What is wrong with MGS4

[edepot]

There is a big problem with MGS4, and I think most of the people who have played it will probably agree. The biggest problem is the number of cutscenes you have to sit through to understand the storyline. I think there should be an option to allow you to be in the cutscene in first person mode and basically participate in it. Allowing your decisions to influence how the cutscene will turn out. Or, instead of making the player sit through cutscene after cutscene, make the cutscene a video clip that the user finds and can playback by putting it inside a virtual video player in the game. That way the user can opt to view it or not (like an educational video). Make the plot realtime, and not dependent on cutscenes, so if the person is saying something to you, allow the possibility for you to ignore that person, and that person can either follow you around keep talking, or basically leave you without telling you anything. And this may affect the next stages. Maybe one day video games will move towards interactive movies.

Another problem is the loading screens. The driving scenes where the player needs to wait for loading ruins the continuity of the game. I think most developers can handle on-demand-loading of 3D scenes now, and I don't understand why MGS4 is still stuck in the past with huge loading times between very small areas. Perhaps GTA4 and Mercenaries 2 and games of these nature will rule the next-generation of games. However, they are still not there yet. If someone makes something like MGS4 without the loading screens (and with the same graphical quality), and add in interactive cutscenes, then it may be what the next stage of gaming should be.

From viewing the game, if MGS4 used 100% (or close to it) of the CELL and RSX's capabilities, then I think the PS3 is not powerful enough. Maybe they have yet to tap into the total potential of the machine. I am still waiting for a true 1080p game with next gen graphics (60fps would be great). My guess is that the PS3 needs to be at least 6 times more powerful to achieve this. Most games do 720p because the CELL and RSX are not fast enough. Perhaps when the games are coded in assembly and allowed to take over the whole machine instead of through the XMB operating system (that needs to worry about security and in-game XMB), the PS3 needs to be only 4 times more powerful. Time will tell... when developers find out more tricks that can be done to take full advantage of the chips, maybe there will be an outstanding game that really tap into the PS3's potential. I have a feeling this game will be in 720p though.

Perhaps the PS4 can incorporate 3 CELL processors, and each CELL has usable 14 SPE, and the RSX is souped up 6 times (maybe integrated into the CELL so they don't have to go though that stupid bus), something nice can come out of it. It will still not achieve real-time graphics like the pre-rendered digital movies you see these days, but at least it is approach it.