QualidadEsincron
65 reviews liked by QualidadEsincron
Baroque
1998
English patch here https://mega.nz/file/0NUFnCAR#Cc35QA1s3tNwaED0Lz6VBI_5w6zZlJh45uBPbxb6xno
I'm tired and didn't expect to finish this tonight so I'm going to stay terse. naughty dog is obsessed with filmic avenues for games as art. game design is entirely secondary and liberally cribbed from contemporaries. consider literally any jak game (standard collectathon for first game, same engine grafted to eyebrow-raising drab GTA world for second game) or uncharted (bog-standard cover shooter + ico-lite platforming + half-hearted turn towards horror in the back quarter). naughty dog only believes in conglomerates of design. interwoven webs of market-proven mechanics where the connective tissue is the graphical fidelity and storytelling.
this is not what I like in games. I like games that create internal logics that interact with each other in novel ways. this doesn't have to be complex. arcade-style games form tiny cores of necessary mechanics and grow their universes from exploring the facets of each element in further and further detail. surprisingly, the last of us is naughty dog's attempt at making such a game. it is meant to be a rich tapestry of survival, horror, grounded shooter, et cetera. its individual elements are evidently meant to pulsate and reprise in waves across the experience. approaches to encounters are meant to run the gamut of stealth, guns blazing, trap-oriented, and any combination of these you can conceive.
naughty dog is not a studio that has the design chops to make such a game though. instead, the end product is The third-person shooter. the third-person shooter monolith if you will. a pastiche of nearly a decade of design patterns evolving shoved into a single casserole. when in tightly constrained areas, cover is conspicuously placed for you to camp behind while you clear the room. other areas feature hidden routes to quietly crouch-walk through under the auspicious of "tense" play. others feature onslaughts of infected waves meant to be gunned down. these are discrete and easy to recognize. what makes it interconnected is that the options are bare enough to make transitioning styles required. getting caught during stealth just makes the game a cover shooter. running away from clickers far enough transitions back into stealth. remaining in cover long enough will eventually force the enemies to push and let you react aggressively. no one system ever has enough juice to invigorate the experience on its own. walking up behind someone to shiv them rarely changes outcomes over just shooting them with an arrow or walking past. shotguns sometimes barely stagger opponents so what pleasure do I attain from experimenting with the weapon when a point-blank headshot doesn't even cause them to explode into gibs. I could just use any of the multiple other weapons that have the same effect.
all you're doing at the end of the day is eliminating individual enemies with one of the options off of the a la carte weapons menu. no need to manipulate their search AI or clump them into groups or anything beyond just rotating weapons and picking off every enemy one by one. only thing that changes is if you're supposed to be playing gears-style cover tactics or far cry-style "clear the base by pressing the takedown button behind everyone" or resident evil-style horde extermination. which is potentially enough to satisfy anyone who wanted a third-person shooter buffet. none of the styles are really entertaining enough on their own to justify the whole. the universe the game design resides in is disjointed.
the rest is pushed forward by walking forward through pretty corridors pressing triangle whenever the game asks you to. none of the aforementioned mechanics lend themselves to puzzle-solving, so virtually every instance of one in the world is just moving a ladder or letting ellie float on a wood pallet. in keeping with the crash bandicoot crate methodology ie provide minute interaction between the actual tests of competancy, the game litters materials all throughout the world for you to mindlessly pick up. any semblence of creating fragments of life in these environments is shattered by this. joel and ellie's banter is mumbled as backdrop for me rumaging through lockers and piles of trash for extra bandages or ammo. representations of life pre-apocalypse decaying are bastardized as I sift through drawers looking for those telltale item symbols to pop up for me to view. this is not an insignificant portion of the game mind you. some of these segments of nothingness reach the 15-20 minute range. if they were so concerned with letting me appreciate the views, maybe they wouldn't have felt the need to breadcrumb trail me around, pointing my camera at the ground constantly in the process. which does not even begin to highlight the inauthenticity of every supposed residential area with conviently placed rubble or cars or such to create cover-based combat arenas.
with this said, its adaptability is its greatest strength as much as it is its downfall. the general workbench design and locked doors are lifted from dead space and rendered more enjoyable here thanks to a streamlined tech tree and relatively-common shivs being used as keys rather than expensive power nodes. the actual gunplay is medicore since it never matches one modality, but at the same time it is at least a better murder sim than uncharted and its sanitized pg-13 firefights. enemy AI is not exactly robust and is easy to exploit thanks to the overeemphasived distraction item mechanic (bricks and bottles are yet another endlessly available item to collect), but it is complex enough to surprise the player and force more reactive play.
there's a particular moment I really liked. in the basement of the hotel there's waterlogged storage rooms with an elevator to reach the main floors that is disabled. enabling this requires turning on a generator located on the opposite side of the area, which will attract many waves of infected along with a dangerous bloater enemy. there are many approaches to this section, including simply beelining to the exit with the keycard for the elevator, setting traps in places where the spawns become most congested, or simply fighting it out amongst the onslaught of opponents. this is identical to the style-switching I discussed earlier. however, this particular encounter is totally open-ended in a way where a particular approach isn't necessarily prescribed. in my first attempt I played cat and mouse with the bloater before I knew the keycard location because I had unwittingly turned the generator on upon seeing it. my second attempt I tried to fight back more proactively, and on my third attempt I laid down traps and planned an escape route beforehand. none of these were intended strategies to the extent that the developers felt pressed to include copious hints towards one style or another (blatant cover, passageways to crouch-walk through, etc.). the area is relatively large as well, and thus the actual tactical evaluation feels less limiting. if only more encounters in the game had attempted something higher-level like this instead of pulling from canned ideas.
all of this is in service of delivering the story. I would call it a children of men rip-off if I had ever actually watched that movie. I appreciate that joel is the anti-nathan drake. the deluge of quips is replaced by generic gruff guy behavior (not to mention ellie handles most quip duties when appropriate), but at the very least the game does a better job presenting him as a total psychopath and justifies the insane bodycount he racks up. the ending in particular I enjoyed; the "actually he did all this terrible shit because he's a terrible person!" throughline is not novel nor was it in 2013, but I rarely see a game attempt such a purposeful lack of closure. the rest is marginal. various character sketches dedicated in each chapter with predictably dour results for each. the repeated "people do terrible things under pressure" motif is wrung far too dry. makes each character's arc slight since the outcome is always known in advance. perhaps this is why I liked the ending: did not necessarily expect it given most games' predilection for riding off into a sunset.
the latter section is sort of damning because I actually played the majority of this game while dogsitting for my girlfriend months ago, and finally finished today to add another game to the halloween roster. I frankly don't remember much about the story other than the broad strokes. I at least remember more than a dozen or so particular enemy encounters, which is pretty great for a game that runs about 15 hours. what's less reassuring is how scattered my responses to said encounters were: I often remember routes I took but what guns or tactics I favored are completely absent from my memory.
a smorgasbord of opportunites for you to throw a brick somewhere and make everyone around you go "huh? what was that" and allow you to walk behind them. speaking of which: the clickers. the perfect synthesis of "scary enemy that actually is so trivial to circumvent that it's not scary" and "scary enemy that awkwardly OHKOs you and becomes more frustrating than scary". having your primary horror encounters be based around an enemy that cannot see you renders virtually every situation with them one that rewards just walking really slowly. that is when you don't have a brick, which you nearly always will because they're generously located near all clickers. finally building up the firepower to kill them more efficiently would be great if not for the OHKO, and so just walking around them still feels like the dominant strategy up through the final area. other than using the flamethrower that is, which I frankly underused outside of the final areas. also this review is more terse than my usual shit which thankfully meant I knocked it out in about an hour but still is way too long. oh well. better than my original draft from when I was more actively playing it that tried to wade into the lukewarm "games as art" discourse.
this is not what I like in games. I like games that create internal logics that interact with each other in novel ways. this doesn't have to be complex. arcade-style games form tiny cores of necessary mechanics and grow their universes from exploring the facets of each element in further and further detail. surprisingly, the last of us is naughty dog's attempt at making such a game. it is meant to be a rich tapestry of survival, horror, grounded shooter, et cetera. its individual elements are evidently meant to pulsate and reprise in waves across the experience. approaches to encounters are meant to run the gamut of stealth, guns blazing, trap-oriented, and any combination of these you can conceive.
naughty dog is not a studio that has the design chops to make such a game though. instead, the end product is The third-person shooter. the third-person shooter monolith if you will. a pastiche of nearly a decade of design patterns evolving shoved into a single casserole. when in tightly constrained areas, cover is conspicuously placed for you to camp behind while you clear the room. other areas feature hidden routes to quietly crouch-walk through under the auspicious of "tense" play. others feature onslaughts of infected waves meant to be gunned down. these are discrete and easy to recognize. what makes it interconnected is that the options are bare enough to make transitioning styles required. getting caught during stealth just makes the game a cover shooter. running away from clickers far enough transitions back into stealth. remaining in cover long enough will eventually force the enemies to push and let you react aggressively. no one system ever has enough juice to invigorate the experience on its own. walking up behind someone to shiv them rarely changes outcomes over just shooting them with an arrow or walking past. shotguns sometimes barely stagger opponents so what pleasure do I attain from experimenting with the weapon when a point-blank headshot doesn't even cause them to explode into gibs. I could just use any of the multiple other weapons that have the same effect.
all you're doing at the end of the day is eliminating individual enemies with one of the options off of the a la carte weapons menu. no need to manipulate their search AI or clump them into groups or anything beyond just rotating weapons and picking off every enemy one by one. only thing that changes is if you're supposed to be playing gears-style cover tactics or far cry-style "clear the base by pressing the takedown button behind everyone" or resident evil-style horde extermination. which is potentially enough to satisfy anyone who wanted a third-person shooter buffet. none of the styles are really entertaining enough on their own to justify the whole. the universe the game design resides in is disjointed.
the rest is pushed forward by walking forward through pretty corridors pressing triangle whenever the game asks you to. none of the aforementioned mechanics lend themselves to puzzle-solving, so virtually every instance of one in the world is just moving a ladder or letting ellie float on a wood pallet. in keeping with the crash bandicoot crate methodology ie provide minute interaction between the actual tests of competancy, the game litters materials all throughout the world for you to mindlessly pick up. any semblence of creating fragments of life in these environments is shattered by this. joel and ellie's banter is mumbled as backdrop for me rumaging through lockers and piles of trash for extra bandages or ammo. representations of life pre-apocalypse decaying are bastardized as I sift through drawers looking for those telltale item symbols to pop up for me to view. this is not an insignificant portion of the game mind you. some of these segments of nothingness reach the 15-20 minute range. if they were so concerned with letting me appreciate the views, maybe they wouldn't have felt the need to breadcrumb trail me around, pointing my camera at the ground constantly in the process. which does not even begin to highlight the inauthenticity of every supposed residential area with conviently placed rubble or cars or such to create cover-based combat arenas.
with this said, its adaptability is its greatest strength as much as it is its downfall. the general workbench design and locked doors are lifted from dead space and rendered more enjoyable here thanks to a streamlined tech tree and relatively-common shivs being used as keys rather than expensive power nodes. the actual gunplay is medicore since it never matches one modality, but at the same time it is at least a better murder sim than uncharted and its sanitized pg-13 firefights. enemy AI is not exactly robust and is easy to exploit thanks to the overeemphasived distraction item mechanic (bricks and bottles are yet another endlessly available item to collect), but it is complex enough to surprise the player and force more reactive play.
there's a particular moment I really liked. in the basement of the hotel there's waterlogged storage rooms with an elevator to reach the main floors that is disabled. enabling this requires turning on a generator located on the opposite side of the area, which will attract many waves of infected along with a dangerous bloater enemy. there are many approaches to this section, including simply beelining to the exit with the keycard for the elevator, setting traps in places where the spawns become most congested, or simply fighting it out amongst the onslaught of opponents. this is identical to the style-switching I discussed earlier. however, this particular encounter is totally open-ended in a way where a particular approach isn't necessarily prescribed. in my first attempt I played cat and mouse with the bloater before I knew the keycard location because I had unwittingly turned the generator on upon seeing it. my second attempt I tried to fight back more proactively, and on my third attempt I laid down traps and planned an escape route beforehand. none of these were intended strategies to the extent that the developers felt pressed to include copious hints towards one style or another (blatant cover, passageways to crouch-walk through, etc.). the area is relatively large as well, and thus the actual tactical evaluation feels less limiting. if only more encounters in the game had attempted something higher-level like this instead of pulling from canned ideas.
all of this is in service of delivering the story. I would call it a children of men rip-off if I had ever actually watched that movie. I appreciate that joel is the anti-nathan drake. the deluge of quips is replaced by generic gruff guy behavior (not to mention ellie handles most quip duties when appropriate), but at the very least the game does a better job presenting him as a total psychopath and justifies the insane bodycount he racks up. the ending in particular I enjoyed; the "actually he did all this terrible shit because he's a terrible person!" throughline is not novel nor was it in 2013, but I rarely see a game attempt such a purposeful lack of closure. the rest is marginal. various character sketches dedicated in each chapter with predictably dour results for each. the repeated "people do terrible things under pressure" motif is wrung far too dry. makes each character's arc slight since the outcome is always known in advance. perhaps this is why I liked the ending: did not necessarily expect it given most games' predilection for riding off into a sunset.
the latter section is sort of damning because I actually played the majority of this game while dogsitting for my girlfriend months ago, and finally finished today to add another game to the halloween roster. I frankly don't remember much about the story other than the broad strokes. I at least remember more than a dozen or so particular enemy encounters, which is pretty great for a game that runs about 15 hours. what's less reassuring is how scattered my responses to said encounters were: I often remember routes I took but what guns or tactics I favored are completely absent from my memory.
a smorgasbord of opportunites for you to throw a brick somewhere and make everyone around you go "huh? what was that" and allow you to walk behind them. speaking of which: the clickers. the perfect synthesis of "scary enemy that actually is so trivial to circumvent that it's not scary" and "scary enemy that awkwardly OHKOs you and becomes more frustrating than scary". having your primary horror encounters be based around an enemy that cannot see you renders virtually every situation with them one that rewards just walking really slowly. that is when you don't have a brick, which you nearly always will because they're generously located near all clickers. finally building up the firepower to kill them more efficiently would be great if not for the OHKO, and so just walking around them still feels like the dominant strategy up through the final area. other than using the flamethrower that is, which I frankly underused outside of the final areas. also this review is more terse than my usual shit which thankfully meant I knocked it out in about an hour but still is way too long. oh well. better than my original draft from when I was more actively playing it that tried to wade into the lukewarm "games as art" discourse.
Special-Operations FOX-HOUND 🔫🔁🔫🔃🔀🔁🔫🔁🔃🔀🔫↪️🔫🔁🔀🔃🔫↪️🔁🔫🔃🔃🔀🔄 Revolver 🔫↪️🔄🔁🔫🔃🔀🔫↪️🔀🔀🔄🔀 Ocelot 🔫🔃🔄🔁↪️🔃🔫🔁↪️↪️🔫🔁🔁↪️ I've been waiting for you, Solid Snake 🔫🔃🔃🔃🔫🔁↪️🔃🔄🔫🔀🔁↪️🔃🔃 Now we'll see if the man can live up to the legend 🔫🔀🔁🔀
Warning. Long text. This is not a review. Many quotations.
Have you read the warning? Then let's begin.
To be honest, I wasn't going to write a review of this game. There are 3 main reasons.
The first is that I don't think I fully understood MGS2.
I can't say that I understood this difficult game myself, nor that I got the whole picture of MGS2 by thinking for myself. Besides, I thought I only needed to listen to Snake's solution/sermon at the end of MGS2. MGS2 is a fun game, even if it is difficult to understand. It's got a lot of gameplay finesse, cool visuals, and a lot of playful mind. I had no complaints at the time about being able to enjoy an evolution of the classic MGS. I didn't think for a minute that Snake had to be the protagonist. I liked the character Raiden. (I liked him even more in the later MGS4. I haven't played the Rising games, sorry.)
Story in games is certainly an important element.
The story of MGS is interesting, humorous and above all, always surprising. (I like to be surprised, not only in games.) But the great thing about Hideo Kojima, I felt, was that even if you put the story aside, the exploration, ingenuity and fun of the gameplay shone through. That's why, although I was baffled by the story of MGS2, especially at the end of the game, I thought that "the difficulty of the story is just a trivial matter" and that "it's a fun game and, above all, Snake gives the answers, so that's all that matters". At that time, I was not interested in the opinions of others on the internet, so that's all I could think about. As I write this, my opinion has not changed.
Secondly, My total love for the MGS series, including MGS2, is less than you Hideo Kojima(MGS) freaks in international.
I mentioned at the beginning that I was reluctant to write my opinion about MGS2. I'm reluctant to write or talk about this popular series. This is because, from my point of view, there seems to be more passion abroad than there is in Japan. I was even more convinced after the whole disturbance with MGS5. (Not just me, but all the MGS/Hideo Kojima fans in Japan were very surprised by the frankly angry attitude of you international fans towards Konami.)
I've played a lot of Hideo Kojima's work. I've played MGS2 to the point where I've completed dog tags on every difficulty level. But still, if you ask me if I like the MGS series as much as you, the international fans who write the reviews on this site, I can't say yes.
And finally, third reason, which is both the motivation and the purpose of this essay-like writing. In the past, there were enthusiastic Hideo Kojima fans in Japan.
A fervent Hideo Kojima fundamentalist, whom Hideo Kojima himself describes as "my alter ego, my disciple and my teacher". Yes, there were absolute Hideo Kojima freaks in Japan.
Itoh Keikaku/ItohProject.(Real name Itoh Satoshi/伊藤聡)
...At last I can get to the point.
He was a hardcore geek/otaku. He loved foreign films, novels, and was the biggest Kojima Hideo fan in Japan, having studied and reviewed every single one of his works, starting with Snatcher. Half the purpose of this article is to give you a glimpse of the astonishing analysis of MGS2 left behind by the enthusiastic Hideo Kojima fundamentalist, Itoh Keikaku.
The other half is to play a role. ...To be honest, it's hard to write this group of sentences. It's hard work. It doesn't bring in any money. So why am I writing this text? No, this isn't a text. This is a 'bridge'. Or a zip line, a rope, a ladder.
My role here is to act as a bridge between you, the rabid Hideo Kojima fans overseas, and the greatest/strongest Hideo Kojima fan that ever existed in Japan, Itoh Keikaku.
”I don't need a bridge!”
Some of you may say. Then don't bother reading this text, just read the Japanese text at the link below for yourself. (If you have an English translation of any of below sentences, please post a link in the comments section, as they are undoubtedly better than my poor English translations).
Fully translated into English. Bolded text is the part of the main topic that relates to MGS2.
"What is controlled reality?” Itoh Keikaku
When the aircraft crashed into the WTC, I was in hospital watching the footage.
I had just joined the ranks of the crippled at the time. I have just lost my right sciatic nerve and the major muscles in my right thigh, and said goodbye forever to all control and sensation below the knee. Below the knee became a darkman. There were many other issues that needed to be considered. The malignancy that led to this situation in the first place (in short, cancer) had such troublesome issues as metastasize problems and whether ABC and various other forms of hepatitis were latent in the transfused blood. If I metastasize, I don't know if my life will be saved next(or rather, almost no hope.), and if I have hepatitis C, I'll almost certainly develop liver cancer. Furthermore, furthermoree, if I look up the five-year survival rate of the sarcoma that bothered me on the internet, I'll find something like 50-70%.
Frankly, this situation was depressing. I would have been happy if I didn't know, but as soon as I heard the name of the disease, I connected my laptop to the hospital payphone and accessed the internet. I love Cronenberg(lol), and being the kind of person who wants to die knowing exactly what is happening to him, there was no stopping me from wanting to know. See, The Fly, there are? The protagonist is a scientist, so I understand all the grotesque festivities that happen to my body, such as the peeling of the nails and the dissolution of the skin, and I accept that "hmmm, this is what this is all about" and accept my path to becoming a fly man. I mean, what am I talking about(lol).
Nevertheless, once I knew the name of the disease, fear now came to me. Are my parents and doctors telling me the truth in the first place? I was struck by paranoia, almost like a Philip K. Dick's novel. Yeah, this is a bit amazing. After all, it makes me think that everyone involved with me is lying. This is exactly how I feel about Tokyo Total Recall, Rei Fukai being captured by the Jam Human and forced to eat chicken broth. REALLY. The slightest care from a nurse or the casual kindness of a parent would scare the hell out of meeee(lol). See, David Fincher's 'The Game', that Michael Douglas situation.
So I am still living in fear of death. I am certainly a little closer to death than most. I've managed to get out of the Philip K Dick state(I mean, there's no way for me to know if I've been deceived.), but there are many days when 'death' comes at me furiously in the middle of the night and I have to cry under the duvet.
Because I don't want to die at all yet.
I've been in hospital for about 10 days every month for the last year, with anti-cancer drugs in my system. Unlike in the past, recent anti-cancer drugs are not so hard, but the nausea is still strong and hair falls out. What's a bit interesting is that even though I'm dosed each time with an anticancer drug with almost the same ingredients, the hairs that fall out are in different places each time, really. The first time I lost hair, beard, armpit hair, breast hair(lol) and pubic hair, but the second time I lost no hair or beard at all, but instead a lot of nose hair. But at first I was happy. I thought, "I don't have to take care of my hair", but it turned out that this condition is fiercely vulnerable to dust. I can hardly stay in my room, which is the Lidley Scott room(in short, a dusty room), where I can see streaks of light from the window. Ugggghhh.
I have always had asthma and a sultanol inhaler was a must-have. Now I am injected with anti-cancer drugs and fighting the possibility of cancer in my body(maybeeee?). If it had been the beginning of this century without these drugs, I would be dead. It is the drugs produced by science and technology that sustain my existence.
Bodies maintained by science and technology. Bodies that would disappear without science and technology. What this means, in essence, is that I am a cyborg. Not only machine bodies with superpowers are not cyborgs. If not the word 'cyborg', then 'cyborg-like body'. 'cyborg feminism'(wow, I miss it) style thing. Not like Mitsubishi Genentech's 'Sarariman', which has embedded micro-processing equipment (lol). I maintain my body through chemical technology. Incidentally, do you know that the hospital code for anti-cancer drugs is 'chemo'? Chemotherapy, chemical, so chemo. My existence has been predicated on the existence of science and technology from an early age. (On another note, I was apparently born by caesarean section. I was a child who could not have been born without technology.) I was a child who would have disappeared without technology. And I still am.
I am one of the 'children of technology'. I am one of those people who have already demonstrated by their bodies that my lived reality has always been cyberpunk. Of course everyone's life is defined and limited by technology, but I have demonstrated this in my body almost from birth.
The body that is me. Needless to say, I have cancer, and this is a reality that never moves. It is nature itself, because nature is unpredictable and uncontrollable.
For survival, however, I have to anticipate, control and converge with its nature. It is to exclude nature, to construct the world as one in which nature does not exist from the outset. It is an impulse and an ideology rooted in human survival. (Survival is not an instinct, as humans are creatures capable of wishing for death. It is a desire.) Humans have extended their individual viability by assembling models, simulating, predicting, describing and controlling.
MGS2 is about a kind of paranoia. It's a Newtonian delusional pipe dream that says that everything in the world can be reduced to numbers, and therefore everything can be simulated, everything can be observed, everything can be predicted, everything can be controlled. Laplace's demon. The idea that, with infinitely precise data, we can perfectly predict the trajectory of a billiard ball. The delusion that the world is computable. Of course, this is impossible, not to mention quantum mechanics and chaos theory. But MGS2 shows that it is possible, albeit only in a social model.
I've seen some people say that MGS2 itself was just a VR experience for Raiden. That is, "Is this real? Or is it a dream?" It's a philosophical discussion about the definition of reality. I don't need to quote Mamoru Oshii, but I feel that this kind of theme has been depicted so many times in various works that it has already become obsolete. And Raiden does indeed come close to addressing such issues when he says that the Colonel doesn't exist. Another "common story" about people's sense of reality being diminished by virtual reality is told in Raiden's small story about VR training.
"It doesn't matter if this is a dream or not, what you think is real is real." Unfortunately, MGS2 doesn't jump to any of those "often" conclusions. and, nor does it let virtual reality encroach on reality. MGS2 ignores the concluding recipe of the "virtual reality" story. If you've ever said, or thought, that the whole "reality vs. dream" theme is a cliché, good job. If you thought I was saying that "the theme of reality or dreams is clichéd", well, good job, because MGS2 has a unbelievable conclusion that makes that point nullification. And good job to whoever said or thought that the theme of self-discovery was clichéd. Because MGS2 ends with a conclusion that invalidates itself.
With S3, the patriots have been able to control human society from an individual level. It's not about controlling the brain, it's about what kind of events can be accumulated to lead people to do what they want them to do. They have acquired such methods. The story of MGS2 was to test the effectiveness of this method and to establish a version of the protocol that could be used. Everything in human society can be reduced to numbers, and therefore everything can be simulated, everything can be observed, everything can be predicted, everything can be controlled.
Where then is the difference between reality and virtual reality?
Virtual reality does not come to reality. The possibility that this reality may be a virtual reality and that there may be another reality does not matter. MGS2 does not make the question of "what is reality?" a matter of ego perception. It doesn't make it a philosophical question. Because if everything is predictable and controllable, then it is a virtual reality. That this reality is at the same time a virtual reality.
That this reality can be defined as a virtual reality. To violently redefine it as a virtual reality. Such acrobatics are the substance of the idea of the S3.
When Neo realised that this world was a virtual reality, he was led by Morpheus to escape to another "reality". When Moroboshi Ataru realised that this world was only a dream, he returned to the real Tomobiki High School (even though it was also only a dream). But for Raiden and his friends, there is no other world to escape. Because, the "reality" they live in has become a virtual reality, and there is no "another world" to escape to. It is not even allowed to be a dream, no matter how far it goes, like the skin of an onion (which is what Avalon is). This is the story of April 30th, MGS2, the day when this only reality became a virtual reality.
"What is the world when everything can be counted, predicted and controlled?"
After pushing this assumption, MGS2 comes to this conclusion.
It's a virtual reality.
The perception that people already living in a virtual reality. A vision in which reality itself is virtual. This is not the same as some kind of escapism: "This world could be a dream (virtual reality)". It is not the same as the phrase that has been used a thousand times: "There is no such thing as reality."
It's about the fact that even though this world is a virtual reality, it's still real, it's still a unique reality with nowhere to run, and it's still a virtual reality. It is this despair that tints MGS2 to no end.
Shadow Moses Island, the setting of MGS1, was a hollowed-out facility on an isolated island. There was snow, rocks, trees, natural caves and permafrost. MGS2, on the other hand, is a man-made landscape in every way. It place in New York City, and a huge man-made structure floating off the coast. There is nothing in this place that does not involve human hands. At most, there are seagulls flying in the sky. Raiden's fight takes place in a thoroughly artificial environment. Unlike MGS1, which was about genetic determinism (and freedom from it) and was set in a harsh natural environment, MGS2 deals with the determinism of man, by man himself. It was inevitable that the place could only be so thoroughly man-made. There is no longer any need for the word "fate" to demand a god. There is no need for a cosmic mystery or a law of cause and effect. A world in which man predicts and controls himself. There, everything needs to be a product of human thought. Because nature is an unthinkable and therefore inherently uncontrollable and unpredictable factor. To live in a world where everything around you has been created by human hands. That is to say, to live in human thought. Elements that are unpredictable and difficult for humans to control are completely eliminated. There is no need to bring up virtual reality. Because this world is already a virtual reality.
Look around us, how much of it is natural? Is the grass, potted plants, roadside trees and weeds in the car park planted by man 'natural’? Is the river that runs through your neighbourhood a natural river? It is out of the question that some irrigation canals have been built recently, but in fact they may have been used for agriculture in the Showa, Meiji and even Edo periods.
We live surrounded by man-made things. We live surrounded by the environment that we have created by our thoughts. We live surrounded by the results of our thoughts. Why are we all surprised that 5,000 people die in a major earthquake, but not surprised at the huge number of deaths in road accidents per year? It is because nature is a "calamity that has come to pass", an unpredictable factor, whereas road accidents are merely a "socially predictable and acceptable by-product". Earthquakes are natural disasters, but road accidents are the preserve of human thought. That is, we live inside what the human brain has created. The roads, the buildings, the houses, the food, everything is just an artificial product.
Nature is not an entity created by the human brain. Nature is an inherently unpredictable and uncontrollable realm. It is not a symbol. The city is dyed with human thought to every extent. It's no coincidence that MGS2 is set in New York, a city within city.
It's the kind of writing that makes you feel crazy. I felt dizzy right after I read it for the first time. Hideo Kojima himself, who made MGS2, is crazy, but I think it's also crazy for Itoh Keikaku to grasp it so accurately.
Report on the talk show celebrating the publication of "The Chronicles of Itoh Keikaku : Phase 2"
The content of MGS2 was controversial among fans, and Kojima recalls, "I was worried about what Itoh-san would think". Fortunately, Itoh-san had praised MGS2 on his blog, but his blog under fire because he had written that "only I(Itoh Keikaku) could understand this".
Kojima expressed his gratitude and admiration, saying "It's not easy to find fans who continue to fight even in such a situation. The only people who understand what I'm trying to do are Itoh-san and Yano-san. (aka Nojima Hitori)
Since writing the above commentary, he has written commentaries in the limited edition booklets of MGS3 and other titles, and reviews of films, but in 2005 his cancer returned. In the midst of his battle with the disease, he dedicated the rest of his time to creating. This was Genocidal Organ, MGS4's nobelize, Harmony and his last work, The Empire of Corpses.
In an essay written around the same time as Harmony was released in December 2008, he wrote
"Human Story” Itoh Keikaku
https://itoh-archive.hatenablog.com/entry/2015/11/13/170413
"People die. But death is not defeat."
That's what Hemingway once said. What Hemingway meant by winning and losing, I do not know, but I understand what he meant. A man can dwell in another as a story. We can live in someone else's body as a story. It can be told in many ways and become part of a fiction that shapes many other human beings.
It is not only genes that people pass on. People procreate because they seek a familiar other to whom they can tell their own stories. A man begets a child in search of a listener, a most attentive and faithful listener. Listening, of course, is a metaphor, and there are many ways in which a person can tell his story to his children. The "way of life" is a synonym for fiction, and there are as many fictions as there are ways in which parents show their children their lives.
And I, as a writer, tell my own fiction as I write it here. I don't know whether this story will be remembered by you or not. But I'm writing this text because I'm betting on that possibility.
This is me.
This is the fiction that I am.
I want to live in your body.
I want to be passed on to others by your mouth.
About six months after writing this essay, he passed away.
This is a bit of a departure from MGS2, but when I was playing Death Stranding, I often thought about Itoh Keikaku. 'I wonder how he would have critiqued Death Stranding if he had lived longer'. It didn't take long for me to think: "...He'll laugh and do Thumbs up."
When Hideo Kojima looks at the deceased, there's no doubt in his mind that in the forefront is Itoh Keikaku.
He doesn't exist in the world now. But he is here nonetheless.
G.K. Chesterton, the great mystery novelist, wrote in his essay "Democracy of the Dead"
The argument can be summed up in one short sentence: "It is not only those who live now who will determine the country."
It makes sense to me to apply this to games as well. Rather, it seems to me to be far more adaptable than political systems. It's not just the gamers of today who are playing games. Don't the dead enjoy playing games and talking to each other as much as we do? Perhaps some of the reviews on this site have been written by dead people. When I look at the reviews of the MGS series I hear a voice laughing. The voice of Itoh keikaku. Bonkura, silly jokes, and the laughter of otaku laughing themselves silly. When you read his main book, you're pulled in by the surface image and you get the impression that he's all seriousness, but in reality he's a just otaku. Cinephile who loves Monty Python, Fight Club and The Dark Knight. His novels are masterpieces, but it's his geeky, silly short stories and film reviews that I love. Many of the subplots, especially in the Genocidal Organ text, are really ridiculous. The content of the game is really full of bonkurasness: 'Revolver Ocelot makes a cameo appearance', 'Initial D cars appear', and 'last boss mumbles Tokimeki Memorial’s song'. And, "セカイ、蛮族、ぼく。/World, Barbarians and Boku" is the best, and I still laugh out loud every time I read it again. I think, maybe he have written a review on this site.
Oh, I'm not.
I have substance. And, There is no alcohol in this substance.
小島秀夫 @Kojima_Hideo 2011年3月22日
From "The Second Phase of Itoh Keikaku's Chronicle".
”I don't feel comfortable with the word 'blessed'. I don't think there is a nether world, and as an idiom it is too meaningless. I don't think I've ever used the word "blessed" when someone died in all the years I've been writing my diary.
That's what I wrote about in the novelization of Metal Gear. When someone dies, what words should we use to mourn and remember them? I've always used these words.
Thank you very much.”
Thank you, Itoh-san.
From me too, thank you, Itoh-san.
Have you read the warning? Then let's begin.
To be honest, I wasn't going to write a review of this game. There are 3 main reasons.
The first is that I don't think I fully understood MGS2.
I can't say that I understood this difficult game myself, nor that I got the whole picture of MGS2 by thinking for myself. Besides, I thought I only needed to listen to Snake's solution/sermon at the end of MGS2. MGS2 is a fun game, even if it is difficult to understand. It's got a lot of gameplay finesse, cool visuals, and a lot of playful mind. I had no complaints at the time about being able to enjoy an evolution of the classic MGS. I didn't think for a minute that Snake had to be the protagonist. I liked the character Raiden. (I liked him even more in the later MGS4. I haven't played the Rising games, sorry.)
Story in games is certainly an important element.
The story of MGS is interesting, humorous and above all, always surprising. (I like to be surprised, not only in games.) But the great thing about Hideo Kojima, I felt, was that even if you put the story aside, the exploration, ingenuity and fun of the gameplay shone through. That's why, although I was baffled by the story of MGS2, especially at the end of the game, I thought that "the difficulty of the story is just a trivial matter" and that "it's a fun game and, above all, Snake gives the answers, so that's all that matters". At that time, I was not interested in the opinions of others on the internet, so that's all I could think about. As I write this, my opinion has not changed.
Secondly, My total love for the MGS series, including MGS2, is less than you Hideo Kojima(MGS) freaks in international.
I mentioned at the beginning that I was reluctant to write my opinion about MGS2. I'm reluctant to write or talk about this popular series. This is because, from my point of view, there seems to be more passion abroad than there is in Japan. I was even more convinced after the whole disturbance with MGS5. (Not just me, but all the MGS/Hideo Kojima fans in Japan were very surprised by the frankly angry attitude of you international fans towards Konami.)
I've played a lot of Hideo Kojima's work. I've played MGS2 to the point where I've completed dog tags on every difficulty level. But still, if you ask me if I like the MGS series as much as you, the international fans who write the reviews on this site, I can't say yes.
And finally, third reason, which is both the motivation and the purpose of this essay-like writing. In the past, there were enthusiastic Hideo Kojima fans in Japan.
A fervent Hideo Kojima fundamentalist, whom Hideo Kojima himself describes as "my alter ego, my disciple and my teacher". Yes, there were absolute Hideo Kojima freaks in Japan.
Itoh Keikaku/ItohProject.(Real name Itoh Satoshi/伊藤聡)
...At last I can get to the point.
He was a hardcore geek/otaku. He loved foreign films, novels, and was the biggest Kojima Hideo fan in Japan, having studied and reviewed every single one of his works, starting with Snatcher. Half the purpose of this article is to give you a glimpse of the astonishing analysis of MGS2 left behind by the enthusiastic Hideo Kojima fundamentalist, Itoh Keikaku.
The other half is to play a role. ...To be honest, it's hard to write this group of sentences. It's hard work. It doesn't bring in any money. So why am I writing this text? No, this isn't a text. This is a 'bridge'. Or a zip line, a rope, a ladder.
My role here is to act as a bridge between you, the rabid Hideo Kojima fans overseas, and the greatest/strongest Hideo Kojima fan that ever existed in Japan, Itoh Keikaku.
”I don't need a bridge!”
Some of you may say. Then don't bother reading this text, just read the Japanese text at the link below for yourself. (If you have an English translation of any of below sentences, please post a link in the comments section, as they are undoubtedly better than my poor English translations).
Fully translated into English. Bolded text is the part of the main topic that relates to MGS2.
"What is controlled reality?” Itoh Keikaku
When the aircraft crashed into the WTC, I was in hospital watching the footage.
I had just joined the ranks of the crippled at the time. I have just lost my right sciatic nerve and the major muscles in my right thigh, and said goodbye forever to all control and sensation below the knee. Below the knee became a darkman. There were many other issues that needed to be considered. The malignancy that led to this situation in the first place (in short, cancer) had such troublesome issues as metastasize problems and whether ABC and various other forms of hepatitis were latent in the transfused blood. If I metastasize, I don't know if my life will be saved next(or rather, almost no hope.), and if I have hepatitis C, I'll almost certainly develop liver cancer. Furthermore, furthermoree, if I look up the five-year survival rate of the sarcoma that bothered me on the internet, I'll find something like 50-70%.
Frankly, this situation was depressing. I would have been happy if I didn't know, but as soon as I heard the name of the disease, I connected my laptop to the hospital payphone and accessed the internet. I love Cronenberg(lol), and being the kind of person who wants to die knowing exactly what is happening to him, there was no stopping me from wanting to know. See, The Fly, there are? The protagonist is a scientist, so I understand all the grotesque festivities that happen to my body, such as the peeling of the nails and the dissolution of the skin, and I accept that "hmmm, this is what this is all about" and accept my path to becoming a fly man. I mean, what am I talking about(lol).
Nevertheless, once I knew the name of the disease, fear now came to me. Are my parents and doctors telling me the truth in the first place? I was struck by paranoia, almost like a Philip K. Dick's novel. Yeah, this is a bit amazing. After all, it makes me think that everyone involved with me is lying. This is exactly how I feel about Tokyo Total Recall, Rei Fukai being captured by the Jam Human and forced to eat chicken broth. REALLY. The slightest care from a nurse or the casual kindness of a parent would scare the hell out of meeee(lol). See, David Fincher's 'The Game', that Michael Douglas situation.
So I am still living in fear of death. I am certainly a little closer to death than most. I've managed to get out of the Philip K Dick state(I mean, there's no way for me to know if I've been deceived.), but there are many days when 'death' comes at me furiously in the middle of the night and I have to cry under the duvet.
Because I don't want to die at all yet.
I've been in hospital for about 10 days every month for the last year, with anti-cancer drugs in my system. Unlike in the past, recent anti-cancer drugs are not so hard, but the nausea is still strong and hair falls out. What's a bit interesting is that even though I'm dosed each time with an anticancer drug with almost the same ingredients, the hairs that fall out are in different places each time, really. The first time I lost hair, beard, armpit hair, breast hair(lol) and pubic hair, but the second time I lost no hair or beard at all, but instead a lot of nose hair. But at first I was happy. I thought, "I don't have to take care of my hair", but it turned out that this condition is fiercely vulnerable to dust. I can hardly stay in my room, which is the Lidley Scott room(in short, a dusty room), where I can see streaks of light from the window. Ugggghhh.
I have always had asthma and a sultanol inhaler was a must-have. Now I am injected with anti-cancer drugs and fighting the possibility of cancer in my body(maybeeee?). If it had been the beginning of this century without these drugs, I would be dead. It is the drugs produced by science and technology that sustain my existence.
Bodies maintained by science and technology. Bodies that would disappear without science and technology. What this means, in essence, is that I am a cyborg. Not only machine bodies with superpowers are not cyborgs. If not the word 'cyborg', then 'cyborg-like body'. 'cyborg feminism'(wow, I miss it) style thing. Not like Mitsubishi Genentech's 'Sarariman', which has embedded micro-processing equipment (lol). I maintain my body through chemical technology. Incidentally, do you know that the hospital code for anti-cancer drugs is 'chemo'? Chemotherapy, chemical, so chemo. My existence has been predicated on the existence of science and technology from an early age. (On another note, I was apparently born by caesarean section. I was a child who could not have been born without technology.) I was a child who would have disappeared without technology. And I still am.
I am one of the 'children of technology'. I am one of those people who have already demonstrated by their bodies that my lived reality has always been cyberpunk. Of course everyone's life is defined and limited by technology, but I have demonstrated this in my body almost from birth.
The body that is me. Needless to say, I have cancer, and this is a reality that never moves. It is nature itself, because nature is unpredictable and uncontrollable.
For survival, however, I have to anticipate, control and converge with its nature. It is to exclude nature, to construct the world as one in which nature does not exist from the outset. It is an impulse and an ideology rooted in human survival. (Survival is not an instinct, as humans are creatures capable of wishing for death. It is a desire.) Humans have extended their individual viability by assembling models, simulating, predicting, describing and controlling.
MGS2 is about a kind of paranoia. It's a Newtonian delusional pipe dream that says that everything in the world can be reduced to numbers, and therefore everything can be simulated, everything can be observed, everything can be predicted, everything can be controlled. Laplace's demon. The idea that, with infinitely precise data, we can perfectly predict the trajectory of a billiard ball. The delusion that the world is computable. Of course, this is impossible, not to mention quantum mechanics and chaos theory. But MGS2 shows that it is possible, albeit only in a social model.
I've seen some people say that MGS2 itself was just a VR experience for Raiden. That is, "Is this real? Or is it a dream?" It's a philosophical discussion about the definition of reality. I don't need to quote Mamoru Oshii, but I feel that this kind of theme has been depicted so many times in various works that it has already become obsolete. And Raiden does indeed come close to addressing such issues when he says that the Colonel doesn't exist. Another "common story" about people's sense of reality being diminished by virtual reality is told in Raiden's small story about VR training.
"It doesn't matter if this is a dream or not, what you think is real is real." Unfortunately, MGS2 doesn't jump to any of those "often" conclusions. and, nor does it let virtual reality encroach on reality. MGS2 ignores the concluding recipe of the "virtual reality" story. If you've ever said, or thought, that the whole "reality vs. dream" theme is a cliché, good job. If you thought I was saying that "the theme of reality or dreams is clichéd", well, good job, because MGS2 has a unbelievable conclusion that makes that point nullification. And good job to whoever said or thought that the theme of self-discovery was clichéd. Because MGS2 ends with a conclusion that invalidates itself.
With S3, the patriots have been able to control human society from an individual level. It's not about controlling the brain, it's about what kind of events can be accumulated to lead people to do what they want them to do. They have acquired such methods. The story of MGS2 was to test the effectiveness of this method and to establish a version of the protocol that could be used. Everything in human society can be reduced to numbers, and therefore everything can be simulated, everything can be observed, everything can be predicted, everything can be controlled.
Where then is the difference between reality and virtual reality?
Virtual reality does not come to reality. The possibility that this reality may be a virtual reality and that there may be another reality does not matter. MGS2 does not make the question of "what is reality?" a matter of ego perception. It doesn't make it a philosophical question. Because if everything is predictable and controllable, then it is a virtual reality. That this reality is at the same time a virtual reality.
That this reality can be defined as a virtual reality. To violently redefine it as a virtual reality. Such acrobatics are the substance of the idea of the S3.
When Neo realised that this world was a virtual reality, he was led by Morpheus to escape to another "reality". When Moroboshi Ataru realised that this world was only a dream, he returned to the real Tomobiki High School (even though it was also only a dream). But for Raiden and his friends, there is no other world to escape. Because, the "reality" they live in has become a virtual reality, and there is no "another world" to escape to. It is not even allowed to be a dream, no matter how far it goes, like the skin of an onion (which is what Avalon is). This is the story of April 30th, MGS2, the day when this only reality became a virtual reality.
"What is the world when everything can be counted, predicted and controlled?"
After pushing this assumption, MGS2 comes to this conclusion.
It's a virtual reality.
The perception that people already living in a virtual reality. A vision in which reality itself is virtual. This is not the same as some kind of escapism: "This world could be a dream (virtual reality)". It is not the same as the phrase that has been used a thousand times: "There is no such thing as reality."
It's about the fact that even though this world is a virtual reality, it's still real, it's still a unique reality with nowhere to run, and it's still a virtual reality. It is this despair that tints MGS2 to no end.
Shadow Moses Island, the setting of MGS1, was a hollowed-out facility on an isolated island. There was snow, rocks, trees, natural caves and permafrost. MGS2, on the other hand, is a man-made landscape in every way. It place in New York City, and a huge man-made structure floating off the coast. There is nothing in this place that does not involve human hands. At most, there are seagulls flying in the sky. Raiden's fight takes place in a thoroughly artificial environment. Unlike MGS1, which was about genetic determinism (and freedom from it) and was set in a harsh natural environment, MGS2 deals with the determinism of man, by man himself. It was inevitable that the place could only be so thoroughly man-made. There is no longer any need for the word "fate" to demand a god. There is no need for a cosmic mystery or a law of cause and effect. A world in which man predicts and controls himself. There, everything needs to be a product of human thought. Because nature is an unthinkable and therefore inherently uncontrollable and unpredictable factor. To live in a world where everything around you has been created by human hands. That is to say, to live in human thought. Elements that are unpredictable and difficult for humans to control are completely eliminated. There is no need to bring up virtual reality. Because this world is already a virtual reality.
Look around us, how much of it is natural? Is the grass, potted plants, roadside trees and weeds in the car park planted by man 'natural’? Is the river that runs through your neighbourhood a natural river? It is out of the question that some irrigation canals have been built recently, but in fact they may have been used for agriculture in the Showa, Meiji and even Edo periods.
We live surrounded by man-made things. We live surrounded by the environment that we have created by our thoughts. We live surrounded by the results of our thoughts. Why are we all surprised that 5,000 people die in a major earthquake, but not surprised at the huge number of deaths in road accidents per year? It is because nature is a "calamity that has come to pass", an unpredictable factor, whereas road accidents are merely a "socially predictable and acceptable by-product". Earthquakes are natural disasters, but road accidents are the preserve of human thought. That is, we live inside what the human brain has created. The roads, the buildings, the houses, the food, everything is just an artificial product.
Nature is not an entity created by the human brain. Nature is an inherently unpredictable and uncontrollable realm. It is not a symbol. The city is dyed with human thought to every extent. It's no coincidence that MGS2 is set in New York, a city within city.
It's the kind of writing that makes you feel crazy. I felt dizzy right after I read it for the first time. Hideo Kojima himself, who made MGS2, is crazy, but I think it's also crazy for Itoh Keikaku to grasp it so accurately.
Report on the talk show celebrating the publication of "The Chronicles of Itoh Keikaku : Phase 2"
The content of MGS2 was controversial among fans, and Kojima recalls, "I was worried about what Itoh-san would think". Fortunately, Itoh-san had praised MGS2 on his blog, but his blog under fire because he had written that "only I(Itoh Keikaku) could understand this".
Kojima expressed his gratitude and admiration, saying "It's not easy to find fans who continue to fight even in such a situation. The only people who understand what I'm trying to do are Itoh-san and Yano-san. (aka Nojima Hitori)
Since writing the above commentary, he has written commentaries in the limited edition booklets of MGS3 and other titles, and reviews of films, but in 2005 his cancer returned. In the midst of his battle with the disease, he dedicated the rest of his time to creating. This was Genocidal Organ, MGS4's nobelize, Harmony and his last work, The Empire of Corpses.
In an essay written around the same time as Harmony was released in December 2008, he wrote
"Human Story” Itoh Keikaku
https://itoh-archive.hatenablog.com/entry/2015/11/13/170413
"People die. But death is not defeat."
That's what Hemingway once said. What Hemingway meant by winning and losing, I do not know, but I understand what he meant. A man can dwell in another as a story. We can live in someone else's body as a story. It can be told in many ways and become part of a fiction that shapes many other human beings.
It is not only genes that people pass on. People procreate because they seek a familiar other to whom they can tell their own stories. A man begets a child in search of a listener, a most attentive and faithful listener. Listening, of course, is a metaphor, and there are many ways in which a person can tell his story to his children. The "way of life" is a synonym for fiction, and there are as many fictions as there are ways in which parents show their children their lives.
And I, as a writer, tell my own fiction as I write it here. I don't know whether this story will be remembered by you or not. But I'm writing this text because I'm betting on that possibility.
This is me.
This is the fiction that I am.
I want to live in your body.
I want to be passed on to others by your mouth.
About six months after writing this essay, he passed away.
This is a bit of a departure from MGS2, but when I was playing Death Stranding, I often thought about Itoh Keikaku. 'I wonder how he would have critiqued Death Stranding if he had lived longer'. It didn't take long for me to think: "...He'll laugh and do Thumbs up."
When Hideo Kojima looks at the deceased, there's no doubt in his mind that in the forefront is Itoh Keikaku.
He doesn't exist in the world now. But he is here nonetheless.
G.K. Chesterton, the great mystery novelist, wrote in his essay "Democracy of the Dead"
The argument can be summed up in one short sentence: "It is not only those who live now who will determine the country."
It makes sense to me to apply this to games as well. Rather, it seems to me to be far more adaptable than political systems. It's not just the gamers of today who are playing games. Don't the dead enjoy playing games and talking to each other as much as we do? Perhaps some of the reviews on this site have been written by dead people. When I look at the reviews of the MGS series I hear a voice laughing. The voice of Itoh keikaku. Bonkura, silly jokes, and the laughter of otaku laughing themselves silly. When you read his main book, you're pulled in by the surface image and you get the impression that he's all seriousness, but in reality he's a just otaku. Cinephile who loves Monty Python, Fight Club and The Dark Knight. His novels are masterpieces, but it's his geeky, silly short stories and film reviews that I love. Many of the subplots, especially in the Genocidal Organ text, are really ridiculous. The content of the game is really full of bonkurasness: 'Revolver Ocelot makes a cameo appearance', 'Initial D cars appear', and 'last boss mumbles Tokimeki Memorial’s song'. And, "セカイ、蛮族、ぼく。/World, Barbarians and Boku" is the best, and I still laugh out loud every time I read it again. I think, maybe he have written a review on this site.
Oh, I'm not.
I have substance. And, There is no alcohol in this substance.
小島秀夫 @Kojima_Hideo 2011年3月22日
From "The Second Phase of Itoh Keikaku's Chronicle".
”I don't feel comfortable with the word 'blessed'. I don't think there is a nether world, and as an idiom it is too meaningless. I don't think I've ever used the word "blessed" when someone died in all the years I've been writing my diary.
That's what I wrote about in the novelization of Metal Gear. When someone dies, what words should we use to mourn and remember them? I've always used these words.
Thank you very much.”
Thank you, Itoh-san.
From me too, thank you, Itoh-san.
I’ve been told that a propensity for smalltalk is one of the little things that reveal someone as American, but even as an introvert who was never super good at it, I never found it as off-putting as some of my friends around the world do. Sure the words themselves are pointless, but I think it’s nice when people can spend a couple seconds establishing some tiny human connection. Of course, when you get into a situation where it drags on for minutes at a time, that’s when the unspoken social contract has been broken. The idea here was to invest a small amount of time to connect and lift the feeling of uncertainty from the air, but once that’s complete, the connection benefit is far outweighed by the social energy required to keep going. When you think about it, this principle of energy input vs. energy return can be generally applied to the effectiveness of a lot of things, and it’s part of the reason I’ve been writing shorter reviews than before. For every second I demand, I should hope to return an appropriate value, and that’s easier to do when maintaining a strong focus. With this in mind, after completing Nier Replicant, I’m sitting here wondering what the thought process was in making players repeat ~15 hours of content across 4 additional playthroughs before seeing the few short scenes which complete the narrative. It’s not that what’s here is terrible, but again, it’s like bad small talk. The story creates little connections and pulls at your heart, but the investment it demands is disproportionate to the return. It creates the same sort of annoyance that you could feel with someone who’s excessively chatty; you go from thinking it’s nice to meet someone so friendly, to wishing they would leave you alone for a while. As beautiful as the game is, and even with how most of it is executed well, that’s the unfortunate feeling that comes to mind as I look back on the experience. It’s nice, it’s fine, but I feel like it chose not to respect my time, making that lack of respect unfortunately go both ways.
When you think about it, the principle of energy input vs. energy return can be generally applied to a lot of things, and it’s part of the reason I’ve been writing shorter reviews. For every second I demand, I hope to return an appropriate value, and that’s easier to do when maintaining a strong focus. With this in mind, after completing Nier Replicant, I’m sitting here wondering what the thought process was in making players repeat ~15 hours of content and complete 5 playthroughs before seeing the few short scenes which complete the narrative. I had the exact same thought when I was finishing Automata, and although I was willing to give it some credit back then, I was surprised to see that the exact same gimmick was already used in the previous game. Just like with Automata, it’s not that what’s here is terrible, but again, it’s like bad small talk. The story is as dramatic as one would hope for, but the investment it demands is disproportionate to the return. It creates the same annoyance that you could feel with someone who’s excessively chatty: you go from thinking it’s nice to meet someone, to wishing they would leave you alone for a while. As beautiful as the game is and how well most of it has been executed, that’s the unfortunate feeling that fills my mind as I look back on the experience. It’s all fine, but I feel like it chose not to respect my time, which made the lack of respect go both ways.
When you think about it, the principle of optimizing energy input vs. energy return is a fundamental rule of nature, and it’s part of the reason I’ve been writing shorter reviews (other than general laziness, of course). Every second that you spend reading this should be worth your while, and that’s easier to do when staying focused. With this in mind, after finishing this game, I’m sitting here wondering why players had to complete 5 playthroughs before seeing the ending cutscenes. I had the same thought when finishing Automata years ago, but while I was willing to give it some credit back then, I was surprised to see that the same gimmick was used in the previous game. Just like with Automata, it’s not that what’s here is terrible, but again, it’s like bad small talk. The story is as dramatic as one would hope for, but the investment it demands is disproportionate to the return. It’s sorta like how I’ve intended to watch that new Batman movie for a while now, but the three-hour runtime creates such a mental block that I never decide to actually start watching it. It would probably be a fun enough little movie, but I know Batman will just be doing the things I expect him to do, so I don’t think I would get three hours worth of enrichment from it. As beautiful as Nier is and how well most of it has been executed, that’s the unfortunate feeling that fills my mind as I look back on the experience. It’s fun but widely uninriching, and I feel like it chose not to respect my time, which made the lack of respect go both ways.
When you think about it, the principle of optimizing energy input and return doesn’t just apply to media, it’s a rule of nature, and it’s part of the reason I’ve shortened my reviews. Every second that you spend reading them should be worth your while, and that’s an easier promise for me to keep when I stay focused. If I don’t, then even my audience might lose focus, making even the parts that they did engage with quickly fade from memory. With this in mind, after finishing this game, I’m sitting here wondering why players had to repeat so many hours of content in Nier before seeing a satisfying conclusion. I had the same thought when finishing Automata years ago, but while I was willing to give it some credit back then, I was surprised to see that the same gimmick had already been used in the previous game. It’s not that what’s here is terrible, but again, it’s like drawn-out small talk. The story is as dramatic as one would hope for, but the investment it demands is disproportionate to the return, especially when a plot that’s fairly obvious dips into indulgent melodrama. It’s not like the media you consume needs to be analyzed as such a clinical and unartistic transaction of course, wasting time has a lot of its own benefits, but a line needs to be drawn somewhere for the best use of your time. As beautiful as the game is and even with how most of it is executed well, that’s the unfortunate feeling I get when I look back on the experience. It’s fun, it’s fine, but I feel like it chose not to respect my time, which made the lack of respect go both ways.
When you think about it, the principle of optimizing energy input and return doesn’t just apply to media, it’s a fundamental rule of nature, and it’s part of the reason I’ve shortened my reviews. Every second that you spend reading them should be worth your while, and that’s an easier promise for me to keep when I stay focused. If I don’t, then even my audience might lose focus, making even the parts that they did engage with quickly fade from memory. With this in mind, after finishing this game, I’m sitting here wondering why players had to repeat so many hours of content in Nier before seeing a satisfying conclusion. I had the same thought when finishing Automata years ago, but while I was willing to give it some credit back then, I was surprised to see that the same gimmick was used in the previous game. Speaking of Automata, I was really split on whether I should do a standard review for this game like I did for Automata, or whether I should be a self-indulgent hack like I am right now. I decided on this format mostly because doing a repeat of “it’s a fine game, but its obvious plot, melodrama, and repetition bugged the hell out of me” would be a bit pointless. It’s not that writing another review like that would be terrible, but again, it’s like drawn-out small talk. The investment it would demand is disproportionate to the return. It’s not like the media you consume needs to be analyzed as such a clinical transaction of course (wasting time has its own benefits) but a line needs to be drawn for the best use of your time. As well as most of it may-or-may-not have been executed, that’s the unfortunate feeling that probably fills your mind as you look back on this experience. At the very least, *I* had fun, I think it’s fine, and maybe that’s how Nier’s creators felt, so in the end it goes both ways.
When you think about it, the principle of energy input vs. energy return can be generally applied to a lot of things, and it’s part of the reason I’ve been writing shorter reviews. For every second I demand, I hope to return an appropriate value, and that’s easier to do when maintaining a strong focus. With this in mind, after completing Nier Replicant, I’m sitting here wondering what the thought process was in making players repeat ~15 hours of content and complete 5 playthroughs before seeing the few short scenes which complete the narrative. I had the exact same thought when I was finishing Automata, and although I was willing to give it some credit back then, I was surprised to see that the exact same gimmick was already used in the previous game. Just like with Automata, it’s not that what’s here is terrible, but again, it’s like bad small talk. The story is as dramatic as one would hope for, but the investment it demands is disproportionate to the return. It creates the same annoyance that you could feel with someone who’s excessively chatty: you go from thinking it’s nice to meet someone, to wishing they would leave you alone for a while. As beautiful as the game is and how well most of it has been executed, that’s the unfortunate feeling that fills my mind as I look back on the experience. It’s all fine, but I feel like it chose not to respect my time, which made the lack of respect go both ways.
When you think about it, the principle of optimizing energy input vs. energy return is a fundamental rule of nature, and it’s part of the reason I’ve been writing shorter reviews (other than general laziness, of course). Every second that you spend reading this should be worth your while, and that’s easier to do when staying focused. With this in mind, after finishing this game, I’m sitting here wondering why players had to complete 5 playthroughs before seeing the ending cutscenes. I had the same thought when finishing Automata years ago, but while I was willing to give it some credit back then, I was surprised to see that the same gimmick was used in the previous game. Just like with Automata, it’s not that what’s here is terrible, but again, it’s like bad small talk. The story is as dramatic as one would hope for, but the investment it demands is disproportionate to the return. It’s sorta like how I’ve intended to watch that new Batman movie for a while now, but the three-hour runtime creates such a mental block that I never decide to actually start watching it. It would probably be a fun enough little movie, but I know Batman will just be doing the things I expect him to do, so I don’t think I would get three hours worth of enrichment from it. As beautiful as Nier is and how well most of it has been executed, that’s the unfortunate feeling that fills my mind as I look back on the experience. It’s fun but widely uninriching, and I feel like it chose not to respect my time, which made the lack of respect go both ways.
When you think about it, the principle of optimizing energy input and return doesn’t just apply to media, it’s a rule of nature, and it’s part of the reason I’ve shortened my reviews. Every second that you spend reading them should be worth your while, and that’s an easier promise for me to keep when I stay focused. If I don’t, then even my audience might lose focus, making even the parts that they did engage with quickly fade from memory. With this in mind, after finishing this game, I’m sitting here wondering why players had to repeat so many hours of content in Nier before seeing a satisfying conclusion. I had the same thought when finishing Automata years ago, but while I was willing to give it some credit back then, I was surprised to see that the same gimmick had already been used in the previous game. It’s not that what’s here is terrible, but again, it’s like drawn-out small talk. The story is as dramatic as one would hope for, but the investment it demands is disproportionate to the return, especially when a plot that’s fairly obvious dips into indulgent melodrama. It’s not like the media you consume needs to be analyzed as such a clinical and unartistic transaction of course, wasting time has a lot of its own benefits, but a line needs to be drawn somewhere for the best use of your time. As beautiful as the game is and even with how most of it is executed well, that’s the unfortunate feeling I get when I look back on the experience. It’s fun, it’s fine, but I feel like it chose not to respect my time, which made the lack of respect go both ways.
When you think about it, the principle of optimizing energy input and return doesn’t just apply to media, it’s a fundamental rule of nature, and it’s part of the reason I’ve shortened my reviews. Every second that you spend reading them should be worth your while, and that’s an easier promise for me to keep when I stay focused. If I don’t, then even my audience might lose focus, making even the parts that they did engage with quickly fade from memory. With this in mind, after finishing this game, I’m sitting here wondering why players had to repeat so many hours of content in Nier before seeing a satisfying conclusion. I had the same thought when finishing Automata years ago, but while I was willing to give it some credit back then, I was surprised to see that the same gimmick was used in the previous game. Speaking of Automata, I was really split on whether I should do a standard review for this game like I did for Automata, or whether I should be a self-indulgent hack like I am right now. I decided on this format mostly because doing a repeat of “it’s a fine game, but its obvious plot, melodrama, and repetition bugged the hell out of me” would be a bit pointless. It’s not that writing another review like that would be terrible, but again, it’s like drawn-out small talk. The investment it would demand is disproportionate to the return. It’s not like the media you consume needs to be analyzed as such a clinical transaction of course (wasting time has its own benefits) but a line needs to be drawn for the best use of your time. As well as most of it may-or-may-not have been executed, that’s the unfortunate feeling that probably fills your mind as you look back on this experience. At the very least, *I* had fun, I think it’s fine, and maybe that’s how Nier’s creators felt, so in the end it goes both ways.
EarthBound
1994
I dug up a review/piece I wrote about Earthbound in 2017 on my old blog. I'd like to post it here:
"What does Earthbound mean to you?
In Itoi’s interview regarding Earthbound’s U.S. re-release on the Wii U Virtual Console, he looks back on Earthbound and describes his views on it now as a playground he threw stuff in for himself and everyone else to play in, and that everyone takes something completely different away from these bits and bobs he's filled it with. A communal sort-of game, in which children make up stories and ideas as they go along and put it right in with the rest of the make-believe. When you have a group of friends in a playground, kids will often enter and leave as their parents drop them off and pick them up, and little by little the stories the group goes on changes as children come and go. Between zombies, aliens, the future, and whatever else kids either think about or wonder about their own world. And of course, the longer this goes on, eventually dark thoughts and feelings enter. Relationships form, and people realize things about themselves and each other.
A lot of the spirit of a shapeshifting make-believe can be found in the game’s stories themselves, as each town is going through some crazy problem, and as the heroes continue their adventure, each new scenario adds something completely separate to the mix of fictional situations, drawing from all sorts of American cultural iconography and imagery.
This is another reason the game is so interesting, it as an adventure through a self-parody of the American youth, the landscape of American suburban adventure (or as it is referred to in the game: “Eagleland”) with the coming-of-age spirit so prevalent in American fiction. But it is told through the mechanics, systems, and interface of classically Japanese role-playing games, namely Dragon Quest. The inclusion of (pseudo) first person battles (albeit influenced by psychedelic visuals, as they take over the background of each fight), a command menu, stat growth, and equipment/inventory all pulled from the Dragon Quest system. This combination of simultaneous parody of Japanese systems and American culture and iconography makes it a truly unique international cultural creation.
In addition to this, the localization of the game lends itself very much to the identity of Earthbound. Much of the Japanese humor that would have been lost in translation is rewritten, but still preserves the wit and verbal/deadpan tone of the original. The octopus statue blocking your way in a valley is replaced with a pencil, to allow for the invention of the iconic “Pencil Eraser” (Just don’t use it in a pencil store!), a now staple joke of the game, with which the identity of the American version of the game just wouldn’t be the same without. Of course, the “Eraser Eraser” continuation of the joke found later in the game acts as an even better secondary punchline to the same joke.
Much of the game often feels like a rambling collection of jokes, ideas, and views on the world. Nothing is quite told boringly or without clear authorial perspective. It brings to mind the sort of writing that books like Cat’s Cradle used, in which Vonnegut described as each chapter being a small chip of the whole book, and each chip is a little joke in and of its own.
The U.S. release, in specific, is the Earthbound I think of so fondly when I think of the game. And I find that name so fitting as opposed to its Japanese name.
Earthbound.
Despite all the adventuring, all the crazy, wacky, surreal stories you learn and experience, even with the threat and exposure to extraterrestrial life within the game, your characters, your experiences, everything you do is very much bound to the planet Earth. Every idea in the game, every character you meet, makes up one grand image of the world that the game, in essence, is presenting to you as you explore it with your d-pad.
The NPC’s of the game are some of the most iconic in any, and the reason for that is that their dialogue is written so unpredictably and humorously, but yet so truthful to their representations of their roles as humans. A businessman in Earthbound will not sound like a businessman you meet on the street. He will sound like a caricature of what a businessman would sound like, knowing that he’s a businessman in this world of hundreds of other people and hundreds of other types of people. And in knowing that, he has found joy and laughter understanding his place. Each character is a figment of themselves in the eyes of a child innocently wandering around.
There is a famous English saying, “it takes all sorts (to make a world)”, that is often used to understand strangeness or foreignness in the world and in people. People often use it when they find something difficult to understand, because of how strange and foreign it might be, so they make the claim that the world must be so big, that it must require all sorts of strangeness and foreignness and things of all sorts of manners hard to understand, for it to exist as big as it does.
Earthbound, to me at least, is like a literal, humorous depiction of that phrase. Every character, every strange, surreal person that appears so plain, has to be there to make up this world. This Earth that we are all bound to."
If you read it all, thank you
"What does Earthbound mean to you?
In Itoi’s interview regarding Earthbound’s U.S. re-release on the Wii U Virtual Console, he looks back on Earthbound and describes his views on it now as a playground he threw stuff in for himself and everyone else to play in, and that everyone takes something completely different away from these bits and bobs he's filled it with. A communal sort-of game, in which children make up stories and ideas as they go along and put it right in with the rest of the make-believe. When you have a group of friends in a playground, kids will often enter and leave as their parents drop them off and pick them up, and little by little the stories the group goes on changes as children come and go. Between zombies, aliens, the future, and whatever else kids either think about or wonder about their own world. And of course, the longer this goes on, eventually dark thoughts and feelings enter. Relationships form, and people realize things about themselves and each other.
A lot of the spirit of a shapeshifting make-believe can be found in the game’s stories themselves, as each town is going through some crazy problem, and as the heroes continue their adventure, each new scenario adds something completely separate to the mix of fictional situations, drawing from all sorts of American cultural iconography and imagery.
This is another reason the game is so interesting, it as an adventure through a self-parody of the American youth, the landscape of American suburban adventure (or as it is referred to in the game: “Eagleland”) with the coming-of-age spirit so prevalent in American fiction. But it is told through the mechanics, systems, and interface of classically Japanese role-playing games, namely Dragon Quest. The inclusion of (pseudo) first person battles (albeit influenced by psychedelic visuals, as they take over the background of each fight), a command menu, stat growth, and equipment/inventory all pulled from the Dragon Quest system. This combination of simultaneous parody of Japanese systems and American culture and iconography makes it a truly unique international cultural creation.
In addition to this, the localization of the game lends itself very much to the identity of Earthbound. Much of the Japanese humor that would have been lost in translation is rewritten, but still preserves the wit and verbal/deadpan tone of the original. The octopus statue blocking your way in a valley is replaced with a pencil, to allow for the invention of the iconic “Pencil Eraser” (Just don’t use it in a pencil store!), a now staple joke of the game, with which the identity of the American version of the game just wouldn’t be the same without. Of course, the “Eraser Eraser” continuation of the joke found later in the game acts as an even better secondary punchline to the same joke.
Much of the game often feels like a rambling collection of jokes, ideas, and views on the world. Nothing is quite told boringly or without clear authorial perspective. It brings to mind the sort of writing that books like Cat’s Cradle used, in which Vonnegut described as each chapter being a small chip of the whole book, and each chip is a little joke in and of its own.
The U.S. release, in specific, is the Earthbound I think of so fondly when I think of the game. And I find that name so fitting as opposed to its Japanese name.
Earthbound.
Despite all the adventuring, all the crazy, wacky, surreal stories you learn and experience, even with the threat and exposure to extraterrestrial life within the game, your characters, your experiences, everything you do is very much bound to the planet Earth. Every idea in the game, every character you meet, makes up one grand image of the world that the game, in essence, is presenting to you as you explore it with your d-pad.
The NPC’s of the game are some of the most iconic in any, and the reason for that is that their dialogue is written so unpredictably and humorously, but yet so truthful to their representations of their roles as humans. A businessman in Earthbound will not sound like a businessman you meet on the street. He will sound like a caricature of what a businessman would sound like, knowing that he’s a businessman in this world of hundreds of other people and hundreds of other types of people. And in knowing that, he has found joy and laughter understanding his place. Each character is a figment of themselves in the eyes of a child innocently wandering around.
There is a famous English saying, “it takes all sorts (to make a world)”, that is often used to understand strangeness or foreignness in the world and in people. People often use it when they find something difficult to understand, because of how strange and foreign it might be, so they make the claim that the world must be so big, that it must require all sorts of strangeness and foreignness and things of all sorts of manners hard to understand, for it to exist as big as it does.
Earthbound, to me at least, is like a literal, humorous depiction of that phrase. Every character, every strange, surreal person that appears so plain, has to be there to make up this world. This Earth that we are all bound to."
If you read it all, thank you
EarthBound
1994
EarthBound
1994
Note. There are many quotations. In addition, there are many proper nouns and anecdotes about Japanese culture. And this is just my theory. This is not a complete account of the Mother series, and you may not enjoy reading it. The most important thing I wanted to say was part of "2", so if you can't be bothered to read a long text, please skip it.
Well, OK desuka?
MOTHER/EARTHBOUND BEGINNINGS
Itoi Shigesato' main inspiration for creating MOTHER was Dragon Quest.
Programme broadcasted on NHK Educational TV
INTERVIEWER - What was your motivation for making games?
ITOI - It's Horii-san's fault.
Before the release of MOTHER1, In a conversation with Yuji Horii, he talks at long length about how impressed he was with DQ.
*July '87 Advertising Review - Special Feature: The Great Famicom Study
ITOI - I've just started the second round of DQ2.
HORII - You like it. (Laughs)
ITOI - I changed the prince's name to "wee-wee". It's funny. Like, "My wee-wee took a beating." (Laughs), Like, "But what is this, brave wee-wee? Defeat do ill become you!", hilarious.*
Shigesato Itoi speaks happily.
The look on his face and the words he said were hardly those of a man over 30. In the NES game boom of the time, many TV personalities only submitted their plans and threw away the production itself. (Takeshi Kitano and Samma Akashiya are typical.) In contrast, Itoi did his best to make MOTHER. The essence of Dragon Quest has been sublimated in Itoi's style, bringing to fruition the world and adventures he envisaged.
MOTHER2/EARTHBOUND
The world Itoi envisages
I think there are many good things about the MOTHER series. Among them, I think many people like Itoi's unique humorous texts and his "world view”. The following text explores what lies at the heart of him humour and worldview.
MOTHER has the same auxiliary line all the way from 1 to 3.
There is, of course, the main line, Shigesato Itoi. We will now talk about what drew the lines of the world that Shigesato Itoi envisaged. On the whole, the world of 1 and 2 has many optimistic and Pollyanna side. That's why the horror of Moonside in the middle of the game and the last boss, Giygas, stand out so much. 3 was the opposite of 1/2, with a story that emphasized the darker side. The story of what that auxiliary line is, is at the core of this review.
Let's be frank. I mean, it's 落語/Rakugo.
What is "Rakugo"?
There are many different interpretations, and as I am not as well educated as Itoi, I will rely on the definitions of the Rakugo professional. 立川談志/Tachikawa Danshi. A master Rakugo storyteller who has been called a heretic in the world of Rakugo.
Danshi's Rakugo philosophy is that "Rakugo is an affirmation of human karma”. In other words, "Rakugo is a form of storytelling that acknowledges human weakness and stupidity, and depicts this humanity.” And, "Rakugo is the affirmation of non-common against common sense.” Last, he goes so far as to say.
"Anything that doesn't smell of Vice I don't enjoy as an 芸/art form."
Specific examples
A boss who cautions his subordinates but falls asleep with a pen in his hand.
A father who scolds his children for wasting money, but gambles himself into oblivion.
Example sentences
My neighbors' wife had an accident and her face was injured!
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
Then, a good doctor restored her face to its original state!
Oh, so you're back to normal? Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
A case study of my own as I write this.
Me - "Mr. K, you always lie like you breathe!"
K-san - "Thanks to you I can't breathe!"
Me - "...I lost."
A scene from an online program. It's a low-key show with just two people: a scholar with a PhD in political science and the show's host. The scene is a commentary on the current news with the expert knowledge of the scholar.
Moderator - "O-san, You know a great deal about political science!
Dr.O with a bitter smile, paused for a moment and then said, "A little."
During the first bombing of London in 1940, part of a department store had been destroyed. The next morning a large sign was erected at the entrance, which read: 'Entrance extended from today'.
A foreign joke I learned recently that I thought was similar to Rakugo.
A word to Scotland, the only UK to lose at the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
'Brexit achieved.'
Lately I have been reading a little bit of Don Quixote, and I felt smell the Rakugo in it too. Putting them side by side, they seem to be no different from jokes from abroad. (laughs)
MOTHER3
In Japan, 3 is not so popular compared to 2.
There is also the fact that the SNES is a legendary piece of gaming hardware compared to the GBA. But in the end, the conclusion is that the Japanese do not like dark stories. I think it's natural that people prefer to watch light-hearted and funny programmes rather than serious political dramas.
And, from what Itoi has said in conversations, he did not intend to make 3 as universally popular as 1/2 when he planned it.
*
https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm5093966 (Probably the content of this video has not been translated into English.)
32:00~
ITOI - "It's like brother/eldest son who died in the war. I mean, there was a war. World War II, for example. He died on a kamikaze pilot. And eldest son's wife is a fan of MOTHER1/2. And MOTHER3 is eldest son's young brother. The mother of the eldest son, who was killed in the war, was living with his wife, and on one occasion said to her: ‘His brother is single too, why don't you marry him?'
Its young brother is MOTHER3. I mean, eldest son was really kind. He's manly, he's heartwarming, I can't say enough! Perfect!"
IJŪIN - "When people reminisce, they say, 'he was a good man!'"
ITOI - "If we had a お通夜(Otuya. Is that the English word for wake? Finnegans Wake) every day, we have a drink every day! In this context, the young brother says, 'Marry me'. That's what it means to bring MOTHER 3 into this world."
IJŪIN - "Why do you take the trouble to use such a confusing analogy?(laugh)"
*
MOTHER3, Shigesato Itoi, human beings, karma
Shigesato Itoi is Ninten/Ness/Lucas, Phone Papa/Flint, Giygas, Fassad and Porky.
He is never perfectly good. He was such a militant student activist that he was arrested by the police five times. And he is a man who had an affair and married his partner. (I writes things that would be very difficult to write in Japanese. Well, forgive me, Itoi-san, because it's public information that you can find on the internet.)
When talking about the Fassad, Itoi refers to Shinran's "Tannisho".
*
http://mother3.fobby.net/interview/m3int_10.html
Itoi Actually, I haven't really prepared any answers about Fassad. So if you really want to know the answer, I'd like you to read the Tannisho and think it over.
[omitted]
- And that's where the mouse who's attached to Fassad comes in.
Itoi That's right. So MOTHER 3 might not appeal as much to people who can't enjoy gray areas. They'd just want to demand that characters are either good guys or bad guys. (laughs)
*
Itoi himself can be interpreted in terms of Tannisho, and so can I as I write this. And what about you? Perfectly good? Perfectly evil?
It is human nature to oscillate between these two extremes, and it is also human nature to continue to suffer from them. The theme of MOTHER 3 is pranks," says Itoi.
*
https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm5093966 75:00~
ITOI - "As long as you have good and evil fighting each other, it's not interesting whether good wins or evil wins. What I like best is that it's funny. What would happen if everything in the world was based on good values alone? You can't live. I can't live either. On the other hand, we don't want the Sex Pistols to rule the world. I mean, you're enjoying classical music on one side of the room, but 'Poop!' or ‘Anarchista!', then the people who are just enjoying the music will lose their position."
*
So how can we overcome these polar opposites of good and evil? That is "Rakugo".
Danshi's definition of Rakugo, "the affirmation of human karma”. If I were to rephrase this into a word that even a person with no Rakugo education could understand, it would be "しょうがない/shouganai”. It is a Japanese word that is difficult to translate into English. Or, to put it another way, "That's life” or "That's human.” this is it?
In other words, we should try to forgive ourselves and others as much as possible for our inability to do so with a single word: "shouganai".
"To err is human, to forgive divine."
This is what the poet Alexander Pope wrote. I do not know what A. Pope’s intentions were when he wrote these words. But I feel that we are looking in the same direction as Rakugo.
Well, it's not as simple as that, and that's the REALITY.
MOTHER4
Either there is a MOTHER 4 or there isn't!
*https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm5093966 98:00~
ITOI - "There is no MOTHER 4! FOOOO!" (He's imitating a comedian who was popular at the time.)*
*https://twitter.com/itoi_shigesato/status/1356435755292266496
Once again, I think you can see that there will never be a "MOTHER 4". It's each (points at) your job!*
In fact, MOTHER 4 has already been made.
Undertale, LISA, Yume Nikki, OMORI. In some ways, the Pokémon series may be the most famous MOTHER4.
They are MOTHER 4 if you look at the many children of MOTHER being born. If you say that MOTHER without Shigesato Itoi is not MOTHER, you are right, but MOTHER4 can be made without him. If you want to get the unique humour of MOTHER, I think the above text is the small answer. I hope this will be of some help to you.
That's all! Happy New Year. This is my New Year's gift(お年玉/Otoshidama) to you.
THIS IS! TRULY! THIRD STRONGEST!!!
Well, OK desuka?
MOTHER/EARTHBOUND BEGINNINGS
Itoi Shigesato' main inspiration for creating MOTHER was Dragon Quest.
Programme broadcasted on NHK Educational TV
INTERVIEWER - What was your motivation for making games?
ITOI - It's Horii-san's fault.
Before the release of MOTHER1, In a conversation with Yuji Horii, he talks at long length about how impressed he was with DQ.
*July '87 Advertising Review - Special Feature: The Great Famicom Study
ITOI - I've just started the second round of DQ2.
HORII - You like it. (Laughs)
ITOI - I changed the prince's name to "wee-wee". It's funny. Like, "My wee-wee took a beating." (Laughs), Like, "But what is this, brave wee-wee? Defeat do ill become you!", hilarious.*
Shigesato Itoi speaks happily.
The look on his face and the words he said were hardly those of a man over 30. In the NES game boom of the time, many TV personalities only submitted their plans and threw away the production itself. (Takeshi Kitano and Samma Akashiya are typical.) In contrast, Itoi did his best to make MOTHER. The essence of Dragon Quest has been sublimated in Itoi's style, bringing to fruition the world and adventures he envisaged.
MOTHER2/EARTHBOUND
The world Itoi envisages
I think there are many good things about the MOTHER series. Among them, I think many people like Itoi's unique humorous texts and his "world view”. The following text explores what lies at the heart of him humour and worldview.
MOTHER has the same auxiliary line all the way from 1 to 3.
There is, of course, the main line, Shigesato Itoi. We will now talk about what drew the lines of the world that Shigesato Itoi envisaged. On the whole, the world of 1 and 2 has many optimistic and Pollyanna side. That's why the horror of Moonside in the middle of the game and the last boss, Giygas, stand out so much. 3 was the opposite of 1/2, with a story that emphasized the darker side. The story of what that auxiliary line is, is at the core of this review.
Let's be frank. I mean, it's 落語/Rakugo.
What is "Rakugo"?
There are many different interpretations, and as I am not as well educated as Itoi, I will rely on the definitions of the Rakugo professional. 立川談志/Tachikawa Danshi. A master Rakugo storyteller who has been called a heretic in the world of Rakugo.
Danshi's Rakugo philosophy is that "Rakugo is an affirmation of human karma”. In other words, "Rakugo is a form of storytelling that acknowledges human weakness and stupidity, and depicts this humanity.” And, "Rakugo is the affirmation of non-common against common sense.” Last, he goes so far as to say.
"Anything that doesn't smell of Vice I don't enjoy as an 芸/art form."
Specific examples
A boss who cautions his subordinates but falls asleep with a pen in his hand.
A father who scolds his children for wasting money, but gambles himself into oblivion.
Example sentences
My neighbors' wife had an accident and her face was injured!
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
Then, a good doctor restored her face to its original state!
Oh, so you're back to normal? Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
A case study of my own as I write this.
Me - "Mr. K, you always lie like you breathe!"
K-san - "Thanks to you I can't breathe!"
Me - "...I lost."
A scene from an online program. It's a low-key show with just two people: a scholar with a PhD in political science and the show's host. The scene is a commentary on the current news with the expert knowledge of the scholar.
Moderator - "O-san, You know a great deal about political science!
Dr.O with a bitter smile, paused for a moment and then said, "A little."
During the first bombing of London in 1940, part of a department store had been destroyed. The next morning a large sign was erected at the entrance, which read: 'Entrance extended from today'.
A foreign joke I learned recently that I thought was similar to Rakugo.
A word to Scotland, the only UK to lose at the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
'Brexit achieved.'
Lately I have been reading a little bit of Don Quixote, and I felt smell the Rakugo in it too. Putting them side by side, they seem to be no different from jokes from abroad. (laughs)
MOTHER3
In Japan, 3 is not so popular compared to 2.
There is also the fact that the SNES is a legendary piece of gaming hardware compared to the GBA. But in the end, the conclusion is that the Japanese do not like dark stories. I think it's natural that people prefer to watch light-hearted and funny programmes rather than serious political dramas.
And, from what Itoi has said in conversations, he did not intend to make 3 as universally popular as 1/2 when he planned it.
*
https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm5093966 (Probably the content of this video has not been translated into English.)
32:00~
ITOI - "It's like brother/eldest son who died in the war. I mean, there was a war. World War II, for example. He died on a kamikaze pilot. And eldest son's wife is a fan of MOTHER1/2. And MOTHER3 is eldest son's young brother. The mother of the eldest son, who was killed in the war, was living with his wife, and on one occasion said to her: ‘His brother is single too, why don't you marry him?'
Its young brother is MOTHER3. I mean, eldest son was really kind. He's manly, he's heartwarming, I can't say enough! Perfect!"
IJŪIN - "When people reminisce, they say, 'he was a good man!'"
ITOI - "If we had a お通夜(Otuya. Is that the English word for wake? Finnegans Wake) every day, we have a drink every day! In this context, the young brother says, 'Marry me'. That's what it means to bring MOTHER 3 into this world."
IJŪIN - "Why do you take the trouble to use such a confusing analogy?(laugh)"
*
MOTHER3, Shigesato Itoi, human beings, karma
Shigesato Itoi is Ninten/Ness/Lucas, Phone Papa/Flint, Giygas, Fassad and Porky.
He is never perfectly good. He was such a militant student activist that he was arrested by the police five times. And he is a man who had an affair and married his partner. (I writes things that would be very difficult to write in Japanese. Well, forgive me, Itoi-san, because it's public information that you can find on the internet.)
When talking about the Fassad, Itoi refers to Shinran's "Tannisho".
*
http://mother3.fobby.net/interview/m3int_10.html
Itoi Actually, I haven't really prepared any answers about Fassad. So if you really want to know the answer, I'd like you to read the Tannisho and think it over.
[omitted]
- And that's where the mouse who's attached to Fassad comes in.
Itoi That's right. So MOTHER 3 might not appeal as much to people who can't enjoy gray areas. They'd just want to demand that characters are either good guys or bad guys. (laughs)
*
Itoi himself can be interpreted in terms of Tannisho, and so can I as I write this. And what about you? Perfectly good? Perfectly evil?
It is human nature to oscillate between these two extremes, and it is also human nature to continue to suffer from them. The theme of MOTHER 3 is pranks," says Itoi.
*
https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm5093966 75:00~
ITOI - "As long as you have good and evil fighting each other, it's not interesting whether good wins or evil wins. What I like best is that it's funny. What would happen if everything in the world was based on good values alone? You can't live. I can't live either. On the other hand, we don't want the Sex Pistols to rule the world. I mean, you're enjoying classical music on one side of the room, but 'Poop!' or ‘Anarchista!', then the people who are just enjoying the music will lose their position."
*
So how can we overcome these polar opposites of good and evil? That is "Rakugo".
Danshi's definition of Rakugo, "the affirmation of human karma”. If I were to rephrase this into a word that even a person with no Rakugo education could understand, it would be "しょうがない/shouganai”. It is a Japanese word that is difficult to translate into English. Or, to put it another way, "That's life” or "That's human.” this is it?
In other words, we should try to forgive ourselves and others as much as possible for our inability to do so with a single word: "shouganai".
"To err is human, to forgive divine."
This is what the poet Alexander Pope wrote. I do not know what A. Pope’s intentions were when he wrote these words. But I feel that we are looking in the same direction as Rakugo.
Well, it's not as simple as that, and that's the REALITY.
MOTHER4
Either there is a MOTHER 4 or there isn't!
*https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm5093966 98:00~
ITOI - "There is no MOTHER 4! FOOOO!" (He's imitating a comedian who was popular at the time.)*
*https://twitter.com/itoi_shigesato/status/1356435755292266496
Once again, I think you can see that there will never be a "MOTHER 4". It's each (points at) your job!*
In fact, MOTHER 4 has already been made.
Undertale, LISA, Yume Nikki, OMORI. In some ways, the Pokémon series may be the most famous MOTHER4.
They are MOTHER 4 if you look at the many children of MOTHER being born. If you say that MOTHER without Shigesato Itoi is not MOTHER, you are right, but MOTHER4 can be made without him. If you want to get the unique humour of MOTHER, I think the above text is the small answer. I hope this will be of some help to you.
That's all! Happy New Year. This is my New Year's gift(お年玉/Otoshidama) to you.
THIS IS! TRULY! THIRD STRONGEST!!!
NieR: Automata
2017
The most disappointing game I have ever played. Bad performance, cheesy combat, inane story, and the protagonist looking like a submissive sex doll for absolutely no reason except to bring in thirsty teenagers is just the absolute lowest, creepiest marketing ploy I can possibly imagine. This is the kind of stuff those people who make blanket statements about how video games are stupid and degenerate point at when they want to dismiss the medium as a whole, and I hate it for making me agree with them even if just once.
"Oh, but it is so deep and complex". Yeah, if you're a horny teenager who never managed to stop fapping for long enough to read a book or watch a movie. "You're just being a sex-hating puritan!" No, Bayonetta is awesome, you can sexualize your characters as much as you want if you do it right. Bayonetta is also about a billion times more fun than this garbage. Go play Bayonetta instead.
"Oh, but it is so deep and complex". Yeah, if you're a horny teenager who never managed to stop fapping for long enough to read a book or watch a movie. "You're just being a sex-hating puritan!" No, Bayonetta is awesome, you can sexualize your characters as much as you want if you do it right. Bayonetta is also about a billion times more fun than this garbage. Go play Bayonetta instead.
Episode 1 of Umineko alone is three times as long as And Then There Were None, a better mystery by a much better writer from which Umineko was obviously inspired. You can read War and Peace in half the time it takes to read all of Umineko. There's so much narration, dialogue, and even entire scenes that could be excised without losing anything. I know this is just how visual novels tend to be written because they have to justify their ridiculous pricing with their length, and this one sure isn't attracting anyone with its artwork. Maybe readers don't notice because they've forgotten what real books are like, but for the love of God, get an editor.
I read Umineko as episodes were coming out way back when and the mystery was oft-discussed. I was also having something of a Visual Novel Phase, when they seemed like a whole new medium to explore. I can't say I look back on many visual novels fondly, and I more or less forgot about Umineko once it was all over, but I thought I'd check it out again now out of curiosity. I've actually long since learned Japanese, so I figured it might be a better experience without that fan translation. And it is better, but it's still not good and absolutely not worth the time. Great music, though, I would recommend listening to the soundtrack.
I read Umineko as episodes were coming out way back when and the mystery was oft-discussed. I was also having something of a Visual Novel Phase, when they seemed like a whole new medium to explore. I can't say I look back on many visual novels fondly, and I more or less forgot about Umineko once it was all over, but I thought I'd check it out again now out of curiosity. I've actually long since learned Japanese, so I figured it might be a better experience without that fan translation. And it is better, but it's still not good and absolutely not worth the time. Great music, though, I would recommend listening to the soundtrack.