There is a lot to unpack about MGSV.

It's the most recent game that I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with; north of 70 hours last I checked. I don’t really do that much anymore. My attention span is comparable to that of an insect these days and that draw just isn’t there in most cases. My needs are different. I’m no longer the guy that would marathon JRPGs back to back. Now, it’s rare for me to devote that much time to anything, let alone a video game.

Metal Gear is different though. It felt to me like it was the last big “event” game, something to anticipate and over-analyse the same way moviegoers look forward to the next comic book film. The fact that there was so much distance between each game helped, I think. By the time the first cryptic trailer for The Phantom Pain showed up, I was more than ready to love again, even if parts of the previous games left me with an odd feeling. That’s the thing with Hideo Kojima. Regardless of how you may feel about the man, it’s impossible to deny that he makes a great sales pitch and even if he doesn’t fully deliver on the promises he makes (often intentionally so), you know that you won’t walk away feeling apathetic. In that sense, independent of anything else, the man is a success. That’s the goal of art, after all – to make us feel something, even if that feeling is outrage.

Considering I wouldn’t spend 70 hours with a game I don’t like, it should go without saying that I quite enjoyed my time with The Phantom Pain. It’s easily the best-playing Metal Gear ever, which may not be much of a compliment considering I treated the gameplay of the previous installments as that thing I needed to rush through to get to the next wacky cutscene. That was always the draw, but that’s also my own bias at work. Tell me a big dumb story and I’ll get invested in it, even if things don’t exactly come together the way I’d like them to. This is all the more ironic since I actually really liked the story revelations in MGSV, which apparently puts me in the minority. Maybe I just had different expectations of Kojima and how he weaves (or doesn’t) a narrative; the themes he choses to focus on above others. He’s always been more of a big idea guy than one for character development anyway. That’s why so much of the cast in the previous games appeared to speak with the exact same voice, from the exact same knowledge base, with the exact same opinions on genetics and/or nuclear proliferation.

That said, this homogenization may be intentional. After all, the whole series, and MGSV specifically, are about how we perceive and very often misunderstand iconic figures; how great heroes and villains were likely less interesting than we think and the idea of a symbol being more important than the person. This is one of the many instances in which Kojima gets in his own way. He crafts such memorable characters but puts them in situations where you have no choice but to ponder their futility. No one in MGSV matters because they can’t, but I had a similar feeling after 3 and 4, games that are very specifically about a sense of duty overriding emotion and heroes being completely unknown to the world they saved. We understand that Big Boss is an infamous figure in the universe, but we as players also know that he’s kind of a boring dude. That doesn’t matter when commanding an army willing to hang on every word of a legendary hero.

These are the things I consider when trying to keep up with the latest debates about Kojima. As with most arguments on the internet, I do find myself desiring a bit more nuance, less lines drawn in the sand. Either the man is a genius or a hack. Either he’s charmingly eccentric or he’s a misogynist. I imagine he’s a lot of things. From my perspective, he’s a man that’s crafted one of my favorite universes the medium has ever seen; a universe that unfortunately has a lot of toilet humor and melodrama. This is a man that designed Quiet, whose appearance and characterization are painfully discordant with one another, to exist in the same world as The Boss, a rather plain-looking woman that is undeniably worshiped by everyone that dares speak her name.

Hideo Kojima, to me, is a contradiction, much like the things he creates. I guess in that way, I can relate. No, I don’t have an unyielding desire to insert fart jokes into everything I write, but the things I create tend be the best reflection of who I am, better than any description I could come up with. I suppose that’s where things get muddled; we’ve played Kojima’s games for so long that we feel like we know him. After playing MGSV, I certainly know the books and music he’s a fan of, along with his favorite parts of the female anatomy. After playing MGS2, I felt like I knew a little too much about his love life, Rose clearly a stand-in for someone nagging him about important dates one too many times. For someone that creates stories about deception, he himself is often a little too transparent.

Maybe that’s a side-effect of telling the same story for too long. I’m certainly not trying to make excuses for the man as much as attempting to understand him; why he often assembles things that seemingly work against his own goals. I suppose the easy answer is that he simply doesn’t know what he’s doing, but MGSV is too good for me to believe that. You don’t accidentally direct one of the best games of the year. Instead, we simply have to acknowledge that the best can always be improved upon, whether or not those flaws are indicative of the person responsible. There’s a balance to be reached, for sure, and I feel that too often we get caught up in the idea of Kojima and what he appears to represent to us and games at large.

For all we know, he may actually be a pretty boring dude.

Boring? And still have the people he worked with still with him at the new studio?

Alright.

Strange statement to end on to be honest.

That... wasn't meant to be taken literally. Like, at all.

I think it's always really important not to conflate the individual with their work. Hideo Kojima is a man with a lot of ideas who thanks to a stroke of luck had for a very lengthy period of time been given unprecedented leeway in bringing those ideas to life, no matter how timely or costly. He is definitely talented as whatever you may think of Metal Gear Solid, it is without a doubt one of the most unique and innovative franchises in the industry. I can't really think of any other game that has changed so dramatically from sequel to sequel, and retained not only it's signature style but introduced ideas that were so far removed from what every other developer was doing at the time. It is also important to note that misogyny is a really powerful term that shouldn't be used lightly whenever a character shows up in a bikini. This is especially important when analyzing games from Japan where the culture and general gender role sensibilities are quite different to the west, and sadly quite a bit outdated.

Is he a boring guy? Who knows. I think he is just a guy. A guy that, like I said, has a lot of really interesting ideas. The next game he releases will be a true test to see if those ideas will continue to be as interesting as they've been up until now.

Oh boy - as someone who thinks Japan has a healthier idea about sex than the west I would in no way call him a misogamist. There is nothing wrong with wanting to put a pretty woman in your game simply because she is pretty. The idea that a pretty woman can not also be a bad ass sniper is ridiculous. Her look and her skill set are by no means discordant. I also don't think he got where he was due to a stroke of luck. The first and second metal gear game did so well BECAUSE of his talent and because they were great games.

But eh I'm the guy who isn't upset over the fart jokes and the sex in the games so obviously any opinions I have are wrong from the starting point.

Some of the most successful people in human history are boring. If you're successful (and make money) you can have whatever people you want work for you. Does everyone like their boss? Sure it helps but it's not necessary if you are passionate about what you're working on.

This is an outdated opinion when even Kojima's female characters from Snatcher are still written with more depth and purpose within the plot than the average American film these days. People can't see past the clothing to notice that they add more to the story then something the male character can talk to and this is true for a lot of Japanese media having strong independent female presence, especially in their music which has a lot of female musicians and all female bands compared to other countries.

@redking56: The average game? Maybe, but even that is a bit of a stretch when you take under account the dozens of JRPG's where characters aren't strong independant women like The Boss or Lightning from FF13. Film? I wouldn't go that far. There are plenty of really well written female roles in American cinema. If you want to go by average action flick or something of that ilk then everything rings somewhat shallow on both sides of the world.

I'm right there with you about the book and the cover and all that. I also don't like it when the internet cries foul over any female character that is displaying even a hint of sexuality despite being well written. I was merely suggesting, and this was true of 2-3 years back from some documentaries I watched, that it really is hard to be a woman in Japan because of the way gender roles still seem to prevail in that country. Maybe things have changed since 2013, I don't know. Last I heard it was still kind of bad over there. Not to say the US or lord forbid the antiquated Europe is better, but apparently not quite as bad as Japan. Then again I've never lived there, so I can only assume what I read was true.

@humanity: I was just speaking to how women are treated in Japanese media, which is a lot better than how they are in mainstream western media.

Their appearance might be excessive or even be considered exploitive but they're at least given character and motivations in most cases that go beyond being love interests which is more than you can say about some recent mainstream films in the west, Creed being a recent example I saw. I liked the film but the female lead was one of the most egregious examples of "insert love interest" I've seen

@redking56: Creed was pretty bad about that, but arguably that movie wasn't about the love interest. Then again for every few Creeds there is a Room or a Carol or even the Intern which goes maybe a step too far in swapping around gender roles.

I get what you're saying but I don't think ALL of Japanese media is that gracious to women on such a consistent basis. I'd say that while Western media keeps a very steady line, Japan tends to have glorious highs and spectacular lows in terms of character representation - they're just generally all over the place. Western games might not have strong characters like The Boss pop up that often, but they also don't have face touching mini games randomly inserted into fairly serious RPGs.

That's an unfortunate example of lost in translation. In Japan it is common for family and close friends to tap each other's faces as a sign of affection. It's just a cultural difference like Mediterranean countries it's common to greet men and women with a kiss.