Yet freezing the game's action so deliberately, in order to drive home characterization, story development and an overall change of pace, is a plainly visible, inarticulate choice.Īnd when it's later revealed that the entire Plant mission was a test of how susceptible people are to received information and how they will keep going even when situations are absurd, since we all continued playing even when we didn't like Raiden, it's clear the illusion, terrifyingly, has been pulled off.
The ketchup bottle twist is one of Metal Gear Solid's most memorable and delightful moments, as a series. Small, repetitive actions-wait in the cell, hit circle repeatedly to resist torture-allow Kojima to turgidly and ham-fistedly deliver story in a single, thick chunk.īut while the player does nothing in this sequence, it's still distinctive. The 15-minutes-or-so Codec call with Naomi and Colonel Campbell. But the majority of its story is nevertheless communicated through heavy, overwrought dialogue. Evocative visuals and playful touches: MGS is filled with these things. It's a scene wherein the player is held in place, again quite literally, while force-fed exposition. After escaping prison, losing Meryl and sharing those personal moments with Otacon, the Ninja and Naomi, Snake is very much inside his own mind.įor all its qualities, the prison cell sequence also betrays Metal Gear Solid and Hideo Kojima at their worst.īut for all these qualities, the prison cell sequence also betrays Metal Gear Solid-as a game, as a series-and Hideo Kojima at their worst. Particularly at the summit of the second communications tower, when Snake, inside a rusty, chain-link elevator, has to fight-quite literally-enemies he cannot see, Metal Gear Solid starts to feel like Konami's other late-1990s game, Silent Hill, a game that openly tackled the crushing effects of psychology and unresolved guilt. The dank confines of the Shadow Moses base betray a gloomy, isolated mentality. There is no tank waiting to ambush you on the snowfield, no Psycho Mantis in the commander's office, no Sniper Wolf at the foot of the tower. When you escape the prison cell and walk back through sections you've already explored, everything is much quieter. Everything takes place on the same Shadow Moses Island, but the initial sneaking sections through the heliport and the nuclear warhead storage building are more brightly lit than Snake's latter incursion through the communication tower. More telling is how the atmosphere of Metal Gear Solid changes after the prison sequence. His revenge against Sniper Wolf is complicated by the fact Otacon has a crush on her. As well as beating Liquid, Snake now has to find personal redemption in rescuing Meryl. The narrative stakes of Metal Gear Solid, during the prison sequence, change from those typical of military and espionage intrigue (stop the bomb, defeat the terrorists) to something closer to melodrama. In the prison, Snake reveals to Naomi that he killed his father, Big Boss. Technological limits may have prohibited it, but the prison cell feels like a more natural place for you to swap Metal Gear Solid's first disc for its second, as instead of fighting alongside Meryl, your mission becomes saving her. The prison scene serves also as a breakwater between the two halves of the game. You can call the Ninja for help, you can call Otacon, or you can break out yourself-it's all a small part of a big game that defines the player-controlled Snake's relationships to other characters, and with himself. Submitting to Revolver Ocelot's torture decides whether Meryl will live or die.
The handkerchief helps you to make friends with some wolves.Ī lot of plot beats, some explicit, some implied, flow in and out of Metal Gear Solid's prison cell sequence.Ī lot of plot beats, some explicit, some implied, flow in and out of Metal Gear Solid's prison cell sequence. To wit: to trick the guard into opening the cell door, ketchup can be used as fake blood. But if you adjust your mental filter and use a little imagination, the idiosyncratic flourishes of 1998's MGS work perfectly well together, and form an amusing, colorful logic. In the later, longer, arguably more sexist and masturbatory Metal Gear Solid games, plots get twisted into almost impossible knots. Hideo Kojima's script borders on incoherent.
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