Metal Gear Solid 3's Ladder Section Is Genius That Must Not Be Skipped

thegamer.com:

These days, a lot of video games want to be movies, but they seem to do so without reverence for the power movies have. Film is a more legitimate art form, at least in the eyes of wider cultural critics, the New York Times, and the developer’s parents, and so this feels like the reason movies are in. If you make a game that somebody compares to a movie, they are essentially telling you it is less like a toy and more like a genuine work of art. But movies do not exist to be grown-up video games, and few developers seem to understand this. One soul who does, however, is Hideo Kojima. This is a man who claims “70 percent of my body is made of movies,” and he has been showing due reverence to filmmaking way before it was cool. The ladder scene in Metal Gear Solid 3 is one of the best examples of this.

Video games have always held that their greatest selling point is ‘immersion’. In a way, that makes perfect sense - unlike films, or indeed any art form, you are physically controlling the character. While there are some limits based on what the game allows for, the character essentially bends to your whim. You are them, and that’s a unique strength games have. But in terms of immersion, it’s also a little bit of a cop-out, and doesn’t always hold up. For example, many of you playing Elden Ring will find yourself dying to the same boss again and again and again - this might make for a fun and rewarding game as you git gudder, but it’s not exactly how the story of your legend is supposed to go. Likewise, many games suffer from ludonarrative dissonance where the cutscenes and narrative show the character to be one way, while the gameplay that allows you to murder at will shows them to be another way entirely.

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