In the Metal Gear universe, history had diverged sometime after World War 1, with the founding of the philosophers, a fictional secret pact between the United States, China, and the Soviet Union. They created the fictional Cobra Unit, led by
The Boss, being instrumental in the defeat of the Axis Powers. Cloning, AI and robotics technology of the 1970s are more advanced. The eleven games in the main
Metal Gear series continuity reveal a narrative that spans five and a half decades, from the
Cold War, until the near future.
Big Boss is the most relevant character within the story of the series and, of the canonical 11 games, five are prequels centering on his story, set decades before the events of the original
Metal Gear. However,
Solid Snake is still depicted as the primary main character of the series, as the prequels create context of his purpose and him being the antithesis of his father.
Plot Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater which is chronologically the first game in the series, introduces
Naked Snake (or
Snake for short), an operative working for the fictional
Force Operation X (FOX) unit of the
CIA during the
Cold War. The game focuses on the rise of Snake from an apprentice to a legendary soldier, as well as the downfall of his mentor and matriarchal figure,
The Boss. After The Boss defects to the Soviet Union, Snake is sent into Russia to kill her and end the threat posed by
Yevgeny Borisovitch Volgin, a
GRU colonel with plans to overthrow the Soviet government. Snake's heroics during the game earn him the nickname "Big Boss" at the end. The origins of The Patriots, an organization founded by
Zero, are also explored.
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops serves as a direct sequel to
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and follows Naked Snake's life after disbanding from FOX. With Snake not yet accepting the Big Boss codename, the plot features the origins of his mercenary unit as he attempts to escape the San Hieronymo Peninsula and battles his old unit. The canonicity of
Portable Ops is disputed, with Kojima having stated that "the main story of
Portable Ops is part of the Saga, is part of the official
Metal Gear timeline, while some of the small details that are in
Portable Ops are outside the Saga, not part of the main timeline of the game." The next game,
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, is set ten years after the events of
Snake Eater and returns to the story of the young Big Boss. Now the head of the mercenary corporation Militaires Sans Frontières (MSF), Big Boss discovers that nuclear warheads are being transported to Latin America and decides that he must put a stop to it.
Peace Walker features a new cast of characters to provide both aid and intelligence for Big Boss. A few characters from later games, such as a younger Kazuhira Miller, make appearances in the game.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, serves as the direct sequel to
Peace Walker and is composed of two chapters. The prologue,
Ground Zeroes, is set a few weeks after the final mission in
Peace Walker, as Big Boss is tasked with rescuing two VIPs from a U.S. military black site on the coast of Cuba. Big Boss' mission coincides with a visit to Mother Base by the
IAEA, which turns out to be a cover for an attack on Mother Base orchestrated by the mysterious organization XOF. In the chaos, Big Boss' helicopter first gets disabled by a bomb implanted inside of Paz, then collides with a following helicopter, and he is then sent to the hospital for nine years, which leads to the events of the main chapter,
The Phantom Pain. The basis of the main story revolves around Big Boss forming a new
private military company, the Diamond Dogs to retaliate for the destruction of MSF and the loss of his comrades. However, this "Big Boss" is revealed to be a part of the medical staff who survived the helicopter crash, who was brainwashed to believe himself to be Big Boss, while the real Big Boss went into hiding to create Outer Heaven, a place where soldiers can live without having to abide by any particular ideology. The first
Metal Gear game for the MSX follows
Solid Snake, a rookie of the
FOXHOUND special operations unit. He is sent by his superior
Big Boss to the fortress in South Africa known as Outer Heaven, with the goal of finding the missing squad member
Gray Fox and investigating a weapon known as Metal Gear. However, after Snake unexpectedly completes his goals, Big Boss is revealed to be the leader of Outer Heaven, which he has created as a place for soldiers to fight free of any ideology that he believes has been forced upon them by governments. He fights Snake and is killed. However, it turns out that this was actually the body double from
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. In
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake the real Big Boss has established a new military nation, Zanzibar Land, and he and Snake face off again, with Snake achieving victory and seemingly killing Big Boss for good.
Metal Gear Solid elaborates on the storyline of the earlier games and reveals that Solid Snake is a genetic clone of Big Boss, created as part of a secret government project. An antagonist is introduced in the form of
Liquid Snake, Snake's twin brother who takes control of FOXHOUND after Snake's retirement. Liquid and FOXHOUND take control of a nuclear weapons disposal facility in Alaska and commandeer REX, the next-generation Metal Gear weapons platform being tested there. They threaten to detonate REX's warhead unless the government turns over the remains of Big Boss. Solid Snake destroys Metal Gear REX and kills the renegade FOXHOUND members, with the exception of
Revolver Ocelot. A third Snake brother known as
Solidus Snake is introduced as the
United States President at the end of
Metal Gear Solid and serves as the main antagonist of
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. During his time as president, Solidus became aware of a secretive cabal known as "The Patriots" who were steadily manipulating the course of history. After his tenure as president is over, Solidus takes control of the "Big Shell" offshore facility, which is being used to develop Arsenal Gear, a mobile undersea fortress designed to house and protect a network of
AIs created to influence human development by filtering the availability of information across the Internet. The game is set four years after Liquid's death in
Metal Gear Solid, and it puts the player in control of
Raiden, a soldier who fights against Solidus, who is revealed to be his former commander during his time as a child soldier. Raiden joins forces with Snake and learns that they are being manipulated by
Revolver Ocelot, who has been working for the Patriots. At the end of the game, Ocelot seemingly becomes possessed by Liquid Snake as the nanomachines from Liquid's arm (which Ocelot took to replace his own arm after Gray Fox slices it off in
Metal Gear Solid) work their way into Ocelot's thought process.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots deals with a rapidly aging Solid Snake (now branded "Old Snake") who is on a mission to find and defeat Revolver Ocelot, now known as Liquid Ocelot. Despite the destruction of the Arsenal Gear in
Sons of Liberty, the Patriots have continued in their plans to influence the course of human history, installing artificial intelligence systems around the world. Ocelot, opposed to this, has assembled armies with which to fight back and intends to hijack their entire operating system for his own ends. Solid Snake's objective later changes to destroying the AIs of the Patriots and stop their oppression. After he and his allies succeed, Snake decides to live out his life peacefully.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is set four years after
Guns of the Patriots and it stars Raiden as a cyborg ninja mercenary. Raiden joins the private military firm, Maverick Security Consulting, and is tasked with defending the prime minister of an unspecified African country. However, the situation goes awry and the prime minister is killed by a rival PMC company named Desperado Enforcement LLC. Raiden is defeated in the battle, but decides to re-avenge his failure and is sent out with a brand new cyborg body to fight the mysterious military group.
Tone and themes The original
Metal Gear, which was released in 1987 during the
Cold War, dealt with the manipulation of soldiers by politicians of the East and West, countered by the concept of "Outer Heaven", a country without politics. Its sequel
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, which was released in 1990 at the end of the Cold War, expanded on this with themes regarding political intrigue, battlefield ethics, military history, and the negative effects of warfare. The overarching theme of the
Metal Gear Solid series is that of the "
gene,
meme,
scene,
sense,
peace,
revenge and
race," and how people are affected by these factors according to the game's producer Kojima—
Metal Gear Solid deals with
genetics and the moral implications of
genetic engineering,
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty deals with how identity can be affected by the philosophies of one's society (a "meme") and the effects of censorship on society,
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater deals with how the time and place one lives in (a "scene") affects their identity, how politics change along with the times and
hyperreality, the inability to distinguish fact and fiction in an information-saturated world.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots deals with "sense", which is a person's understanding of the world that is lost when they die. It also encompasses how some things cannot be passed down to future generations and be misinterpreted as well as the artificially controlled (and globally shared) sense-data of the new era's nanotech-enhanced soldiers. With
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker the plot deals with the true nature of 'peace', and the concept of conflict in human societies.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain deals with the themes "race" and "revenge" and how the latter can make one lose their humanity. Following the initial Metal Gear, each game has been a deconstruction of action movies and video games, using tropes to invoke the themes and ideas especially those of spy movies - it examines what kind of mind and complete control of a situation would be needed to pull off the absurdly complex and convoluted plans that rely on events completely within the realm of chance yet comes off without a hitch. Furthermore, it examines what happens to a child soldier forced to take up a normal life through the characters Eli (also known as Liquid Snake) in
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and Jack (primarily known as Raiden) in
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance also deals with "revenge". Raiden is defeated in the beginning and feels a deep sense of vengeance, and as such exacts his 'revenge' on the group who sabotaged him, as well as coming to terms with his own past and embracing his true nature. The games carry many implicit parallels to
Nietzschean philosophy. Solid Snake serves as a deconstruction of the
action hero archetype, as his wartime experiences have turned him into a bitter, broken-down soldier who wishes to retire, but cannot escape the life of conflict that had entwined him for so long. This concept is further explored through Raiden, who is put through the same torments as Snake in explicit detail. Big Boss is similarly not immune to this theme: as Naked Snake, he does not resemble a suave, impeccable secret agent that would otherwise fit into the 1960s
spy film pastiche of
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, but is instead an
everyman character. Only after undergoing immense psychological and physical scarring does he begin to resemble the ultimate soldier known as Big Boss. Although the series takes place in a realistic military setting, the
Metal Gear video games also feature a strong focus on supernatural elements, leading the series to be commonly described as
magic realism.
Characters In games, players control a character who has to infiltrate into his enemy's area alone to complete his mission. Across the mission, the player receives assistance from a supporting team communicated by Codec. While the team tells the player hints about the mission, it also helps expand the characters through their interactions. During their debuts, player characters Solid Snake and Raiden are meant to represent the player while in the following games they acquire more defined personalities. A common motif in the series is the use of powerful enemies. As games were released, new concepts were given to the bosses to make them innovative and notice their strength. As the first games used humans with supernatural abilities, for
Metal Gear Solid 4, the designers decided to use monsters rather than humans as enemies. Another common motif has been the transformation of a previously normal character returning as a ninja. It started with Kyle Schneider in
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake when he fought against Snake as "Black Ninja". Several other characters have done the same, including Gray Fox, Olga Gurlukovich, and Raiden. Much as
Metal Gear began as partially a
pastiche of
action movies of the time, characters were sometimes pastiches of contemporary action movie heroes.
Metal Gear Solid characters have been designed by
Yoji Shinkawa. Several of their real names and aliases are references to various Hollywood films. Because of the time skip between games, a few of the characters have been redesigned to fit in the game's year. With the improvements from new video game consoles like the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, the staff gave the characters a more realistic look although they initially had doubts about it. Kojima's thoughts regarding Snake's improved abilities by the time of
Metal Gear Solid led to the concept of cloned characters who would be able to match him in combat. By
Metal Gear Solid 2, Kojima was inspired by the
Sherlock Holmes novels to introduce a sidekick character in order to view Snake from a different perspective. ==Development==