Bombin' the A.M. With Scoops and the Wolf: 03/31/2014

Awesome

Hmm...I wonder if Patrick has opinions about Metal Gear.

Would you consider posting an audio only version of this Bombin' the A.M. for those that do not want the video version, please?

Considering Patrick's tweets about the game while he was playing it, I'm interested in hearing this discussion about Ground Zeroes.

The guy who's name is Skullface doesn't fit into Metal Gear? Haha, such bullshit.

@migsse: That exists. I don't think they post it to the website, but it is on iTunes.

@migsse: http://www.giantbomb.com/podcasts/bombin-the-a-m-with-scoops-and-the-wolf/

New context for "V Bomb". Poor Vinny will never play that character again.

It's actually good to hear that both Patrick and particularly Alex shared a lot of my experience with Infamous, if only because a fundamental apathy or dislike of characters and story is increasingly a central reason for me to put a game down and move on. It's not a categorical reason, because I'll leave the door open for ironic appreciate or effectively ignore bad characters or storytelling but when I can't boy does it leave me completely disinterested.

Psst...we've been doing that forever! Check the podcasts tab.

So, haven't watched all the way through yet but, is the InFamous 2 thing a joke or did they really forget the game isn't called InFamous 2?

I think they probably meant inFAMOUS Second Son, not inFAMOUS 2.

I don't want to be contrary, but as much as I agree that MOST of infamous 1 and 2 are quite bland on the surface, both of them get to a point where there is an impressive narrative shift that really make the rest of the game come into perspective. Some people find them more effective than others, but you wouldn't have experienced them if you quit before 60% across the game @alex.

Maybe it is a problem of the structure, and I'll be the first person to say that the morality slider system is dated and uninteresting, and that the general side mission design is not terribly exciting either, but I feel that they have pretty strong writing, if you allow it to build sufficiently. Before those important narrative turning points, I also felt rather uninterested not particularly invested in the narrative or the characters... But the series has been one of the few to genuinely suprise me.

I also agree that the presentation in E3 was really contrasting with the spirit of the game, but I'm really glad the game did not subscribe to the tinfoil hat paranoia too profoundly, or I believe it would have been in an even worse position.

I dont know, don't take it the wrong way Alex, but if you are willing to write off the quality of writing of a franchise, you should at least experience it to completion. I'm not saying it is the best, but its easily an unexpected underdog, and surprisingly a pretty heavy hitter, far better than many other story driven games.

About MGS, I kind of got burned out by MGS4, that ending was just too dumb, and I don't know if I can go back to that point in which I enjoyed the dumb pseudo hystorical / aparently darker tone. That said think MGS3 kind of tried to be dark in sections, it just didn't really translate that well. And also there is the fact that ground zeroes is really just the thinnest section of a game, the goofyness could still be there, but the technology and the particular subject matter could be masking it. We might have to wait for Phantom pain to really get it.

I do feel a bit sad for Kojima though, It's quite clear that he is tied to MGS now, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that he is burnt out with his own creation too.

Kojima failed to make Paz a character you can easily sympathize with. I know I felt no sympathy for her because she came across as an asshole in the audio tapes I listened to her in, and I think it's because he failed at making her someone you cared about that his usage of her comes across as being so blunt and forced to a lot of people.

The fact that your feelings about what happens at the end of Ground Zeroes may be directly proportional to how much effort you put into building your base in Peace Walker also makes its impact whiff completely for a lot of people. Kojima wanted the ending of Ground Zeroes to fill the player with a desire for revenge and retribution, but he locked the ability to obtain those feelings behind conditions that many would never meet.

I can understand people having problems with how characters and events were handled, but my being so impressed by the game itself, the controls in particular, completely overshadows any misgivings I have with the story and characters. That stuff barely enters my mind because the rest of it is operating at such a high level. I viewed Ground Zeroes as a glimpse of what's to come and was more than satisfied.

Shoulda popped up to Nova Scotia @patrickklepek

We just had a blizzard with 150km winds that left us under 2+ feet of snow, followed by a window-pelting ice storm that covered everything in half an inch of ice. Then that was followed by a torrential downpour that took all the snow and ice away.

Unfortunately no stogies and whiskey on the porch, it was more Guinness and Pokemon Season 4 on the couch with my wife and newly-Pokemon-obsessed son.

The most damnable thing about Ground Zeroes is its lack of a PC release.

I wonder if the perspective on the podcast that Kojima failed to "pull off" the creative choices around sexual violence is not just tied to the fact that they don't believe the metal gear series is anything greater then just over the top crazyness or audacity. Its just not a series for them that actually is worthwhile in terms of its darker themes, but it is for a large group of people. They don't know if there opinion actually represents the majority, they have no proof of there loud minority claim. so what I'm saying is equally as valid.

I think that it was pulled off just fine, but thats probably because I enjoy kojima's work. I would like to hear from Patrick as to why its not pulled off, is it simply the odd juxtaposition of a character named skull face that's the issue or something else.

The reason why i bring this up is because there seems to be a total lack of respect of the other view point. the way the speak about it its as if there is no way, anyone in their right might could feel like the depiction in ground zeroes of the darker themes is well done.

If I were to suggest something to Patrick it would be that this is probably the reason for some of the flaming or difficult comments he receives when he says things concerning feminism, gender ethics or distaste for certain elements of games its because it seems so dogmatic, perhaps if he would open up a little in his opinions and make a point of acknowledging that other people could be right about these issues it would actually go away but to be honest I think he likes it....

You misunderstood. A villain named Skull Face with no skin is perfectly Metal Gear. That he is shooting bolts into people's legs and forcing them to rape each other is not.

Any sympathy for Paz was thrown out the window in Peace Walker. Stealing ZEKE, being a spy for Cipher, and lying to Big Boss. I want Skull Face dead because of what he did to Mother Base than what he did to Paz.

+1,000,000 to @patrickklepek's Metal Gear comments. Kojima is nowhere near an empathetic and grounded enough writer to pull off the gross shit that he employs in the ending. And the execution was so heavy-handed it came across as laughably nasty. I don't feel like many long-time Metal Gear fans like myself were expecting something like that.

I guess you could say... "They played us like a goddamn fiddle!"

@cale: Totally! they didn't really reflect the fact that people that played peace walker have an attachment to the base and to see it not be some sort of long game play segment where your moving through the base is a missed opportunity.

Why I would like to hear by the way is because I wonder if its anything beyond a strawman, that because its kojima and the previous creative choices or current creative choices he has made there is a lack of trust in his ability, could Patrick envision a more direct look to the same themes in a metal gear game done differently that would have pleased him or is it the silly, its used as a plot point argument or is it simply because its kojima and metal gear they are not allowed to depict such things so directly...

@jekra:

I wonder if the perspective on the podcast that Kojima failed to "pull off" the creative choices around sexual violence is not just tied to the fact that they don't believe the metal gear series is anything greater then just over the top crazyness or audacity.

I don't think so. They acknowledge that the series has addressed serious stuff like this before.

If I were to suggest something to Patrick it would be that this is probably the reason for some of the flaming or difficult comments he receives when he says things concerning feminism, gender ethics or distaste for certain elements of games its because it seems so dogmatic, perhaps if he would open up a little in his opinions and make a point of acknowledging that other people could be right about these issues it would actually go away but to be honest I think he likes it....

Are you fucking kidding me?

Does Alex like any game series? It seems like every time they mention a particular series, Alex doesn't care for it in some way.

Kojima did warn he was going to add hard themes in this game. People talk about the tone because they are afraid to say the guy "went too far" and sound like antiquated prudes. Metal Gear never had tone consistency anyway.

Truth is Kojima is kinda a like Lars Von Trier of videogames, an easy target with foreign sensibilities that acts all artsy wanting to cause impact and call attention -- his fans, that are a very passionate bunch (don't get me wrong, I'm one of them), get delighted with how crazy he is and how far he goes with his message -- and everyone else goes up in arms saying he's this and that.

That was not the first time someone was raped in the series, just saying.

@octaslash: Im not kidding, and I do think so, if you notice there acknowledgement its pretty clear they think kojima failed in his treatment of serious subject matter in the past parts of the series. you will notice neither alex nor patrick seem to actually care about those parts and the praise just turns to how crazy the series can be. they say it delves into series subject matter and thats it, its pretty clear they think he failed in doing so.

also, No im not kidding. your reading my point as a critique when it doesn't have to be, Im actually trying to give helpful advice. Patrick does repeatedly often stand up for principles fairly dogmatically, even in the face of fact or criticism. Never has he admitted to being persuaded by discussions or changed his thinking. this is really the reason for people being so up in arms at what he is saying.... I don't even disagree with him on alot of the stuff he says but there is no reasoning or him seeing internet comments or opposing view points in good faith.... ask Sean Elliott about the time he the criticized gender hiring statistics argument

Not to spoil anything for anyone. But second son's "bad" ending is pretty goddamn brutal.

Yeah, Patrick pretty much nails it here. I've liked MGS over the years and I'm disappointed in the handling of Ground Zeroes for the same reasons he is. The events here are so callous and just nasty that I was thrown right off the game, stopped being engaged with what was happening and started wondering about why Kojima made these creative choices.

So it's not that the violence was "too much violence", it's that it was the kind of violence that a creator makes as a challenge to the audience, seeking shock rather than an emotional reaction, and that kills all suspension of disbelief, even just as a defense mechanism against the vicious crap you're being made to watch.

I like the guy, but Kojima just doesn't have the directorial ear to subject people to minutes upon minutes of deliberately cringe-worthy crap and not lose them along the way. Half the joke in this games is that he pushes so many minutes of mild campy fluff and he can barely keep people paying attention. If you swap that out for genuinely nasty crap it's just not gonna play very well or be very effective about making a point about torture and war.

@jekra: Except they totally cited Watchmen as something that deals with those subject tastefully while still being cartoonish.

While you might enjoy Kojima's fiction and that's fair, the way it is handled in that game just seem needlessly provocative and does not fit the tone at all. For what it's worth, I would like videogames to be able to touch those subjects. In Ground Zero, it's pretty juvenile.

"Skullface doesn't fit in"? Is Psycho Mantis any better? No. "The End"? No. They're all dumb as shit. FATMAN for crying out loud! Kojima has always mixed serious stuff with the absurd, crazy stuff and as long as he does I can't take any of it seriously. Skullface is probably Liquid or some shit, his face just hasn't grown out yet. Plot twist? #internetz

@fear_the_booboo: your right, but I dont think it is juvenille in ground zeroes and it can compared to watchmen favorable. Have you read the watchmen, two characters can only have good sex in costume in that book and you say its not juvenile.

also, your point really does not say anything to mine, its as if your not hearing me, as I never said they didn't believe that cartoonish things can't make serious points its that they clearly believe metal gear never has and that causes them to have no trust in ground zeroes.... from the moments the credits roled I knew Patrick would dislike it his comments here and his comments in the past have shown he has little respect for kojima as someone who actually says something worthwhile...

@jekra: I totally read your comment. In Watchmen there's a meaning behind the characters motivation and the way the book touches on rape is actually one of the best thing about it (I'm not a fan of Moore myself).

What I meant is that just hearing a girl getting bombs shoved into her vagina with little to no empathy to her, just to show that the evil guy is "evil", is pretty juvenile and grotesque in a bad way for me. It's provocative and shocking, but does not add anything to the story that could not have done in a smarter, more tasteful way.

You knew beforehand that Patrick would disagree with it and I knew too. I feel that is ok. We know Patrick's opinion enough that we can guess how he feels about some stuff. It does not show that Patrick lacks empathy for the other side, I felt he was pretty outspoken with being ok having Kojima tackling this kind of subject, what he did not like was how it was done in that particular game. I agree with him.

@fear_the_booboo: Actually I don't think he is good with kojima tackling such an issue. I think he has been fairly outspoken in the opposite direction actually an example where he talks one the podcast about how he doesn't know if he is in for taking metal gear seriously and his comments about kojima's explanation of the quiet character being probably suspect are other examples.

the way in which the Comedian character in the watchmen rapes can be seen as pretty provocative and shocking as well as fairly grotesque most of the watchmen can be seen that way. Perhaps the glee in which skullface goes about it is causes the difference in opinion from watchmen to ground zeroes. Ground zeroes is actually less grotesque as it is less visual. its only an audiolog. so an arguement can be made that watchman might actually be more grotesque.

it is a matter of opinion to say the least, and thats my point, and patrick does not do a good enough job giving the other side its due. He is very dogmatic in his approach to exposing his opinions for someone who is proud his comments are so subjective, he seems to speak so objectively and insultingly to people who disagree with him.

@jekra: My point is that it adds a lot to the story in watchmen and does not in Ground Zero. I think we're disagreeing there.

Patrick is being critical to the game, which I think is fair. It is his job as a journalist/critic/editorialist. He thinks Kojima is not a good writer to tackle those subjects and I agree with him (I think Kojima's writing is mostly pretty bad). You disagree with us and that's fair.

We will never agree on that point.

Where I think you're wrong is when you say that Patrick would not be ready to give other's opinion their due. He does share often share articles that disagrees with him on twitter or on Worth Reading. On this podcast, you're here to hear HIS opinion. Nobody could in their right mind express every opinion on a subject while being completly neutral (that would be boring anyway).

Patrick stating his opinion does not mean he cannot see the other side (or something in between, it's not black and white).

That's what I think, anyway.

This was, however, the first time they made you listen to it and shoved it in your face.

Well the audiolog is a collectible, right? So they don't shove it in your face. You don't have to listen to any logs either, so they don't 'make you' listen to it.

I finished the main mission about 10 times before even knowing that content was in there, and even then it was because I read about it online. I still haven't listened to whichever log it is in the game. The characters aren't interesting enough for me to care to listen to all the logs.

They pretty much shove it in your face with the B&Bs in MGS4 and imply it heavily with Volgin in MGS3. In this one, the bulk of the rape references are in a separate collectible, actually. The difference is just that they are more 'graphic' and lengthy, but you can skip them at will.

@gasparnolasco said:

Hell, that's even suggesting that what you hear on the tapes even is rape. It's really hard to tell and in the one instance where you could argue it does happen (and is "shoved in your face") is when something like a zipper is heard in the audio. You know what happens? The tape cuts off not two seconds after. Now maybe I have missed a tape, but as it stands now with the "evidence" on hand people are blowing this shit way out of proportion.

You know, like the usual suspects are wont to do.

@oldirtybearon:

Yes. Which goes to the point on why are people so worked up over this. It's just part of this dev's proposition of making this game about the ugly part of war, Metal Gear has always shown the hero being broken and tired under the horrors and guiltiness of war. Instead of glorifying the situation, as most other war games do.

You think there wasn't rape and torture in any of the real wars depicted in your average Call of Duties and Battlefields? Yes there was quite a lot, you just can't hear it under all the glorification.

You are right on the cusp of busting out a "What is rape, really?" line to defend the sexual assault of a fictional character, and I'm here to advise you to cut your damn losses while you still can.

I'd say he absolutely does, but feel free to draw your own conclusions based on his last five reviews of franchise titles.

http://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/thief-review/1900-627/

http://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/nba-live-14-review/1900-619/

http://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/assassin-s-creed-iv-black-flag-review/1900-617/

http://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/nba-2k14-xbox-one-and-playstation-4-review/1900-611/

http://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/madden-nfl-25-xbox-one-and-playstation-4-review/1900-610/

@gasparnolasco: Totally agree. When people talk about the "tone" of Metal Gear being "inconsistent" in Ground Zeroes (and presumably Phantom Pain) I have to wonder what games they were playing from '98 onward. Metal Gear Solid 2 for my money is the most insanely meta game in, well, video games. Metal Gear Solid 1 was only considered "goofy" because of the naming conventions involved with the characters; which is essentially "English words mashed together that sound bad ass to Japanese people".

For me, it'd be one thing if people said the games were just poorly written (I'd disagree with them but hey, other people are free to be wrong), but that's not what people are saying. People are saying that vagina bombs and gruesome depictions of wartime violence are out of bounds to Metal Gear. Why? I've yet to hear one good reason as to why Metal Gear is not allowed to be whatever Kojima and KojiPro wants it to be.

Bah, whatever. All the people bitching right now will still be in line on release day to pick up their copy of The Phantom Pain. Why? Because it's Metal Gear, and Metal Gear is awesome.

Yeah, that's totally what I was doing. I wasn't at all speaking to the fact that the audio we hear doesn't even sound like sex. It's a lot of whipping and grunting. Paz is definitely being tortured, but to say that the audio is stuffed to the brim with rape is odd. You could interpret the audio as rape, I guess, but you'd have to really work for it.

Also, I wasn't saying "what is rape, really?" I didn't dispute the fact that the character is raped in the story; I am disputing the idea that people think it's "shoved in their faces" when it's merely alluded to and not outright depicted for the player.

Maybe you could climb off of that high horse of yours, eh fella?

i loved the gameplay in ground zeroes a whole lot - enough to make me excited for the phantom pain. that excitement was subsequently dulled when i realised that kojima is the guy who said he made the character of quiet "more sexy to encourage cosplay." that's the guy who is trying to tell this 'mature' story which touches on the torture of child soldiers and rape. he just doesn't have the track record in terms of writing to have any kind of trust from me in that regard (and i say this as longtime MGS fan who realises that the writing is garbage). for example, all the stuff about how snake is now meant to say less in order to express more with his face could be a result of them only having kiefer sutherland for a certain amount of time (there is literally only about a minute's worth of his VO in the entirety of GZ). all the other characters talk just as much shit as they did previously (the famous 'THEY PLAYED US LIKE A DAMN FIDDLE!' comes to mind).

i think what you say about that stuff kinda passing over people's heads in GZ is interesting, and largely due to its brevity. i think that if this kinda stuff runs rampant throughout a much larger game like the phantom pain, it'll be more difficult to ignore.

I see no problem with the MGS thing that everybody is moaning about

@oldirtybearon: Considering one of the tapes directly references the fact that Chico was forced to have sex with Paz, you can pretty safely say there was rape

@bocam: Again, didn't say there wasn't. Try re-reading what I wrote.