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166-597: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is a 2008 action-adventure stealth video game developed by Kojima Productions and published by Konami for the PlayStation 3 . It is the sixth Metal Gear game directed by Hideo Kojima . Set five years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty , the story centers around a prematurely aged Solid Snake , now known as Old Snake, as he goes on one last mission to assassinate his nemesis Liquid Snake , who now inhabits

332-523: A Megaduke and commander of its armies and manages to fight off the invading Ottoman armies of Mehmet II . He saves the city from Islamic conquest , and even chases the Turks deeper into lands they had previously conquered. One of the earliest works of alternate history published in large quantities for the reception of a large audience may be Louis Geoffroy 's Histoire de la Monarchie universelle : Napoléon et la conquête du monde (1812–1832) (History of

498-619: A fantasy " setting. Tutankham , debuted by Konami in January 1982, was an action-adventure released for arcades . It combined maze, shoot 'em up, puzzle-solving and adventure elements, with a 1983 review by Computer and Video Games magazine calling it "the first game that effectively combined the elements of an adventure game with frenetic shoot 'em up gameplay." It inspired the similar Time Bandit (1983). Action Quest , released in May 1982, blended puzzle elements of adventure games into

664-446: A joystick -controlled, arcade-style action game, which surprised reviewers at the time. While noting some similarities to Adventure , IGN argues that The Legend of Zelda (1986) by Nintendo "helped to establish a new subgenre of action-adventure", becoming a success due to how it combined elements from different genres to create a compelling hybrid, including exploration, adventure-style inventory puzzles , an action component,

830-566: A monetary system , and simplified RPG-style level building without the experience points . The Legend of Zelda series was the most prolific action-adventure game franchise through to the 2000s. Roe R. Adams also cited the arcade-style side-scrolling fantasy games Castlevania (1986), Trojan (1986) and Wizards & Warriors (1987) as early examples of action-adventure games. Games like Brain Breaker (1985), Xanadu (1985), Metroid (1986) and Vampire Killer (1986) combined

996-431: A multiverse of alternative worlds, complete with the paratime travel machines that would later become popular with American pulp writers. However, since his hero experiences only a single alternate world, the story is not very different from conventional alternate history. In the 1930s, alternate history moved into a new arena. The December 1933 issue of Astounding published Nat Schachner 's "Ancestral Voices", which

1162-759: A subgenre of open world action-adventure video games in the third-person perspective . They are characterized by their likeness to the Grand Theft Auto series in either gameplay or overall design. In these types of open world games, players may find and use a variety of vehicles and weapons while roaming freely in an open world setting. Metroidvania is a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania ; such games are sometimes referred to as "search action", and are generally based on two-dimensional platformers. They emphasize both exploration and puzzle-solving with traditional platform gameplay. Survival horror games emphasize "inventory management" and making sure

1328-434: A 9.9/10 from IGN United Kingdom , a 9.5/10 from IGN Australia , and a 10/10 from IGN USA . IGN was quoted in a video review, saying it is "one of the best games ever made". Edge and Eurogamer both gave the game 8/10. GameSpot gave it a 10/10, saying " Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is the most technically stunning video game ever made", making Guns of Patriots one of only five games ever to receive

1494-455: A POD only to explain the existence and make no use of the concept, or may present the universe without explanation of its existence. Isaac Asimov 's short story " What If— " (1952) is about a couple who can explore alternate realities by means of a television-like device. This idea can also be found in Asimov's novel The End of Eternity (1955), in which the "Eternals" can change the realities of

1660-412: A Pennsylvania State Police officer, who knows how to make gunpowder, is transported from our world to an alternate universe where the recipe for gunpowder is a tightly held secret and saves a country that is about to be conquered by its neighbors. The paratime patrol members are warned against going into the timelines immediately surrounding it, where the country will be overrun, but the book never depicts

1826-460: A Union victory at the Battle of Gettysburg. When a story's assumptions about the nature of time travel lead to the complete replacement of the visited time's future, rather than just the creation of an additional time line, the device of a "time patrol" is often used where guardians move through time to preserve the "correct" history. A more recent example is Making History by Stephen Fry in which

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1992-465: A bitter war with the "Spanish" in Mexico (the chief scientist at the laboratory where the experiment occurred is described as a Gnostic, and references to Christian Gnosticism appear repeatedly in the book). Although not dealing in physical time travel, in his alt-history novel Marx Returns , Jason Barker introduces anachronisms into the life and times of Karl Marx , such as when his wife Jenny sings

2158-496: A blog entry in which it claims it will be unable to review the game either, claiming Konami have withheld review code because of non-compliance with the limitations. The article originally implied that the absence of a review was due to GameSpot's refusal to attend the Boot Camp event at Kojima Productions' offices. It has since revised it to state that the Boot Camp was a mid-development feedback and PR exercise, and would not have led to

2324-412: A certain drug, and the agent is constantly trying to maximize the consistency of behavior among his alternate selves, attempting to compensate for events and thoughts he experiences, he guesses are of low measure relative to those experienced by most of his other selves. Many writers—perhaps the majority—avoid the discussion entirely. In one novel of this type, H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen ,

2490-546: A character in Ada makes a long-distance call, all the toilets in the house flush at once to provide hydraulic power. Guido Morselli described the defeat of Italy (and subsequently France) in World War I in his novel, Past Conditional (1975; Contro-passato prossimo ), wherein the static Alpine front line which divided Italy from Austria during that war collapses when the Germans and

2656-545: A choice of what to say. The NPC gives a scripted response to the player, and the game offers the player several new ways to respond. Due to the action-adventure subgenre's broad and inclusive nature, it causes some players to have difficulty finishing a particular game. Companies have devised ways to give the player help, such as offering clues or allowing the player to skip puzzles to compensate for this lack of ability. Brett Weiss cites Atari 's Superman (1979) as an action-adventure game, with Retro Gamer crediting it as

2822-448: A complex text parser and no free-moving character. While they share general gameplay dynamics, action-adventures vary widely in the design of their viewpoints, including bird's eye , side-scrolling, first-person, third-person , over-the-shoulder, or even a 3/4 isometric view . Many action-adventure games simulate a conversation through a conversation tree . When the player encounters a non-player character , they are allowed to select

2988-480: A cost of JPY¥ 51,800, the bundle sold out by March 25, 2008. An identical bundle was available in North America for pre-order on May 19, 2008, in "very limited" supply for US$ 600 at Konami's official website. David Reeves has announced a similar bundle for Europe which includes a 40GB PlayStation 3, the game itself and a DualShock 3 controller. A downloadable version of the game was released on PlayStation Store at

3154-500: A cyborg ninja fighting against the Patriots. Meryl Silverburgh commands a PMC inspection unit in the U.S. military, which includes Johnny Sasaki . After learning that he has only a year to live due to Werner syndrome -like symptoms, Snake is tasked by Campbell, now working with the  United Nations Security Council , to assassinate Liquid Ocelot. In a Middle-Eastern war zone occupied by one of Liquid's PMCs, Snake meets Drebin, an arms dealer who injects Snake with nanomachines to use

3320-618: A different history. "Sidewise in Time" has been described as "the point at which the alternate history narrative first enters science fiction as a plot device" and is the story for which the Sidewise Award for Alternate History is named. A somewhat similar approach was taken by Robert A. Heinlein in his 1941 novelette Elsewhen in which a professor trains his mind to move his body across timelines. He then hypnotizes his students so that they can explore more of them. Eventually, each settles into

3486-764: A divided United States , in which the Empire of Japan takes the Pacific states, governing them as a puppet, Nazi Germany takes the East Coast of the United States and parts of the Midwest , with the remnants of the old United States' government as the Neutral Zone, a buffer state between the two superpowers. The book has inspired an Amazon series of the same name . Vladimir Nabokov 's novel, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969),

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3652-474: A nation. It assumes that by giving a nation an alternative history, alternative values can be made to grow." In the English language, the first known complete alternate history may be Nathaniel Hawthorne 's short story " P.'s Correspondence ", published in 1845. It recounts the tale of a man who is considered "a madman" due to his perceptions of a different 1845, a reality in which long-dead famous people, such as

3818-427: A perfect 10 from both IGN and GameSpot , and the sixth of only nine games to receive a perfect ten from GameSpot overall. IGN also included the game at No. 59 in its list of Top 100 Games of a Generation. Reviewers acclaimed the manner in which the title concludes the series. Eurogamer stated: "You could not ask for a funnier, cleverer, more ambitious or inspired or over-the-top conclusion", and IGN found that

3984-533: A result, Guns of the Patriots is one of the Platinum/Greatest Hits range of best-selling games, and helped to increase sales for the Metal Gear franchise and record profits for Konami in 2008–2010. On May 21, 2014, Ryan Payton, a former employee of Kojima Productions who worked on Metal Gear Solid 4 , stated that the game has sold 6 million copies. Action-adventure game An action-adventure game

4150-400: A review in any case. The day before Konami's restrictions were to be lifted, Electronic Gaming Monthly ( EGM ) reviewer Jeremy Parish clarified the reasons for the self-imposed review embargo, dispelling rumors of a disagreement between Konami and EGM on the review conditions in a lengthy blog commentary. His review of the game appeared on the website shortly after. According to Konami,

4316-519: A review, the magazine printed a roundtable discussion about the game. Kojima Productions spokesperson Ryan Payton has since explained more specifically what the NDA restricts, and has amended "some items [that] are outdated and require more explanation." He also listed the length of install times, noting that the restrictions were intended to prevent spoilers regarding what occurs during the installations. Following this statement, gaming site GameSpot published

4482-705: A side-scrolling platformer format with adventure exploration, creating the Metroidvania platform-adventure subgenre. Similarly, games like 005 (1981), Castle Wolfenstein and Metal Gear (1987) combined action-adventure exploration with stealth mechanics, laying the foundations for the stealth game subgenre, which would later be popularized in 1998 with the releases of Metal Gear Solid , Tenchu: Stealth Assassins , and Thief: The Dark Project . The cinematic platformer Prince of Persia (1989) featured action-adventure elements, inspiring games such as Another World (1991) and Flashback (1992). Alone in

4648-493: A similar fashion to an octopus, decreasing the probability of Snake being noticed. Additionally, FaceCamo is made available to players after they defeat Laughing Octopus. FaceCamo can be worn by Solid Snake on his face and it can be set to either work in tandem with the Octocamo or instead mimic the face of other in-game characters. To get access to these unique FaceCamos, players have to complete certain in-game requirements first. When

4814-400: A single avatar as the protagonist . This type of game is often quite similar to role-playing video games . They are distinct from graphic adventures , which sometimes have free-moving central characters, but also a wider variety of commands and fewer or no action game elements and are distinct too from text adventures , characterized by many different commands introduced by the user via

4980-637: A sixteen-part epic comic book series called Captain Confederacy began examining a world where the Confederate States of America won the American Civil War . In the series, the Captain and others heroes are staged government propaganda events featuring the feats of these superheroes. Since the late 1990s, Harry Turtledove has been the most prolific practitioner of alternate history and has been given

5146-453: A special Guns of the Patriots -themed version of Risk , which had playing pieces based on the game's various characters, plus a battle map based on Outer Haven. The game's characters can also be used as special allies. A novelization of Guns of the Patriots written by Project Itoh was published by Kadokawa Shoten in Japan on the day of the game's release. An English-language translation of

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - Misplaced Pages Continue

5312-592: A staple of the alternate history genre. A number of alternate history stories and novels appeared in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (see, for example, Joseph Edgar Chamberlin 's The Ifs of History [1907] and Charles Petrie 's If: A Jacobite Fantasy [1926]). In 1931, British historian Sir John Squire collected a series of essays from some of the leading historians of the period for his anthology If It Had Happened Otherwise . In that work, scholars from major universities, as well as important non-academic authors, turned their attention to such questions as "If

5478-593: A streamlined view and over-the-shoulder camera for aiming a weapon, with an optional first-person view like a first-person shooter at the toggle of a button. A further addition to gameplay mechanics is the Psyche Meter. Psyche is decreased by non-lethal attacks and is influenced by battlefield psychology. Stressors (including temperature extremes, foul smells, and being hunted by the enemy) increase Snake's stress gauge, eventually depleting his Psyche. Adverse effects include difficulty in aiming, more frequent back pain and

5644-470: A subgenre of science fiction , alternative history is a genre of fiction wherein the author speculates upon how the course of history might have been altered if a particular historical event had an outcome different from the real life outcome. An alternate history requires three conditions: (i) A point of divergence from the historical record, before the time in which the author is writing; (ii) A change that would alter known history; and (iii) An examination of

5810-619: A third. Robinson explores world history from that point in AD 1405 (807 AH ) to about AD 2045 (1467 AH). Rather than following the great man theory of history, focusing on leaders, wars, and major events, Robinson writes more about social history , similar to the Annales School of history theory and Marxist historiography , focusing on the lives of ordinary people living in their time and place. Philip Roth 's novel, The Plot Against America (2004), looks at an America where Franklin D. Roosevelt

5976-503: A time machine is used to alter history so that Adolf Hitler was never born. That ironically results in a more competent leader of Nazi Germany and results in the country's ascendancy and longevity in the altered timeline. While many justifications for alternate histories involve a multiverse , the "many world" theory would naturally involve many worlds, in fact a continually exploding array of universes. In quantum theory, new worlds would proliferate with every quantum event, and even if

6142-411: A tyrannical US Government brushes aside the warnings of scientists about the dangers of time travel and goes on with a planned experiment - with the result that minor changes to the prehistoric past cause Humanity to never have existed, its place taken by tentacled underwater intelligent creatures - who also have a tyrannical government which also insists on experimenting with time-travel. Time travel as

6308-427: A vehicle to expound them. This book introduced the idea of a person being transported from a point in our familiar world to the precise geographical equivalent point in an alternate world in which history had gone differently. The protagonists undergo various adventures in the alternate world, and then are finally transported back to our world, again to the precise geographical equivalent point. Since then, that has become

6474-531: A verse from the Sex Pistols 's song " Anarchy in the U.K. ", or in the games of chess she plays with the Marxes' housekeeper Helene Demuth , which on one occasion involves a Caro–Kann Defence . In her review of the novel, Nina Power writes of "Jenny's 'utopian' desire for an end to time", an attitude which, according to Power, is inspired by her husband's co-authored book The German Ideology . However, in keeping with

6640-476: A year left to live. He is living on board the airplane Nomad with Dr. Hal Emmerich, nicknamed Otacon , and Olga Gurlukovich 's daughter, Sunny , a child prodigy in computer programming. Since the aftermath of the Big Shell incident , Raiden has drifted away from Rose , who had apparently suffered a miscarriage with their child and gone to live with Snake's former commander, Colonel Roy Campbell , and has become

6806-447: Is a video game hybrid genre that combines core elements from both the action game and adventure game genres. Typically, classical adventure games have situational problems for the player to explore and solve to complete a storyline, involving little to no action . If there is action, it is generally confined to isolated instances. Classical action games, on the other hand, have gameplay based on real-time interactions that challenges

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - Misplaced Pages Continue

6972-434: Is a "touch shooting" game that revisits Guns of the Patriots ' s plot and action through the touch interface. Developers of the game LittleBigPlanet , Media Molecule , released an expansion pack based on Guns of the Patriots on December 23, 2008. It includes character skins for Old Snake, Raiden, Meryl, and Screaming Mantis, as well as a Metal Gear -themed set of levels. In October 2011, Konami and Hasbro produced

7138-469: Is a downloadable application for PlayStation 3 that catalogs every piece of Metal Gear lore from all the canonical entries in the series released up to Metal Gear Solid 4 in the form of an encyclopedia (browsable by alphabet and category), a timeline, and character relationship diagrams. Highlighted words in each article link to related articles, and it keeps track of which ones the user has already read. The Database automatically locks any items related to

7304-491: Is a form of historiography that explores historical events in an extrapolated timeline in which key historical events either did not occur or had an outcome different from the historical record, in order to understand what did happen. The earliest example of alternate (or counterfactual) history is found in Livy 's Ab Urbe Condita Libri (book IX, sections 17–19). Livy contemplated an alternative 4th century BC in which Alexander

7470-557: Is a game that has enough action in it not to be called an adventure game, but not enough action to be called an action game." In some cases an action game with puzzles will be classified as an action-adventure game, but if these puzzles are quite simple they might be classified as an action game. Others see action games as a pure genre, while an action-adventure is an action game that includes situational problem-solving. Adventure gamers may also be purists, rejecting any game that makes use of physical challenges or time pressure. Regardless,

7636-405: Is a story of incest that takes place within an alternate North America settled in part by Czarist Russia and that borrows from Dick's idea of "alternate-alternate" history (the world of Nabokov's hero is wracked by rumors of a "counter-earth" that apparently is ours). Some critics believe that the references to a counter-earth suggest that the world portrayed in Ada is a delusion in the mind of

7802-679: Is also controlled during the beginning of each separate "Act", although the player is not able to utilize its capabilities during this time. Whenever the Drebin menu is available, weapons, attachments, and ammunition can be purchased via Drebin Points (DPs), awarded for on-site procurement of weapons already in the inventory and by initiating specific scripted events or destroying Unmanned Vehicles. The conversion rate between weapons and DPs depends on current battlefield conditions, with more-intense fighting yielding higher prices. Drebin would also purchase items from

7968-450: Is ambushed by Vamp, accompanied by Naomi; but Vamp is killed when his self-healing nanomachines are disabled via injection. Naomi reveals she has terminal cancer; and, overcome with guilt for her mistakes, she disables the nanomachines keeping her alive and dies. Snake and Raiden use REX to escape and fend off Liquid piloting a Metal Gear RAY . Liquid reveals Outer Haven , a modified Arsenal Gear . Raiden saves Snake from being crushed before

8134-505: Is another attempt to portray a Utopian society. In Aristopia , the earliest settlers in Virginia discover a reef made of solid gold and are able to build a Utopian society in North America . In 1905, H. G. Wells published A Modern Utopia . As explicitly noted in the book itself, Wells's main aim in writing it was to set out his social and political ideas, the plot serving mainly as

8300-477: Is defeated in 1940 in his bid for a third term as President of the United States, and Charles Lindbergh is elected, leading to a US that features increasing fascism and anti-Semitism. Michael Chabon , occasionally an author of speculative fiction, contributed to the genre with his novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2007), which explores a world in which the State of Israel was destroyed in its infancy and many of

8466-469: Is due to intentional genetic mutations as a human clone , and that the FOXDIE virus inside him will also mutate within months, spreading to the general populace and causing a deadly pandemic . Liquid's PMC soldiers kidnap Naomi, but Snake rescues her, assisted by Drebin and Raiden, and they escape, though Raiden is injured by Vamp . Snake locates an Eastern-European resistance group, which happens to possess

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8632-424: Is heavily reliant upon the player character's movement, which triggers story events and thus affects the flow of the game. Popular examples of action-adventure games include The Legend of Zelda , God of War , and Tomb Raider series. There is a good deal of controversy over what actually constitutes an action-adventure game. One definition of the term "action-adventure" may be '"An action/adventure game

8798-481: Is incinerated, and Snake saves EVA from the fire when she tries to save the body, but both are badly injured in the process. Naomi leaves with Liquid, but Otacon tracks them. EVA dies from her injuries. Snake and Otacon learn that Liquid aims to destroy the Patriots' master AI with a nuclear strike , allowing GW to take control. A non-ID-tagged warhead is required from Metal Gear REX at Shadow Moses in Alaska. There, Snake

8964-664: Is set in Europe following the Nazi victory. The novel Dominion by C.J. Sansom (2012) is similar in concept but is set in England, with Churchill the leader of an anti-German Resistance and other historic persons in various fictional roles. In the Mecha Samurai Empire series (2016), Peter Tieryas focuses on the Asian-American side of the alternate history, exploring an America ruled by

9130-488: Is suggested that, had Gordon Banks been fit to play in the 1970 FIFA World Cup quarter-final, there would have been no Thatcherism and the post-war consensus would have continued indefinitely. Kim Stanley Robinson 's novel, The Years of Rice and Salt (2002), starts at the point of divergence with Timur turning his army away from Europe, and the Black Death has killed 99% of Europe's population, instead of only

9296-567: The Uncharted franchise, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Ark: Survival Evolved . Alternate history Since the 1950s, as a subgenre of science fiction, some alternative history stories have featured the tropes of time travel between histories, the psychic awareness of the existence of an alternative universe by the inhabitants of a given universe, and time travel that divides history into various timestreams . Often described as

9462-604: The Cold War continued into the 1990s before ending before the turn of the century. The events themselves take place in 2014, five years after Sons of Liberty , and form the final chapter in the storyline covering the character of Solid Snake, providing conclusions to the events that led up to Guns of the Patriots . The world's economy relies on continuous civil wars fought by private military companies (PMCs), which outnumber government military forces. Soldiers are equipped with nanomachines that monitor and enhance their performance on

9628-643: The Crosstime Traffic series for teenagers featuring a variant of H. Beam Piper's paratime trading empire. The concept of a cross-time version of a world war, involving rival paratime empires, was developed in Fritz Leiber 's Change War series, starting with the Hugo Award winning The Big Time (1958); followed by Richard C. Meredith 's Timeliner trilogy in the 1970s, Michael McCollum 's A Greater Infinity (1982) and John Barnes' Timeline Wars trilogy in

9794-469: The Empire of Japan and the Germans (and doing almost as much harm as good in spite of its advanced weapons). The series also explores the cultural impacts of people with 2021 ideals interacting with 1940s culture. Similarly, Robert Charles Wilson 's Mysterium depicts a failed US government experiment which transports a small American town into an alternative version of the US run by Gnostics , who are engaged in

9960-457: The Guns of the Patriots would entail Snake and Otacon turning themselves in for breaking the law, and subsequently convicted and executed. This was avoided after negative feedback from the development team. Snake's experience across the series made the creation of new enemies challenging and encouraged staff to create groups of non-human enemies to rival Snake. During development, the game's exclusivity

10126-634: The MGO2 menu item "MGO Shop (PlayStation Network)", or via MGO2 or Konami's shop. The PlayStation Wallet is used for the first option and a credit card for the latter two. Metal Gear Online 2 was completely shut down on June 13, 2012. On June 19, 2008, Konami released the Metal Gear Solid 4 Database onto the PlayStation Store in North America and Japan, and one week later on the European store. The Database

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10292-755: The Worldwar series , in which aliens invaded Earth during World War II . Other stories by Turtledove include A Different Flesh , in which the Americas were not populated from Asia during the last ice age ; In the Presence of Mine Enemies , in which the Nazis won World War II; and Ruled Britannia , in which the Spanish Armada succeeded in conquering England in the Elizabethan era , with William Shakespeare being given

10458-571: The time travel novel Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp in which an American academic travels to Italy at the time of the Byzantine invasion of the Ostrogoths . De Camp's time traveler, Martin Padway, is depicted as making permanent historical changes and implicitly forming a new time branch, thereby making the work an alternate history. In William Tenn 's short story Brooklyn Project (1948),

10624-522: The "fair world" parallels our history, about fifty years out of step, there is functional magic in the fair world. Even with such explanation, the more explicitly the alternate world resembles a normal fantasy world, the more likely the story is to be labelled fantasy, as in Poul Anderson's "House Rule" and "Loser's Night". In both science fiction and fantasy, whether a given parallel universe is an alternate history may not be clear. The writer might allude to

10790-813: The "first to utilize multiple screens as playing area". Mark J.P. Wolf credits Adventure (1980) for the Atari VCS as the earliest-known action-adventure game. The game involves exploring a 2D environment, finding and using items which each have prescribed abilities, and fighting dragons in real-time like in an action game . Muse Software 's Castle Wolfenstein (1981) was another early action-adventure game, merging exploration, combat, stealth, and maze game elements, drawing inspiration from arcade shoot 'em ups and maze games (such as maze-shooter Berzerk ) and war films (such as The Guns of Navarone ). According to Wizardry developer Roe R. Adams, early action-adventure games "were basically arcade games done in

10956-538: The 1920s. In Jo Walton 's "Small Change" series, the United Kingdom made peace with Hitler before the involvement of the United States in World War II, and slowly collapses due to severe economic depression. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen have written a novel, 1945 , in which the US defeated Japan but not Germany in World War II, resulting in a Cold War with Germany rather than

11122-484: The 1980s; Chalker's G.O.D. Inc trilogy (1987–89), featuring paratime detectives Sam and Brandy Horowitz, marks the first attempt at merging the paratime thriller with the police procedural. Kurland's Perchance (1988), the first volume of the never-completed "Chronicles of Elsewhen", presents a multiverse of secretive cross-time societies that utilize a variety of means for cross-time travel, ranging from high-tech capsules to mutant powers. Harry Turtledove has launched

11288-468: The 1990s. Such "paratime" stories may include speculation that the laws of nature can vary from one universe to the next, providing a science fictional explanation—or veneer—for what is normally fantasy. Aaron Allston 's Doc Sidhe and Sidhe Devil take place between our world, the "grim world" and an alternate "fair world" where the Sidhe retreated to. Although technology is clearly present in both worlds, and

11454-509: The American Civil War (named the "War of Southron Independence" in this timeline). The protagonist, the autodidact Hodgins Backmaker, travels back to the aforementioned battle and inadvertently changes history, which results in the emergence of our own timeline and the consequent victory of the Union instead. The American humorist author James Thurber parodied alternate history stories about

11620-412: The American Civil War in his 1930 story "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox", which he accompanied with this very brief introduction: " Scribner's magazine is publishing a series of three articles: 'If Booth Had Missed Lincoln', 'If Lee Had Won the Battle of Gettysburg', and 'If Napoleon Had Escaped to America'. This is the fourth". Another example of alternate history from this period (and arguably

11786-721: The Austrians forsake trench warfare and adopt blitzkrieg twenty years in advance. Kingsley Amis set his novel, The Alteration (1976), in the 20th century, but major events in the Reformation did not take place, and Protestantism is limited to the breakaway Republic of New England. Martin Luther was reconciled to the Roman Catholic Church and later became Pope Germanian I. In Nick Hancock and Chris England 's 1997 book What Didn't Happen Next: An Alternative History of Football it

11952-649: The Beauty and the Beast Unit compare poorly to the previous title's main foes, the Cobra Unit. The game was lauded for its technological and artistic achievements, with Edge describing the Otacon character as "the real star", and "a gaming revolution", while they found the game's score to be superior to that of many Hollywood offerings. The magazine felt that the few visual shortfalls, such as texture detail, did nothing to detract from

12118-517: The Church Peter Damian in the 11th century. In his famous work De Divina Omnipotentia , a long letter in which he discusses God 's omnipotence , he treats questions related to the limits of divine power, including the question of whether God can change the past, for example, bringing about that Rome was never founded: I see I must respond finally to what many people, on the basis of your holiness's [own] judgment, raise as an objection on

12284-486: The Dark (1992) used 3D graphics , which would later be popularized by Resident Evil (1996) and Tomb Raider (1996). Resident Evil in particular created the survival horror subgenre, inspiring titles such as Silent Hill (1999) and Fatal Frame (2001). Action-adventure games have gone on to become more popular than the pure adventure games and pure platform games that inspired them. Recent examples include

12450-484: The Drebin Points system and alternatives to stealthy play, were particularly highly praised with a few minor annoyances. The variety of set-piece events, details such as the psyche meter, and healthy provision of secrets were also remarked upon. Eurogamer tempered their overall praise with concern that one of the chapters may induce ennui but that the game quickly recovered, while Edge expressed mild disappointment that

12616-479: The Enders: The 2nd Runner . He also contributed easter eggs to Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear: Ghost Babel . It was announced that Kojima would be co-directing the game with Murata after substantial negative fan reaction, including death threats . Kojima wished to implement a new style of gameplay which was set in a full-scale war zone. Kojima wanted to also retain the stealth elements from previous entries in

12782-543: The FaceCamo is worn with OctoCamo, under ideal conditions, Snake's stealth quotient can reach 100%. The Solid Eye device highlights items and enemies and can operate in a night vision and a binocular mode. It also offers a baseline map, which indicates the location of nearby units. The latter function is also performed by the Threat Ring, a visualization of Snake's senses that deforms based on nearby unit proximity and relays them to

12948-516: The Great had survived to attack Europe as he had planned; asking, "What would have been the results for Rome if she had been engaged in a war with Alexander?" Livy concluded that the Romans would likely have defeated Alexander. An even earlier possibility is Herodotus 's Histories , which contains speculative material. Another example of counterfactual history was posited by cardinal and Doctor of

13114-574: The HIDECHAN!Radio podcasts instead), and 25 iPod songs (a twenty-sixth song, named "Chair Race" was removed for copyright reasons in 2011). On July 16, 2014, it was announced on the Japanese site that all DLC downloads would terminate on July 31; however, a workaround was made in January 2015. As of today, this is the only way to obtain the content on an unmodified console, as it was never made available on PlayStation Store . Metal Gear Solid Touch for iOS

13280-620: The Hawaiian Islands. Perhaps the most incessantly explored theme in popular alternate history focuses on the aftermath of an Axis victory in World War II . In some versions, the Nazis and/or Axis Powers win; or in others, they conquer most of the world but a "Fortress America" exists under siege; while in others, there is a Nazi/Japanese Cold War comparable to the US/Soviet equivalent in 'our' timeline. Fatherland (1992), by Robert Harris ,

13446-601: The Imperium is one of the earliest alternate history novels; it was published by Fantastic Stories of the Imagination in 1961, in magazine form, and reprinted by Ace Books in 1962 as one half of an Ace Double . Besides our world, Laumer describes a world ruled by an Imperial aristocracy formed by the merger of European empires, in which the American Revolution never happened, and a third world in post-war chaos ruled by

13612-508: The Japanese Empire while integrating elements of Asian pop culture like mechas and videogames. Several writers have posited points of departure for such a world but then have injected time splitters from the future. For instance James P. Hogan 's The Proteus Operation . Norman Spinrad wrote The Iron Dream in 1972, which is intended to be a science fiction novel written by Adolf Hitler after fleeing from Europe to North America in

13778-460: The Jews and Israel, Chabon also plays with other common tropes of alternate history fiction; in the book, Germany actually loses the war even harder than they did in reality, getting hit with a nuclear bomb instead of just simply losing a ground war (subverting the common "what if Germany won WWII?" trope). The late 1980s and the 1990s saw a boom in popular-fiction versions of alternate history, fueled by

13944-571: The Moors in Spain Had Won" and "If Louis XVI Had Had an Atom of Firmness". The essays range from serious scholarly efforts to Hendrik Willem van Loon 's fanciful and satiric portrayal of an independent 20th-century New Amsterdam , a Dutch city-state on the island of Manhattan . Among the authors included were Hilaire Belloc , André Maurois , and Winston Churchill . One of the entries in Squire's volume

14110-474: The Myriad Ways , where the reality of all possible universes leads to an epidemic of suicide and crime because people conclude their choices have no moral import. In any case, even if it is true that every possible outcome occurs in some world, it can still be argued that traits such as bravery and intelligence might still affect the relative frequency of worlds in which better or worse outcomes occurred (even if

14276-470: The Patriots , a box with artwork by Yoji Shinkawa , a Blu-ray Disc containing two "making of" documentaries, and partial game soundtrack containing only songs written by Harry Gregson-Williams . The Limited Edition was available exclusively at GameStop in the United States and EB Games in Canada, while a similar bundle with an additional 6-inch 'Olive Drab' Old Snake Figurine was made available at Play.com in

14442-511: The Patriots. After Big Boss' downfall in Zanzibar , the Patriots placed him in an induced coma , and later initiated the war economy, a vision far from the Boss' will. Ocelot and EVA planned to restore Big Boss by destroying the Patriots, with the possession of Ocelot through Liquid being a ruse to draw the Patriots' attention. Big Boss then kills Zero by cutting off his life support. He informs Snake that

14608-742: The Soviet Union. Gingrich and Forstchen neglected to write the promised sequel; instead, they wrote a trilogy about the American Civil War, starting with Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War , in which the Confederates win a victory at the Battle of Gettysburg - however, after Lincoln responds by bringing Grant and his forces to the eastern theater, the Army of Northern Virginia is soon trapped and destroyed in Maryland, and

14774-827: The Starter Pack for Metal Gear Online 2 ( MGO2 ). MGO2 features up to 16 player online tactical battles and incorporates several gameplay elements from Metal Gear Solid 4 , including the SOP system that allows players to have a visual confirmation of their teammates' position and battle status. MGO2 also allows fully customizable characters. The Starter Pack allows players to engage in sneaking missions, where Old Snake and Metal Gear Mk.II acquire dog tags from other human contestants, along with standard Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and several special modes. Expansions packs, offering more maps and playable special characters (Mei Ling, Meryl, Akiba, Liquid Ocelot, Raiden, and Vamp), can be purchased via

14940-519: The USS Missouri , captained by Mei Ling , arrives and forces Haven to retreat. Snake, Meryl, and Johnny board Haven when it surfaces in order to launch the nuke. At the core, Snake installs a computer virus coded by Naomi and Sunny into Liquid's trojan, which destroys both the core AI as well as the entire Patriot network controlling global affairs, leaving the necessities for civilization to survive. Atop Haven, Liquid explains to Snake that he allowed

15106-420: The United Kingdom. It is also included in the 40GB Limited Edition PlayStation 3 Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle. In North America, a bundle containing an 80GB PlayStation 3, a DualShock 3 wireless controller, a downloadable game coupon for Pain , and a copy of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was released for US$ 499 on June 12, 2008, to coincide with the release of the standalone edition. Japan saw

15272-667: The Universal Monarchy: Napoleon and the Conquest of the World) (1836), which imagines Napoleon 's First French Empire emerging victorious in the French invasion of Russia in 1812 and in an invasion of England in 1814, later unifying the world under Bonaparte's rule. The Book of Mormon (published 1830) is described as an "alternative history" by Richard Lyman Bushman , a biographer of Joseph Smith . Smith claimed to have translated

15438-637: The Year awards from several major gaming publications. It is one of the most significant titles for the seventh generation of video game consoles , as its release caused a boost in sales of the PlayStation 3, and had sold six million copies worldwide by 2014. In Guns of the Patriots , players assume the role of an aged Solid Snake (colloquially referred to as Old Snake), using stealth, close-quarters combat , and traditional Metal Gear combat. The overhead third-person view camera of earlier games has been replaced by

15604-540: The action-adventure label is prominent in articles over the internet and media. The term "action-adventure" is usually substituted for a particular subgenre due to its wide scope. Although action-adventure games are diverse and difficult to classify, there are some distinct subgenres. Many games with gameplay similar to those in The Legend of Zelda series are called Zelda clones or Zelda -like games. Popular subgenres include: A Grand Theft Auto clone belongs to

15770-452: The authors did not alter the real history of the past when they wrote the stories. Similar to the genre of alternative history, there is also the genre of secret history - which can be either fictional or non-fictional - which documents events that might have occurred in history, but which had no effect upon the recorded historical outcome. Alternative history also is thematically related to, but distinct from, counterfactual history , which

15936-474: The battlefield, controlled by a vast network known as the Sons of the Patriots (SOP) system. Revolver Ocelot , missing since the events of Sons of Liberty , is possessed by the will of Liquid Snake and re-emerges from hiding to launch an insurrection against the Patriots , a secret cabal that manipulates global affairs from the shadows. In the meantime, Solid Snake is experiencing accelerated aging and has about

16102-477: The body of his former henchman Revolver Ocelot under the guise of Liquid Ocelot, before he takes control of the Sons of the Patriots, an A.I. system that controls the activities of PMCs worldwide. The game was released on June 12, 2008. Guns of the Patriots received universal acclaim, with praise for its gameplay, graphics, characters, and emotional weight, while criticism centered on its plot as convoluted and its emphasis on cutscenes. The game garnered Game of

16268-481: The cause of a point of divergence (POD), which can denote either the bifurcation of a historical timeline or a simple replacement of the future that existed before the time-travelling event, has continued to be a popular theme. In Ward Moore 's Bring the Jubilee (1953), the protagonist lives in an alternate history in which the Confederacy has won the American Civil War. He travels backward through time and brings about

16434-514: The comatose body of Big Boss, in order to heal Raiden. Its leader EVA reveals she was the surrogate mother to Snake and Liquid through the cloning process. They move Big Boss' body by boat while Liquid's PMC soldiers attack decoys. Liquid captures the body and obtains the biometrics, intending to infiltrate the Patriots' system by using the repaired artificial intelligence (AI) core, GW, as a trojan . U.S. soldiers arrive to arrest Liquid, but he kills them after disabling their firearms. Big Boss' body

16600-428: The company had difficulties with "Russian composers who said we stole their music", referring to an occasion when a group of Russian games journalists presented Hideo Kojima with a composition by Georgy Sviridov and claimed this had been plagiarised to create the theme. Hibino states that "they didn't actually" but the company was "too sensitive about the situation" and elected to drop the theme. The official soundtrack

16766-435: The copies of you who made the same decision succeed too. What you do for the better increases the portion of the multiverse where good things happen." This view is perhaps somewhat too abstract to be explored directly in science fiction stories, but a few writers have tried, such as Greg Egan in his short story The Infinite Assassin , where an agent is trying to contain reality-scrambling "whirlpools" that form around users of

16932-706: The disintegration of the US Federal Government after Albert Gallatin joins the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 and eventually leads to the creation of a libertarian utopia. In the 2022 novel Poutine and Gin by Steve Rhinelander, the point of divergence is the Battle of the Plains of Abraham of the French and Indian War. That novel is a mystery set in 1940 of that time line. A recent time traveling splitter variant involves entire communities being shifted elsewhere to become

17098-517: The document from golden plates, which told the story of a Jewish group who migrated from Israel to the Americas and inhabited the region from about 600 B.C. to 400 A.D., becoming the ancestors of Native Americans . In the 2005 biography Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling , Bushman wrote that the Book of Mormon "turned American history upside down [and] works on the premise that a history—a book—can reconstitute

17264-553: The emergence of the prolific alternate history author Harry Turtledove , as well as the development of the steampunk genre and two series of anthologies—the What Might Have Been series edited by Gregory Benford and the Alternate ... series edited by Mike Resnick . This period also saw alternate history works by S. M. Stirling , Kim Stanley Robinson, Harry Harrison , Howard Waldrop , Peter Tieryas , and others. In 1986,

17430-523: The end of 2014. It was also briefly available as a PlayStation Now rental title in North America, before being delisted by Konami due to undisclosed reasons. It was added again to the service in March 2019. The game received new content through PlayStation Network (in-game downloads) between 2008 and 2009. A total of 49 free add-ons have been released, which include 12 additional OctoCamo patterns, 12 MGS4 Integral podcasts (the Japanese version got 18 Guns of

17596-448: The extent of a mock-up Trophy listing. In July 2012, a patch was announced that would include Trophies for the game, which would later be released on August 6, 2012. In addition to the support for Trophies, the patch also allowed a full install of the game onto the hard drive to remove the installs between acts. At a press conference on May 13, 2008, Hideo Kojima announced a marketing campaign and agreements with several companies to promote

17762-518: The first that explicitly posited cross-time travel from one universe to another as anything more than a visionary experience) is H.G. Wells ' Men Like Gods (1923) in which the London -based journalist Mr. Barnstable, along with two cars and their passengers, is mysteriously teleported into "another world", which the "Earthlings" call Utopia. Being far more advanced than Earth, Utopia is some 3000 years ahead of humanity in its development. Wells describes

17928-473: The game ' s release on any other console, stating that an "Xbox 360 version [will not be] released, because an Xbox 360 version of MGS4 hasn't gone on sale" and that "the amount of data in MGS4 is just too enormous". The game was publicly announced first at E3 2005 , by means of a humorous and slightly abstract gag machinima using characters from Snake Eater , under the slogan of "No Place to Hide". The title

18094-519: The game are a Triumph Bonneville and Speed Triple . Konami and Ubisoft put an unlockable costume in the game for Snake, Altaïr from the Ubisoft stealth game Assassin's Creed . Initially revealed on April Fool's Day 2008, Kojima later announced that it would actually be in the game, unlockable by doing "something special". To obtain the attire, the player must acquire the Assassin Emblema nod to

18260-454: The game in the vein of Substance or Subsistence would be released alongside a Trophy patch. In November 2010, an updated Greatest Hits box art of the game was released, which in the top right-hand corner boasted the addition of Trophies to the game. This was later reported as a typo, and removed from later printings. False reports of an "incoming Trophy Patch" often appeared, usually on internet forums and on April Fools' Day, some even going to

18426-426: The game shipped over 3 million units worldwide on the day of its release. According to Enterbrain , Guns of the Patriots sold 476,334 copies in its first four days on sale in Japan, which includes copies bundled with the PlayStation 3 , and caused a boost in PlayStation 3 sales. The PlayStation 3, which at the time sold about 10,000 units in a given week, went on to sell 77,208 units in the game ' s debut week. It

18592-425: The game's overall quality. IGN UK commented that the attention to detail in both visuals and audio represented "sublime brilliance", and remarked upon innovations such as the use of split-screen. Criticism of the game was largely leveled at the storyline, which reviewers found at times to be confusing, or poorly executed, and with IGN UK advising players to revisit the earlier titles for clarity. The overall result

18758-423: The game's production. It was revealed in an interview with Norihiko Hibino that the team, in fact, wrote 90 minutes of music for the game's cutscenes, only 15 minutes of which made its way onto the official soundtrack. There are two vocal themes for the game. The opening theme, "Love Theme", is sung by Jackie Presti and composed by Nobuko Toda. The ending theme, " Here's to You ", is sung by Lisbeth Scott . Before

18924-573: The game's title—or input a password in the Extras section). Konami had originally planned to organize grand launch events in Tokyo, but some of them were canceled with the "safety of participants in mind" in light of the Akihabara massacre on June 8, 2008. On June 15, 2009, a year after its release, Konami re-released Guns of the Patriots as a part of Sony Greatest Hits collection. Metal Gear Solid 4 includes

19090-455: The game, in order to prevent the leaking of spoilers to players who have not completed the game yet. In order to reveal these articles, the user must have a completed Guns of the Patriots game save that was created on the same console and with a version of the game from the same region as their account. A Limited Edition was released simultaneously with the game's standard edition, as an enhanced counterpart. The limited edition contains Guns of

19256-482: The game. Apple computers and monitors feature in the game and an Apple iPod is an in-game item that Snake can use to change the background music, listen to in-game podcasts and collect hidden songs scattered throughout the game. ReGain Energy Drinks are used in the game as a Psyche gauge booster, and mobile phones from Sony Ericsson are used, specifically by Naomi and Vamp. In addition, the motorcycles featured in

19422-406: The gameplay still follows a number of adventure game genre tropes (gathering items , exploration of and interaction with one's environment, often including an overworld connecting areas of importance, and puzzle-solving). While the controls are arcade-style (character movement, few action commands) there is an ultimate goal beyond a high score. In most action-adventure games, the player controls

19588-402: The hero (another favorite theme of Dick's novels ). Strikingly, the characters in Ada seem to acknowledge their own world as the copy or negative version, calling it "Anti-Terra", while its mythical twin is the real "Terra". Like history, science has followed a divergent path on Anti-Terra: it boasts all the same technology as our world, but all based on water instead of electricity ; e.g., when

19754-571: The last moment. Snake is then met by Big Boss with a vegetative Zero , with Big Boss explaining that the body burned in Europe was Solidus Snake . He then reveals that the Patriots were founded by himself, Zero, EVA, Ocelot, Sigint , and Para-Medic to realize the will of the Boss, Big Boss' mentor. Differing interpretations split the group into two factions: Zero's, which stood for government control of society to prevent conflict, and Big Boss', where soldiers fought for personal beliefs, unrestrained by governments. Zero consigned control to AI networks,

19920-437: The latest weaponry, and Meryl. Snake reaches Liquid, but the latter transmits a signal that incapacitates those nearby with nanomachines. Snake sees Dr. Naomi Hunter , who departs with Liquid. In South America, Snake locates Naomi, herself a captive of Liquid. She explains that Liquid plans to use the biometrics of Big Boss to access and take command of the Patriots' firearms control system. Snake learns his accelerated aging

20086-470: The making of Metal Gear Solid 4 . Kojima announced that he would be retiring as director of the Metal Gear series after Snake Eater , and would leave his position open to another person for Metal Gear Solid 4 . As a joke, the new director was announced as Alan Smithee ; in R , a 400-page book bundled with Metal Gear Solid 3 ' s Japanese Premium Package, the director was revealed to be Shuyo Murata, co-writer of Snake Eater and director of Zone of

20252-411: The nanomachines from Drebin contained FOXDIE, engineered by the Patriots to kill EVA, Ocelot, and Big Boss. With the new strain supplanting the mutated strain, Snake poses no risk of becoming a biological weapon unless he lives long enough for it to mutate. After understanding his mentor's will and telling Snake to find a new reason to keep living, Big Boss dies beside the Boss' grave. Snake decides to live

20418-567: The novel was published in North America in June 2012. Metal Gear Solid 4 received universal acclaim, according to review aggregator website Metacritic . The first review was a 10/10 from PlayStation Official Magazine – UK , commenting " MGS4 shifts gears constantly, innovating again and again". The game has been awarded 10/10 from Game Informer , as well as a perfect score in all categories (graphics, control, sound, and fun factor) from GamePro , Famitsu (40/40), and Empire . The game received

20584-460: The opening weekend. Konami has reported that Guns of the Patriots sold over one million copies across Europe in its first week, with 25,000 limited-edition copies "snapped up almost immediately". The game received a Platinum sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association , indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom. In the United States, it

20750-481: The player at a discounted price, especially at certain points in the story and certain days in real life. The game may also be finished without killing anyone, using non-lethal weapons. The Virtual Range, similar to the Virtual Reality training of previous titles, functions as a test facility for weapon performance and gameplay controls. Guns of the Patriots is set within an alternate history timeline in which

20916-489: The player has enough ammunition and recovery items to " survive " the horror setting. This is a thematic genre with diverse gameplay, so not all survival horror games share all the features. The Resident Evil franchise popularized this subgenre. Action-adventure games are faster-paced than pure adventure games, and include physical as well as conceptual challenges where the story is enacted rather than narrated. While motion-based, often reflexive, actions are required,

21082-400: The player's reflexes and eye-hand coordination . Action-adventure games combine these genres by engaging both eye-hand coordination and problem-solving skills. An action adventure game can be defined as a game with a mix of elements from an action game and an adventure game , especially crucial elements like puzzles inspired by older adventure games. Action-adventures require many of

21248-420: The player. Metal Gear Mk.II (later replaced with Mk.III), is a small support robot that always tags along with Snake, offers codec functionality and a means to the in-game menu for a large part of Snake's mission. It can be remotely controlled to stun enemies, provide reconnaissance and interact with the environment. Its design is based on the namesake robot from Snatcher , a game designed by Hideo Kojima. It

21414-460: The poets Robert Burns , Lord Byron , Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats , the actor Edmund Kean , the British politician George Canning , and Napoleon Bonaparte , are still alive. The first novel-length alternate history in English would seem to be Castello Holford 's Aristopia (1895). While not as nationalistic as Louis Geoffroy 's Napoléon et la conquête du monde, 1812–1823 , Aristopia

21580-402: The point of view of an alternate history is variously known as " recursive alternate history ", a "double-blind what-if", or an "alternate-alternate history". Churchill's essay was one of the influences behind Ward Moore 's alternate history novel Bring the Jubilee in which General Robert E. Lee won the Battle of Gettysburg and paved the way for the eventual victory of the Confederacy in

21746-418: The possibility of Snake passing out upon receiving damage. If Snake kills too many enemies in a short amount of time, he will have a vision of Liquid and vomit, greatly reducing his Psyche. Among the available methods of restoring Psyche are eating, drinking, smoking, and reading an adult magazine. Snake has a few gadgets to aid him in battle. The OctoCamo suit mimics the appearance and texture of any surface in

21912-543: The protagonist's doppelganger. Philip K. Dick 's novel, The Man in the High Castle (1962), is an alternate history in which Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan won World War II. This book contains an example of "alternate-alternate" history, in that one of its characters authored a book depicting a reality in which the Allies won the war, itself divergent from real-world history in several aspects. The several characters live within

22078-408: The ramifications of that alteration to history. Occasionally, some types of genre fiction are misidentified as alternative history , specifically science fiction stories set in a time that was the future for the writer, but now is the past for the reader, such as the novels 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Arthur C. Clarke , 1984 (1949) by George Orwell and the movie 2012 (2009) because

22244-415: The reality that is most suitable for him or her. Some of the worlds they visit are mundane, some are very odd, and others follow science fiction or fantasy conventions. World War II produced alternate history for propaganda : both British and American authors wrote works depicting Nazi invasions of their respective countries as cautionary tales. The period around World War II also saw the publication of

22410-547: The release of the Guns of the Patriots Welcome Box that contains the game itself, a DualShock 3 controller, a Sixaxis controller, and a 40GB PlayStation 3 in either black, white, or silver. Sony also announced a limited edition pre-order bundle containing Guns of the Patriots Limited Edition and a matte grey (officially titled Gunmetal Grey) 40GB PlayStation 3. First announced in Japan on March 18, 2008, at

22576-511: The release of the game, "MGS4 – Theme of Love – Smash Bros. Brawl Version" was provided for Super Smash Bros. Brawl in the Shadow Moses Island level. The "Metal Gear Solid Main Theme", composed by Tappi "Tappy" Iwase, was notably omitted from the soundtrack, and the soundtrack of Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops . In an interview with Electronic Gaming Monthly , Norihiko Hibino stated that

22742-475: The result "refines the MGS formula and introduces just enough new (or respectfully influenced) ideas to ensure that it stands on its own as a game". Edge concluded that "it is faithful to its fans, its premise and its heart, delivering an experience that is, in so many ways, without equal", while IGN UK described it simply as "the ultimate Metal Gear game" and "a dazzling, heart-lifting, voyage of discovery". The game

22908-439: The same physical skills as action games, but may also offer a storyline, numerous characters, an inventory system, dialogue, and other features of adventure games. They are typically faster-paced than pure adventure games, because they include both physical and conceptual challenges. Action-adventure games normally include a combination of complex story elements, which are often displayed for players using audio and video. The story

23074-527: The series, which made the team abandon the original "No Place to Hide" concept. The only announced war zone before release was the Middle East. Using several locations emphasized Kojima's original intention to present the world in full-scale armed conflict. Solid Snake was physically aged to portray to the player the games' overarching theme, SENSE, and to assign them to a character whose task was to pass moral values to future generations. Kojima's initial ending for

23240-453: The slaughter of the innocent thus entailed, remaining solely in the timeline where the country is saved. The cross-time theme was further developed in the 1960s by Keith Laumer in the first three volumes of his Imperium sequence, which would be completed in Zone Yellow (1990). Piper's politically more sophisticated variant was adopted and adapted by Michael Kurland and Jack Chalker in

23406-458: The style was somewhat appropriate given the rest of the series ("in many ways it's a vindication of Kojima's unique interpretation of the videogame medium"), and unlikely to trouble fans. The addition of a pause function for these story sequences was universally welcomed. Edge and Eurogamer concluded that although the game represents an apotheosis of the series style, it ultimately fails to revitalize it, and would not win over new fans. IGN UK

23572-519: The task of writing the play that will motivate the Britons to rise up against their Spanish conquerors. He also co-authored a book with actor Richard Dreyfuss , The Two Georges , in which the United Kingdom retained the American colonies, with George Washington and King George III making peace. He did a two-volume series in which the Japanese not only bombed Pearl Harbor but also invaded and occupied

23738-419: The time he has left peacefully with Otacon and Sunny. Metal Gear Solid 4 started development due to fan demand. Series creator Hideo Kojima had previously directed the prequel Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater , which was meant to end the series. People's demand to have a sequel to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and clear the mysteries Kojima wanted to leave to the players' interpretations resulted in

23904-528: The title "Master of Alternate History" by some. His books include those of Timeline 191 (a.k.a. Southern Victory, also known as TL-191), in which, while the Confederate States of America won the American Civil War , the Union and Imperial Germany defeat the Entente Powers in the two "Great War"s of the 1910s and 1940s (with a Nazi-esque Confederate government attempting to exterminate its black population), and

24070-505: The topic of this dispute. For they say: If, as you assert, God is omnipotent in all things, can he manage this, that things that have been made were not made? He can certainly destroy all things that have been made, so that they do not exist now. But it cannot be seen how he can bring it about that things that have been made were not made. To be sure, it can come about that from now on and hereafter Rome does not exist; for it can be destroyed. But no opinion can grasp how it can come about that it

24236-445: The total number of worlds with each type of outcome is infinite, it is still possible to assign a different measure to different infinite sets). The physicist David Deutsch , a strong advocate of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, has argued along these lines, saying that "By making good choices, doing the right thing, we thicken the stack of universes in which versions of us live reasonable lives. When you succeed, all

24402-522: The unwitting creators of new time branches. These communities are transported from the present (or the near-future) to the past or to another timeline via a natural disaster, the action of technologically advanced aliens, or a human experiment gone wrong. S. M. Stirling wrote the Island in the Sea of Time trilogy, in which Nantucket Island and all its modern inhabitants are transported to Bronze Age times to become

24568-773: The use of file compression. The budget for the game has been estimated to be between US$ 50-70 million. Kenichiro Imaizumi from Kojima Productions denied this stating if it had cost this much, the game would have been for multiple platforms. One of the main objectives of the budget was research of environments the game would feature. The score to Metal Gear Solid 4 was led by Harry Gregson-Williams , his third Metal Gear Solid soundtrack, and Nobuko Toda, who provided music for Metal Gear Acid and Metal Gear Acid 2 . Other contributors are Konami employees Shuichi Kobori, Kazuma Jinnouchi, Akihiro Honda, and Sota Fujimori. Directed by Norihiko Hibino , GEM Impact employees Yoshitaka Suzuki and Takahiro Izutani also made compositions late in

24734-553: The virus' installation in order to destroy the Patriots. The two fight, with Snake victorious and Liquid becoming Ocelot again before dying. Meryl reconciles with her father, Campbell, and marries Johnny. Raiden reunites with Rose after learning their child was not miscarried and that her marriage to Campbell was a ruse to protect them from the Patriots. Snake visits the grave of The Boss at Arlington National Cemetery. Snake, feeling that he has no further purpose and must prevent an epidemic from his FOXDIE, attempts suicide, but hesitates at

24900-559: The war ends within weeks. While World War II has been a common point of divergence in alternate history literature, several works have been based on other points of divergence. For example, Martin Cruz Smith , in his first novel, posited an independent American Indian nation following the defeat of Custer in The Indians Won (1970). Beginning with The Probability Broach in 1980, L. Neil Smith wrote several novels that postulated

25066-480: The world's Jews instead live in a small strip of Alaska set aside by the US government for Jewish settlement. The story follows a Jewish detective solving a murder case in the Yiddish-speaking semi-autonomous city state of Sitka . Stylistically, Chabon borrows heavily from the noir and detective fiction genres, while exploring social issues related to Jewish history and culture. Apart from the alternate history of

25232-513: The world's first superpower. In Eric Flint 's 1632 series , a small town in West Virginia is transported to 17th century central Europe and drastically changes the course of the Thirty Years' War , which was then underway. John Birmingham 's Axis of Time trilogy deals with the culture shock when a United Nations naval task force from 2021 finds itself back in 1942 helping the Allies against

25398-514: The world, without people being aware of it. Poul Anderson 's Time Patrol stories feature conflicts between forces intent on changing history and the Patrol who work to preserve it. One story, Delenda Est , describes a world in which Carthage triumphed over the Roman Republic. The Big Time , by Fritz Leiber , describes a Change War ranging across all of history. Keith Laumer's Worlds of

25564-451: The writer explicitly maintains that all possible decisions are made in all possible ways, one possible conclusion is that the characters were neither brave, nor clever, nor skilled, but simply lucky enough to happen on the universe in which they did not choose the cowardly route, take the stupid action, fumble the crucial activity, etc.; few writers focus on this idea, although it has been explored in stories such as Larry Niven 's story All

25730-487: The writer uses human decisions, every decision that could be made differently would result in a different timeline. A writer's fictional multiverse may, in fact, preclude some decisions as humanly impossible, as when, in Night Watch , Terry Pratchett depicts a character informing Vimes that while anything that can happen, has happened, nevertheless there is no history whatsoever in which Vimes has ever murdered his wife. When

25896-543: Was Churchill's "If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg", written from the viewpoint of a historian in a world in which the Confederacy had won the American Civil War . The entry considers what would have happened if the North had been victorious (in other words, a character from an alternate world imagines a world more like the real one we live in, although it is not identical in every detail). Speculative work that narrates from

26062-408: Was also described as being unusually sad and depressing for a video game. Kotaku said " Metal Gear Solid 4 is so unusual in that it's the rare game that asks them to be interested in something else: a march toward defeat, an interactive tragedy." The new control scheme ("the ideal balance of intuitiveness and range"), camouflage system, and shift to more free-form, replayable gameplay, in particular

26228-474: Was concerned that the game's hype and widespread praise may lead to disappointment but felt that the game was a "masterpiece". Several publications have commented on limitations given to pre-release reviewers by Konami, including discussion on the length of cutscenes and size of the PlayStation 3 installation. These limitations resulted in Electronic Gaming Monthly delaying its review. In lieu of

26394-465: Was continuously questioned, even after Kojima officially confirmed the exclusivity several times. The exclusivity of the game was still in doubt from non-PlayStation 3 owners for a long period after the initial release, with the company confirming that the 25th Anniversary edition of the game released in late 2012 was still a PlayStation 3 exclusive. Upon the release of Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection , Kojima had once again firmly denied chances of

26560-428: Was described as "essentially finished" by January 2008 and went through extensive beta testing . At Destination PlayStation on February 26, 2008, Sony announced that the game would be released worldwide on June 12, 2008, along with the special Guns of the Patriots -themed PlayStation 3 bundle. It was announced that Guns of the Patriots is the first PlayStation 3 game that uses a 50GB dual layer Blu-ray Disc , even with

26726-578: Was not founded long ago... One early work of fiction detailing an alternate history is Joanot Martorell 's 1490 epic romance Tirant lo Blanch , which was written when the fall of Constantinople to the Turks was still a recent and traumatic memory for Christian Europe . It tells the story of the knight Tirant the White from Brittany who travels to the embattled remnants of the Byzantine Empire . He becomes

26892-427: Was praised as emotionally engaging and topical, and characters such as Liquid Ocelot were singled out for the quality of their depiction. It was generally conceded that although the use of cutscenes were more intrusive than they needed to be, comprising "about half of the content of the game" by one estimate, and which "might make you crave action, or wonder why they couldn't have been turned into interactive sequences",

27058-450: Was quickly followed by Murray Leinster 's " Sidewise in Time " (1934). While earlier alternate histories examined reasonably-straightforward divergences, Leinster attempted something completely different. In his "World gone mad", pieces of Earth traded places with their analogs from different timelines. The story follows Professor Minott and his students from a fictitious Robinson College as they wander through analogues of worlds that followed

27224-472: Was released on May 28, 2008, by Konami Digital Entertainment under the catalog number GFCA-98/9. It consists of two discs of music and 47 tracks. A soundtrack album was also packaged with Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Limited Edition . In August 2009, when asked if there would be a patch to add PlayStation Network Trophies to the game, Kojima Productions' Sean Eyestone asked people to "stay patient". This led to speculation that an updated version of

27390-400: Was the 11th best-selling game of Japan in 2008, selling 686,254 copies. According to Chart-Track , the game is the second fastest-selling PlayStation 3 title in the United Kingdom after Grand Theft Auto IV and was below Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty ' s opening weekend figure by 14,000 copies recorded in 2002; the sales of the PlayStation 3 increased by a "minimal" seven percent over

27556-452: Was the best-selling game in June 2008 selling 774,600 copies (nearly one million if the number of copies bundled with the PlayStation 3 console was included), causing console sales to double over the previous month according to the NPD Group . It became one of the best-selling PlayStation 3 video games , and was the best-selling PlayStation 3 exclusive until the release of Gran Turismo 5 . As

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