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I agree the creatures I've seen so far look pretty unimpressive. Looks like the procedural generation of creatures works by randomly matching together prefab pieces and then modulating their shapes and colors a bit. The animation looks pretty crappy by todays standards too, seeing as we've been spoiled by incredible animation in a lot of modern games. I understand why it's this way, game development is incredibly difficult. It's just that 18 something quintillion planets becomes kind of meaningless if it's all more or less the same stuff just swapped around and tweaked a little bit.

I was hoping the devs had developed some novel techniques of generating organic feeling species that would truly feel unique and alive. There's just that part of us that always wants to believe in something unreasonable and magical...

When I was younger I often became obsessed with upcoming releases and the hype leading up to them. Because of this I understand what a lot of people are going through. At this point I don't really get that way, there's too much other stuff in life to become obsessed about one video game. Having said that, I would love for this game to be good. I don't personally think it will be this unbelievable thing, but I would love for it to at least provide some moments of awe.

Guys I am not really too bothered about this "ignorance", I didn't even intend to point anything out as ignorance. And of course I understand that metal gear is completely fictional and also inspired by a lot of american action movies, which means you're probably correct in assuming it's got Vietnam-war movie influences.

I guess I'm just sad that many people's sole impression of Vietnam the country, is war. When my lasting impression from living there is (in Da Nang) an amazing place with lots of warm friendly people. Though I'm not blaming anyone for being ignorant, as I am personally ignorant about much (if not most) of the world.

Thanks for the replies though, I guess I personally never agot any Vietnam-war vibe from the game when I played through it aside from it taking place in a jungle (There are more jungled war-ravaged places in the world than Vietnam). Yes I have seen my share of Vietnam-war movies too, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Good Morning Vietnam etc.

@mathey: Haha yeah the Sweden/Switzerland confusion I am well aware of, seeing as I'm Swedish I've had a lot of people foreigners assume I'm actually from Switzerland.

I guess the United States is so big and diverse in itself so that learning about all the different states is already pretty daunting. This Vietnam thing isn't strictly limited to americans though as I've met Swedish people who were very surprised by my stay in Vietnam as they thought it's just a destroyed war-zone.

It's funny watching Metal Gear Scanlon because I feel like Dan and Drew are pretty much polar opposites when it comes to knowledge about the surrounding world. Dan is like the classic American dude, who I definitely would expect to just associate Vietnam with the "Vietnam war" or "'nam", whereas Drew has actually visited Vietnam.

Why do members of the bomb crew keep referring to this game as a "Vietnam" game. I apologise for not having a direct quote from anyone but seem to recall this being alluded to several times. I guess it should come down to the fact that it's a cold-war thing set in a jungle...

I think I may be a little sensitive to this seeing as I've lived in Vietnam for 2 years, I get a bit annoyed when people just associate such a beautiful culture and place with a war. For americans and many westerners, Vietnam seems to just mean, you know, that war that happened in a jungle somewhere far away. The funny thing is, in Vietnam, understandably they call it the American war.

Also being set in the Russian jungle is a little weird, are there any jungles in Russia?

Oh and international karate, and the pinball dreams/fantasies games are pretty badass too. DICE actually made the pinball dreams/fantasies games if I'm not mistaken, so could be interesting for people to get a glimpse of their roots, those games have amazing music.

Moonstone and Hunter both fucking awesome.

Yes I have been in Ho Chi Minh City, or "Saigon" a couple of times, but found Da Nang to be much more worth while. Ho Chi Minh is so over crowded, polluted and jam packed with motorbikes. They also got this huge sky scraper ominously overlooking the city that reminded me of City 17 or something from half-life 2, so I just called it the evil building. Ho Chi Minh is better than Hanoi though in my opinion, but would much rather recommend Da Nang, Da lat, Hue, Phu Quoc.

Another place you should probably avoid is Nha Trang. It's full of tourists (a lot of Russian tourists here for some reason), and it just not a very pleasant place. My friends also got robbed there, though they kind of have themselves to blame seeing as they were hanging out in night clubs at 2am and got a ride back to the hotel on some random guys motorbike.

If you go to Vietnam, I can recommend Da Nang. I lived there for 2 years and found it to be my favourite city in the country. It's not too big and not too small, fresh air and beautiful weather, a seemingly infinite beach stretching down to the "ancient town" Hoi An. People are very friendly and it's not too overrun with tourists yet. The city is growing more and more lately though and have recently built some pretty cool new bridges (one dragon bridge that shoots fire/water on saturdays :) ).

If you end up spending time in Da Nang I can recommend going to Soul Kitchen, a beachside bar/restaurant outside Hoi An, on any given sunday night. They have a big music jam with all the local musicians (mostly expats). I used to play in a band there so every sunday we would host it. Soul Kitchen is one of the most idyllic places I've ever been, and now I am missing it while thinking about it :(.

Anyways good luck. Hope you go to Vietnam, it's a beautiful, magical place (for those who can appreciate it, not for everyone).

Goodbye Ryan.