Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 159: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Episode Date: July 9, 2018

In 2004, Hideo Kojima restored his famous series' reputation with Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. This third entry in the Metal Gear Solid series eschewed the excessively meta approach of the previous sequel for a James Bond-ish romp in an entirely new setting that still provided plenty of convoluted--and incredibly amusing--twists and turns. The result is a modern classic that's brimming over with so many great, unique ideas, we barely have time to scratch the surface in 90 minutes! On this episode, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Mikel Reparaz, and Wes Fenlon as the crew takes a closer look at Metal Gear Solid 3 under the survival viewer.

This week on Retronauts, we feed on a tree frog. this one, Bob Mackey, and today's topic is Metal Gear Solid 3, Snake Eater. Before I go more into that, who else is here with me today? As always, we have... A code name T-Frog, Jeremy Parrish. Liquid Frog? What state of manner are you in? It's toasty. I hope it's not gaseous frog. It's somewhere between solid and plasma, I think.

I see. Okay. Well, we'll learn more about your secret ability later. But in this game, you shoot a lot of frogs, so I hope you're comfortable with that. Eat them, too. Oh, yeah, you can eat them, too. Who else is here today? Michael Rappariz, and I've still got the N's caged parrot sitting in my inventory. Oh, my gosh, that poor baby. I have a bird, Michael.

Don't hurt that thing. Don't tell me what to do. Oh, geez. We're starting off like this. And first-time guest on the show, who do we have here? Hello. Excuse me. All right.

Great start there. I'm Wes Fenland. I'm an editor at PC Gamer, and I'm here to talk about Metal Gear. Yes, I've been trying to get Wes on the show because everyone is fleeing San Francisco, and we just need new voices. And I finally got him down for our topic today, Metal Gear Solid 3. And you might be wondering, Bob, Retronaut's Number 47 was called the Final Word on Metal Gear. Well, we are liars and scoundrels because we can't stop talking about Metal Gear.

And now that we're doing episodes about singular games and not as much about an entire, you know, series at a time, I think we can deep dive into this game because it is one of the finest moments of the Metal Gear series. I think we're all on the same page with this. Yeah, did we really say the final word? You titled the episode, the final word on Metal Gear. I'm sorry, that was really irresponsible with me. Jeremy, you should know better. We can't stop talking about Metal Gear.

We're going to, we'll run out of retro games eventually and have to we start recycling after, you know, 20 years. It is true. But then, I mean, retro, new things become retro all the time. So, and I hope in 10 years I can talk about Metal Gear Solid 5 because, God, I love that game so much. And even Metal Gear Solid 5 is not the final word on Metal Gear as we thought it was going to be. Oh, that's right. Got a new zombie shooter Metal Gear or something comes. Are we really considering that a new word on Metal Gear?

I don't know. It's some kind of word. I mean, survive is a new word. It is a new word. That's true. It's literally a new word. Maybe not the final word. I don't know what Konami is doing.

But I want to talk a little bit. It's okay. They don't either. They really don't either. Actually, I found out they released like 23 turbographic 16 games on the Wii U virtual console this year. What an odd choice. It's really weird. Like, there's so much good stuff on Wii U virtual console now, but I'm like, I don't use that anymore.

Yeah, why did you do this in 2017 and why only these games? But enough questions about virtual console, that's for another episode. That's for every episode, yes. I think we just stopped asking about it. We assume it's dead. But I want to go a little into the history and production of Metal Gear Solid 3. And I think we can look at Metal Gear Solid 3 as sort of a reaction or a reflection of Metal Gear Solid 2 because Metal Girl 2, as much as the critics praised it, I know it was a very high-scoring game. It really turned away fans.

And I think in a way that would affect the series for the rest of its life. I was there at GameStop the day after it. It came out. Lots of angry people trading it back in. I was working at the game stop. I saw the raid. They directed it at me. So I was there on the ground floor when people hated Metal Gear Solid 2.

Riden was all your fault. I think so. You're the flap jaw, whatever space guy. What? Flapjaw, whatever space guy? I hear it's amazing when the, I don't know. Oh, what the colonel says to you. I need scissors, 41, whatever.

Yeah. I did not program this game, people. So what Harakiri Rock? I was making 5.15 an hour at Game Stop. Yes, it was not my fault. But yes, I mean, it's no secret that people did not like Metal Grisola 2. It was intentionally designed to, you know, surprise people, but maybe not in the way that the creators wanted. They were surprised and angry.

So Metal Gear Sala 3 was, let's just get as far away as possible from Metal Gear Sala 2. We're going to focus on a different character than a solid snake, a different time period, and we will not try to, you know, shake things up too much in terms of defying your expectations. It's like, yes, naked snake is on the cover. Yes, you do play as naked snake the entire time. Although you play as Guy Savage for about two minutes in the first release of this game. Yeah, I didn't. You never played as Guy Savage?

You could have played a bad prototype that Konami never released? No. Never included in any other version. We'll talk more about that later. So a few more details about this officially announced at E3-2003. And it seems like every Metal Gear has this attached to it for about a year. It was intended to be the final installment of the series. And it was also intended to be the last one, Hideo Kojima directed himself.

I believe he said that every time a new Metal Gear game has come out that he's directed. Like, this will be the last time. He didn't say that about five, I don't think. And it was the last Metal Gear he directed. So he really, like, he blew it for himself. Maybe he didn't say that because he knew he was leaving or he knew. He didn't. He didn't know.

It was a surprise. Oh, wow. Well, yeah. I understand. Well, I mean, now we know death stranding is the idea that's been kicking around in his head, I guess, for years or whatever. We can finally see what he's going to do outside of Metal Gear. I mean, what is the idea there besides Norman Redis is naked. Norman Redis and the funky fetus is what I've heard about this game.

And Guillermo del Toro is like cradling a tank? Yes, I mean, basically, I think all of Kojima's products are going to be in the future. Hey, look at these famous people I know in Tricked and tricked him. working with me. David Cage, I only think I got him so far. Got Speed to Kojima on his new project. So, last thing that surprised me in doing research for this,

is that this was originally intended to be a PlayStation 3 game very, very early in development. I guess Kojima assumed that the PlayStation 3 would be out in 2004 or 2005, but Sony shifted that release window into, you know, the future. So Metal Gear Solid 3 ended up being

a PS2 game, and it definitely takes the full advantage of that hardware in a way that doesn't break it like Shadow of the Colossus did a year later. It would have been really weird if Sony had released the PS3 that early. Like, it would have really changed things. Yeah, I mean, it's still had a lot of momentum in 2004. There was no Xbox 360 would be in 2005. And that kind of had a...

The PS2 was a giant all the way up to, like, 2006. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wasn't it 2004 when they were showing off, like, the PS3 mockup and the, like, the infamous kill zone... The battery controller. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I recall that being 2005, but it was probably really close to that. So conceivably, this...

could have been a 2005 PS3 launch game, but we got it in 2004 and it was just fine, and I think it's aged fairly well. I wonder what the technology of that game would have looked like as a PS3 launch title. Yeah, I don't know what would have happened because I guess the best we can look at is the HD version, but even then, it's just like

these are still PS2 models, like, at a higher resolution. In a different timeline, it would be cool to see, like, what they would have done with this. There probably would have been a lot of bad six-axis forced gameplay. So let me, I think we dodged to pull up there. So key figures in the, this development are, of course,

Kojima. I don't think we need to talk more about him. He is sort of like one of the most notable video game directors out there. I did want to mention two of his sort of his second, his right-hand man and his left-hand man, I guess. These guys have been attached to Metal Gear since the Solid series, and they're sort of the guys that help him with all the writing

and the research and the justification for all of his crazy ideas. And you'll see their names in every Metal Gear Solid game you play. And that's Tomokazu Fukushima and Shuiuamara. They're both guys that help Kojima write. I don't know if they went with. him. I don't know if they're still at Konami. I couldn't find any information, but it's weird. I really can't find any key figures that are, you know, that lend to the

design of Metal Gear, like who is making these mechanics work. It's really the most notable people that stand out in terms of who gets interviewed and who gets attention paid to them are the story guys. And I mean, Metal Gear is a very story-focused series, but I think the mechanics also are very important as well, but we don't really know a lot about, I mean, Kojima does not sit down and program things. He's like the idea guy. I kind of want to to know who are the design people that take his ideas and make them into gameplay. But I need to do a bit more digging with that. It's sad that those interviews aren't really out there, at least in any prevalence. Maybe they are in Japanese. But if you search for, if you search for

any name that's not Kojima, you're not going to find much. That is true. I kind of think that there probably aren't. And a lot of cases when we do research retronauts, there are certain sites like Litterberry and Shmupulations that will dig through the archives of old magazines in Japan, and they will translate interviews that we've never seen before. But I think Konami really wants us to believe, like, Kojima does everything on this game. They want him to be just sort of the only figure associated with Metal Gur. At least they did when he was still with them, and they had a fairly good relationship. Yeah, Squarionix does that a lot with Uji Hori and Dragon Quest.

They've eased off that a bit, but for a while, it was like any question you had about the games had to go to Hori, even though he's, like, not, you know, doing the nuts and bolts all the time. I still feel like he's sort of hands-on, but he's also probably hasn't programmed a game since, like, 1992 or something, even in probably the 80s. My understanding is he's pretty hands-on, too. Right, right. But in, like, the sort of, like, he's the presence who might hover over your shoulder and up end three weeks of work. Yeah, he's more of the guiding or the destructive hand in that case. Like, that cigar should be the smoking of that cigar totally wrong.

You've got to put it on the other side of his mouth, and he should be puffing every year. six seconds. And why isn't this guy, where's Norman Redis? He needs to be in every scene. If he's not in there, people need to be asking, where's Norman Redis? So, yes, main topic now. I've got all this stuff out of the way. It says Metal Gear Solid 3, Snake Eater.

It released in November of 2004 in the U.S. And surprisingly, a month later in Japan, I don't know why. Maybe they made it better. Middle Gear Solid 2 came out in Japan a little later than America, too. That's odd for this era. Like, Riden was a surprise for the U.S., but then it came out like a week later, and they actually pushed Radin pretty hard in Japan

because he was designed more for Japanese audiences. Okay. That doesn't really... There's nothing like that in Metal Gear Solid 3. No, like, clear fan bait for one region or the other. Interesting. I read that they had some like downloadable camo, I think. Oh.

In the Japanese version of the game that you maybe couldn't get in the States, but that doesn't seem like a reason to delay the launch by a month. No, it could have been any number of things. Some like secret marketing crap we don't know about, but it did come out a month. later in Japan. And before we start, I want to know what our relationship with this game is, everybody here at this table. I think I was, I was not angered by Metal Grasola, too. I thought it was cool. I was ready for more, and like knowing that they were going back to a different

era and all of the cool things you could do with the snake in this setting. And there was a great, I think, official PlayStation magazine demo that really made me want this game. And then EGM had a huge cover story that kind of gave away every cool thing that I would later see. Like, here's what every boss does. Like, well, I probably wouldn't want to read that now. But when I was 20 in my early 20, I was like, yes, I want to read every detail about this game. So, like, tell me your relationship with this game. Let's start with Jeremy.

I actually didn't play this game until subsistence came out. Was it subsistence? The remake? Yeah, that was the re-release with some additional things. We'll talk more about that later. Yeah, I had jumped on the Metal Gear train as soon as the first one came out in the U.S. and then Metal Gear Solid 2 and 1 and 2 both

I was there day 1 for those games and I enjoyed Metal Gear Solid 2 and I played it and then when I went back to replay it I was like the writing of this is really painful like when the bomb disposal expert is like going on and on about how he like blew up a church and pretend that he was hurt I was like what is this

so I kind of I don't know it's weird like I wasn't one of people who hated middle gear solid two the first time I played it but then I went back to it and was like I don't know if this is actually good so I was really lukewarm on middle gear solid three and ended up ended up not playing it until the remake the re-release came out but I take it you did play it and enjoyed it oh yeah I think it's amazing yeah but it took me a while to kind of warm up to it I think the reason people hated it was not the writing I think everyone who hated it was on board with the writing they just they

felt they were promised something that didn't deliver and they never, like, were introspective about why that was a cool, you know, twists. Yeah, that wasn't the case for me. I just went back and was like the actual script in this game is not good. That's very true. Michael, how about you? I think with two, like, a lot of that game in retrospect kind of went over my head at the time. Like, I was no big fan of riding, but I just kind of like, well, you know, it's still a great game in spite of him.

I'm going to play through it anyway. And then, like, reading people writing about it, it's like, oh, I missed all this new on. in detail. Like, for some reason, I'd thought it was the big boss who had adopted Ryden instead of Solidus, et cetera. But coming to three, it really felt like, oh, this is like Konami. They're taking a step back. They're wiping the slate clean.

They're, you know, just giving us back solid snake, but it's a different solid snake. And, like, you know, prequels, I don't think always work so well, but this one just was amazing even for its time. Definitely. Yeah. How about you, Wes? So I came at this kind of a different perspective because I, it was basically my first Metal Gear game.

Oh, wow. I think I'd played like a little bit of the original NES version of Metal Gear on an emulator or something and probably gotten through like two or three screens of it before getting killed. That was my experience of Metal Gear back in the day. And I didn't own a PS1 as a kid. I had a Genesis and then N64 and I kind of went full Nintendo from that point. And so when I did play, like, Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2 with friends, something like that, I was terrible at them.

I just could not get a hang of the controls in the very small, you know, amounts of time that I was playing them. And I just wasn't into the top-down perspective that they relied on. So I kind of just ignored the series until subsistence came out with Middle Gear Solid 3, and they added the 3D camera. You took the right version. Yeah, to that director's cut version. And so I finally played that one in, like, 2006 or seven. I think it came out in 2006, subsistence, and loved it. And I think the campiness that the Melgear series is known for works better with the kind of 60s bond thing that they do with that game.

So it was just the right meshing of gameplay and kind of setting for me to make me finally get into the Metal Gear series. Does this make you a fan of Metal Gear after playing this? I kind of hate played Metal Gear Solid 4. I did too. It was... Although I love Metal Gear in general, I don't like 4. I think we should do a podcast about that next year. Please continue, though.

Yeah, that was... That experience didn't kind of... It didn't have the same vibe that Metal Gear Solid 3 did with the, you know, the James Bond 60s stuff. So I was not as tolerant of the crazy story and, like, overly long cinematics. You know, and I think Metal Gear Solid 3 did a better job of balancing that stuff. It has some pretty long cutscenes, but it has some really cool times where you're just in the jungle and you can play at a very deliberate pace and you can enjoy the weather system and the environment stuff and the camouflage and all those pieces. So it made me a big fan of that game. And I appreciate the stuff that Milger Solid 5 took from 3.

Oh, yeah. It really built out on the gameplay side rather than the story side. I did play through 3 again after playing about 200 hours of Metal Gear Solid 5 and I was just like, oh, I wish I could get all. all of the Metal Gear Solid 5 features in this game. I wish I could crouch walk. I wish I could do this. I wish I could do that because that game is so mechanically satisfying. I love it.

Oh, I love Metal Gear Solid 5. I remember on my podcast when we did Episode 200 about like the best games of all time, we were arguing about like Metal Gear Solid 5 or Metal Gear Solid 3. And it was like, you guys all think it's Metal Gear Solid 3 that should be the best because you haven't played it recently. But if you play 5, it's like this feels so much better. We'll talk more about that later, but you're right, Michael. I used to think three was my favorite game.

It has my favorite, it's the most emotional game for me. It's the most, I guess, iconic and memorable game for me. But in terms of pure play, five is sublime. And we'll talk about five in about a decade. So I'll invite you back for that, Michael. Fair enough. So I want to talk about the big, big changes between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Girl Solid 3. There's a lot of new systems added.

There's a lot of things that are changed to fit this new setting. And one of the biggest new changes is, is this is now primarily an outdoors game. Metal game games are primarily taking place in, like, factories and installations, and, you know, or like an oil refinery. They were just all of these, like, indoor environments. And in this game, you're outside for most of the time. And it's still just a collection of rooms, really, like in Monster Hunter.

When you're outside in Monster Hunter, it's just like, you're in this outdoor room with a skybox. But the environments are much bigger. And you have all new opportunities for sneaking. It's not just crawling under boxes. It's not just, you know, hiding behind walls. There's a brush to hide in. There's trees to climb.

It's just a lot of new opportunities to... Logs. You can crawl through... You can crawl through logs, yeah. Or like hide inside the trees that's like we're put there by God for a snake to hide in, I think. Or crouched down in swamp water with a gavial head on your head. You can scare, you can scare soldiers. So many cool things to do.

And another big change is the setting jumps back to 1964. And there is some anachronistic tech in there, but they do try to stay. a little faithful to the era, of course. This is a bit of a James Bond parody in some way. So there are some very outlandish tech. There's stuff that simply couldn't happen in 1964. But I feel like they, Kojima is all about just like obsessive attention to detail. And I feel like all of the details come out from this era in Melgarzolid 3 for sure.

It's internally consistent in terms of like design and tech, even if it's not realistic. Yeah. It's consistent with itself. And it doesn't feel like unrealistic. Like you have, you know, basically a cosmonaut who has flamethrowers. There's no real, like it's sci-fi, but it's 1960s sci-fi. Right, right. And if you call someone on your codec, they'll give you an explanation as to how this boss has superpowers.

But I don't think, I don't think they ever do that with Vulgan. I never figured out how Volgan the electricity guy got his powers in the game. And they never explain it. Just like, yeah, you can even find out why the bee guy is full of bees and he can shoot bees at you. But they never explained the Vulgan thing. I don't know why. Which Snake is really cool with, by the way. Like, I don't know what he saw in his missions prior to Metal Gear Solid 3,

but he is totally unperturbed by the guy who shoots bees out of his body. And bees are summoning grenades to drop on him, and he's just like, well, I've seen this before. I have to say that the changes, the sort of backward revisions to the technology, really helped the game. They created a more immersive game. You know, one of the big complaints about Metal Gear Solid was that in a lot of cases, is you end up playing Pac-Man with the radar.

Like, instead of paying attention to the screen, you pay attention to the mini-map because it has the cone of vision for the guards and everything. And it takes away some of the tension, so you're just kind of watching dots move around. But you can't do that in Middle Garsall-Thirty. You have the soliton, and you can ping people and get a sense of where they are.

But you have to kind of do that from hiding and use it very deliberately and use that to sort of triangulate what the enemies are doing. doing. You don't have that information put forward for you the entire time. So it really combined with the camouflage index, it really does heighten the sense of stealth and sneaking in a way that I haven't seen in any other game, honestly. Yeah, actually the different radars you get instead of the Soliton radar, which is the default radar, middle gear solid one and two, you have I think

three different kinds of radar. And I believe one of them is the old radar, but it drains your battery super fast. You're right. You do like ping the area and you see little dots on a map. But that's it, yeah. I mean, A, Cogamo is trying to stop players from looking at the top right corner of the screen while playing the entire game. But B, this does fit with the setting. I mean, as much as I love Metal Gear Solid 5, Snake's iPad would not exist in 1984 or whatever you're thinking it takes place in. I don't care what excuse you could make. That thing is way too advanced for the time.

Yeah, they didn't even have that for Star Trek until, like, 1987. So these changes make this a much harder game than one and two, for sure. And especially in the original version of the game. in which you had a, what was essentially a fixed camera. I mean, the camera angles were predetermined. And in one sense, this was kind of cool for some areas because it gave you an overhead view you can't really get with the free camera.

But in other sense, sometimes an enemy will be off screen and they can still see you. So unless you're constantly going into first person mode a lot, which is tough to do consistently while you're moving, you will get spotted a lot in the original version of the game. They did add the free camera with subsistence. It's in every release since then. But if you click on the right,

I think if you click R3, you can go back to the predetermined camera angles, but I don't recommend you do that. But it's cool to see what was originally intended for the game. And it is like, it's such a different game with that free camera. I don't know how I played through this without the free camera, frankly, because you can just see so much more just in the context of gameplay, not in the context of, I'm going to freeze where I am, hit the R1 button, look around, and then keep moving.

Like, it lets you look around while you're doing actions. Yeah, the original camera worked a lot better in the context of Metal Gear 1 and 2, Because Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2, because you did have these very finite spaces with a very limited number of elements to keep track of. But when you put that into large, open environments that scroll in a lot of directions, it's really tough because there's just so much going on. And the enemies in this have a pretty good line of sight. Yeah, I mean, it's still, they should be able to see you when they can't, but it's much, they're much smarter than they are in Meliger Solid 1 and 2 for sure. You get that warning. Like, they think they spot you and there's like, I don't think it has a bar, but they can't.

there's, like, the question mark that shows up. Right. And you get the little, huh? Do they, do the, does the question mark, like, fill up in color, or is that something that came later? Maybe a later, a later one, yeah. I mean, they've tinkered with the system a lot. I know in this one you have to wait through, like, two 99 second meters.

That, that's no fun. I did think it was really cool in this one that, uh, this, for the first time, like, you didn't really need a place to hide. Like, you could, if you had the right camo, just, uh, flatten yourself against the ground. Right. And get it up to, like, 90%. And then, like, they wouldn't,

see you unless they got close. We should talk about the camo system. Since we're talking about it now, go more into detail about it rather. Yes, there's a camo system in this game. It's one of the systems they added onto it. It's to assist snake with hiding, not necessarily behind walls like Michael said, but it just in plain sight. You're just blending in with things because this is a jungle game.

As much as Kojimo was inspired by James Bond movies, he was also inspired by Predator. He watched Predator, and this gave him a lot of ideas for Snake Eater. And basically, it's another, it's nestled into a menu. I feel like if they would have done this in a later game, it would just just be like a radial menu. You could pop up during gameplay, but you have to dive into the menu. You select a clothing to wear and you select face paint. You can pick up more throughout the game.

And as, as, as, as, as, you have to dive into menus to do it, they design it so you really only have to do it, like, once per every four or five screens, I think. I don't think they make you do it like, oh, now I'm in this kind of brush. I have to change again. Yeah, the, this is like a really systems-heavy game. Oh, for sure, yeah. I think, like, are there any other Metal Gear's that have this many systems that are so, like, buried into the mechanics?

It's the most systems heavy one, yeah. Like, they streamlined a lot of things, like, the health system and stamina and food and everything, like, in the sequels, the subsequent games. Yeah, like, those things are really sort of understated and just kind of happen. They're done more, I think, artfully. They're not as, they're just sort of integrated more. Yeah, there are three, like, added on subsystems in this game. So first we have the camo. We also have food.

So instead of relying on rations to heal yourself, although there are still healing items in this game, Snake has a stamina meter, and it's constantly draining at a fairly slow rate. Or faster, I think, if you have more stuff in your backpack. Oh, is that how it works? Yeah. There's also some items you can equip that, like, increase your camo index, but they drain your stamina really fast. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I knew the weight affected it in some way.

I wasn't sure how, but I think you're right about that. There's so many little nuances to those systems that aren't really obvious when you're playing, but it's the kind of thing where if you play that game, you know, 10 times and you're trying to collect all the special camo and stuff, you're going to pick up on all these really cool little elements. Right, right. Also, I just love the idea of, like, Snake being chased and, like, hurriedly changing his clothes and, like, applying different face paint, like, oh, damn it, I put on the American flag face paint by mistake.

No, no, I'm kabuki, what? He's doing all that while eating a frog or rat. You have a constantly draining stamina meter. And if you have, if you lose health, the stamina meter will help replenish that health slowly too. But you need to constantly keep eating food that you either find or hunts in order to keep refilling that stamina meter. I think there are some camouflages that are some clothing things you can put on that will prevent it from draining as fast. I think one of them you get from one of the bosses is if you lay in the sun, it will give you your stamina back. It might be the ends camouflage, yeah.

But I think also, like I mentioned earlier, I think the, the fear has like the invisibility camo or something and that drains your stamina at double speed. I don't think it's invisibility. Invisibility is if you shoot all the frogs or don't kill anyone in the game. The fear is really easy to kill without actually lethally killing him. So I don't think they would give you the invisible. He does something that drains your stamina really fast though. I'm going to be able to be. So we talked about food. Actually, there's like four systems in this game.

So another one is more of a, it's not a menu-based system. It is CQC, this new fighting system for Snake that was done way better in the future. I would call people babies or say get good or whatever when they would complain about this. But now going back to it, I'm just like, oh, boy, the first time you try to interrogate someone, you will slit their throat. The problem with this is Kojima or Konami, I don't know. whose idea it was, they were really obsessed with these button pressure analog buttons. Analog buttons

and that never works. Yeah, the PS2 had analog buttons. Yeah, but not just the sticks, but the buttons had analog sensitivity. I find that doesn't work well unless it's on the triggers. The triggers are easy to feel the slight difference, but when I'm holding a guy you know, blade against his throat, I'm like, oh, I can't push this circle

button in anymore, I'll kill him. So, yeah, a lot of this is very fussy, a lot of this is very mechanical, but it's all context sensitive. How hard are you pushing the buttons? What direction are you pushing while you're pushing the button? There's a lot you can do, and playing Metal Gear Solid 5 ruined me for this forever.

I had a really hard time going back to it, but I do love to interrogate every guy just to see what they'll tell you. They give you tips sometimes, or they'll yell at you, or they'll tell you where secret items are, and it'll appear on your map. There's a lot of things you can do with soldiers to interact with them, more so than any other game. There's a bunch of in-game radio stations

that you can only discover by talking to these guys. And it's all music composed by Norihiko Norehiko Hibino, the composer. And he did them in like different styles. So there's like, um, he, I remember, the surf rock, I think is by a composer or by a, by a band called Chunk Raspberry, which is supposed to be like Chuck Berry. And he like had all these like, uh, random sort of like pop culture illusions in these that were supposed to tie into the, uh, um, the, um, the, um, the. kind of the style of music that he created. One of them was, like, called the 66 boys or something, and that's because...

The Beach Boys? Yeah, but the name for that became, came from the fact that Konami's headquarters was in Rapongi, in Tokyo, and Rapongi, like, means six hills. Interesting. So it's, like, a reference to the fact that it was composed at Konami's headquarters, but it's also, like, a riff on the Beach Boys or whatever. And I think listening to those stations gives you stamina back. I think that's one of the ways to do it, although it's just so easy to just find a thing to eat.

There are all kinds of ways to get stamina back in the game. And another thing I really associate with this period of Japanese development, and we talked about this in a Win Wake episode. You either heard or will hear. Japanese games were very reluctant. They would let you look in first person, but they would rarely let you move in first person. And I always wanted to move in first person, again, after playing Metal Gear Solid 5. I'm going to try to stop breaking that game up, but that game ruined me for playing Metal Gear Solid 3.

But you can go into first person to shoot. In fact, it's recommended, but you can't move at the same time. So it's a little disorienting to, oh, the enemy's over there. I have to run and then go into first person again instead of sort of just inching your way over. Going back and played it, I can't figure out, like, how did I ever successfully shoot at a target without going into first person? I don't understand how it works anymore. I think I only ever went into first person. I don't know that I did a lot of, like, free aiming.

But, like, I played through three of these games with free aiming with, like, the fixed camera. camera, and, like, that's a lost skill to me now. Like, I have no idea how I ever did it. Actually, the 3DS version adds behind the shoulder aiming, like, in Peace Walker. That sounds so nice. Yeah, they add, like, two things. I didn't play that version. I kind of want to now.

I might wait a bit before I play it again, but they add crouch walking and that behind the shoulder aiming, which was in Peace Walker, I'm not going to Sol 5. Like, man, this would be so much better if they put these, those little options in the game, I think. Having just played through subsistence this past week before doing the podcast, my answer for free aiming is use the shotgun because pretty much every time I got caught by the guards

I just started running around I don't believe in killing yes well that makes I guess one boss fight much faster but makes the rest of the game much slower so talking about passivism

they finally give you a point to playing peacefully in Metal Gear Solid 3 in two you can play peacefully with the trank gun where it was introduced to get a higher score a higher rank at the end of the game

but in this game and in all future games they would just up the rewards for not killing. And this one, you can kill all of the bosses peacefully and if you do you'll get special camo, some of them very super powered. And I believe, I think if you go through the game without killing anyone,

you get that invisibility camo too. So in this game definitely they were thinking more about how can we give players an incentive to play peacefully. In future games, the incentive would be, I can capture all these people I drank and they can be my soldiers. So they were really thinking about it starting with this game.

It also makes one of the boss fights a lot easier. Right. Unless you want to talk about that later. Which one? The sorrow. Oh, the sorrow. You're right. Go ahead, Michael.

Yeah. So when you fight the sorrow, it's, snake is near death. I think he's just fallen into a river off of a cliff. And you are walking down this river that may or may not be real haunted by the specter of the sorrow, who was the boss's former lover and a bunch of other secret implications for the franchise. are attached to him. And as you're walking down this, you will be confronted with the ghosts of everyone you killed in the game in the state they were at death. So, like, there's a bunch of guys with flamethrowers that, like, I blew up their packs and burned them alive at the beginning.

And, like, they come at you, like, on fire. And I think the end I had killed him and his parents just flying around saying, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. That's so heartbreaking. It's pretty morbid, yeah. It is kind of heartbreaking. And then if you go through without killing anybody, that sequence is very short and you don't really encounter anybody. Actually, if you don't kill anyone up to that point, you only encounter all of the members of the COBRA unit you've killed because they blow themselves up even if you take them out peacefully. So, yeah, you only encounter them in that river.

Yeah. Scott Sharkey has told me that that sequence always takes a really long time for him to get through because he just runs around willy-nilly killing everyone. Does you shoot them all in the balls? He told me that he shoots people in the balls a lot, and if you do that, they're, like, clutching their groins and saying, I'm no longer a man. I don't know if that's apocryphal. They're also dead, which is much worse.

So another subsystem we talked about so far, we talked about camouflage. We talked about eating. We talked about CQC. The final one is the cure screen, which I feel like is a cool feature, but it's a little unnecessary. Some attacks will hurt Snake in a way

where you have to dive into a menu to, you know, dig out a bullet, apply antiseptics, touch up the wound, apply a bandage. It's cool the first couple of times, but after a while, you're like, I have to go to that menu again because I was shot. I hate doing this. Yeah, and you have to, it's like, it's like a surgery game. You have to, like, pick the proper order of things. You have to remove the bullet or use a, you know, like a cigar to burn the leech. And you have to do it in the right order.

Yeah. And if you don't, he bleeds out from those injuries. And so he'll keep losing a little bit of life. There will be like a life bleed. until you patch him up. Yeah, I mean, it is a bit of a puzzle in that you have to figure out what you need to use and in what order. But after you do it once, it's just like, well, why are you making me do this again? I've already solved your puzzle.

I know how to dig out of bullets. Does the order actually matter? I feel like I bandaged myself before, like, digging the bullet out. I'm not positive. I think in some cases it does. Maybe you can apply the bandage first, but maybe you can. Did you say you did? I'm pretty sure I have done an illogical, you know, emergency treatment on myself.

that still work. Apply the bandage and stitch up the bandage. Exactly. But you always have to do certain components. You need to find the right tools. And I like that there's a medical chart in the game where you can track how many injuries Snake has had. Right.

As you play through the game, this list of, like, his medical history just grows and grows as you take more injuries. But you can also see medical charts for other characters, which has little details for some of the other characters. Yeah, like Ava. Yeah. When she's with you, you can see that she has breast. implants or something. That's a little, that's an Easter egg

for you, kids. That's a Kojima Easterer. Yes. This game is a little pervy in some ways that are very him. So another big change is something I noticed is that, yes, this is a Kojima game, yes, there are a lot of cutscenes. It takes you 16 minutes from starting a game until you can actually control Snake,

which is probably around the same, about the same time that Metal Gear Solid 2 took. But what I noticed compared to Metal Gear Solid 2 is that way less exposition happens via Kodek. Metal Gear Solid 2 was really Kojima still trying to make a visual novel with some like action scenes in it. So there's just so much happening in the Kodak alone in that game.

So much storytelling is done just via Kodak, especially when you get to Ryden, because Riden has like a huge support team that is always talking to him and they never shut up. But in this game, when I play through the Rangos Sala 3, I usually, I want to get every bit of Kodek from everybody for every item, for every location, for every enemy. This time I was in a hurry. I was like, I will never use the Kodek unless it's a, you know, story codec scene. And it rarely comes up, and you don't really have to stare at that for that long. I would still rather it be something I can listen to while I'm playing, like Metal Gear Solid 5 does.

But it's a lot more respectful of your time in terms of, like, I'd rather watch characters act as out than stare at a picture of a character. I can look at, like, two facts about him and, like, move the camera around. That's basically it. I think it was replaying this and then playing Dangan Rompah V3 around the same time that made me realize, like, oh, man, the Kodak conversations are just like the visual novel style, too. character portraits are talking to each other, but it's just dressed up to be cooler. At least with Dogan Rampa, though, there is more than one drawing, and they move a camera and they have, like, sound effects and the UI is very fun to look at. In this game, it is just like, here's the one piece of art that Koji Shinkawa drew for this guy.

That's right. They didn't keep the, like, rotating 3D heads from two. That's right. Yeah, and you can't hit the L-O-1 and R1 buttons to have Snakeo, shut up. Right. Well, I mean, this is supposed to be like an analog system. So instead of having a video, you just have like a picture of whoever is on the radio with you. So it's part of that going backward and regressing with the technology.

Even Metal Gear Solid 1 had animated character portraits talking to even though they didn't have the full 3-D. Yeah. And the N-EAS version, though? Like I remember just a transceiver. No, the Metal Gear Solid 1. Oh, solid. I thought you were talking to Metal Gear 1. Yeah, I think their mouths moved at least.

In this game, I don't think you get a mouth moving. No, no. No, it's more primitive. It's like a dossier of them. But it's a much, like you said, it's much more respectful of the player. And you don't have scenarios like those ridiculous things in Middle Gear Solid 2 where you like go to save the president or whoever or no, that other guy. And you're like standing there talking to him.

And then he's like, go to Kodak. And so you're like doing the Kodak talk to a guy who's literally right in front of you. And it's like there's an in-game explanation. Yeah, I totally forgot about that. But yeah, so much of two was told via Kodak. But they really, they made a lot more out of cutscenes in this game. The cutscenes are more fun. They're slightly interactive in some ways.

There are certain triggers you can hit R1 when it shows up on the screen. And you'll see through snake's eyes, especially if he's looking at breasts. And there are some hidden R1 triggers in the game, too, that are not displayed on the screen. And if you get all those, you get an achievement in the PS3 version. But those are little Easter eggs, too. You also get to see the sorrow lurking in some scenes. When you look through snake's eyes, he's like holding up like a board with either a timer or a radio frequency. Yeah, I think that's when you're trying to escape the prison.

That's one of the ways to get out. Yeah, yeah. So one of the other things I completely, completely forgot about, in the subsistence version of this game, that is the PS2 re-release that came out about 18 months later. Metal Gear Online, that was the first time this was included in a Metal Gear game. And God bless Konami, they can just never make this happen. There's been like five versions of Metal Gear Online. People have talked to me about this on Twitter. I was like, did anyone play this?

What was it like? And they said, yeah, it was fun, but you could tell they hadn't really figured it out yet. And it got to the point where Konami was like, okay, Metal Gear Online is now just a part of Metal Gear 5. You have to interface with it. You have to be online when you play this game because your money is like held online in some way. But I just feel like they could never make Metal Gear Online happen in any way. It just people would play it, but it was never a thing. It was never a big deal.

Did anyone ever play Metal Gear Online in any way? Getting online on the PS2 wasn't the best experience at the time. It was workable. I think I played it at a press demo. It's like, well, this is like death match with high. One cool thing, though, so when I played through subsistence this week, I pulled out the old disc, ripped it on my PC, and played it on an emulator, and you can boot up the second disc, which has the online mode.

Oh, yeah. And there are actually, there's a community out there called the Save MGO, I believe, is the name, and they run, I guess, private servers for the Metal Gear, original Metal Gear Online from Metal Gear Solid 3 and for the, I think, the Metal Gear Solid 4 version as well. And I didn't get a chance to play with them. I think their games are very sporadic, but they actually have a Discord server where people organize games from time to time, as I understand.

So I'm really curious now to see what that experience is like playing it now. With Modern Metal Gear Online available, why would someone want to go back to this very rough, jinky early version? Because they loved it when they were 17 or something like that. And the same reason people want to go back to like original flavor or World Warcraft. Or Fantasy Star Online. Yeah. Yeah, in retrospect, this feels like this was sort of the beta test for what Konami wanted to do with Metal Gear Online, because if you wanted Metal Gear Online to have a big launch, why would you make it on – why would you put it on the second disc of a re-release, of an old game?

You know, I think Metal Gear Solid 4 was the bigger relaunch of Metal Gear Online, but I believe it was on portable ops. There was a PSP Metal Gear Online or something, I believe, yeah. Like, was that a portable ops edition or was it a standalone product? No. It must have been part of Portable Ops. Maybe it was in Portable Ops Plus. It could have been. My first experience with Portable Ops, I remember, was playing at E3 like a multiplayer match.

Maybe it was plus. I don't know. Now I'm confused. Yes. Well, the history of Metal Gear Online. That's another podcast. But, yeah, this is the very first time that they tried to make it work and it didn't, but I don't think they're going to be trying much longer. It has a real fun trailer on the subsistence disc, too, of just, you know, this is Metal Gear Online or whatever and just going through all of the.

Like the goofy things you can do? Yeah, exactly. Somebody was telling me on Twitter There was a mode There's like lots of like silly modes in this And of course Peace Walker had some fun online stuff But it was more like a monster hunter

Local co-op thing But someone was telling me There's a great mode in this where like one person plays snake And everyone else plays soldiers And they have to find snake I feel like there's a lot to be done with this But it might be a little too fussy To be an immediately accessible online game

Like Grand Theft Auto Online or Overwatch Or one of you, uh, PubG Like it's not as immediately accessible as any of those things I mean that style of play has worked really well for Star Wars Battlefield, Battlefront, where, you know, you have the hero characters, so whoever plays as Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader or whatever gets all kinds of extra perks and can just slaughter everyone else.

And I feel like the idea, that's the same idea here. I know that the soldiers had a lot of limitations, like your sight wasn't as good, and there were certain AI things that you couldn't circumvent, like if the person playing Snake put a porn magazine in front of you, you'd like be drawn to the porn magazine and you couldn't control yourself. I think I want to say unless you played as Rykov, there was a character that's like implied that they're gay and the porn magazines wouldn't affect them.

Is he the one who looks like raising this thing also? Yeah, Rykov is the, yeah, the Vogan's lover. Yeah. So we'll take a break and we'll go into the story after that. else. Crime. It's the way I fly to you. I'm still in a dream. Someday you. Someday you go through the rain. and someday you'll feed on a tree frog It's so deep that try Dixter has a playlist for every moment, mood, and minute of your life.

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So we're back, and I want to talk a bit about the story of Melgear Solid 3. It sets a, I mean, so we're playing as a character that's been established, Big Boss. He is the, okay, let me try to explain this. He's not the villain of Metal Gear 1. That's a double of Big Boss, correct? I don't know. Has that actually been established? Yes, because Metal Gear Solid 5, the ultimate final ending.

Oh, spoiler. Oh, God. Can I spoil Metal Gear Solid 5? Okay. Yeah, you might as well. You're going to hear a spoiler for Metal Gear Solid 5, but the ultimate. ending is, Michael, can you explain this? I'm having problems trying to articulate this in my brain how to explain this.

So, yes, in Metal Gear Solid 5, you play as venom or punished snake, which you are led to think is Big Boss, who's been in his coma for nine years, and is brought back from just complete decadence. He's all withered and skinny, and he's trained back up by Osolot. and then goes to establish this whole private army rebuild the diamond dogs. And at the end of the game, it is revealed that the person that helped you in like the initial escape from the hospital, Ishmael, is actually big boss. And you are his, not clone, but you are the medic who saved his life at the end of ground zeros by stepping in the way of an explosion. And so you sustained all these ridiculous injuries, but like, they're like, yeah, we'll just alter you with plastic surgery and hypnotic conditioning and then like artificially place you in a coma for nine years. And then when you wake up, you'll think you're big boss and you'll take his place. And so when Solid Snake infiltrates Outer Heaven in Metal Gear One and kills Big Boss at the end of it, that is the big boss he kills.

He kills your character in Metal Gear Solid Five, Venom Snake. Yes. Thank you for explaining that so succinctly. I got all that, but I'm asking, like, is it really established that the Metal Gear Big Boss is Venom Snake? Yes, the Metal Gear Solid Five. At the end of Metal Gear Solid Five, it has, like, a role of, like, significant events that happened since then, and it actually says Solid Snake kills Big Boss's, like, Ghost Double, something like that. Something like that. I mean, that was a choice made so there could be a sequel in which Big Boss was in it again.

They're like, oh, the first one was a clone, it was just a very hasty decision. But they made a narrative, they made it make sense by the secret ending of Metal Gear Solid 5. They made that hasty decision be part of the giant continuity mess that is Metal Gear. It's like Metal Gear and like Fast and Furious movies are like the most dedicated franchises to their outlandish. Yes. But Big Boss is still a villain because he is the final boss of Metal Gear 2. Yes, that's right. We're not saying he doesn't exist.

We're saying... No, I'm not saying... Big boss is real. He is a villain. Right, right. He does have like a cackling want to take over the world. I am your father, rule by me, and, you know, it's... Yes, in this game you play as the person who would later become big boss in Metal Gear 2.

And then be the genetic material that liquid and solid snake we made from in Metal Gear Solid. And Solidus. And Solidus, too. President, what's his name? George, no, not George Sears. No. Isn't it George Sears? Was he George Sears?

I thought George Sears was the president after. No, I guess Solidus was George. I voted for him. I don't know. In any case, there's also all the genome soldiers who are genetically, they've received gene therapy from Big Boss. Right. So that's the character you're playing.

He's the ultimate soldier. That's the important thing. You're playing as this character in this game, and what happens to him in this game will sort of turn him into a villain. You'll see what starts him down this path that will turn him into the villain of the Metal Gear series, this very, and a very legendary figure in the Metal Gear series. So Naked Snake and Solid Snake are basically the same in visual design. But I believe Naked Snake is he's much more of a character to him.

He's much more of an arc. And the previous game's Solid Snake is just sort of a sounding board for exposition. Of course, the joke is Snake will repeat a question back at you and the person will give more information. There's not much more to him than that. Yes, exactly, Michael. A question. And he doesn't do that as much in here. I feel like they're trying to turn this protagonist into more of a character because of,

of what will happen to him later in this continuity, for sure. I think the biggest part of that is his relationship with the boss and all of his past stuff that you actually have a reason to care about the relationships between all these characters and these cutscenes scenes, which is nice. And Solid Snake's history is sort of relegated to these eight-bit games that were not super sophisticated in terms of narrative and characterization. Yeah, they were great for 1987, but not so much by, you know, standards of 10 years later. But, I mean, so Solid Snake has kind of a history when you start Metal Gear Solid 1.

But when you start Metal Gear Solid 3, there's this giant history that Naked Snake has gone through. Solid Snake in, oh, in Metal Gear Solid 1, yeah. Yeah, in the original Metal Gear, he is the rookie. Right, right. And he's sent in to die, basically. Yeah. You mentioned that you brought up the boss, and you mentioned earlier, someone mentioned earlier, that the sorrow was the boss's lover. Yeah, she's the joy, right?

Yeah, and I believe the kid is Osolite. Yeah. So it just occurred to me. that basically, like, the simpatico between Ocelot and Big Boss, you know, Naked Snake, they're basically like Surrogate Brothers. Like, it never occurred to me, but they, like, the boss is sort of a mother figure to Big Boss. So, yeah, okay, that kind of makes sense. Yeah, I mean, it's a cool choice.

So Metal Gear Solid One's theme, Japanese games do this a lot, like the theme of this game is blank. So Metal Gear Solid One's theme was Gene. Metal Gear Solid 2's theme was meme, and Metal Gear Solid 3's theme is seen. It's not nearly as clever or succinct, but it's all about the context in which things happen, the scenario. And a lot of this is driven home through the exposition that the boss gives you, where it's like, countries don't matter, cultures don't matter, those things all change. You're a soldier. Don't question anything. All you do is your mission.

Like, all these things are transitory and ephemeral. Just do what you're told. and that is sort of how that ties into the idea of scene. I also took scene to be like a description of the camouflage element in the game. I think it's also a new setting too. Yeah. Well, sure. And more open.

Yeah. Like, that was the big mechanical change for this game was that suddenly you were hiding not just behind boxes or whatever, but you had like a freedom of choice to go wherever you wanted and hide however you wanted and approach each scenario in many different ways. as opposed to the previous games, which were much more like scripted and sort of pre-baked in terms of design where there was like a correct way to get through that portion of the big shell. Yeah, it ties into mechanics and into the story as well. I can definitely see it in both ways.

But I hadn't thought about the context before. So it's got that double meaning that I'm always kind of impressed when Kojima pulls that off when he uses, you know, he's not a native English speaker. In fact, he doesn't really speak English that well or understand it that well. but he does, like, throw in these English words that somehow are very, very effective and appropriate. Yeah, I think I've heard, like, a lot of double entendre. I heard the word meme for the first time in Metal Gear Sulla, too, and I don't think anyone really knew that word.

And now it's just like... That game is, like, ten years ahead of its time. Yeah, now meme is a dancing gungam style guy or whatever, I mean. I've always been impressed by their acronym usage, like, all the words that they find to slot into MGS, or, like, the MGO trailer I mentioned earlier has, like, this sequence of like five different uses for the acronyms, MGO, that I can't remember. It's often clumsy, but it's very cute and fun, you know, the way they can do that.

So I think I went to this on the last World on Middle Girl podcast, but I think I want to dig a little deeper. It's interesting to see, especially given the people who are writing this, a story about war and soldiers written from a Japanese writer's perspective. Because, again, this game came out in 2004 in America. We did not realize the wars in the Middle East were huge mistakes yet, I think, as a whole. And we were in the full-on, like, yellow ribbon magnetic sticker on your car, support our troops, rah, rah, era of America. But this game is really all about how soldiers, they can do heroic things, but ultimately they are kind of like a pitiable figure. They are lied to. They are disrespected.

They are just sent to die. They are working for forces that will disregard them. forces that change all the time. And this basically, this is really spoken in the ending where because of what happens to the boss, what happens to Naked Snake, Naked Snake wants to start his own independent nation for soldiers, a place where soldiers can call home, they can have loyalty to, and they can be respected and loved even in this new world. And this is what gives him that inspiration.

Yeah, this game actually, like the first time I played it, it made me a little bit uncomfortable because it was so unusual for me to see a game with a military theme that didn't necessarily take the side of America. It wasn't necessarily like, yes, everything the USA does is good. Like they're presented as sort of a scheming, conniving superpower that does a lot of questionable things just like Russia, just like China. And like that was kind of a shock of cold water at the time. I think, you know, as things have progressed over the past 10, 13 years, it's easier to sort of see that perspective and see, you know, the things that the U.S. does as part of its foreign policy have only gotten worse. But it's really reinforced the fact that, oh, yeah, like, from the outside looking in, maybe we're not always good and noble. Yeah.

I feel like the ending has about three layers of, like, extra shitty things revealed about the entire plot of the game. I kind of wish it just ended with your conflict against the boss and this, like, tragic thing. But, no, they have to go through and justify, like, she was actually on her mission the whole time. And we sent her there and we sent her to die. And then we faked out China by hiding the philosopher's legacy and switching it with a dupe so that we can steal all this extra money. And it's just like, it keeps going and going and going and going. And Snick was sent to kill his mother figure to sell the lie even more to Russia, I believe. Is that what happened?

Yeah, for Krish. Yeah. Because that was the bargaining chip, like, kill the boss and we won't nuke you, basically. Relentless Downer, the last 20 minutes of that game. It's like an emotional roller coaster. It's still my favorite ending in any Metal Gear. So what else about this story? It's very inspired by James Bond movies and also Predator.

I feel like a lot of the more outlandish bosses are definitely drawn from some of the crazier James Bond villains. No one was as crazy as anything you see in Metal Gear, but I'm thinking you have things like odd job and jaws and guys like that, just guys with like just weird. eccentricities or weird, like, things strapped to them. I think this is a good time for me to pull out a couple of quotes. Oh, please do. So where do these come from?

So back in 2003, late 2002, early 2003, Kojima was writing a column for official PlayStation 2 magazine. And I assume, you know, someone translated these into English. I don't know who did that if someone at Konami or what. Where are these online? So I found them on a website that I think is like Metal Gear Solid.net or something. It's just a fan site. they transcribed all these magazine interviews, which is great because good luck finding those

in the actual magazines anymore. But he just wrote about movies for like seven months or something. He did a bunch of columns. Most of these movies appear in Metal Gear Solid 3 as references in the Codex. Paramedic talks about the Guns of Navarone, James Bond, the Great Escape, a few others. And these are all movies that he wrote a column about while making Metal Gear Solid 3. so clearly this is where his head was at. Okay.

But there's some weird quotes in here from Kojima. So here's one on the Bond movies. He says, The Bond films have always been cool, sexy, and funny. They may not have been films for kids, but they destroyed the fake ethics that society and school forced upon us. James Bond was our teacher.

He taught us how cruel the real world is, and he also taught us about martinis, Don Perignon, and Blackjack. I learned about how to seduce women. The films were my textbook of fashion and style. My knowledge on cars, watches, and bags increased. A man of any generation, age, or nationality will be turned on by 007. The films have always been and always will be top-notch entertainment loaded with male mesmerizing essences. Wow. And I thought I got more of him just from his tweets.

This is astounding. Yeah, so that was a weird one. And there's a few others, but I think my favorite in terms of how it reflects on this game is from his column about the Planet of the Apes movies. So he kind of talks about the whole original trilogy made from the late 60s through maybe mid-80s. I forget exactly when those movies were made, but he said, I've been influenced greatly by the anti-nuke messages and criticism of civilization and apes. As a citizen of the only country against which nuclear weapons have been used, my parents and schools taught me about their experiences of the bomb. On a school field trip, I visited the Atomic Bomb Memorial Museum in Hiroshima. But even so, I was horrified by the ending.

of the apes. What happens to Earth if a massive nuclear war takes place? When we were kids, there was still a strong anti-nuke movement worldwide. How about now in the 21st century? There's no such movement anywhere, even in an age where the use of such weapons worries the world. Maybe anti-nuk ideals are an outdated way of thinking. Maybe it is uncool to think that way, but nuclear weapons do exist. The nuclear threat is stronger than ever. As someone from the ape age and the nuclear age, I dealt with anti-war and anti-nuk messages in Metal Gear Solid. many players of Metal Gear Solid 2 complain that the game is too preachy

but nowadays we cannot expect movies like apes from Hollywood or manga like Barefoot Jen about the tragedy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima which is why I would like to keep on including the anti-war and anti-nuk messages as much as possible. Interesting at least with Metal Gear Solid. Yeah that's really

cool. I mean I feel like these are as fun as it is to shoot guys with the billions of guns they give you in these games. These games very much are sort of like anti-war in their own way and mechanical even more so as we've continued on the series because it's like, no, the best way to play these games is completely peacefully.

Don't kill anybody. Don't kill anybody. Just make them all your friends instead. And then Five has the thing with the nuclear option where you have the option after finishing the game's like, should you build a nuke? And then if you do, like people will try to dismantle it. And so like

the goal is to push toward total nuclear disarmament, but like there's an incentive to have nukes. So it's interesting. It's like real life or detente but reflected in the game. I didn't know about that. That's interesting.

Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. I mean, there are nukes in this game. In fact, in the first like 20 or in the first hour of this game, a nuke is fired and explodes in this fake area of Russia you're in, which starts off the next leg of the game. So, yeah, it's very early on that the nuke is used in this game. A Davey Crockett, which is a real thing, right? It was developed for small scale nuclear confrontation. But you couldn't actually use a Davy Crockett like a rocket launch or one person could not lift and fire.

I think they were bazookas that had like very small nuclear lines. I read up on Davy Crockett after playing this game because I was like, is that real? That is real. That is horrifying. But yeah, it's like a multi-person like squad assault weapon type thing. But still, it's also like. It's a portable nuclear weapon. It's used by Vulgan who has like super strength.

Sure. It just like the concept, it seems kind of dire. Like you use that thing. There's a pretty big splash effect. on nuclear weapons, so you're probably not walking away from it, or if you do walk away from it, you're not going to be around for long much after. At the end of the game, I thought it was interesting. As someone who hasn't done a crazy deep dive into all of Metal Gear lore, at least can't

keep all of it straight, that in her kind of ending monologue, the boss talks about her being irradiated through some nuclear testing, and apparently Snake as well, he was on, what was the island where the U.S. did the testing? McKinney Atoll. Yeah, apparently he was there when they did the nuclear testing. I guess he survived that somehow. Yeah, and in this game, like, Naked Snake is on the fringes of that nuke explosion. He has to, like, shield his face, and it's like all the wind is hitting him.

I'm like, does he have leukemia now? Is he going to be okay? He does eventually make it to Metal Gear Solid 4, though. Exactly. They'll heal anything. Yeah, and I think, so this game, after Metal Gear Solid 4 close the door on one and two, I kind of just forced the door shut and hammered up boards with nails in it on top of that door. But after Metal Gear Solid 4 ended the continuity of 1 and 2, this would be the future of Metal Gear this timeline.

Naked Snake being the star of the games. So from here we have portable ops, then we have Snake Eater, and then we have Metal Gear Solid 5. And these are all games that take place in the past with a non-solid snake protagonist. And I think that's a very good move. Kojima got himself in too much narrative trouble with those first Metal Gear Solid games. And I feel like starting fresh was the best thing for this series. I don't know if you guys prefer the futuristic ones or not, but I just love this era and how they can do a 60s game and a 70s game and an 80s game.

It's just such a cool way to do things. I think you meant to say Peace Walker, by the way. What did I say? Snake Eater, right? Sorry, I do that all the time. Peace Walker, the PSP game, which is awesome. Well, it's interesting. Like, when they were showing off Ground Zero's, I went to this, like, weird press event where they opened up Kojima Studios in L.A. and, like, closed it within the year, I think.

there while it was still open to do the preview event for five. It was still open. Yeah? They didn't close it that quickly anyway. Well, it was closed down relatively quickly. Yeah. But did you do like the weird thing where we all sat in an auditorium and like everyone got one question?

No, I was there for that. You were there for that? I asked the first question, actually. What was yours? I asked Yogi Shinkawa like how he adjusts his artwork to deal with like the, you know, the changes in time periods. And he was like, I don't care. It was a really, it was like a waste of a question.

Well, I asked Kojima, like, why, what is it about this Cold War time period that you feel compelling? Why do you keep going back to this character versus Solid Snake? What's more interesting? And he said, like, well, Solid Snake is just a clone, whereas Big Boss is a human being who has real emotions and range. And I kind of interpreted that as like, is that like a backhanded slap at David Hater? Like, you're not a real actor? I hired a real actor to play your character, but it wasn't playing David Hader's character. Well, David Hater had previously voiced that character.

Yeah. But it was a different character. Oh, that's true. But it was a double. Different person. But that same character also has Kiefer Suther Sutherland's voice. I always feel like Solid Snake really took a raw deal. Like he was the protagonist of four games.

And then Kodem was like, big boss. And then all of a sudden, Solid Snake is dying of lung hair. answer and it's horrible and yeah I don't know like solid snake I like him too I just feel like there was not a plan as as good of a plan put into action with him as there was with naked snake I mean naked snake was already a character in the series solid snake it was sort of I think they were just figuring out solid snake story as they went along but starting with naked snake you know what's going to happen with him and it's just sort of filling in the blanks until you get to that point I think

We're going to be able to be. I'm going to be. We're going to do. I'm going to be able to be. I'm not. No. I'm not. But...

...you know, ...and... ...you know. ...and... ...a... ...and... ...their... ...a...

...and... This game has an interesting structure. It starts off with something that's sort of like a tutorial, sort of like, it's kind of like a tutorial in the way that Metal Gear articulates it. It's called Virtuous Mission. Virtual mission. Nope. That's the second one.

And then once all the things happen, once boss, quote-unquote, you know, switches sides, you start virtual mission, which actually has you go through the same areas over again at night, which is a cool little touch. And I don't think Metal Gear hasn't done anything like this since then. I don't think they've taken this approach. Can't you revisit the setting of ground zeros? Yeah, you can.

Oh, I thought you meant Ground Zero, like where the nuke went off. Metal Gear Sol 5, Ground Zero. I don't think you can. No. The camp? Okay. No, I think they're removed from each other, like in terms of geography. But, yeah, I just... Yeah, that camp is Guantanamo Bay. Yeah, oh, you're right, you're right.

It's in Cuba. Yeah. So one of the cooler things about this game, where I got stuck in this replay, is so you go through Virtuous Mission, it's fairly easy. The soldiers are fairly spaced apart. It's just sort of walking you through, like, here's how you hang from things. Here's how you can interact with the environment. Here's how you hide, et cetera. Once you start virtual mission, one of the first major challenges is taking out eight soldiers in this fairly large location.

And, again... The Oscelot unit, right? Yes, the Oscelot unit. And again, being spoiled by five, I think I played this for 90 minutes before I was, I got through it in a way I was satisfied with. It just, it is a trial by fire moment in this game, which I really appreciate. It's like, you need to be at least this good to continue playing the game. And there are many ways to cheese it. There are many ways to get around it.

Enemies are kind of stupid in this game if you know what to do, but it's a really interesting design decision to test players after letting them play for a few hours. This is like, okay, this is what you're in for now. Are you talking about the, like the building? The building, yeah. You have to, like, crawl underneath and you're meeting Sokolov? Yes. Where you're trying to rescue him the first time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, she's already been taken. You go back there again. You meet, you meet Ava when you go back. And then there are eight Osloat soldiers. Yes. Yeah, I find, like, I always, you know, regardless of Metal Gear Solid 5, I always play this game so slowly. It's probably like a 10-hour game, but it's like 30 hours for me because I'm so meticulous. Like, I spent two hours fighting the end.

That's not an exaggeration. I spent three hours. Three hours. Okay. Because you were just entranced by the parrot, right? I wanted to find that guy, I make him my friend, but Snake will only eat him. So do we have any favorite, like, moments in the story? We talked about the ending a bit.

This game, as goofy as it is, it's very, very emotional. And I really like all the moments with the boss. They are a little on the nose sometimes a little heavy-handed. But I think this game is more believable in terms of characters than the other games in the series I've played. What does everyone else think? I mean, the final showdown with Boss and every single showdown. everything surrounding it on either side, like the cutscenes, is the best Metal Gear has ever been. It's so good.

In terms of story. Well, in terms of story, but also in terms of how the mechanics play out, because that final showdown in the field with the flowers forces you to take advantage of and make use of every skill and every game mechanic that you have learned and really apply those. That's why I hated Middle Gear Solid 4's ending so much because it just throws everything aside. It's like, it's a QTE punching game. It's terrible. But this is the opposite of that.

This is everything that you've done for the past 20 hours. It's the ultimate test. Now it is down to you and the one person who's better than you. And you have to exceed them. Yeah, it makes sense thematically and mechanically. And emotionally, it's very awful because you have to kill her. Yeah, the whole time you're like, I don't want to do this, but I have to. And that's a hard fight, too.

I've never been able to figure out how to be good at that fight. I always just barely scrape by. I can barely hide. I can barely get a hit in. She will always own you at CQC. Sniper rifle. Sniper rifle is a good way to do it. But she still finds me.

I think I need to get better camo, but it's still a hard boss fight, I think. I love the score or the theme, the skate meter theme coming in, like, halfway into that fight. It's just such a good, just emotional moment. I think the best camo index you get in that fight is by using the Kabuki face paper. Right, yeah. It's a very unfortunate side effect. Yeah, it's the white. kabuki face paint with like the red

paint. It has the very unfortunate side effect of making Snake wear that kabuki in the cutscenes. In the cutscenes throughout the end of the game. It'd be even more insulting if it was the American flag. I love American now. I'm going to kill my boss. Yeah, so we talked about

the boss. That's a great fight. I want to go more into the bosses because they're great. The one thing I dislike about that boss fight is ultimately the most heartbreaking thing you have to do in the game is execute her. That's like a QTE-ish style thing. The one thing I really hate about the game and I wish they would change is if you don't

do it, the game will just do it for you. You can't just wait and be like, I'm just going to let this sit here for a while. If you don't do it after like 10 seconds, it's just like when she's dead. I wish they would make that they would make you do it ultimately no matter how long you waited. It's also kind of a cool callback to Metal Gear Solid 1 where the Cyborg Ninja slices open Metal Gear Rex and is like holding the jaws open and you've got a rocket launcher and it's like you're in first person perspective and you could end everything right there if you just fire because you'll take out the Cyborg Ninja and Liquid Snake and Rex. But if you try to

press the fire button, Snake goes, I can't do it. That's right. I can't do it. I totally forgot about that. It's a complete inversion of that, which like I, it just occurred to me, but I just like realized it's kind of like taking that element of the previous game and showing like a completely different context. Yeah, I totally forgot about that. But you're right. Yeah, this game is just like a masterclass on boss design. There are just so many ways to interact with the bosses.

There are so many ways to subvert their powers, to trick them, to get around them. And I want to go through the bosses. The first one, of course, is the guy we mentioned before. He's a guy with bees in his mouth. And when he barks, he shoots bees at you. Just a great idea for a character. Just the goofiest guy ever. The pain?

The pain. He does like a very, like, Gingue squad or like, super centi kind of posing thing. He's just like justiculating wildly in that fight. It's great. I find him the least interesting of the bosses in the game. He is, but I like how they put the more comedic bosses first because this game gets more and more depressing as you go on.

So it's like the pain and then the fear are two of the goofy bosses. And even when you're fighting Osolot and like dropping bees on him and shooting off his hat and stuff, that's silly too. But they front load this game with sillier bosses. And this guy, he's fairly easy. You basically just kind of throw smoke grenades. him to dissipate the bees. The bees will, like, bring grenades to you, shoot the bees out of the air, you swim

underwater to hide from him. It's a pretty fun boss fight, and he's goofy as hell, and I just, I like this idea, just as stupid as it is. If you call the people on the codec, they will explain to you as best they can as to how he's got like a bee colony living within him. It's pretty wild. So up next we have the fear. He's sort of the predator in a way.

Like, he is a fast boss that has a stealth suit. you can easily cheese this boss by using your infrared goggles to spot him running around in the trees and just shoot at him. What I like to do is I like to throw rotten food at him or poisonous food at him and he will eat it because

the stealth suit will drain his stamina and he needs to stop to eat. So you can either shoot him while he's stopping or throw poison at him, which he'll gladly eat. And there are like poisonous frogs in the area too. It's a really easy way to end up. Yeah, it's a really great application

of a game mechanic that you wouldn't think like, oh, you know, I have to keep snake alive with stamina, and I have to watch out for these things and not eat them, and then, you know, saying, well, here's the logical extension of that. Here's a character whose stamina constantly drains. And if you want to go for a stamina kill, the best way to do it is to do something that would poison snake. It's a rare example of a video game really taking its mechanics and applying them to logical extensions and, you know, alternate purposes. Yeah, and you can do that

two enemies in the game as well. You can throw living animals you capture at them, like snakes. You can also blow up their food supplies and then throw poisonous food or spoiled food at them and they'll eat it and they'll get sick. It's just like this system is in place. It's not just invented for this boss fight. It's already existing within the game. So if you're thinking of how these systems interact with each other, you can easily apply

this to this boss fight if you see that the boss has to eat food. While I was fighting him, I was wondering if there was a way to make him trip the traps that are scattered out of his arena because at one point in the jungle I like dodge rolled under a um the log thing like yeah like a wire trap and a soldier kind of backed his way into it and then the log came out and smashed him I didn't know you could do that awesome so I don't know if you can do it against the fear but that would be another really cool way to beat him if you can well definitely I think possibly a contender for one of the best bosses in a video game we mentioned him before is the end so every metal gear game I think four might have one I can't

Remember, every Metal Gear Solid game has a sniper battle. Poor has one. What's that one? You fight the octopus. No, not Octopus. It's like the robot version of sniper wolf. It's really bad. I hate it.

It's basically a reprise of sniper wolf. I hate every boss fight in that game. We're going to do a Metal Gear Solid War podcast next year. I'm making Jeremy replay it. And I want to know what he feels about it 10 years later. Jeremy's going to be on trial. I know what you gave that game, Jeremy. You're in trouble.

But yes, the end. One of the best bosses, if not the best boss in video game history, this is just like, Every system in the game is at play. Every option is on the table. You can interact with him in so many ways. There are so many ways to find him, to hide from him, to track him. You can put in the Konami code on the map screen. It will show you where he is.

You can capture his bird and release his bird. It will fly towards him. You can see his footprints really easily with the infrared scanner. There are just a lot of ways to find him and to disable him. And basically, it's sort of like a war of attrition. You're just whittling down his life, tracking. him from location to location and hoping he does not hold you up and

capture you, which can happen in the game. You can wait a week and he just dies. Yeah, I love all the crazy non-combat options you have. You can kill the end long before you ever fight him. There's a scene where you see, I think, Volgan wheel him out onto a dock in a wheelchair and you can actually, like, get the sniper rifle and kill him, and then you just face it like the Oswald Squad instead of taking

on the end. But you can also So, yeah, like Wes said, you can save your game, set your system clock like two weeks ahead, and he'll die of old age. I think if you save your game and then go back to it, you'll wake up captured because you left the game. Yeah, if you save the game and come back, then he like sneaks up behind you and puts you in, like, clocks you and put you in jail. There's a fun little codec too, or paramedic says, like, I have a bad feeling. Are you sure you want to save? And snakes like, snake's like, I'm sure it's fine, whatever. No problem.

And if you come back, she kind of shames you. Like, you waited too long. Can we remember any other ways to mess with the end? I'm just thinking one's off the top of my head, but if you hold him up and then point your gun in his head, that's how you can get his can't get him to drop his camo. You have to kind of sneak up on him, which is very difficult, but probably the most satisfying, that was the most satisfying thing for me in that fight was to track him really, just really slowly, finally find him in a patch of grass, sneak up to him, point me. my pistol at the back of his head, and snake goes freeze, and then he'll drop his camo for you. Especially in this game, because you cannot walk with your gun drawn to hold up enemies, right? You have to hold them up in first person?

Yeah. I think in this boss fight, he drops his gun if you kill him, but you need to hold him up to get his, to get his camo. Is that correct? Yeah. The Mosen, the Gantz, the Trank sniper rifle from Metal Gear Solid Games. Is that what it is? That is a gun, yeah. It's like once I get that, that's my baby.

Yes. Because then I can do anything from anywhere and do it non-lethaly. No one can stop you. Any more about the end? I mean, I think Jeremy said you found for two hours. I remember it being like a three-hour one-session fight with him. Yeah, it was like my entire evening, basically. I got to that part and was like, oh, this is the fight I've heard about.

Okay, so this will take like half an hour. And then two hours later, I finally, finally got the stealth kill on him. It is incredibly tense. I will say I kind of dread this fight in some ways when I am playing this game. I just know what I'm in for. And I know that even if you can cheese it with the infrared goggles, finding his footsteps, there's still a chance he could hold you up and there's still a chance you could, you know, just miss him. It's a very tense fight, which I think, I would like to see another version of this in a new Metal Gear game if there ever is one, because I feel like there's just so much more you can do with better hardware. But this still holds up to me in a lot of ways.

Yeah, it's still the best sniper duel in a video game, aside from, you know, like 360 no scope. I love that you can choose which kind of which way you prefer to track him. Like, you can use the personnel detector that just beeps when you're close to somebody. So if you don't want to track his footsteps, you can just kind of go to the sniper grounds and try to, you know, find him that way. It's, I can't think of another game that has a boss fight that relies around patience like that. You know, maybe some turn-based games you need to think through and, and choose your action really wisely. But, like, it is such a, for an action game to just say you can spend three hours on this being incredibly meticulous and slow and thoughtful, it's, like, still unrivaled. It's a risky move because I can imagine so many, like, publishers looking at something like that.

I was like, no, we can't, we can't do this. There has to be action now. The player has to be able to understand the challenge and get through it. Yeah, this is just very slow, methodical. And I think, I don't remember how I actually got past the end. I do remember tranquilizing his parrot and him getting really angry. Like, my parrot, she's dead. No, she's not.

It's just sleeping in heaven. Yeah. Well, I know, I kept her in a cage in my inventory, like through the rest of, rest of the game. And like, I think one time I was just like, can I eat the parrot and like tried and like, yeah, I can eat the parrot. All right, restore safe. Did you release it at the end of the game? How is this damn? I don't think you can. It just station. Release it during the battle of the boss. Like, be free both of you. Oh, that would have been good. So we talked about the sorrow. It's more of an interactive cutscene. Can you actually die in this boss fight? I think

you just walk. You can. You can. Okay. I totally forgot. If you don't do it right, he actually just kills you. He still kills you. That happened to me. I didn't realize there was like a trick to it. He shoots like a sorrow beam at you. Yeah. Also. Yeah. So you like go through the river past all the corpses and then he like kills you. Yeah. I mean, you have to die as part of this boss fight, but then you use the revival pill or whatever in order to get it, get around that. Which is such a cool little item in this game that we didn't talk about earlier, this survival pill. You only have to use it like, that's the only time you have to use it, I guess, is that fight. But you can also use it to escape from your jail cell. That's right. And you get a many ways

to do that. You get a funny dialogue where the guard is kind of just staring at you dumbfounded as you come back to life, and he was like, he was faking, and then you knock him out. You can also, in that scene, like a Metal Gear Solid One, there are many ways to escape from that prison cell. One of the ways is to spin snake around in the viewer, and when you exit the screen, he'll throw up, because you spun him or his model around in the model viewer, and the guard will come thinking he's sick. That's like one of the, as pointless as that is, it has a purpose in the game in at least one scene. So, yes, we talked about the boss. One thing I wanted to bring up, which I'm glad they didn't do.

Her original design was she was going to have one breast exposed, at least partially, so that when she fired a gun, the snake would move on her breast. So let's all say thank you for not doing that, because this is one of the better female characters in a game, especially in 2004 when that was not really happening a lot. Even though she is sent to die in this game, she's not allowed to live, she's still a very strong character. I love her combat suit, her like white kind of space-man-looking. It's really cool. It's so cool. I don't think there's another suit in a Metal Gear game. I can think of that I like as much as that one.

It just looks awesome. And I was really disappointed when she spends the final boss fight zipped down to her navel as Ava spends the entire game, basically. Yeah, you said that, you know, she is sent to die, but it's important to note that she chooses this. True. A big part of her ethos is that, like, she, you know, has to do what she's told, but that is her choice.

I feel like, you know, she goes into this with full knowledge of what's happening. Yeah, yeah. And it's not like she's duped or, you know, playing a patsy. It's like she has accepted this burden and she'll follow it through the end. It's just unfortunate. I mean, she needs to die for this story to be significant, but it's unfortunate that we did not get a character like this in future games. I mean, what's a big mama? Was that her name in Metal Gear Sulla 4?

Ava? Yeah. Is it really big mama? Yeah. Okay. The famous Martin Lawrence character, of course, we all love. Yes. Good, good ideas all around.

She's the mother of Liquid and Solid Snake and I guess Solidus also. I was a really big fan replaying this game of the very kind of action movie-e ending sequence where you're racing away from the Shaggo Ha. That's really cool. You know, some of it controls a little funky, and part of me didn't like that it got away from the Metal Gear espionage element, but I thought for a PS2 game that came out in 2004, the score and the presentation of that whole scene was so well done. And, like, the motion capture when, like, Snake, like, hops off the side of the sidecar

of the motorcycle so that they can do, like, a really tight, like, hairpin turn. There's just, like, a lot of really, really cool touches in that scene that just, like, kind of screams money and style and, like, direction that not many games had at that time. I think Konami was an innovator in motion capture for this era. I don't remember this happening as often. I know, like, even as games as early as Silent Hill 2 in 2001, all the cutscenes were acted in a motion capture studio. And I don't really remember that happening as much back then.

Of course, that's like every cutscene now. But they were really ahead of the game in terms of that. And we can watch footage of this and see, like, all the sets they built to facilitate things like the motorcycle scene and things like that. If you've never seen the mocap of Ocelot's actor doing the gun. Maybe it's not his regular actor, but the guy who does the gun twirling stuff, It's just this, like, 55-year-old Japanese guy with a mustache, completely blank facial expression while he's doing these incredible gun tricks. Yeah, the Osolok gunstub is really neat. One of the stupidest things in the game that I love is him knocking bees out of the air with his gun twirling.

That doesn't make any sense, but I like it. Kojima wrote it down, and someone had to make that happen, and I'm glad that it's in a game. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be able to be. So we're running low on time, and I just want to do like a scattershot discussion of our favorite things in this game,

just because there are so many ways to interact with guards. We barely got into that, just the amount of ways you can screw with guards. It's almost like there are just so many options that interact with so many systems in this game. But I wanted to go over just a few of the things that stood out to me that might not be in every version of the game. So one of the things I remember distinctly in 2004 playing this game

is that this game had game magazines in it. And I couldn't find which ones they were, but they definitely existed in this game in the first release. And this was an era, which as shocking as it may seem to you in 2017, in which games journalists would just be in video games as secret characters. It's like, nobody cared or no one was screaming for people's jobs or collusion or anything like that. But there were video game magazines, and I think they were eventually replaced with, like, idle magazines or Japanese magazines or whatever, in future versions of the game.

I assume there was some sort of deal made behind the scenes with whatever publisher set that up. One of the other things I wanted to talk about is, so this game is very much an apology for Metal Gear Solid 2 to the people who didn't like it. And this game just blames everything on Riden. Absolutely. In this game, and it does feel, in 2017, it feels like a bad gay joke. But Riden is like a subservient, castrated lover to the villain. And that kind of sucks for Riden. I mean, it's not Riden literally, but it very much is Riden, who the gamer wants to take all of their aggression out on.

I mean, Rikov is not very far from Riden. Very, yes. And at a certain point, you have to dress up like him. And it's just, and they kind of screw with you in the beginning of the game. If you say, I like Metal Garsallad, too, when Snake lands, he is Riden until he takes off his masks. So they... But doesn't the masks stay in your inventory? It does.

That's what you used to masquerade as. RICO. That's what I was curious about. If you pick something other than I like Metal Gear Solid, too, like how do you masquerade as RICO? I think they give it to you. They eventually give it to you. But if you pick I love Metal Gear Solid 3, I think you unlock the most extra stuff. So if you're playing

this game for the first time, you do want to choose I like Metal Gear Solid 3. I think that was only from subsistence onwards. They let you choose I like MGS 3. So, yeah, trolling players at the beginning was a great idea. They definitely recognized Raden wasn't the problem. It's Raiden or Riden? Riden.

I keep saying random. I'm thinking Mortal Kombat. Ryden was not the problem, but he was an easy scapegoat for people who didn't like Metal Gear Solid, too. What else do we talk about? There was a mini-game. So if Snake gets captured and you save, I forget which point of the game this is, but if you save and then turn the game off and turn it back on again, when you start the game, you'll be in a different game. It's not Metal Gear Solid.

It's a black-and-white game where you're fighting vampires with, like, blades. Isn't it black and white? The end catches you and you save it in prison? I don't think it's the end, but it's at some point where Snake is captured. Is it during the sorrow, maybe? Maybe that's it, yeah. But you don't need to worry about it because it will be in no version of this game that you play. It was only in the original release.

I assume it was just like the remnant of a prototype Konami made. And they're like, that'd be fun if you started a game and you were in a different game. And there are also cool things like time paradoxes when you kill important characters. Like you fight Osalot, but you can't kill him because otherwise there could be no future games. So that's one of the clever things they do. And when Snake dies, game over turns in the time paradox. So they're definitely leaning into the fact that, like, you need to stay on track in terms of what the continuity will be.

You can't kill characters that need to show up later. That's a lot of the things I pulled out. Did anything else stand out to you as, like, a cool touch, a neat extra fun way to interact with an enemy or an NPC? I'm just curious, free discussion time. There's an ape escape little mini game. That's right. I forget how you activate in the game.

In subsistence. And it has solid snake in it. Not naked snake because the colonel walks you through it. Yes. In fact. The only place he appears in the game. Yeah, they had voice acting for both of those characters. I mean, David Hader was already in the game, but they got the colonel's voice to do the kernel for.

Okay, so this is only on disc two of subsistence. The snake versus ape or snake versus monkey mode did not make into any other re-release of the game, which is a damn shame because it is so fun. It is so cute. and you're basically Snake playing a non-violent version of Metal Gear where you're tracking down monkeys like you do an Ape Escape. And he does the little dance at the end when you get them all. And unfortunately, the fate of Ape Escape is not very good in 2017 as opposed to where it was in 2004.

But I always like to point out that there's the mirror of that in Ape Escape 3 where you play as Pippo Snake who's like a monkey that's been loaded up with all of Snake's combat data and memories. And you have to go and... So it's like overlaying Metal Gear gameplay onto the ape escape character. So it's the opposite of what Snake versus Monkey did. Interesting. And then you rescued Solid Snake at the end, who is not played by David Hater, and the colonel is not played by that guy.

But there is a lot of really funny, ridiculous dialogue in that. And I recommend, like, just looking it up on YouTube. Which Ape Escape game is this? Ape Escape 3. That's probably on PS4, I think. Is it? Yeah, those sequels are really good. I think they're pretty fun.

I don't think the sequel, I don't think that one was originally. published by Sony, so, I don't know, maybe. Interesting. Jeremy mentioned the part where you can snipe the end before you ever get into the fight with him earlier in the game, and I was thinking about that place where you kind of come through the water, come out of the water, and then go up to a dock, and that's how you get into one of the bases in the game. And I was wondering if that was a deliberate homage to the beginning of Metal Gear. Oh, I think so, yeah. It looks kind of similar. And that was something that struck me when I was watching a trailer, the original E3-2003 reveal of this game,

because a lot of the locations were already built, and you can see, you know, oh, that's where I fought the fear or that's where blank happened, but it's not depicted in the trailer the way it is in the final game. You can tell they had those environments already. Interesting. I was like, oh, that looks a lot like Metal Gear. I can see that. So we are running out of time. I want to go over the releases of this game because this game has been re-released a lot, being one of the better Metal Gear games. So 2004, original release, 2006, was Subsistence. A lot of these features carried over into the HD re-releases in 2001, but a lot of them didn't.

So, of course, this is a fantastic package subsistence. You also get, for the first time ever, America got the MSX versions of Metal Gear 1 and 2. I believe they were ports of, like, advanced phone versions of those games. They were almost positive. They were based on them. They were based on them. Yeah. Like new character portraits for Metal Gear 2.

They took out the plagiarism in some ways. You'd no longer have, wait, who is Snake in the original game? Mel Gibson. I thought it was the Terminator dude. Kyle Bean. Yeah, I think it's Kyle Cowrie's. Oh, yeah. Whoever played him.

Michael, Michael Bean. Yeah. That's on the cover, though. It's not in the game itself. Yeah, and the game, he was more like Mel Gibson and Sean Connery. Big Boss was definitely Sean Connery. The Colonel was pretty much the guy who played Troutman from Rambo. Yeah.

So, yeah, there are some things missing in the H-TRE releases. They're not huge losses. We don't get Snake versus Monkey. We also don't get Secret Theater. These were a bunch of goofy videos made by the Metal Gear staff using existing assets, and they're all voice-acted. Some of them don't have voice acting, but they do have voice acting in some of them. They're just, like, goofy, like, I guess you'd call them Omake, like, extra videos where

there's one where Snake is wondering what the boss's horse tastes like. There's just like a bunch of goofy, non-canonical things. they're all on YouTube. It's like 20 minutes worth of videos. Just watch them if you like Metal Gear Solid 3. You don't know what these are. Just a bunch of silly videos. Snake Eater 3D is one of the other versions of this game,

which I never played. And I think I should have played this one for this podcast. But man, it looks so good in HD. But this added a lot of quality of life upgrades from Peace Walker, like crouch walking and over-the-shoulder aiming. And a lot of dumb 3DS stuff, like things with the gyroscope, things with photography. I have never played this version of the game.

as anyone in this room played it. Yeah. Did you like it? Yeah, it's done really well. I was impressed by how well it worked, and I believe, I want to say it supported the Circlepad Pro. It did, the Frankenstein. Yeah, so if you have that, or just a 3DS, like Excel or new 2DS or whatever, then you

can play the game the way God intended. And the way I like to play this game is the HD collection, one of the best collections ever made, just because, so this came out in 2011. I really wish this was available on PS4, Xbox 1, and PC, but you got Metal Gear Solid 2, Metal Gear Solid 3, and a amazing version of Peace Walker with all of these quality of life features added and also transferring. So that is the best way to play this, I think. Try the 3DS version, but if you've never played Peace Walker, this is a really good way to experience that game. You can see what basically would become Metal Gear Solid 5. The HD collection also came out for Vita.

Oh, you're right, yeah, two and three, just two and three. It doesn't have Peace Walker because that was a native PSP game. Yeah, and it had come out a year previously, so pay all the money for that game. So no PC port of this game on like 1 and 2. Makes me sad. Yeah, there was never a PC port. Think of how, I don't know if those old ports were any good, but I assume they would have looked better than the PS2 version. But who knows what a PC port of a Japanese game would be at this era?

They didn't have the best track record at that time. Probably not great. Things are much better now, though. But if you like me have a powerful PC in or emulation, you can run this game. and it looks phenomenal. You can run this game in 4K if you want to if you want to go that far.

It has some little glitchy moments with some of the cutscenes like the B's really. The emulator does not like the Bs but 95% of the game runs great, looks amazing. To be fair, the bees look really bad in HD as well

just because you can see the trick they did to make it look like a lot of bees and it's conceivable on it, sorry, it's believable on a SDTV at 480I but not so much at 1080P in HD. So yeah, thank you so much for listening. This could probably be a podcast

series. I feel like there's still so much more to talk about. But I love Metal Gear Solid 3. Going back to it, I was a bit upset that this series has moved so far in the direction of mechanics that it feels very alien to me to play. It feels very frustrating for me to play. But I soldier

through it and I still love this game and it basically from this game spawned the best Metal Gear, really. And the end of Metal Gear, really. But yeah, I hope everyone enjoyed this podcast. And let's wrap up. Plug time. Jeremy

talk about yourself. Sure. You can find me, Jeremy Parrish, on Twitter as GameSpite at Retronauts.com, doing Retronauts stuff. You can hear me

every week on my podcast, Vigigame Apocalypse at Vigigameapocalypse.com. I deliberately misspell Vigigame, so work it out for yourself. You can find me on Twitter at Wikiparas. And, yeah.

Wes. You can find me on Twitter at Wesley Fenland. I'm the features editor at PCGamer, so you can find my features, stuff I edit or write on PC Gamer, and if you follow

me on Twitter, I apologize for tweeting about NetHack most of the time, because for some reason I'm playing a 30-year-old roguelike most of my time. I am. That's cool, though. As for me, you can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo, but first I want to talk about the Retronauts Patreon. If you're listening to this on

the main feed, you might not know that you can listen to episodes like these a week ahead of time, add free, and at a higher bit rate. And to do that, all you need to do is pledge $3 a month to patreon.com slash retronauts, you will get these podcasts, like I said, a week ahead of time with no ads and ad-free. So if you don't like the ads and you want these at a higher quality, that is your option. And I think I've crunched the numbers people. I think it comes out to

50 cents per podcast. That's correct. That is a steel. Except on really long months and then it's more like 43 cents or something. Yes, but it's even more of a steal. So that is one way to support the show. And this show is completely supported by fans like you, the listener. And you're giving us a lot and we appreciate that. We put a lot of work into this. And Jeremy and I do this for a living now. So we're hoping that you appreciate all the work we're doing and we appreciate your money. It's a very, very symbiotic relationship we have here. I feel it's healthy. We'll be back next time for another retronaut. See you then. You know,

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Bandastico. Carry out only. You must ask for this limited time offer. Price's participation and charges may vary. The Mueller report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House, his special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released.

next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others.

The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.