The Philosophers

History:

The Philosophers were a secret organization founded in the early 20th century, shortly after World War I. Little is known about those who founded the group other than that they were all highly influential people from three countries that were quickly growing in power at that point in history--the People's Republic of China, the Soviet Union, and the United States of America. At the head of the group were twelve key individuals referred to as the "Wisemen's Committee." Beneath them were an unknown number of "sleeper agents," trained in collecting information and using covert tactics to further the organization's agendas. According to EVA, The Philosophers had "charm schools" where children gathered from around the world were raised and trained specifically to be loyal agents.

The original goals of The Philosophers are somewhat hazy, but they clearly sought to influence politics on a global scale. To that end, they assembled a massive fund to finance their collective interests. Known as "The Philosophers' Legacy," this fund amounted to no less than one-hundred billion U.S. dollars, which was split into innumerable pieces hidden away in various banks and financial institutions throughout the world. (How the group managed to hoard such an immense amount of capital and where it all came from is unknown--though it likely involved some amazing acts of embezzlement.) This money was used to research and fund various "black" projects, such as the Cobra unit, nuclear weapons development, and rocket technology. Each branch of The Philosophers controlled a third of the Legacy, thus maintaining the balance of power between them.

However, as the 20th century progressed and the global balance of power began to shift, the internal balance of power within The Philosophers followed suit. All of the original members of the Wisemen's Committee were dead by the end of the 1930s, and their replacements were less interested in maintaining unity. During the chaos of World War II, a deep schism formed between the three branches of the Philosophers.

This split was triggered by one specific event: towards the end of WWII, The Philosophers' chief money-launderer--Volgin's father--used his knowledge of their collective finances to seize the entire Legacy for the Russian branch. He recorded the locations where the numerous pieces of the Legacy were hidden on microfilm, and passed the information on to Volgin upon his death several years later. Volgin used it to build the fortress of Groznyj Grad and fund the development of a number of new weapons.

Once the three branches of The Philosophers turned on one another, their original goal of world unity was completely lost. Each branch became concerned only with holding onto and increasing their own political power. The tool they used to accomplish this was, simply, war. According to The Boss: "The Philosophers of today have no sense of good or evil. Their influence extends to countries and organizations involved in every aspect of every war. They have become war itself. ...The sacrifices of war cause a shift in the times, which increases conflict and, in turn, triggers the next war. ...By consuming me, and you, The Philosophers intend to keep that cycle going forever."

Naturally, the American and Chinese branches of The Philosophers had no intention of allowing Volgin to do whatever he pleased with "their" money. The events of Metal Gear Solid 3 depict what transpired when the three divided branches clashed over possession of the Legacy: by sacrificing The Boss, the American branch was able to acquire half of the missing money (courtesy of their triple-agent, Ocelot). The Chinese branch got away with a fake copy of the Legacy and the Shagohod's test data, which they used to jump-start their country's nuclear and space-exploration programs. With the death of Volgin and the loss of half the Legacy, the Russian branch was greatly weakened--though this didn't stop one of its presumed members, Leonid Brezhnev, from ousting Krushchev and becoming General Secretary of the Soviet Union just a few months later (in October, 1964).

Little is currently known about what became of the Russian and Chinese Philosophers after the events of Operation: Snake Eater. We do know, however, that six years after Snake Eater, in December 1970, the American branch gained the rest of the Legacy and assumed a new name: The Patriots. The story of those events is told in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops.


Speculation:

The Boss was the daughter of one of the original members of The Philosophers Wisemen's Committee. To hear her tell it, the group's original goal was to "make the world whole"... which sounds like a nice way of saying they wanted to implement one-world government. Whatever flowery rhetoric they may have used to obscure their motives, The Philosophers clearly weren't shy about using some pretty nasty tactics to steer the world in the direction they wanted it to go--from the very beginning, they were abducting and indoctrinating children to serve as future agents. They even stole away the newborn son of The Boss and raised him from childhood to serve them. That child was named Adamska... later known as Ocelot.

There's also the matter of a certain enigma that would haunt America's collective consciousness for the latter half of the 20th century: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. On the official series timeline included on the Metal Gear Saga Vol. 2 DVD, 1961 is specifically mentioned as the year Kennedy "falls out of favor with The Philosophers." 1961 was the year of the Bay of Pigs debacle, a botched invasion of Cuba backed by the CIA. Though the invasion was based on faulty intelligence and likely would have failed anyway, the CIA blamed Kennedy because he held back the air support that had been promised to the troops who landed in Cuba (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion). In fact, The Boss specifically mentions this to Big Boss at the end of MGS3: "Our weak-kneed President held back their air support. Defenseless, the exiles were annihilated by the Cuban army. All I could do was watch in silence."

As a result of the Bay of Pigs operation, the CIA was publically humiliated, and its founder, Alan Dulles, resigned in disgrace. We know that the CIA at that time was deeply involved with the American branch of The Philosophers. At the end of MGS3, Ocelot calls the director of the CIA to report on his success in obtaining the Legacy. Also, in Portable Ops, Gene refers to the Pentagon and CIA headquarters as "The Philosophers' twin lairs." Factor in Kennedy's famous threat to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds," and The Philosophers clearly had a motive to remove Kennedy from power to protect their own interests.

Two years later, in November 1963, Kennedy was assassinated during a visit to Dallas, Texas. Given the annoyance he had caused them already, it's more or less a given that The Philosophers had a hand his death. (If we didn't know for sure that Ocelot was in Russia at the time, I'd be willing to bet he was the legendary "second shooter on the grassy knoll.") Not only did this remove Kennedy as a political threat, it sent a strong message to future Presidents regarding the penalties of defying them.

Links for Further Reading:

Listed below are links to pages containing information on several real-life organizations that may have served as inspirations to Kojima in creating The Philosophers and The Patriots. All of these groups have been the focus of conspiracy theories in their own right. Some of those theories are pretty wacky, but I find it interesting to note the parallels between these groups and their fictional counterparts.

The Trilateral Commission:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_commission

http://www.trilateral.org/

The Bilderberg Group:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group

The Illuminati:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati

MGS3 Media Influences, Round 1: Bond

Hideo Kojima is a huge film buff, and he's not shy about making it known. Every game he's ever directed bursts at the seams with references to his favorite movies. Some are subtle, while others leave me shaking my head in wonder at the fact that no one has sued him over them. If what they say about amateurs imitating and geniuses stealing is true, then Kojima is most definitely a genius.

The funny thing is, though, he always ends up doing his own thing with whatever elements he swipes from other sources. Snatcher may be a shameless ripoff of Bladerunner in terms of its visual aesthetic and basic premise (both are about a guy trying to track down robots that outwardly appear human), but they take the concept in very different directions. Kojima also always seems happy to openly admit it when he uses something from another source, and frequently pokes fun at himself in his own games--Solid Snake using "Iroquois Plisken" as a pseudonym in MGS2, for example.

Metal Gear Solid 3 is no exception to this. Since the events of the game are set in the early 1960s, Kojima decided to model certain elements of it after the early Bond movies (Dr. No came out in 1962, quickly followed by From Russia With Love in 1963). The game's most obviously Bond-ian elements are its theme song, "Snake Eater," and the stylized intro it plays over, which closely mirrors Bond movie opening credit sequences:

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

VS.

Goldfinger

There are plenty of other similarities between MGS3 and Bond. EVA, Snake Eater's biker-chick femme fatale with the perpetually unzipped jumpsuit, is cut from the same diaphanous cloth as many a Bond girl. I suspect her appearance was based on Tatiana Romanova in From Russia With Love (played by Daniella Bianchi), but her actual character is very different.

Similarly, Ocelot and Volgin function a lot like a typical pair of Bond villains--the menacing mastermind and the sidekick with a weird signature weapon or ability (Goldfinger and Oddjob, for example). Ocelot also shows up to take one last crack at Big Boss after the "main" villain, Volgin, has been dispatched; a common occurrence with Bond villain sidekicks. Volgin even has a line parodying the infamous "talking killer"phenomenon that the Bond movies have become known for--when Big Boss asks him about the Philosophers' Legacy near the end of the game, he says "Very well... I'll explain it before I kill you." (To his credit, he does personally try to tear Big Boss limb from limb right after that, rather than leave him tied up unsupervised in front of some slowly-advancing deathtrap.)

It's interesting to note, though, that all of these similarities are mostly superficial. I can't really think of any specific Bond girl who has EVA's combination of combat competence, deceptiveness, and teasing seductiveness. Unlike most "main" Bond villains, most of Volgin's menace comes from his physical strength and brutal sadism rather than any skill for making ingenious plans. And while Ocelot may seem like a typical over-eager lackey, at the end of the game it's made clear that he was playing everyone else around him for suckers, and he comes out of the situation with exactly what he wanted--not only was he using Volgin the whole time, he also knew exactly who EVA really was and who she was really working for! As I said earlier, Kojima almost always takes the elements he "borrows" from other sources in directions that are all his own.

Finally, MGS3 actually mentions the Bond movies at several points. There's a conversation where Para-medic asks Big Boss if he's seen From Russia With Love. Big Boss replies that he hates the Bond movies... much to Major Zero's chagrin. Be that as it may, Big Boss can clearly appreciate 007's fashion sense: like MGS1 & 2, MGS3 has a snazzy black tuxedo as an unlockable costume.

Secrets: Decisions, Decisions...

Right after you select "New Game" from MGS3's title screen, the game throws a menu at you with a number of choices and no explanation as to what each one will get you. While most of them don't significantly impact the game in the long run, I thought I'd clear up the mystery for you. Here's a breakdown of what each choice means:

"I'm playing the MGS series for the first time!"

Choosing this gives you the default intro sequence. I recall reading at one point that it also makes you take a little bit less damage and lose stamina a little bit more slowly during the Virtuous Mission (the game's prologue chapter). I'm not 100% positive that's true, but it seems plausible.

"I like MGS1!"

By all appearances, this gives you the same intro as the first choice. I've heard that choosing this makes the Virtuous Mission slightly harder (take a little bit more damage when hit, consume stamina a little bit faster). As with the first choice, I'm not sure this is true... but if it isn't, then why would they even bother having this and the first choice be seperate?

"I like MGS2!"

This is a fun one. Selecting this changes the intro sequence considerably: Snake will start out in the plane wearing a mask that makes him look like Raiden from MGS2, and after he lands in Tselinoyarsk the game lists his name as "Jack" rather than "Snake." The radio conversation with Major Zero immediately following that will be different, and then Snake will take off the mask to show his real face.

So what's the point of all that? Basically, it's the first of the many potshots MGS3 takes at Raiden, the bishonen-y main character of MGS2. The joke is that, if you choose MGS2 as your favorite, the game makes you think you'll be playing as Raiden again before revealing that it's really Snake (both of them are really named "Jack," so that's why the game introduces him as such).

This was what I chose the first time I played the game, and at first it kinda freaked me out. I saw this guy who looks like Raiden in the intro, who sounds and looks like Snake when he talks during the flashback scene where he accepts the Virtuous Mission, and I got worried that the game was pulling some cheap head-swap switcharoo on me. I knew from the previews that there was someone in MGS3 who looked almost exactly like Raiden, and I started thinking: "What if choosing that makes you play the whole game like this, and those preview scenes with the guy who looks like Raiden were taken from the version of the game where you choose MGS2?"

For the record, I like Raiden. However, his head looks ridiculous on Snake's body, and I didn't think it made any sense to play as him in a game set in 1964. So I reset my game and chose "I like MGS1!" It wasn't until my second time through the game that I found out Snake takes the mask off and reveals the joke about three seconds after the point where I hit reset. D'oh!

"I like MGS3!"

This choice is only available if you're playing the enhanced version of MGS3, MGS3: Subsistence. Choosing it unlocks a ton of stuff that you'd otherwise have to beat the game once to get--the secret demo theater and boss battle mode on disc 2, all of the Snake Vs. Monkey levels, and a plethora of new camo and face paint patterns.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater was released in November, 2004. It introduced new gameplay elements to the series such as hunting for food and using camouflage to hide in plain sight, and gave players larger, more open-ended areas to sneak through and explore. Like all the Metal Gear games, the game still emphasizes (and rewards) stealth over straight-up run-and-gun action, while using a series of inventive boss battles to keep things exciting.

Story-wise, the game is a major departure from its predecessors. After setting the stage for the series' final conflict in MGS2, Kojima chose to flash back to where it all began in the next two games, MGS3 and Portable Ops. While Metal Gear Solid 2 ended with more than a few loose ends crying out to be tied up, MGS3 doesn't address any of them directly. MGS3 is set in 1964--45 years before MGS2--and focuses on an almost completely different cast of characters. While the rest of the Metal Gear games take place in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, MGS3 is set deep in the heart of the Cold War.

Let's just get this out of the way: Solid Snake is not the main character of MGS3. In fact, he's not even born until eight years after the events of this game. The main character of MGS3 (and Portable Ops) is Solid Snake's father, Big Boss: a man who will eventually become a legend in his own time--first as the greatest warrior of the 20th century, and many years later as a nuclear terrorist and a traitor. On the surface, Metal Gear Solid 3 is the story of how Big Boss destroys a dangerous super-weapon to prevent the outbreak of World War III, and is recognized as one of his country's greatest heroes.

The price he pays for these accomplishments is the loss of his innocence. In fulfilling the mission his country has set before him, Big Boss gains uncomfortable insight into the forces that drive the government he serves. For the first time, he truly realizes that even the noblest and most loyal heroes are only pieces in the grand game of politics--pieces to be used, then blithely sacrificed the moment it becomes advantageous to their players. At its core, Metal Gear Solid 3 is the story of a man who saves the world, but loses everything he believes in.

I'll cover the evolution of Big Boss's character in more detail later. For now, it's time for me to get playing!

Metal Gear?!

Hi there. My name is Caleb. If you happen to know me, then it probably comes as no surprise to find that I'm writing a blog about the Metal Gear series of videogames. Simply put, I love Metal Gear--its characters, its plot, its gameplay, the themes it deals with, and the level of sheer off-the-wall insanity the series' mastermind, Hideo Kojima, always manages to whip up. This blog will contain all kinds of information on, and analysis of, the series. I plan to write entries focusing on major themes, characters, plot points, running gags, influences from outside media, instances where the history of the series coincides with actual 20th century history (or interestingly contradicts it), and whatever else I feel like yammering about.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the series, Metal Gear is a series of "tactical espionage action" videogames that began in 1987. The first installment, Metal Gear, was originally published by Konami for the MSX personal computer, which was only sold in Japan and Europe. In 1988, Metal Gear was remade for the American Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), where it gained much wider exposure and quickly gathered a surprisingly huge fan following. In the third-ever issue of Nintendo Power, November/December 1988, Metal Gear appeared out of nowhere at #3 on the magazine's "Top 30" list (as determined by responses mailed in by readers). It beat out immensely popular titles like Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!, Super Mario Bros. 2, and Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, and stayed in the top 5 for quite some time. A decade later, in October of 1998, Metal Gear Solid was released for the Sony Playstation. It sold almost seven million copies worldwide, and is still widely regarded as one of the best Playstation games ever made. The success of the original Metal Gear Solid established the series as one of the most popular videogame franchises of the last ten years, and cemented Hideo Kojima as an industry celebrity (and one of my personal heroes :) ).

I'll go into more detail about the history behind each game in the series later, though. As anyone who follows videogames likely knows by now, the final game in the series--Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots--will soon be released. June 12, 2008, is the day when the saga of the Snakes will finally see its conclusion, and needless to say, I'm extremely excited. So excited, in fact, that I've decided to prepare by playing through every game that takes place in the main story arc of the series in chronological story order. Which breaks down like so:

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater -- 1964
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops -- 1970 (December)
Metal Gear -- 1995
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake -- 1999 (December)
Metal Gear Solid -- 2005 (March)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Tanker chapter -- 2007
Big Shell chapter -- 2009 (April 29-30)
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots -- 2014

This approach may seem a little awkward at times--the order in which the games take place within the series' timeline is much different than the order in which they were released. But since I'm mostly going to be focusing on the narrative and thematic elements of the series, I think going through the games in story order ultimately makes the most sense. One warning, though: there will be a huge amount of spoilers found in these entries. Proceed at your own risk if you want to play through the series on your own. Finally, if you have any comments or feedback, please feel free to post here or e-mail me directly.

Now that introductions are aside, let's get started!