A Commentary on Metal Gear Solid 3

Kojima once mentioned wanting either Ashes to Ashes or Space Oddity to play out the credits sequence of Metal Gear Solid 3. Related to this is the opening, the discussion of Major Tom-related codenames (though there was no way they could have been referencing the album diegetically) in the opening of the Virtuous Mission. Major Tom occurs again in the middle, with the Fury bossfight, a cosmonaut falling to Earth consumed by his ecstatic visions of the Earth engulfed in flame and carnage, seeing total and transcendent destruction as he plummeted through the atmosphere. 

There’s nothing transcendent about spaceflight in MGS3, with all related instances being ones of descents into darkness. The HALO jump at the beginning has a similar feel to the Fury’s descent, with both encased in the finest military-industrial hardware of the space age and sent to plummet into the turbulent jungles of the 1960s. In all cases, what’s inverted is the vertical orientation, even in Ashes to Ashes, Major Tom’s state is one of suspension, in heavens high, desperately wanting to come down. The reference to Major Tom, the linkage, comes only in the form of the technological apparatus which brings the destination into being. For Major Tom, technology brought him into the hazy opium-den of high-Hollywood, for Snake and the Fury, it brought them back down, into the depths of war. The “space” technology only allowed for horizontal movement, promising transcendence and delivering a return to a greater degree of where they began.

The Fury achieves what he was ultimately after - transcendence via flame. The technology which brought him into space serves as the vehicle for his final flight, as he explodes in a glorious violence. The same can be said for the others. The Fear tastes the masochistic thrill of defeat, The End disintegrates back into nature, The Pain is overwhelmed to death with pain. The same can be said for Snake, using technology in order to descend into the jungle in his Heart of Darkness journey to the Boss.

The keyword of MGS3, one far more interesting than Gene or Meme, is Scene. The final battle with the Boss brings scene into full question, as the Boss lays out a plan of embraced nihilism in her treatment of “scene”. She and Snake meet openly in a field of death, the game gone silent in order to allow their mutual death to play out. In her speech and plan, the Cold War and its affiliated military-industrial complex is the staging of their actions, the vehicle of their transcendence. The Boss and Snake both used it in order to bring about the various scenes they engage in, staged rituals. Such is the perfection achieved by Snake in killing the Boss. The Boss invites her death in order to kill his final attachment and in order to teach him the final lesson of “scene”. Her demise is brought about via manipulation to create “scene”, emerging from it, Snake, perfected, into a warmachine which engages regardless of the staging-facts of scene. The war fades into the background as Snake’s final lesson, as Snake annihilates what hold he had to the static world and embraces the war as the scene to stage his own combat.