Metal Gear and Me.

I need scissors! 61!

How have I gone this long without writing anything dedicated to my favourite franchise of all time? It's ludicrous when you think about it, that I've only ever mentioned it in passing; somehow resisting the urge to submit my blog to my full nerdy wrath. All this time you thought I was using 100% of my power level, but this wasn't even my final form! Enough posturing. Let me introduce you all to my favourite topic of all time; Metal Gear Solid. Yeah, I know. Not the biggest surprise in the world. "You mention it enough." But trust me when I tell you that I cannot understate the impact that Metal Gear Solid has had on my life.

Back when I was still in secondary school, I was one of those students that one might describe as 'directionless'. Not really brilliant at anything and not really terrible at anything. Our School even established this 'set' system during my second year wherein the smartest kids got put in top set and everyone else was relegated accordingly. I was second set. In everything. Except sport, but that's because we used P.E. as a 'Watch TV whilst on exercise bikes' period. Apart from that, I was your quintessential, middle-of-the-road teenager. Would it be terribly eye rolling for me to then tell you that everything changed because of a Video Game? That wouldn't be entirely accurate anyway. But I will say that discovering Metal Gear Solid was a very formative point in my life.

One day my father came home with a PS2 and a whole box worth of a games. This was a gift from a workmate of his who needed to get rid off all these games as they were moving. I received the box as a hand-me-down and let me tell you, I was in heaven. All of a sudden I had more game than I could ever play with all the time in the world. But I sure as heck was going to try. My parents immediately banned me from a few of the titles I was more interested in: 'Grand Theft Auto: Vice City' and 'San Andreas' namely, due to their 18 rating, but I had free reign of everything else. And of course, at the bottom of the box I would find a little game called 'Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater'. Instantly I was repulsed. I can't say why. Was it the odd cover art? (Which I now adore.) Or maybe the weird name? For whatever reason I wasn't interested and Metal Gear was relegated to the bottom of my to-play list.

Months later and I had managed to sneak a game or two of the GTA titles, found a whole new genre I liked in 'Army Men RTS' and blown through dozens of bargain bin games that aren't even worth the brain space to remember. I had found so much to love in my little game collection, to the extent where that I never wanted to be apart from them. I would read the manuals (Back when those were still a thing.) and dream about the things I would do when I could play those games. Okay, it sounds a little sick when I put it like that, but I was just a kid in love with gaming, cut me some slack! Reading manuals was a must-do for young gamers at the time, it was the way that we got up to date with everything we could expect from our new games. We could learn the controls, read about the story and get a heads-up on some of more obscure mechanics. I loved the material too. I never shied away from reading, don't get me wrong, but reading something written about a topic you care immensely about was the height of ecstasy for me. However, there is only so many times that you can read Fallout 3's manual before you know every page. Some games didn't even have decent manual. Just a quick list of controls and then straight on to the boring legal pages. So I found myself combing through the back catalogues of games I already owned, games I'd played then forgotten and finally, games I never played at all.

Imagine my surprise when I picked up the booklet for Metal Gear Solid 3. And it was a booklet. A huge, chunky manual that looked like it barely fit in the game case. My first thought must have been something along the lines of 'Just what have I been missing?'. Those next few days I studied that manual like an archeologist pouring over ancient religious texts. It was beautiful. Full to the brim with illustrations, lore, innovative mechanics and item descriptions. Oh, so many item descriptions! I was amazed at the level of detail this manual claimed that one game could hold. A full medical healing system that required players to treat wounds methodically and individually; an in depth culinary system that had players hunting wildlife for sustenance and growing fond of particular food the more you were subjected to them; and a real-time camouflage system that tasked players with matching their environment with their battledress in order to remain stealthy. This game appeared to be more feature complete than anything I had ever played before. And I had the audacity to pass it up when I first saw it! Needless to say once I was finished, I sought to rectify that as soon as possible.

'Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater' was a gaming experience unlike any I had ever played before. This isn't the right blog to go into specifics, but I'll just say that I was blown away by a video game experience that felt more cinematic than most of the movies of the time. I still maintain the MGS 3 is the greatest James Bond game ever made, and it doesn't even have James Bond in it. What astounded me was the way the game defied my every expectation of what a game could be. It was structured and chaotic, serious and funny, a game and a movie. For the first time I got a glimpse into the flexibility of story telling. Here was a game director who loves movies, Hideo Kojima, creating a game that captures the essence of movies without losing the spirit of a game. Of course, it all came down to execution. Every line, every shot and every scene was envisioned through a film directors mind and it played out on the screen. I fell in love, for the first time, with Metal Gear Solid.

Since then I went on to really become enraptured in the world of storytelling. I took my English classes with renewed passion, eager that one day I may get to tell a story as epic and effecting as Kojima did. I re-read a lot of the classics that the curriculum forces upon us, but this time I understood what I was reading. I could still get lost in the worlds, but I could do so knowing the author's intent as well. This was also the point in my life that I became able to actually read Shakespeare without a teacher alongside translating every sentence. Of course that's more a side effect of me applying myself but I still owe it to Metal Gear at the end of the day. The course of my education and interests shifted because I came across that one work that opened my eyes to the concept of opening my eyes. So perhaps it is eye-rolling to claim that a Video Game changed my life, but perhaps it is accurate too.

I remember watching a panel that featured two fantastic authors in a room full of fans: Stephen King and George R.R. Martin. (Still excited about Elden Ring, by the by.) At one point George said something that really stuck with me. Something to the tune of "You know when a kid has really found his passion because you don't need to tell him to practise. Because for him it isn't practise." That seems to sum up my feelings towards writing in a nutshell. Why else do you think I started up this gaming blog? Why do you think that, despite promising to update this blog weekly, I've updated it daily since it's inception for a month? I cannot relax properly throughout the day unless I've uploaded something here, or amended a draft of something there, or researched this for an article. Metal Gear helped instill a love for crafting a narrative that I can only satiate with the act of writing.

Never was it about telling someone else's story, I always wanted to tell my own. I wanted to craft a moment as heart wrenching as the point when The Boss reaches out to Snake to share her life story, thinking him to be the only one who would recognize her. I wanted to make a scene as exciting as when Eva and Snake race through Groznyj Grad on their bike whilst being chased by the hulking Shagohod. I wanted to be the one behind the emotional gut punch like the Revelation of the Boss' true mission in the graveyard before the credits. I wanted to be the architect who bought it all together. That's likely the reason that I never settled into acting. I wanted to reach the core of the character in the same way that Kojima did, through a crazy, beautiful, masterfully crafted story

You are probably unsurprised to hear that since then I have played almost all of the Metal Gear franchise. 1,2, Solid 1,Solid 2, Solid 3, Solid 5, Ground Zeroes, Revengence and Peacewalker. (I avoided survive for obvious reasons.) Although nothing has ever made me feel the way that 3 did and still does, all of them has made a noticeable mark on me as a person. Everything that evolves from my passion for writing here-on-out stems back to those games. And that, in a nutshell, is why I love Metal Gear Solid. So that one day I may grow talented enough to make and release my very own Snake Eater.