Welcome back to Franchise Festival, a fortnightly column where we explore and discuss noteworthy video game series from the last four decades. Older entries can be found in the archive here.
This week we’ll be [!] learning about Metal Gear. Cover art is from MobyGames. Please consider supporting that website, as its staff tirelessly catalogs key information and art assets for an often ephemeral medium. For more information on the history of Konami, the studio responsible for Metal Gear, please consult Lily ‘Lovely’ Bones’ Franchise Festival #35: Silent Hill. For previous series entries, please check out Franchise Festival #115: Metal Gear (1987-2005).
Note that there will be some spoilers throughout this article, as it’s impossible to discuss such a narrative-heavy franchise without identifying some key moments in its ongoing plot.
Please also be aware that much of the development information on these series entries is sourced from Third Edition Books’ Metal Gear Solid: Hideo Kojima’s Magnum Opus. Buy it immediately if you’re interested in a full exploration of the series’ history and dense narrative.
Table of Contents
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008) Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2010) Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (2014) Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015) Spinoffs
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008)
Kojima once again tried to step away from Metal Gear, believing the story to have reached an adequate conclusion with Metal Gear Solid 3, but fan demand resulted in Konami insisting on another outing for Snake. Though Zone of the Enders (2001) director Shuyo Murata was originally tapped to spearhead production, he would share co-director credits with Kojima in the end. The first six months of the project were spent experimenting with the Metal Gear Solid 3 game engine, after which development shifted to the PlayStation 3. Kojima’s primary goals were wrapping up all of the lingering mysteries from Metal Gear Solid 2 and offering a vision of Snake infiltrating hectic battlefields rather than isolated facilities. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots launched worldwide as a PlayStation 3 exclusive on June 12, 2008.
Solid Snake’s final quest sees him visiting five different locations – the Middle East, South America, Eastern Europe, Metal Gear Solid‘s Shadow Moses complex, and a modified version of Metal Gear Solid 2‘s Arsenal Gear – over a series of chapters separated by lengthy briefing cutscenes set in the Nomad, Otacon’s aerial base. Private military companies (PMCs) and the proliferation of mass-produced Metal Gears have plunged the world into a period of endless war by 2014 and Snake is called in by Colonel Campbell for one last job: the assassination of Liquid Ocelot, a version of Revolver Ocelot that evidently bears the consciousness of Liquid Snake. Solid Snake has aged rapidly due to his nature as a clone of Big Boss and much of the story centers on him confronting his approaching death.
Like the game’s overall plot, Metal Gear Solid 4‘s supporting cast offers numerous references to previous series entries. Metal Gear Solid‘s Meryl Silverburgh and Naomi Hunter respectively return as a United States government agent and an ally of Liquid Ocelot. Metal Gear Solid 2‘s Raiden, having been transformed into a cybernetic ninja, saves Snake and is then saved in turn by his former mentor. Metal Gear Solid 3‘s EVA is revealed to be the surrogate mother of Liquid and Solid Snake. Even the new set of bosses, a team of animalistic warriors known as Beauty and the Beast, are based on the boss enemies of Metal Gear Solid.
While it uses a new game engine, Metal Gear Solid 4 more or less replicates the gameplay of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. A player-controlled camera makes large-scale encounters more feasible than they’d been in earlier titles, as enemies approach from all sides during the Middle East and South America sequences. Stealth remains a viable strategy, especially when the player activates Snake’s new adaptive camouflage suit, but direct combat is more prominent than ever before. In an echo of Resident Evil 4 (2005), an arms dealer named Drebin appears throughout stages to sell Snake guns and ammunition.
Metal Gear Solid 4 was celebrated by critics at the time of its release, but that reputation has dimmed over time. Its perfection of the gameplay systems found in earlier series entries was believed to have been compromised by an overly dense narrative presented through too many cutscenes; the final cutscene, as a particularly egregious example, runs slightly over an hour in length. Even so, Kojima had done what few believed he could: he resolved the series’ overarching plot with a final chapter that offers closure for all principal characters. At the time of writing in January 2022, Metal Gear Solid 4 remains the final chronological chapter in Solid Snake’s story.
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2010)
Kojima’s next planned departure from Metal Gear was as short-lived as previous attempts. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, a core series entry based on 2006’s Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops spinoff, was to be anchored by a shadowy proxy war being fought by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1970s Costa Rica and Kojima believed that his younger staff failed to understand Cold War culture. He switched from a distant producer role to the director’s chair in 2009, bringing his own unique perspective on multiplayer games with him. Development was otherwise smooth and wrapped up in under a year, with the game released in Japan on the PlayStation Portable in April 2010 and around the world two months later.
The story picks up ten years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 3 and depicts the transformation of Naked Snake into Big Boss. Snake has relocated to Costa Rica at the start of the game, where he has established a mercenary group called Militaires Sans Frontieres (MSF) and begun recruiting soldiers. MSF is pulled into combat in 1974 by the Costa Rican government when a second mercenary group is revealed to have brought a nuclear-armed tank called Peace Walker to the country. Snake’s mission to find and disarm the tank is further complicated by the fact that Peace Walker’s creator (Dr. Strangelove!) has programmed its artificial intelligence with the personality and memories of Snake’s deceased mentor, The Boss.
Though its visual design is scaled down from home console series entries, the shift to a portable device does little to compromise Metal Gear Solid‘s hybrid of action and stealth gameplay. Snake can execute all of the same actions he could in Metal Gear Solid 4, as well as an expanded set of Close Quarter Combat (CQC) techniques, but the biggest mechanical evolution is the integration of base-building and multiplayer components into the narrative. The former sees Snake knocking out and airlifting enemy soldiers using a new tool – the Fulton Recovery System – to his home base and converting them to MSF’s cause; they can then be controlled in missions or sent on resource-gathering runs from a central menu. Online multiplayer allows up to four players to take on missions together, and is particularly helpful when battling the game’s large mechanical boss enemies.
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker was a critical success, receiving a perfect score in Japan’s Famitsu magazine, but sales outside of Japan were abysmal due to the unpopularity of the PlayStation Portable console. This lends greater resonance to a humorous in-game crossover with Monster Hunter, as Capcom’s multiplayer-oriented property likewise failed to inspire as much love in the West on the PlayStation Portable as it did in Japan. Luckily, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker was rescued from obscurity by being included in an HD format as part of the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection (2011) and Metal Gear Solid: Legacy Collection (2013) on contemporary home consoles. This version, which can still be downloaded on Xbox Series X/S devices, updates the graphics and performance while offering a more traditional control scheme in which camera controls are mapped to the right analog stick.
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (2014)
Hideo Kojima’s final Metal Gear title would be beset by delays from the start of production. The upcoming hardware generation demanded a new game engine and, rather than reproduce the comparatively compressed scale of previous Metal Gear games, Kojima decided to swing for the fences. The result was a proprietary open-world engine that allowed for full simulation of weather effects, physics, and evolving AI patrol routines. The Fox Engine finally fulfilled the promise of Metal Gear Solid 4‘s emphasis on battlefields, yet was flexible enough to accommodate the stealth tactics of earlier series entries.
The consequence of this protracted production cycle, however, was a spiraling cost that threatened Kojima’s relationship with his publisher. Konami made the controversial decision to publish a portion of the planned game, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (2014), ahead of the full experience at ⅔ standard retail price (40 USD). Straddling console generations, this standalone PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC game would serve as a prologue in the vein of Metal Gear Solid 2‘s tanker chapter.
Players control Big Boss – now voiced by Keifer Sutherland rather than David Hayter – in 1975 as he and MSF attempt to extract kidnapped ally Paz Ortega Andrade from Camp Omega, a United States blacksite in Cuba. He is supported remotely by second-in-command Kazuhira Miller and Huey, Otacon’s father, both reprising their roles from Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. While he is able to successfully locate Paz, she is killed by a bomb surgically implanted within her body. The explosion badly wounds Big Boss and, during his resulting nine-year coma, MSF is destroyed alongside its Costa Rican Mother Base.
Ground Zeroes‘ gameplay refines many of the systems originally found in Peace Walker. Stealth is encouraged through the inclusion of binoculars that let the player track enemy patrol routes and “Reflex Mode,” a brief window of time in which Big Boss can quietly dispatch an enemy who has discovered him before the general alarm is raised. The level design constitutes Ground Zeroes‘ biggest revision to previous series entries, as Camp Omega is fully explorable rather than presenting a series of linear areas to overcome.
Critical reviews were largely positive in spite of concerns that the game represented an ugly sales gambit by Konami. Since many Western players had skipped Peace Walker, the novelty of Ground Zeroes‘ tight stealth and combat mechanics overcame frustrations with its exceptionally brief playtime; side missions that filled in backstory likewise encouraged replay. Most importantly for Konami, the game drove demand for its successor even higher than it had already been.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015)
By April 2015, over $80,000,000 had been spent on Metal Gear Solid V. Konami was already in the midst of a corporate shakeup to refocus their business more heavily on mobile platforms and Japanese game parlors. Kojima had picked the wrong time, it seems, to go all-in on a high-concept open-world game built using a proprietary engine. The legendary auteur was isolated by his new bosses, prevented from communicating directly with the Metal Gear Solid V team, and finally forced into retirement from the studio at which he had worked since 1986. Though Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was finally released on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC in September 2015, behind-the-scenes turmoil resulted in the game being left unfinished.
The Phantom Pain‘s story kicks off in 1984 as Big Boss recovers from his coma and escapes the Cyprus hospital where he’s lived since being caught in the explosion at Camp Omega. Soon on the trail of Cipher, a sinister cabal led by Big Boss’s former commanding officer Zero, he’s joined by a handful of allies as he builds an offshore base that will ultimately become Metal Gear‘s Outer Heaven. These include silent assassin Quiet and Revolver Ocelot, now on Big Boss’s side two decades after they clashed during the events of Metal Gear Solid 3.
Two massive open-world settings offer interpretations of Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and the war-torn border between Angola and Zaire. Big Boss can explore these areas either on-foot, on horseback, or via helicopter fast-travel. The player receives missions often centered on a given region, though, where leaving the predefined mission zone results in failure. The open-world consequently serves more as a source of emergent gameplay between missions, as Big Boss spirits away soldiers to Outer Heaven using his Fulton Recovery Device and raids outposts for equipment. Outer Heaven is also explorable and able to be enhanced as Big Boss acquires more troops and materials.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was beloved by critics, who drew attention to its consistently compelling gameplay loop, and shipped over 6,000,000 copies within its first three months on store shelves. The narrative proved to be less universally praised, however, as the omission of a planned Act 3 forced its events to a premature conclusion. Some longtime fans also found the absence of David Hayter’s voice to be a jarring change for the character of Big Boss, though a late-game twist explains the alteration. Even so, The Phantom Pain was widely considered to be the pinnacle of the series’ tactical stealth gameplay. Sales soon justified the project’s ballooning costs, making Konami look even more foolish for losing its best-known developer than it already had.
Spinoffs
Snake’s Revenge was developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) by a team at Konami – including programmers Hitoshi Akamatsu, Kouki Yamashita, Yasuo Okuda, and S. Fukuoka – but never released in Japan. It was instead published in North America and Europe by a Konami subsidiary called Ultra Software Corporation as a reaction to the higher-than-anticipated sales of its NES predecessor. Without input from Kojima, the developers largely replicated the gameplay of Metal Gear. The narrative involves Solid Snake and fellow FOXHOUND operatives John Turner and Nick Myer infiltrating a Middle Eastern base three years after the fall of Outer Heaven.
Snake’s next non-canonical adventure was also a 2D title published on a Nintendo console, albeit one made under the oversight of Kojima. Metal Gear Solid: Ghost Babel (2000), released in the West without its subtitle, serves not as an adaptation of its PlayStation namesake but rather an original adventure evidently set seven years after the events of Metal Gear 2. Its status as a genuine sequel is murky, since 1998’s Metal Gear Solid was a disguised reimagining of Metal Gear 2 and some details of Ghost Babel directly contradict the plot of Metal Gear Solid.
The story concerns Snake’s stealthy assault on Galuade, a South American fortress built on the ruins of Outer Heaven where separatists have commandeered a Metal Gear. Snake is aided by Metal Gear 2‘s Colonel Campbell, Metal Gear Solid‘s Mei Ling, a mercenary nicknamed Weasel, CIA operative Brian McBride, and United States Delta Force soldier Chris Jenner as he makes his way through the game’s thirteen stages and battles a team of eccentrics called the Black Chamber.
Its gameplay represents the series’ 2D peak. A solid foundation based on Metal Gear 2‘s mechanics is enhanced by eight-directional movement and the ability to lean against walls, during which Snake can either tap to distract patrolling guards or see a preview of what’s behind him. Bonus VR missions pad out the already-lengthy story mode and offer a tantalizing easter egg to Metal Gear Solid 2 players in the form of references to in-game VR session player “Jack.” Sadly, however, Ghost Babel has not been re-published since its initial release on Game Boy Color in Spring 2000.
Ghost Babel director Shinta Nojiri’s next project was a pair of spinoffs released for the PlayStation Portable. Metal Gear Ac!d (2004) and Metal Gear Ac!d 2 (2005) are both presented with the visual language of Metal Gear Solid, but Snake’s actions are dictated by the use of in-game collectible cards rather than traditional controller inputs. Cards with art drawn from the Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2, Metal Gear Solid 3, and even Hideo Kojima’s other games allow Snake to move a certain number of steps, attack with his weapons, or otherwise interact with the environment during turn-based missions.
The story of the first Metal Gear Ac!d game, while unconnected to core series entries, is reminiscent of other adventures: Snake must infiltrate a laboratory in the fictional Moloni Republic to save a kidnapped United States senator and uncover the truth of a mysterious research project known as Pythagoras. Metal Gear Ac!d 2, in addition to an enhanced cel-shaded graphical style and twice as many cards, builds on its predecessor by focusing on corporate intrigue in the United States rather than terrorism abroad. The first of the Metal Gear Ac!d games was subsequently remade for mobile phones in 2008 under the name Metal Gear Ac!d Mobile, with 2D and 3D versions available depending on the phone model.
Metal Gear Ac!d Mobile was not the series only appearance on mobile devices, however. An original adventure focusing on the exploits of Snake and Otacon’s Philanthropy group between the events of Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 was also published for phones and the Nokia N-Gage platform in 2008. Metal Gear Solid Mobile sees Snake infiltrating a black ops military facility using mechanics inspired by Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3, along with experimental new input mechanisms that make use of the player’s phone camera to aim, as he attempts to rescue a whistleblower scientist named Victoria Reed.
The series’ only iOS-exclusive, 2009’s Metal Gear Solid Touch, is a shooting gallery built using the assets of Metal Gear Solid 4 in which the plot is told through text crawls that play between missions. Drebin likewise sells new weapons to Snake for money earned from killing enemies. While the game is visually impressive, one finds it difficult to imagine a less thematically-appropriate Metal Gear mechanic than murdering hordes of faceless enemy soldiers to rack up a high score.
Core series collaborators Kojima and Yoji Shinkawa planned and proposed the initial designs for the PlayStation Portable’s next spinoff, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (2006), before scenario designer Gakuto Mikumo, scriptwriter Yoshito Ohara, and lead programmer Masao Tomosawa carried it to completion alongside their team. Portable Ops‘ story details the founding of FOXHOUND between the events of Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. The player guides Big Boss and up to three squadmates – who can also be controlled by friends via Wi-Fi – through bite-sized levels using the mechanics and camera system of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. Its cooperative online components proved so popular that an expanded version, Portable Ops Plus (2007), focused almost exclusively on multiplayer functionality.
The series’ best-known multiplayer spinoff, though, is Metal Gear Online. The first incarnation was included as a pack-in with Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence and allowed players with PlayStation 2 network adaptors to compete against one another in sneaking missions, capture missions, and rescue missions, as well as team and free-for-all deathmatches. Its servers were shut down in 2007.
The second version of Metal Gear Online was published worldwide as part of Metal Gear Solid 4, and in Japan as a standalone unit, in 2008. Metal Gear Online 2 meaningfully expanded on its predecessor with a refined combat engine based on Metal Gear Solid 4 as well as additional gameplay modes: among others, Bomb Mode sees players trying either plant bombs or defend bombable locations, Race Mode serves as a speed test through five checkpoints on one of five maps, and Stealth Deathmatch presages Fortnite (2017) with its shrinking arena and goal of being the last soldier standing. An arcade version even made it possible to play in-person with friends in 2010. While official support for Metal Gear Online 2 was discontinued in 2012, fan servers have preserved access to the game into the 2020s.
Metal Gear Online 3 launched as a patched-in component of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain in October 2015. As in Metal Gear Online 2, up to 16 players cooperate with or compete against one another in numerous modes that make use of the latest single-player game’s combat and stealth mechanics. A new buddy system allows players to partner up with a teammate and then teleport to their location when they need support. Player avatars are also now class-based, making their roles more clearly defined, and additional gear is unlocked as the player accumulates experience points by participating in matches. Support for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game ended in August 2021, and the remaining servers are planned to be taken offline in May 2022.
The series’ most ambitious single-player spinoff, on the other hand, is one not actually produced by Konami. Though development began at Konami subsidiary Kojima Productions around 2009, the bulk of work on Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (2013) was carried out by Platinum Games. Kojima elected to turn the project over to that studio, then best-known for MadWorld (2009) and Bayonetta (2009), in 2011 after two years of fruitless efforts.
The result was an over-the-top melee-focused character action game featuring Raiden as its protagonist. Four years after Metal Gear Solid 4, cyborg ninja Raiden is charged with eliminating a dangerous mercenary group called Desperado after they assassinate the prime minister of an unnamed African country. Linear levels discourage stealth in favor of flashy acrobatics and direct confrontation using Raiden’s trusty katana, which can slice precisely through enemy appendages when the player activates a time-stopping Blade Mode. Projectile weapons can be acquired but are generally used to close the distance with foes rather than eliminating them. Though critical reviews were mixed upon its publication for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, its tight combat and campy atmosphere have established it as a cult favorite in recent years.
Metal Gear‘s last spinoff at the time of writing is also the series’ only game produced since Hideo Kojima left Konami. In Metal Gear: Survive (2018), developed for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC by Metal Gear Solid V veterans who remained at the studio after their boss’ departure, players create and control an avatar (The Captain) who battles zombies in a parallel universe accessible through a wormhole that opens above Mother Base during its destruction in 1975. The Fox Engine-based game can be played solo or through online multiplayer, as The Captain builds up their base, establishes automated outposts in the manner of a tower-defense title, and scavenges for food and water to survive their harsh environment. Metal Gear: Survive was panned by reviewers and sold poorly, however, vindicating longtime fans who believed that the series would lose its way without its creator.
Conclusion
Metal Gear is the rare example of a franchise that has become defunct in spite of consistently strong critical and commercial performance. A shaky start on hardware unavailable in North America had given way to one of the most enduring titles of the 32-bit era, thanks to the unique vision of Hideo Kojima and Yoji Shinkawa, and then some of the most thought-provoking home console games of the PlayStation 2. Struggles to recapture the narrative successes of Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3 failed to diminish the series’ reputation in the 2010s, as Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and Metal Gear Solid V offered the most refined interpretations of its stealth-combat mechanics so far.
Mismanagement by Konami would end Metal Gear with a spinoff that seemed designed to repurpose its source material’s game engine rather than offer any meaningful new ideas. Even so, it’s hard to be disappointed if the series receives no further iterations. The story of Solid Snake was resolved in Metal Gear Solid 4 while the downfall of his father came to its natural conclusion in Metal Gear Solid V. Kojima himself had been trying to move on from his creation since the 1980s and was finally able to produce a major new intellectual property, Death Stranding (2019), once he was able to make Kojima Productions an independent studio in 2016. If his first post-Konami project is any indication, the end of Metal Gear may be a good thing for fans of Hideo Kojima.
What do you think about this period of Metal Gear? Which is your favorite series entry? Favorite boss? Let’s discuss in the comments below.
Be sure to tune into the monthly Franchise Festival podcast if you’d like to hear an even more granular exploration of noteworthy video game series. If you enjoy the articles or the show, please consider backing us on Patreon. Patrons make it possible to keep producing great content!
As ever, here is a tentative list of upcoming articles:
- #117: Dragon Age – February 11
- #118: Time Crisis – February 25
- #119: Kentucky Route Zero – March 11
- #120: Drakengard/Nier – March 25
- #121: Snowboard Kids – April 8
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