Honestly? I think Hayter is Snake, much like Kurt Russel will always be Snake.
But Kiefer actually can act (… when he is not struggling with his demons and tackling Christmas trees). And basically from MGS2 on, the decision was made that MGS should have pathos that is not “so is this intentionally funny?” a la “Can love bloom on the battlefield?”.
MGS2 sort of got away with it because Quinton Flynn is actually a pretty talented VA but… everyone hated Raiden because he was “the player” rather than “Snake”. Same gag as Otacon but people sort of realized it this time.
But MGS3? I am not going to claim that the issue was that Hayter “couldn’t do the voice” or whatever. The issue is that he just isn’t the kind of actor who can carry those scenes. And that is why we mostly had EVA (unknown, but likely a “real” VA/actress) and The Boss (Pearl Krabs) carrying the story with a lot of the more emotional scenes involving Naked Snake silent and in agony.
And MGS4 was the worst of all worlds. Between having the player mockery character fuck the fanservice version of Bastilla for no apparent reason and actually putting a lot of the pathos on Hayter and Meryl (Debi Mae West has a fairly limited range) and some random kid… yeah.
Which gets to MGS5. When Kiefer speaks, he knocks it out of the park. His career is largely built around taking REALLY mediocre scripts and somehow making us care about some obnoxious bully or a psychopath running around with a car battery. But apparently “lessons were learned” from MGS4 so it was mostly awkward silence while Kaz or Ocelot did the talking and… yeah.
Still, if you can get past the trademark Kojima misogyny, MGS5’s gameplay is miles beyond every other Metal Gear short of Rising. It does have the problem of trying to shoehorn in a progression/unlock system while giving you a silenced (later infinite silenced) tranq gun (and tranq sniper rifle) in the first three hours of actual gameplay, but that actually works with the general horrible pacing and lack of plot (and spoilers built in to the intro cutscene of every level…).
Although, if you have the option, play it on PC and fiddle around with one of the bigger mods. Doing more missions as OSP (start with no gear) and tweaking the progression so that the top tier stuff isn’t balanced around multiplayer goes a long way.
Still. 4 with a more talented VA (and a lot less fanservice) would have been so amazing.
Much like Escape from LA was shit compared to Escape from NY, the MGS series has gotten progressively more and more hindered by being built around a “… how did you not get sued?” reference to Kurt Russel in the 80s joke. Like I mentioned elsewhere, I really wish MGS had become an ensemble piece (and MGS2 was trying for that before the backlash). Rising being a character action game as Raiden is AMAZING. Imagine an IOI led Hitman-style game where you play as Meryl or Johnny infiltrating an enemy base. Or an Arkane led game where you play as The Cobra Unit with all their magic powers. And not having to keep going back to such a one dimensional character as the core of the series.
Also, just to make it clear. I am not shitting on Hayter. Bruce Campbell is one of my favorite actors (also was in Escape from LA…). He can do very short bursts of pathos but it was clear that Burn Notice was struggling when they had to rely on Bruce/Sam because Michael/Jeffrey was still learning how to act and it would have been INSANE to let one of the better tv actresses of all time (Sharon Gless) do anything other than play a one dimensional character. Not every actor is Lead material and that is fine. Because you need a lot more top tier supporting actors/actresses than you do “good” Leads.
For anyone who wants to get into this just know that A) it has aged VERY poorly. There are tons of aspects about the UX that are just terrible and frustrating. And B) it’s better with a group
But if you can get past all that then it’s really fun
I played EQ in that era and I absolutely love playing Project 99… to a point. It ends up with the same problem that every older online game seems to have: all the veterans that never left act like they own the place, and take it way too seriously.
If I do go back to P99 it will just be to level a character up until I get bored. There’s lots of essence to EQ that you just don’t get in modern MMORPGs; mostly because content is difficult to solo, working with others makes your entire life easier, and everyone is struggling together. I’ve had so many good conversations with people while camping in Blackburrow and Guk and the Karanas and so many places. I recommend it to anyone for that.
Of course, but it was also the generation after EQ1 in a lot of ways. It was able to learn from EQ1’s release and early months and quickly improve its own game as a result of that.
I love that when Everquest first came out there was no map. You had to make your own hand drawn map to navigate in the game. I’d love that in a RPG today.
I have a nostalgic affection for making my own maps. I remember discovering hidden rooms based on unfilled squares of graph paper, and mapping mazes of twisty corridors, both all alike and all different. I think that translating the digital representation to physical added vividness to the imaginary worlds when they were presented as simple wireframes, 8-bit graphics, or even just text.
Today, I don’t have time for it. I would almost certainly end up visiting the same - I’m guessing - half dozen places I could keep in a mental map, decide the game is boring, and play something else. Lazy. Jaded. Spoiled. Whatever - that phase of my development from reading static books, to reading interactive text, simple avatars, now near-photorealistic animations…the phase where I enjoyed the physical crutch for imagination is just gone.
It’s tempting, but I know it would be too much of a time suck. Especially pre-Planes of Power era, after which time spent traveling drops dramatically.
I can’t imagine anyone unfamiliar with the game dropping into one of these fan servers, though. Bit of a reputation for not everyone being the nicest people, especially towards new players.
I actually jumped into the Imperium server recently and finally duo boxed. The real probably is that the down time that could be filled getting to know other players in your level range is slim.
I admit I’ve been having a lot of fun with New World following the first expansion. The artifact gear you can grind usually has a 6 minute timer (some are dungeon locked, and one spawn every 90 minutes according to server day/night schedule) and it’s made me nostalgic. The mob has nothing to do but chat, and it’s been really enjoyable so far.
That’s my ramble done, but anything EQ related gets me nostalgic.
Thanks to fan projects, it’s still possible to play EverQuest as it used to be. The latest fan-run classic EverQuest server, Project Quarm, launched on October 1. Like other unofficial fan servers the Al’Kabor Project and Project 1999 before it, Quarm strives to present the game as it existed back in the first couple years of the game’s life—warts and all. Unlike Project 99, however, this server will progress through the classic era all the way through the 2002 Planes of Power expansion, seen by many to be the peak of the EQ experience.
Always cool to see fan projects like this. I know there are a few out there but I’m struggling to remember the names of them.
I thought there was one for Ultima Online I saw but that might have just been an article about its official online mode.
The article really seems to be for people who played EverQuest or similar MMOs a while back and are nostalgic about them though
UO has a super robust eco system of private shards and server software. It’s kind of amazing. Pretty active development on things like ServUO or ModernUO servers. The client has been fully rewritten and actively developed with improvements on ClassicUO. All of these are open source as well.
For servers you have places that function entirely as different eras of UO like the Renaissance shard, or even entirely new content like what’s in Outlands.
There’s honestly a lot to be found out there and it’s really neat.
Does it still present the classic UO experience where as soon as you walk five steps into the wilderness, PKs descend on you, kill you in a few hits, and take all your stuff?
pcgamer.com
Gorące