Living up to a massive fanbase’s expectations becomes trickier and trickier as the scale of your project goes- much more so than it might seem like on paper. More than a few times over the years, we’ve seen examples of highly anticipated releases doing something particularly controversial that divides audiences and generates heated conversations, and the reasons for these tend to be widely varied- from bold narrative decisions to questionable design choices to limitations brought about by development issues and more. Here, we’re going to take a look at few such examples from the last decade that stand out in memory.
Keep in mind, however, that there will be spoilers ahead for every game we speak about in this feature, so if we begin talking about a game you don’t want spoiled, feel free to skip ahead to the next entry.
METAL GEAR SOLID 5
Not for the first time with Metal Gear Solid 5, Hideo Kojima claimed that he was making his final game in the series, and with that ultimately proving true, fans’ expectations grew to massive proportions. For a series as heavy on narrative and convoluted lore as Metal Gear Solid, wrapping up a long, complicated ark in a satisfying manner would be no easy task. On that front, MGS5 wasn’t exactly a resounding success, and even with issues such as its surprising lack of emphasis on storytelling to how many big questions it still left unanswered to even how many of its crucial narrative developments it relegated essentially to audio logs, the one scene that stuck out the most was where it’s revealed that Venom Snake, who you’ve been playing as the whole game, isn’t really Big Boss. Realizing that such a crucial part of the Big Boss’ story isn’t actually attributable to him but to a brainwashed clone was shocking, to say the least.
