Life can have quite the cruel sense of humor, in that sometimes, in order to get things just right, you must first experience things going very wrong.

Progress is rarely linear…

Yesterday, I more or less explicated about some personal history I had with the Metal Gear Solid (MGS) series, in attempting to frame both the relative importance it has represented in my own experience, as well as helping to frame the irony around the idea that I’ve done very little in the way of writing about the games over a span of many years. I also briefly touched upon the idea of what the MGS series had meant to the gaming industry at large, and the effect it had on the idea of “how games are viewed”, which sounds like a topic that has some serious legs in terms of revisiting at a later date, for the next inevitable retrospective I find myself perversely entangled with.

Anyone who is familiar with my writing or this site, knows I’m usually only a single moment away from finding an appropriate reason to tie philosophy into my analysis, and today is certainly not the day I change my ways. With that in mind, and looking at the basic structure of Snake Eater (or Delta as the case may be, as Delta is essentially an incredibly faithful remake of the source material, so they are nearly interchangeable mechanically speaking in most regards), and you see a classic example of the “Hegellian Pendulum” finally at rest in the center of two apex points of one massive swing of design methodology, and this is where MGS3’s inherent quality springs from.

To take a moment to clarify for those minorly confused and or massively curious about what exactly all of that means, I am speaking about the tl;dr version of a theory from an old philosopher named Hegel, involving his perspective on how the “world spirit” functions, but reapproriating it for game design. In a severely reductionist retelling of this pendulum based theory, Hegel dictates that society usually develops in the extremes, much like a pendulum would swing, in going from one extreme to the other, very much in response to a previous epoch in time. So, where a society may first perhaps be too conservative, the pendulum eventually swings, and thusly, we see an era of severe liberalism as a response. The idea being while these shifts of extremity happen regularly and inevitably, the march of time and progress will eventually lead to further progress, in the eventual “stasis point”, or resting place for the pendulum in the middle, after a tug of war, back and forth, with society at large finally coming to a more balanced place of rest.

Taking this theory and applying it to game releases and design prospects, it’s quite easy to see (at least viewed through this lens and my perspective on the matter, this is what we see with Snake Eater (Delta), as the metaphysical makeup of what helps to solidify the strong design ethics of Delta overall, comes from the informed place of the experience involved with the pendulum swings apex points of metaphoric extreme that represented the ideas behind MGS1 and MGS2. Where as MGS1 was a much safer, arguably more traditional approach to design and story, with many narrative elements being both in line with more standard action move fare, and even some elements borrowed from the original Metal Gear games, and the stealth being mostly on a more straight forward, even playing field of sorts, you saw MGS2 go way over the top, with both a post-modern story dealing with wild metanarratives of the hyperreal, simulation, and societal simulacrums, along side stealth that had a lot more verticality, traversal mechanisms….there was a lot going on. I think both games were synthesized together, in helping to bring into focus what worked with best in either, foregoing what didn’t quite vibe, and how these two disciplines were then blended together, and thusly created the center stage to make Snake Eater (Delta) the ideal of both. In some ways, you could say the “Kojima Ratios” were just right with MGS3….where as MGS1 was only a little Kojima-ey, and MGS2 was way too Kojima-ey, MGS3 found that ideal balance of Kojima-ey, and was therefore, just the right amount of Kojima flair without being too overbearing.

And for all of you following me on this posit, in my current explanation, and getting what I’m throwing down: thank you for being with it enough to kind of “get it” with such vague and yet distinct distillment of the metaphysical qualities of the MGS series in general. Some qualities involving the “spirit” of an entity or entities, in terms of digging to the heart of the matter, don’t necessarily need a massively complicated amount of deep dive analysis and strenuous amount of word play to essentially help reveal itself, and then share that truth with others, but it does take a certain willingness of imagination in order to “fill in the blanks” of reason by reading between the lines of such curious lingualism in regards to the metaphysical breakdown, as it were.

I think, all of these factors mentioned, and in consideration of the caliber of game MGS3 is, ends up making comprehensible why so many old school MGS fans go on about the quality of the title. While my perspective is certainly anecdotal in its approach, without having done extensive research or hard data pulls in terms of polling a mass audience, I reckon that MGS3 would likely win the lions share vote of which of the original trilogy was everyone’s favorite, very much due to all of the reasoning I’ve provided above, almost as if the series finally came into itself, and knew how to fully embody its own mission statement, essentially reaching that exact sweet spot of knowing just how to deliver stealth action, paired with an ideal narrative par excellence.

While I am definitely excited to continue singing the praise of MGS3 with my current playthrough, like most nights I write, there is always more ambition then time available to me, and we have arrived at the point where I must wrap it up for the night.

To be continued….

-Pashford