One of the first critiques you will hear as a creative writer of any kind is this: show, don’t tell. The Metal Gear Solid franchise has never taken that piece of advice (not that I’m complaining) until we were allowed to get into the head of Big Boss in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. The beautiful drawn cutscenes by Ashley Wood draw a wordless parallel between Naked Snake shooting The Boss in Russia in the 60’s, to the present day 1970’s where he puts down her horse in Costa Rica. The Snakes often say little about how they feel, but this scene is where Kojima really shows what he’s learned since Metal Gear Solid IV, and uses visual storytelling to say things without using words. It’s important especially in the context of Peace Walker, where Big Boss navigates a second time what The Boss taught him, or at least, what he thought she had taught him. If she had been entirely open with him in the first place, he may have not still struggled with her message.
And that leads us to the controversy of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. There is very little in the narrative that is simply told to the player. For many fans of the earlier titles in the series, The Phantom Pain was a disappointment. As a fan myself, I understand why. I, too, miss the long codec conversations about military history and characters’ personal histories. The sacrifice of these though (and adaptation into fewer, more carefully selected tape recordings) earns MGSV an A+ in game design. The medium is the message in The Phantom Pain, and the message is about silence and projection.
I feel like here I need to leave a disclaimer that 1: there are spoilers ahead and 2: I was not on board the MGSV hype train leading up to the game’s release in October 2015. I bought a playstation 3 for the sole purpose of having it for the Metal Gear Solid IV release, and after that I gave up on the Metal Gear franchise entirely. Not because I was unhappy with IV (I wasn’t! I was pleased with it, although I have some issues with it now) but because I didn’t want to encourage a franchise that Kojima no longer wanted to make. So when I came home to Canada in mid-October 2015 to find my roommates deep in Metal Gear Solid hell, I played Peace Walker, Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain in one go, without any expectations of what any of these games entailed. Considering the angst much of the fandom went through waiting, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I realize, however, that the marketing of MGSV led to certain expectations of the game that were not met, and it’s important to understand that this was not how I experienced it.
