Metal Gear

Metal Gear Solid title

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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.

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 /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. Bedsides it's well crafted game play and sometimes uneven plot, Metal Gear is mainly known for it's 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.

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.

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). 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.

Gray Fox

Initially just an NPC with some backstory as FOXHOUND's best soldier. In Metal Gear 2 he's retconned as Solid Snake's best friend in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.( To differentiate it from the load of fail that was Metal Gear 2 on the NES) Mid-way into the game in he is revealed as the second in command of Zanzibar Land under Big Boss & the pilot of the first real Metal Gear battle and first of the melee only boss battles, with land minds surrounding boss arena. 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. So Snake can 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, though luckily assisting in the act of nuclear terrorism only gets you a verbal reprimand, so she gets away just fine.

Liquid Snake

Liquid quite literally most of the time.

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, Liquid 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). 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 became bros with Big Boss, helping him in secret despite nominally being a member of the Patriots (and later deciding to destroy them). 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.
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. ???
8. 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.

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. 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 uniting the world 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 (Move Trough Cover) that would rocket-boost (one-turn Fast Tank) in order to give its nuclear payload an extra boost and was designed to launch nukes from any surface, giving 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 wazzoo.

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 plot that understood little to nothing of mutually assured destruction.

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, it was simply a robot that could fire nukes. 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 that's how explosives work.

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. It's sprite makes it look as if could launch 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, 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. Liquid only uses the anti tank 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 laser or 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 unmanned knockoffs.

Gekko: Quite possibly the dumbest looking mechs in science fiction, the Gekkos are 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 NES port of Metal was a load of fail. Proving that even thirty years ago PC gaming is superior to consoles. Seriously some of the maps are removed and a few of the boss battles have been changed. It also takes out Big Boss's importance to the original plot. Reading about Phantom Pain first will be spoilers for this game so be warned.

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake

Subtitle included because the original non-canon Metal Gear 2 NES is a run and gun shooter with a story that makes less sense then usual.

Metal Gear Solid

Snake's decided to retire from the spy business after having to kill his father twice once (first one was actually Venom Snake) to live out his dream of training racing huskies in the Alaskan wilderness. But Colonel Campbell comes knocking at his door, telling him that FOXHOUND's turned traitor and have taken a nuclear disposal facility hostage. After getting some weird shots from Dr. Naomi Hunter, he gets his SCUBA on and sneaks into the base. There he quickly discovers that the leader of the rebellion is Liquid Snake, Solid Snake's clone brother with a massive hate-boner for both their father and himself. The other FOXHOUND members include Revolver Ocelot, Decoy Octopus, Vulcan Raven, Sniper Wolf, and Psycho Mantis; the only FOXHOUND agent who didn't join the rebellion was Campbell's niece Meryl. After sneaking around the base trying to rescue the hostages, both Darpa Chief Donald Anderson (Sigint in MGS3) and Armstech President Kenneth Baker die suddenly of a heart attack mid-conversation. Snake later learns that the shot he received earlier was actually the FOXDIE virus, a genome-specific disease that kills specific individuals (and that the Darpa Chief was actually Decoy Octopus, whereas the real one had already died from torture). Furthermore, the nuclear disposal facility is actually a secret testing ground for the newest Metal Gear model, Metal Gear REX.

Snake tracks down REX's designer, Otacon, just as he's been cornered by a creepy cyborg ninja. Said ninja is actually Gray Fox, Snake's old BFF who's gone completely mental. (Naomi later reveals that she's not only Gray Fox's sister and wants to kill Snake for what he did to him, but also modified FOXDIE so that he'll be targeted as well at a random time... except wouldn't he already have been a target since he and Liquid have the exact same genome? Kojima just doesn't understand genetics at all.) After fighting him off, Otacon helps out Snake in finding out how to stop the terrorists from using REX's stealth nuke capabilities. Snake also meets up with Meryl, who gives him the PAL card needed to disarm Metal Gear REX. After fighting Psycho Mantis (Who has a memorable boss fight in which he literally blanks the entire screen and forces you to change controllers) and Vulcan Raven, Snake is captured by Sniper Wolf after she shoots Meryl, while Ocelot tortures Snake. Here, if Snake submits to the torture, Meryl dies at the end, otherwise she survives. Anyway, with Otacon's help, Snake is able to escape captivity, destroys Liquid's helicopter, defeats Sniper Wolf, and sneaks into Rex's lair. After defeating Vulcan Raven a second time, Snake finally reaches REX itself, figuring out that the system requires three key cards to disarm even though he only has the one. However, Otacon tells him that he already has all three key cards because its designed to change shape with temperature. So after traipsing around in the lair he disarms REX... except that it was all a ruse and he ended up arming it instead. Liquid takes control of REX and challenges Snake to a fight. Luckily Gray Fox intervenes and helps to expose REX's cockpit, allowing Snake to shoot at liquid directly. Que a fistfight atop Rex, followed by the sudden reveal that the Secretary of State is going to bomb the whole island to cover the entire incident up, followed by a high-speed chase in which Liquid attempts to kill Snake one last time. Finally Liquid succumbs to FOXDIE while Snake and Otacon or Meryl walk away with him into the rising sun.

Que one final cutscene in which Ocelot is revealed to have survived, and has stolen the plans for Metal Gear REX, under orders of President Solidus Snake.

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. Force Operation X drops one of their operatives, Naked Snake, into Soviet territory to help scientist Nikolai Stepanovich Sokolov defect. Again (Major Zero of FOX had to give him back to the Soviets to end the Cuban Missile Crisis just days after crossing the Berlin Wall). Just as Snake is leaving with Sokolov, they are surrounded by KGB agents. Ocelot, a young major in GRU, arrives, kills the KGB agents with a dazzling display of gunplay, and then gets his ass handed to him by Snake. A sporting chap, Snake offers Ocelot tips on his gun handling before Ocelot passes out. Before they can leave, The Boss arrives in the AO, declaring her own defection to the Soviet Union. This is later revealed to be a ploy, though it should have been obvious to anyone with a brain that it was a ruse since the government told you she was on a nuclear sub and if her defection really was legit then they wouldn't have known where she was. If this was legit, this also means that they would have lost sight of not only the greatest soldier in the world, but her entire unit. She breaks Snake's arm for no reason other than to be an asshole and throws him off a rope bridge. Colonel Volgin of GRU uses an M388 Davey Crockett, given to him by The Boss, to destroy Sokolov's design bureau, thus ending the Cold War, as this is now an American nuke brought into Russia by an American and fired by a defector. Everyone still calls it the Cold War anyway because this plot point is forgotten almost immediately once the intro is over.

In order to stop a full-scale war, America has to prove to Russia that they were not behind the attack on OKB-752, a plan doomed to failure because they obviously were and it's revealed in the end that they definitely were. Major Zero is forced to send Snake back into action with only two weeks to heal, his new mission: rescue Sokolov, kill The Boss (for some reason), her team (the Cobra Unit), and Colonel Volgin, and destroy Volgin's pet project, the Shagohod. In exchange, the Soviets will provide access to a communication satellite and two spies, NSA defectors codenamed ADAM and EVA.

Snake is inserted into the area of operation again, but The Boss finds him and destroys his weapon and insertion vehicle because she's an asshole who likes working directly against her main objective, alerting the Russian ground forces to his presence. Snake meets a woman who claims she's EVA, even though she doesn't provide the counter-phrase "La Li Lu Le Lo" to Snake's question "Who are the Patriots?" Which should have told not only him but everyone involved that she wasn't who she said she was, and nobody read EVA's file which would have told them EVA was a man, either that or the NSA doesn't know if their agents are male or female and also doesn't bother writing their names down or taking their picture. Strangely Snake received a full file on this EVA before he met her (as some of it shows up in the radio menu) however he neglects to read the part where it says she was a Chinese spy, because we need some retarded plot twist at the end of the game for a 'Gotcha!' Moment. The two end up fighting the Ocelot Unit and humiliating Major Ocelot once again, even though Ocelot is ADAM and it's in his best interest to work with Snake (somehow nobody remembered he was a NSA defector the first time you met him) and nobody mentions this to Snake, because once again the government doesn't know who their own agents are. Snake fights Ocelot for the first time face-to-face at a crevice, though the fight ends prematurely when a swarm of hornets descends upon them, causing Snake to fall into the crevice.

This leads to Snake's first encounter with a Cobra Unit operative, The Pain, who is infested with throat parasites that give him the scientific ability to control bees with his mind (it's as stupid as it sounds). The Pain wants to fight him for no narrative reason at all, we just needed a boss fight. After defeating The Pain who explodes with a microbomb at the end of the fight (which is retconned in a later game), Snake infiltrates the Granin Design Bureau, where he learns from Director Granin that Volgin is financing Shagohod's development with the Philosophers' Legacy, a hundred-billion-dollar fund entrusted to his father, Boris Volgin, by a shadowy cabal of the world's elite who called themselves the Philosophers. On leaving the Bureau, Snake encounters The Fear, the Cobra Unit's stealth and terror specialist who has the same parasites as The Pain, though they provide him with different abilities. Once again Snake fights a guy who has no reason to fight him, and after The Fear explodes via microbomb (retconned out later) he passes through the Sokrovenno forest and probably fights The End, the Cobra Unit's centenarian sniper, and the 'father of sniping'. Apparently nobody tried to be a sharpshooter before him, which is strange because this was when the guard's eyesight wasn't that bad. The End is perhaps the only member of the Cobra unit who has a reason to fight Snake, that being he's dying and wants to be killed before he dies of old age, and dies in several different ways depending on what the player did. They could have found the sniper rifle off the beaten path and shot him before this fight, after which Snake gives a depressed message about how sad he is that his mission is closer to being accomplished (this is also back when Snake was retarded), he might die of old age (Snake gives the same message), or you might fight him, in which he blows up via microbomb. The End has the same throat parasites as the other two, though once again his do different things, and depending on the gender of the person they're attached to they make you either require a ghillie suit, or require you to wear nothing but a bikini. After that Snake climbs a mountain path to rendezvous with EVA.

EVA sets out their escape route and tells him where Volgin is holding Sokolov before she has to return to Volgin as Sokolovs' captive lover Tatyana, throughout this she hits on Snake, who reacts as if she just shot his dog. Traveling through underground tunnels, Snake encounters The Fury, the Cobra Unit's flamethrower operative. Like the others he has throat parasites that give him affinity for fire. His fiery, explosive death where he turns into a flaming skull monster (Snake suspects this to have happened thanks to the microbombs, because he's an idiot who believes that blowing up via microbomb turns you into a skull monster) causes the tunnels to collapse. Pressing on, Snake climbs the tallest ladder in the world while the theme song plays in the background to mask the load time to infiltrate the perimeter of Groznyj Grad, Volgin's fortified research facility where Shagohod and Sokolov reside, and the place Snake could have just dropped in at/immediately went towards from the beginning if Ocelot wasn't working against his own orders.

Inside, Snake takes out Major Raikov/Raiden and dons his uniform, completing the disguise with a Raikov/Raiden mask. He doesn't get very far before Volgin sniffs him out and captures him, thanks to the fact that Raikov/Raiden and Volgin are/were in love (yes, seriously). Volgin tortures him for information, literally shocking the piss out of him thanks to his own ability to shoot lightning, before Ocelot walks in and shoots Snakes' right eye, because even though one of the main themes of the game is Patriotism, Ocelot will continuously work against the country he's supposed to work for. Snake escapes captivity through one of many ways, either a ghost gives him a message, he gets it via radio, he tricks the guard or he gets it from a weeaboo (yes, seriously, a weeaboo who's obsessed with all the men in his family being named Johnny) and ends up diving off a storm drain outflow to evade pursuit as he's chased by the Ocelot unit, because Ocelot's loyalty is to whomever it's least convenient for the plot. During his near-death experience, Snake encounters The Sorrow, the Cobra Unit's deceased psychic ops soldier, who confronts him with a waist-deep river filled with the souls of the men he's killed, though this really amounts to nothing as the 'fight' is literally impossible to lose and The Sorrow really doesn't give a shit one way or another.

After coming to and linking up with EVA (also fucking her), Snake returns to Groznyj Grad, armed with a supply of C3 to destroy Shagohod's liquid fuel reserves. Caught in the act, The Boss makes Snake fight Volgin one-on-one while the detonators tick down toward zero, even though she could have started working with him right then and there, which would result in both of their missions being complete without any of the following bullshit: After defeating Volgin, Snake and EVA escape by motorcycle. Shagohod bursts out of its hangar, Volgin at the controls, because Snake runs away without checking to make sure Volgin will stay down, and so starts one of Snakes' major flaws, forgetting to make sure that his enemies are dealt with. Snake collapses a bridge to drop the Shagohod into a ravine, yet the machine drives up the debris in a way it couldn't to continue the pursuit. Even after pummeling it with RPG rounds, Volgin won't give up and controls the machine entirely through electricity once it becomes inoperable (because running electricity through shit causes it to magically become fixed). Snake goes for a third round, this time on foot, before Shagohod is finally destroyed and Volgin is not killed, since Snake again forgets to check if Volgin died or not. Finally, it looks like the mission's a success when they give their pursuers the slip, but EVA crashes their motorcycle and gets impaled by a tree branch.

Snake has to haul the severely wounded EVA through another stretch of forest, evading the ground pursuit, to reach the WIG that she'd prepared for their exit. Before they arrive, Snake has to tie up one last loose end: The Boss. In a field of white flowers, The Boss tells Snake about the Philosophers in a cutscene that mostly repeats information the player already knows and goes on about twenty fucking minutes too long. The cutscene also includes her role as a secret Mercury Program astronaut, witnessing her country's betrayal in the Bay of Pigs incident, and the loss of her child to the Philosophers after giving birth to him on the shores of Normandy. She calls in an airstrike on their location with a ten minute warning and demands that Snake give her his all, for no real reason.

After beating her in a fight, the Boss lays dying or just sleepy (depending on whether or not you used tranq rounds) in the field. She hands Snake a microfilm containing the Philosophers' Legacy since it was her mission to recover it in the beginning (she didn't complete her mission and fake her death because much like her student, she's an idiot) and asks that he use her gun, the Patriot, to finish her. The white flowers turn blood-red after the shot is fired. Snake boards the WIG, but Ocelot gets on as it's leaving to challenge Snake to a final duel, because his main objective is to ensure the USA gets the philosophers legacy, and he loves trying to prevent his own objective from getting accomplished. He loads one of his two revolvers with a single round, juggles them, and offers the choice to Snake. Depending on which gun you choose and where you choose to shoot it the round is either a blank or an actual bullet. If it's fired at one of them, it's a blank, if it's fired at a wall, the blank magically turns into an actual bullet.

After spending the night in the Alaska safehouse fucking EVA, Snake awakes to find EVA gone and a taped message waiting for him. Her message explains that she was a Chinese spy, not the EVA who was supposed to help Snake during his mission (aka information he should have already known), raised by the Philosophers, taught by The Boss, and that his mission was intended to get the Philosophers' Legacy into the hands of the US government, while her mission was to steal it for the Chinese. When Volgin nuked OKB-752, Snake's mission was changed to include killing The Boss as a scapegoat, because losing the greatest soldier in the world during what could have been the worlds greatest war was deemed 'acceptable'.

Back in the USA, Snake receives the Distinguished Service Cross from President Johnson and the title of Big Boss, ruining the Boss's speech about how there always needing to be one Snake, and one Boss (although the speech didn't make sense anyway as Snake wasn't his only codename). He snubs DCI John McCone on his way out, the man ultimately responsible for the death of The Boss. Snake places the Patriot on The Boss's unmarked grave in Arlington and salutes it, a manly tear rolling down his face.

After the credits, we get the customary Ocelot phone call. He assures the KGB director that Groznyj Grad and the Granin Research Bureau were destroyed, Khrushchev is finished, and the Soviet Union can use the details of the Virtuous Mission and Operation Snake Eater to blackmail America. He then calls the DCI to confirm that EVA's copy of the Philosophers' Legacy is a fake, half of the Legacy has made it to America, the Shagohod is destroyed, and that he'd acquired data on Granin's Metal Gear project that America could find useful. He also reveals that he's the real ADAM, a triple agent working for the KGB, Volgin, and the CIA, which the the DCI already knew but never bothered to mention, because keeping his identity secret was considered more important than insuring the world isn't enveloped in Nuclear War. MGS4 pretty much confirms that all the surviving FOX unit characters from Snake Eater plus Eva and Ocelot are the founders of the Patriots, this happens off-screen of course even though none of the members are given any hint of being tech-savvy or influential enough to make (and install) world-governing AI's, since any time the series writes itself into a corner, more shit will just happen off-screen.

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops

A game of questionable canon not directed or written by Hideo Kojima.

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.

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 try to use stealth, but there's really no point). 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.

Metal Gear Survive

A generic Left 4 Dead/Resident Evil Umbrella Corps ripoff that takes place in another universe. As bad as Kojima's writing was, Konami once again proves they can do worse.

See Also

Metal Gear Vindicare

BattleTech

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