[mgs] god the part in MGS3 where you escort EVA is so weird and out of place

i wonder if they'd planned more for EVA and ended up having to cram it into one sequence?

(i KNOW for a fact that MGS1 was planned to contain much more content where Meryl would fight alongside Snake, but it didn't work and got cut)

(... dammit, i love meryl )

i am nnnnot as in love with MGS3 as most other people, and... normally I find MGS's flabbiness charming and delightful but holy shit the finale of 3 is a mess (even though The Boss and the Ocelot WIG stuff is great)

PS2 MGS tends to have a pretty uncomfortable approach to how female characters can be interacted with because that's what happens when you get a character who can only interact with the world by shooting at it

but at least dragging Emma around isn't helpful except in certain emergency situations

with EVA, the only approach is basically 'lol well guess I'll strangle her and drag her around so her hair gets all messed up'

i think with Raiden and Emma the capacity for manhandling her is supposed to provide an element of comedy, in a very 80s movie kind of sense. like encouraging you to drag her through the bugs

and I guess the player's eventual treatment of EVA sort of matches Snake's emotions in a sense... "I need you. I can't pilot the WIG by myself."

but the game dumps a whole other player character on you, who you ALSO HAVE TO MENU MANAGE, in its last five minutes!

it's just bananas. and not funny

Is that also with the bit where you have to shoot guys from a moving motorcycle, and it’s split up by loading screens into like 7 sections?

that's the bit immediately before, which ALSO sucks, BUT 1) you get a fun part with Ocelot (surprising how frequently that happens AND YET Ocelot feels like part of the ensemble rather than just blasting everyone else off-screen) and 2) the extended Shagohod chase/boss fights are good.

I feel like the escort mission exists just for the bikini EVA spin-and-jiggle-her-boobs survival menu (and feeding her and poking around her medical history)... I don't feel it was intentional that strangling and dragging her happens to be the much easier gameplay method but who knows.

Boy, it sucks as an escort mission though.

I liked MGSV's early "be the ESCORTED person" mission a lot. I'm really sad that "The Truth" wasn't a reversal of it where you play as Ishmael escorting Ahab, that would have been an incredible take on escort missions.

I constantly forget that the EVA escort mission even exists because it was just a nuisance sequence that had little impact.

yeah, like that's why it's so weird! there clearly needs to be a breather between the motorcycle part and the part with The Boss, but I'm not sure why it has to be this weird sequence where EVA is basically thrown at the player as a toy to play with

even if you do lead her through chivalrously, you're still looking at her medical history and x-raying her body and feeding her shit to make her throw up

it COULD have been really emotional and scary, you've got a partner who was just skewered through the gut and you're being actively hunted. Just wound up more like an interruption than the drama it should have been.