#yes this is the mgs revengeance meme

[sheepbunmonster]

[vermutandherring]

No spoilers

It's funny that despite all my love for the game, I didn't have any inspiration to write a review. Because how can you put into words the feelings it causes? Yes, the gameplay is like an endless dance that flows and twists the player into its vortex. Yes, every second in this game is melodious like a song, cutscenes are apt like rhymes in poetry, and the outcome suffered in the battle with the last boss gives a feeling of exaltation. And although each work is a matter of taste and everyone sees something different in the game, it seems that the audience has finally matured to understand the genius of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.

It's a bit unfortunate that the game is mostly recognized by memes, which makes its perception superficial and not serious. On the other hand, a meme can only be understood with full context, which requires playing through the game. The context, in turn, gives a deeper understanding of the work. And therefore, even such popularity can attract new fans of the series. I also think that the example of this game shows how much the game industry has in common with high culture, not mass culture. Most games acquire their meaning over time, rather than gaining popularity as a phenomenon of consumer culture, quickly fading into obscurity. So in this review I will try to explain why MGRR will remain a classic for generations of gamers to come.

I'm happy that Metal Gear Rising was my first MG game. It does not require extensive knowledge of the history of the franchise. Therefore, discovering the character of Raiden and the meaningful content of the game, you want to get to know this universe more closely to understand its essence.

There is a perception that MGRR is not Hideo Kojima's canonical Metal Gear, so you won't be able to touch his genius in this game. In fact, it is not quite so. Although at some point the project was given to PlatinumGames, its initial idea and main character remained in the spirit of the good old Metal Gears, which is felt if not in the combat system, then certainly in the ideas, narratives and used means of artistic expression inherent to Kojima. In the game we have some elements of stealth, expressive cutscenes with unexpected angles, the philosophical basis of the plot and, of course, the codec - Kojima's greatest invention in video games, in his own opinion. It is interesting to observe how his principles continue their life in subsequent projects, changing and adapting to the needs of the time and the content of the games. Yoji Shinkawa, an integral part of the tandem, also contributed to the creation of the game. So if you look at it from a certain angle, MGRR is pretty much canonical Metal Gear.

Yep. I spent 20 mins of my life to find Kojima and Shinkawa in credits. They both are present.

One of the key features of MGRR, inherent in the MG series in general, is its ability to combine very different and, at first glance, absurd things. The game constantly balances between philosophy and satire, cringe and seriousness, kitsch and incredible aesthetics. This feeling is very similar to the first experience of getting to know anime. To a person out of context, individual episodes of anime can seem strange and wild, and a single series can make the entire industry seem like low-level geek culture. In short, this cultural phenomenon is shrouded in a lot of prejudices and stereotypes, which is caused by a different cultural context than yours (unless you are Japanese).

MGRR feels very Japanese, even though the setting of the game (like all the games in the series) has nothing to do with Japan. The very first mission resembles a traditional Japanese engraving, on an endless sheet of which heroes from ancient myths confront each other. I love finding parallels between games and art forms. Vampyr similar to a theater play, L.A. Noire is to the detective film, and Mafia is to the noir novel. And although I have repeatedly emphasized that Kojima brought video games closer to cinema through MG, I want to go deeper in the search for aesthetic parallels in Rising. This game resembles a mythological epic with its inherent trope about the hero's journey, the endless fight against evil and, of course, the worldview of a particular people, its philosophy.

In many mythologies, events take place in 'eternal' space and stretch endlessly in time. A dark force always appears to destroy the world, a light force always accepts its challenge. After all, the world is maintained thanks to their balance, the delicate balance of yin and yang, which should not be disturbed in any way. That is why evil exists. And that's why good always wins it. In general, most games with a plot, having a certain literary basis, use this pattern. But in MGRR, this principle seems to be embodied literally, only the actors are changed: robots and cyborgs take the place of deities and spirits. Powerful forces converge in a predestined battle, but we know its outcome in advance. Therefore, the most interesting part of this whole action remains the confrontation process itself. What is heard on earth when the titans are fighting in the sky? What does the Dragon say when he meets the Tiger?

Doan (Yamada Yorikiyo), Japanese. Tiger and Dragon, ink on paper, around 1560. The Minneapolis Institute of Art. Source: https://www.roningallery.com/artists/Kuniyoshi

'RULES OF NATURE'

The rules of nature are one of the key elements of the game. The problem of the main character's struggle with the natural state of things and their phenomena is embodied in many details and in the mythological background in particular. In primitive beliefs, people of all cultures addressed the forces of nature that they could not directly change, but that they could influence and interact with. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Raiden fights not with abstract thieves, but with destructive, unpredictable and dangerous natural phenomena. In the game, we have a group of Winds of Destruction - cold-blooded mercenaries who do dirty work. In the system of Japanese beliefs, in particular Shinto, spirits-deities called kami have a clearly defined good/bad characteristic. At the same time, they also have an opposite side to it. Therefore, people can interact with kami in different ways depending on their needs. Before his battles with the Winds, Raiden has moments of revelation with each of them, through which he discovers new truths. These conversations also show that if you judge the state of affairs from the point of view of the criminals themselves, their views also have a grain of rationality. They have come to choose their craft in a certain way, have their own beliefs and principles, and therefore it is difficult to call them unequivocally bad. Raiden himself is more like the Winds than he would like.

One of the most magical and, at the same time, one of the most dangerous and destructive forces of nature is embodied in the image of Raiden. In Japanese mythology, Raijin is the god of lightning. A variant of Raiden-sama's name can literally be translated as Mr. Lightening Bolt. But the most interesting thing is not that. According to the tradition of Japanese Buddhism, Raijin and his brother, the wind god Fujin, were originally evil demons who fought bitterly with the Buddha. As a result of the battle between the Buddha's heavenly army and the demons, Fujin and Raijin were captured, repented and now serve good as Buddha's guardian deities. To say how brilliantly accurate this tribute is - is to say nothing. Like Raijin, in the MG series, Jack went from a punishing dark force to a protective light force. At the same time, he does not depart from his original nature of destroyer and killer, but only directs energy in the right direction.

Folding screen depicting Raijin (left) and Fūjin (right). Tawaraya Sōtatsu, 17 century. Raiden-sama usually depicted as white demon, which also resonates with one of Jack's names - White Devil.

One could say that such a similarity between the fates of Raijin and Jack was only a coincidence. After all, this is where Joseph Campbell's theory of the monomyth, laid out in his 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, takes place. Campbell, researching the myths, fairy tales and legends of the peoples of the world, came to the conclusion that most of these stories rely on a common plot structure, which he called the monomyth. Since the modern literary tradition is drawn from the oldest literary forms, it still retains the most common and established models, albeit in modified forms. And therefore, the similarity of the paths of heroes in myths or literary works is only a consequence of an established tradition.

But Metal Gear wouldn't be Metal Gear if it weren't for its attention to details. As we know, in myths, things are rarely clear-cut. Raijin often fights with his brother Fujin. He is also depicted in the company of Raiju, a thunder beast or thunder demon that also acts as his animal totem, usually appearing in the form of a dog or wolf. Does this remind you of anyone? Another minor but interesting detail is that Raijin has a son, Raitaro, who is another deity of thunder.

Although Raiju is a companion of Raijin, it can act independently. During thunderstorms, Raiju descend from the sky, accompanying lightning to strike at trees and houses, causing disasters. Thus, Raiju attacks were also believed to be a form of divine punishment: those whose homes were struck by lightning were “suffering the wrath of the Raiju”.

The dystopian environment of MGRR tries to imitate the natural state of things and imitate nature itself not only at the expense of the mythological core. There are more direct allusions embedded directly in the design of robots and cyborgs. The most obvious is the already mentioned Blade Wolf, in which the prototype of the dog is easily guessed. Amphibians and insects, dinosaurs and birds, ungulates and predators inhabit the unexplored hostile spaces of MGRR. It is noteworthy that some of the mechs in the game are present in the MG series not for the first time. Even in previous games, you could find numerous modifications of Metal Gear RAY, Gekko or canine-like robots. The entire MG series in one way or another introduces allusions to the animal world into the design of the characters. On the one hand, this is a fairly obvious design approach. On the other hand, it adds more depth to the game's lore. The concept of human imitation of nature is a red thread through all Metal Gear, opening a kind of philosophical questions, and also conveys the idea of "naturalness" of those changes taking place in the alternate reality of the game.

Animal traits are evident in robots' behavior and appearance, such as design elements, mannerisms, sounds, etc. It would seem that this is enough to give the player information about what they are dealing with. But the designers give a deeper explanation of how these mechanisms work. They are endowed not only with the features of living beings. They have a similar 'body structure' and even blood likeness. From a practical point of view, most of these details do not make any sense.

From the perspective of game design, this is one of those elements that works on a subconscious level with the player's imagination. Blazing his way through enemy valleys, Raiden destroys more than just robots. They bleed, suffer and make shrill sounds like living animals. They seem to embody the next, albeit artificially created by man, stage of evolution. They are only a part of the usual state of things, where "wind blows, rain falls, and the strong prey upon the weak". Obviously Raiden is a predator in this story. Kill or be killed. At the same time, he is a victim. A victim of his own beliefs and memes, obeying them, he tries to change the natural order, to destroy long-established truths for the sake of the highest good. But, as we found out, good and evil will always exist side by side. Because as one little-known philosopher once said,

About memes, honor and war in the next part of the review~

Credits:

Japanese Tiger and Dragon. Minneapolis Institute of Art

2. RAIJU: The Thunder Beast Yokai

3. Gekko. Metal Gear Wiki

4. Raijin. Wikipedia

[sugarypixel]

Sam when Raiden first revealed his “Jack the Ripper” sona to him:

[ciircumserpent]

I don't know if this falls into the right category, and you can ignore it if you want, but can you talk about big boss and snakes relationship, like regarding snake entering foxhound. Bb obviously allowed it, gave him a name in reference to his old name, paid special attention to his training, then sent him out with the intention of using and killing him, then at the end claimed he had always respected him as a soldier and as a man. Is bb just bad at emotions or did things go wrong somewhere?

send me a topic to write a meta about my muse on.

i’m gonna answer all of these specific questions but first, background reading link dump! most of these are headcanons as opposed to meta, which means i’m going with one interpretation of the relationship, but once these are done i’ll talk about all the different ways you could read it, starting with canon facts and moving into analysis. links: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15. i’m gonna cut it off there because i’ve had this blog for close to two years and i’ve written a lot on this but yeah let’s do something thorough and fresh! also this is going to be really long because i want to hammer out everything we know, and some of it can get nitpicky.

let’s go over what we know about big boss and snake in canon, as fact. 

msx mg: in the original metal gear, snake is a rookie in foxhound, an elite black ops unit, and has been sent on his first mission to outer heaven with orders to, quote, ‘penetrate the enemy’s base, outer heaven, and destroy the ultimate weapon: metal gear.’ snake does just that, under direct guidance from big boss, whose orders grow more confusing and nonsensical the further you get into the compound. this game starter the ‘turn off the console’ meme, and that’s just one example of how crazy big boss is starting to sound. perhaps assuming that his commander isn’t all there, snake listens less and less to his advice and instead takes matters into his own hands, going so far as to ignore the order to cease and desist. upon destroying metal gear and rescuing kyle schneider, head of the outer heaven resistance, you discover that big boss has been in command of the compound all along, and then are confronted by him in the final boss fight. quote: ‘solid snake! you’ve finally arrived. yes, i’m big boss, general commandant of foxhound… and in charge of this fortress, outer heaven. i gave you instructions to bring back false information on metal gear. however, you went too far! you’ve completely smashed my ambitions. solid snake, i will not die alone. you’ll join me.’ you kill big boss and jet the fuck out of there before the building explodes, shaken but alive. quote from the updated edition: ‘this is solid snake… i destroyed metal gear. operation intrude n313 accomplished! everything is over… everything… i’m returning now. …over.’ the updated edition also has big boss swear revenge on snake for ruining his plans.

mg2ss: by the time snake returns in the sequel, he has left foxhound, but has agreed to come back to assist them with taking out the military nation zanzibar land, as he has made a career for himself assassinating dictators in countries much like this. campbell, previously unmentioned but retconned into foxhound’s command, guides you through the mission. almost immediately, we have a mention of big boss: ‘he did…? you mean…’ ‘snake, you’ll understand soon… what a wonderful man he is…’ then, ‘the one-eyed man told us to tell him if we saw a man wearing green clothes.’ ‘s… snake… snake… he’ll never let you get away.’ when confronting gray fox, he already knows that big boss is in command of zanzibar. fox says that his situation is more complicated than snake’s, as big boss is more than a commander to him, and snake doesn’t react to this. this is followed by campbell saying, ‘snake! big boss is no longer your co! he’s just another madman! got that? put aside your personal feelings. stay focused! you can’t afford to lose this battle! there’s nothing more we can do for you,’ followed by kaz’s now-famous, ‘snake, that guy is a monster.’ big boss greets snake with the following: ‘snake… welcome to zanzibar land… i knew you’d come back to me.’ they have a pretty intimate conversation about ptsd, war, and their place in society. snake sets big boss on fire. big boss dies screaming his name. snake legs it a second time, then ducks out of the debriefing as soon as holly and campbell turn their backs. alaska time.

mgs1: snake gets dragged out of bed at like one in the morning for more bullshit. our first reference to big boss comes right in the prologue, with naomi and campbell briefing snake on the situation. ‘i hear the terrorists are calling themselves the sons of big boss.’ snake seems bemused. this game in general is more about liquid and snakes’ relationship and snake’s journey to coping with his trauma, but we do get one of the more important pieces of the bb & solid puzzle in this conversation, which i’m just going to link. people have pointed out that campbell’s line ‘it happened in zanzibar’ doesn’t necessarily mean that big boss and snake discussed their relationship during the events of mg2, as we don’t see it in canon. what we do know for certain is that big boss himself addressed it and told snake that he was his son, not his clone. snake also claims that big boss ‘wanted’ snake to kill him, but we don’t know if that’s true, or if that’s snake’s interpretation of the situation. liquid, of course, spends most of the game yelling at snake about taking the opportunity to kill big boss from him, while snake seems irked by the idea. wolf mistakes snake for big boss briefly, but snake lets it slide. snake also reads liquid’s obsession with big boss as ‘some warped kind of love’, and reaffirms his anti-war views.

mgs2: snake takes more of a back seat in this game, but we do get some good nuggets about his relationship with big boss, particularly when ocelot notes that raiden and solidus’ relationship directly parallels snake’s relationship with big boss. that’s big in clueing us into how they interacted. we also see snake lose his cool when solidus attempts to imitate big boss in front of him, demanding that he stop and trying to shoot him off of the walkway.

mgs4: this is maybe the most important game detailing their relationship after mg2, because it includes a lot of updates and retcons post-snake eater. big boss volunteering his dna for a government project is changed to zero stealing it and big boss leaving the patriots in protest, so snake is no longer an intentional baby. eva discusses her relationship with big boss with snake pretty openly, and says that, despite the fact that big boss never wanted him, he did care enough to give snake a name that he directly associated with the mission that changed his life, and with the boss. we also learn that he trained snake personally during their time in foxhound and shared cqc with him, a technique used exclusively by big boss and his disciples, such as ocelot – the majority of modern soldiers don’t know how to use cqc properly, as it never became a common military practice ( in metal gear’s world ). this throws the pre-metal gear timeline into confusion, as we know that big boss and the boss took years to develop and perfect cqc, and it was not something that someone could pick up on easily. it’s also notable that, while ocelot is the boss’s son and would therefore have some right to learning cqc, big boss doesn’t really share it with anybody else but snake, teaching a watered-down version to the soldiers in peace walker. then we have the epilogue, which presents the contradiction that this ask hinges on: big boss claims that he always respected snake, but that he never saw him as a son… minutes after addressing him as such and making an attempt at comforting him. he spends his final moments doing his best to reconcile with snake, and snake appears to forgive him for what happened.

peace walker / mgsv: grouping these two together because there isn’t much, but peace walker shows us that big boss stays in contact with eva ( snake’s mother ) after the cloning incident, and mgsv has the real big boss ordering ocelot to treat whichever clone he finds as ‘just another person’.

semi-canon material: we do get some extra tidbits from secondary games and the comics. in ‘ghost babel’, snake says that he was ‘in hell’ and ‘couldn’t forgive’ himself after killing big boss. in the mgs1 comic, psycho mantis attempts to torture snake by convincing him that he’s on fire. in the mgs1 novel, snake has a hallucinatory conversation with big boss where he reacts very strongly to the idea that he could be in danger and goes so far as to actually spill information about the mission, though it ( luckily ) doesn’t get mantis or liquid anywhere. in the mgs2 comic, snake and solidus also have a brief exchange about their father, but snake seems disinterested and detached.

OKAY NOW WE CAN GET INTO ACTUAL ANALYSIS.

firstly, it’s important to note that so much of this is from snake’s perspective, and we hardly get any concrete information about big boss’s perception of snake, so we’re working backwards on this to figure out what he wanted. 

before we go any further, let me address what i believe is the most important part of this discussion, and that’s whether or not you think big boss told snake he was his father before or after outer heaven. there is no right answer; as stated above, campbell’s ‘you had no way of knowing’ does not relate directly to big boss talking to snake, and the metal gear wiki – which tends to be extremely impartial and canon-compliant – doesn’t place the Big Reveal in metal gear 2, but rather says that ‘at some point’ snake and big boss had a talk about it. another hint for this comes in the metal gear solid handbook, which recaps both mg and mg2 and includes a semi-novelized version of big boss and snakes’ fight, and does not mention this conversation despite it being post-‘retcon’, so even the game that establishes big boss as snake’s father doesn’t say with any certainty that this went down in zanzibar. so it’s entirely up to you whether you want to believe that big boss told snake before outer heaven – maybe because he was catching feelings, maybe because he wanted the sort of absolute loyalty that he hoped would come from a familial connection – or during zanzibar in an attempt to shock snake out of killing him. and that lies more in the realm of how you decide to characterize big boss. i personally believe that he told him in foxhound because of the mgs1 guide’s pointed silence on the matter, but again, there’s no right answer. it’s just going to heavily influence how you read the relationship.

starting with the original game, we now know that it was venom snake commanding outer heaven, but it’s more than likely that it was the real big boss on the radio. not only does he joke with snake ( ‘a cardboard box? are you moving house or something?’; ‘a uniform… like a high school girl’s uniform? ), suggesting some sort of shared background that venom wouldn’t have, but he’s the one who sent snake on the mission from foxhound. it would be weird if he said he was going to be directing snake and then… didn’t do that… like somebody would probably notice. so we can take their radio dialogue as canon interactions. but while some of them are cute ( thanks konami ) they mostly tend to be big boss trying to trip snake up, so he’s clearly underestimating snake, but that’s pretty par for the course with big boss in general? he tends to be shortsighted when it comes to the ‘i’m the greatest soldier in the world’ thing by mgsv and doesn’t think that anybody can hold a candle to him ( or like… a lighter ). it’s also a misconception that big boss never told snake to destroy metal gear and that was all snake’s doing. in both the original game and the updated version, big boss very straightforwardly tells snake to go find and blow up metal gear – it was his intention to mislead snake and get him to bring back false information, but he never conveyed that to snake. as far as snake knew, he was doing what he was supposed to do and got overzealous and didn’t stop when big boss said to. big boss also didn’t go straight for impaling snake on spike traps; that was his last resort. honestly, his first attempt at stopping snake was just to send him back to the beginning and be like, ‘oh well as long as you’re here maybe you should just come home.’ and then snake, eager beaver that he was, responded with the classic, ‘I SEE YOU TRYING TO TEST MY DEDICATION TO THE MISSION BUT LET ME BE VERY CLEAR I AM NOT COMING BACK UNTIL I FINISH EVERY ITEM ON YOUR LIST BOSS HAHA YOU ALMOST GOT ME.’ and then Tragedy Struck.

but of course once he realized that snake wasn’t backing down he shifted straight to trying to kill him so let’s be clear in that snake never mattered more to big boss than outer heaven. i mean, neither did anybody else for that matter – cast in point, kaz. that would be the ‘bad at emotions’ component of his character: big boss can like people and even love people, but hits a snag in that he doesn’t always see others as anything but an extension of himself, and doesn’t judge them outside of how they relate to him and his wants / needs. he does this with the boss, he does this with eva, he does this with kaz, he does this with venom, and he does this with snake. it’s a recurring issue for him and yes, it’s an emotional problem. i don’t think he’s sitting back cackling and rubbing his hands together getting ready to screw over the people closest to him whenever he gets the chance. it’s more that, given the choice between them and his dream, he will always choose himself. he might even feel bad about it, but it won’t stop him from doing it. i will never claim that big boss Just Woved Snake So Much that he would have been fine with outer heaven blowing up, because that’s not what their relationship was no matter how you examine it, but the fact that he tried to murder him doesn’t mean he didn’t like snake at all, it just means that he was being big boss.

speaking of being fine with outer heaven blowing up let’s move on to zanzibar. i think a roadblock to understanding big boss’s character is believing that he wanted what kaz wanted: a stable, physical ‘outer heaven’ that would last forever. i don’t know if he ever thought it out – that’s open to interpretation – but big boss’s outer heaven was and always has been an idea instead of a country. yes, he acquired land and started building bases, but the fact that these compounds were destroyed wasn’t actually a setback for him, and he explains why in mg2: ‘start a war, fan its flames, create victims… then save them, train them… and feed them back onto the battlefield.’ not only is this some insidious shit, but it encompasses all of big boss’s plans for outer heaven. if the country gets settled, great! but eventually it will get blown up, and that’s not a problem, because that’s going to create survivors and victims and a desire for revenge, which he can then take advantage of to start another war… and another war… and another war. in big boss’s eyes, he and snake are both examples of these ‘victims’, and it looks like he’s finally come around to the fact that snake is a lot like himself, because he’s ready to manipulate those feelings of being misunderstood and used to convince snake that his solution is the best and only solution to his problem.

his attempts to sway snake are a far cry from him swearing revenge after outer heaven. honestly i think he just got over it and realized that it is so much better to have snake on his side than to let him run amuck ruining his plans all the time. and we touch upon the moriarty and sherlock aspect of their relationship here, which i love. big boss says to snake’s face that he’s giving snake a reason to live, and he’s kind of right! what does snake do for a living? he fights dictators. what makes snake feel really alive? participating in war and being close to death, and what thrill can compare to fighting metal gear, his first and most definitive trauma? big boss is correct in that he’s giving snake exactly what he wants, and snake knows it. they’re batman and joker, you can’t have one without the other, so even if they genuinely dislike each other for getting in the way, they also know that they need each other. snake needs someone to fight, and big boss needs a soldier that powerful and headstrong to face off against and would not be opposed to having that soldier around all the time.

this might be where big boss really starts to like snake. before, snake was pretty good; he was an interesting enough warrior to be worthy of private cqc training and his codename. but now he has someone like kaz who’s also willing to say ‘no’ to him, and that’s special! very few people have it in them to deny big boss. he’s extremely persuasive and he knows it, but snake wasn’t going to lie down and die for him, and that’s something that he simultaneously finds intoxicating and also is going to have to overcome if he wants things to go well for him. maybe he wanted the relationship he had with kaz in peace walker, where they settle for being partners and the power dynamic is confusing but they actually do like each other. we know that, despite all his efforts, kaz ended up being the one to get screwed over by that and got a little too attached, so perhaps big boss thought he could pull that off a second time. acknowledge his prowess, fluff him up, flatter him by allowing him to get closer than anybody else, and catch him in that sweet stockholm syndrome net. but he is not peace walker kaz, he is solid snake, apprentice of master miller, who knows damn well what big boss is about and wastes no time in hopping on the radio and being like, ‘that’s bullfuckery.’ and snake declares, ‘that is bullfuckery,’ and lights big boss on fire.

 but even before, he gives snake his name. he gives him his time and attention. he doesn’t immediately try to kill him. and he forgives him enough after outer heaven to want him back. he is lowkey stalking snake through zanzibar, and i’ve talked about how mgs3 was based heavily off of mg2 and how that translates into canon as snake’s mission being based off of operation snake eater. he’s clearly attached to snake somehow, but in the only way that he knows how to be attached to someone, which is to try to convince them to become as much like him as possible. any love he has for snake probably stems from the fact that he grows to see snake as an extension of himself. at the same time, he might be refreshed by the fact that snake is naturally similar to him while doing his own thing. he isn’t like liquid ( who is constantly trying to one-up big boss ) or solidus ( who is constantly trying to be big boss ); snake meets big boss on his own terms, trains with big boss on his own terms, loves big boss on his own terms. any attempts to be more like his mentor are coming from a natural progression of growing close to him and not from the idea that because he’s a clone he has to be just like the original. and i think that might be why big boss never tells him, because here is someone who adores him and wants to learn from him but has no intention of ever taking his place, which big boss would clearly see as a threat if it wasn’t on his own terms ( re: liquid and solidus ). snake has organically filled the role of big boss’s son, so he’s not going to trigger that same gag reflex. and while big boss would never spare him if it meant the end of his dreams, he did grow to want snake. he chose to give him everything. he chose to ask him to come and fight by his side.

so i’m not even touching upon the power dynamic and the abuse aspect, which have their place. i’m saying that, based off of what we know in canon from both sides, big boss was fond of snake, and snake loved big boss, and when you examine snake’s character for the rest of the series, you can tell that big boss played a role in raising him and that this impacted him for the rest of his life.