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A Critique of Metal Gear Storylines

Date     : 2025-01-24
Entry ID : 16657
Game     : Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty - HD Edition (@2815)

After reading the MGS2 story summary in the book 'Metal Gear Solid: Hideo Kojima's Magnum Opus', I started thinking about the problems I have with the Metal Gear storylines in general and the MGS2 story in particular.

Dialogue

The character dialogue is really sappy. This is quite silly, but in a way, it's also something I really enjoy. Otacon asking if love can bloom on the battlefield is so silly that it becomes quite funny. I enjoy those moments more now.

The main problem I have with the dialogue is that in the PS1-PS3 generation of games, there is way too much dialogue compared to gameplay. MGS2 and MGS4 are really extreme examples of this.

Player Character Subversion

MGS2 pulled a huge twist on the unsuspecting players, namely that you're not playing as main series protagonist Solid Snake for most of the game, you're playing as a new character, Raiden. The character is in many ways the opposite of the main protagonist, Solid Snake.

Apart from the frustration of fans who preferred playing as Snake, Raiden's character is developed, and does become interesting. He's a bit of a soapy anti-hero, but it mostly works.

This type of player subversion was done again in MGS5:The Phantom Pain. The trailers and the prequel game Ground Zeroes implied that you would be playing as perhaps the most important character in the series, Big Boss. Big Boss was the player character in MGS3, Peacewalker, and Ground Zeroes, and this game seemed to tell the story of Big Boss' transition from disillusioned US agent to supervillain. However, this was another

If a player doesn't pick up on some specific details in the confusing opening cutscene, they might not pick up what is going on. At the very end of a very long game, the twist is revealed:
You are not playing as Big Boss, but rather the decoy Venom Snake, a character that doesn't have a history in the series. Figuring out this subversion earlier the game was an interesting challenge and reinforces the feeling of not knowing what is going to happen.

However, when you think about this game being the final entry in a 28 year old series of games, the events of this game actually matter the least out of all of the games - neither of the key characters Big Boss or Solid Snake are involved in this story, save for perhaps two cutscenes, and you're just playing as a side character that doesn't have a place in the overarching story, except for him being retconned into the place of Big Boss in the original 1987 MSX game.

It leaves the player that understands the storyline of the series with a feeling that most of your player actions and experiences in this game become completely irrelevant. This is an example of a destructive story twist: the twist surprises, but it means that nothing that happened before was important.

Plot-Invalidating Twists

The overarching storylines of these games are really fun and full of twists and turns. Just understanding what the hell is going on in games such as MGS1 and MGS2 is a really fun puzzle to piece together. It is a bit overly elaborate, but it doesn't necessarily harm the experience, if you're into that sort of thing. Also, the twists feel fun while playing the game for the first time, because you never know what's around the corner for the story.

However, the twist can become problematic when they invalidate other parts of the story.

FoxDie and Decoy Octopus

An early example of a plot-invalidating twist is in MGS1 see this recording:

The first hostage Solid Snake finds is DARPA chief Donald Anderson, who has an interesting conversation with Snake, but then shockingly dies in front of Snake, seemingly for no reason.

Later in the game, the first plot twist is exposed: Snake is carrying a virus called FOXDIE that is created to specifically target the rogue members of FOXHOUND and ArmsTech president Kenneth Baker (for some reason). Snake is unwittingly used as an assassin, and is not on a rescue mission as initially assumed.

The second twist happens when Snake is captured and imprisoned by the Sons of Big Boss. It is revealed that Donald Anderson has been dead for days, and Snake actually didn't actually encounter and kill Donald Anderson, but rather Decoy Octopus, one of the Sons of Big Boss. This twist is not as interesting, and it actually invalidates the how important the first twist was: Snake didn't actually act as the unwitting assassin on the DARPA chief, he just killed another member of the Sons of Big Boss.

Thus, the second twist partially invalidates the events explained in the first twist.

The S3 Plan

In MGS2, the plot-invalidating second twist undermines most of the events of the game.

The first big twist (apart from the reveal of Raiden) is that all the events in the game is supposedly a real-life simulation that is set up to emulate the Shadow Moses Incident from MGS1 and create a program for training the perfect soldier, and your allies are actually computer simulations! This was very exciting to experience for the first time, as your radio contacts Campbell and Rosemary start glitching out and you start to question the nature of everything you have experienced so far. A new understanding of the world of Metal Gear is opened up, and Raiden ends up having a very central role as the test subject of this grand experiment.

MGS2 script¹ - see this recording:

SOLIDUS
It came as a complete surprise when Ocelot discovered the S3 data from GW. Not a bad idea, though -- using fire to fight fire, creating the perfect assassin to retire Solid Snake's brother.

S3 stands for Solid Snake Simulation... It's a development program to artificially reproduce Solid Snake, the perfect warrior. The result is a FOXHOUND commando. When FOXHOUND no longer exists, a simulated Solid Snake shaped by VR regimen. Sound like someone you know, Jack?

[..]

OCELOT
Ames and the President's deaths -- the computer virus that mimics FOXDIE. Did you really think they were all a coincidence? Ames' own nanomachines were used to shut down his pacemaker. I arranged for the appearance of the Ninja as well.

As for the President -- although Johnson realized what was going on, he played out his allotted part. As for the computer virus, it's a digital counterpart of FOXDIE. It was also designed to eliminate every scrap of information regarding the Patriots from GW.

[..]

Given the right situation, the right story, anyone can be shaped into Snake. Even rookies can fight like men of experience. An instant creation of genius -- and this training kernel will provide more than enough data to formulate such a program. You, Dead Cell, Olga -- you're all nothing but pawns placed to create the perfect simulation.

[..]

Solidus, you and the boy were selected because your relationship resembles the one between Snake and Big Boss. Fortune, you and the rest of Dead Cell stand in for the FOXHOUND squad that Snake took on in Shadow Moses. You're the most impressive collection of freaks outside of FOXHOUND.
We've gone to a lot of trouble to set you up against the boy. That story about purified hydrogen bombs is just the tip of the iceberg. The project was already underway when I sunk that tanker along with your old man two years ago. Throwing your husband in the brig was a part of it too.
You were told that the eradication of Dead Cell six months ago was an act of the Patriots. We provoked and encouraged your hatred -- and you opted for vengeance, just as we planned.

The second big twist is that the whole game was actually not a training simulation, but an exercise in AI information control by controlling the spread of ideas. This is certainly an interesting topic by itself (more relevant that ever in the time of writing), however, the rest of the story starts to make less sense when viewed through the lense of this second twist.

MGS2 script¹ - see this recording:

"CAMPBELL"
Ocelot was not told the whole truth, to say the least.

"ROSE"
We rule an entire nation -- of what interest would a single soldier, no matter how able, be to us?

"CAMPBELL"
The S3 Plan does not stand for Solid Snake Simulation. What it does stand for is Selection for Societal Sanity...
The S3 is a system for controlling human will and consciousness. S3 is not you, a soldier trained in the image of Solid Snake. It is -- a method, a protocol, that created a circumstance that made you what you are.

[..]

"CAMPBELL"
We used Shadow Moses as a paradigm for the exercise.

"ROSE"
I wonder if you would have preferred a fantasy setting?

"CAMPBELL"
We chose that backdrop because of its extreme circumstances. It was an optimal test for S3's crisis management capacity. If the model could trigger, control and solve this, it would be ready for any contingency. And now, we have our proof.

After finishing the game, you will realize that the second twist completely invalidates the ideas in the first twist. If the S3 plan is not about training the perfect soldier, why are the events orchestrated to be similar to the Shadow Moses Incident? Why is Raiden even involved? It's not like the press is there to observe Raiden running around and fighting Dead Cell members, a test of information control could be simply the Patriots blowing something up and then covering it up.

So the end result is that after you viewed the game through the lens of the first twist, all of this understanding gets undermined by the second twist, and what is even worse - the second twist seems to make all Raiden's actions mostly irrelevant.

It almost feels like Kojima had two cool parallel storylines in his head, and decided that he didn't want to choose, but just tell one and then the other.

References