The Best is Yet to Come
If you were to look at Metal Gear Solid on it’s own merits- without analyzing what preceded or succeeded the 1998 classic- then you’d more so see the Tactical Espionage Action title as a sequel to Snatcher and Policenauts than an entry in an already established series. After all, Metal Gear 1&2 on the MSX weren’t available in the United States until 2006. You never needed to play them to enjoy MGS. When I decided to dive back in October of 2023 I opted to read the synopsis of the two previous games that is included in the “Special” tab of the game’s main menu. Immediately following I started the briefing. These cutscenes totaled to about 23 minutes. Between the game’s intro, the briefing, the synopses, and fiddling around with the Master Collection’s supplemental material, It was a full hour before I even began to play the game.
By the Cyborg Ninja fight I was thirsty for that passive feeding of information.
You could probably get away with cutting about half an hour of gameplay from Metal Gear Solid without sacrificing anything worthwhile. Instead of backtracking throughout you could simply…not.
Let’s talk about another game for just a quick moment.
In 1996’s Resident Evil you’re forced to backtrack several times. You get a key in one building, then you head back to the mansion, then you go back and forth a few times before you find yourself locked into the final stretch of the game. Despite having more backtracking than MGS, RE feels more intentional. Yes, you’re doing this so as to reuse architecture and to tack on another hour or so of content, but with each subsequent key or doodad you genuinely *want* to go back. You wanna see where that hallway takes you.
In Metal Gear Solid, each new keycard just feels like the game telling you:
“Well, welcome back to B2 of the facility. Here’s two more doors you can open.”
There’s a moment in the game where a character gets hurt, and you’re explicitly told that you can’t do anything to save them, and that you need to go back to an area you visited seemingly hours ago in order to acquire an item to progress the story. When you finally come back you discover that your friend is gone, and in more than a few ways it seems like you did something wrong. Perhaps you took too long to get the item? Soon after you make enough progress you learn that the game was acting as intended, and you were never being penalized for taking too long. Instead, your friend’s fate relies on how fast you can press a button in a mini game.
If you do some backtracking of your own you’ll remember that I said that this game feels like a sequel to Hideo Kojima’s previous directorial works. That’s because like Snatcher and Policenauts Metal Gear Solid is at it’s core an interactive film. The interactivity might disguise itself better as a game more so than his previous endeavors, but once a cutscene starts you might see yourself instinctively reaching for the Twizzlers you have next to you on the couch. By the third Twizzler you’ll realize that it’s been twenty minutes since you last had to touch the controller, and you don’t even mind.
Now despite my complaints I still think Metal Gear Solid is a worthwhile experience, designed to stand the test of time. When you talk about videogames, Metal Gear Solid’s spot at the table is one hundred percent warranted. When the game’s story gets going it really takes you places, and without thinking of the other games you can nearly see this title as an open and shut case until the final stretch of dialog. Without spoiling anything the game leaves itself open for a sequel, but if you were to cut that dialog out then this game honestly would feel complete. Nothing is left on the table aside from a few loose ends, and those said ends aren’t even tied until the fourth entry.
-PA
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