Metal Gear Solid Storyline Gripes

Warning: This is going to spoil Metal Gear Solid 4. Do not, I repeat DO NOT read this if you have not played MGS4 and have followed the series. If you haven’t played MGS4 go play it, because MGS4 effing rules. Come back here, this editorial will be here.

THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED MGS4. I PROMISE YOU IT’S AN AWESOME GAME.

ONE MORE WARNING FOR FUN DO NOT READ THIS IF
Aw screw it.

Metal Gear Solid 4 may not put the series on hold, but as far as Solid Snake is concerned, it’s going to be a whole new set of characters to continue what happens. I’m not going to go in about all the gameplay quirks and everything already said about the game. I’m here to look at how MGS4 did as far as a Metal Gear game is concerned. Did Konami do a good job bringing the series full circle? Was everything explained the best possible way?

Yes, I think it was.

My one gripe with the storyline of Metal Gear was that after Metal Gear Solid-which introduced a lot of extra material that could be elaborated upon in sequels, MGS2 and MGS3 introduced three times as much new storyline developments IN EACH GAME-and it showed. It seemed that they were running out of time to tie up every loose end in the game, and a lot of it didn’t need to be there. Did there really need to be five AIs? Couldn’t’ there have just been one or two? What’s the point of 5? GW was the only one that made any establishment or place in the story-and even it should have remained destroyed. It’s examples like this. This is what happens when you introduce a bunch of crap and never explain any of it till the end.

I’ve always been an advocator for storytelling in video games-and Metal Gear is a good indication of why. It easily rivals that of any sort of fiction on the market, and it has effects that are better than that of any Hollywood blockbuster.  This is just a rundown of a few things in the story that I personally felt were weak

Character Placement: I can’t fault Konami for bringing just about every major character sans Frank Jaeger back for the fourth installment. But after I marked out seeing how truly hot Naomi Campbell was, it begged the question: Was it necessary?

Answer: No.

The whole new bread of the Foxdie vaccination that took out all The Patriots was pointless for one thing. Eva obviously had a right to be there-but pretty much was destined to die on her own after getting impaled. Naomi had cancer (and Foxdie? Damn that’s tragic). Big Boss was just out there. As cool as it was to see the main baddie of the first two Metal Gears, it just seemed out of place to see him at the end explaining everything. That debriefing very well could have been by someone else like Rose, and Boss could have been seen in a flashback.

That’s two of them.

Zero shows up old and brain dead. I wonder why Big Boss is hanging with his buddy and just forgiving him after essentially being killed by him twice (remember, Snake basically was an agent of the Patriots in the first two MSX Metal Gears). Wouldn’t it have been cooler if they took Zero’s brain and hooked it up as John Doe-the main AI? It’s Metal Gear, that makes more sense than that paraplegic scene of Zero having died moments later in a peaceful death.

Hell, what a boss fight that would be against Zero.

And finally Ocelot. Well Snake is gonna kill him anyways, and you know this in the beginning because it’s obvious.

Remember the Foxdie vaccine was to kill all members of the Patriots that were around, as well as Naomi. Big Boss was the only character that needed to be eliminated. The rest of the characters pretty much die on their own and Foxdie is used to save someone else-but we’ll get to that in a bit.

That’s just how unneeded all these characters are. I love seeing everyone, but it just seems very overwhelming with everything going on. We didn’t need to see Big Boss revived, that tidbit about Solidus’s body being used as Big Boss was just a name drop and nothing more.   Rose and Raiden’s relationship was literally stuffed in there and not necessary.

Think about it, do you think anyone in their right mind would hang around a girl after knowing they spied on him for the last few years? How would you know they were telling the truth about loving you as much as they did (IE. Rose)

Rose is effing hot by the way. That might explain it.

Every series in the vein of Metal Gear Solid has a sort of resolution with the protagonist (main character) and the antagonist (bad-guy). Star Wars had Darth Vader-who was the resident bad-guy, turn on Emperor Palpatine (the super-bad guy), make peace with Luke after getting the sh*t kicked out of him by his son, and dies. The Emperor dies and with him the Empire he created.

In the Matrix, as confusing as it is, Neo lets Smith consume him as they are one in the same and when one is gone so is the other to balance the program (and this is my own interpretation of it, I may be off).

Well the resolution between Snake and Liquid was completely blown. It was obvious in MGS II that there was going to be another fight between Liquid and Snake. They had a score to settle. And then what happened?

Ocelot took off Liquids arm and “acted” like Liquid to get past the Patriots. It was revealed he went through a bunch of therapy and was really Ocelot just acting. Finding out I wasn’t fighting Liquid Snake was kinda just like “Thank you Mario, but our princess is in another castle.” It seemed like they wanted you to kill Ocelot all along, and were like “Oh crap, we had Liquid possessing him, we better retcon that.” Besides, why is Ocelot all the sudden a double agent? HE IS EVIL! They made him out to be the meanest scumbag in the first three titles, why all the sudden is he a tragic character?

They should have made a new body for Liquid and had us fight both of em. Seeing Ocelot with a motive to destroy the Patriots just seemed out of character to me.

Don’t get me wrong, that final battle was awesome. But when Big Boss reveals that it wasn’t the nanomachines that made Ocelot Liquid, it was just Ocelot acting, I sort of felt cheated.

THE PATRIOTS

I think I already touched on this slightly with the characters, but part of the reason people anticipated MGS4 was to finally have some light shed on who the fuck The Patriots were. All we heard was organization names, and a vague origin story. That was it. So how surprised was I to see that the Patriots were essentially the cast of MGS3?

Surprised. It was a good surprise too, as they needed to give us a unpredictable scenario-which worked. However, when you think about it, it kinda seems like a last minute decision like a lot of the storyline stuff.

Dr. Clark (Para-medic) was in fact a female even though Naomi said she was a he in both MGS and its remake. Sigint as the Darpa chief made absolutely no sense (think about it in relation to Ocelot), and the events of Metal Gear 1 and 2 just don’t fit in now. If Big Boss and Zero had such a falling out, don’t you think the Patriots would have figured out he was behind Outer Heaven? And don’t you think Boss would have kept Snake out of it if that was the case? The whole Patriots angle makes no sense when they have to retcon half the effing story to make it make sense. Was it cool? Yes, convoluted? Of course.

I know I am going to get a lot of angry emails for this one. So I will say it straight out:

Solid Snake should have died. Solid Snake should have died by his own gun, in his own mouth. I was infuriated when that didn’t happen. I love Snake, but to make the story go full circle, they HAVE to kill him. Actually I don’t mind if he doesn’t die, but I mind when at the last EFFING SECOND somehow we find out how he can live a measly 6 months. He may as well just said “Screw it, I’m not gonna do it,” but he had to have Big Boss show up, give an hour long speech, and die before Snake is like “nah.” Again, last minute storyline details that just pissed me off. Snake should have died, and it was obvious he was going to. At the last minute Kojima just decided “Lets keep him alive, make a Foxdie vaccine that kills everyone, oh and bring back Big Boss too while we’re at it. That can keep him alive and kill Big Boss off too. Wait, lets have the vaccine kill ALL The Patriots.”

Details.  We lack details here. There isn’t much more to say about Snake, other than his horrible finale, he is by far one of the most rounded characters in fiction. With this, I see the route Kojima went with Metal Gear Solid 2-having Snake in third person. It makes it refreshing to finally play as him again, and also keep him from being boring as unfortunately would have been the case if we were stuck with SOLID Snake for the whole series.

That’s really all I have to say on this. The series was awesome, just a few gripes about the direction Kojima took with the storyline. Don’t get me wrong, MGS4 was the best game I’ve played in years. I just wanted to go through a few things I found wrong with the whole thing.

Yeah, it’s a little all over the place, but there really isn’t much else for me to say that hasn’t already been said.
And the f*ckers who read this thing without playing the game should be shot.

That’s it, see you hopefully next time!

El Pato Outo