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just-mebs · 2 years

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I know you're currently into tf2 but you're my only mgs mutual and I really need someone to explain to me the order of the games to me PLEASE

+"Also can you add an explanation of each I BEG"

Oh fuck okay pop quiz time for me i guess, in order of when they take place + little explanation [spoilers i guess???] added a cut bc this got long

1. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - happens in the 1960s, the one where Naked Snake/the Big Boss goes to Russian jungle that 100% exists. Also Ocelot is gay

2. MGS: Portable Ops??? - Never played it and is one of the only games I know absolutely nothing about

3. MGS: Peace Walker - takes place like early 70s I think? this is the one Kaz gets introduced and him and Big Boss have gay sex :)

4. MGSV : Ground Zero - uhh you gotta save Paz and Chico from a camp in Cuba??? you get back to the MSF base as its being attacked and leads into-

5. MGSV : Phantom Pain - my personal favorite. Takes place in 1984. You play as Big Boss after waking up from a 9 year coma, but you dont. you aren't big boss. But you are? who are you? no one knows. Ocelot knows. Fuck Ocelot. He's hot tho. Him and Kaz both try to fuck Big boss/not Big Boss. Venom sweetie you deserved so much more.

6. Metal Gear - yes the og 1987 NES game. takes place in like 1995. Solid Snake infiltrates Outer Heaven and fights Big Boss :)

7. MG : Solid Snake - Another one I never played and know nothing about what happens?? tho I do know this is where Solid Snake kills Venom Snake who is not the Big Boss (but everyone thinks it is).

8. METAL GEAR SOLID - The og of the solid games. Solid Snake goes to Shadow Moses in 2005 and has to fight his twin brother/fellow clone Liquid Snake. Ocelot is here and gets his hand cut off. Solid Snake meets Otacon who pees his pants. Liquid Snake dies and it turns out Ocelot was working for the third clone: Solidus Snake who is the President of the United States

9. MGS2 : Sons of Liberty - Part 1 of this game takes place in 2007 with Solid Snake infiltrating a oil taker transporting Metal Gar Rex (???? correct me if I'm wrong). Ocelot is now Liquid Ocelot because he stole Liquid Snake's arm after he died and the arm lets Liquid possess Ocelot (thats how arms work btw). Part 2 takes place in 2009 where you play as Raiden who's a twink. There is a Vampire named Vamp, but not because he's a vampire rather because he's bisexual. Solidus Snake is Raiden's adopted dad and there is a meta about the internet

10. MGS4: Guns of the Patriots - Solid Snake comes out of retirement in 2014 and the Patriots (who have been the villain this entire time??? I never mentioned this???) have control over the entire world or something. Otacon and Solid Snake have a daughter named Sunny. I dont know anything else that happens in this game besides that Ocelot and Solid Snake make out before Ocelot dies. Oh and Ocelot lied the entire time, he wasnt possessed by Liquid he just hypnotized himself to act like he was :) We learn that Big Boss has been alive this entire fucking time and just ????

11. Metal Gear Rising : Revengence - game takes place in like 2018 I think and uhhh Raiden is a cyborg now?? Thats all I know about this game.

#fuck what everyone says PP is a good game #also feel free to yell at me if i got any of this wrong I havent played most of these in YEARS #anon #ask.mebs #playing games: mgsv #mgs #long post #I typed this out in one sitting and no references #all dates I pulled out of my ass i hope theyre right

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therain-trxnsfxrmed · 4 years

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About Raiden

IC TIMELINE FOR RAIDEN’S MAIN GAME APPEARANCES

Childhood (1983 onward)

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (MGS2) (2007-2009, age 24-26)

Between MGS2 and MGS4 (2009-2014, ages 26-31)

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (MGS4) (2014, age 31)

Between MGS4 and MGR:R (2014-2018, age 31-35)

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (MGR:R) (2018, age 35)

BACKGROUND & PSYCHOLOGY

Note: There’s so much detail in this franchise, so many characters and important events, but I am going to try to narrow this background down to events important to shaping who Raiden is and that contributed to his often fragile psychology. These are the events, memories, information I would draw from the most while writing him, although not limited to just these. if I tried to explain the entire franchise I’d be here for years, so I have to narrow it down somehow, haha.

Childhood (1983 onward)

Raiden (real name Jack) was born in 1983 and raised early on as a child soldier in Liberia. He was trained with both guns and blades, in hand-to-hand combat, and in advanced CQC (close-quarters combat), and participated in the First Liberian Civil War, killing several men. His ruthlessness combined with his pale, almost-white skin and hair earned him the title of The White Devil. Jack the Ripper was another moniker he earned from his peers. However, Raiden was significantly traumatized by this upbringing, as it had an emphasis on lack of emotion, lack of empathy, and killing without remorse. This goes against who he is at a core level, but because Raiden had never known anything else, he didn’t know who he was as a person. He had never been given the freedom to develop his own personality. Therefore, he repressed a lot of his childhood, not even remembering much of what he did in any detail.

Because of this, and because of his isolated upbringing that had a heavy emphasis on virtual reality (VR)-style training, Raiden behaves very much like a rookie during his first official mission for FOXHOUND in MGS2, and is introduced as having no former live combat experience. Of course this wasn’t true, but because he had repressed so much of his childhood and because he had never been released to do a solo mission before, it also kindof was true.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (MGS2) (2007-2009, age 24-26)

FOXHOUND, a U.S.-based high tech army elite special force, sends Raiden on his first live combat solo mission. The directive was simple: rescue hostages from the terrorist cell known as the Sons of Liberty. He was aided remotely via codec by his commanding officer, Roy Campbell, and his girlfriend, Rosemary, a psychologist, as well as directly in the field by Solid Snake (the franchise’s main protagonist) and Olga Gurlukovich, a spy. During the mission, however, Raiden is unwittingly controlled by a secret organization called The Patriots, which creates AIs that impersonate both Campbell and Rose on his codec, issuing orders to achieve their means instead of the mission he was supposed to be on. When Raiden discovers this, he has trouble trusting anything he hears and trouble discerning reality from simulation. This results in both fear and anger that follow him long after the events of the game. Despite his trust issues with Rose, Raiden learns that she’s pregnant and decides to enter civilian life to settle down with her.

Between MGS2 and MGS4 (2009-2014, ages 26-31)

Raiden does not adjust well to civilian life. Being a soldier is all he has ever known. In addition, he finds it difficult to trust Rose after being lied to by The Patriots, and clashes with her often due to his developing alcoholism and propensity to start fights with anyone who looks at him crossways. Events of MGS2 haunt him, particularly the death of a young woman at the hands of Vamp, a recurring villain in the franchise, in front of Raiden and purely to taunt him. He finds it all very difficult to deal with and doesn’t know what to do with himself as a civilian. He can’t keep a job, fights with Rose often, and when he learns that she’s had a miscarriage, he goes off on his own.

Raiden, as part of a debt he felt he owed Olga, searched for her infant daughter Sunny and rescued her from The Patriots. He was successful, but was then captured, tortured, and most of his human body was destroyed. Only Raiden’s brain, spinal cord, and head from his upper jaw up are still human. He was fitted with a prototype cybernetic body, officially making him a cyborg. Between what he suffered at The Patriots’ hands, his breakup with Rose, and the loss of his own child, Raiden resigned himself to the fact that he would never be anything but a soldier, a killer, and his place would forever be on the battlefield.

There was a significant amount of mental stress and identity confusion that he suffered with regard to his transformation into a cyborg, having lost 90% of his natural body. In addition to feeling like a “monster,” and a “machine” instead of a man, Raiden lost much of what traditionally defines “manhood,” which was a big blow to his idea of self-worth. Rose losing their child hurt a lot more because of that, since Raiden now is no longer capable of fathering children. For years, Snake lost contact with Raiden… until he surfaced again in MGS4.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (MGS4) (2014, age 31)

By this time, Raiden’s blood has been entirely replaced with White Blood (shiro chi), a synthetic chemical lymph/blood substitute designed to optimize the performance of his cybernetic body. When Raiden is badly wounded by Vamp during a confrontation in which he was reunited with Snake to protect him, Sunny performs dialysis on him, a process that the genius child perfected for him herself. Despite not being fully functional or repaired, Raiden continues to help Snake throughout the events of the game and manages to kill Vamp. This closes a big chapter of his life, as Vamp was always a sore spot after what he’d done in MGS2.

Throughout the game, Raiden adheres very closely to katsujinken, a samurai code in which the evil of killing is accepted as necessary if it is done to protect innocent life. His fighting style becomes very much like that of a samurai as well, relying on blades and specifically a high-frequency samurai sword as his main weapons as opposed to firearms. This remains his fighting style of choice for the rest of the franchise.

Raiden is a somber and tragic character in MGS4, believing that he is nothing more than a solider, and that he has lost Rose, having been told that she married Roy Campbell, his former commanding officer from MGS2. He often thinks very little of his self-worth, his own wants and needs, his physical body, or his life in comparison to the lives of comrades and innocents. At several points in the game, he sacrifices parts of himself to save others, including stabbing through himself to run Vamp through as well, cutting off his own arm to aid Snake, allowing himself to be crushed beneath a grounding ship to save Snake, and fighting armless and while malfunctioning electronically to yet again help Snake complete his mission.

The level of honor, bravery, and sacrifice he exhibits at this time in his life is remarkable considering the level of torture, trauma, and betrayal he has suffered. It is the first time in his life, however, that he is free to live as he wants, no longer feeling that he is under anyone else’s control. It’s the first time he has free will, and what he chooses to do with it is remarkable. However, Raiden also suffers from depression, PTSD, and crushing loneliness by this time, which sometimes affects his decision-making and performance in the field.

After the game ends, Raiden finds out that Rose did not marry Campbell, nor did she have a miscarriage. Raiden was lied to and a ruse constructed for Rose to protect her from The Patriots, who were targeting those Raiden cared about. He meets his son John (nicknamed Little John), already five years old, and reconciles with Rose, despite yet again having trust issues with her.

Between MGS4 and MGR:R (2014-2018, age 31-35)

Raiden cannot remain in civilian life, and so he finds a way to provide for his family while still living a life he can realistically sustain emotionally and psychologically for himself. He joins the PMC (private military company) Maverick Security Consulting as a way of supporting Rose and Little John. With this organization, Raiden has access to top-tier technology for his combat body, as well as upgrades and medical care. Wilhelm “Doktor” Voight, a scientist working with Maverick, provides Raiden with tech support both on and off the field as well as performing and advising him on the technical upgrades that he receives to his cybernetic body.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (MGR:R) (2018, age 35)

There’s so much to unpack for this game, so I’m going to summarize just very briefly the major points for Raiden’s psychology, which is what is most important for this blog. He goes through a journey in this game which involves him coming to terms with his past and with being excellent at killing, while still trying to be a good, moral person. He begins the game still trying to adhere to katsujinken, but increasingly he feels that this is just a smokescreen, a crutch. He worries that he is nothing more than an emotionless killer, one who enjoys killing, still ashamed of his history as a child solider. That Raiden is good at killing is undeniable, and he knows that he gains pleasure from killing his enemies. He feels this is wrong, however, and tries to suppress those feelings.

When an enemy called Jetstream Sam emerges, a member of the terrorist group Desperado Enforcement LLC and a man of Brazilian-Japanese descent whose style also incorporates samurai blades and discipline, Raiden is forced to face his guilt. Sam makes it possible for Raiden to hear the thoughts of the cyborgs he kills, most of which are just hired hands trying to make a living. They’re scared, they worry for their families, they just want to go home… and this begins to break Raiden down mentally. He very nearly has a mental break listening to their thoughts as he kills them.

What we all learn through DLC is that Sam is doing this on purpose to Raiden, to help him become more emotionally stable. Long story short, the main villain of the game is someone Sam hates as well, but after being defeated by him, Sam joins his cause as a ruse so that he has access to the man’s enemies. Meeting Raiden, he grooms him to be able to do what Sam could not… kill the main villain, a U.S. senator augmented with nanomachines (not unlike Vamp from earlier games) that make him nearly un-killable. Having Raiden confront his guilt was stage one. Stage two involved bringing out all that Raiden had repressed, all that held him back. That meant… awakening the Ripper…

Jack the Ripper, a name given to him as a child, is very nearly like a protective personality that emerges from Raiden whenever he feels too much guilt over killing people. Protective… to Raiden, not to others. This side of him, emerging almost in a Jekyll and Hyde fashion, is uninhibited, unapologetic, and unafraid to feel pain, kill, and enjoy it. He overkills his enemies, often using more violence than necessary because he likes it. This persona is the result of all that Raiden represses of his natural feelings toward killing, his anger towards those who hurt innocent people, and his deep-seated fears that there is nothing more to him than an emotionless killing machine… coming full force to the surface of his consciousness. However, the Ripper is not as strong as he seems, so Sam pushes Raiden to stage three of his emotional development…

…which is acceptance of who he is and acknowledgement that, although killing may be wrong, sometimes killing those who would kill innocents is necessary, the crux of katsujinken. The final test is a duel with Sam, in which Sam is killed (the intended result, for if Raiden can stand up emotionally and combat-wise to Sam, then he can defeat the senator) and Raiden inherits his ancestral samurai blade, an extremely powerful augmented high-frequency weapon capable of negating the nanomachine-facilitated fast-healing capabilities of the senator. Raiden defeats the senator, and after the events of the game is far more emotionally grounded and accepting of who he is as a person.

#about the muse #raiden

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63824peace · 4 years

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Tuesday, 22nd of november 2005

A friend pulled me into conversation this morning without even saying hello. "I saw a Quake-Cloud last week. It was terrible, frightful... just awful."

He claimed to have clearly seen a cloud shaped like an arrow, pointing from the sky to Roppongi Hills. He said it was obviously a Quake-Cloud... a premonition that Roppongi would suffer tremors.

The sight had shocked him so severely that he couldn't tell anyone about it until today.

"Last week?" I said. "But when? Which day?"

"I don't remember... perhaps Thursday."

"I hadn't heard any news of this."

"No, there's no mistaking it!" he insisted. "I saw a Quake-Cloud!"

He usually watches all sorts of television programs related to these matters. He's probably an expert by now.

"A Quake-Cloud, eh?"

What do Quake-Clouds even look like? Are they magnetic fields created from seismic distortions in the bedrock? I'm clueless on these matters.

I listened to him doubtfully, and he seemed to lose patience. The prophet muttered his forecast: "A huge earthquake will hit within two weeks." He appeared somehow relieved, and then he hastily tottered away.

A big earthquake, huh... maybe it'll come, and maybe it won't. If I start to worry about something as small as this, I might as well worry forever.

I should still prepare for the worst though. I have readied myself for the reality that a huge earthquake will hit someday.

I relayed the story as a joke to Matsuhanan, and he reacted with a serious expression.

"What's wrong?" I said.

Matsuhanan lowered his voice. "I'm not saying this to scare you, but--" His voice cut on the word. He leaned closely and hardened his expression. "I dreamed of an earthquake over the weekend."

"So?" I said. "What about it?"

"I had a dream, and in it we all got hit by an earthquake."

"Hmm. Well, still, that's just the sort of thing you'd expect from a dream, right?"

"However," he said. "On top of that, my wife also dreamed of an earthquake that very same morning."

Two similar events can happen, and we can still dismiss them as coincidences. Something more enormous than mere coincidence emerges when three similar events occur. How ominous....

Everyone who had not paid attention to our conversation earlier now listened intently. The air thickened, and the very atmosphere changed immediately.

Matsuhanan and I had both experienced the Kobe Earthquake. Memories from that time bubbled to the surface of my thoughts. I don't ever want to experience or see anything like that again. I decided to shut off these negative emotions as soon as possible.

"So you and your wife both dreamed of earthquakes? The answer's pretty simple here--you must have been on top of your wife without knowing it!"

"H-hey! That's not true!"

"Sexy Matsuhanan!"

"Oh, be serious."

I managed to ease the tense, nervous atmosphere with a little juvenile obscenity. We settled the matter with laughter.

We've seen some pretty scandalous problems lately regarding cover-ups of some buildings' vulnerability to earthquakes. The news broke when everyone concerned themselves with earthquake preparations. "How can we prepare for the big earthquake?" they asked. "And what will we do after the earthquake actually hits?"

I heard that some buildings can topple even under a small earthquake. If a building will collapse under just a small one, what will we do when the big one hits?

Dangers fill our world.

An earthquake will definitely hit us one day. No one knows when, of course, but Tokyo can't avoid its fate. It may hit tomorrow, within ten years, or even fifty years from now.

Still, we can't squander time worrying. We live in Tokyo, and we can't leave it. We certainly won't abandon it. We live with the possibility of disaster every day. Most importantly, we must avoid panic while also keeping ourselves prepared for our future quake.

A long time ago, Toho produced a movie called Jishin Retto (1980). Kaneto Shindo wrote the film's scenario; he's one of my favorite directors. The last scene disappointed me because it was just a rehash of the famous panic movie, Earthquake (1974).

The film's contents aside, the advertisement copy was great. It went something like this: "I knew it would hit one day... but I never thought it would hit today."

Over the past weekend I finally got to watch the bonus disc's extra footage from War of the Worlds. It lasted a total of 165 minutes.

They presented the Previsualization Method developed by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). The method draws out the full potential of scenes that use a lot of CG and CGI.

Film-makers traditionally edited the CGI and V/A composition into the film after they had finished shooting. There's a problem with that method though. According to these traditional methods, we needed to shoot the film against a blue screen background. We could have a hard time feeling out where the non-existent objects, scenery, and atmosphere belonged in the shooting studio.

Each person's imagination differs from other people's imaginations. We have a lot of room for miscommunication and misunderstandings. The shooting studio only becomes more chaotic when everyone on the set works out of sync with the total scenario conveyed on the blue screen.

ILM invented Previsualization to solve this problem. Think of it as a storyboard transferred into 3D images.

Each person can coordinate himself with the total scenario when he examines the Previsualized images in the shooting studio. People can arrive at a consensus understanding among themselves before they shoot... the actors, the special effects team, the stuntmen, and the CG team.

We can use this to determine how all the visual elements will correlate. We'll also work more efficiently with ILM's Previsualization Method. Production costs will drop. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.

James Cameron made a small model of his set while working on Terminator 2 in order to shorten his production period. He used a small camera to test various angles, and then he started to shoot. He cut back on the time needed to make his set that way.

Previsualization uses the same idea. We can decide how to adjust our special effects and our camera placement by moving character models through scenery in 3D space. We can decide how to handle our set, visual characteristics, props, and CGI usage after selecting the camera location.

This is how they produced War of the Worlds so quickly. Spielberg is known for a quick turnaround on his films, but Previsualization made this one possible.

I thought about how similar Previsualization seems to resemble our own development methods when I saw it in motion. We naturally used those methods when games became 3D in the late 1990s. We didn't pick it up from anyone... it's simply necessary to make our games.

We first construct the game using simple models and scenery. We treat the cutscenes the same way because they require cinematic effects. We test the module while minimizing all our resources, such as processing speed, MGS-defining characteristics, camera, and general operations. We must reduce everything to its bare qualities in our Previsualization Phase.

Once we fix everything using trial and error, we move on to full-scale production. The film industry's shooting phase equates to this.

Likewise, we don't use the older methods of making the game's map. Instead of drawing it directly, we structure the game according to the script team's provisional map. Once we've done that, we hand everything over to the designers. The pre-production period always lasts the longest while making a game.

The film industry could only have realized its Previsualization Method through digital technology. Film has finally evened out with the game-making process. Some aspects of game-making are behind the times. Other parts, however, are well ahead.

I ate lunch at the Nishi Azabu restaurant La Brace. I ordered spaghetti with ground chicken and Chinese cabbage. I wanted a drink of wine, but I controlled myself. Customers all around me wet their throats.

It's only on the lunch menu, but that was a big salad.

The pasta tasted delicious too. I paid a cheap price considering how much I ate.

We held our hiring interviews in the afternoon. After that we worked on our projects for MGS4 until evening, just like yesterday.

The project certainly is fun. I'd love to work on it twenty-four hours a day. I only want to create.

I'll totally shift my focus onto MGS4 once our new PSP project gets off the ground. I'll try to avoid entanglements such as interviews, clients, meetings, or lectures. I have to focus on my work during the pre-production and Previsualization periods.

At the bookstore I bought the fifth volume of Complete Cobra. I buy manga to read at a later date these days. I haven't got time to read any of them now, and the same really goes for novels. I finished reading Mr. Kurokawa's book Ansho, and I have started reading Parker's latest, Melancholy Baby.

I received my copy of NewWORDS, an entertainment magazine for mature adults. Kadokawa Publishing will release it November 25.

The cover really impacts the reader. It's a shot of Natalie Portman with her head entirely shaved! It will catch the attention of people in the bookstore. The magazine's first issue comes with a UMD Video that contains an episode of Blood+. I think it's really hip that they're not just including a regular DVD.

I wish this mature entertainment magazine great success.

I am actually helping NewWORDS by giving them an interview and writing introductions to movies. I'd like many adults to read it.

People in the past used to call Otaku a new type of subculture. Now we have all become adults. These Otaku now work as members of society, and they pay the usual taxes. They register to vote, and they participate in politics. They have married and now take care of families with children. They have become aware of their larger human community.

The Otaku's loneliness has disappeared, but his responsibilities have increased. These Otaku swore never to grow up -- yet they grew up without even noticing.

Nonetheless, games and anime still mean a lot to them.

People started calling manga "graphic novels." Manga became acceptable as dignified adult entertainment as time moved on. We also ought to have anime and games made specifically for adults.

But here's the question: will supply or demand come first?

Nothing will happen if we just wait for an answer. We're not looking at an issue of "When will it happen?" We're dealing with an issue of ‘Who will do it?’"

Who will innovate products to serve this market?

Now that I think on it, people in the last century used to call Otaku a new type of human being or an alien race. I think that Otaku should take a lesson from War of the Worlds -- they should return as adults from underground.

Our bodies retain the sturdy weight of our time's residue. As adults at last, we shall shed the filth on our own.

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63824peace · 4 years

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Tuesday, 15th of november 2005

We have implanted our children's genes into the surrogate womb... everything moves along according to plan. After today, we need only to check how well the mother carries the fertilized egg. Our cloned children will cleave apart and spread once we have finished checking.

We have only to wait for the delivery. The incubation period hasn't changed a bit. We can count on a smooth, natural childbirth. I intend to witness the delivery.

"Welcome to our world!"

We received our large stand-up store display for Subsistence. People will find it in shops starting December 6. Snake stands and salutes... he's nearly life-size!

The saluting scene gave birth to MGS3's whole story, so we want to draw attention to the importance of the image. We'll use the image to illustrate the package art too.

I asked Mrs. Miyamoto (one of our assistants) to stand beside the store display in order to give a sense of perspective. It's quite large.

I also compared it with our previous stand-up displays. It's relatively simple, but the design's simplicity catches the eye.

I walked a bit farther than usual for lunch--all the way to Azabu Juban. I ate Matsusaka Gyudon at the restaurant Isekan. It was part of a lunch set, so it came with a dessert called Ultimate Pudding.

It was good. Azabu Juban has a nice, peaceful atmosphere.

I stopped by Tsutaya on my way back to the office. For in-store background music they played Free Tempo's single Prelude, which I like. I heard that they have included the single on their newly released compilation CD. Tsutaya played it as a demo to expose customers to current releases.

I found an imported reissue of Joy Division's album Live Transmissions. I knew that I might already have it at home, but I wasn't so sure. I bought the copy anyway.

I continued browsing. I had hoped to find something interesting besides Joy Division. Then I received quite a surprise! I found Bananarama's new album in the New Releases section. They have lost a member, so they're down from three to two. I listened to it a bit at the Demo Station.

I also saw Miyuki Nakajima's debut album. I'll check Mr. Muraoka's opinion before I get this.

We're testing the OOOO System for MGS4. We've made it available as a utility application on our computer. People who heard about it gathered around Matsui-kun.

"Oh wow! This really is the next generation!"

The OOOO System will establish a different concept of MGS. Provided that everything goes smoothly, this will no doubt be another first in the gaming industry. The OOOO System will reflect the particular qualities of MGS4 well. Everyone appears satisfied.

We use our current development phase to evaluate the progress of experimental ideas and size up other challenges. Different development teams evaluate various aspects of a given game... they look at the systems, processes, presentations, the rules of a game, the gameplay, and so on.

Then we express our evaluations using terms like, "This will be good," "This has some problems," "We should pass on this one," "No hope for this one," and so on. We use these evaluations to advance cautiously, step-by-step. We must work like this to create a new game, especially when we're preparing to work with new hardware.

Each of these aspects forms only one part of the total composition, yet we cannot treat them as isolated components. They'll become disconnected from each other if we treat them individually. A game designer must therefore evaluate each portion by checking it against his vision of the total finished product.

We might compare each day's decisions with the work of steering a boat. Our efforts will result in nebulous confusion if we make a wrong move at any point, even if it's only a small tack to the side. We absolutely cannot afford carelessness, lest we risk becoming lost ourselves.

No one knows how to approach our type of work from the start. We're building a world that no one has seen before. We need to adopt attitudes of humility as we discover our development methods.

Above all else, we must remember to dream while we grope through the dark. Our labor will bear no fruit if we become negative at this early stage. We can't give up even on our most stubborn problems.

Game creators must learn how to make impossibilities possible... that's the trick of game creation. Right now we're challenging and testing the ideas that purportedly will make impossible goals possible. We'll feel even more joyous when we finish a good game because we'll have passed through all these straits.

Between our meetings, we held an afternoon brainstorming session in the glass room. We dealt once more with the new PSP project. Okamura the confessional man, Shinta (AC!D2's Director), Murashu, Yamamoto-kun, Yamada-kun, and I all attended as the six participants. We six share knowledge of the top secret ideas that form the project's core. Today we organized and developed our previous ideas.

We've made great progress. I've got a feeling that the project will work. It looks fine.

It's a new type of game, so we need to know whether or not users will accept the idea. We'll need to develop a trial version and test it. This changed our discussion during the brainstorming session. We discussed the best time to make the trial products that test each idea, how to create them, and how to evaluate the feedback received from the trial run.

The gameplay system will diverge from existing gameplay trends. That's really the selling point... so I've made my decision. We'll test whether or not people will accept it.

I don't know what got into Shinta at the end of our brainstorming session. He suddenly spoke as though he were proclaiming war!

"I'll be the Producer!" And he's already the Director!

Okamura (AC!D2's other Director) looked at me and gently nodded. He had already given Shinta his consent. I burst out laughing, and Shinta importuned me passionately.

"Can I? Can I please?"

"Yes, you can," I said. "It's always best to produce the game that you're directing. If you're up to the task, that is...."

"I'm good for it!"

I glanced at Murashu sitting next to me. He didn't say a word. He just looked down... I couldn't see the expression on his face.

Murashu and Shinta started working the same year, and they both joined Konami to work in production. They have a rivalry with each other, even though they arrived at the same time.

So Murashu, what will you do now?

Shinta has grown up... he looks bigger.

I ate a light supper at the Metro Hat.

I went to the gym in the evening. I hadn't gone there in a while. I think that I gained a bit of weight in Korea.

I didn't want to overexert my body right away, so I swam slowly.

I saw someone unusual at the gym. He openly read a hardcover book in the public bath. He sat up to his waist in water, and he absorbed himself in his book. He had an odd method, though.

Perhaps I ought to explain his unusual sitting position first. The bookworm sat while leaning against the corner of the bath, so the tub's edges extended to his left and right. A dry washbowl sat on the left edge. He had placed the book in the washbowl to keep it dry, and he held the pages open with one hand.

"Aha! The book won't get wet like that."

The covers peeked over the bowl's edges a little because the book was slightly too big. It looked kind of cute.

"But how will he turn the pages?" I wondered while I continued to observe him.

He had placed a towel on the right edge of the tub. The fellow put his wet hand on the towel to absorb the water. He turned the page with the dried hand after a while.

"Aha! Got it!"

The book wouldn't get wet that way. He looked skilled... he's probably a pro at this. He's a man in a bath (Furo) who reads (Hon) like a professional (Puro)... a Furo Hon Puro!

He must really love reading. Or does he simply enjoy reading in the bath? A resourceful idea can change a person's outlook, after all.

Then I got an idea. If I wrote my blog (Buloggu) in the bath (Furo), I would write a bath blog... a Frog (Furoggu)!

What would you think of that?

The gym had changed its lobby decoration from pumpkins to a Christmas tree. Christmas approaches at a breakneck speed.

I saw a young woman walking toward me while I traversed the long passage on my way home. She looked like she was in her twenties. Something about her seemed strange... something just wasn't right....

"What is it, I wonder?"

I looked at her feet. A black shadow clung to her ankle... no, wait... it clung to both ankles. I looked more closely and saw that multiple black shadows moved rhythmically in circles, according to the movement of her feet.

What are those? Some kind of spherical, amorphous creatures?

I finally understood what they were when she passed by. Thin strings anchored pom-pom decorations to each side of her boots. The fist-sized pom-poms spun round and round with each step.

She had two pom-poms per leg, so with two legs that made four. Four pom-poms turned as she walked.

In a way, they kind of resembled the old-fashion ball-and-chain fetters attached to prisoners and to slave laborers in ancient Rome.

She walked with a sprightly pace, spinning her steel balls round and round. She would never have associated her decorations with fetters.

Her back shrank into the distance.

How many fetters clank around my feet? I can only say with certainty that age latches more of them onto me. No adult lives without fetters.

I would like to spin my fetters as easily as she did, like velvet balloons.

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