"Otacon."
"Snake?"
"There's this… gorilla, dressed up in armor and glasses. And these Overwatch agents are letting it hold a gun."
"Oh! You must be seeing Winston! He was a huge pillar for Overwatch's research and development back when it was active, plus he was all over the news when he was first inducted. He's one of the biggest household names! You seriously never heard about him before?"
"If I did, I forget. Unless the Patriots or Ocelot are involved, I've been keeping a closed eye on things."
"Of course you would. You should at least try to keep up with current news! There was a good documentary about Overwatch a few years back, and another one about the Horizon Colony. I'm pretty sure they asked Winston to be interviewed for both, but he said no. I bet he'd enjoy finding a network that lets him talk about his inventions."
"It talks? How did it… Where did he come from?
"The moon."
"You're kidding, right?"
"Get ready Snake, I'm about to give you a lesson in the last thirty years of space exploration!"
"The abridged version, please."
"Okay, so it all started when we became obsessed with colonizing Mars. People wanted to test living conditions outside Earth and test appropriate equipment. So this private company called Horizon set up their own base on the moon. No one wanted to raise their baby in space for an experiment, so the scientists used infant gorillas instead."
"Sounds like something the Patriots would be interested in. Expanding their sphere of influence outside our atmosphere."
"But what the scientists weren't telling people was that they were genetically altering the gorillas! Soon the animals were growing intellectually at the same rate humans do. They were even starting to replicate human languages."
"Who figured out how to do that?"
"Well, this is where history starts to get, er, dark. When they were fully grown the gorillas rebelled against their captivity. They killed the humans up there and took the Horizon Lunar Colony for themselves. Winston barely managed to escape in a makeshift shuttle. No one has heard from the colony since."
"And I bet that company is too scared to try and take it back. At least the Patriots wouldn't be interested in a project that failed."
"So, Overwatch has provided quarter for Winston ever since. The majority of their operatives have him to thank for their gear! I wonder where he was during that decade between Overwatch disbanding and the recall. With all respect to him, being a gorilla makes it hard to blend in places…"
"From my own experience with shut-in scientists, I bet he found himself somewhere quiet to work on his inventions."
"Hey! I'm going to take that as a compliment!"