Metal Gear Solid V: Lights, Emptiness, Revenge!
It was just another day at the office for Philanthropy, the anit-Metal Gear NGO which consisted of two people, the legendary Solid Snake and whiz kid Otacon. Ever since the Manhattan incident, the threat of Metal Gear has risen and the mystery of the Patriots has deepened. At the moment, they're in Montserrat, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom. Here, their sifting through their latest haul of technology from a Patriots-affiliated science institute long since defunct.
"This is ancient history," Snake noted as Otacon held a floppy disk with METAVERSE CODE written on it.
"I'll say," Otacon agreed as they inserted it in the floppy drive. "However, whatever's inside would bring us one step closer to the Patriots."
"Hopefully," Snake added. The revelation of the extent in which the Patriots controlled information in the world was truly horrifying after Raiden blew the cover of the S2 program.
"Yeah." Otacon waited for the computer to boot. Then it showed up with Y/N box. Otacon selected Yes. Then it flashed into a video...
Hello, ladies and gents! This is Anime Borat! I'm here to talk about MGSV and how the game matches the context of the Eighties.
Metal Gear Solid V was fraught with controversy ever since its release since 2015. The game, the ninth and final installment of the critically-acclaimed Metal Gear franchise, is set nine years after Ground Zeros, which itself is the prologue for Phantom Pain. As a matter of fact, Both games are actually one game, divided into two with the latter making up bulk of it. The game is considered to Hideo Kojima's greatest work yet. I'm not a professional in anything here, merely well-read so I'll try to explain as best as I could. If you don't want to be spoiled, then don't read this.
In Phantom Pain, Big Boss wakes up from a nine-year coma, still reeling from the destruction of Mother Base and his private military company, Militaires Sans Frontières. He narrowly escaped an assassination attempt assisted by a bandaged fellow patient named Ishmael. They escaped from the horrific assault on the hospital they were interned, orchestrated by the mysterious XOF and his and while Ishmael disappears, Big Boss meets Ocelot, who fills him in on what happened during the time he was in a coma as it turns out he lost most of his memories due a horn-like piece of shrapnel embedded on his head. Ocelot informs him of his partner a close friend Miller is captured in Afghanistan while training Afghan mujahideen. He rescues him and after barely escaping with their lives from the mysterious Skulls Unit.
Miller: Cipher sent us to hell - but we're going even deeper - take back everything that we've lost!
Snake: Kaz... I'm already a demon...
They vow revenge against Skull Face set up their own private force, Diamond Dogs, taking any dirty job to grow the company on their quest for revenge. At the risk of spoilers and misunderstanding, I'll summarize the rest of the story: Big Boss fights and captures an enhanced superhuman assassin named Quiet and makes him part of the team, much the protest of most Diamond Dogs's staff, led by Miller. Together, they go to missions that unravel the machinations of Skull Face and XOF across Africa and Afghanistan, rescuing Huey, who was suspect since the fall of Mother Base. Turns out that Skull Face was more than just developing the newest iteration of the Metal Gear weapons system Sahelanthropus.
They learn through Huey and another character, Code Talker, Skull Face plans to unleash a powerful biological weapon in the form of parasites that target the English language alongside Sahelanthropus. Skull Face reveals that his primary motivation is loss of his ability to speak his native Hungarian and revenge on Zero for imposing his will through the use of the English language. There's also an interconnected subplot where Quiet was plotting against Big Boss for burning her in the beginning of the game as she was the one who tried to kill him, using the English parasite strain in her voice, which prevents her from speaking until the end of the game. After defeating Sahelanthropus and killing Skull Face (well, Huey did, Miller and BB were content to leave him to bleed), the game's second act was mostly repeat gameplay with the main focus being on the parasites and Eli, leader of the child soldiers.
In the end it is revealed that we did not play as Big Boss but rather a medic who acted as his body double in a paradoxical reversal of MGS2's ending. This twist ending as well as the lack of an apparent story, which one of the downsides of the game, and it also earned the game controversy alongside Quiet's sexy body. This lack of story content as caused cries of "Kojima's a hack!" all across the internet.
Angry German Kid: KOJIMA'S A FUCKING HACK! ALL GAMEPLAY, NO STORY! ARGGGHHH(smashes keyboard like lunatic)
Kojima: Did you rike it? (Trollface)
Like most of you, I expected more from this game. Just as advertised I wanted to the game tackle its central themes as well as issues contemporary to the 80's. I wanted missions set in places besides Afghanistan and central Africa. I'd to go to places like Somalia, Ethiopia, Libya, and Indonesia. I want sneaking missions into Vietnam and Cambodia ala Rambo and maybe even anti-narcotics operations in Myanmar. I wanted a lot of Eighties references. I also wanted extensive character interaction like a visual novel or Mass Effect, or even squad-based ops like in XCOM but alas, none of that is to be when it came out.
However, if you know Kojima, the jokes are always on us in the end. His not known as The Man Who Trolled The World without reason.
Let's a take a look at the game. When Metal Gear Solid was released in 1998, it was considered one of the first examples of post-modern gaming. This streak has carried over to the rest of the franchise and enabled Kojima to think out of the box and take risks in storytelling.
Look to the 80's setting. The 80's was a great time for the world in general and the movie industry was flourishing. Gone were the introspective and brooding themes of the 70's and in were the more extroverted zest of the decade. This made for big-budget blockbusters and more action. One genre that particularly flourished in the 80's was action and adventure. It was the time of Stallone, Norris, Schwarzenegger and Willis riding the silver screen. They took advantage of the latest special-effects and filming techniques to take viewers on an adrenaline-pumping celluloid fantasy fighting villains ranging from criminals to warlords. The same can be said with video games of the era, when a few classics where emerging, setting the tone for the industry in the following decades. There was much criticism of action movies in the era of being nothing more than flashy, violent escapist fantasies. They were also symbolized for their portrayal in women as epitomized by Quiet's character design. The thing about adrenaline is that once the action stops, it ebbs away and we're left nothing but this empty feeling. We also get feeling after playing at an arcade or console during those early days of gaming. Even the first game in 1987 started out with bare-bones plot.
Enhancing the feeling is the hype produced in the pre-release media. In the 80's many people flocked to cinemas, excited by the hype of movies like The Terminator or Indiana Jones. We watched them for the thrills and chills, something that they delivered well most of the time. For us, we were disappointed by what we get, yet MGSV delivered it all, just not in the way we wanted. I can remember the famous voice of the late Don LaFontaine, who was known as the Voice of God, who is in many trailers and commercials including for Metal Gear Solid 4. His voice alone is one element of ramping up a hype for particular movie or game. Kojima, his name and his game already known, uses it to his advantage in order to trick us thematically. It was deliberate that he choose the song The Man Who Sold The World as an invocation in the beginning, a subtle nod to the power of hype in shaping our expectations of what was coming.
Hell, the 80's were accused of being such a shallow and vapid time in spite of the advances put forward in every field of human endeavor such as the early computers and cellphones of that era. Cinematic conventions were very often cheesy and campy. Phantom Pain truly was an expression of the 80's, or at least our perception of it today and what it stands for. Put it simply, we are too dazzled by the "glitz" of Phantom Pain to realize what truly goes on beneath. To see through it all would be first step of getting an understanding of the story.
I remember the dispute between Konami and Kojima over creative control of the game, which sparked controversy in the video game community. This fight over creative control resulted in the falling out between the two. This is illustrated in the cut content of the game which includes promises to return to Ground Zeroes's Camp Omega and the missing mission Episode 51, the final battle between XOF led by the fledgling Patriots AI; Diamond Dogs led by Snake, and Eli and his child soldiers controlling Sahelanthropus. This concludes an important plot thread between Snake and Eli and was much fuller ending than the one with Quiet. This lead many to believe that Konami was pressuring Kojima and his staff to rush development for an early release and was unhappy with development costs. This coincided with a corporate restructuring of centralizing game development, which would have knocked the wind of Kojima Productions in its creative control. While understandably Konami holds the purse strings so they're not happy about the increased cost, I believe Kojima had planned to release Phantom Pain in 2017, which would make it the 30th anniversary of the Metal Gear franchise.
This has real-life context back in the Eighties when the blockbuster era has displaced New Hollywood, marking the end of creative freedoms enjoyed by directors and the rise of a new studio system which controlled moviemaking. This era began in 1975 when Steven Spielberg entered the scene with his classic, Jaws. Jaws was a revolution in cinema, marking a shift towards advertising, High Concept and disciplined production as ways of producing high-quality, commercially viable films(source: Tv Tropes), i.e, the business model used by Hollywood today. The introduction of High Concept inevitably turned movies names into brands, much like how Konami wanted to create pachinko machines based on the MGS franchise. It is rather coincidental that Mother Base was destroyed and Big Boss goes into a coma in the year Jaws was released and woke up during a time when the early part of the Blockbuster era was in its peak. There are comparisons of Kojima and Kubrick as the American director retained control of his films during the blockbuster era. This Thomas Becket-and-King Henry II business between Konami and Kojima was a meta reminder how a new era film-making displaced the old breed of maverick filmmakers whose time is up.
Many people observed that the gameplay is the best in the series while having a weak, seemingly empty story. This was intentional on Kojimia's part. A lesser developer would have been deluged in the inevitable flak of criticism if a game has a poor story but not Kojima, it was intentional in more ways than one. There is a rich story in the game but we need to delve deeper. Half of it is in cassette tapes scattered throughout the game which the player needs to pick up. They give context to much of the game's events and backdrop. This prompt one Youtuber to comment about wanting back the forced cutscenes from MGS4 back. Well, let's get back to the ending, shall we? It revealed that we have been playing as a body-double rather the great man himself is a paradoxical reversal-
Campbell: You created a TIME PARADOX!
Ugh, thanks, Colonel, but not that kind of paradox. It's a reversal of Metal Gear Solid 2's ending where instead of being mocked for wanting to play a video game hero and told to define our own paths and identities, we are praised by Big Boss for our performance and support. Because of us, his legend grew and he applauds us for creating our own legend. You see in most games, the story either takes us for a ride or makes us drive. The MGS franchise is mostly the latter as we progress through the game, we uncover more of the plot until the reveal in the end. MGS does a bit of the former by making us taking twists and turns in the story, challenging us to keep up and understand as much as possible. I get the feeling that the player is always fool, the last person to learn the whole truth or extent of the plot but the whole notion is strongest for me in the MGSV and this is because of one key detail.
We are not who we are supposed to be.
Yes, the protagonist and through him the player are slowly made privy of the story as the game progresses through unlocking cutscenes, codec calls, and overhearing conversations. In MGSV, however, we make progress but not much story unless we seek it out in the form of cassette tapes. Unlike other games where we are treated to many forms of cinematic exposition, there's none of that in Phantom Pain, and Ocelot, supreme manipulator and master of secrets, have successfully kept us from learning for the most part, the truth about "Big Boss" being none other than Medic and this is to protect the real Big Boss and support the player in their grand schemes together. Ocelot has jerked many characters around throughout the franchise to further his goal. It is only in Phantom Pain that he jerked us. Because of this, I regard Ocelot as Kojima's proxy in playing mind games with the player throughout the story. And in order to preserve the facade, he sort of acted as the midwife in shaping the player's false(and only) identity as Big Boss and we did the rest, with Miller as the unwitting family doctor.
The cassette tapes serve a purpose in this trick. In Peace Walker and Ground Zeroes, they can be seen as after-action reports. audio journals, or Snake performing intel gathering. In Phantom Pain, we are lead to believe that this was the case and we slowly unravel hints about who we are really playing but for the most part, left us tantalized if we are not paying attention. Of course those who paid close attention to the pre-release media and understood the hidden meaning of the song The Man Who Sold The World will know that we are not actually playing as BB, but two of the lyrics stated that "I never lost control" and "we never lost control," we were never in control the whole time because we are not Big Boss at all and he, and thus we, have been kept outside the loop until the very last minute.
Also the plot twist nails the coffin in true MGS fashion such as how Solid Snake had been a clone and he has two brothers, about how Raiden was being used a lab rat to study information control, or how BB's mentor, the Boss, whose defection was cover for real mission and that included dying tragically in her student's hands. The twist that we are NOT playing Big Boss at all is simply that unlike the other characters who at least established identities, Medic has almost no sense of self at all, having been destroyed by a piece of shrapnel lodged to his head, and he had been led to believe that he was Big Boss the whole time until the end. He, and thus the player, are ignorant of what he truly is.
Revenge. This was one of the theme's in MGSV. It's also a common cause for the plots of many 80's action movies. Revenge stories have a place in our collective experience and it's why they remain popular today. In MGSV, this was the primary motive for Skull Face in the in his obsession of ridding the world of "English infestation", holding Zero responsible of destroying any chance of freedom through imposing the English language, which would destroy his roots and identity as he cannot speak his native tongue and making revenge and fear the basis for his "new world of deterrence." This runs to the contrary of the motivations of many key antagonists in the series, which are essentially selfless albeit twisted such as trying to unite the world as Zero tried, and later the Patriots AI would have done or Big Boss wanting a world where all soldiers will have purpose. Skull Face's subconscious motives are essentially selfish, base. He's acting out hatred and loss. This would be unlike Solidus who might say, "The Patriots are increasing their grip on the world. I will make an Outer Heaven as a bastion of American ideas" that sort of thing. Skull Face would say, "I will make them pay. I will make Zero pay as I did to Stalin. I'll make them all pay with their schemes and petty political gambits. They destroyed and then left me in this horrid empty shell of a body!" (Yes, in the MGS universe, Skull Face killed Stalin).
" Is vengeance going to bring your son back to you or my boy to me?"
-Vito Corleone, The Godfather
This also makes him down-to-earth in a sense that he reacted to his circumstances in a realistic way, i.e. how a vengeful individual would. The protagonists themselves are not immune from this motivation when they took down Skull Face and where did that get them? They harvested the bitter, empty fruit, disappointment, the withdrawal symptom that accompanies vengeance. Hell, even the body double Venom Snake/Medic/fake Big Boss was created so Big Boss can bring his vendetta against Zero closer to him as well. Had Skull Face succeeded, he would have been disappointed too at the world he created, ruled by fear of retaliation by one's neighbor, and it would collapse in front of his face. Big Boss surely be disappointed himself as his efforts to find Zero remain fruitless and makes him push his timeline to create his paradise of soldiers, Outer Heaven. However, Venom Snake showed himself as the better man in the game as he choose to spare Huey rather than execute him for his duplicity and role in the parasite outbreak in Mother Base. Venom had transcended vengeance in order embrace a higher calling the other characters in the series have professed. This has also helped Quiet get over her hatred for him in the end, sacrificing her life and giving her peace at last.
In the end, the joke's on us but doesn't have to be that way. Being that it is, like the rest of the series, a post-modern work, it follows no set or paradigm of conventions and it's usually up to us in how we see it and what we see in it. In my opinion, MGSV is the thematic nod to the 80's cinematic zeitgeist. So when I think of this game, instead of Lights! Camera! Action!, it's Lights! Emptiness! Revenge!
They all sat silent after watching the whole thing until Otacon managed to turn off the computer with shaky hand.
"S-s-snake," he asked. "What did we just watched?"
Snake, already thinking about cigarettes, replied, "Trust me, Otacon. It's best we forget it."