Metal Gear Solid 4: Twin Suns

Having recently finished Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots I feel safe to say that it is easily one of the greatest videogames I have ever had the pleasure to play. As a consummate Metal Gear fan I was prepared for lengthy cut scenes, codec conversations that threatened the half-an-hour mark, and plot threads more tangled than a fisherman’s knot. In fact, I was more than prepared for these things. I wanted them, and I certainly got what I wanted.

Despite nearly falling asleep at the end, and the layers upon layers of exposition that sometimes felt more endurance test than game, I fell in love. The devotion to character, imagination and setting is absolute, and inarguably as good as anything Kojima has offered before. The Beauty and The Beast unit typify the idiosyncratic nature of the auteur’s vision when it comes to crafting memorable set-pieces.

The non-interactive chunks of MGS’s playtime have long been the cause of a splintering of gamers into love-it or hate-it camps. The cutscenes found in MGS4 are unashamedly lengthy, and while some devote whole sections to narrative and conversation (which is still entertaining in its own right) it’s the expertly composed actions sequences that truly electrify. Even the word ‘expertly’ fails to convey just how well constructed these visual spectacles are. Surpassing even Spielberg’s on-screen creations Kojima’s choreography feels like a blend of Bruckheimer and Woo-Ping Yuen – with a cheeky pinch of Lynch thrown in for good measure.

There’s a new fluidity to gameplay, providing the player with a Metal Gear experience that is less rigid in its reliance on stealth. And it’s certainly not coy in its sharing of gameplay elements with other triple-A titles. However, this is turning into a mini-review, and I don’t intend to do a review any time soon (I’d have given it a nine, if you’re wondering). What I would like to talk about is one very specific section, one of the game’s five acts that’s up there with the finest moments I’ve ever enjoyed in my life as a hardcore gamer.

Read on to find out more, but beware. There are epic spoilers ahead.

Sometimes something happens in a game that I just can’t get over – something so well conceived and executed that it warrants talking about on its accomplishments alone. It could be my first encounter with a colossus in Fumito Ueda’s masterpiece Shadow of the Colossus, Andrew Ryan’s memorable monologue in Bioshock, the end of Half Life 2: Episode 2 (still holding back tears), or emerging from dark, dank dungeons into the radiant, green fields of Hyrule or Cyrodil in Zelda: A Link to the Past and Oblivion respectively. One section half-way through Guns of the Patriots was one of these moments. It fortified the game as one of my all-time favourites, and the moment itself up there with the likes of my first battle against Gray Fox.

And it is this: The return to Shadow Moses. Nine years on from Snake’s first encounter with Liquid Snake – both in-game and since Metal Gear Solid was released in 1999 – Snake is ordered back to Shadow Moses to prevent Liquid Ocelot taking control of Metal Gear Rex and utilising its rail gun to bring about his new world order. Returning to the site that spawned many a Metal Gear fan (myself included) is an accomplishment in narrative engineering both convincing and artistic.

It’s a moment in modern gaming that speaks volumes about the medium’s power to affect the player in new and diverse ways. It’s not about a lack of imagination, or a deficiency in new ideas. Kojima spoke openly of his desire for Guns of the Patriots to resonate with player’s previous Metal Gear experiences, and returning to Shadow Moses perfectly encapsulates this design principle. It intentionally stirs the memories many of us hold dear – staying up until the early hours of the morning to battle Vulcan Raven, outwit Psycho Mantis, or sneakily snuff Sniper Wolf with the Nikita – and consolidates Snake’s presence as a real person; a true hero with an intricate past.

It’s an occurrence that has never been seen before in a videogame series, or at least, has never been attempted in quite the same way. Chrono Trigger showed glimpses of the concept in its time travelling narrative, giving players access to sever eras of the game world’s history and allowing past actions to affect future events, and World of Warcraft introduced the ‘Caverns of Time’; portals to different key historical periods and events in Warcraft including events that actually took place in Warcraft 3. The same location showed up multiple times across a series spanning six games in Konami’s other big franchise, Silent Hill. However, in each iteration the town felt more a re-imagining than a revisiting. Only MGS4 has returned to a pivotal location in its history some games down the line. The length of the series combined with the new technology of the PS3 made 2008 the perfect time to do it.

Kojima is well aware of how gamers’ experienced the first Metal Gear Solid, and his ability to echo these experiences is a masterstroke in atmosphere and story. It brings a whole new meaning to the term ‘environmental narrative’. He may not wring story from every rusting rivet and pouring pipe in the same way as Bioshock, but the old saying, ‘if these walls could talk’ has never felt more meaningful than when you stalk through the now empty corridors of the one time nuclear weapons storage facility.

Moving through the snow-blanketed infrastructure of Shadow Moses’ helipad as white cascades all around, it’s hard not to feel the heartstrings pulled this way and that when Aoife Ní Fhearraigh’s melancholy melody swims into the surroundings. The bare hallways are filled with echoes of events past, remembered codec conversations whispering over the delicate atmosphere. Moving through areas is an exercise in memory, as smashed computer consoles and scuffed walls hark back to battles fought long ago. It creates that feeling of a consistent world, a world that has remained despite not having been revisited by you, the player, for over 9 years.

Returning to the genesis of Snake’s battle with Ocelot allows for one narrative to inform the other, linking Snake’s earlier trials endured in the name of honour, duty and principle with his actions in the present day. The whole event culminates in a battle that, while a little rough around the edges, is one of the best the series has ever offered in terms of scale and scope.

It almost feels that Snake’s return is a plot development that could resonate so powerfully only within the borders of an interactive experience. Could a film or a book reach the same levels of connection between the entertainer and entertained? It’s your interactions with Shadow Moses, and indeed, your previous interactions there that make it so significant. Star Wars’ repeated ventures to Tatooine could never feel as poignant. Films are under pressure to take their characters to new places and undergo new experiences, and while games are – to an extent – under the same constraints, they give the player the ability to interact with the same environment in a way that movies can never emulate. Movies cannot offer the audience the chance to be a part of the surroundings, and as such a return to the same setting can never feel as meaningful.

And so that’s that. The return to Shadow Moses made me happier than Laughing Octopus, crazier than Raging Raven, more moved than Crying Wolf, and had me yelling more praise at my TV than even Screaming Mantis could manage. It’s one videogame moment I won’t forget any time soon. There are hundreds of other instances that stand out in the game – Raiden’s return, the first boss battle, THAT ending – but none are as original and nostalgic as the one discussed here.

It’s sad to see Snake go, but his time has come. At least we were given the chance to revel in his past adventures one more time before we had to say goodbye.