Metal Gear, Kojima's Stealth Legend in 8-Bit!

With this powerful and memorable opening line, Solid Snake, a few years ago, kicked off that masterpiece of writing called Guns of the Patriots, the fourth “official” installment of the new era dedicated to the saga of the Foxhound agent most famous of all time. 

Kojima has always gone hand in hand with arcade games (just read his résumé), and the stealth interpretation of Metal Gear is impeccable: the mission of the “solid snake” will begin right at Outer Heaven, one of the most important places in the saga, mentioned in practically every chapter and operational base of Big Boss, the villain who over the years has undergone a very heavy retcon operation and who in fact constitutes not only Solid’s nemesis, but his distorted reflection. Infiltrating the fortress and being careful not to get discovered by the enemies (direct confrontation is always the last option and very often will not lead to success), Snake will meet a prized prisoner, Gray Fox, who, a few years later, will become an icon of style and lethal refinement in his cyber ninja suit. His final monologue from Metal Gear Solid for PlayStation still echoes in my mind; the chills it leaves on the skin are something that cannot be described in words.

E then we’ll have to deal with it, the Metal Gear, the code name of a tank capable of launching nuclear warheads from any kind of terrain: every title in the saga presents its own version of the self-propelled war machine, often more like an Evangelion-style mecha than a true instrument of death from modern, “realistic” warfare. The Metal Gear is more than anything a symbol, a very powerful one: with its imposing and relentless presence, it represents the bogeyman of the new millennium’s warfare (especially in this game, where in fact you do not face it directly), as opposed to characters of Snake and Gray Fox’s caliber, flesh-and-blood remnants of a world vanished in the folds of the arms race, where honor and toil, sweat and blood spilled in close combat are nothing more than an echo destined to die. 

First official mission of Solid Snake in this title, which despite its horrendous translation flaws and a sort of questionable gameplay choices, remains a milestone for the eight-bit generation: an engaging soundtrack, graphics that push the NES’s limited color resources to the limit of what is possible, and the constant feeling of casting a glance back at the past to the origins of Konami’s greatest hero.

It may seem overly didactic, but I would like to reserve a final thought for the opening line: it is true, perhaps war never changes, but I believe the secret still lies in change, and that it is we who should change. This is the most important lesson that Hideo Kojima conveys to us, through the splendid, profound, and often devastating narrative arcs of his characters.