Metal Gear Solid Storyline Gripes

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.