The story of Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain

Exploding onto the scene in 1998, Metal Gear Solid has cornered the market on both stealth action games and utterly insane plot twists. From it’s humble beginnings as a Die Hard style stealth action game to the dizzying heights of psychic Bee control and cyborg ninjas, MGS is on the cusp of its fifth (and likely final) main console title THE PHANTOM PAIN. With 17 years of entries and insane stories, we thought we’d put together a quick primer for the game’s excellent stand-alone prologue Ground Zeroes, available now as a stand-alone purchase or for free on Games with Gold.

 

 

Catching up with Naked Snake

 

Taking place in 1974, Ground Zeroes centres around the early years of “Big Boss”, the legendary mercenary king and genetic father of series protagonist “Solid Snake” and antagonist “Liquid Snake” whose stories were completed with Metal Gear Solid 4. “Naked Snake” was first playable in the series prequel Metal Gear Solid 3 as a young Cold War Special Forces operative who was forced to neutralize his comrades and mentor following their defection to a Soviet superweapon project.

After taking on the name of Big Boss from his mentor at the game’s finale, Snake’s adventures continue 4 years later in side-entry Peace Walker as he renounced nationalities to form a worldwide Private Military Company (“Militaires Sans Frontieres”) in the pacifistic Costa Rica, ending with the destruction of a rival PMC and a traitor who set out to start nuclear war.

Ground Zeroes picks up several months after the finale of Peace Walker as Big Boss sets out to liberate two of his captured comrades (the traitor “Paz” and young sidekick “Chico”) who have been located in an American “black-site” in Cuba. With the UN investigating MSF for having had a nuclear weapon and Paz’s secret organisation “Cipher” still stifling MSF at every turn, Big Boss needs to save both his ally and his enemy so he can finally get back to realizing his dream.

Big Bosses Big Bag of Tools

Preferring outdoors camouflage and firearms to magical vision-cone radar and cramped corridors, Naked Snake has always taken a more grounded approach to espionage. Developing further in Peace Walker, Naked Snake has embraced a host of real-life Spec-Ops technologies and methods as well as the full force of a supporting base to wildly differentiate his adventures from those of his sons.

Firstly, series crutches such as the radar and constant regular patrol patterns are not present in Ground Zeroes. Enemies must be located visually and tagged with binoculars to appear on your HUD, which is essential prep work as the base is both crowded and full of open spaces observed from many angles. Patrol Patterns are regular and arranged only for a set period of time as in real life, and you will be notified on completion of each objective that there has been a “changing of the guard”.

Secondly, Snake comes much better prepared for Close-Quarter confrontations than his children. His soldier sense of awareness gives him a small warning when nearby enemies are becoming aware of his presence (presented with thickening white lines on the HUD) which is an excellent cue for use of his adrenaline-fuelled slow motion aiming to fire off a headshot.

Additionally, the world and enemies of of 1974 are a fair bit deeper than their modern equivalents. Snake can listen in to the natural conversation between enemies to learn useful pieces of operational intelligence, such as the location of ammunition caches and superior officers that will radically smoothen the tactical decisions of your adventures on the island. These soldiers can also be made to divulge their information in the series-classic hold-up, activated when the player draws their weapon on a nearby unaware enemy - simply hold aim on the enemy (with occasional glances to the groin and head) and they will quickly break their silence.

Enemies will also seek and give aid to comrades, which can be exploited to cause any number of distractions and destructive manipulation. An early patrol for example can be easily stopped by placing an enemy in its path, at which point they will exit their vehicle and investigate the area (at which point you can hope in the truck or plant explosives to set off later).

Island in the Sun

Taking place on a single large military base, Ground Zeroes may sound like a more cramped experience than any of its predecessors. However GZ at once also opens up every inch of its base, allowing traversal over every piece of ground and around every obstacle to increase the number of options available to the player. Although the location of your objectives is set for each scenario, the freedom to move around and subvert the game will constantly open up new paths for each playthrough. A particular highlight is the entry into the camp’s High Security area, which has several aggressive, subversive and total stealth options available including the wedging of its main entrance with a C4 detonated vehicle on its normal patrol of the area.

Although canonically a single mission, Ground Zeroes also includes several excellent alternate scenarios once the main route is complete. This includes daytime missions that dramatically mix-up the stealth gameplay and come complete with brand new patrol patterns and objectives (such as identifying certain patrolling officers as forceful extraction targets) to further open up the sandbox to experimentation.