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And he looks great doing it! Clearly he's a hero! He stops giant robot dinosaurs! He fights a masked dude named Skull Face who's trying to kill billions! He even offers a particularly poignant eulogy for his fallen brothers at one point, delivered in the charismatically weary dulcet tones of Keifer Sutherland. On the surface, he's a likeable character. We generally don't notice this, however, because the story is told from his point of view. As such, he wants to create a soldier's paradise where everyone is always at war because that would be totally badass. He simply enjoys combat because that's all he knows. Essentially he's Tyler Durden trying to transform the world into one giant military Fight Club. This, he figured, was as good a reason to fight as any. Rather than be a pawn in someone else's game, he decided to build a private army, one who would fight for the highest bidder. After Uncle Sam branded her a traitor as a scapegoat to avoid going to war with Russia, Snake became disillusioned with the entire concept of nations. In Metal Gear Solid 3 he was a US soldier who was betrayed by his government and forced to kill his mentor, a woman he greatly admired codenamed The Boss. To explore this, we first need to look at the background of protagonist Big Boss, aka Venom Snake. If Kojima wanted Snake to be less idolised, he could have given him a lamer name.
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Instead, I believe Kojima emphasises the "badass" parts of war - the guns, the torture, the iconic posturing - as a commentary for how people get swept up in the culture of devoting your life to murdering those who disagree with you. After all, the man did grow up in a country that remained pacifist for over 50 years after being ravaged during the second world war.
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After all, lots of video games inadvertently romanticise war, a concept succinctly mocked by video game scholar Ian Bogost in a New York Times article from 2010 where he said the theme behind most military shooters is that "war is horrible and badass."īut I don't think Kojima is in love with war. You're playing as an insane war criminal, yet the game treats him like a brooding hero. This, incidentally, is my favourite aspect of The Phantom Pain's storytelling. If you were new to the series, you might not know that you're supposed to be an anti-hero at all. Instead, we spend dozens of hours watching the iconic character face off against a cartoon antagonist named Skull Face with a hilariously Kojima super villain plot (I think after 28 years of Metal Gear Kojima has earned the right for his name to be used as an adjective). This was supposed to be the story of a good man turning into a villain Kojima's Revenge of the Sith, in other words. But one reason lots of fans are crying foul of Konami is because The Phantom Pain doesn't concretely complete Snake/Big Boss's arch into infamy. In many ways, the game feels blatantly unfinished with plenty of plot threads left dangling and a twist that's haphazardly introduced when the game's final mission seemingly arbitrarily gets added to your docket. There's a lot of reasons to be disappointed in Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain's conclusion.