What Even Happens in MGS3? Part One - Virtuous Mission

[Music] welcome to another installment in what even happens in mgs given how popular the mgs v trilogy turned out to be i've decided to keep things rolling for the rest of the series we'll start off with the first game chronologically metal gear solid 3 snake eater we'll also be doing some scene and dialogue analysis as well as the usual explanation later on it'll take several parts to cover each game okay with that being said please consider liking and subscribing so that now we can begin [Music] mgs3 is split in two virtuous mission and operation snake eater the game takes place in 1964 at the height of the cold war mgs-3 tells the origin story of the man who will become known as big boss in the shadowy secret society who ruled the world revealed by mgs2 as the patriots now mgs3 has a lot of layers to it because as a prequel it isn't just a self-contained story it's covertly also a story about where everything and every other metal gear game comes from characters and events in other words resonate with the wider series lore in ways that aren't always explicit that's important to keep in mind going forward virtuous mission is about how the original snake tries to extract an important soviet scientist from behind enemy lines while snake eater is about snake's follow-up mission to destroy an insurrection against the soviet union that threatens the entire world along the way this involves eliminating a giant nuclear weapons platform the shacklehod and also every last member of a formerly legendary world war ii era special forces unit led by snake's own mentor the boss now with the basics out of the way we can dive in a brilliant russian scientist nikolai sokolov has been caught up in a power struggle within the soviet union one between the military and the government sokolov is responsible for the rocket engine that got history's first cosmonaut yuri gagarin into space and now he's being used as a pawn in a much wider game sokolov was forced to move from rocket research to missiles and grew so terrified of his own creation he tried to defect but soviet premier nikita khrushchev retaliated by instigating the cuban missile crisis just to get him back and now a new missile platform sokolov has been forced to build is ready for field testing [Music] in virtuous mission you must infiltrate a remote soviet research and development region named selenium where in the virgin cliffs sokolov has been temporarily moved to await the test after rendezvousing with sokolov you learn that there's another group who intend to extract him from kgb care the soviet grew and leading them a dangerous insurrectionist named yevgeny volgen volgan sends in a spetsnaz outfit to capture sokolov one named after their trick shooting commander major ocelot snake deals with them while leaving ocelot alive and with that it seems all that's left to complete the mission is exfiltration with sokolov using a fulton balloon but then come a series of devastations that leave not only the mission but your unit fox and the fate of the entire world in shambles first we get a hold of sokolov's weapon the shagahot which can fire nukes as a stand-alone platform even from mountainous terrain it isn't complete yet at the development level of stage 1 but by stage 2 it'll have the potential just by existing to single-handedly turn the cold war hot then snake's estranged but still beloved mentor the boss shows up carrying two prototype portable nuclear launchers she announces that she's defecting not just to the soviet union but to the forces of volgan's coming coup d'etat and she's doing so arm-in-arm with the remaining members of her legendary world war ii era unit the cobras the boss completely overpowers you throwing snake into the river and capturing sokolov who you've just delivered to volgen's unit for them and then volgen using one of the boss's gifts nuke's sokolov's research lab completely blowing the secrecy of this sensitive and failed operation [Music] and by that point the virtuous mission will have officially ended in total failure and the future both of the burgeoning unit within the cia you work for unit fox as well as that of the entire world will depend completely on snake's one and only shot at redemption operation snake eater so that does it for the synopsis of the virtuous mission now we can really get into its analysis and investigation early in the 20th century the true holders of power in the united states the republic of china and the newly formed soviet union gathered together in a secret meeting that would later be known as the wise men's committee the secret pact they formed there marked the beginning of the philosophers but the last of the original members died in the 1930s after that the organization began to run out of control and the wise men's committee degenerated into a mere shell of its former self during the last great war the most powerful men in america china and the soviet union had a secret pact the pact was a blueprint for defeating the axis powers and creating a new world order to secure victory in the war the three countries pooled their resources to conduct the most covert types of operations and research the atomic bomb rocket technology the cobra unit and they amassed an enormous sum of money to fund these projects enough to fight the war five times over that wealth is the philosopher's legacy the philosophers once had the potential to rule the world and abolish war for good but ever since the second world war they've been ripped apart as newer generations within their ranks failed to reach the same unity that the organization's founding fathers envisioned with the virtuous mission the american philosophers seem to be trying to force a crisis within the soviet ranks to sneak in amid the chaos and get their hands on the secret black budget amassed to determine the course of war over the next century known as the philosopher's legacy [Music] that legacy is being hoarded by a rebel within the soviet's bureaucracy a madman named yevgeny volgen his father a member of the soviet branch of the philosophers had been responsible for hiding the legacy's existence during the war he had used this opportunity to attempt to ensure only the soviets would be able to recover it once the war was over and now his son yevgeny vulgan is the only one on earth who really knows where the bank records containing the legacy can be found [Music] that means that ever since stalin's death in 1954 stalin's replacement nikita khrushchev has not had access to the legacy khrushchev has been trying to defeat the americans technologically anyway with projects like the vostok rocket that sokolov here built kokolov now has been tasked with building a certain new weapons platform that will utilize some of the same principles and technology as the vostok rocket but in a weaponized form about two years ago a certain soviet scientist requested asylum in the west through one of our moles his name is nikolai tepanovich sokolov he's head of the 754 design bureau one of the soviet's top secret weapon research facilities and the east's foremost expert on weapons development ciro got sokolov out the first time on foot arranging for him to travel from okb 754 to the berlin wall this was after sokolove's family were brought over by [Music] moles the time sokolov arrived after two weeks and over 600 miles he had to be hospitalized and then came the crisis in cuba officially the crisis was averted by america's agreement to pull its intermediate-range ballistic missiles that menaced the soviet union from turkey but this was only a ruse to throw intelligence agencies around the world off from the real arrangement returning sokolov ever since the debacle of sokolov's defection in 1962 the man who supposedly was in charge of getting him out a british former secret intelligence officer known as major zero has been developing a new kind of special forces unit to get him out again in the two years since sokolov's asylum operation i spent all my time making preparations and now is the time to show some results that's your unit unit fox you are the first fox field officer codenamed naked snake a former green beret and veteran of the korean war though fox is disliked by the higher-ups at its mother outfit the cia zero has chosen the re-rescue of sokolov as the mission to prove the unit's value as a stand-alone paramilitary force kokolov has been developing the shacklehod for khrushchev in order for the desperate soviet premier to appease his critics thanks to his pursuit of peaceful coexistence with the west in the wake of the missile crisis and khrushchev's failed agricultural policies he's in trouble with the military and provincial leadership ever since the withdrawal from cuba khrushchev's position has been getting weaker day by day this secret test is an act of desperation by a cornered man that's why he's giving sokolov's project his full support and why he triggered the incident in cuba just to get him back since his success with the vostok rocket sokolov's been forced to work inside the most secretive of all the secret soviet design bureaus okb754 the only reason fox has learned of the details of this upcoming field test and sokolov's location is thanks to an underground spy network zero tells us belongs to our mentor the boss so you have absolutely no idea what sokolov is developing we've got nothing then how did you get the information for this mission it can't have been from sokolove from the boss the that's right she has her own intelligence channels that she cultivated during the last war she shared what she learned with us in actuality it was built prior to the end of the war by the philosophers the area you begin virtuous mission in is outside the enemy's patrol routes but the closer you get to sokolove in the abandoned factory the more you encounter operatives of the kgb they're from the ninth directorate an elite kgb division responsible usually only for senior government officials and vips they're here because their director is a protege of khrushchev's and the premier is running out of people that he knows he can trust if nothing else the completion of sokolov's new weapon in this test should help re-establish khrushchev's authority in moscow so what you're saying is there's also a good chance that whoever doesn't want to see that happen is going to try and interfere most likely khrushchev must have anticipated this and sent his most loyal unit his trump card to make sure that all goes well virtuous mission tasks you with infiltrating an abandoned industrial zone in the virgin cliffs located three miles away from sokolov's research bureau where he's been working on the shagohot okb754 interestingly enough the old factory area is named rasavet or sunrise in the phantom pain this is the same meaning according to ocelot behind the name of the village where the soviets are holding miller one day anyway it seems many of the animals that you encounter in selenius that aren't native to the region were flown in here from all over the world for some sort of research and some of them have been exposed thanks to the nuclear testing here to radiation which has changed some of their behavior like the indian gavils for example this little detail seems to foreshadow the revelation that will come that both snake and the boss have been subjects to nuclear experimentation and hint to the idea that the entire game is some sort of experiment in of itself but all of the research and development going on in this region surrounding and inside selenium is a closely guarded secret the only thing zero claims to know at the start of the game is that sokolov's been taken prisoner and forced to work on this big secret weapon forced by the kgb xero speculates it has some relation to recent soviet nuclear tests at the infamous site semipalatinsk aka the polygon sokolov has been moved to rasavet to await this new platform's first field testing when you meet up he explains that his kgb retinue has orders to kill him rather than allow sokolov to be captured by the gru and volgan khrushchev knows folgen is likely to intervene terrified of what volgan is capable of with sokolov's own creation when we first find the scientist this is why he's burning his own research materials commencing virtuous mission now not only does this name give us a nod to the presence and earlier titles of vr missions it's a great bit of foreshadowing as well as characterization at the same time the similarity with the name virtual mission hints that this will be something of a staged production a contrived artificial event the head of the cia has finally given us the green light for the virtuous mission virtual mission no the virtuous mission the future of our fox unit depends on it if it succeeds we'll be officially organized into a unit virtuous mission sounds like some kind of initiation ritual and the word virtuous is directly relevant to the theme of this game the changing times and the manipulation of values over history enemies change along with the times the flow of the ages and we soldiers are forced to play along [Music] one early line that conveys this with great irony is major zeros this is one for the history books the world's first halo jumps this is one for the history books isn't this supposed to be a top top-secret mission not only does this line hint that this mission's going to end in failure and therefore be revealed to the world it also hints that history in the mgs universe will be written or omitted not according to true events and how they actually transpire but by the whim of shadowy power mongers behind the scenes but i'm getting ahead of myself [Music] the virtuous mission we're told is the first field mission of a new covert operating group within the cia called unit fox [Music] again we're bumping into the theme technically unit fox does not yet have permission to exist as a standalone outfit whether it can is something that the virtuous mission is meant to prove this is a trial run now what won't be divulged until the end is that unit fox was formed in 1962 following the boss's own version of snake eater her mission to kill the soviet operative and her former comrade the sorrow it's a long story but essentially the boss the sorrow and major zero along with a handful of other unusual commandos known collectively as the cobras all fought together on the same side and all but single-handedly helped turn the tide of the war world war ii [Music] but that was then and this the cold war are the times today that meant that the boss and the sorrow despite having been comrades and even having reproduced together were set at the end of the war at odds they were wrapped up in the early space race and though neither realized it they were fighting each other through a secret game of spy versus spy long before they actually met each other face to face on the battlefield as enemies in 1962 the boss aka joy had planted a mole in the soviet space program but then the sorrow flipped this asset to the soviet side which is why the russians beat the west to space with sputnik in 1957. the boss tried to make up for this failure by volunteering for the early nasa project as a member of the mercury team who were in a race against the soviets to be the first humans to make it into space thanks to higher-ups rushing her spacecraft out of development something went wrong during the landing and the boss already exposed to dangerous levels of cosmic radiation during the trip nearly died getting back to earth technically secretly she was the first person in the mgs universe to make it to space not yuri gagarin all of this took place after she and snake met and became closer than words can express in the 1950s [Music] the boss abruptly disappeared from snake's life in june of 1959 in the gap of time between then and the virtuous mission she flew to space fell into a coma and then in 1962 came to this very place in soviet territory selenium to kill the sorrow in exchange for the life of their son adamska aka revolver ocelot who is being held hostage by members of a shadowy organization formerly known as the philosophers an organization that joy's own father was among the founding members of before they killed him jack is that you how many years has it been boss that's right it's me so what brings joy back in contact with snake now for the virtuous mission well it's simple the virtuous mission has been timed to coincide with the conclusion of this new platform's phase one right at the point snatching sokolov will be the most tempting to volgen who plans now to defy khrushchev and stage a coup not only against the soviet union but the entire world this coup has been building for some time at least since the cuban missile crisis backed by the soviet army and khrushchev's rival leonoid brezhnev vulgan has pitted the soviet grew against their rivals the kgb [Music] volgan also originally was working with sokolov's rival the weapons engineer alexander grannon quietly volgan converted a former soviet prison in selenius into grannon's very own design bureau ironically sokolov sent to the exact same place seleniujarsk and given his own research bureau by khrushchev to provide the soviet premier with a weapon to stand up not only to the west but perhaps to the soviet army and volgan as well grannon's project for volgen would have been a bipedal weapons platform to serve as the missing link between infantry and artillery combining them into a single machine this machine granon would have called metal gear brannon decided to work for volgen to spike khrushchev for choosing sokolov and because he's aware that volgan has access to unlimited funds until the virtuous mission grannon's metal gear was being developed as something of the rival to sokolov's parallel platform project the walker the treading behemoth or shagohod but now that phase one of the shaggahad's development is actually complete and grannon has yet to complete even a prototype holden decides he doesn't care for grannien's metal gear anymore and now once the shacklehot wants to steal it from khrushchev but because he doesn't want khrushchev to even know how to build another one without sokolov bolgen resolves to not only kidnap the scientist but destroy his research facility however in something of a nod to the events of metal gear 87 bolgan will have to maintain his cover of loyalty to the soviet union if he's going to destroy sokolov's research plant and covertly start preparations for his coup d'etat with the shaggahad as its linchpin bogan needs someone to pin these events on a patsy and that's where the boss comes in well actually the boss's handlers in washington are already scheming to use her as a mole by staging a defection to volgan's ranks they'll be tricked somewhat when the weapon that they give the boss to provide vulgan to prove her loyalty and the sincerity of her defection he actually uses to destroy sokolov's lab this ruse that wildly gets out of hand was originally to steal the legacy and in the process for the boss to set into motion the in-game for the cold war by recovering the funds and reuniting the philosophers only as an american organization [Music] by doing so the boss had the potential to guarantee that the u.s would emerge from the cold war as the winner and the sole global superpower this scheme was hatched when volgen using a still operational spy network first cultivated by the philosophers when they were still united contacted the boss with the proposal of defecting [Music] perhaps volgan believed the boss was petty enough to want revenge for being forced to kill the sorrow he certainly has no clue that ocelot her son is all appearances to the contrary actually working for the americans it's implied out of loyalty to her his mother at any rate everything i've just explained is happening completely behind the scenes in virtuous mission but there's an even deeper layer one that goes right to the center of things and the real objectives behind what will become known as operation snake eater the boss was created by the philosophers a group who continues to exist only basically in name whose originators all died in the 1930s she was created with one purpose to serve as ground zero for something like a chain reaction to spawn children and from them whole generations of copies and descendants and successors all to keep going an endless cycle of wars across the globe a cycle that will keep the world in the philosopher's hands her mission her secret mission in other words is to help construct a system a program keeping alive their shapeless formless status quo the real reason snake is sent on first the virtuous mission and then operation snakeheater is to replace the boss as her first disciple forming from her a pattern of others all made in her image [Music] just like her these followers in her footsteps will begin as legendary heroes only to wind up dead as pariahs [Music] all the while secretly serving the true will of in loyalty to the heirs of the philosophers and this is going to be a group to come known first as cipher then finally as the patriots in so many words the boss explains that the biggest thing standing in snake's way of replacing her is his need for a reason to fight that's the difference she says between a fighter and a soldier it's part of why he feels so abandoned by her disappearance he doesn't yet understand what the events of the game have to teach him that a soldier has no room for human attachments especially not to a fellow soldier or rather that sense of attachment can only come through devotion towards a particular mission a devotion that is unquestioning and eternal in this regard soldiers are two things that snake has to become by the end of snake eater instruments of power but also its priests it isn't enough just to carry out a mission in other words snake must be taught how to believe in it so totally that the instant it changes former friends can become enemies and white become black he'll adapt with just the same degree of belief and devotion as before and just as instantly this line by the boss is very important here drift away my place is with them now the river is a metaphor for the changing and moving stream of time or rather the times it's because there's no place for the boss or her cobras in the times of tomorrow that they've chosen instead to die for their mission all her dialogue to snake earlier in the game is just as crucial to grasping this point and the wider point that mgs3 wants to make about moral cultural and historical relativism listen to me jack just because soldiers are on the same side right now doesn't mean they always will be having personal feelings about your comrades is one of the worst sins you can commit politics determine who you face on the battlefield and politics are a living thing they change along with the times yesterday's good might be tomorrow's evil is that why you abandoned me no it had nothing to do with you i already told you jack i was on a top-secret mission this all goes back to world war one famously christened the war to end all wars now today this phrase might sound like it's referring to the violence and extremity of world war one but originally this phrase meant something more utopian it was envisioned as a war to bring an end to all wars once and for all in the mgs universe how this was achieved was quite literally by weaponizing war against itself so that a new world order could be constructed that no one could have the power to oppose that by trying to oppose one unwittingly serves war would become part of how this status quo would maintain its balance a war as orwell put it as peace this is the true nature of everything that happens in mgs3 it's all part of a war that's really just serving the very status quo it's meant to ostensibly threaten at least in the mind of the one who thinks he's really fighting it volgan his little rebellion is merely the fodder for the philosophers to reunite not as an international group spread across the major world powers but localized only in america to reform as the covert entity that will control world events for the next century led by major zero cipher and much later known as the patriots [Music] snake tells sokolov a sort of code phrase to prove he's working as zero's proxy and that also sort of tricks the player into thinking that zero's a benevolent hero a trustworthy figure now it wasn't kept consistent in localization but in the native japanese it's implied here that this phrase is the origin behind snake's famous catchphrase which we know better in the west as kept you waiting huh [Music] bogan is the prototype for the man who will become big boss in many ways he's secretly plotting to carry out a version of the military rebellion that years later big boss will attempt himself throughout the events of the msx games but this won't become clear until more of volgan's plans come to light for now all we're told is that volgen is a key player in the red army's extremist anti-khrushchev faction who disapprove of the government's post-cuban missile crisis policy of pursuing peaceful coexistence with the west later on we'll also learn that volgan is a radical russian nationalist who's committed war crimes and crushed rebellions in satellite states in other words he's a monster who's been useful to the soviet union but now has become more and more unhinged it's clear why sokolove can't fall into vulgan's blood-stained hands but as soon as snake tries to exfil you come face to face with the commander of the guru's ocelot unit major ocelot which i already briefly mentioned it seems that most of what happens in this scene is somewhat of a ruse ocelot is merely testing snake the man that he knows will soon become the next boss working as ocelot is secretly as a triple agent for the american government i think ocelot really does try to shoot snake here using the untested technique he's only read about trying to show off his relationship with snake is somewhat complex throughout the game to say nothing of the complexity of ocelot's true objectives behind the scenes but the best way to think of the two is like brothers there's a rivalry yet a camaraderie and mutual understanding and respect too snake really does teach ocelot a lot along the way constantly surprising him with genuine integrity and good-naturedness yet snake also humiliates him often in front of others so there's a bit of a brotherly grudge brewing as well the big clue that the project of turning snake into the next boss is already underway during virtuous mission is in how ocelot claims that he was expecting sokolov's rescuer to be the legendary hero the boss is it really possible ocelot has yet to learn the real boss is a woman not to mention that she's his own mother and wouldn't ocelot have already been told the boss has defected to vulgan's unit nothing about this makes much sense unless getting past the ocelot unit was actually part of snake's first test part of his initiation ritual by the end we'll learn that ocelot has assumed the identity of one of two former nsa defectors who the kgb believes are working for them inside vulcan's outfit as double agents in reality though ocelot is a triple agent loyal to neither side of the soviet interservice conflict but to the cia [Music] ocelot is also buying time for what happens next which i believe was predetermined before the start of the virtuous mission even though were presented these events as if they were completely unexpected i think that major zero understood fully well that the boss was going to defect well before she actually does so at the perfect time the boss appears out of the mist carrying the davy crockett portable nukes for vulgan and this is when we learn that she along with the cobras are defecting to vogue inside however in reality they've all signed up for nothing more than a suicide mission one where each one of them in turn will sacrifice themselves to secretly support snakes true mission objectives as well as teaching him things that he'll need on his way to becoming big boss is he crying [Music] sad so sad a host of sorrows and you are one of them it may be hard to tell but in between snake getting tossed into the river and waking up after washing up on shore several hours pass it's implied that in this time volgan and the cobras have raided the kgb to steal the shacklehod as well as capture the woman that they believe to be sokolob's mistress eva no that's not her name her name is tatyana how long has tatiana been here only a few weeks a few days before the virtuous mission then it seems this woman tatiana was snatched by the ocelot unit who are the only other passengers in volgan's hind now there's not much we can say for sure about how tatiana who will later of course meet as the spy secretly working for the chinese philosophers eva winds up in vulgar's chopper was she grabbed along with the shaggahad at the mountain testing site or did the rebellion sneak her out of sokolov's research bureau it may not really matter because if you notice what actually matters here is how the person responsible for her being here is ocelot apparently she sokolov's woman a kiss of death are you kgb ocelot working unbeknownst to eva to help her plant her cover story more convincingly as a kgb spy is actually playing china's rivalry with the soviet union against both sides this is all to lure eva into stealing a fake of the film containing the whereabouts of the philosopher's legacy ocelot will also use his cover story as adam the nsa defector to provide eva the opportunity to masquerade as the second defector who actually may or may not have ever even existed code named eva [Music] it will be necessary to feed snake valuable intel and support almost like apples which she won't even realize that she's doing in service to the americans the real adam never showed up at the meeting place saving me the trouble of having to eliminate him [Music] yes it appears that no one knew that i was adam after beating snake within an inch of his life the way that the boss takes sokolov seems to be a nod to mgs one in how in both these scenarios you unwittingly deliver the very thing that you were supposed to prevent the enemy from getting to them on a silver platter and all of this i believe is going according as i mentioned to a predefined plan [Music] one of the reasons that volgan nukes the development facility is presumably to double check that the boss isn't lying to him which ensures that she can't go back home in an instant the boss has turned from an international symbol of heroism to an international pariah now supposedly even by the end of the game we're being told the idea that the cia didn't anticipate volgan using the nuke but i'm not entirely convinced this is so this nuclear strike catalyzes the very rippling changes to the times that the boss from the very start seems to already know are coming whatever the truth though this nuclear explosion sets into motion not only the boss becoming evil on the outside to the world but also snake by killing her only to learn by the end that she remained loyal the whole time becoming evil on the inside becoming the chimerical combination of the boss and vulgan that we'll later know and fear as big boss this theme of the times or context mgs three's developers represented with the theme word scene now one way that mgs3 plays with the central theme of scene is as a prequel there's one sentry on the left and one on the right they're armed with five five sixers pineapples colonel i've sighted an enemy century i've spotted two enemy soldiers ak-47s and grenades anyone going with me as usual this is a one-man infiltration mission weapons and equipment osp yes this is a top secret black op don't expect any official support is this a joint effort no foxhound remains a covert body don't alert them to your presence that is an order this will be a sneaking mission you must not be seen by the enemy you must leave no trace of your presence is that clear this kind of infiltration is the fox unit's speciality in other words weapons and equipment to procure on-site that goes for food as well there are dynamics here that we recognize for starters there's naked snakes similarities with the protagonist of mgs2 who was also named jack this can't be happening it's like being in a nightmare you can't wake up from jack snap out of it the way the boss is introduced through the codec after we're given a short moment of warming up and how much that this throws jack off is a solid mimicry of how the dynamic in mgs2 got introduced between jack and rose then there's the familiarity of not naomi like mgs1 but paramedic she too flirts with us and goes into crazy detail describing science and medicine and there are other little references into other games as well like the plane that resembles the one that we see at the start of the nest version of metal gear one or the sub off the coast of alaska that starts mgs one but despite these similarities there's also something different in all of these examples of deja vu too they're in the wrong context the boss is nothing like rosemary and paramedic unlike naomi isn't secretly scheming to get revenge against us get down the things that have shown back up in the past you see haven't shown back up in there if you'll pardon the irony original context hell just look at how naked snake both is and is not just like solid snake all these awesomely ironic twists are not only subtly meta-referential they're driving home the central theme about changes not so much simply changes over time but within the times themselves and by the times i just mean the status quo what matters what's meaningful relative to a specific era and we'll return to this question of the times as time goes by one thing that certainly never seems to change throughout the times though is the dynamic of snake whichever snake in whatever era we're looking at getting used and manipulated there are hints and little signature kojima style bits of foreshadowing to this effect like how zero and paramedic share this knowing glance it almost feels much like mgs2 that the events of mgs3 are some kind of psychology experiment a single blind study that we the player as well as our player character snake are kept in the dark about there are other subtler details and hanging threads that seem intentionally left dangling for us to notice and suspect one is why did fox put their logo all over the plane and even on snake's parachute if this mission really was only supposed to last four hours why did fox go to the trouble of assembling a field guide on all the plants and animals why was there conveniently some sort of animal version of the great escape from a laboratory in the region filling it with a diverse plethora of edible animals and speaking of one example that we see of change over time on a personal level for snake is how he'll develop more of a taste for eating wild animals in some ways his story is about a loss of innocence just as the story of adam and eve symbolized this same thing through consumption of food mgs3 is about a conversion of both heart and mind obviously it's possible to overthink things and miss their actual purpose by doing so especially in kojima's games where you can never feel too sure about anything but the only reason that i mention this stuff about eating at all is yet another ironic line by zero if all goes well it shouldn't take more than a few hours home in time for dinner but if anything goes wrong you'll be eating dinner breakfast and all the rest of your meals in the jungle zero has quite a few lines that seem to be private and very mean-spirited jokes at our expense told in a dry and characteristically english passive-aggressive way speaking of snakes you remember the boss don't you as long as you've got a legendary hero backing you up you'll be fine isn't that right snake this mission would never have come together without the boss's help in a number of respects you're a ghost snake in every sense of the word another way that this theme of the times and how they change is conveyed is through the very name snake itself though snake starts out in our eyes a hero the hero that we've heard about and all the other games the legend whom we know will one day become big boss by the end of mgs3 he'll have shed his skin and become a sort of unwilling villain but also victim a man without much control a man who gets tricked the value the virtue the context of big boss himself is something that we'll see changing with the times notice that zero uses the boss to cover his own sins no less opportunistically than volgan throughout the virtuous mission zero puts everything on the boss all of this is apparently designed to make her cover story of defection and betrayal not only more convincing but more devastating for snake for example zero says it was the boss's connections with the director of central intelligence that got him to authorize unit fox's first mission he also says it was her access to her very own underground espionage network that was cultivated during the war which has enabled fox to pinpoint sokolov's location and xero uses his background in co-creating the sas with the boss to ingratiate himself to us using her the same way he uses his promise to sokolov to prove his virtue and trustworthiness that word prove is very important in mgs3 because usually it's used to subvert the very idea of proof and facts and knowable truth in situations where perception matters more than reality as just a few examples volgen proves the boss isn't still in league with the us by firing the crockett in turn the u.s must quote unquote prove it had nothing to do with volgen getting his hands on the weapon by sending snake to kill the boss there are so many other examples like when eva will prove that she's adam by killing the soviets but most of these examples will have to wait i think that the relevance of proof here at mgs3 has to do again with history and the changing times and how things that are recorded and thought of as facts as things that really took place aren't necessarily true we'll talk more about this and many more things should this episode get enough of your support in the follow-up until next time boss [Music] i give my love [Music] [Applause] hmm

Channel: Futurasound Productions

Views: 217,208

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Id: kOMaFzPVXpY

Length: 48min 32sec (2912 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020