Talk:Metal Gear Solid

US special forces with French FAMASs?

My only gripe with this game is why the Japanese developers decided to give the so called US special forces you take on FAMASs. It just has always seemed kinda weird with me. There are so many better looking guns than these. Excalibur01 09:00, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

That annoys me, too. It was used in the PS1 original supposedly only because it was "easy to render" graphics-wise. However, as far as Twin Snakes (which was developed in-house at Silicon Knights in Canada) goes, I would have preferred it to (a bit logically) be replaced by the M4A1. Spartan198 08:19, 21 February 2009 (UTC) Spartan198

True, that. I recently came into possession of Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes for the Nintendo Gamecube and was quite stunned to find that they hadn't updated the FAMAS to an M4 Carbine (or even a M16A3 assault rifle), considering that they bothered to put both the Beretta M9 and Heckler & Koch PSG1-T less-lethal tranquilizer weapons into the game.

I also saw somewhere that there was a Heckler & Koch submachine gun in the beta (possibly the MP5N) which was later cut from the release version. Unfortunately, I don't know the source off the top of my head. 203.206.5.121 14:58, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Famas is just ugly gun. Period.

In the Japanese version, the SOCOM was replaced by the USP from MGS2. So they had to render that into the game. So why couldn't they put a gun actually used by US Forces? Lazy people these days... Hoot471 22:03, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

That's damn right, Hoot471. 203.161.84.114 13:12, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Just chalk it up to people who don't know guns Excalibur01

Actually, according to the developers, they had been looking for unusual-looking and/or obscure weapons as well.

The FAMAS is not obscure because it's used by a major military, the French. Unusual doesn't describe it. They could have picked a more futuristic design 69.51.184.172

Not knowing about guns isn't the problem, Excalibur01.

The problem is that the development team of Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes only thought of adding things (first-person shooting, less-than-lethal weapons, etcetera) to the game, instead of improving stuff that was already in it (dialogue, weaponry, etcetera).

In fact, I remember quite clearly reading an article on IGN about how Hideo Kojima did extensive weapons research in preparation for developing the game.

The only reason for the French FAMAS assault rifle being in the original Metal Gear Solid was because of graphical limitations and if they had tried rendering an AR-15 model assault rifle, it would have turned out unrecognisable and that is forgivable considering that the game was released in 1998.

The Twin Snakes however, is a different story. 203.161.84.114 10:58, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Aside from the graphical limitations, I think from an ingame perspective it's possible that the Genome army, being a "black project," needed a standard assault rifle that was less traceable than "All-American homegrown" M4s or M16 rifles. It could be the case that the FAMAS rifles seen in the game were just the most available and least traceable 5.56mm rifle at the time when the time came to approve the weapons for the Genome army, and 5.56mm ammunition is certainly available from many more sources than rifles are.

Even so, it doesn't excuse how useless the gun is in Twin Snakes at penetrating body armour, which you can see in action here: [1] (granted, the player in the video is not using the FPV function to aim for headshots). --Mazryonh 17:22, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Why all the FAMAS hate? I think it's a really cool rifle (my personal favorite) and very original to this game besides it's getting boring to see M4 this and M4 that in every freaking game out there. (no offence. M4A1 is still a decent gun) --SilentwarriorX 14:28, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

M16s and M4s are used by so many nations all over the world (even at the time of MGS1's original PS1 release) that I doubt traceability would have been a problem, even for a black ops unit. I know it certainly wasn't back in the '60s when MACV-SOG units were launching covert raids into Laos and Cambodia armed with CAR-15s and XM177s, which weren't exactly commonplace like the M16/M4 platform is today. Compare the number of FAMAS users [2] with the number of M4 users [3] and you'll see my point that, if anything, the FAMAS is more traceable than the M4 alone, let alone the entire M16 family.

@Silentwarrior

No one is "hating on" the FAMAS. As for "M4 this, M4 that in every game", what else do you expect? The M4 is the standard by which every firearm of its class is judged. It's light, accurate, easy to maintain and operate, reliable, and highly modular. It's the epitome of what a military firearm should be. Spartan198 07:48, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Heh, nice yankee propaganda :) I still think that AK is better (I'm sure a lot of people agree with this one) and it's even more reliable and easier to maintain than M4. But why all the bother? Americans use a lot of european guns and nobody's complaining? --SilentwarriorX 04:48, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I stand corrected on the FAMAS. I do, however, remember reading that during the development of MGS they wanted an assault rifle that looked futuristic in 1998, so they picked the FAMAS to that end. It's likely that they also did so since it was easier to render convincingly with the 3D technology of that day. I own a copy of the PS2 version of MGS2, and even that engine has problems with rendering an M4 convincingly. The round handguard ends up being diamond-shaped, the front sight (being a 2D plane with no thickness) is invisible when you look at it head-on, etc. So it's probable that the FAMAS was chosen for having far fewer curves, which are hard on a primitive engine's polygon limit.

One thing needs to be reiterated though; the Genome Army are not a Special Forces or Black Ops unit--they are a black project, through and through. To my knowledge the Genome Soldiers don't have any field experience either, being raised only on virtual training.

Besides, the MGS series seems to operate on a different timeline than ours, especially since in MGS4 the XM8 was formally adopted. Maybe in the MGS timeline Colt never let their rights to the M16/M4 family lapse. It could explain why in MGS4 so very few soldiers use M4s (only Old Snake and certain soldiers from "All-American" forces), and no one uses M16s. It's too bad that they didn't implement the FAMAS in MGS4 for old time's sake. The M4 maybe the "epitome" of a short-barrelled assault rifle, but it's a standard that can be met in other ways, otherwise we wouldn't see things like the G36C, the FN F2000, the SA80 series, the Steyr AUG, the FAMAS itself, etc.--Mazryonh 15:24, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I imagine of people in the MGS universe use M4s (that's surmountable to saying nobody uses EOTechs because they replaced Snake's 552 with an Aimpoint CompM2). Even the enemy contractors were originally armed with M4s [4], which is probably the reason the US soldiers and Marines later in the game have XM8s, as a way of visually "separating" them from the contractors. Some of the dialogue regarding it was even left in when Drebin told Snake that the M4 Custom was "a favorite of the big PMCs" and flashbacks during the very first mission briefing even showed contractors with them. So the M4 is a lot more widespread than it appears in the final game. And who's this "certain soldier from the 'All-American' forces" you're talking about? Spartan198 17:23, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

I recall seeing a terrified trainee soldier on the Missouri in MGS4 pointing his M4 (sideways, for some reason) at the swarms of Dwarf Gekko crawling up the ship's bridge. Still, my point on how graphically difficult it is to convincingly render a weapon with so many rounded surfaces like the M4 stands as the most probable theory as to why it wasn't used in MGS1. They make up for it in MGS2 though (if I ever get my PC port copy working again I'll post screenshots)--Seal Team 10, the Tanker Marines, and the Presidential Bodyguards all use M4s.

I still think the relative lack of M4s/M16s in MGS4 (despite Drebin's quip) is a sign that Colt in the MGS timeline held onto their rights with that weapon series, and gave "preferential customer" status to the US forces, while making others pay through the nose to use those weapons, which is probably why FN has so much more market share in MGS4--the SCAR-H, P90, and Five-SeveN all make appearances among many more NPCs than the users of Colt products do. --Mazryonh 16:26, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

FAMAS Version

I'd mistakenly noted in the article that the Genomes used the F2/G2 version, but after playing it again, I noticed the full-sized hand guard rather than the small trigger guard (characteristic of the F1/G1 version). My apologies. I've also removed my noting from the article. Spartan198 09:28, 7 March 2009 (UTC) Spartan198