Scene: A Metal Gear Solid 3 Analysis

if Metal Gear Solid one is something along the lines of a game creator declaring that he felt he'd done all he needed to do with a series and Metal Gear Solid 2 is a game creator declaring that he'd rather leave the series and the memories of the audience than start muddying up people's individual interpretations and meanings with a Canon then Metal Gear Solid 3 is a warning that if this keeps up things are going to get stale [Music] Gene meme scene as far as I can tell this idea was first introduced in the E3 2004 trailer for Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake heater those first two immediately make sense if you've watched the previous sections of this video mgs1 is about genes mgs2 is about memes but mgs3 is about scenes what does that mean well let's get into it so having just replayed mgs3 for this video I noticed that it feels like it's a lot less about its themes than the previous two games I mean mgs1 was all about jeans they had a genetic clone pitted against his twin fighting a cast of characters who all basically have parental trauma and the genome Army Metal Gear Solid 2 is about memes and the manipulation of ideas and the entire point of basically everything in that game is to mess with your own perception of reality and try to control how you think mgs3 says it's about scenes and it is I'll get into that in a bit but I find it's more about naked snake learning to balance his Humanity with his loyalty as a soldier only to realize that Humanity isn't really compatible with what the world needs from him now every other game in the series ends with our player character looking forward to their new life this is the only one that ends with snake being utterly hopeless and that's very important for reasons that we'll get into in a little bit so mgs3 is the first game in the series that feels like it's really about the characters above anything else with that in mind let's quickly recap the story since all of the plot twists and the last half can make things pretty confusing when you look back at it all basically during World War II the Soviet Union America and China form together to create a branch called the philosophers pretty much the Illuminati the Patriots before the Patriots and they pulled together a huge sum of money to rebuild the world after World War II this money is hidden all over the world and the key to finding it was information on a microchip called the Philosopher's Legacy vulgan one of the parties vying for control of Russia managed to manipulate a few political situations so that he would inherit the Legacy and he used his money to begin development on the first Metal Gear prototypes the boss naked snake's Mentor after her Cobra unit was disbanded was put on a mission by America to fake her defection and join up with volgan in order to locate the Philosopher's Legacy and return to America to help her in this mission was ocelot an NSA code breaker who acted as a triple agent making everybody think he'd betrayed America to work for Russia but actually being a spy for the CIA when the boss fakes her defection the volgan's forces she gives him a Davy Crockett portable nuke launcher and vulgan fires it at the now Antiquated design Bureau that was working on a failed Metal Gear prototype in order to blame America since snake was seen on her mission to rescue a scientist sokolov at the time the nuke going off immediately made Khrushchev suspect America of breaking the conventions of war and so the boss's mission to locate the Philosopher's Legacy was revised she would now have to locate the Legacy and deliver it to America with the help of ocelot and let herself be killed by snake in order to prove that she had indeed defected to sell Russia on the LIE snake is supposed to meet up with Adam AKA ocelot only his meeting is interrupted by a woman calling herself Eva the other code breaker who had supposedly defected Eva is actually a spy trained by the Chinese branch of the philosophers and ordered to collect the Legacy for China she fools everyone into thinking that she works for America and ultimately manages to steal a fake philosopher's Legacy as the real one is actually an ocelot's hands along with the development plans for their first Metal Gear that would be the tx-55 metal gear that Solid Snake would go on to destroy in Metal Gear 1 for the MSX America begins development on metal gears and using the Philosopher's Legacy they create the Patriots the same Shadow organization that acted as the Illuminati in mgs2 and tried to control information so to put it all as simply as possible snake has to kill volgan and the boss in order to stop the Cold War from turning hot and through a series of crazy spy Antics America is poised to create the Patriots while Russia and China are left to pick up the scraps okay totally it was complicated and I barely even touched on sokolov or granin but whatever that's plenty for now let's talk about the time so that we can start chipping away at the deeper meaning behind this insane spy story the times the times the times the times so throughout a lot of the game anytime that someone who was involved with the philosophers is talking they're talking about something called The Times they're talking about how politics determine who you have to face on the battlefield and how a change of just a few years is enough to turn friends into enemies ultimately in the boss's eye accepting this truth is the key to World Peace once you accept the war is nothing but an arena for politicians the very concept of a Nation becomes almost meaningless this is a philosophy that makes a whole lot of sense for the boss after her Cobra unit was disbanded she was forced to kill her lover and comrade the sorrow while because of a shift in the times which turned allies into enemies Now snake is in the exact same situation forced to kill the person who in his own words owns half of his soul somebody who he lived and died with for 10 years and snake has to choose whether he'll be loyal to the times or loyal to what he believes in snake puts the mission Above All Else ditching his own Humanity in the process and killing someone that he loves this attitude of snakes carrying little for his own humanity and focusing instead on devoting himself entirely to the mission makes him weird he's surrounded by interesting characters who are all quippy and unique and memorable but snake himself is cold while yes it's kind of a silly scene Eva's introduction to snake is a perfect example of how empty snake is she tries to seduce him normally and he barely responds at all so she has to seduce him with a gun an information critical to his mission to start earning his Trust before moving forward I think we need to touch on one very important line when the boss is staging her defection to volgan she says that snake is still too pure and that he hasn't yet found an emotion to carry into battle the Cobra unit is composed of the fury the pain the sorrow the end and the joy boss each one of them has a philosophy and an emotion that drives their Humanity in spite of their dedication to their missions snake however is just snake he isn't a person he's a gun a tool for his government nothing but a meaningless vessel for both politicians and the player this is in my eye what mgs3 is the most about snake learning tube carry an emotion into battle so that he can become more than just a gun as the game progresses snake's emptiness shows more and more he isn't as soulless as say Ryden at the beginning of mgs2 he still jokes a little bit and he has some quips here and there but you get the impression that this man just doesn't feel like all of his joking with paramedic is just a mask he wears he doesn't even react to Eva's advances whatsoever for most of the game he just grits his teeth during the torture scenes he goes forward on his mission knowing full well that it's going to end with him killing his best friend and lover this all fits really well with the cold systems based gameplay of the Metal Gear series Once you understand the systems well enough there's zero ambiguity you climb trees the exact same way every time guards react to sounds the exact same way every time snake responds to your controller and puts the exact same way every time whether his leg is broken or he's starving to death snake and indeed every Metal Gear protagonist feels like a robot in a way that's just hard to put your finger on there's just something so mechanical about the way that these characters control and that's critical to the amazing feeling of the gameplay but it's something that the games like to play with some here in mgs3 that mechanical nature of snakes extends to the Survival Systems too hunger is nothing but a gauge with very concrete definable consequences to neglecting it injuries are healed cold and sterily in some menu and more experienced players will even opt to not heal their injuries at all as letting them heal naturally gives you a bigger Health meter you can just spin sneak around on the survival viewer to make them vomit up poisons both within and without snake mgs3 feels like the most mechanically driven game in the entire series there are just loads and loads of mechanics here each one operating without any ambiguity but back to snake he feels like the most mechanical snake we've ever gotten to control and that fits perfectly with this idea that he's willing to put the mission above his own Humanity it doesn't matter what he feels all that matters is what buttons you press however snake does have a character Arc in this game he doesn't stay this heartless killing machine from beginning to end he finds an emotion to carry into battle just in time to take on the boss I can't say exactly what that sensation is you could say it's love or pain or dedication or courage hell it could even be fear or rage it kind of depends on how you play honestly regardless of what emotion he finds for himself snake feels way more like a human by the end of this game than he does in the beginning he's loosening up a bit he's starting to allow himself to have fun and connect with people it's actually a little bit beautiful watching him slowly let Eva into his heart even as he knows that she's an agent on a mission of her own however snake still has to complete his mission in the final hour of this game Snake learns from the boss that she really is still working with America and that her sacrifice was essentially nothing but a way for America to get its hands on the Philosopher's Legacy he and the boss gave everything just to get some money for a few people who saw them as disposable all along he learns that the philosophers intentionally caused these shifts in the times that turn people like the boss into enemies partly as a way to fuel the military-industrial complex but also as a way of maintaining an unstable political situation in the world so that it's easier for them to maintain power however the philosophers themselves fell victim to these changes and times and were split apart like snake in the boss a snake at the end of mgs3 figures out how to balance Being Human with being a soldier just in time to learn that this new generation he's moving into doesn't want him to be human they just want him to be a gun mind you we already know by the end of the game what this is all leading to the world of Metal Gear Solid 2 where thoughts are being manipulated war is controlled and where passion and individuality are left to die this world doesn't want the sorrow the pain The Joy the fury or the fear the world doesn't need Jack the soldier who learned empathy the world wants a soldier who can be soulless a puppet for politicians and for the player the world doesn't want jack it wants snake now with a normal leadhead analysis this would basically be the end of it I've analyzed what happens in the game and what it means to me but again you can't spell Metal Gear without meta mgs2 was all meta all the time but the meta narrative that I see in mgs3 is something that lays beneath all of this other stuff see this is a really dense game richly packed with interesting character arcs emotional moments excitement and Intrigue but beneath all of that stuff is something like a cry for help from Kojima and the Metal Gear series as a whole again I don't want to put words in kojima's mouth but this is all that I see when I think about this game so let's go back and take a broader look at what Metal Gear Solid 3 really is the way that Konami probably saw when it was pitched it's more metal gear but this time it's set in the 60s and it takes place in the jungle still though it's more Metal Gear double and triple agents betraying each other mechanically deep stealth Action boss fights with wacky characters a guy called snake killing someone that he owes part of his soul to a scheme to spark a world war that turns out to actually I'll be employed by the Illuminati a radio team providing support each with their own specialty a constant Journey North with a bit of backtracking here and there to get keys that can open New Paths a climactic final act that flips the stealth core on its head to deliver something more bombastic every game that I've talked about so far in this series feels like it could just be an alternate universe sequel to Metal Gear one and that in my mind is by the theme word for this game is obscene it doesn't matter what where or when you set a metal gear game it's always going to be a metal gear game with a pretty similar plot a guy's name snake are always going to kill people that they're close to because that's what the world wants from metal gear and that's what America wants from guys named snake from now until the end of this video every time that you hear me say snake I'm referring to the concept of snake specifically the ones we control that means naked snake Ryden and Solid Snake will get to venom snake when the time comes in the actual timeline of metal gear the things that naked snake does in this game lead to the things that happen to Solid Snake and ride in an mgs2 but in the Thematic Arc of the series this game comes last the abstract concept of snake originally learned to love his life then he learned to live his life without fear then he learned to pass his message on now it's time for him to learn something else ironically the most bombastic action-packed game in the series so far to me is really just trying to say hey if things keep going like this it's going to get really stale snake learns that his future is going to be one where he never gets to just ride off into the sunset and have his peace no matter what we do snake will only ever exist if he's on a mission to kill someone who's got major history with because that's what happens in Metal Gear and snake can't exist without Metal Gear it's a weird concept I know but if you ask me that's what the handshake at the end of Metal Gear Solid 3 is all about it's snake acknowledging that he'll only ever exist as a weapon it's him accepting that his story won't ever have a happy ending since I'm learning that his role as a protagonist isn't to finally become whole as a person and leave the series behind but to just keep on doing the same thing he was doing in the other games forever this is where the fatalism that comes with being a prequel comes into play the informed Metal Gear player knows from the very beginning the naked snake is going to turn into the villain of the series Big Boss by the end we know that whatever naked snake goes through in this game some other guy named snake is going to be doing something very similar 50 years later and that society's already doomed in a way we know from the very beginning that all of this talk about finding yourself and learning to share your Humanity with your role as a soldier is just going to lead to the cold sterile mercenary nations of metal gear one and two and the outright death of free will that we learn about nimji S2 Metal Gear will always be metal gear and snake and mgs3 finally learns to accept that so hopefully you get what I'm saying so far mgs3 is about snake this abstract concept that we've been controlling for five games now learning that no matter what happens as long as there's another Metal Gear he won't ever get a happy ending the game creates this idea by drawing a ton of parallels between itself and the previous Metal Gear games particularly those first two the 2D ones on the MSX snake starts with an impassable barrier to the South and moves North through ever more heavily guarded jungle and urban environments he fights bosses with incredibly simple Core Concepts those bosses explode for practically no reason when they die he fights an enemy who's known for his aim that guards a prison area he gets a transmitter planned and on him after escaping a prison he has a fist fight with an electricity themed enemy in a square room before taking on a metal gear and rushing to the end of the game in a chase scene where he departs via aircraft and kills somebody who he was super close to I could go on and on and on while mgs1 had a ton of callbacks to the original 2D games mgs3's references to the originals are a lot more literal it uses almost all of the same ideas and concepts of the original games but jazzed up with more modern technology riding and direction thematically this works on two levels firstly it better ties the games to Metal Gear 1 and 2 the games that come immediately after this one in the timeline at launch and are all about big boss the character that naked snake was doomed to turn into that's why Metal Gear 1 and 2 are playable in most versions of Snake Eater through the main menu so basically everything from the mechanical inhuman Precision with Which snake and his enemies move to the boss's simpler motivations and characters to the general structure of the game and its sequence of events all exist to drive home this idea that snake exists solely as a video game character as somebody who doesn't ever exist unless his God hideo Kojima needs him to go on a heartbreaking mission of loss and emotional ruin and any personal fulfillment Lessons Learned introspection or greater understanding of life he attains by the end of a given game won't be enough to save him from being put in some other game some other day basically if a game is outstandingly weird as Metal Gear Solid 2 winds up having so many plot similarities to the rest of the series then at this point we all pretty much know exactly what we're getting into when we pick up a brand new metal gear game Snake knows exactly what he's getting into when Kojima allows him to exist again for most series this isn't too big of a problem Master Chief fights aliens and that's all but for Kojima a Creator who didn't even plan on making Metal Gear 2 much less on Metal Gear Solid 2. it's stale I can only imagine that by this point in the series Kojima pretty desperately wanted to move on to a different game with a different universe and a different tone different themes and ideas but he simply wasn't allowed to the Patriots I mean a Konami said we need to break snake's heart again we need to deconstruct his masculinity again and make him question everything he knows one more time this is what Eva and the boss mean when they talk about the times it's why kojima's theme word for mgs3 was seen because at the end of this game Snake learns that regardless of the scene time and place of the game he's in he's doomed to do the same stuff over and over forever because the times demand it without Konami and without Kojima there are no times so long a snake exists the times are going to make him go on another classic some might say played out Metal Gear Adventure again so to sum up where mgs3 sits on that long Arc that I keep ending these videos with mgs3 is to me saying pretty please let me be the end of the series we've gone full circle all the way to the Jungle in the 60s but the time still control snake just like they've controlled every iteration of snake and now there's nowhere for us to go but back around the circle again just look at that bandana if you can't put the past behind you you won't survive long there's a dozen reasons why this game is called Snake Eater my favorite among them is that the classic example of a Snake Eater is an oroboros a snake eating its own tail like an oroboros Metal Gear has become a series that just consumes snakes chews them up and tosses them out and this is the game where snake truly loses any hope for a happy ending enter Metal Gear Solid 4 guns of the Patriots I'll be back around soon enough to talk about the last chance that snake ever had to Simply put down the gun and have a happy and fulfilling ending to his story [Music] thank you thank you [Music] [Music] before I close out today's video and get to figuring out how the hell I'm going to film PS3 footage for the mgs4 video I just like to first off apologize for how long it took for this video to come out the mgs2 video took a while because that was an absolutely massive video this one's only like 20 minutes though so it really shouldn't have taken this long but I cut my hair and that made like half my footage unusable you might have noticed I tried to hide my face a little bit more during the second half because the haircut just I hated it and then after that before I got to shoot more footage I got very very sick and was completely out of commission for about a week and then just some really tragic stuff happened that I'm not going to talk about on the channel right now uh and that held me back for about another week but here I am it's done I can focus on the mgs4 video and then the mgsv video and then I can be done with this whole thing and move on I've got a big list of ideas that I've planned in my head while I've been working on this whole series but uh also as always I'd just like to go ahead and verbally thank the patrons especially those who donate 10 or more monthly such as the narcissist cookbook astrabatune spooky Ina guybrush Dyer elspur uh Ellie B M koi Ayla Scott Cappy Lake Mina badimatti random sageless super Eva Knight Panda Mr Coco shaytheus swatchbox Nomad Delilah Jester bjorb Lily Leones neris Sean Hamilton monkey monks monkey Monastery voiced mute Haunted Mystic Charlotte freedom rider Rio Laura M poof donut finnboy fishing atheist Johannes IW arto Aurelia Vega Nelson demise Mia Maple Nicole Ada Avery neurofilter the comb Slayer summer saline Garden Night Big Time Gym Darius fazier almost dead again gab David Kaiser Erica and celo once again I'd just like to apologize for how long the delay has been I've recently switched to a full-on nine to five schedule with this thing so I'm working on it for pretty much most hours every single day and it's been really good for my productivity so far so hopefully I can keep that up and the flow of ideas will eventually learn to match that workface uh but we'll see anyways um I'll see you all soon with the mgs4 video hopefully it won't take too terribly long we'll see uh and have a fantastic week thank you everybody

Channel: Leadhead

Views: 19,380

Keywords: analysis, explained, essay, review, snake, eater, theme, mgs, meaning, series, meta, Kojima, boss, fight, walkthrough, strategy, end, fury, fear, pain, ocelot, eva

Id: 8GQM64sFm6Y

Length: 23min 44sec (1424 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 28 2023