"Free Will and Defiance" Follow-Up #1: The Twin Snakes

For those of you out of the loop, Twin Snakes is unpopular within the Metal Gear fandom to a fairly significant degree, a view I reflected at least twice in "Free Will and Defiance." A Facebook friend of mine recently asked what my beef was with it, and my responses included the usual complaints, but also some low-level talk of how The Twin Snakes messes with how I personally interpreted Metal Gear Solid. Here is the meat of that, transcribed below. I'm only posting this because I don't ever want to have to answer the same questions about Twin Snakes. It's not a bad game, it's just not Metal Gear Solid. Not really.

• Today
• 4:08am

  
  
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  4:15am
  

  Austin Chandler Howe
  

  
  

  Oh sorry, just saw this

  Tbh I oversell how much I dislike it

  But what it boils down to is this
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  4:17am
  

  Austin Chandler Howe
  

  
  

  The cutscenes are just insane, frankly, which I honestly don't mind as much considering I think MGS4 is one of the best games I've ever played, but I would say that a remake more faithful to the original material would've been better. Game remakes ought to be concerned with modernizing to preserving an experience, not necessarily changing it to BE more modern.
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  4:17am
  

  Austin Chandler Howe
  

  
  

  That's not really a huge problem though
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  4:18am
  

  Austin Chandler Howe
  

  
  

  The other common complaint is that being able to shoot in first-person view seriously degrades the difficulty of the original game, which wasn't all that hard to begin with, but my personal issue with it is that the ways that the gameplay changes fuck with my interpretation of the game.
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  4:19am
  

  Austin Chandler Howe
  

  
  

  I compare MGS1 and MGS2 as being practically the same thing done in different ways when you look at what they achieve artistically, but when you start putting MGS2's gameplay rules on to MGS1 you screw with a lot of the stuff that I think makes MGS1 cohesive on a ludonarrative level. For example, you CAN kill all the guards without escaping.
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  4:20am
  

  Austin Chandler Howe
  

  
  

  There's also the fact that the game may have the same engine and such as MGS2, but the resulting changes in the animation of the models does not make them look nearly as expressive or emotive as those in MGS2

  Alaska may be cold, but those faces are not made of stone, feel me.
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  4:22am
  

  Austin Chandler Howe
  

  
  

  Also, going back to the camera that again screws with how I interpret the mechanics of the camera as related to the themes. MGS2 used first-person camera but eventually went about removing it by giving Raiden the sword, as Howell writes. You could argue something similar for Snake's end fight with Liquid, but that's a lot less buildup, and you go write back to aiming first-person in the escape sequence for the most part.
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  4:24am
  

  Austin Chandler Howe
  

  
  

  Two last minor things
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  4:26am
  

  Austin Chandler Howe
  

  
  

  I'd argue that the the pristine look of MGS2's engine, which served well to the clean-cut, modern look of MGS2, is mismatched to the original games more gritty, much less colorful aesthetic. The idea that this place is cold and bleak is sold a lot better in the PS1 version even if the character models look significantly worse.
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  4:26am
  

  Austin Chandler Howe
  

  
  

  And honestly, my biggest real complaint . . . I hate the Gamecube controller. I absolutely despise that thing.