A Name from Long
Ago
Temperature Tango – Suspicion and Deceit –
FoxDie revealed – Snake gets tricked –
Fox intervenes – Sacrifice – Snake destroys Rex
It’s an inevitable fact that upon beating a game a dozen or so times, some sections of it are going to get…well, boring. Mostly,
these are informational bits—I mean, who watches a tutorial for a game that
you’ve already beaten and understand the mechanics of? Nobody, that’s who. It’s
not necessary, right? You know all
the information already, what’s the point in going over it again and wasting
your time?
It was this completely logical thinking that led me
to wasting a whole lot of my time.
Last time we checked in, I had just blown a ravenous
varmint into kibbles and retrieved the PAL key. The key is actually three keys,
responding to different temperatures levels. So when the key is hot, a terminal
accepts it, and when it’s cold, and when it’s room temperature. Pointless? Yes.
Nonsensical in the long run? Yes. A contrivance to create backtracking to pad
out the game? Yes, yes, and yes. But we’re stuck with the hand we’re dealt, and
my hand is a particularly bad one, because I skip the cutscene where Otacon
explains how the key works. It’s all exposition, after all, and I’ve beaten
this game so many times, why should I listen to information I know like the
back of my hand? Turns out I know the back of my hand less thoroughly than I
thought.
What happens is I run up and turn the key “hot”
first. Makes sense: this whole section is tedious and the “hot” bast furnace is by far
the farthest away; I want to get it over with.
Right away I suspected something was wrong,
because the Codec conversation I’d anticipated didn’t take place.
Maybe I was misremembering, I thought. I spend twenty minutes making my way up
to the blast furnace, and another five waiting for the key to get hot, then I
rush all the way back to the command office and try and insert the key. No
dice. I’m flabbergasted. I try again. Rejection. What’s going on? Is the game
broken?
Then it hits me, like a snake sinking its fangs into
my leg, with all the pain and nausea that comes with it: you have to put the
keys in order: room temp, then cold, then hot. Which Otacon explained to me in
the cut scene that I so dismissively eschewed watching.
Yeah, had to leave the game a little while.
Not to mention waiting another fifteen minutes for the key to get back to room
temperature so that I could do the cursed contrivance correctly. But I’m not
bitter or anything.
This whole PAL key fiasco is just busywork at its
most inglorious anyway. It’s by far the most banal, irksome portion of the game, and
as I mentioned before, it doesn’t make sense logically: I mean, what if a
situation went critical and Metal Gear Rex had
to be activated, immediately? What, are you going to spend fifteen minutes
getting the key alternately hot and cold? And with what? Are you going to send
it by courier to the inexplicable freezer and then to the furnace? Are you
going to have a little hair dryer in the command room? We'd all be dead by then.
Safeguards are one thing, but then there’s making something so safe you cripple
its very function.
It’s the same with the Codec. Throughout this
interlude, Master’s been calling Campbell and Snake with his suspicion that
Naomi’s a spy with some other hidden nefarious purpose. Then Campbell finds
Naomi sending encrypted messages from the sub, corroborating Master’s claims.
Naomi gets locked up, and then secretly calls me. This is probably the most
important call in the game: it’s where we learn about who Naomi is: how Frank
Jaeger/Gray Fox/Cyborg Ninja rescued her when she was a child, raised her, and
how crushed and bitter she feels toward Snake for killing him in Zanzibar. She
also describes the FoxDie virus: what it is, how it works, and that she has, in
fact, infected Snake—although her feelings toward him have now become somewhat more
complicated. As usual, all this takes place on a black screen with green
cutouts of the characters faces, lessening the emotional impact.
But let me posit that there are perhaps some
limitations to the medium video games that are absolutely unavoidable? Gameplay
is interactive storytelling, but there are only a couple of kinds of
interacting you can do: for character
driven games, as an example, you can have the player character be in first
person, or you can have the player character be in more omniscient third
person. But paradigms are inevitably going to sacrifice something towards the overall mission of player interactivity, even
if it’s as paltry as dynamism; by that I mean you can’t have a frantic, highly
edited action sequence at a juncture of player interactivity, because it
removes the player from the equation. Confuses and disorients them. This,
therefore, is a sacrifice on the altar of interactivity.
Meaning that if you’re going to make a third person
tactical espionage video game, with a one-man infiltrator sneaking upon a
highly guarded nuclear warhead storage facility/WMD research center, you are
going to have to separate the emotional core from the player itself, because
there’s nothing, emotionally, for the character to “interact” with. Snake finds
Otacon, for example, because he needs him—but the two had no prior relationship
before the game, and while their friendship is the founding arc of the game,
the emotional center—that is, the characters that Snake has a relationship
with—at the start of the game are, by necessity, a hundred miles away in a
submarine. It’s completely logical: one man infiltrator is going to have a
support team off site somewhere. But what it sacrifices is that same emotional
core. It’s easy to have a game with a one man infiltration story: I mean,
there’s barely any interactivity considerations you have to go in with. The one
man is the player, and therefore anything the story requires will have to be
done by the one man, and therefore the player. But the game wants more than
that: it wants interactivity and a deep,
thoughtful, emotional story. The only way it can figure to do this is to have
these emotional moments on a black screen with green cutouts; the incongruity
of the two, therefore, is a sacrifice on the altar of interactivity. When
gaming truly solves the dissension between its emotion and its practicality is
when I think the form will truly have “arrived” as a medium of narrative art.
It’s come close, but it’s not quite there yet. Maybe it never can be—I mean,
just like a film can’t fluidly give you the inner workings of a character’s
mind the way a novel can. But here’s hoping.
The PAL thing takes, literally, an hour—okay, maybe
only if you make the atrocious mistake I made—but even if you didn’t, it takes
a few minutes for the key to “change over,” meaning, first timers, that you’re
literally going to be standing in the freezer/blast furnace, doing nothing, for
an indeterminate amount of time. So, you know, unload the dishwasher, make a
sandwich, finish that research paper. Me? I got through a good amount of The Brothers Karamazov (Note: It was okay. –E).
Of course the tedium does serve one critical function: it lulls you into a false sense
of security, so that when you insert that last key and the computer cheerfully announces
that you have, in fact, activated
Metal Gear Rex, you jump out of your seat in shock and alarm.
A lot of people apparently figured out Master Miller
was Liquid long before the reveal, but I remember it legitimately shocking me
the first time I played this, way back on the little Windows PC. And all I can
say is: you better have gotten that gas mask.
In one swift stroke, and one of Kojima’s better
writing moments, all the hints and threads from the game come to an
astonishingly succinct and effective conclusion. Liquid tells you about the
real DARPA Chief—the body that was thrown in with you in the cell—and how
Ocelot accidentally killed him before being about to torture the code out of him.
How Decoy Octopus then disguised himself in a ruse to get the code out of you.
And, finally, how they planned to “let” you through the base, thinking you were
advancing, but in reality only getting closer to activating Rex for them. It’s
a wonderful turn, not only for the storytelling, but for the game logic as a
whole, completely dissuading any doubt about even someone as legendary of Solid
Snake making it as far into the complex as he has—“Huh?” says Liquid. “You
didn’t think you made it this far by yourself?”
That brings up the question of whether the FoxHound
minions were holding back and letting
Snake kill them, but honestly? It’s plausible. If Sniper Wolf was anything to
go by, the whole group were looking for a way off this mortal plain anyway. The
only ones without some kind of death wish were Liquid and Ocelot, and lo and
behold, who’s left standing at the end.
Liquid informs me helpfully that I’ve served my
purpose and that I may die now. The doors lock and the place fills with gas.
Like I said: gas mask. Never would have thought it would come in handy this late
in the game, did you? Item scouring, people.
In a nice fit of logic, calling Otacon gets me out
of the room lickety-split—it’s a simple matter of him overriding the program
keeping the door shut, and then I run outside for the final confrontation with
Liquid and his two hundred ton nuclear tank.
Liquid jumps into the cockpit after a quick
conversation about FoxDie, Les Enfants
Terribles (the science project attempting to make clones of Big Boss that
created Snake and Liquid), and Liquid’s misunderstanding of how genetics
work—recessive genes do not work that way. Although, in all honesty, it
probably works. It doesn’t really matter
that recessive genes don’t make you “genetic garbage” or anything (as proven
that it’s actually Snake that has the recessive genes, spoiler alert), but when
you’re erstwhile father tells you
they do, at some point you’re going to start to believe it.
Liquid activates Metal Gear Rex in what is still one
of the most awesome preludes to a boss fight ever:
I mean, you can just feel the power, and the
majesty, and the terror that this
machine would strike into the hearts of foes. Honestly, we can’t pass by this
point without mentioning just how well designed Rex is; its form has become
almost a staple of the video game culture. It’s a perfect synthesis of form and
practicality. It doesn’t have the flash and verve of, say, the Transformers or
Gundams, but it doesn’t need to. In a world that places an emphasis on
“realism,” no matter how stretched, praise must be given to the designers for
the fact that Metal Gear Rex actually looks plausible, like something that
maybe, possibly, could in some universe be constructed one day. I mean, it
never will, and it is probably im-possible—but
it doesn’t look like it is, and
that’s what matters. Like I said, a harmony of awesome and logic.
Oh my God, what did…did it just shriek?
Kojima…I just…I can’t...
Snake: How do
I stop it?
Me: CHAFF GRENADES!!!!!!!
(Chaff
grenades miracles: 5)
Yes indeed, my friends: our ever-faithful explosive
radar-masking device comes through one more time in the clutch, providing the
sure fire way to win the first round of this fight against the walking
behemoth. Chaff grenades completely bamboozle Rex’s raydome, the device that
provides feedback for its virtual interface. Hock a chaff, move out of Rex’s
line of fire, shove a Stinger missile right up its power couplings. The idea is
to take down the raydome, thereby forcing Liquid to open the cockpit and attack
you using mere eyesight alone, allowing you to place a well-aimed Stinger right
between his eyes.
You finish this first half of the battle, but it
appears to be all in vain, and our hero is doomed to have his guts smeared
across the hangar floor courtesy of one giant metal boot, when suddenly out of
nowhere, Gray Fox descends to save him.
There are cases when suspension of disbelief can be
stretched to places that it otherwise would not be able to go. It’s a hard task
to accomplish, and it ultimately hinges on how effective the aggregate parts of
the story in the moment are.
In this case, Fox has all but destroyed the raydome,
confusing Liquid for the moment. He’s firing blindly and desperately, and this
gives Snake and Fox the chance to talk behind a convenient bit of cover. Now
there are a couple of things you have to accept with this scene:
- Snake and Fox are perfectly okay standing there having a long conversation while a two hundred ton nuclear-equipped walking battle tank is firing at and around them.
- Liquid will be blind until the exact moment that Snake and Fox finish their conversation.
It strains logic at the basest level. The scene
construction, however, is so good, so heartfelt and well-played, that the
contrivance is easily forgiven. This little scene from when Fox saves you to
his ultimate death is simply perfect in every emotional way, and to do that it
had to sacrifice story logic; in this case, it’s okay, because the tone and set
up called for it.
Gray
Fox:
Hurry! Get away!
Snake: Gray Fox!!
Gray
Fox:
A name from long ago. It sounds better than Deepthroat.
Snake: So it is you...
Gray
Fox:
You look terrible, Snake. You haven't aged well.
It’s the dialogue that really carries the day here.
Unlike the Wolf scene, the impact is not supported by the scenery—I mean, it’s
two guys talking behind a metal crate, in a metal hangar, with a metal robot
firing at them. But the voice acting, and narrative flow, is so superb that it
makes up for the lack of aestheticism. Fox explains to Snake about why he came
back, and in a heart wrenching moment, about Naomi’s past:
Snake: Fox, why? What do you want from me?
Gray Fox: I'm a prisoner of
Death. Only you can free me...
Snake: Fox, stay out of this. What about Naomi?
She's hell bent on taking revenge for you.
Gray Fox: Naomi...
Snake: You're the only one who can stop her.
Gray Fox: No...I can't.
Snake: Why?
Gray Fox: Because I'm the
one who killed her parents. I was young then and
couldn't
bring myself to kill her too. I felt so bad that I decided
to take her with me. I raised her like she
was my own blood to
soothe my guilty conscience. Even now she
thinks of me as her
brother.
Snake: Fox...
Gray Fox: From the outside,
we might have seemed like a happy brother and
sister.
But every time I looked at her, I saw her parents' eyes
staring back at me... tell her for me.
Tell her that I was the one
who
did it.
It really hits you right in your gut, and highlights
once more why I like Greg Paulsen’s voice for this character so much. The
gravel gives every word such weight and pathos; you feel his regret and anguish
for what he did to Naomi, and how her eyes remind him so much of the parents he
killed.
Fox then sacrifices himself, basically, to destroy
the raydome once and for all, in one of the best one-liners ever conceived by
any creative work, ever:
Gray
Fox:
A cornered fox is more dangerous than a jackal!
In the end, Fox gets what he wanted all along:
death. Oh, God, this death scene is just so tough, especially given the fact
that, despite how gruesome is, it’s the only the Fox truly wanted: to be free
from the hollow shell his life had become. It’s a sobering moment, and it tears
you apart in so many ways: you feel bad for Fox, terrible for Snake, anger at
Liquid. It gets you amped up for the final confrontation. By the end of this
scene, you are very much ready to kick Liquid back to whatever hell he came
from.
And you do. It’s tougher, because since Fox has
destroyed the raydome, Liquid has opened the cockpit, meaning for once, our
chaff grenades fail us. But really, it’s about timing the attacks and moving
when you have to. Oh, and when he shoots the homing missile things, run towards Metal Gear Rex, not away or side
to side. Towards. Yeah, it makes more sense when you play, just trust me on
this one.
Finally, finally
I get one good shot off and Rex collapses, and blows to shred with the best
explosive effects 1998 could muster. Really though—it’s a pretty tremendous
amount of booms going on here; kind of makes me question the plausibility of
Rex functioning in any capacity in Guns
of the Patriots—but that whole fight was awesome, so I’ll ignore it.
With that, Snake gets hurled against the side of the
hangar, and all fades to blackness.
Escape
Explanations – A Final Battle – Jeep chases –
FoxDie, redux
– A Purpose to Live –
Snake rides into the sunrise – A last twist
You know, I never quite caught on to the fourth-wall
breaking Kojima got up to in the fire-shrouded conversation between Liquid and
Snake. I mean, in the immediate moments afterwards, you’re watching Liquid
through Snake’s POV, meaning for all intents and purposes Liquid is looking at me, the player, as he rebukes me for
enjoying the killing and destruction:
Liquid:
Ha! You lie! So why are you here then? Why do you continue to
follow your orders while your
superiors betray you? Why did you
come here? Well... I'll tell you
then. You enjoy all the killing, that's why.
Snake:
What!
Liquid:
Are you denying it? Haven't you already killed most of my comrades?
Snake:
That was...
Liquid:
I watched your face when you did it. It was filled with the joy of battle.
Snake:
You're wrong!
Liquid:
There's a killer inside you... You don't have to deny it. We were created to be
that way.
I’d never really noticed that before this play through,
but after Spec Ops: The Line I’ve
become far more attuned at looking out for such affectations. It’s just funny
to see a game from fourteen years ago saying, however bluntly, the same things
about video game players that Spec Ops
did in 2012. Timing is everything in art, remember, and Metal Gear Solid came out in a time before the ultra-modern,
ultra-realistic, graphically superior military shooter, and so its prescient
message probably slipped by most people.
I have decided that a great drinking game can be
made of this series as a whole. We’ll call it the “KID,” or the Kojima Info
Dump. Take a shot whenever Kojima spends fifteen minutes going on long bouts of
exposition to tie up all the loose ends he didn’t telegraph very well
throughout the rest of the game. I mean, seriously, I think it happens in every
single game in the series, with Guns of
the Patriots being by far the most notorious.
In this case, the info dump is one long bout of
exposition regarding Les Enfants
Terrible, FoxDie, the Pentagon, nuclear weapons, and genetic testing. It
goes on for far too long and is far too…shall we say lackadaisical? To be a
twist. It means little to the audience because there’s not a singular point to
focus on. We already knew Liquid was Snake’s brother, and that just left the
details to explain why. But details are hard to make into a good twist because
a twist, simply by implication, is a quick moment where an unexpected turn is
taken, the exact opposite of a twenty minutes speech by a video game
antagonist. I mean, Liquid starts talking about asymmetry in nature, for crying out loud. Is this really the time,
at the climax of your story?
Mercifully, mercifully, it finally ends, and the game
ramps back up as Snake contacts the Colonel. Liquid’s heard about a bombing run
authorized by the Pentagon, and Snake wants some answers. Campbell confirms
that a bombing run has been ordered on the island, but that, even though he’s a
figurehead, he’s still in operational control of the mission, that him
countermanding the order will delay that bombing and buy Snake sometime. But
just as he’s doing this, Campbell is suddenly interrupted!
There’s something cold and clinical about this
twist. Jim Houseman, defense secretary oozes with the smug superiority of the
righteous bureaucrat, so enchanted with his rectitude that he cannot see any
other viewpoint:
Houseman:
I see. Oh well that's okay... You two are an embarrassment from the 1970's. Our
country's dirty little secret. You can't be allowed to live. Well, the bombs
will be dropping soon, and you two have a lot of catching up to do. Farewell.
Not to mention his voice actor is just sublime. Unctuous, disaffected, dismissive. He’s going to
bury Shadow Moses, and he simply does. Not. Care.
With time against us Liquid plays out the final
stage in his revenge fantasy. He’s got Meryl tied up off to the side on top of
Metal Gear with a bomb next to her—wait, how in God’s name did he—you know
what, never mind, fight scene coming up.
Can I make it plain to all you guys how tough this
fight is without embarrassing myself? It’s one of those battles where the rust
becomes apparent when you step into it. If you haven’t beaten the game in a while, odds are decent that on any
higher level, you’re going to die at least once; not to mention you can’t “take
your time” because of the handy-dandy bomb Liquid’s activated.
DEATH
#5
As expected, I fall to
him once. It’s not really the controls as much as the pattern of Liquid’s
behavior. All you do is run around and hammer the O key, except you can’t,
because if you hammer the O button and you miss your punch, you’re going to
catch a roundhouse kick to the gut.
Then his tactics
switch. At first he just stands there and lets you wail on him; then he begins
shucking and diving, so you have to adjust your game plan. The worst however, is when you get him down
to about half health. He starts charging you with this rodeo-like shoulder
tackle and it hurts. You get smacked
with this thing and half your life bar is just gone. Bam. If you hear him grunt
run as fast as you can in a diagonal direction and do not let him hit
you. This was the big mistake I make in the primary confrontation. After I do,
I resolve to get back in the swing of the fight and use the lessons I remember
about combatting Liquid to defeated him on my second go.
…
…
DEATH #6
DEATH #7
DEATH #8
…
…
…
DEATH #9
FIVE.
FREAKING. TIMES?!?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?! MOTHERF&%$@!!!!
There’s nothing to really say about each of them
either. It was just an AI from 1998 outwitting me. I mean…seriously. I’m not
misleading you people, I have beaten
this game a dozen times. This is not my first rodeo. So how in the armpit of
Godzilla did I manage to die against Liquid five times in a row?
Thinking on it rationally, and being removed from
the play through for a good length of time, it was the charge that got me.
Yeah, the exact same charge I warned you to watch out for. I just kept running
right into it. Or underestimating just how slow Snake is at getting out of the
way. Then I started to get frustrated, and if there’s one thing you must never,
ever do in a Metal Gear Solid game,
it’s get frustrated. When I finally chilled out and was more patient was when I
knocked his blonde butt over the side of Rex’s dead hulk. So Liquid dies.
Again.
Now at this point the narrative splits depending on
what you decided to do during the torture sequence. If you were a complete tool
and submitted because it was too hard or you wanted to get the Stealth or some
such, you discover that Meryl is dead, and Snake laments that everything he
becomes close to dies. If you have a shred of human decency and fight through
the torture, then Snake runs over to Meryl and discovers she’s alive, and they
share a badly placed and pixelated bit of romance. While the storage
facility is set to blow. Whatever.
It’s here that we see the scene I mentioned way back
in Part One, where Otacon volunteers to sacrifice himself so that Meryl and
Snake will have a clear shot out the door, and that Rex and all its specs will
die with him. It’s a tender moment between the two, a culmination of their new
friendship and a narrative conclusion to Otacon’s arc, and I really do prefer
it to the ending where Meryl dies and Otacon’s the one to drive you out of the
storage facility.
Not to mention that Meryl’s rather large role in Metal Gear Solid 4 legitimizes the
“Meryl survives” ending as canon. So there.
Meryl leads you to the jeeps you’re going to use to
escape, and inadvertently runs right in sight of a surveillance camera (a surveillance camera!?). The last
action bit begins. I mount the gun in the back of the jeep that actually starts
and blast through the checkpoints and waves of genome soldiers, who for some
reason after the death of their leader and upon the inevitably of their
imminent doom are not fleeing for their lives. Or at least letting me go.
That’s some heavy-duty training regimen those guys must have gone though.
I make it past the checkpoints and appear to be home
free when suddenly—behind me—gasp! Liquid! In a jeep! With a machine gun! “Not yet, Snake. It’s not over yet!”
Actually, Liquid, it is. I’ve killed you at least
three times now. At this point, it’s just obnoxious.
DEATH
#10
So you have to blast
away at liquid in his jeep, and as throughout the game he’s very adept at
taking multiple hits from a fifty caliber machine gun to his chest. Be
reminding that at this point I have precisely two rations and that’s all.
Liquid gets some shots off, lowers my health, depletes my rations, and then the
perspective turns so that Liquid’s now pulled up alongside me and I have to
fire at him sideways.
This little bit is
tough, not because of the game challenge, but because the firing here is buggy
as all get out. You will swear that you are shooting right into Liquid’s head,
and nothing happens. Then he’ll hit you,
knock your sights off, and you’ll have to readjust just in time for him to hit
you again. It’s annoying and badly coded—or maybe I’m just incompetent, who
knows—and I die.
Unlike our bout of fisticuffs, thankfully, on the
next go round I’m able to kept a steady stream of high intensity metal hurling
at him, and as the light appears at the end of the tunnel, both our jeeps lose
control. When the smoke clears, Meryl and Snake are trapped under the jeep;
Liquid comes from around the jeep. I just love Snake’s line here:
“Uh-oh.”
I’m not sure if this is a bad line reading from
David Hayter or what. Here I am having fought and failed to kill this guy for
half a game, and in the worst position imaginable, all Snake says is a rather
languid “Uh-oh.” The reading works,
actually, because it gives Snake this sort of debonair aura, but it’s still
funny.
Or maybe Snake was just at ease because he read ahead
in the script: Liquid, beaten and battered, draws his sights upon you, point
blank range. “Snaaake,” he growls.
“Snaaaake.” An odd churning sound fills the score. The camera flashes to
Snake, to Liquid, zooms in. The colors mute. Liquid spasms in agony.
Liquid:
“FOX?!”
Snake:
“Die.”
Me: Squeeee!
 | ||||||||||||
| PICTURED: "The Liquid" new dance craze? Must remember to investigate further. |
Now there’s a cool moment. And thank the Lord,
because my word the ending is so
saccharine it’ll give you diabetes. Campbell contacts me and tells me that he’s
okay, and that the President has put the Secretary of Defense under arrest. “Early retirement.” Snake asks Campbell
to retrieve Otacon, and Campbell says there’s a snowmobile under the cliff in a
cave for us. This is all okay. Campbell puts Naomi on. Naomi talks about
FoxDie, and Snake lies to her, and tells her Frank told her to move one with
her life and forget about him. It’s touching and understated and a very complex
decision. Then comes the sugar. All five hundred gallons of it.
Okay, it’s not so bad. Basically Naomi voices over
and tells Snake that his genes don’t define him and that he should live his
life as best he can, while he and Meryl climb down to where the snowmobile is
located. Meryl and Snake talk about living, and Meryl finds a bandana, which
Snake says to keep as a reminder—of what, Snake? The terrorist attack that almost
got both of you killed? (Note: Wait a
minute—how is Meryl walking? Didn’t
she just get both knees blown out not five hours ago? –E) And why is this
random bandana that you randomly found on this random snowmobile? Wouldn’t a
more effective memento, if you’re going to have one, be something that you
carried with you through the whole ordeal? Your cardboard boxes, perhaps? Oh,
wait, this thing will give me infinite ammo on my next playthrough. Carry on.
With that, Meryl and Snake—who has revealed his name
as David—as in David Hayter, and no, that was not intentional—ride off into the
Alaskan dawn, and thus ends one of the greatest videogames ever made.
…
…
…
Or
does it?
The after credits stinger is one of the best, most
shocking moments in my gaming life. It is simply sublime, because you have completely forgotten about Ocelot. Like, that he even existed. You hear his voice start up with a
telephonic, almost eerie echo over the background of METAL GEAR SOLID in white
on black, and it hits you—in your very soul. You have forgotten about Ocelot.
And now you’re curious—nervous, even. You know something is going down.
Something big:
"Yes, sir. The entire unit was wiped out. Those two are still alive...
The vector? Yes, sir: FoxDie should become activated soon, right on schedule...Yes, sir, I collected all of Rex's dummy warhead data...No, sir, my cover is intact. Nobody knows who I really am...Yes, the DARPA chief knew my identity, but he's been disposed of.
Yes, the inferior one was the winner after all. That's right: until the very end, Liquid thought he was the inferior one. Yes, sir, I agree completely. It takes a well-balanced individual such as yourself to rule the world. No, sir, no one knows you were the third one, Solidus. What should I do about the woman? Yes, sir. I'll keep her under surveillance.
Yes, thank you, goodbye.
Mr. President... "
"Yes, sir. The entire unit was wiped out. Those two are still alive...
The vector? Yes, sir: FoxDie should become activated soon, right on schedule...Yes, sir, I collected all of Rex's dummy warhead data...No, sir, my cover is intact. Nobody knows who I really am...Yes, the DARPA chief knew my identity, but he's been disposed of.
Yes, the inferior one was the winner after all. That's right: until the very end, Liquid thought he was the inferior one. Yes, sir, I agree completely. It takes a well-balanced individual such as yourself to rule the world. No, sir, no one knows you were the third one, Solidus. What should I do about the woman? Yes, sir. I'll keep her under surveillance.
Yes, thank you, goodbye.
Mr. President... "
It’s chilling in the best possible way, and is, really, the best possible way to end this game, about war and death and life. Not with an unabashedly happy ending, but with a caution: there is satisfaction now, but with humanity, always, always, the battle rages on.
In
Summation
Metal
Gear Solid is today heralded as one of the greatest
games of all time, and one of the most landmark. It more or less established
stealth gameplay as a viable genre, and its ruminations and themes, even its
ham-fisted monologues, introduced players to a depth of emotion and implication
that was rarely seen in games before. Partly, of course, it was due to the
setting. The PSX era was the first where games could have something even
approaching the verisimilitude of real life, with aesthetics and fully voiced
characters and scripts and narrative commitment, and Metal Gear Solid took full advantage of all the tools available at
the time. It even invented some. Never before had such a cinematic flair been
melded with gameplay so well, and while this technique has come under its own
criticism in recent years, you cannot deny that it opened up whole new realms
with how to portray video game narrative. It didn’t have to be static, and it
didn’t have to be uncreative. You could, in fact, create your own narrative
techniques for games to push a story forward.
Players were swept away by this story and its
characters. We fell in love with Shadow Moses Island. With Campbell, Naomi, and
Mei Ling. We adored the host of villains, so creative and fleshed out. We
reveled in the story, the twists and turns. We felt for the honorable shaman,
and the traumatized Wolf. We rooted for the timid but steel-hearted scientist,
the green (and verbose) but brave warrior. And we cheered, most of all, for the
weary, broken, and lost soldier, who with our help found his soul again.
Metal
Gear Solid is a seminal moment in my personal
history, just as much as its sequel, and is living proof that man will forgive
flaws as long as an emotional connection is forged between the characters and
audience. I care about Solid Snake, and I care about his universe, and thus I
can put up with the maudlin and the unsubtle, and the incomprehensible and the lame.
And the best part is? It’s not even close to over yet.
Until next time,
Mr. E
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