Guess who bought herself Metal Gear Solid 4? (And guess who was completely taken off-guard when she didn’t have to show her ID at the checkout. Whut?) So yeah, I’ve decided to skip Portbale Ops for the time being. The controls are horrible and while I definitely want to go back to it someday, right now I’m a lot more interested in how the main plot concludes in, da-da-da-doooooom, Solid Snake’s final game.
What is it with all this da-da-da-doooooming, by the way? The ad on the back of the box is all “A last mission. The greatest sacrifice. The final chapter in the life of this exceptional hero.” but you know what? The more it’s trying to convince me of the opposite, the more certain I am that the *cough* exceptional hero *cough* is going to survive the game. Or maybe I’m just in denial sticking my fingers in my ears an go “lalelulelola, I can’t heeeeaaaar yooouuu!” We’ll see. For now, welcome to a few notes about Act 1.
Sunny has two daddies.
The loading screen:
Yes, I’m serious. That thing deserves its own section. Or, well, technically it’s just the loading screen that’s displayed when you install the game onto your PS3: Snake’s seen standing around, smoking a cigarette, while the usual health and other assorted warnings (“Don’t play the game when you’re tired,” “Please make sure the room you’re playing in is brightly lit” etc.) are displayed next to him. There’s even a warning about smoking being hazardous to your health. It’s seven kinds of hilarious. XD (Snake, you old chain smoker. You got through three cigarettes and started a fourth by the time the installation was finished!) It is, however, slightly less hilarious when you’ve spent eight minutes staring at the warnings and Snake and realise how goddamn tired he looks. 
Opening movie:
Scene: The cemetery where The Boss’s grave is, by now covered in the flowers from the MGS3 final battle against her. (The entire place, not just her grave) Hello Snake. Fancy suit you have there! But, uh, what exactly are you doing here? It’s not like the place has any special meaning for you… in fact, you shouldn’t even know about it! It’s, what? The grave of your mentor’s mentor? [Note: We do find out in a codec conversation later that Big Boss's story/the events of MGS3 seem to have become a part of pop culture in the last year or so, so Snake knowing something about it makes some sense, but still.] And– uh, Snake? What are you planning to do with that gun?
Oh no you won’t. Mark my words. *stares* *stares more* *stares very convincingly* It’s not like the MGS series as a whole is allergic to Happy Ends. It loves bittersweet endings, true, but such a downer ending? Pfffft. As if.
Mission Briefing:
Did anyone else watch the mission briefing and realise ten minutes later that they had absolutely no idea of the plot they’ve just been expositioned to death with because they were to busy going “awwww!” in Sunny’s general direction? Seriously, she’s adorable… and apparently a little computer whiz too. (She did grew up around Otacon after all. XD) Though I have to say that Snake and Uncle Hal aren’t winning any Best Parents Ever awards here and I hope they’re less negligent when Plot isn’t knocking at their door. <.< As it is, they pretty much completely ignore her when she tries to bring them something to eat, no matter how earnestly she tries.
So, they're… currently living on a plane, yes? And they have chickens that lay eggs that Sunny will then try to cook (sunny side up, of course *g*) and apparently the chickens are named Liquid and Solidus? Oh yey. And have I mentioned the adorableness that is Sunny? When she finds the full ashtray in the room upstairs and one of the cigarettes falls to the floor, she pounces and stamps on it before it can roll away and I can't be the only one who grinned and thought of Big Boss's stunt with the cigar, also on a plane. XD And then she goes and yells at Snake for smoking again, and stutters only a little when she does it.
(How old is Sunny, by the way? She should be six or seven, right, given that Olga was pregnant with her in the MGS2 prologue (2007) and that MGS4 takes place in, what was it, 2014? And she's been living with our two Philantrophists (does their organisation still exist, I wonder?) since she was about two. Must be interesting.)
There's an earlier scene, also with Snake in that same fancy black suit, also near The Boss's grave, where Otacon arrives with a helicopter and announces that The Plot has found them Colonel Campbell has something he wants to talk to them about. The conversation takes a brief detour when Snake asks about “the test results” and we find out about the whole accelerated ageing process thing, and that they know of no way to stop it, and that Snake has at most another year to live.
I love the direction of that scene. There’s Otacon who has his back turned to Snake and who, even when he turns to face him, can’t meet his eyes when he tells him about the results. Who can’t even bring himself to say the words out loud. It’s Snake who does, who looks at his now wrinkled hand and says “A year at best, right?” It’s all Otacon can do to confirm that and for a moment he just sounds so utterly defeated. No wonder he wants to grasp at straws a second later, tells Snake and tells himself that they can always try another doctor, right, this doesn’t have to be the end. Not that Snakes wants to hear any of that. He’s tired.
Gah, I’m such a big mushball when it comes to these two and right now, they’re breaking my heart.
As for the actual plot, it looks like our cockroach villain has taken control over the kitten completely via arm possession and is now planning to do stuff somewhere and we’ve got to stop him. Uh, I mean, Liquid seems to have taken over Ocelot’s body and wants to create the world that Big Boss dreamt of back in his good ol’ villain days, were the world’s pretty much constantly at war. And oh well, I guess Snake still has some bones to pick with his obnoxious clone twin, so we’re off to another adventure. Or whatever.
Controls and Codecs:
You fire weapons with the right shoulder button. What. What is this insanity? <.< Seriously, I've played my way through the first act and I still haven't gotten used to the completely changed control scheme. I mean, it's not the mess that Portable Ops‘s was, not by a long stretch, and it looks like it’ll play pretty smoothly once I’m used to it, but it’s… different. Different enough that I still find myself crawling around on the floor when I want to sneakily shoot some poor NPC. Whoops.
But: Cutscenes can now be paused! \o/ That makes up for almost everything. (I’m still wondering who thought it was a good idea to make you push Start at the loading screen after it has, well, finished loading to proceed to the following scene.)
So far, Snake has exactly one codec contact, and of course it’s Otacon. He is, however, no longer our safe person. What. WHAT. This. What is this. This is even stranger than the new button configurations. We no longer have safe persons. We save via the pause menu. Game! You can’t do that! I liked safe persons and all their implications! (see also: what I’ve said about this topic in my first MGS2 post)
As it turns out, I am just as worried when there’s no silly banter on the codec between Snake and Otacon as I am when Garcia from Criminal Minds has no witty remarks for her teammates on the phone. It just makes me want to give everyone involved a big hug and tell them that everything is going to be all right, because when Garcia isn’t joking, and when Snake and Otacon aren’t teasing each other, we know it’s bad.
I miss the “lighter” coded calls between those two from MGS2. I understand why they’re not there and it makes sense, but I still miss them. At times, they sound downright aggressive when talking to each other via codec. They’re frustrated. And who could blame them.
New faces, old friends and even older foes:
I don’t really have terribly much to say about Act 1 itself. I mean, there’s not much plot; we’re mainly running around to meat up with “Rat Patrol Unit 1″ and confirm Liquid’s whereabouts while we’re introduced to new gameplay mechanics and see how the world has changed in the last seven years. Let’s do bullet points for this one.
- The “Metal Gear Mk.II,” aka the little robot that Otacon built to have it follow Snake around on the battlefield is beyond adorable. (And I was glad for the scene it was introduced in because the clinical tone of the preceding codec calls had me worried; but the affection in their voices during the Mk.II conversation was clear as day.)
- Drebin is probably a walking Unfortunate Implication (what with him being both one of the few black characters in the series and a weapons dealer), but I quite like him anyway. For all that it makes him rich, he doesn’t seem all that fond of the idea of an “eternal” war after all.
- MERYL! That’s my girl! \o/ *cheers* I was somewhat neutral towards her at first in MGS1 but she quickly grew on me and I love her here. ♥ Major hearts for the rest of the Rat Patrol Unit too, even if except for Johnny, they don’t really get much character. I love how well they work together, even if it might mostly be a result of their NaNonanomachines. (Snake doesn’t like the idea behind the whole thing – 24/7 monitoring and possibly fiddling with people’s emotions to make them into more effective soldiers – and who could blame him, but, uh, I wouldn’t say it’s the soldiers’ fault that they were being born in this age.)
This is, by the way, the point where we all pretend that it didn’t take me the first five minutes of the Rat Patrol scenes to remember that Snake and Meryl where Designated Love Interests back in the day when they were the hero and the heroine and of MGS1. (Well, we all know how well that worked.)
The theme of Snake’s accelerated ageing and me going “:(” continues when Meryl doesn’t even recognise Snake at first. She reaches out to touch his face twice, he shies away both times (which is ore what I’d expect from Big Boss). So instead we go and talk about The Plot some more. Or about Meryl still holding a grudge against her uncle father. Or maybe more plot and exposition? Or we could introduce the rest of the team! It doesn’t get boring, that’s for sure.
tl;dr: My crush on Meryl, let me show you it.
- Cockroach!kitten shows up, says something (“Brrrrrother!”), talks to Naomi – Hello Naomi! Have you cooked up any more deadly viruses lately? – does plot-related things and leaves via helicopter, mostly because, uuuh… we can’t have our big showdown in act 1. “Plot-related thing” included, apparently, something to do with their nanomachines, or else I can’t explain why every soldier in the vicinity, including Snake, Meryl and her unit, broke down all at once.
Well, all expect for Johnny. Johnny is the one who always panics, to put it mildly. He’s the weakest link in Meryl’s unit, the one who trips over his own feet and needs to have things explained to him twice when the rest of the team has the non-verbal communication thing down pat. He’s always breaking down, so when everyone else does, he doesn’t have to. Fascinating.
- One more thing, about the general setting for this act: It’s one that’s highly unusual for MGS. We’re in the middle of a combat zone where two seemingly unrelated parties are battling each with shots being fired at all times and people yelling and screaming; it’s very different from the silence of Shadow Moses, or the plant, or even the jungle. (The jungle wasn’t necessarily silent of course, but it was tranquil.) It fits in very well with the story’s general sentiment that “war has changed” and that it’s everywhere now and if Liquid has his say, it’ll surround everyone as much as it surrounds Snake. Heh. We should better go and find that cockroach before he has any more brilliant ideas.
Act 1: Fin
