Comment on Games Where Nothing Happens (SPOILERS for various game plots)
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks agoNo its not MGS3.
MGS3 takes place in the 1960s, entirely in the real world, computers are not really generally a thing yet, the ending is a twist, but not a ‘it was all a dream and none of this really happened’ kind of twist.
MGS2 starts with virtual training, but … then the actual plot happens, in the real world.
There are also additional VR challenge levels… but they are clearly demarcated as such, they were designed with a scoring system so people could compete over high scores.
And also character development happens in the virtual world.
MGS games are like the perfect opposite of ‘nothing happens’, a whole fucking lot happens and it is so wild and intricate and absurd that if you wanted to understand the entire ‘plot’ of all of MGS, you’re looking at bare minimum a 4 hour lore video.
Also, there is apparently some confusion from a 20 year old Kojima quote about the Big Shell all being VR in MGS2.
So, for starters, if you take that very literally, well then its obviously been retconned, other games and characters treat it as if it did actually happen.
But, if you are a bit more expansive with your understanding of a ‘virtual reality’… well that means a world constructed by computers.
Not to spoil too much, but uh, some computers orchestrated the real world to cause much of Big Shell to play out the way it did.
Thus, in a sense, it is a virtual reality, sort of like how if you live in a digital information silo or hugbox of some kind… then you are also experiencing a virtual reality of a kind.
Quadrexium@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
To be honest I’ve only played MGS3. I thought you were playing as a clone of the boss, reliving the original’s life? It might have just been a theory video I watched. I do remember dying in one of the later boss fights and the fail screen rearranged itself to say “time paradox”.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Uh… oh god, time to attempt to correctly remember Metal Gear lore…
But before all that, broadly, no, in MGS 3 you are not a clone reliving the life of an original, ala some kind of Assassin’s Creed type mechanism, nor is there anything like ‘lol it was all a dream you were in a coma’.
In MGS 3 you are just a dude, a US spec ops dude… eventually many clones are made from ‘you’, Naked Snake/Big Boss, but no, ‘you’ are not a clone.
The ‘time paradox’ thing is something that happens in a lot of MGS games when you die… because the games did not come out in the same order the actual story line takes place in.
Sorta like how Episodes 1 2 3 of Star Wars came out after Episodes 4 5 6, but they are all prequels.
So if Anakin died in Episode 3, welp thats a time paradox because now 4 5 6 don’t have a Darth Vader anymore.
Chronological timeline of Metal Gear games:
… The two Metal Gear games, before the ‘Solid’ got added on, were 2D, top down/isometric, not 3D.
Solid = 3D or something, I don’t know, Kojima is a madman.
What you are describing sounds more like MGS5… but… yeah you’re going with some person’s theorycrafting, not the… actual things that happen.
MGS V spoilers
So, very broadly, in MGSV/5, you start the game in a coma. You are apparently Big Boss, from MGS 3, same character, roughly 20 years later. But… you actually aren’t Big Boss. You are literally a random medic who was part of Big Boss’s crew. Both of you were sent into comas by the same explosion roughly 9 years ago, both of you woke up at around the same time, and the real Big Boss was actually a guy fully wrapped in bandages, who helps you escape the hospital you wake up in in the first act or intro to the game. But uh, bandaged guy? Yeah, he is actually Big Boss, Naked Snake from MGS 3 (they are the same person). But, whilst comatose, you, the player character, actually had plastic surgery, to make you into his doppleganger… and basically this works, your prior memories are fucked, everyone from Big Boss’s outfit thinks you are Big Boss, and treats you as such, and you thus basically believe you are him, and thus act as… your conception of him / new identity dictates. But at the same time… you do still do all of the shit you do, basically everyone other than the bandaged guy… thinks you are Big Boss, so, you are, lol. Thus, its not a ‘it was all a dream’ fake out… its a … call it a meditation on the power of illusion/delusion, as well as the potential to become or do really anything, should you believe in yourself strongly enough. More mechanistically, this ‘solves’ a ‘plot hole’ in the MGS timeline, that of Big Boss being killed by Naked Snake (who is actually a clone, but again, does real things) before the time of MGS 4, which is set in the… 2030s I think? So, uh, nope, Naked Snake did not actually kill Big Boss, he killed MGSV/5’s not-actually-Big-Boss-but-everyone-thinks-he-is… and that is how the real Big Boss is able to be alive at the end of MGS4. … I did try to warn you how fucking bonkers MGS is lol. Do you get why the game’s secondary title is ‘Phantom Pain’, lol? Kojima loves to do this shit, double meanings, nested metaphors, etc. Yeah, you literally have ‘phantom pain’ because you lost a limb. But you are also literally a phantom, a fake, unreal but also real person, who has to just… live with that pain, because your whole team is counting on you. And also the real Big Boss more or less disappears into becoming another kind of phantom, to escape from his life as a super soldier… and he has to live with the pain of knowing what he did, to you, the player character, to allow that to work… both he and ‘you’ can never discuss any of this, with anyone.