Legend of The Snake Eater. How Metal Gear Solid 3 pushed the…
By: Abdullah Farooqui
Tags: Art, Writing, Features, Fiction, Gaming

Legend of The Snake Eater

How Metal Gear Solid 3 pushed the creative boundaries of video games

Snake Eater was the first Metal Gear game I ever played. I didn’t expect much from what I had thought was an old third-person shooter. Kojima Productions proved me wrong. What I found was a deeply complex and captivating experience that stunned me with its story and characters. I became immediately hooked on the Metal Gear Solid series from then on. MGS3 is a beautifully-crafted game that skews the secret agent clichés to leave you with something wholly unique and entirely unforgettable.

You are Naked Snake. He is a pivotal character in the overall franchise, influencing many of the future events in the series. But instead of sneaking through futuristic laboratories to destroy robots and mechs, you instead travel through a Russian rainforest. You’re hunting down a nuclear-equipped tank called that Shagohod. The fact that MGS3 is set decades into the past frees it, to some extent, from shackles that may otherwise constrain the events here. This story feels fresh and independent from the baggage it may otherwise have inherited from games set later in the chronology. And although you could argue that MGS as a series has always featured an element of camp, MGS3 takes this to a high art form.

This camp factor actually acts to preserve the MGS3 experience in a way that other forms of entertainment set in the 1960s don’t always achieve. Camp productions that take themselves too seriously can end up being laughable and stale decades into the future. But MGS3 contains an earnestness that makes it difficult to mock. It also helps that the entire franchise has always had a degree of camp; MGS3 seems a little more self-aware, in a way that feels like a celebration rather than awkward self-consciousness. Camp style makes you laugh at the artificiality of art.

Of course, one of the key ironies here is that there are no rainforests in Russia. The lush forests, caves, and secret bases hidden in the deep jungle are impossibilities to begin with. This one simple-yet-obvious disconnection between fantasy and reality plays an important role in establishing a heightened reality — this is clearly a fictional world with its own rules in play. There are points where the story makes contact with real-world events (like The Cold War, for example). People who played actual roles in major conflicts (like code talkers) are present here, but then you’ll come across enemies with utterly fantastic powers, like wielding lighting or controlling swarms of bees.

The use of camp in MGS3 isn’t particularly for humor (although there are plenty of jokes peppered throughout), but rather, it is used as a strategy to disarm you for the hard-hitting emotional moments. The camp style here acts to establish a carefree — almost cartoon-like — atmosphere that is then deliberately subverted. But this atmosphere is also something of a helpful crutch, too, because it papers over elements that may otherwise be cringey if the game had taken a more self-serious approach. What we’re left with is something of a rollercoaster ride that simultaneously deals with highly-impactful concepts (like nuclear war, the nature of patriotism, and the philosophy of a soldier) and utterly ridiculous, hyper-real departures from reality (like the aforementioned lightning-wielder and bee…shooter).

MGS3’s gameplay is a fascinating lesson in game design. The environments are not particularly large (this is nothing like Metal Gear Solid V’s open-world setting). But what the world lacks in overall size it makes up for in density. There are so many different ways you can approach each challenge, which has the added benefit of making the game highly replayable as well. These options aren’t just there for the sake of it, either; they are all genuine strategies that provide space for multiple personal preferences and styles.

I remember feeling especially connected to the humble cardboard box. I’d try approaching many challenges using it, just seeing what kind of crazy things I could set up while disguised as a box in the middle of the jungle or a weapons facility. But there are so many more options here. In what other game can you capture a snake, give it a name, then throw it at a guard? It’s a totally legit tactic! And there are many, many more. A big part of the fun here is simply experimenting with different approaches. MGS3 actively encourages this, and tends to reward players who push the boundaries.

The stamina meter provides a light survival element, too, and it incentivizes the player to explore the jungle — to travel beyond the beaten path and beyond the immediate objective. Animals can act as weapons (like in the snake example above), but they provide numerous other uses — for example, you can throw food at guards or dogs to distract them from their patrols.

There is also a whole layer of customization here via the camo system. You can choose which camo you want to wear at any given time; this includes all sorts of outfits like tuxedos, lab coats, or even nothing. You’ll find these garments out in the field as you explore, along with different weapons. But items aren’t just found sitting on the ground. You can hold up guards at gunpoint and nab items from them, or even interrogate them. I found myself wanting to hold up every guard in an area to reveal every nearby secret.

You never quite get to the point where you have everything and there is nothing else to discover or seek out. This is because various items either wear out or are used up (suppressors wear out over time, and you’ll run through ammunition). Using tools like radars and microphones drain your battery and any item used is taken out of your inventory. I wish the same principle applied in Metal Gear Solid V, where you can simply call in a supply drop whenever you run out of something. The limitations placed on resources in MGS3 force improvisation and continual exploration.

Enemies — especially bosses — in MGS3 are really interesting. The build up to each boss encounter is gradual. You’ll also find that you aren’t immediately thrown into another action set piece after a boss battle. Instead, MGS3 wisely gives you a cool down space to digest the situation. Bosses, like everything else in the game, require clever use of learned skills to defeat. And like everything else in the game, they can be tackled in numerous ways. I made it a point to always save my RPG ammo to use on the next boss, which proved challenging at times.

Perhaps the most memorable boss in the entire game is The End. He’s an ancient sniper who you have to hunt through the forest to defeat. This encounter is a great example of one that has many different possible solutions. In fact, you can actually avoid the fight entirely. If you save your game mid-battle and then wait a week before returning, you’ll find that The End has actually died of old age.

The characters in MGS3 are memorable and fascinating. Despite the story’s outlandish trappings, the relationships between characters are fairly believable. Ocelot, for instance, is an energetic young soldier who has a sort of friendly rivalry with Snake. Then there’s Eva, who seduces Snake, surfacing his more vulnerable side. Boss is a mentor to Snake and one of the most interesting and complex villains in video game history. She’s a wild card, too, and a character that expresses both deep love and nurture as well as being a fierce threat. Volgin — the purely evil Russian nationalist — is one of the more stereotypical characters, but he’s also one of the more outlandish figures who contributes to the game’s heightened reality and surrealism.

I’d argue that the music in MGS3 is often overlooked in favor of the rich story and gameplay. But it’s entirely fitting, and superbly well-produced. The music director, Norihiko Hibino, joked about leaving the series if the next game didn’t have a forest theme, as he wanted to create pieces for that setting. The caution theme is my favorite example of Hibino’s creative genius when it comes to MGS3.

There’s so much going on here. The flutes represent the jungle setting and the upbeat drums and trumpets hint at a military backdrop. There are also violin plucking sounds, which evoke memories of cartoon characters sneaking around and causing all sorts of trouble. There are also references to the ’60s Mission Impossible here, for good measure.

If you’re new to the Metal Gear franchise, I definitely recommend MGS3. Even now, it’s incredibly enjoyable. The setting, tone, and style of the game all dovetail beautifully. And they set you up for a truly bombshell ending. It’s an ending that kicks off a chain of events that ultimately leads to Naked Snake becoming the main villain of the series later in the timeline.

In fact, the ending hit me hard even though this was my first Metal Gear. But now that I’ve played the other games in the series, I appreciate it even more. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is one of the best — and most impactful — games I’ve ever played. It’s well worth checking out for the first time, or revisiting if you haven’t played it for a while.