You forgot Bloodborne.

Yeah, it might be a nice little hack and slash, but won't have the emergent play possibilities, mechanical sophistication, and irreverant attention to detail and personality that is the MGS trademark. That's what I mean when I say Kojima is an auteur - no one else in AAA makes games as idiosyncratic  It's just another level of thought, like comparing Orson Welles or Stanley Kubrick to the guy who directed that movie that was pretty good but has no personal vision and you don't even know his name.

Actually, let me pull back on that a bit. The Souls games do show more of that personal vision and unique touch than 98% of AAA game that aren't MGS. I would include Suda 51, but the point is the above combined with a level of mechanical sophistication and expertise, which his games don't have

Yeah, I mean, I get Kojima has an unparalleled vision in video games, but Miyazaki definitely has a unique one of his own told in his own way. Hence why these are my two most wanted games of the year.

Plus I'm still getting used to the idea of From Software games being considered AAA. Demon's Souls is what we would have called AA a couple of gens ago. And Dark Souls 1 and 2 didn't have much higher production values. I guess BB is AAA by most people, but I still don't see it that way. I'll wait for the final release (to see how the graphics really look) and budget information to come to a conclusion on that.

Fair enough. Everything I've seen looks AAA though, but the final product will be a better indication.

Since Casey stole my line: You forgot The Witcher 3.

I didn't forget. Depends how similar it will be to the first two. They were conventional and mechanically weak. Unless they make some drastic changes besides just making the land mass bigger, it's not even in the running afaic. Now if it has Dark Souls or Dragon's Dogma level combat, then maybe. Plus, like I said, Kojima and his crew are veterans who have been operating at the top of the game for decades. I don't think CDProjekt REd are going to leap past them on their 3rd game.

How were they conventional?

I'm thinking of dungeon design, spell selection/spell casting, combat, character customization, structure, RPG features. They don't push themselves in these areas. It's all pretty straightforward and what you expect in 2015. That's not exactly a flaw, and TW isn't alone. Mainstream fantasy RPGs have settled into a very limited model of how things are done, imo. It's very rare for a AAA RPG to introduce a new or interesting system, or an in depth one (like Baldur's Gate 2's spell list and mage battles)

And again, Kojima and co. are just on a different level of attention detail and out of the box thinking. You can tie flotation devices to people and animals and have them whisked away to your base, and somehow it doesn't seem that bizarre, and it's not just humorous, it's a major gameplay feature. There is nothing comparable in RPGs since Planescape:Torment. Well, maybe Divinity:OS.  Why does Big Boss hurl unconscious guards 10 feet away instead of just laying them down like in normal stealth games? It makes no sense in conventional terms. But it's funny, it can be used as part of your gameplay strategy, and it adds some unique flavor to the character. In conventional games, you don't get those unorthodox touches, for better or worse. You don't get Psycho Fucking Mantis reading your memory card.

Um, no. Spells were quite different to most games. They could very rarely outright kill someone, and were mostly used to give you some breathing room to jump back in and kill someone. 

 As a question, in a conventional game, are you able to have a completely different second act with completely different quests, characters, and locations?

 The combat of The Witcher is actually very in depth, because unless you're playing on easy, you have to prepare for encounters. You have to use potions before you get into a fight to give you a boost, and you have to coat your blades in certain types of poison to even have a chance of coming out on top. Then when you're in the fight, you have to mix swordplay and magic, laying magical traps to immobilise, force them back, or just make get them off your back in some way.

 The first games combat was also very weird, and although it wasn't great, it was far from conventional.

 Yeah, you're right. As much as I love Kojima though (and I have a shirt that says Hideo Freaking Kojima), his plots are convoluted and nonsensical and generally ruined by his need to over explain everything. The ending of MGS4 really turned me off the series for so long it wasn't funny. I mean seriously, you had your ending, we don't need an 7 hour epilogue afterwards of just cutscenes trying to get MGS2 to make sense. Kojima is a mastermind of unique gameplay. It's just a shame we barely get to actually play his games.

Um yes, a lot of RPGs have utility spells. The spell selection is tiny and not very interesting to me. The whole spell game is not as developed as something like BG2 or even Dragon's Dogma. This is a limitation of being faithful to the books I imagine

Since acts are just seperate sections of the world and story, I'd say each planet you went to in KOTOR was like a different act.   I guess it's technically unconventional, but it never stood out to me as something important.

Yes, you have some depth to the combat, but I wasn't attacking that (my comment was reflecting BG2's wealth of depth, not TWitchers lack of it). Those options are still the standard fantasy RPG set of Melee, Magic, Potions. And your interactions are limited to what you can do in most ARPGs.  The Witcher does solid fundamentals with some unusual emphasis on one of them (potions), and that's fine. But imagine if they or any other RPG developer took a Hitman-like approach with numerous ways of killing things based on a constantly shifting environment, or if you could mess with enemies like you could mess with guards in MGS2 and on? That would be outside of the box for fantasy RPGs.

Yeah, Kojima is an undisciplined writer. Why he thought Meryl getting married should be any part of the plot is beyond me. Think he watches too many Hollywood blockbusters like ID4, where every character has to have their colorful life story wedged in there.It's garbage. MGS4 was half great, half misfire, so PP could flame out too. But I'm rooting for it because, frankly, most AAA games  these days don't really offer interesting challenges, especially open world games, and you know that at least the boss fights in MGS5 will keep on your toes and be unlike anything else out there. Combine that with unique  ideas, style, top notch production values, and a developed narrative, everything gamers ...I'm going to call bullshit if some plain old shooter or action adventure game gets more GoTY props. The can't make an excuse that it's low budget, no story, not polished, not accessible, too niche, not open world, too short, too Japanese, etc.

True. MGS has some of the most memorable boss battles in existence. Even when they aren't super fun you could never claim they were generic.

 I think it hurts harder with Kojima being undisciplined, simply because he is a skilled world builder. If he reigned shit in a bit more he could probably achieve narrative perfection, but he wants to technobabble on for 12 hours.

 I know games have utility spells, but they rarely make that the only thing you have.

 And dude. Uncharted 4 is coming out this year, so we all know what IGN's game of the year will be. To me this year will probably come down to Bloodborne, MGSV, and The Witcher 3 unless something absolutely amazing comes out of left field.

 Either way this is looking to be a much better year than last year. I mean apart from the three games mentioned, there's a new Arkham game, an new Just Cause game, a new Rainbow Six, new Persona, new Ratchet and Clank, new Zelda, new Resident Evil, Mad Max, a Final Fantasy game that might not suck, a new Sid Meier game, and a remake of Pathologic. Plus like 10,000,000 other games that look exciting. Not to put a damper on MGS V but it has a lot of competition.