Metal Gear

Metal Gear Solid title

This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.

This article contains spoilers! You have been warned.

"Nanomachines, son!"

– Senator Armstrong, explaining how Metal Gear gets away with anything it can't explain with traditional technobabble. (replace with parasites for pre-nanomachine era).

If you're here on the Internet and have not heard of Metal Gear or Metal Gear Solid, you're obviously pretty new or just straight up ignorant... But for the sake of /tg/ and everyone, we'll help.

Metal Gear and the subsequent games coming after it are action-adventure stealth games starting in 1987. While Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 on the EN EE ESS EM ES EX TWO were well-received and iconic, it was Metal Gear Solid in 1998 on the PEE ESS JUAN that changed not only the franchise but third-person shooters in general and practically being the herald of stealth games. Though each game has a different story, it typically follows the supersoldier agent Solid Snake or Big Boss during the 21st century and the Cold War as he infiltrates something, destroys whatever's inside, and is a badass while doing it. We would explain more of the story here, but honestly it gets stupidly complicated with government conspiracies, clones, ghosts, sudden but inevitable betrayals, and many more. While somewhat grounded in reality, it has a very obvious sci-fi feel to it, similar to BattleTech, Shadowrun, and in some ways Warhammer 40K. Besides its well-crafted game play and frequently uneven and twisty plot, Metal Gear is mainly known for its memes.

Metal Gear and /tg/

Like much of the Internet and 4chan, /tg/ has a pretty distinct love for Metal Gear. We've had several quest threads following the Metal Gear universe, most notably Rise from Ashes and Revengeance Quest. While there's not a definitive homebrew for it, there's limitless potential and that certainly hasn't stopped us from trying.

Metal Gear Vindicare is a pretty obvious /tg/-MSG relation, being inspired by the famous codec used by Solid Snake in the game. Centers around Love Can Bloom with Doomrider as a special guest. DO COCAAAAIIIINNE!

A lot of things about Metal Gear correlate with the interests of fa/tg/uys. Despite what most people think, /tg/ loves their giant robots, which Metal Gear Solid has in spades. There's also a good enough amount of both grimdark and hilarious stupidity to keep a wide variety of neckbeards entertained.

There was a limited edition version of Risk with Metal Gear tappings. However it is out of print and now costs more to buy than any of the games alone. Because Konami is even dumber than Games Workshop.

There is also a board game in development. The last word being main one because Konami has been shitting the bed as of late, though the new management seems to be least smart enough to pawn their work off on third party devs.

Characters

Solid Snake

I am happy

The protagonist for most of the games. He starts out his career in Metal Gear as a rookie FOXHOUND agent, uncovering the existence of the Metal Gear and the double-crossing of his superior, Big Boss. He later discovers that he's actually the clone-son of Big Boss, created for reasons that change from game to game. Snake spends the rest of the games fighting Big Bosses' other clones as well as uncovering the grand conspiracy his father had been retconned into fighting, while people talk about how hard the life that he chooses to live is even though it's his own fucking choice. He finally ends his career in Metal Gear Solid 4, his clone-genes rapidly degenerating and near the end of his life (by the time he's in his mid-thirties he's in his late sixties biologically, complete with heart problems and seizures). But he doesn't get to die before finally making amends with his father in a rather hilarious moment where Big Boss is convinced that unless he kills a really old man who was essentially a vegetable the whole series could happen again. In terms of personality there's not much to say, besides him wanting to lead huskies in the Iditarod if he were to ever retire.

Big Boss

Good night, sweet prince.

Basically General Sturnn. But with an eye-patch. Farsight seems to take a lot of inspiration from him too. While initially portrayed as the villain due to how much he loved war so he could get child soldiers to train into regular soldiers, one could argue whether or not his actions were justified given the later retcon of the Patriots existence (and then they'd remember that whole child soldier bit - then again, who knows if that was actually Big Boss or Venom Snake). Big Boss stars as the protagonist of all the Metal Gear games before Solid begins his career, dating back to the 1960s when he was known as Naked Snake (get it?). Naked Snake discovers the progenitor of Metal Gear in Soviet Russia while also being "betrayed" by his former leader, The Boss. After an arms deal goes wrong, he chooses to kill her to cover up America's involvement, which leaves a lasting impact for the rest of his life and was betrayed by his love interest, EVA, because nobody on the team realized that the agent he was supposed to meet (a man) was actually replaced by EVA (a woman). He decides to abandon the United States (even though patriotism was the theme of the previous game) and create his own military group "Militaires Sans Frontieres," the very mercenary group to have ever existed in the MGS world, later called "Diamond Dogs," while fighting his own shadow war against former comrade Zero who turned evil offscreen and is the founder of the Patriots (also happens offscreen). After fighting a number of early Metal Gear models, Big Boss began building a few Metal Gears of his own to try and even the odds. During a battle against one of the Patriots' splinter groups, Cypher, Big Boss pussies out and decides "Fuck this war, somebody else can deal with this shit" and leaves a body double, Venom Snake, to become the public face of his PMC while he fucked off to who knows where. Originally Big Boss fought Solid Snake in MG1 and died, this was retconned in MG2 where they said he didn't die, just had lots of his body replaced with machinery, and retconned into Venom Snake died instead in MG1, while Big Boss entered into a coma after MG2 until he was revived just after the patriots were defeated (nobody bothered to check to make sure he was dead). He can also bench press 200 simi odd ton tanks and recharge batteries by eating glowing mushrooms for some reason. TL:DR, he's a ubersoldier. Also has done enough shit to make James Bond look like a pansy. Made a cool base.

Gray Fox

Initially just an NPC with some backstory as FOXHOUND's best soldier. In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (To differentiate it from the load of fail that was Metal Gear 2 on the NES) he's retconned as Solid Snake's best friend. Mid-way into the game he is revealed as the second in command of Zanzibar Land under Big Boss & the pilot of the first real Metal Gear. He is also the first of the melee only boss battles, with land mines surrounding the boss arena to spice things up. Because the AI was shit (and he isn't the player character) he loses to Snake. He also kills his girlfriend accidentally in one of the most heavily foreshadowed scenes of all time. In Metal Gear Solid he comes back as the first Cyborg Ninja as a tutorial battle for the game's melee system. In short telling the player how to beat him. His final act is damaging Metal Gear Rex with some kind of laser or plasma weapon that he didn't have in previous appearances before being squished by Metal Gear. His sacrifice allows Snake to finally defeat Rex with his Stinger Missiles. Also appears in a prequel game of questionable canon. Later on his backstory was expanded a little more, and it was revealed that he was a child soldier fighting in an area well known for their child soldiers, and he was able to amass a large kill-streak because none of his enemies thought that child soldiers existed, in an area full of them. His ability to lower the intelligence of everyone he met impressed the CIA, who decided to make him into the perfect soldier, unfortunately this ability affected the CIA too and they assumed that wiping all of his memories, including the memory of any martial art he knew or fought against, would make him a better fighter. He also later murdered the parents of Naomi, then chose to adopt her, because why not? Naomi is also the person who turns him into a cyborg and then lets him loose, knowing full well that he'll want another rematch against Snake, and knowing full well that if Snake failed to complete the mission a Nuke could be launched against the US. The "book" included with MGS2 "In the Darkness of Shadow Moses" says she was arrested, charged with treason and broken out by a mysterious savor, implied to be Solid Snake. However in an optional Codex Call(and another retcon due to Konami's downfall starting in 2006) Campbell suspects that it was Liquid Ocelot who broke her out and captured her to do experiments. So she gets away just fine. One would think they could get Paul Eiding to make a ItDoSM audio book but since the company ran the franchise into the ground this won't happen until Konami goes under and is bought out by real game developers.

Liquid Snake

Liquid quite literally most of the time. This even extends to when Ocelot brainwashed himself to become Liquid.

The antagonist of Metal Gear Solid and Snake's clone brother. Liquid has a distinctly British accent and blond hair. According to the game's very loose grasp of genetics (later ret-conned into Ocelot convincing Liquid this is how genetics work, which is even more dumb since this implies Liquid, an elite ex-British SAS member, could not pick up a goddamned high-school science textbook to do extra research), He actually failed biology as a child which tells you quite a bit. Liquid tell snake inherited all the recessive genes of Big Boss, while Snake inherited all the dominant genes, and because of this he believed he was made from "inferior genes" and that's the reason he's evil. No seriously, the entire reason he's evil is because he doesn't like how he looks, and thus becomes Doctor Doom. Even as a child, he was a surprisingly competent soldier, giving Venom Snake (who he believed was his father Big Boss) a lot of headaches when he started acting out. He also murdered kids and stole the Metal Gear Venom Snake had before vanishing in a cliffhanger that never got resolved in the main series (you'll have to look to youtube to see what they wanted to do, and even then that still ends up on a cliff-hanger). It was later revealed though that it was actually him who had the dominant genes and Snake who had the recessive genes, even though he believed it to be the opposite.

Liquid would have died from Skull Face's parasite had he not become BFFs with his future comrade, Psycho Mantis who had the ability to do pretty much everything, and was retconned into being possessed by Liquid since Psycho Mantis now gets possessed by non-Psychic people, even though he's wearing his mask which was designed to stop peoples thoughts from entering his head. Liquid has massive Daddy issues (the aforementioned genes) and is incredibly stupid, which lead him to rebel against the US government and seize Metal Gear REX for himself. He also really hates Snake for the same aforementioned gene issue, possessing a really intense inferiority complex and needing to constantly prove himself. Also turned Gray Fox into a blood puddle, because can't aim a laser for crap. Snake fights him several times, including shooting down his helicopter and Metal Gear Rex, but the bastard JUST. WON'T. DIE. Of course he finally does die from an engineered virus... sort of. "Liquid" takes possession of Ocelot but this was retconned out later so it doesn't matter.

Ocelot

A Russian gunslinger and a guy with a LOT of mixed loyalties that make no sense when you think about it. Formerly a member of GRU (the Soviet Military's version of the civilian KGB) and a secret agent for the USA, Ocelot joined with Big Boss (due to a combination of charisma and because Ocelot has a major crush on Big Boss, bordering on actual romance), helping him in secret despite nominally being a member of the Patriots (and later deciding to destroy them, for Big Boss' sake). Ocelot joined Liquid's rebellion, but only to act as the Patriot's inside man and steal the plans for Metal Gear REX, even though as the governing intelligence they would already have had them. He also manages to steal Metal Gear RAY, but at this point he starts acting out his secret plan to destroy the Patriots from within. How does he do this? Well....

1. Pretend to be possessed by the ghost of Liquid and steal Metal Gear RAY which was later retconned into him using hypnosis to make himself think he's Liquid, which gives him all of Liquid's personalities and skills, because that's what happens in this universe (it's how Big Boss made his body double too).
2. Use one of the Patriots' AI to infiltrate their system and take effective control over their military assets, because AI who know that the new AI will be under Liquid's control will just hand it to him and wait to die.
3. When the patriots send Snake after him, put up a convincing show of resistance by attempting to kill him multiple times.
4. Steal the railgun off of Metal Gear REX and aim it at the Patriots' main satellite, which is still armed with a live nuke because nobody in the government told their successors about the nuke, because written logs don't exist in this world, everything is passed down through word of mouth, and the patriots forgot that the nuke was there too. If it makes you feel any better, the US government also forgot they have a fully-armed (we're not even kidding, come MGS4, and the thing's weapon systems are fully armed and operational) 15-ft bi-pedal mech, fully equipped with classified next-generation technology, sitting in an abandoned nuclear storage facility.
5. Hope that Snake is still alive at this point and that he's developed the worm necessary to kill the Patriots AI, which Liquid could have done at any time so he wouldn't have had to worry about all the earlier bullshit.
6. Fistfight him bare-chested until you die of exhaustion.
7. Realize how hilariously dumb Kojima's story-telling ability is, after reading everything in this section
8. ???
9. Profit!

Yeah... when we talk about how convoluted the story is, it's usually Ocelot's fault. Still, for an elderly old bastard, he's pretty damn badass. Dude can also pull off some Taskmaster level shit and bite CQC moves from his opponents. He's also the third canon cyborg via replacing Liquid's Arm with a prosthetic and dented his own ship with it (but somehow, couldn't break Solid Snake's face during their fist-fight).

Also, he has a torture fetish and is a furry old fuck, the "Ocelot" code-name was before Fox Hound decided to go full-furry with operative code-names.. TLDR, he is Wat incarnate.

Otacon

The weeaboo of the series. We're not exaggerating, by the way. He wanted to work on Metal Gear REX specifically because he's obsessed with anime, and he ripped his codename straight from a real anime convention held yearly in Washington DC. Otacon is your typical nerdy support character, giving Snake technical assistance in his fight against the Metal Gears and is the only reason REX was able to be defeated because he intentionally developed it with an exploitable weak spot that would have made it a hindrance against on the battlefield. This carries over to the next several games where he'll design something far inferior to what already existed, only to let you use that better thing later on anyway. He's also a quite literally hopeless romantic, as his two romantic interests ended up dying. Though to be honest, the first was a terrorist who showed no real interest in him, and the second was Naomi, who upon realizing she had cancer that wasn't doing a fucking thing because she stopped it with nanomachines, decided to commit suicide. Also we learn that his dad committed suicide because he had sex with his stepmom. Yeah.

Huey

Otacon's dad. Despite having the same general appearance, voice actor, and role as Otacon, Huey deserves special mention for how much of a cock he is and how despite all his faults, Otacon is infinitely more tolerable. So, he's a paraplegic engineer who got drafted by the CIA into helping to build Peace Walker, not realizing how insane the project really is (this is a persistent theme for him). After being rescued by Big Boss, Huey works for him and develops Metal Gear ZEKE as a counter to the various AI weapons the CIA had built. He also ended up marrying his design partner, the heavily-implied-to-have-had-a-lesbian-crush-on-The-Boss Dr. Strangelove, with whom they had a son named Hal (aka Otacon). Now, here's where the dark shit settles in: after getting tricked by Cipher into letting them onto Mother Base to destroy it after selling out Big Boss and MSF to Cipher, Huey gets abducted and is forced to work on a new Metal Gear, Sahelanthropus. Because the cockpit can't fit a full-sized human, he tries to get his son Hal to pilot it. Strangelove vehemently opposes this, so he ends up stuffing her inside an AI pod to suffocate. After getting recaptured by Big Boss, he insists that he never betrayed him and that he wasn't willingly working for Cipher. But after Big Boss succeeds in defeating Skull Face, Huey steals the vocal chord parasite and makes it more deadly by making it immune to its original antidote in an attempt to sell it to Cipher for protection, even having the gall to call Big Boss a murderer for mercy-killing the men Huey infected. Naturally, this pisses off Big Boss, so he sends him adrift on a tiny life raft. Huey lives out the rest of his days being a bad parent, eventually drowning himself (and nearly drowning his stepdaughter) when he found out Hal had sex with his new wife. After learning all that, one can only imagine how badly Hal was treated and feel some genuine pity for him.

Meryl

Colonel Roy Campbell's daughter (he told everyone she was his niece because he didn't want them to know her mother had an affair with him) and the only FOXHOUND agent to not join Liquid's rebellion. She starts out as a rookie way in over her head, but she helps out Snake by providing him with useful information. Snake also starts to develop a romantic interest in her after all the shit they go through, and then dumps her to go hunt Metal Gears because Snake decided that Metal Gears shouldn't exist, a plan which was doomed to failure since their design was on the internet and literally everyone could download it. In Metal Gear Solid, depending on whether Snake submits to Ocelot's torture, Meryl lives or dies at the end of the game. This is later retconned in Metal Gear Solid 4, where she lives but also learns the truth that she's Roy's daughter, not his niece, which pisses her off. Meryl becomes the commander of her own unit which she names after the group who tried to kill her, and decides that because at this point Snake's turned into a crusty old fart, she's going to marry her perpetually incontinent subordinate stalker (he saw her once and was then pining for her years after the fact), who's also a weeaboo.

Raiden

He's introduced as the "true" protagonist of Metal Gear Solid 2, but his original appearance is nowhere near as badass as Snake. He's a white-haired effeminate Bishie that tends to rile up most people who loathe anime stereotypes. Raiden starts out as a Child Soldier in Africa (despite being whiter than white-out) before being taken in by the Patriots as their successor to Solid Snake. He's lived nearly his entire life in simulations and being fucked over by AIs. Once he's actually let out into the real world to stop Solidus and his terror cell, he meets Snake, and together they discover the existence of the Patriots.

Raiden gets a significant upgrade after MGS2, where he gets kidnapped by the Patriots and has his entire body below his upper jaw cut off and replaced by a cyborg ninja body (akin to a reverse Ferrus Manus). Everyone agrees that his version of Raiden is much better, and he ends up starring in the spin-off game Metal Gear Rising, where he uses his sword and ninja athleticism to fight other cyborgs and a regular human who was stronger than him due to having a better weapon, Power Armor and skills. In the Metal Gear verse your top of the line upgrades are barely useful in less than four years.

Solidus

The last of Big Bosses' clones, Solidus was much more under the control of the Patriots, sometimes. He spent some time fighting in Africa, where he picked up an orphaned Raiden and turned him into a pawn of the Patriots. While he was eventually made President, this really didn't count for much as the Patriots still made all the decisions and he was basically a puppet. Solidus decides that he's had enough of this shit and steals the Patriots' new warship, Arsenal Gear, and decides to take the fight directly to them. Of course, this didn't end well for him when Snake and Raiden interfere and the ship crashes into Manhattan. He gets killed by Raiden, sort of-not really as nobody bothered to check the body (falling into a coma instead of dying), but his body ends up being a macguffin because his DNA is an exact match to Big Boss, allowing Ocelot to hack into the Patriots network, because even though the Patriots know what's happening and could stop it they let it happen anyway.

The Patriots

Also known as "Cipher", or "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo" if you're under their direct control since they decided the best way to hide their name is telling everyone that they can't say their name. Financed by the inheritance of the 20th Century's wealthiest men, the Patriots control literally everything. Originally this was a group formed by Big Boss, Zero, Sigint, Para-Medic, Ocelot, and Eva in order to fulfill The Boss' wishes of creating a world without borders and ending the Cold War since the entire series is based around people wanting to do what The Boss wanted to do, despite most of them having minimal attachment to the boss at best. However, this group split in half over differences on how to fulfill this vision. Zero wanted to control the entire world and all facets of human life through all-knowing AIs, while Big Boss wanted to create "Outer Heaven," a place where soldiers would always belong and not be the puppets of governments (because having people always ready to fight would obviously mean everyone becomes peaceful and happy). When Zero went comatose, the group was taken over for a short time by Skull Face, the guy responsible for cleaning up the mess in MGS3 even though there wasn't anyone like that originally (retcon) and the location should have made it impossible. He wanted to fulfill the Boss' vision by eliminating language itself using a language-based parasite because he believed that a persons personality and way of thinking had everything to do with the language they spoke (he was also retarded). Eventually the Patriots was controlled by Five AIs: JD, GW, TJ, AL, & TR (John Doe, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt respectively) who had no self preservation whatsoever. These AIs decided that the best thing to unite the world was to plunge it into perpetual conflict and proxy wars, bringing together the worst of Zero's and Big Boss' visions and directly working against everything the series said they were working towards. The Patriots AI were killed off when Snake unwittingly uploaded a worm that killed all of them, finally freeing the world from their influence.

Types of Metal Gears

If the title of the game didn't hint at it enough, a prominent part of the game(s) are these giant mechs called (you guessed it) Metal Gears. In the beginning they're simply mobile platforms to launch nuclear weapons, but they evolve to fulfill many other roles and become far more dangerous in general.

Shagohod: Technically not a Metal Gear, but created the precedent for mobile nuclear platforms. This crazy contraption was basically a giant armored hovercraft that could use rocket-boosters to give its nuclear payload an extra kick of speed, designed to launch nukes from any surface and give the Soviet Union the edge in the Cold War. Of course the whole point of the Cold War was that both sides were fucked if ANY nukes were launched, so it became pointless before it was built. It also had point-defenses up the wazoo.

Metal Gear RAXA: The first proper Metal Gear ever built. A four-legged Metal Gear that could be launched from a ICBM. If you're asking why in the fuck they have to use a Metal Gear as a middleman nuclear platform when they're already launching it from an ICBM, supposedly it's because the missiles are harder to intercept on the Metal Gear than on the ICBM... but who's to say they can't intercept the ICBM carrying the Metal Gear?

Peace Walker: A four-legged walker that was fully AI controlled. It's described as having a stealth frame, but it wouldn't exactly be hard to spot considering the size of the thing. It could only fire nukes defensively, but could be tricked into launching a premature attack through a faked nuclear launch signal sent through the hacked NORAD system. Was intended to be the ultimate assurace of Mutually Assured Destruction by being an mobile, autonomous, and intelligent AI system that would guarantee a retaliatory strike upon whoever fired their nukes first. Originally created because a branch of the government didn't believe people would be able to launch nukes and kill millions of innocent people (which he'd prove by launching a nuke himself). Turns out it wasn't needed at all because the final act (and anyone with common sense) proved him completely wrong.

Metal Gear ZEKE: Big Boss' first attempt at a Metal Gear, this one was fully bipedal. Originally it was AI controlled too, but was modified to use a human pilot when Cypher attempted to steal it, the modifications being completed in days or minutes depending on when you last checked it, and nobody guarding it thought that it was a good idea to stop the modifications that weren't supposed to happen, and the two people doing them would never have been able to make them in the first place. This metal gear was also customizable and could be sent out on combat missions alongside MSF soldiers.

Sahelanthropus: This one was designed by Otacon's Dad, Huey. While technically more advanced than Metal Gear REX in that it could walk upright, one flaw was that the cockpit was too small for a full-sized human. Cypher got around this by using Pyscho Mantis to control it psychically, because in Phantom Pain Psycho Mantis could do whatever he wanted, which makes you question why they need robots when they already have control over a superhuman. Sahelanthropus is also the absolute proof of why Metal Gears are useless (as if Metal Gear: Rising didn't already do that), despite costing millions to make and countless resources, it's easily defeated by a man on a man-sized robot that would have cost a fraction of the resources to develop, and if it didn't have the ability to create clouds that destroyed metal, it could have been easily defeated by one tank.

TX-55: The Metal Gear that appears in the first game (which is now chronologically not the first one). This model didn't have that many frills, though it could fire two nukes despite being relatively tiny. It does nothing while Snake just uses C4 to blow it up and dodges the annoying laser cameras. Presumably it's the most durable one because the only way to hurt it is to use a shitload of C4 on its legs in a certain order, because armor paneling redundancies.

Metal Gear D: The first real Metal Gear the player ever fights in the release order. An upgraded version of TX-55. It only had a machine guns and missiles during it's boss battle, but apparently it could also fire six nukes one after another.

Metal Gear REX: This dinosaur-looking motherfucker takes the original Metal Gear concept one step further by firing nukes from a railgun instead of a ballistic missile, making nukes nearly impossible to track (though it was never designed to do so, and the waste heat it would generate makes that highly implausible, it just happened to work out that way). It also had a badass assortment of weaponry, from Gatling Guns to crotch lasers and a crap-ton of missiles. Even after Snake battled it in MGS1, it was still tough enough to take on RAY in MGS4. After MGS1, hundreds of REX knockoffs started spreading throughout the world thanks to Ocelot's douchebaggery.

Metal Gear RAY: Designed to be the ultimate anti-Metal Gear weapon, RAY failed fucking hard in that regard. It's amphibious by design, and instead of carrying nukes, its weapons include a powerful water cannon that can cut metal. Despite being built specifically to fight Metal Gears, it still loses in a fight against an already damaged Metal Gear REX. For some reason Ocelot never uses the missile spam attack seen in Metal Gear Solid 2 when he pilots the manned version in MGS4. Still not a cake walk though since you need too spam the fire button instead of holding it down to make this fight easier. Since Metal Gear battles that are not the first boss hardly ever are. The others seen in MGS2 and Rising are smaller unmanned knockoffs.

Metal Gear RAY MOD0: An upgrade over RAY seen in Metal Gear Rising. With the rise of carbon nano-tube tech; the armor was made lighter and stronger, allowing it to carry more weapons. Upgrades include: 4 limb-mounted twin-linked gatling guns, micro and macro missile launchers, an HF arm blade roughly the size of a small building, and a mouth-mounted plasma cannon. Despite all this, every last one of these guys encountered were destroyed by some Rhodesian weeaboo ninja with a sharp stick and a smart-talking Brazilian samurai with an incomprehensibly powerful sword and fighting technique.

Metal Gear EXCELSUS: Not really a Metal Gear, it was only named so for marketing reasons, but still impractically awesome either way. Seen only in Metal Gear Rising; EXCELSUS was meant as an anti-cyborg gear, because cyborgs were becoming too powerful for conventional warfare. Due to this, people thought the only counter to this was to go back to making giant mechs with impractically large and powerful weapons (under the logic that if you can't outmanuver them; outgun them). EXCELSUS is basically a scorpion-shaped mech roughly as tall and wide a sports stadium and armed with two giant HF blades and twin plasma cannons. Its destroyed by Raiden in the most hilariously over-the-top way possible; he SUPLEXES THE DAMN THING, rips one of it's arm blades off, and engages it in an arm-wrestling match with one of it's severed arms. Reminder, this was designed to kill cyborgs.

Gekko: Small Metal Gears made up of a combination of synthetic organic muscle and mechanical technology. They have the head/upper body of a REX, but they have a pair of lizard legs to walk around on. You'd think that those legs would be easy pickings for bullets, but actually they won't buckle for anything less than explosives. They also allow the GEKKO to jump really high, climb on walls, and sweep kick you, so good luck running away from them. They also moo like cows and take shits. Seriously. We're not fucking joking.

Plot

Metal Gear

The original story on the NES. While the future 3D games are the stuff of legends, the old ones didn't get better with age (they're good for nostalgia, but gameplay as expected during the pioneer age of vidya gaems, is unpolished at best).

It has rookie FOXHOUND operative Solid Snake infiltrating Outer Haven, a mercenary empire led by a mysterious legendary mercenary. Big Boss, leader of FOXHOUND, originally sent one of their best operatives named "Grey Fox" to infiltrate the area, but was captured, leaving only the message "Metal Gear" before disappearing. BB then only sends Snake to investigate, in an operation dubbed "Operation Intrude N312".

So to make a long-story less long and all the obligatory plot twists: Big Boss is actually the leader of Outer Haven (this was later ret-conned to being Big Boss' body double: Venom Snake) and the real Big Boss (we think) only sent in Snake thinking that he would be killed as he didn't have the experience to go up against hardened war veterans (all those guys you fultoned in MGS5? They're these guys). Metal Gear is actually a bi-pedal tank capable of launching nuclear weapons from anywhere. Also Grey Fox is alive, and wants to kill you after being convinced by Big Boss to turn on the US government.

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake

Sequel to the first game. The game now features the fictional nation of Zanzibar, another mercenary empire led by another "legendary mercenary". Zanzibar kidnapped Dr. Kio Marv, a scientist who created a compound named "OLIX" which could create an oil-substitute compound at little cost. Due to diminishing oil supplies, Zanzibar plans to hold the world hostage by controlling the only new reliable source of oil. They plan to enforce their position using OLIX and of course, a nuclear-equipped walking battle tank. Snake retired after the events of the first game, but was pressed by Campbell into service, due to this new crisis. Now, Snake must rescue Dr. Marv and bring an end to Zanzibar.

Surprisingly, this mission also goes well for Snake, managing to save Dr. Magnar and destroy Zanzibar's Metal Gear. But you guessed it, plot twists: Grey Fox is still alive, and this would be his final days as he dies after fighting Snake (but is forcibly brought back from the grave by the Patriots later), and Big Boss is actually still alive (although technically he was always alive, you just killed his body-double at first, with recent retcons considered), but Snake puts him down, once and for all (And this is the actual Big Boss now, but he didn't actually die, rather he was saved by the Patriots after the battle, but was in a coma. This plot point gets wrapped up in MGS4.).

Metal Gear Solid

Metal Gear Solid is a bit of a "reboot" of the franchise, where most of future games will follow this style of gameplay (or improve upon it).

The story involves Solid Snake being forced back into service after Liquid Snake, his brother, stages a coup with the Next-Generation Special Forces, and Fox Hound, taking Metal Gear REX and several personalities hostage. Their demands are money and for the US government to surrender the remains of Big Boss, as they require his DNA to fix their genetic flaws. Failure to do so, will cause the terrorists to launch a nuclear weapon from REX.

As a solo infiltrator Snake must defeat the members of the NGSF and Fox Hound, save the DARPA chief and president of the ArmsTech corporation, and retrieve Metal Gear REX. But as much as it was intended; he wasn't alone. He's assisted by an operations team that he contacts via codec that's currently operating from a submarine, an NGSF defector named Meryl, and REX's designer; Otacon. Also a mysterious cyborg ninja who is there to both assist and kill you, specifically in a first-fight.

But, plot twist, the ninja was Grey Fox all along and only got you here as a duel to the death with you was his final wish, you were just there to be a carrier of the FOXDIE virus, to ensure the members of Fox Hound are killed either way, then allow the US government to retrieve REX undamaged. Snake sort of "succeeds" in his mission (Revolver Ocelot is still alive, two of the hostages are dead, and REX is "kind of" destroyed.), failing most of his objectives, but managing to prevent nuclear holocaust from occurring.

As an additional Plot Twist: Revolver Ocelot planned everything with then-president George Sears (AKA: Solidus Snake), and everything went all according to plan from his stand-point (Whether him losing his gun hand is part of it or not, is up to debate).

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Known mostly as where the story of the Patriots and information control started.

After MGS1, Ocelot leaks plans of REX to the world, causing numerous countries to start making their own home-grown nuclear weapons programs through this data. Due to this, the US Marines are commissioned Metal Gear RAY, a not-metal gear that's designed to take on other giant robots, rather than launch nukes. Why they needed their own is only explained in optional dialogue that you have to go out of your way to find. As conventional weaponry (anti air and anti tank mostly or just a crap ton of explosives) can easily defeat Metal Gears. In short the USMC want to stick it to the Navy who have their own Metal Gear project.

This is caught by Snake's and Otacon's attention, who infiltrate the tanker transporting RAY to get photo evidence of the US government building another Metal Gear (never actually considering that in the age of Photoshop, the USG can easily deny these claims). Things go not as planned after Ocelot and a bunch of Russian mercenaries take over the tanker. Things are even more complicated after Ocelot betrays the mercenaries, then takes RAY for himself, sinking the oil tanker, and pinning the entire incident on Snake. Snake is assumed to have died during the tanker incident. Also Snake meets Olga Gurlukovich, daughter of the mercenary commander's daughter, for....reasons.

Fast forward a few years, and a facility called "Big Shell" is built on-top of the oil spill, to facilitate clean-up of the patch of water. Said facility is then taken over by the "Sons of Liberty" a disenfranchised US Special Forces group, led by former president George Sears, who intends to rid the world of the Patriots' influence, supported by a group of Russian mercenaries. He plans to do this by gaining access to nuclear weapons and requires the President's authorization to allow him to use it. During this time, they take the US president, and his cabinet hostage during a routine visit from them.

Along with a SEAL team, the US government sends "Raiden" a bishie "rookie" of Fox Hound.(he's trained with VR, but has no field experience to speak of. If you discount his stint as a child soldier. Who was designed to appeal to teenage girls. A demographic known for its awful taste.) Also there's this SEAL named Iroquis Pliskin who sounds, looks, and acts a lot like Solid Snake, but it can't be him because he's dead. Plus there's also this female cyborg ninja with a thick Russian accent, who's....just there, I guess.

His objectives were to rescue the president, prevent the terrorists from blowing-up Big Shell (as the chemicals used for de-contaminating the oil would poison the area around Manhattan), and neutralize the Sons of Liberty....atleast that was the plan. As with the first game; Raiden fails his original mission as the Big Shell is eventually destroyed, the US President is dead, and Solidus gains access to another superweapon that he was able to use. But he was able to prevent Armageddon by stopping Solidus by having a sword-duel to the death. Anyways:

PLOT TWEEST: Pliskin is actually Solid Snake (whether this can still be considered a twist is debatable, but meh), the Ninja with the feminine Russian accent was Olga all along, Big Shell was just a cover for the Patriots attempting to build another Metal Gear called "Arsenal Gear", the oil spill was Just as Planned to allow it's construction and the Big Shell was never doing any clean-up work at all, and this entire flubdubbery was actually an exercise to allow the Patriots to gather data on the SSS program or "Solid Snake Simulator", a program that would allow them to train a soldier at-par with Solid Snake with Raiden's experiences, using Ocelot as an observer. Ocelot was actually working with the Patriots, if that was ever a surprise. Also the Colonel Campbell and Rosemary advising you were actually the Patriot AIs, bringing into question whether everything Raiden has been told by the two is real or not. Snake also comes off looking like an asshole in this game as he does things such as using Raiden as bait for Solidus and withholds information. Which is kind of the point. As being a super spy for twenty years some odd years would make just about anyone else into a jerkass. He also knew that the Patriots were monitoring Raiden. A proper reason for keeping somebody you don't trust in the dark about your plans.

A TWIST TO THE PLOT TWIST: Ocelot was just a pawn (or so the Patriots think), SSS was actually for "Selection for Societal Sanity", a program enacted by the Patriots to gather data on how they can filter and censor information, to ensure the world only listens to the Patriot's point of view, as they deem that humans are incapable of forming context for information, resulting in dozens, to hundreds of opinions and interpretations, that inevitably cause either a stagnation of progress and conflict. By creating a context for everyone to adhere to, it is that much easier to influence the masses on how to think.

Another twist: Everything Raiden knows may or may not be a lie, but the validity of it is left ambiguous to allow the player to decide whether its truth or a lie.

Retrospective: As many sources attest to. MGS2 was supposed to the magnum opus for Kojima and wanted to leave the series in the hands of younger developers. There are a few problems with this. Sons of Liberty would be the second game for most players. As the eight bit games were never released internationally until 2005.(other than a shitty port of MG1 and a really bad third person shooter on the NES) Making the game's twists feel forced and unearned. Another problem is that players got vastly different dubs. Not just language but Solidus and Olga have the same voice actors as Snake and Meryl. Talking no differently from their roles in MGS1. The devs also despised the changes that improved English dub of the game and refused to let it happen again. Disrespecting their larger audience who can't even play the Japanese version of MGS2.

So again, despite being a fanboy of America. It's Kojima fault for not realizing that Japan has different values from the rest of the world. He and his staff didn't understand how western culture views things(and possibly still doesn't). As Raiden comes off as a poor man's Shinji Ikari for most of the game. So it came off to western players as one of many ripoffs of Evangelion. Another large problem is that one of the translators is a racist Karen who now whines about the MeToo movement and sues people when she is caught lying.

Another issue is that America wasn't bad off and didn't have the shitty economy Japan had in 2001 until 2007. Nor did big social media websites exist at the time to unwittingly assist in spreading conspiracy theories and accelerate the decline even further. Geekdom also didn't accept anime otaku culture as they do now. It also blames no in particular for these problems. As Japanese culture has the rather dumb ass view of not shitting on the flaws of your enemy. Thus falling on its face compared to more successful franchises.

The largest flaw is that the game's story is based around Richard Dawken's The Selfish Gene. A book at the time of development was over twenty years out of date. Which is a long time when it comes to science and long enough for most of its theories to be discredited. Worse for the devs and writers as a whole. Is that the Bioshock games, Specs Ops The Line(both subversive video games that did what MGS2 did but better) and anime such as Mobile Suit Gundam (shitting on those who glorify WW2 Japan) or Ghost in the Shell (itself based on Blade Runner) have the same messages but aren't as nice about it. MGS2 would most likely had been better received if it was meaner and actually went out of its way to criticize those whom it was railing against. Of course most people in their twenties, even fresh military recruits, are not obviously going to be anything like Solid Snake. But it seems that Kojima and Fukushima don't realize or have forgotten how shitty the tastes of most teenagers and twenty year olds actually are.

Also most people in the west unlike those in Asia. Think leaving plot threads open for non existent sequel as a sign of laziness, opposite of a large franchise such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Whose writers and producers actually planned ahead, even in the case of their most famous director leaving for his own projects.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Chronologically the first game in the series, MGS3 is pretty much a Fix Fic for the half assed story of MGS2. The game is still plays out like the old games, but as most of the activity is now in outdoor environments, additional features are added like the need to hunt and eat food for stamina, and the wound system that would cripple the player in certain areas due to injury (which was later pulled out of later games, because its just kinda dumb and needlessly slows the action down). MGS3 was initially made without Kojima's input but it was so bad that Konami had no choice but to ask him to come back. Japanese culture being what it is means he couldn't refuse.

MGS3 follows the adventures of "Jack", code-named "Naked Snake" (named so because he has little gear during missions, hence "naked"). He was selected to be the pioneer of the FOX group, a military initiative aimed at training elite operatives for deep-infiltration missions, which is overseen by an ex-SAS operative known only as Major Zero (why the blue blazes the American government would enlist a British national as the leader one of their black ops groups is only something Kojima could explain) and also by The Boss, Jack's mentor and the greatest soldier America has ever known.

Their original mission that acts as a trial for FOX is to help scientist Nikolai Stepanovich Sokolov defect to the West, growing tired of his creations becoming weapons of war (not really realizing the West will pretty much press him for the same ends), by rescuing him from a stronghold deep in Russian territory. Said weapon is a giant tank, capable of launching nuclear missiles without the use of a silo, named "Shagohod" (Walker, even though it's screw-propelled). Things originally went well, up until the ambush led by GRU Major Ocelot (who appears to have mellowed with age, as he's an insufferable fanboy during his youth), which Snake manages to overcome, thanks to Ocelot's cockiness. But things went Not as Planned when he realized his mentor, The Boss, defected to a Soviet separatist faction led by Colonel Volgin. This led to Sokolov being kidnapped again, the Shagohod being stolen, and Snake being left almost for dead after a hilariously one-sided fight with The Boss. Things went even more not as planned after Volgin uses the Davy Crockett nuclear weapon that The Boss gave him to destroy Shagohod's design facility, blowing any chance of the US keeping this operation a secret completely out of the water.

To head off the prospect of open warfare between the US and USSR, the CIA sends Naked Snake back into the field a week later to kill The Boss, under the official story that she had gone rogue and the destruction was entirely her fault. He's also tasked to kill Colonel Volgin, as a favor to the Russians, destroy the Shagohod before Volgin can use it for his own ends, and rescue Sokolov properly this time. Standing against him are rogue Russian spec ops groups of the KGB, GRU, and most infamously the "Cobra Unit," The Boss's elite squad of quirky misfits, who served with her during WW2.

Surprisingly, Naked Snake actually accomplishes more than future protagonists ever could, with the help of another Soviet spy named Eva. Sokolov kinda "died" (he's alive in Portable Ops after being rescued, but PO's canonicity is dubious as the game wasn't written by Kojima, but he doesn't really impact the story past MGS3 so its kinda moot overall), but Volgin kinda "died" as well (apparently he was only in a near-death coma, kept alive by his unfaltering rage against Snake. Its kinda irrelevant in the long run), the Shagohod was destroyed, and The Boss is killed in what is probably one of the saddest moments in video games (mostly because of reasons listed below).

If you haven't gotten used to it yet, too bad, PLOT TWEESTS: The Boss was never really a traitor. Her original objective was to gain the trust of Colonel Volgin to obtain the "Philosopher's Legacy," fucktons of money left behind by a secret cabal of world leaders during WW1, but this was compromised after Volgin used an American nuclear weapon on Russian soil. To ensure that the US had a way out of starting WW3, The Boss was forced to accept the role of the villain, and had to rely on Snake to have the skills and fortitude to kill her, absolving the US of its crimes. By killing The Boss, Snake is heralded as a hero in the US and Russia, earning him the title of "Big Boss" from the President, but the trauma of sacrificing so much for his country made it feel like he was anything but a hero.

Also, Eva was actually a Chinese spy (if that wasn't kinda obvious, given Sigint's hints and her actions) and Ocelot was a triple agent (a GRU officer, working for a separatist faction, while working with the US government) who was actually Adam, the person meant to support Snake but was beaten to the punch (given this is his character trope, this probably should stop counting as a plot twist).

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops

A game of questionable canon not directed or written by Hideo Kojima. The main antagonist is a bigger Villain Sue than Armstrong and Ocelot put together. Which is saying something because either would whip the floor with him. It was also a considered the worst game until recently (see Survive). Which is what you get when the primary writer is known for making shitty harem novels for morbidly obese otaku and directed by a script writer instead of a real director.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

MGS4 is officially the "end" of the Solid timeline, as MGSV is about Big Boss's wacky misadventures in the 80's. The game is constantly criticized for basically being one long cutscene, due to the fact a lot of the game has a lot of cinematic content, than actual gameplay, to the point that MGS4 actually holds the world record for the longest cutscene in videogame history, who's finale spans a whopping 71 minutes (and reminder, this is JUST the ending).

The game follows Solid Snake, who has rapidly aged to an old man in his 60s due to being a clone, and apparently he's going to be a WMD as the FOXDIE virus injected into him back in the first Solid game is mutating into an indiscriminate bio-weapon. He's called in for one last mission by Colonel Campbell to assassinate "Liquid" Ocelot, the leader of one of the largest PMCs in the world, who has amassed too much power and is deemed a threat by world leaders. He reluctantly takes to the field again, as this is to be his final mission to end the madness he and his extended family was responsible for, before finally dying (by his hand if necessary). Along the way he's helped by just about every MG character from the previous games as one big nostalgiafest, including:

• Otacon, who's there for exposition;
• Raiden, who is now an impractically awesome near-immortal cyborg ninja;
• Dr. Naomi Hunter, who's attempting to atone for her sins;
• Colonel Campbell, who married Raiden's wife after becoming estranged to him;
• Rosemary, Raiden's wife who separated from him after a miscarriage. Acts as a psychologist to Snake;
• Vamp, who's trope as a bi-sexual vampire is really drilled into your skull here;
• Ocelot, who may or not be literally possessed by Liquid Snake's ghost (we're not kidding, this is the main reason why Ocelot became the series's big bad);
• Solidus, who's now in a coma;
• Meryl, who is now working for the US as an observer for PMCs;
• Johnny Sasaki, who somehow turned from comic relief to part-time action hero (because.....eh?);
• Mei Ling, who due to certain assets, is now a USN captain of her own ship;
• Big Boss, who finally woke up from his near-death coma;
• Eva, who's now leading an Eastern-European resistance group under the name "Big Mama";
• Sunny Gurlukovich, the daughter that Olga mentioned back in MGS2, now under the protection of Snake and Otacon.

To wrap up Kojima's decade-long fever dream: Big Mama dies attempting to save Big Boss's husk from being burned to ash, Vamp dies after being heavily wounded by Raiden and injected with a nanomachine suppressor, Naomi dies after being guilt-tripped by Vamp's death, Snake manages to upload a computer virus that finally destroys the Patriots for real (but their influence continues on) and manages to kill Ocelot for real after one of the most nostalgia-drilling fist-fights in the series. Meryl and Johnny get married, Campbell and Rose reveal that their relationship was a play to keep the Patriots thinking that Raiden's kid was Campbell's, and Snake goes to The Boss's grave to eat a bullet before he involuntarily kills everyone.

Except he doesn't: Big Boss stops him and reveals that he's not dead (obviously) and the corpse that EVA died for was actually Solidus, whose limbs were removed and transplanted onto him when he was revivified. He has a long heart-to-heart with his clone-son and reveals a lot of exposition: he and several of the MGS3 crew were founding members of the Patriots, aiming to fulfil The Boss's wishes, only for shit to go wrong and metastasize into the globe-spanning conspiracy they are today; he and Major Zero (now a comatose, crippled old man on life support) are the last surviving members in a world without a place for them. It also turns out that Drebin 893 (a shady arms dealer you've been buying weapons from throughout the game) injected Snake with a newer variant of FOXDIE, made by the Patriots to kill Big Mama, Liquid Ocelot, and Big Boss; this uprooted the old one, so Snake can live the final year or two of life he has left without fear of turning into a walking WMD.

Big Boss pulls the plug on Zero's life support, then salutes his mentor's grave as he gives Snake a few final fatherly words of wisdom before allowing himself to succumb to FOXDIE. "This is good... isn't it?"

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

The other direct sequel to Metal Gear Solid 3 on the PSP. A much better game between the two. It should have been released on consoles instead as Big Boss can't move and be in the prone position at the same time. This is where the series started it's slow decline that was fast tracked by Konami's sabotage of MGSV and the release of Survive. As one of three main writers behind Metal Gear. Tomokazu Fukushima, left the company during the early development of MGS4. Peace Walker would have been called Metal Gear 5 if it wasn't for Konami's executive meddling. Most of the problems in the game were fixed in the HD releases.

Oddly, everything that was put into MGSV came from Peace Walker. Base building, blueprints, recruiting soldiers, grand theft auto of military vehicles, and tape conversations originated here. While being more detailed and less annoying about it. The story is also considered to be superior to Metal Gear V as well.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Set four years after Guns of the Patriots, Revengeace is a completely different beast from any other Metal Gear game. First off, you play as Raiden for the entire game instead of Snake or Big Boss. Second, since this game was developed by Platinum Games instead of Konami, stealth is mostly thrown out the window for glorious carnage (you can still try to use stealth when it's applicable to make the game easier, as enemies are vulnerable to insta-kills while you're undetected, but nothing's stopping you from just going in and murderfucking everyone.). And third, the stupid over-the-top tropes Metal Gear Solid was known for are hitched up to eleven. Seriously, look at this shit. That's the equivalent of tossing around a Warhound Scout Titan like a rag doll.

Long story short, Raiden receives a far more powerful cyborg body and is sent to eliminate Desperado; an off-shoot faction of the Patriots led by U.S Senator Armstrong, known for the "Nanomachines, son" meme and the most patriotic villain ever known. Besides that the plot is pretty much nonexistent, with Raiden running around and pretty much being the living avatar of RIP N' TEAR. The plot though did have some really funny moments where Raiden discovered the villains plan to create an army, kidnap children from third-world countries, put their brains in jars, have them remote control robots/cyborgs, and once they were skilled enough put their brains in those bodies so that they could get killed on the battlefield, not to mention there's a part where Raiden just lets a bunch of children die because he's too busy posing to help them out. Much like most of the series, this plan is doomed to failure before it starts when you realize that there's already a far better alternative in the form of nanomachines that make you invincible, they only stop working when it's plot convenient. It also regresses Raidens' character a bit (because much like every MGS sequel, the theme of the previous games are ignored), but nobody really gave a shit about that because of all the over-the-top ninja bullshit he constantly pulls off.

It also has a BITCHIN’ soundtrack

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

Ground Zeroes

The story begins with Ground Zeroes, set one year after the events of Peace Walker. It turns out Paz, a former friend of Big Boss and secret agent for Cipher, is alive and is being held in an American Interrogation camp on the southern tip of Cuba. Big Boss originally wanted to assassinate Paz because of her ties to the mysterious Cipher organization and suspects she might may have leaked critical information about the Militaires Sans Frontières. Miller on the other hand doesn't believe this and convinces Big Boss to bring her back alive for questioning. Coincidentally, Mother Base (formerly Outer Heaven, formerly Mother Base) is scheduled for a United Nations nuclear weapon inspection. After rescuing Paz and Chico, they find out that Paz had a bomb surgically planted in her abdomen as a setup. After a very gruesome scene of surgically removing the bomb from Paz's body, Big Boss successfully disposes the bomb as Paz tries to recover. They return to Mother Base only to see that it has come under attack by Cipher's covert strike force XOF, meaning the inspection was only a smokescreen for an attack. Big Boss manages to save Miller and an unnamed soldier (we find out his real alias is Mosquito, but he comes back later on). They all escape as Mother Base collapses and cue for Miller's famous meme quote "They played us like a damn fiddle!". Miller realizes Big Boss was right and demands answers from Paz. That is until Paz claims there is another bomb inside of her (heavily implied to be in her vagina, what the fuck Kojima) as she falls out of the helicopter and the second bomb inside her explodes causing the helicopter to lose control and crashes into another helicopter.

The Phantom Pain

Big Boss manages to survive the crash but falls into a coma for nine years. A pretty cool opening scene of Big Boss waking up to The Man Who Sold the World in a hospital bed in Cyprus. The doctors show Big Boss after the explosion that not only did he get shrapnel sticking out of his head and the inside of his body, but he also lost his left forearm in the process. The following night an assassin kills the doctors who took care of Big Boss and nearly kills Big Boss himself. That is until another patient stops the assassin and sets her on fire causing her to jump out the window. The patient reveals himself as 'Ishmael' and helps Big Boss escape (This isn't the only reference to the book Moby Dick, Ishmael calls Big Boss 'Ahab' while Big Boss is equipped with a hook hand prosthetic). As they both approach the elevator, they encounter a child wearing a gas mask and a straight jacket floating in the air (we know what you're thinking and yes, that is Psycho Mantis as a little kid) and a man covered in fire. Since gunfire is useless against him his only weakness is water. They both see that XOF units start killing the patients and hospital staff to ensure there are no witnesses. It becomes clear that they were sent in to eliminate Big Boss after finding out he had just woken up. After facing certain death against XOF soldiers and the Man of Fire, Big Boss and Ishmael escape the hospital using an ambulance. Unfortunately, the ambulance gets attacked by XOF forces and crashes. Big Boss survives, but Ishmael has disappeared leaving Big Boss to fend for himself. Just as an XOF helicopter is hovering over Big Boss, Psycho Mantis shows up then suddenly a giant fucking whale covered in fire swallows the helicopter and destroys it. To make things even more ridiculous, the Man of Fire shows up again riding a fucking winged unicorn made of fire. Luckily, a man riding a horse shows up to Big Boss' aid and that man is none other than Revolver Ocelot (now voiced by Troy Baker). After a chase ensues between the Man of Fire and Big Boss and Ocelot, they both manage to escape. Ocelot reminds Big Boss of what has happened before he fell into a coma and wants to help him and Miller rebuild their private army. It turns out Miller was captured by the Soviets and is being held for interrogation in Afghanistan. Big Boss joins up with Ocelot and sets out for Afghanistan. And that's all just the prologue.

Unfortunately, the rest of the story isn't nearly as awesome or cinematic, partly due to Konami's budget cuts forcing the game to be left in an unfinished state. Here's the gist; Big Boss slowly starts rebuilding his army by recruiting (read: kidnapping) Soviet and African soldiers, stealing tanks with balloons, and completing various contracts for money. However, its not long before he runs back into XOF forces, this time using mutant supersoldiers called the "Skulls" who use modified versions of the superpowered parasites used by the Cobra Unit, giving them freaky abilities like mind-controlling nearby soldiers or turning rock-solid. XOF is working on a new Metal Gear in Afghanistan, while working on a brand new superweapon on the Angola-Zaire border to eliminate entire languages through vocal-cord parasites, which are actually related to the Cobra Unit parasites. Actually these parasites have a lot of strange and unexplained abilities, like somehow being able to refine uranium ore or being used in the walking mechanisms for metal gears, or destroying metal. Whatever the case, Big Boss captures and falls in love with XOF sniper Quiet (who he learns is the same assassin who tried to kill him in the hospital), who is in turn won over by him because he's the motherfucking Big Boss. He also accidentally unleashes a parasite outbreak in Angola, which infects his own men, until he gets to the bottom of the infection. Finally after a big showdown in Afghanistan, Big Boss finally corners and kills Skull Face and his Metal Gear.

So, story over, right? HA no. Huey causes a second outbreak to try to bribe his way back into Cypher's hands, Quiet is forced to speak to rescue Big Boss (and thus runs away so she doesn't infect anyone, presumably to kill herself to avoid a slow and painful death), and baby Liquid runs away with all the child soldiers and steals the Metal Gear with him. And... that's pretty much it. The entire final battle was cut from the game, which according to plans would have been far more challenging and climactic than the two previous Metal Gear encounters, but unfortunately it never came to pass and likely never will. The only real ending we got was the reveal that Venom Snake was never Big Boss to begin with, just a brain-washed body double who would distract Cypher while the real Big Boss fucked off to do who-knows-what. We did get a decent epilogue, however, when several years after the game released, an Easter Egg was activated after every player-owned nuclear warhead was successfully deactivated in the PvP section of the game.

Phantom Pain is Skub incarnate; and is either considered one of the best game's in the series (thanks to it's amazing open stealth infiltration system and detailed mercenary management) or the worst mainline Metal Gear's (for it's often times sparse story, and undeveloped aspects) However, all will agree it is a Metal Gear game, which leads too...

Metal Gear Survive

What we got instead of remakes of the 8-bit games. However that would require remembering all the retcons, a little research about the politics and pop culture of the 90s and some creativity. Than paying David Hayter and Richard Doyle to return as the voices Solid Snake and Big Boss. Hell they could've had Hayter pull double duty as a script editor to keep them consistent with the canon. Lacking the ability and refusing to spend money to do just about any one of these things. Konami made this POS instead.

A portal in the sky transports you to an alternate dimension after Mother Base was destroyed by XOF, where nanomachines has mutated everyone into Romero-like zombies (we're not kidding, this is as "Nanomachines son" for a plot device as it gets). As the name implies; your objective is to survive. Its basically every indie survival horror game you see on Steam, except this comes in with a hefty pricetag of 40 USD/EUR.

As the first game ever worked on without Kojima's input, it was originally supposed to be a testament if Konami can indeed replicate Kojima's brand of absurdly hilarious yet engaging writing, or if Kojima was indeed the only thing keeping Metal Gear afloat, and it indeed shows: it can easily be called the worst Metal Gear yet. The story is worse than Snake's Revenge and makes Bethesda era Fallout look good with sentient nanomachines from the 22nd century via time travel as the main villain.

It's story right out plagiarizes another video game made by Square Enix, Gunslinger Stratos. Just without the alternate universe dopplegangers. One could also argue that it ripoffs the premise from Doctor Who two parter "The Empty Child". However, unlike Steven Moffat the people behind Survive have no idea how to make a coherent plot. Proving for a second time that Gakuto Mikumo (who wrote the shitty story of Portable Ops) is a no talent hack like most light novel writers. Blatantly ignoring that the real future of the Metal Gear universe is the much superior Zone of the Enders.(Sahelanthropus looks like a much less advanced Jehuty.) Pathetic that they couldn't make a better future of the franchise than a half decent Gundam fanfic series.

The game mechanics are something the olden survival games of yore (which aged about as well as bread left out in the open for 6 years), with you having to build a base using resources that you grind for, and such.

The characters are bland and calling you every 30 seconds for who knows what. You are reminded to take food and drink often but it's very difficult to get either. The main character from the single player campaign is a blatant ripoff of Chris Redfield. While the player character is a mute because they couldn't afford to hire real voice actors after blowing their money on Matt Mercer. And do not forget that this piece of crap demands always online compatibility even for the single-player, and asking $10 for an extra save slot. Yes, 10 bucks for an extra save slot, not even F2P mobile games have that audacity. Also the zombie AI is crap, whose biggest opponents are world objects like vehicles (even an open-topped vehicle like a jeep can make you invincible), and the entire experience just feels like a game that's stuck in 2012, and never bothered to evolve to be better. There is really nothing worth picking up about this game, that you can't get anywhere else for cheaper and better.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. After 30 years, this is how Metal Gear ends: not with a bang, but with a whimper as its dying body is devoured by Konami to salvage whatever profit they can from it before it finally rests in peace. (Well, that and Solid Snake's surprise return to Super Smash Bros., but Konami didn't need to do jack shit for that except say yes to Nintendo's money and let them do all the work.)

To put more nails in Konami's coffin, the new games made by Kojima and Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi after their departure from Konami (Death Stranding and Bloodstained, respectively), have become highly successful, while Konami's own new entries in the Metal Gear, Castlevania and Contra franchises have been met with derision and low sales. They can't even get sports or mobile games right, having lost their licenses for footy leagues they used for Pro Evolution Soccer to EA of all people. Nor can they keep a 10 year old dating sim port running without bugs. Fucking pathetic. The only hope for them at this point is selling their assets off to a large publisher such as Sega or Square Enix after they lose their Pachinko license. Due to Japan's illegal gambling crackdown and parlors ignoring Coronavirus measures. At this point it seems Sony themselves has shown interest in doing so.

See Also

• Metal Gear Vindicare
• BattleTech

Gallery

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  The size of a Warhound and the (contextual) power of an Imperator. Awesome.

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