For those of you who don’t know, TGS stands for the Tokyo Game Show, a convention held at the Makuhari Messe (幕張メッセ) in Chiba Prefecture showing off some of the newest games yet to be released. With the demise of E3 (under the guise of “restructuring”), TGS will undoubtedly become the most important gaming expo in the world. Seriously, I don’t even remember anything big announced at E3 this year. Anyways, TGS lasts 4 days; the first 2 days are dedicated business days while the final 2 days are open to the general public. With that said, TGS has always had a higher attendance than E3 due to the public being able to attend.
The most exciting thing for me this year was the new MGS4 (Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots) trailer which you can watch below in Japanese:
And since many of us lack the skills to understand what is being said, you can watch the trailer in English below:
MGS4 seems to be shaping up to be the true finale to the Metal Gear Saga. Several characters from every MGS game are making appearances such as Naomi, Otacon, Raiden, Liqiud Ocelot, Vamp, EVA and even Johnny Sasaki as a semi-important character (10 year veteran lol). There are also several new characters like Drebin, a shady weapons dealer, and Sunny, Olga’s child. With all these characters and their role in the central plot, it is hard to imagine MGS4 to be anything but the true end of Snake’s journey.
**Possible Spoilers Ahead**
The story takes place five years after the Manhattan Incident. After the incident, the U.S. began to loosen sanctions on foreign intervention fueling the need for mercenaries. PMC’s, private military companies, have arisen to fill this demand. PMC’s fight proxy wars for profit and this has become the central pillar of the world economy. Together, the PMC’s have enough manpower to rival the U.S. military which worries D.C. and the U.N. The 5 largest PMC’s are actaully run by a dummy corporation headed by Liquid Ocelot who plans an armed insurrection against The Patriots. To do this, Liquid plans on controlling the soldiers using the nanomachines in their bodies which are derived from the FOXDIE virus developed by Naomi Hunter. The FOXDIE virus which Naomi injected into Snake prior to the Shadow Moses incident has devasted his body; he is aging rapidly, his body is literally beginning to decay, and he has at most 6 months to live. With FOXDIE as part of MGS4’s main plot, it looks like one of MGS’s plot points will finally be wrapped up.
On the subject of MGS2’s plot, the return of Raiden as the Spiritual successor to the Cyborg Ninja line has got me excited. In the five years since the Manhattan Incident, it seems that Raiden has become a cyborg like Gray Fox and Olga and poses the same super-human abilities and is in the position of being the one to help Snake instead of the other way around. He is able to take down an entire group of the Bio Metal Gears which makes me wonder “when did he turn so cool?” Yet with his enhanced abilities and training, he is about equal to Vamp who essentially is immortal. What I want to know is if Raiden can kill him for good this time and be able to complete his mission of recovering and protecting Olga’s child. I also want to know what Sunny’s importance to the overall plot is.
On the MGS3 front, we see the return of EVA, now calling herself Big Mama, who despite being around her sixties, still dresses like she did during Operation Snake Eater. What her role in the story is yet unclear but what is known is that it most likely has to do with the Philosophers Legacy.
As for MGS4 itself, I can’t wait to see what appears to be the final duel between Liquid and Snake. From the few seconds that are shown, it appears that Snake and Liquid will fight using Metal Gears. Snake can be seen piloting Metal Gear REX, the first fully operational Metal Gear and the prototype for all successive Metal Gears, while Liquid will be piloting the stolen Metal Gear RAY, the prototype for the mass-produced Metal Gear RAY’s specifically designed to be the anti-Metal Gear. I am also excited by the new enemies that are referred to as Beauty and the Beast. They are four former humans, civilian victims of war, who suffered from sever post-traumatic stress disorder. To coop with it, they became war machines themselves. These enemies are seriously terrifying, not in the horror movie type way but rather by the fact that inside these monsters are people. I wonder how Snake is actually going to defeat these foes. I like how Kojima Hideo has literally shown that war transforms people into beasts. The plot of MGS4 seems to parallel the escalating violence in the Middle East and could be a morbid glimpse into the future.
I seriously can’t wait for this to come out. I have been watching the new TGS ’07 trailers over and over in HD (which you can find on GameTrailers.com). The only problem now is that I have to buy a PS3. Sadly, MGS4 is my sole reason to buy a PS3. With a simultaneous worldwide release early 2008, a first in the video game world, it promises to be the best Metal Gear yet.
