big Boss to access and take command of the Patriots' firearms control system. Snake learns his accelerated aging is due to intentional genetic mutations as a human clone, and that the FOXDIE virus inside him will also mutate within months, spreading to the general populace and causing a deadly pandemic. Liquid's PMC soldiers kidnap Naomi, but Snake rescues her, assisted by Drebin and Raiden, and they escape, though Raiden is injured by Vamp.
Snake locates an Eastern-European resistance group, which happens to possess the comatose body of Big Boss, in order to heal Raiden. Its leader EVA reveals she was the surrogate mother to Snake and Liquid through the cloning process. They move Big Boss' body by boat while Liquid's PMC soldiers attack decoys. Liquid captures the body and obtains the biometrics, intending to infiltrate the Patriots' system by using the repaired artificial intelligence (AI) core, GW, as a trojan. U.S. soldiers arrive to arrest Liquid, but he kills them after disabling their firearms. Big Boss' body is incinerated, and Snake saves EVA from the fire when she tries to save the body, but both are badly injured in the process. Naomi leaves with Liquid, but Otacon tracks them. EVA dies from her injuries.
Snake and Otacon learn that Liquid aims to destroy the Patriots' master AI with a nuclear strike, allowing GW to take control. A non-ID-tagged warhead is required from Metal Gear REX at Shadow Moses in Alaska. There, Snake is ambushed by Vamp, accompanied by Naomi; but Vamp is killed when his self-healing nanomachines are disabled via injection. Naomi reveals she has terminal cancer; and, overcome with guilt for her mistakes, she disables the nanomachines keeping her alive and dies. Snake and Raiden use REX to escape and fend off Liquid piloting a Metal Gear RAY. Liquid reveals Outer Haven, a modified Arsenal Gear. Raiden saves Snake from being crushed before the USS Missouri, captained by Mei Ling, arrives and forces Haven to retreat.
Snake, Meryl, and Johnny board Haven when it surfaces in order to launch the nuke. At the core, Snake installs a computer virus coded by Naomi and Sunny into Liquid's trojan, which destroys both the core AI as well as the entire Patriot network controlling global affairs, leaving the necessities for civilization to survive. Atop Haven, Liquid explains to Snake that he allowed the virus' installation in order to destroy the Patriots. The two fight, with Snake victorious and Liquid becoming Ocelot again before dying. Meryl reconciles with her father, Campbell, and marries Johnny. Raiden reunites with Rose after learning their child was not miscarried and that her marriage to Campbell was a ruse to protect them from the Patriots. Snake visits the grave of The Boss at Arlington National Cemetery. Snake, feeling that he has no further purpose and must prevent an epidemic from his FOXDIE, attempts suicide, but hesitates at the last moment.
Snake is then met by Big Boss with a vegetative Zero, with Big Boss explaining that the body burned in Europe was Solidus Snake. He then reveals that the Patriots were founded by himself, Zero, EVA, Ocelot, Sigint, and Para-Medic to realize the will of the Boss, Big Boss' mentor. Differing interpretations split the group into two factions: Zero's, which stood for government control of society to prevent conflict, and Big Boss', where soldiers fought for personal beliefs, unrestrained by governments. Zero consigned control to AI networks, the Patriots. After Big Boss' downfall in Zanzibar, the Patriots placed him in an induced coma, and later initiated the war economy, a vision far from the Boss' will. Ocelot and EVA planned to restore Big Boss by destroying the Patriots, with the possession of Ocelot through Liquid being a ruse to draw the Patriots' attention. Big Boss then kills Zero by cutting off his life support.
He informs Snake that the nanomachines from Drebin contained FOXDIE, engineered by the Patriots to kill EVA, Ocelot, and Big Boss. With the new strain supplanting the mutated strain, Snake poses no risk of becoming a biological weapon unless he lives long enough for it to mutate. After understanding his mentor's will and telling Snake to find a new reason to keep living, Big Boss dies beside the Boss' grave. Snake decides to live the time he has left peacefully with Otacon and Sunny.
Development[edit]
Metal Gear Solid 4 started development due to fan demand. Series creator Hideo Kojima had previously directed the prequel Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which was meant to end the series. People's demand to have a sequel to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and clear the mysteries Kojima wanted to leave to the players' interpretations resulted in the making of Metal Gear Solid 4.[8] Kojima announced that he would be retiring as director of the Metal Gear series after Snake Eater, and would leave his position open to another person for Metal Gear Solid 4. As a joke, the new director was announced as Alan Smithee; in R, a 400-page book bundled with Metal Gear Solid 3's Japanese Premium Package, the director was revealed to be Shuyo Murata, co-writer of Snake Eater and director of Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner. He also contributed easter eggs to Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear: Ghost Babel. It was announced that Kojima would be co-directing the game with Murata after substantial negative fan reaction, including death threats.[9]
Kojima wished to implement a new style of gameplay which was set in a full-scale war zone. Kojima wanted to also retain the stealth elements from previous entries in the series, which made the team abandon the original "No Place to Hide" concept. The only announced war zone before release was the Middle East. Using several locations emphasized Kojima's original intention to present the world in full-scale armed conflict. Solid Snake was physically aged to portray to the player the games' overarching theme, SENSE, and to assign them to a character whose task was to pass moral values to future generations.[8] Kojima's initial ending for the Guns of the Patriots would entail Snake and Otacon turning themselves in for breaking the law, and subsequently convicted and executed. This was avoided after negative feedback from the development team. Snake's experience across the series made the creation of new enemies challenging and encouraged staff to create groups of non-human enemies to rival Snake.[10]
During development, the game's exclusivity was continuously questioned, even after Kojima officially confirmed the exclusivity several times. The exclusivity of the game was still in doubt from non-PlayStation 3 owners for a long period after the initial release,[11][12] with the company confirming that the 25th Anniversary edition of the game released in late 2012 was still a PlayStation 3 exclusive.[13] Upon the release of Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection, Kojima had once again firmly denied chances of the game's release on any other console, stating that an "Xbox 360 version [will not be] released, because an Xbox 360 version of MGS4 hasn't gone on sale" and that "the amount of data in MGS4 is just too enormous".[14]
The game was publicly announced first at E3 2005, by means of a humorous and slightly abstract gag machinima using characters from Snake Eater, under the slogan of "No Place to Hide". The title was described as "essentially finished" by January 2008 and went through extensive beta testing.[15] At Destination PlayStation on February 26, 2008, Sony announced that the game would be released worldwide on June 12, 2008, along with the special Guns of the Patriots-themed PlayStation 3 bundle.[16] It was announced that Guns of the Patriots is the first PlayStation 3 game that uses a 50GB dual layer Blu-ray Disc,[17] even with the use of file compression.
The budget for the game has been estimated to be between US$ 50-70 million.[18][19] Kenichiro Imaizumi from Kojima Productions denied this stating if it had cost this much, the game would have been for multiple platforms.[20] One of the main objectives of the budget was research of environments the game would feature.[21]
Music[edit]
The score to Metal Gear Solid 4 was led by Harry Gregson-Williams, his third Metal Gear Solid soundtrack,[22] and Nobuko Toda, who provided music for Metal Gear Acid and Metal Gear Acid 2.[23] Other contributors are Konami employees Shuichi Kobori, Kazuma Jinnouchi, Akihiro Honda, and Sota Fujimori.[24] Directed by Norihiko Hibino, GEM Impact employees Yoshitaka Suzuki and Takahiro Izutani also made compositions late in the game's production.[25] It was revealed in an interview with Norihiko Hibino that the team, in fact, wrote 90 minutes of music for the game's cutscenes, only 15 minutes of which made its way onto the official soundtrack.[26]
There are two vocal themes for the game. The opening theme, "Love Theme", is sung by Jackie Presti and composed by Nobuko Toda. The ending theme, "Here's to You", is sung by Lisbeth Scott. Before the release of the game, "MGS4 – Theme of Love – Smash Bros. Brawl Version" was provided for Super Smash Bros. Brawl in the Shadow Moses Island level.[27] The "Metal Gear Solid Main Theme", composed by Tappi "Tappy" Iwase, was notably omitted from the soundtrack, and the soundtrack of Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. In an interview with Electronic Gaming Monthly, Norihiko Hibino stated that the company had difficulties with "Russian composers who said we stole their music", referring to an occasion when a group of Russian games journalists presented Hideo Kojima with a composition by Georgy Sviridov and claimed this had been plagiarised to create the theme. Hibino states that "they didn't actually" but the company was "too sensitive about the situation" and elected to drop the theme.[28]
The official soundtrack was released on May 28, 2008, by Konami Digital Entertainment under the catalog number GFCA-98/9.[29] It consists of two discs of music and 47 tracks. A soundtrack album was also packaged with Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Limited Edition.[30]
Trophy support[edit]
In August 2009, when asked if there would be a patch to add PlayStation Network Trophies to the game, Kojima Productions' Sean Eyestone asked people to "stay patient". This led to speculation that an updated version of the game in the vein of Substance or Subsistence would be released alongside a Trophy patch.[31] In November 2010, an updated Greatest Hits box art of the game was released, which in the top right-hand corner boasted the addition of Trophies to the game. This was later reported as a typo, and removed from later printings.[32] False reports of an "incoming Trophy Patch" often appeared, usually on internet forums and on April Fools' Day, some even going to the extent of a mock-up Trophy listing.[33] In July 2012, a patch was announced that would include Trophies for the game, which would later be released on August 6, 2012.[34] In addition to the support for Trophies, the patch also allowed a full install of the game onto the hard drive to remove the installs between acts.
Marketing[edit]
At a press conference on May 13, 2008, Hideo Kojima announced a marketing campaign and agreements with several companies to promote the game. Apple computers and monitors feature in the game and an Apple iPod is an in-game item that Snake can use to change the background music, listen to in-game podcasts and collect hidden songs scattered throughout the game. ReGain Energy Drinks are used in the game as a Psyche gauge booster, and mobile phones from Sony Ericsson are used, specifically by Naomi and Vamp.[35] In addition, the motorcycles featured in the game are a Triumph Bonneville and Speed Triple. Konami and Ubisoft put an unlockable costume in the game for Snake, Altaïr from the Ubisoft stealth game Assassin's Creed. Initially revealed on April Fool's Day 2008, Kojima later announced that it would actually be in the game, unlockable by doing "something special". To obtain the attire, the player must acquire the Assassin Emblema nod to the game's title—or input a password in the Extras section).[36]
Konami had originally planned to organize grand launch events in Tokyo, but some of them were canceled with the "safety of participants in mind" in light of the Akihabara massacre on June 8, 2008.[37][38] On June 15, 2009, a year after its release, Konami re-released Guns of the Patriots as a part of Sony Greatest Hits collection.[39]
Release[edit]
Metal Gear Solid 4 includes the Starter Pack for Metal Gear Online 2 (MGO2). MGO2 features up to 16 player online tactical battles and incorporates several gameplay elements from Metal Gear Solid 4, including the SOP system that allows players to have a visual confirmation of their teammates' position and battle status.[40] MGO also allows fully customizable characters. The Starter Pack allows players to engage in sneaking missions, where Old Snake and Metal Gear Mk.II acquire dog tags from other human contestants, along with standard Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and several special modes.[41] Expansions packs, offering more maps and playable special characters (Mei Ling, Meryl, Akiba, Liquid Ocelot, Raiden, and Vamp), can be purchased via the MGO menu item "MGO Shop (PlayStation Network)", or via MGO or Konami's shop. The PlayStation Wallet is used for the first option and a credit card for the latter two.[42] Metal Gear Online 2 was completely shut down on June 13, 2012.
On June 19, 2008, Konami released the Metal Gear Solid 4 Database onto the PlayStation Store in North America and Japan,[43] and one week later on the European store. The Database is a downloadable application for PlayStation 3 that catalogs every piece of Metal Gear lore from all the canonical entries in the series released up to Metal Gear Solid 4 in the form of an encyclopedia (browsable by alphabet and category), a timeline, and character relationship diagrams. Highlighted words in each article link to related articles, and it keeps track of which ones the use