Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-86.46.22.35-20130403153709/@comment-64.33.250.214-20150811050117

TheGentlemanGhost wrote: 64.33.250.214 wrote: 68.150.30.12 wrote: No, Ishmael is the player. He is also the guy who Miller is refering to when BB was almost dead. "What about him."

Remember when Kojima said: "That guy is me, looking into the world." It make sense because Kojima was a player, and a sculpter of that world. Kojima obviously has played the game.

The finishing blow to this theory is that Kojima showed up to GDC when TPP was revealed WEARING Ishmael's bandages.

It would only make sense, as you could use this character in MGO and the like. Recent gameplay footage showed character customization in action. Why would Kojima be secretive about Ishmael being the player, if he was just going to nonchalantly show off this feature a month before the game's release? Also, Ishmael has Kiefer's voice in the trailers. Are you suggesting we'll have the option to customize voices? I don't see how voice acting can be implemented to represent the player, unless you had the option to record your own dialogue. What footage are you talking about? The only thing we saw close to this was a soldier select screen in the MB demo, that wasn't a face customization screen. I'm sure more active boards like MGSF would have been all over that if I missed it.

Why would Kojima be secretive about it? Well, no matter what you believe, he has in fact been secretive about it. Journalists mentioned it popping up and all of them removed their comments about it, so it's safe to say it's been a secret. Every time I see this theory mentioned, I can honestly say I've never seen anyone so against it lol. I don't know how true the theory can be, I'm just surprised how resistant you are about it. But if you can't see how a custom character playing along side one of the most iconic charcters in gaming, in a game no one could imagine having such a feature within it's story, I don't know what to tell ya. Were you lurking in the threads just waiting for someone to comment on the character customization? Because I rarely see you comment on other topics...

It was in this gameplay coverage where it was confirms "you can pretty much be your own character": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkmFYcAWe7M

While I may have been slightly off, and they didn't specifically refer to character customization, the fact that it's confirmed you can control other characters besides Big Boss is basically confirming customization. It's really not worth waiting until release day to surprise everyone. As I previously stated, many games have implemented customization into story modes.

Kojima's been secretive about the characters, Ishmael included. Whereas customization has been shown extensively. If Ishmael is just customization, and not important to the plot like Gray Fox or some other returning character, I don't see a reason for being mysterious about it.

After years of theorizing who the character might be, to have it be the player would be really anticlimactic. I'm sure there are fan who'd be thrilled to insert themselves into the game, but do they need it to be a surprise like it's Christmas or something?

I don't know if you remember this, but before MGS2 was released there was a drawing for fans to be included in the game via dog tags. When you collected tags from soldiers in MGS2 you were collecting real names. Kind of a big deal at the time, but it wasn't kept secret.

In general, keeping customization a secret can be bad for business. Game conventions are about hyping potential customers for a product. Casual gamers who aren't huge fans of Metal Gear might be more inclined to preorder the game if they knew about character creation.