Denny Dzokic

Comm 1500

Midterm: 5 Step Thinking Process; Gaming: Metal Gear

1. Description

The Metal Gear Franchise is a critically acclaimed series directed by Hideo Kojima and

developed by Konami and Kojima Productions, with secondary titles in the series being

developed by Platinum Games, and Silicon Knights. The main series games follow our

protagonists, [Codename] Snake, master infiltrators and saboteurs, as each incarnation is sent off

to stop terrorist organizations from using Metal Gears, machines so powerful that they could

cause nuclear damage to the United States. While sneaking around in the Metal Gear franchise,

players will be struck with awe as they get more deeply immersed into the complex story writing

and innovative stealth elements of the game. Kojima's Metal Gear solid was considered a

revolutionary game in the fact that it was an action game, where you were rewarded for not

getting into conflict, but with the human like AI that could both see and hear your every move, it

took some real thinking and trickery in order to not set off any alarms. Metal Gear has become

an icon in gaming history with it's cinema inspired writing and being known as “The First

Modern Video Game.”

2. Analysis

While the Metal Gear series was revolutionary, it wasn't perfect. Though the writing was very

good, much of it didn't make sense, especially for a game that wants you to believe that it takes

place in the real world. Characters such as Solid Snake seem like your average American Movie
hero, that is until you dive into the story more and learn that Solid Snake and Liquid Snake are

genetically enhanced clones of the original snake, Naked Snake, more commonly referred to

throughout the games as “Big Boss.” Characters outside the Snakes are all written with

significantly less imagination and inspiration. For example, if you look at all the female “love

interests” in the games, they are written to pander to a male audience. Each love interest in the

games follows the same outline, Slim waste, Large chest, more revealing clothing, and require to

be saved by Snake at least a few times in each game. Much in a similar manner, the villains in

the games are very surface level. Take Revolver Ocelot for example, Revolver Ocelot is a villain

in MGS3 who as his name indicts, uses revolvers to silence his enemies. Ocelot has an

interesting way of using his revolvers, with every action he takes with his revolvers he spins

them. Be it reloading, shooting, unholstering and holstering, he spins his revolvers around, but

that's all he does. Ocelot is very much just a surface level character in that game. While the

writing for these characters is still decent and some like Ocelot get expanded upon, they don't

hold a candle to the writing and complexity of Snake (seriously like look up a video on youtube

about it).

3. Interpretation

The Metal Gear franchise has spectacularly crafted stories with enthralling gameplay because

rather than being just a video game, it's a movie disguised as a video game. Every plot point that

happens in the games make sense for a video game, yet the plots make significantly more sense

if you saw Metal Gear as a movie. The plot itself revolves around an American agent going to

foreign lands to stop terrorists from attacking the US, the typical American blockbuster movie(at

the time). The lackluster writing for the other characters makes sense if you looked at them
through movie lenses rather than video game ones. Writing for the side characters in movies is

not nearly as important as it is for the main character, this explains why Snake has such a

complex and long lore while other characters like Ocelot are more face value. Yet in order to be

able to be disguised as something, you have to be able to share some elements, and that's where

the real genius of Metal Gear comes in. During the long, movies like cutscenes in Metal Gear, a

handful of them allow the player to move the camera around letting the player see things most

others wouldn't notice. If the game was treated solely as a movie or solely as a game, this

element of controllable scenes wouldn't be present. It is through these scenes that extra lore can

be analyzed and it is in these scenes that the player could plan their strategies out by looking

around the terrain and scouting for anything that could give them the advantage.

4. Evaluation

Metal Gear isn't just your average run-of-the-mill game series, even with the playstation 1s

hardware restrictions Metal Gear Solid single handedly shaped the entire upcoming era of video

games because it set the bar so high while the newer Metal Gear games are considered kingpins

in the gaming industry with nearly every other game producers trying to borrow elements from

them. Metal Gear is an underappreciated masterpiece, with it cinematic storytelling and human

like AI, stealth mechanics that rival even today's standards, and characters with background so

complex and filled with lore that the player can't help but look into them more, it's no surprise

that Metal Gear was Konami's number 1 money maker. Even though it has its fair share of

problems, they aren't obvious to the player and can very much be overlooked (unless you're

nitpicky) and don't detract from the main story telling in the slightest.

5. Engagement
While under normal circumstances you would write a letter or Tweet the company that

made/produced the game, however in this case you should write a letter to Hideo Kojima, the

man who made Metal Gear possible. Konami had to lay him off because he wasn't focusing on

the Metal Gear series and as a retaliation he made his own gaming company named Kojima

Productions. Kojima appreciates all feedback for his works and as such browses his twitter feed

often and you can write a thank you there. Otherwise the Metal Gear community has their own

blogs, their own Reddit, and Facebook fan pages and can be reached there.

Work Cited:

https://www.mcvuk.com/snake-tales-the-games-industry-looks-at-the-legacy-of-metal-gear-

solid/
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/03/how-hideo-kojima-became-a-

legendary-video-game-designer/254831/

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-08-12-metal-gear-solid-the-first-modern-video-game

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid#Plot

https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/Metal_Gea

http://www.kojimaproductions.jp/en/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Boss_(Metal_Gear)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Snake

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_Snake