#this happens after mgs4

[linashirou]

Reposting the Amazing art of the first 5 chapters, because they're completely remade! wonderful art made by Walter ♥

You can find @Venomwalter_art in twt! he always have his commissions open, and he is a wonderful artist.

[armed-saphire]

Something that makes me so sad abt MGS is when they show past parts of characters lives where they could have gone down a much better path, but their choices or circumstances are always going to lead to their inevitable end. hope this makes sense,

[flowergirlmiwa]

Fucking insane to me it's canon Solid Snake has seen Star Wars

[thetruescholar]

My experiments involve studying Irminsul, as the Fatui has insisted I focus on improving my enhanced prosthetic limbs. But infusing prosthetic limbs with souls from Irminsul is a tricky process for someone like myself. How useful it is that Sheznevna has the abilities of the goddess of wisdom Nahida, and how useful it is she’s not as wise as Nahida. I can study Irminsul further with her abilities.

A pity I can’t vivisect her, no that man she calls father will get in my way. Ah if only my higher ups would let me get rid of that old puppet boy so I can get rid of that man.

If you wish to help, perhaps you can aid in my theorizing.

The small child curiously looked at the tall doctor with her curious eyes.

Miss doctor do you see mister dmitry as your son?

And does he view you as a mother?

The small child was so tiny compared to the doctor, she looked like she was only 100 cm in height.

1. Do I see Dimitry as my son? No.

2. No he does not view me as his mother:)

[knackeredforever]

Mgs4 is easily the most frustrating metal gear game because it is so close to being amazing because it has some of the best stealth mechanics in the entire series and battlefield stealth is genuinely such a cool mechanic and so fucking fun.

The problem is that once the player gets access to drebins shop it completely kills the balance of the game because you basically now have infinite weapons and ammo making stealth less necessary. But at least you could just ignore the shop the bigger problem is the battlefield stealth parts of the game, you know the main concept of the game only happens in the first 2 of the 5 acts of the game after that the next 3 acts are completely different and significantly less fun and it completely kills the unique fun stealth. Battlefield sandbox the game had been up to that point.

The final boss is still amazing though and one of the best ever in my opinion.

[bigusbossus]

After watching MGS4 cinematic cutscenes, I honestly believe that Bosselot is canon imo even though it was one-sided at first but I do think that BB notices Ocelot's love especially how loyal Ocelot is for him maybe after MGS3 or during MGSV. Just like BBKaz in PW for Date with Kaz

I can't imagine BBKaz or Bosselot being not canon in the Metal Gear Franchise. Same with Otasune. These couples r canon and adds depth to the franchise. The gay and queer subtext is just text imo. Kojima likes yaoi in his games.

i feel like there's just too much that you can't say it's not canon or atleast like something didn't happen... LIKE HELLO?? ocelot kissing snake in mgs4 when their names changed to naked snake and ocelot and that restoring both their stamina's??? ocelot was fr kissing bb and more to restore his stamina too behind the scenes. Also the scene where ocelot lights bb's cigar is such a trope in gay movies like.. we all know how kojima loves his movies.... he was fujoshing out on that one trust me. like the scene was to show how submissive and loyal ocelot was to bb, ocelot wouldn't have done that for anyone else, yet he had literally everything prepared before bb could even say anything , and why did they have to be so close huh 🤨 was that a Russian taunt too 🤨🤨🤨

also bbkaz literally fuck in a box there's no other way to see it they're queers!!! homos!!!! the British slang for cigarettes even!!!

i feel like for bosselot they would've gotten together around the portable ops era, like when bb started returning the feelings for realsies (he would've returned them sooner if he just realized ocelot and we a freak for him but he is dense😭)

[faksyan]

ocelot?

Ask game

When I saw that you asked about Ocelot. barking biting this guy occupies such a big portion of my thoughts.

First impression

If we're talking VERY first the gay guy Venom splashes in the rain with. kinda awesome that he does that. (I saw the model swap of the Quiet cutscene with no context and then thought it's the original for years).

If it's about the proper introduction to the series I started with mgs3 and lost my shit at the meow. I do that now too. Together with the hand gesture and the 'I've been waiting for this' he does at the waterfall. He's a dipshit for how he treated Eva even if it was for show. I didn't see him being a triple agent coming and thought that was cool.

Impression now

I have. so many thoughts about Revolver Adam Adamska (not a real name) Shalashaska Ocelot. fuck this guy. I hate him. he makes me so sad I want to cry. want to punch him in the face. make him a nice cup of tea and let him sleep. feed him to the bears.

He was raised to be a weapon, and yet he is a creature of emotion and love that exists hand in hand with violence. He was never meant to be a person but all that he cares about are people's real names and his comrades (that aren't actually that, he's a triple agent) that Volgin kills, and animal and plants facts. He loves westerns and made them his whole personality for decades and decades. He talked to guy once and then almost burned the world down for him. A lot of times.

I find it so interesting that in v he says he plays up the idea of himself being a sadist and enjoying torture to some extent. I think the Huey interrogations show a lot of how he actually likes doing his work, which has an accent on efficiency and not blood and guts. It's simultaneously cruel and merciful, and it saves time and lives that he can use for something else. I could go on and on about this guy honestly, there are so many fascinating things about him.

Favorite moment

What isn't honestly. The meow. The revolver spin. He tried to poke Snake in his missing fucking eye?? The way he dresses in mgs1&2. also

"It doesn’t feel right to shoot an unarmed man…but I’ll get over it." Slay.

Idea for a story

Let's see I have so many of those. The idea of Ocelot inheriting some of Sorrow's powers is really fun, I was thinking about writing about him using it for a mission with Kaz where they have to dig a dead guy up and interrogate him to get some info.

Unpopular opinion

His feelings towards bb have never been reciprocated, he has never tried to act on them, and is fine with that. him in v is the closest we ever get to seeing him being his genuine self. There is not enough information about how his hypnosis works but that's an interpretation of it that I really like. Also people seem to be really hung up on the fact that he is ""canonically"" gay when he isn't canonically anything. so I guess my unpopular opinion is not necessarily viewing him as specifically gay idk.

Favorite relationship

sigh. ocelhira. horrible terrible predictable I know. I have a big ass wall of text about them in my notes I need to finish. even the ship stuff aside, the things they were hypothetically up to during the nine year coma must have been insane. and after that? What about FOXHOUND? Or Kaz's death? So much could've happened during all of it aghhh. Even during events of v, we get so little of them together in it. Also Ocelot is a loser and has no other friends lol look at that guy. Him and Eva before mgs4 are such a cool duo though, a shame we didn't get to see any of their dynamic in that time period, or during the Patriots.

Favorite headcanon

He's on aroace spectrum. also stupidly in love with kaz miller and the reasoning for why and what and how is entirely in my head and hopefully in text at some point, it makes sense I promise. I just like when characters are in love even though I am so bad at understanding what that entails but so is he so that's fine. Their dynamic is really interesting to me.

[twilightknight17]

Last night on P3R: middle-school SEES, struggling with my social calendar, the Abyss of Time, questionable movie choices, and oh god we finished Sunset and now I’m hitting sad stuff in everything else I’m playing/watching too.

I’m still in Tartarus from last time, so I can knock out a few more floors before we go home. I’ve been introduced to a new thing, though, and it’s a Big Hand!

I kind of love how goofy the hands are. They do a little dance and sometimes it syncs up with the music. ^_^

After that, it’s time for the next gatekeeper floor! And it’s--

...oh. Oh god. Is this it? I’m not ready for this. I’ve got Mitsuru with me, but oh man. Not the Table.

……

...false alarm. This is a Terminal Table, not a Crying Table. We’re safe for a little longer.

That wasn’t so bad.

Also, I got a weapon for Shinji as a quest reward, and it’s a crossing sign from in front of a school. It’s so silly.

I rolled through the next set of floors pretty quick, but I don’t think anyone’s quite prepared to take on another gatekeeper. Everyone is pretty drained in terms of SP. So we’re gonna head home for the night, and go learn some more nonsense from school tomorrow.

...all right, actually an acceptable discussion related to the book we’re reading. But hey, sometimes your soulmate can be your rival! Seven years from now, two rival soulmates are gonna be climbing through a cognitive space station!

This is not a fair discussion when Minato’s soulmate still isn’t here for another month and a half.

Anyway, Mitsuru is very worried about Shinji. He wants to extend his leave of absence from school again even though he’s come back to the dorm. So I guess he’s been absent for two years now? She really wants him to re-enroll, though. She, Akihiko, and Shinji were the only three members of SEES originally, back when the three of them were in middle school.

Apparently they could barely handle the first floor of the tower, which… They were children, so I’m not surprised. No adult supervision, either, and Mitsuru only had minor navi powers. I’m surprised none of them got killed. At least Ken has all of us who’ve already learned to fight to keep him safe.

They promised that they’d all graduate high school together, which explains why Mitsuru is so invested. She clearly cares about both of them a lot.

You can hand over the extension form here, but there’s also the option to hold onto them and go find Shinji to talk again. So… I guess you can literally just end the events there if you choose to not take the form back and go pry.

...there’s nothing we can do?

And any miracles I can make will come too late. If only my sister was here… It’s just a cruel twist of fate that which twin survives the car accident determines whether Shinji can live ten years later.

He says he’s happy to spend time with me, though.

This isn’t fair, you can’t hit me like this after the fic Jade and I finished and the end of MGS4 and the fic my other friend is writing AND--

God. And he doesn’t want to tell anyone.

At least Junpei is happy. He really, really likes Chidori. But he’s willing to go at her pace on everything.

Good for you, my guy.

Let’s go upstairs and check on Ken. He’s banging something around in his room, so probably good to make sure that he hasn’t dropped a box on his head or something.

He’s fine, but he does ask me to come in, because he wants to ask for a favor. Turns out, he’s got a pet hamster!

...you’re gonna be fine, Ken. But okay. What’s the little guy’s name?

……amazing. Yes, I will take care of Hamburger, but I’m also not gonna let anything happen to you. Everyone here is going to take care of you. You’ve noticed, right?

Because you’re the youngest and you’re our collective baby brother/kid. No one wants you to get hurt, and it’s unnerving how you talk like you don’t matter, and like you’re not planning to make it through all this alive.

Maybe school will be less depressing. It’s a good day to go to art club. Apparently Keisuke’s dad is very enthusiastic about him studying art abroad! And he says he’s going to go! But then he immediately says he’s not excited about it, so… Keisuke, seriously. What do you want to do?

Ah, well, I’m sure he’ll figure it out.

And then a box falls on Minato’s head, and everything goes dark.

Keisuke gets Mina to the nurse’s office, and after he wakes up, checks him over. Apparently Minato has dodged a concussion. He blames himself, because apparently he’s the one who put the box on the shelf. He’s not used to cleaning, because the maid does all of that at home.

Right. Sure. Careless at cleaning because of the maid. Cool.

He really seems to like the idea of being a doctor, and he’s afraid that if he goes to become an artist, that’s it, he can never be a doctor.

So… sounds like you made a decision, dude.

Keisuke. What. Do. You. Want. For fuck’s sake.

Anyway. So people have been talking about the culture festival all week. There’s gonna be a haunted house. There’s gonna be fried food. The archery club was gonna do a maid cafe, which I know because Yukari was so mad she was gonna have to wear a maid dress.

But, a typhoon is rolling in, so the festival is canceled, and isn’t gonna be rescheduled despite Mitsuru’s efforts. And after school on Friday, we head straight home, because the wind is starting to really kick up.

But… there’s still one person wandering around Port Island Station.

He’s not worried about the oncoming storm. He wants to talk, specifically about Chidori. He asked if she was okay. If we were taking care of her. If she was being a problem.

...no, you dumb asshole.

He also wants to bitch at me again about how we want to stop the Dark Hour.

Apathy? Maybe if you’d caught me six months ago. I have people I like now, and a reason to care. Meanwhile, you’re sitting there talking about how I don’t understand the ‘true value’ of my powers. What value is that? Wandering around at midnight killing people, like you do?

Minato is drenched by the time we get back to the dorm, because the downpour has kicked in and the typhoon has properly arrived. Everyone is a little cranky about missing the festival (except Yukari), and Minato’s got chills and fatigue from getting soaked, so he opts to go to bed early because he’s not feeling well.

…uh. Hi? Is the elevator about to crash?

Igor says that he hasn’t called me in my dreams in a while, and wants to open up some more special fusions for me to do. Which is great and all, but like… I am trying to sleep because I am sick. Can we do this any other time?

I see. Well, that’s… vague? Are you talking about like… the other Full Moon Shadows? The Clockwork God? Do you know what’s about to happen and won’t tell me? Although I guess you can’t help it, considering who made you.

Even if he wasn’t always like that.

Well, let’s get a good night’s sleep and see how we feel in the morni--

Minato. Mina. Darling. It’s MONDAY. You slept for TWO DAYS?

So, according to Q, Minato was feeling well enough that the team went to Tartarus last night. And Igor left the Velvet Room at some point, making it unstable enough to crash the elevator into the Abyss of Time. Apparently it’s not just the Abyss that no one remembers. They don’t seem to remember the instigating trip to Tartarus either.

Weird. But understandable I guess.

Anyway I missed two days of possibly playing my MMO all day. You could have at least showed me my teammates checking on me!

I guess I’ll spend my vacation hanging out with Shinji. Senpaiiii, teach me to cook!

...senpai is mean. XD

But apparently I’m a menace in the kitchen, so maybe I deserve it.

Let’s go to the movies, too!

Yes, we’re seeing this. It’s a movie about cute animals!

…….oh fuck me this is Watership Down isn’t it

Shinjiro-senpai I’m so sorry.

He sounds like he’s about to cry. X’’’’D

I thought it was a nice movie!!!!

Well, now someone has wandered into Tartarus again, so let’s head back, and check in with the Velvet Room about those new fusions. I’m not a high enough level for them yet, but it can’t hurt to look.

...why does it get its own fire attack. Why does it inflict charm.

WHY IS ITS LEVEL UP ITEM ITS HEAD. WHAT HEAD.

God.

After buying everyone new weapons and fusing some more personas, we’re probably going to be in Tartarus for a while. Because, well…

I’m broke.

So next time, yeah, we’re gonna save people, but also, time to look for so much money.

[sir-yeehaw-paws]

TOP 20 KOJIMA MOMENTS

In No Particular Order, Our Favourite Moments from the Metal Gear Mastermind

-PlayU: The UK’s Only Playstation Magazine, Excerpt from an Interview with Hideo Kojima, 2013

(Full Transcript Under Cut)

1. Psycho Mantis: From reading your memory card to telling you what games you like by requiring the controller be plugged into port 2 to beat him, Mantis played with game conventions in a way unseen at that point.

2. Snake Never Gives Up: Crawling through radiation filled corridors to save the world as Snake slowly dies while his friends are shown struggling in battle is one of the most powerful and emotional moments of MGS2.

3. Raiden Gets Pissed On: Get through an entire part of MGS2 without getting seen and Raiden comes across a soldier on a roof, taking a leak. Stand in said trajectory, call people on your codec, and enjoy the laughs.

4. The Boss: The Boss is one of the most intriguing, and tragic characters ever created by Kojima, and the final battle against her at the end of MGS3 is still by far one of our favourite gaming moments.

5. Kojima in Peace Walker: Recruiting our pal Hideo in Peace Walker is a lovely little bit of video game fourth wall-destroying fun. Big Boss exclaiming, “Mr. Kojima!” makes it perfect.

6. The End: Another phenomenal boss fight, which can take hours or even days, Big Boss and the 100-year-old sniper face off in a battle of wits, disguises and patience, riddled with tension. Utterly unique and properly brilliant.

7. Enter Gray Fox: Coming across a darkened corridor full of blood and body parts is one of the most memorable moments of Metal Gear Solid 1, and the boss fight that follows is tense and thrilling.

8. Rex vs Ray: The trip back to Shadow Moses is surely the most fan-service filled part of MGS4, and is topped with Snake, piloting Metal Gear Rex, fighting Ocelot in Metal Gear Ray. Bizarrely sublime.

9. “Back of the CD Case”: If you’ve played Metal Gear Solid 1, you know this one. Meryl’s codec frequency, never told to you in-game, is actually on the back of the game box the whole time. Frustrating, but wonderful trickery.

10. Young Ocelot/Time Paradox: Young Ocelot’s appearance in MGS3 is hilarious and interesting, explaining how he came to be known as Revolver. But don’t kill him, unless you want to cause a TIME PARADOX.

11. The Battle of Aumaan Crevice: Zone of the Enders 2 improves upon the first game by making everything bigger and louder. Hundreds of mechs on either side clash in a scene like something out of Dynasty Warriors. Glorious.

12. That Bloody Ladder: If you’ve played MGS3, you know what we mean. “What a thrill...with darkness and sorrow throughout the night..” It’s a big ladder, alright? A ruddy big ladder. The biggest ladder there is.

13. Johnny Sasakai (Apart from MGS4): The uncredited hero of the MGS saga, Johnny has bit-parts in 1 and 2 (he’s the guy who gets knocked out by Meryl), before becoming an awful story-killer in 4, getting the girl after shitting in a barrel.

14. Snake vs. Liquid: “I’m you..I’m your shadow..” An awesome fist-fight between two shirtless dudes who happen to be clones, on top of a destroyed mech surrounded by flames? Epic stuff. Fox? Die.

15. Throwing a Metal Gear Ray: Kojima was hesitant to put this in Metal Gear Rising, but we are glad he did. What better way to cap off a fight against a huge robot than heaving it over your shoulder and slamming it face-first into the dirt?

16. Raiden vs. Vamp: Raiden is a lame little crybaby in Metal Gear Solid 2, but redeems himself in a big way in his next appearance . His stand out moment is his epic battle against Vamp.

17. The Sorrow: Another wonderful “boss fight” from Metal Gear Solid 3, a game rammed absolutely full of them. Facing the souls of the people you’ve killed is a genuinely harrowing experience.

18. MGS4 Car Chase: There have been a few fair car chases throughout Metal Gear history, but the one throughout narrow European streets in MGS4 as you race to save Big Boss’s remains stands out.

19. Snake vs. Ocelot: “You and I..have a score to settle.” An awesome fist-fight between two dudes on top of a destroyed boat-mech thingy in the middle of a massive war? Epic stuff. Fox? Die.

20: The Tanker: The opening tanker section of MGS2 is one of the best levels ever featured in the series, with some great set pieces and a ton of stuff to do. Shame about the rest of the game eh?

[fascinationstreetmp3]

would you happen to have the various motorcycle models from mgs3?

eva's first bike (the one she rides up until escaping groznyj grad)

the sidecar bike model -- this one was kinda finicky and weird, there were a bunch of them but none of them were actually complete for some reason so i stuck two together and it's kinda a mess texture-wise, but the bike model is exactly the same as the first one, only the right mirror is attached to the sidecar instead.

there were a few license plates but some have oddly crunchy textures, i'm not sure if it's something to do with how they display in the game engine (and i couldn’t even find ocelot’s. sad) but i realised that all the license plates, except for eva’s (016к нун) and ocelot’s (3756 K0T) have “гром” (thunder) on them

and eva's bike in her final scene, the triumph bonneville t100. bb rides the same model in pw and tpp, and eva does again in mgs4, making this bike model probably the 2nd most recurring character after ocelot

[sarrai]

LMAO

I started mgs4 today and I am flabbergasted how little concern anyone has for Raiden.

The "Wait, what happened to Jack?"

"Who?"

"Jack. Y'know, Raiden"

"Oh, he's missing"

"what"

Exchange killed me! No one ever told Snake, who at least has the decency to sound upset over the situation. And, like, sure, they weren't besties, so why bother giving him the news, but Otacon and Rosemary don't even bring him up at all on codec calls after! I only got far enough to hear Raiden on codec, I really do wonder what the characters' reactions will be to seeing him! I hope there's a little more concern there when he pops back up lol

[linashirou]

I saw my friend @hc-svnt-dracones95 making this one and I can't resist! keep in mind that Hal's age is his one on my fic, and consequently, most of the things here are part of TEC universe.

Don't forget that Lina is an OC/Insert! she has the two qualities. Thanks a lot @plinko-selfships!

[floatingcatacombs]

A Year of Metal Gear: REVENGEANCE

12 Days of Aniblogging 2022, Day 10

By no means should Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance actually be good. It’s a hack-and-slash character action game that emerged without any involvement from directorial mainstay Hideo Kojima after years of development hell getting passed between studios. Taking place at the end of the Metal Gear chronology, this game discards the vast majority of series lore, retaining one major character: Raiden.

(my writeup ended up being a few thousand words so it's going behind a read-more. it's worth it, though.)

A recap is in order. Raiden is introduced in Metal Gear Solid 2 as an inferior replacement for Solid Snake, a snively bishounen who is routinely mocked and belittled within the game. Only in the last act is he able to forge an identity unique from Snake’s, displayed narratively as well as mechanically when he starts wielding a sword. Taking Snake’s advice at the very end, Raiden sets out to find his own meaning and pass down the ideas that he values the most.

Raiden returns in MGS4, and after five years of soul-searching, he’s become convinced that the only meaning in his life comes from the battlefield. Also, he got kidnapped by the government and taken to Area 51 and made into a cyborg ninja between installments, you can’t make this shit up. He spends the whole game having homoerotic duels with a vampire and suggestively bleeding out white fluid.

Clearly something went wrong during his quest for meaning! After all, Raiden was a child soldier, so choosing to return to the battlefield parses as regression, not personal growth. But wait, he’s finally figured out a self-justification! In Metal Gear Rising he fights to “protect the weak”. It is this justification that kicks this game off, which kind of exists to poke at the flaws and contradictions in Raiden’s philosophy.

What the hell does it mean to be a cyborg ninja, anyway? In my previous Metal Gear writeups I viewed this character archetype as a conduit for masochism. For Raiden, it is also getting to have his effeminate nature and general incompetence in MGS2 ripped out and replaced with uncaring metal and the decisiveness to kill. It’s a forced-masculinization fantasy, which demands both a loss and a gain in agency in ways that feminization does not (it’s still gotta be gay tho). But there’s definitely more to it, especially in Revengeance. Here, it’s more about being a mass killer and having to come up with a way to justify yourself, to yourself.

So the antagonists in this game can all be read as foils to Raiden. They’ve come up with their own rationales for personally grinding the gears of war, and demand that Raiden explain how his killing is above all of that. It’s an attack on his values alongside his body. This game is…how do I say it…blunt. Most of what I’m saying is actively textual at times. It’s just that most people don’t take the politics seriously because there’s also the most over-the-top bullshit imaginable happening at the same time.  

Despite everything, Metal Gear Rising is amazing. Its exterior is willfully stupid and it comes off looking all the smarter for it. In a series famous for predicting the future, Revengeance instead demonstrates a deep understanding of the eternal present that emerges from the supposed end of history. It’s not the best video game, but it is the video game.

The prologue level introduces our villains and stakes, but more importantly establishes everyone’s power levels. In Metal Gear Solid games, the titular Metal Gear of every game is the culmination of that time period’s weapons and anxieties. By Rising, we’ve moved past the paradigm of Metal Gears and are now in an era where battles are determined by individuals fighting one-on-one with their weapons and beliefs. This transition is exemplified by Raiden suplexing a Metal Gear RAY while an electro-metal singer screams RULES OF NATURE in the background. Once again, we’re not playing with subtlety here. It is the era of the cyborg.

At the end of the chapter, rival Jetstream Sam calls bullshit on Raiden’s protecting-the-weak ideals. “You deny your weapon its purpose! It yearns to bathe in the blood of your enemies, but you hold it back.” Raiden doesn’t have an answer to this and gets dismembered.

We then jump ahead a week, after Raiden’s has been refitted with an even more militarized yet flamboyant cyborg body. It’s masculinity by way of carbon-fiber and camp. He even has little hand and toe claws! Anyways, his current mission is to put down a coup attempt in an undisclosed Eastern European country. This goes about as unexamined as Raiden’s job in the prologue, which is to act as security detail for the potentially iron-fisted prime minster of an undisclosed African country. The international political interventions that Raiden’s private military company is doing go largely undiscussed within the game, which means that either they’re just a plot vehicle to get Raiden in different locales, or it’s commentary on the amorality of warmongers. Anyways, after tearing through dozens of cyborgs and draining them of their fluids, Raiden faces off against Blade Wolf, a literal dog of war. Its programming is not that different from Raiden when he was a child soldier, a tool for killing with no free will of its own. It can’t be an accident that Raiden’s first major foe represents his past.

Nor is it a mistake that the end-stage boss is an analogue for Raiden’s present-day disillusionment. Mistral goes for an empathetic appeal, arguing to Raiden that the two of them are ultimately the same. They’re child soldiers, trained only to kill, incapable of thriving outside of the battlefield but lacking a sense of purpose as mercenaries.

Mistral’s aimlessness and many aspects of her backstory are directly lifted from The Stranger by Albert Camus, which the game just straight-up tells you. What sets her apart from Raiden at that she’s finally found some sort of ideology to believe in, and is taunting him with that fact, as Raiden is clearly struggling with the veracity of his “I protect the weak” shtick. She’s also sexually taunting Raiden the whole time by being the hornily-designed cyborg lady to his hornily-designed cyborg dude. It’s a whole thing.

In short, Mistral is a mirror held up to Raiden. While she fails to impart any ideology directly onto him, since she’s just choosing to follow someone else’s, she makes it clear to him that his status quo is untenable and he will need to come up with a coherent ideology, or else he’s just going to get sliced to pieces by her new boss.

(Want a cheat sheet for Metal Gear Rising? Just look up the lyric sheet for the song that plays during any given boss fight. It almost always outlines that character’s whole deal. Most of my analysis comes from the dialogue itself, but it’s all right there in the music as well. Also, what a fucking soundtrack)

After a drawn-out fight with Mistral that destroys a whole oil refinery, Raiden gets a lead that the PMC he’s been tracking down has a secret laboratory in the sewers of Guadalajara, Mexico. We learn in this chapter that Raiden is really bad with both race and talking to kids, by means of some truly secondhand-embarrassing cutscenes. But the main plot revelation is that the PMC Desperado has been picking orphans off of the street, harvesting their organs, and hooking their brains up to militaristic VR training with the eventual goal of making them into cyborg child soldiers. The thing that strikes me playing Metal Gear Rising in 2022 is that this is just QAnon. Or pizzagate, or antifa super soldiers. It’s every surveillance and human trafficking conspiracy theory rolled into one, and while this kind of drivel obviously existed in 2013 when Revengeance came out, the writers were insightful to make it a central plot point. But Raiden doesn’t take the news quite like a Q conspiracy theorist. He undergoes what I call a Leftist Meltdown.

It's that moment you start connecting the dots on all the interconnected systems that make up modern capitalism and think way too hard about how much evil and suffering has to go into every single product in your life. Or when you realize that electoral politics will never truly act in your interest and that the whole system is designed to perpetuate the status quo and disempower and disenfranchise the very people who need the most support. Or when you start seriously considering buying a gun and mulling over if revolution is a worthwhile pursuit and how that would even manifest in the present day and if it’s actually possible or if it would make everything worse and whether or not assassination is a viable form of praxis, and ultimately, how far you personally would be willing to go for the cause.

It's this kind of cascade of despair that drives Raiden to (re)vengeance. More specifically, he learns that a standing U.S. senator is bankrolling this child brain-harvesting operation. Even if he leaked this story to the media, no outlet would dare cover it, because said senator has ties to one of the largest military contractors in the world. It would be financial and political suicide. Raiden can’t let this injustice slide, and he knows that even if he shuts down this lab in New Mexico, they’ll just set up another one somewhere else. Raiden advocates for a coordinated assault on their headquarters in Denver, Colorado. He’s chastised by his codec support, who remind him that “America has these things called laws.” He snaps back that Denver privatized their police force and gave out the contract to the very PMC that’s running this operation. It’s this understanding that justice cannot and will not be served that ultimately breaks Raiden. I have seen leftist twitter disputes play out exactly like this. He opts for direct action, travelling to Colorado to slice up the World Marshall Headquarters.

After ripping the guts out of a small army of cops (thank god for video games), what awaits Raiden is a good and proper lecture. Jetstream Sam appears via hologram and further pokes at Raiden’s justifications for all this killing. Can he really call it justified? Did all these soldiers have a real choice in showing up to oppose him, or are they the result a society that coerces its most vulnerable people into being cannon fodder? Raiden turns off his combat emotional suppressors and learns that surprise! – nobody he’s facing wants to die, and that in many cases they’re the very downtrodden people he claims to want to protect.

This revelation hits Raiden like a truck and leaves him highly unstable, which means it’s the perfect time for another insane cyborg to enter the fray and try to impart ideology onto him. This time it’s the meme-addled Monsoon, whose most iconic line I’m just going to have to paste in verbatim.

Monsoon’s goal is to force Raiden to admit that he’s getting off on violence. To accomplish this, he decisively dismisses the whole “protecting the weak” thing as an illusion that Raiden invented to protect himself. Raiden, without his usual defenses, accepts the notion that killing feels good, that he was meant to kill, and that masochism is hot. In a way, he’s kind of reverting to the roots of the Metal Gear cyborg ninja archetype, as these are Gray Fox’s ideals. Raiden turns off his cringepain inhibitors and rips Monsoon to shreds, who dies contented, as he succeeded in bringing out the beast in Raiden and shifting him further away from his original beliefs.

(It's worth noting that if Raiden makes it through the fight without taking any damage, Monsoon will beg for him to stop to instead of saying "Do as you please". I guess a perfect S-Rank Raiden would be less susceptible to memes, freaking Monsoon out a lot more)

One level later, Sundowner is our next cyborg, with batshit politics to match his shit-eating grin – the dude loves war! More specifically, he thinks that cruelty and fighting are just plain human nature, as evidenced by his one-liner that kids are cruel and he’s very in touch with his inner child. He’s a Hobbesian with zero cognitive dissonance, which makes him a very serious threat in this world. He’s that kid who makes up an invincible super shield when you’re playing pretend, except he’s an adult and actually made it real. The meme he ultimately passes on to Raiden is that you don’t even need a personalized excuse for killing if you say that violence is just human nature.

Anyways Raiden rescues the brains and cuts a goddamn plane in half. Sundowner reveals in his dying words that U.S. Senator Armstrong, the one who is orchestrating all of this, is attempting to reboot the War on Terror by assassinating the president and blaming it on Pakistan. It’s interesting to see the characters openly compare this to 9/11 and discuss the disastrous effects of the Afghanistan War. Metal Gear Solid games are very much inspired by real-world events such as this and the Gulf War and nuclear close calls, but they largely shy away from referencing the actual events. In comparison, Revengeance is incredibly candid about the present-day state of affairs, with the codec support team gleefully going on about the effects of the War on Terror and how military intervention further displaces people and creates future terrorists, Western Europe’s problems with immigration, the geopolitical situation in Eastern Europe, the legacy of colonialism, and the iron triangle’s connection to the military-industrial complex.

I don’t see a lot of discussion of these radio calls online, which is surprising because they’re informative and funny and even more on-the-nose than the average MGS codec.  I can only imagine that most people just skipped them because this is a such an action-oriented game, but I highly recommend calling everyone up next time you replay Metal Gear Rising. Kevin has quickly become one of my favorite codec buddies in the whole series.

But I digress. Raiden gets the hell out of Dodge so he can borrow a space shuttle to get to Pakistan on time. But before that, one more obstacle stands in his way, and that’s Jetstream Sam. Sam is this game’s Vamp, the flamboyant rival who does Raiden’s whole deal better than he himself can. He’s Raiden’s parallel in ideology, unlike Mistral who is his parallel in background.

Sam similarly chased after the concept of justice through combat, but this meme gradually became warped until he just started siding with whoever he believed to be the strongest. We see this corruption in his weapon as well, a katana named Murasama. This a deliberate misspelling of the legendary Muramasa swords, to show his drift. Despite everything, Sam still holds himself to bushido principles, which is something Raiden only ever did in passing. He doesn’t truly believe in Senator Armstrong’s ideology and kind of wants to be proven wrong. To this end, he blocks Raiden’s path and demands a duel as a test of strength. He fights openly, just for the sake of fighting. Like Mistral, he also sexually taunts Raiden by calling him a pretty boy, but I’ll leave the analysis on that one to you.

Even as he’s being fought, Jetstream Sam has certain moral clarity to him that the other villains don’t. No dirty tricks, just two cyborgs battling each other sword to sword on the side of a desert road. This purity extends into his death, where we learn that he barely had any cyborg modifications at all, and was mostly just a really impressive guy (In the Japanese release of the game, all of the enemies bleed white blood, a callback to Metal Gear Solid 4. Sam is the one character who spouts red.). He also doesn’t have a visor pop over his eyes before the fight, which everyone else, including Raiden, does up until now. Obviously, these visors are meant to be blinders, and Sam is the one character who doesn’t need them. If I keep writing this paragraph any longer I will just start scream-singing his song so we’re done.

At last, we reach Senator Armstrong, the final boss of politics. The big meme man himself, who said “Make America Great Again” in one of his cutscenes long before Trump ever did. First things first, throw the Trump comparison out of the window, because Armstrong is a fundamentally different type of guy. The other thing I want to assert early on is that Armstrong makes two completely separate ideological arguments. The first, delivered from within his giant Metal Gear death machine, is that manufacturing a terrorist attack and dragging the United States into a new war will jumpstart the economy. He peppers this argument with more right-wing nationalist jingo than you can swing a sword at. But even he knows that he’s bullshitting, and it’s not about taxes. You have to remember that this game was developed in the wake of the Tea Party movement, in which the Republican party got taken over by its populist libertarian flank ostensibly obsessed with small government and lowering taxes, who were in practice using these as levers to oppose ever compromising with Democrats.

Raiden destroys Metal Gear EXCELSUS, and in doing so calls bullshit on Armstrong’s professed ideology, in the same way that Jetstream Sam called bullshit on Raiden at the start of the game. Armstrong is forced to fess up: he wants all of this money and social capital so he can burn down the faceless military-industrial complex and create a society where might makes right on a personal level and everyone fights and kills for what they believe in, where only the fit survive. It’s an eclectic mix of fascism, anarchism, populism, and the chaos routes of Shin Megami Tensei games. Perhaps the better comparison would be master morality in Nietzsche’s paradigm, positioning Raiden as a slave moralist.

Senator Armstrong’s world is the one of the ubermensch, the right-libertarianism to Raiden’s left-libertarianism. It’s batshit crazy, but he has the money and power and physical strength to back it up on a personal level. What memes does Raiden even have at this point, that he could use to fight back? Let’s recap:

“My sword is a tool of justice to protect the weak” was his base ideology, but he hardly even believes it himself anymore

“Killing feels good” from Monsoon

“Violence is only natural” from Sundowner

“The strong can only truly be disproven through combat” from Jetstream Sam

With these in particular bouncing around in his head, it’s no wonder why Raiden throws aside his own sword, dons Sam’s for the final fight, and uses it to impale a standing U.S. senator.

Armstrong is killed and the day is saved, but you have to remember that Raiden is a vessel for ideology. Much like Monsoon, Armstrong recognizes that putting Raiden through the wringer is all it takes to pass on his values. He seems almost gleeful as he dies, claiming that he is “leaving a worthy successor” in Raiden, as he has demonstrated his ability to oppose society and kill endlessly to fight for what he believes in, making him a prime example of Armstrong’s ideal world. Raiden crushes Armstrong’s heart and absorbs all the electrolytes, which seals this transfer of ideals. We see him one last time in a post-credits scene, where we get confirmation that Raiden is a lone wolf now, but not what he’s fighting for now. That’s up to the reader to decide, because we sure as hell aren’t getting a sequel to this game.

So that’s Metal Gear Rising. It’s a story of a gay little cyborg sovereign citizen who gives up on institutionalism after a series of grave injustices, and in doing so, opens himself up to the kind of people who will shift his politics from the left-wing fringes to the right. I’m not saying that horseshoe theory is real, but there is at least a one-way gradient for this kind of thing.

At least, this is my interpretation. You could also approach the game from a more series-focused perspective and argue that Armstrong is the latest in a line of idiots misinterpreting The Boss’s will. Sunny, Snake and Otacon’s adopted daughter, shows up in the final stretch of Revengeance, and you could point to her aerospace company as an example of how science will always be co-opted for war, and how she’ll be the fourth Emmerich to fall into this trap.

On the philosophy side, you could parse Metal Gear Rising as a series of dialectics, or actually read The Selfish Gene and go all-in on the memetic analysis. Or talk about how Raiden is literally thrown a trolley problem at the end of Chapter 2, or actually read The Stranger and go full absurdist on this game. The point is, you’ve got options.

But these are your essays to write, not mine. I’m looking forward to them, though! Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is quite the deep game for what it is. There’s a reason it’s stuck around in our collective memory for so long compared to other games of its era, and it’s not just because of the one-liners. Zandatsu literally translates to “cut and take”, and I think there’s a lot to take out of this game with every angle of dissection.  

[cinnamnt]

Thoughts on MGS4 graveyard scene and post credits scene?

well the snake graveyard scene was super cool at first, i think the cinematography with snake there by himself with the gun in his mouth had a lot of cool moments and frames… and not sure if by post credits you mean the first fakeout before the like 20 minute big boss graveyard cutscene or the post credit audio with otacon so ill give you both 🙏

the big boss graveyard scene was also very cool at first bc i was like WOAHHH BIG BOSS… (<-already knew exactly what was going to happen) but it definitely went on for too long like immediately after that LMFAO i did Not want another tell dont show monologue over a series of jpegs in the last like. ten minutes of the game and the way big boss took forever to die from FOXDIE was annoying as hell omfg he kept keeling over and dying only to come back and regurgitate the same spiel about how there shouldn’t be snakes in the world anymore

i did think the fact that he somehow just Had zero there with him in a wheelchair and made a whole big deal about turning off his life support was kind of hilarious though like what the hell was that

as for the post credits audio with snake and otacon DONT even talk to me about it. don’t even like. don’t

(i also have heard that bit a billion times before but it still hit crazy style getting to hear it for myself. for as much as people love to act like snake died immediately after mgs4 i think it’s really sweet that otacon was basically like Um me and sunny are your family so we’re coming with you Are You Stupid)

anyway that’s some of my thoughts for now my brain feels like a soup rn so i’ll probably share more another time but. yeah

PS i’ll be honest i didn’t think the longest cutscene in a video game ever felt all that long at least up until the big boss monologue i was really digging it (more than some other cutscenes in the game at least)

[socialdegenerate]

First time I played MGS4, I'd been going for over 12 hours straight and was almost seeing double by the time I hit Act 4, and literally the moment I crawled into shadow moses and got the memory of the call from Kaz right after getting hit with the best is yet to come I straight up burst into tears lmao

...anyway guess what happened this tiiiiiimeeeeeeee

[majjiktricks]

9 + Venom Snake

9. a missing scene that definitely happened

im SO upset we never get to see venom interacting with the main cast outside of cutscenes. not even a little rpg-style chat menu to talk to your guys… dragon age camp style wouldve been ideal........ theres NO WAY he didnt go to sickbay and visit kaz or quiet while they were in there.

especially when you rescue kaz, because theres absolutely no way there wasnt some kind of timeskip for him to get back into active command of motherbase. that guy was FUCKED UP. heavily wounded with likely-shoddily-dressed severed limbs, probably malnourished and dehydrated, not to mention traumatized and at least partially BLINDED. so there had to have been at least a week (because hes insane and wouldnt have let himself rest longer unless someone forced him to) where v and others were visiting him in the sickbay that the game doesnt show you.

i know thats a really mundane scenario and it kinda makes sense that it was omitted from the game for story and mechanics reasons (since kaz is in charge of mother base and it would be difficult to run without him). but if mgs4 can have those scenes on the nomad where everyones just sitting around getting caught up on mission objectives and hanging out, we couldve gotten even a tiny montage of hospital visits……..

or quiet when shes recovering from the chlorine burns!!!!!!! v is obviously invested in the well-being of his crew, quiet especially, and after the chlorine tank scene with the necklace where he PERSONALLY CARRIES HER TO THE MEDICAL STAFF, she just.. gets booted to sickbay menu and we never hear anything about it again. like. REALLY??? the med team or r&d team have to have treated her somehow even if she would barely let anyone touch her- hell i bet she WOULD let venom do it. she trusts him. he (subconsciously) knows what hes doing with first aid, and anything more complicated he could either be instructed on or convince her to relax just by being there....

it just... if ocelot can bring bb and venom flowers… why cant we bring flowers for kaz or quiet… peel an orange for them or SOMETHING 🥺