"Sure. We're philanthropists. We're doin' society a favor. So what if we make a li'l money at the same time? We need drugs and organs. We ain't capable of adaptin' to space. The darkness, the loneliness.... It don't matter how well trained you are. You always give in. You know what I'm talkin' about, don't you, Jonny boy?"
It's easy to explain Kojima's quirks as a video game director by calling him a westaboo, wannabe movie producer, but by analyzing the likes of Snatcher, and especially Policenauts, we can see that by dabbing for a bit on the arts of VN/Adventure games, Kojima wanted to transcend the usual expository heavy dialogue nature of Visual Novels by combining it with his knowledge of movie directing, thus making these two odd entries in his catalogue feel like the missing link between Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, and what we would come to know as the iconic game that would change the landscape of gaming ever since, Metal Gear Solid 1
It really is a shame that this game was a Japan exclusive without ever being localized (not counting the fan-translation) due to the poor sales of Snatcher, because it feels right up there with Kojima's best works. Something which it's influences seep right into the rest of the series, given the addition of Meryl, Foxhound, the leitmotifs of the main theme being in MGS1, and the particularly sexy voice of Jonathan Ingram being cast by what would be Otacon's seiyuu, Tanaka Hideyuki.
Part of me wishes I could play the original PC-98 version since I love the aesthetic of the eroge pixel art they have with ports of those games, but the FMV animations they did for consoles are not a bad stylistic choice either, it all adds to the feeling of watching a direct do VHS OVA that only helps with the atmosphere.
Speaking of atmosphere, the worldbuilding is nothing short of fantastic, Kojima's word salad is at it's most cohesive here, everything from the scientifically accurate explanations of the adverse effects of space travel on the human body down to the osteoporosis caused by the lack of gravity and built up stress that results in less production of calcium, not only you can tell that Kojima did his homework about the space rush, but developed a believable world with airtight internal logic that best depicts this cool, otherworldly futuristic view of the cyberpunk world that makes you want to live in it as much as you wish to stay away from it.
While this is not the last time Kojima would speak about the space rush and revolve his games around the consequences of the cold war, it is the first time he specifically tries to imagine a world where we bothered to invest in space travel, proving that we cannot beat the final frontier for a reason, be it Jonathan's lost decades as he is forced to live in the past due to time flowing without him processing what he lost, to the shortage of organs and pharmaceutical conspiracies caused by the complications of living in space, the final frontier becomes less of a limit to be broken, and more of a cosmic horror that defines how it's denizens should act, that perhaps humanity itself evolved in the wrong path for trying to think it could ever escape the planet and it's laws that formed hundreds of thousands of history engraved in it's genetic code.
Can we ever get accustomed to living in an ambient that we were never meant to be at? Are humanity's achievements something to really be proud of, or is it all merely a luck of the genetic draw? Have we evolved too fast, or not evolved at all, if we are still faced with the same problems no matter what time we are at?
While the vibes and music alone would have made Policenauts an immaculate experience by itself, the Solid™ character and narrative writing from Kojima when he was at his prime makes it go the extra mile into a story that feels fresh 30 years after it's inception that I whole heartedly recommend it, for it has all the blueprints of what all would come to love from his most iconic intellectual property.
Also I'm surprised to see so many people complaining about the groping and the sexism on this one. As far as visual novels for the PC-98 go this is quite tame.
It's easy to explain Kojima's quirks as a video game director by calling him a westaboo, wannabe movie producer, but by analyzing the likes of Snatcher, and especially Policenauts, we can see that by dabbing for a bit on the arts of VN/Adventure games, Kojima wanted to transcend the usual expository heavy dialogue nature of Visual Novels by combining it with his knowledge of movie directing, thus making these two odd entries in his catalogue feel like the missing link between Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, and what we would come to know as the iconic game that would change the landscape of gaming ever since, Metal Gear Solid 1
It really is a shame that this game was a Japan exclusive without ever being localized (not counting the fan-translation) due to the poor sales of Snatcher, because it feels right up there with Kojima's best works. Something which it's influences seep right into the rest of the series, given the addition of Meryl, Foxhound, the leitmotifs of the main theme being in MGS1, and the particularly sexy voice of Jonathan Ingram being cast by what would be Otacon's seiyuu, Tanaka Hideyuki.
Part of me wishes I could play the original PC-98 version since I love the aesthetic of the eroge pixel art they have with ports of those games, but the FMV animations they did for consoles are not a bad stylistic choice either, it all adds to the feeling of watching a direct do VHS OVA that only helps with the atmosphere.
Speaking of atmosphere, the worldbuilding is nothing short of fantastic, Kojima's word salad is at it's most cohesive here, everything from the scientifically accurate explanations of the adverse effects of space travel on the human body down to the osteoporosis caused by the lack of gravity and built up stress that results in less production of calcium, not only you can tell that Kojima did his homework about the space rush, but developed a believable world with airtight internal logic that best depicts this cool, otherworldly futuristic view of the cyberpunk world that makes you want to live in it as much as you wish to stay away from it.
While this is not the last time Kojima would speak about the space rush and revolve his games around the consequences of the cold war, it is the first time he specifically tries to imagine a world where we bothered to invest in space travel, proving that we cannot beat the final frontier for a reason, be it Jonathan's lost decades as he is forced to live in the past due to time flowing without him processing what he lost, to the shortage of organs and pharmaceutical conspiracies caused by the complications of living in space, the final frontier becomes less of a limit to be broken, and more of a cosmic horror that defines how it's denizens should act, that perhaps humanity itself evolved in the wrong path for trying to think it could ever escape the planet and it's laws that formed hundreds of thousands of history engraved in it's genetic code.
Can we ever get accustomed to living in an ambient that we were never meant to be at? Are humanity's achievements something to really be proud of, or is it all merely a luck of the genetic draw? Have we evolved too fast, or not evolved at all, if we are still faced with the same problems no matter what time we are at?
While the vibes and music alone would have made Policenauts an immaculate experience by itself, the Solid™ character and narrative writing from Kojima when he was at his prime makes it go the extra mile into a story that feels fresh 30 years after it's inception that I whole heartedly recommend it, for it has all the blueprints of what all would come to love from his most iconic intellectual property.
Also I'm surprised to see so many people complaining about the groping and the sexism on this one. As far as visual novels for the PC-98 go this is quite tame.