Metal Gear Series Primer: Prologue (1920-1962)

The overall plot of the Metal Gear series is really composed of two major, intertwining threads. One is the story of a succession of truly exceptional soldiers, each of them somehow linked to the others. The other is the story of a group seeking to influence the world from the shadows. The story of Metal Gear as it has come to be can be seen as the inevitable clash between a group that seeks to impose control, and a series of individuals who all struggle against this control in their own ways.

The stories recounted below are, for the most part, never directly depicted in any games in the series. They are a compilation of various events referred to by characters or seen in flashbacks. Everything you're about to read is series canon; all I've done is present it in chronological order to make it a bit easier to grasp for those not familiar with the series' many twists and turns.

The Founding and Fragmentation of The Philosophers

Shortly after the close of World War I, around 1920, the "true holders of power" in the United States, the recently-formed Soviet Union, and the Republic of China came together and forged a shadowy alliance. The result was an organization known as The Philosophers. The twelve founding members formed the controlling body of the group, the so-called "Wisemen's Committee." Using their vast influence, The Philosophers sought to steer the course of various world events from behind the scenes. Each of the three "founding" countries had a separate branch, but the three branches worked together to their mutual benefit.

The Philosophers' original goal was allegedly to unite the world--under their own control, of course. As the original members of the Wisemen's Committee began to die off, however, the group's objectives gradually began to shift. By the end of the 1930s, all of the founding members of The Philosophers were dead, and the three branches of the group were starting to become more divided. The rise of the Axis powers and the advent of the second World War forced the branches to come together again, but also set the stage for the schism that would permanently break them apart.

At the beginning of World War II, The Philosophers assembled a vast amount of money in a secret fund--one-hundred billion dollars, which was split up into innumerable pieces and expertly hidden away in banks throughout the world. Known as the Philosophers' Legacy, this money was used to finance various secret activities throughout the war (rocket technology research, the Manhattan Project, etc). The three branches had originally promised to split the remaining money equally between them at the end of the war--but when the opportunity presented itself, the chief financial officer of the Russian branch was somehow able to redirect all of the remaining funds into new locations, and thus effectively steal the entire Legacy.

Needless to say, this theft was all it took to turn the American, Chinese, and Russian branches of The Philosophers against each other. With the end of World War II and the fragmentation of The Philosophers, the intangible battle lines of the Cold War had been drawn. (See my article on The Philosophers for a more detailed account of the group's origins: http://mgsaga.blogspot.com/2008/04/philosophers.html)

The Rise of The Boss

Born in the early 1920s, the woman who would eventually become known through the world by her honorary title "The Boss" was the daughter of one of the original twelve members of The Philosophers Wisemen's Committee. As the original Wisemen controlling the group died off and began to be replaced, her father became more and more concerned with the direction in which the group was headed. Eventually, he disclosed the true nature of the organization to his daughter--warning her that The Philosophers, rather than striving for unity, now sought to profit from conflict. They had "become war itself." When the rest of The Philosophers learned that he had revealed their secrets, The Boss's father was unceremoniously disposed of.

As she grew from adolescence to womanhood, The Boss must have demonstrated the truly exceptional combat skills for which she would later become famous. Someone certainly noticed her talents--in 1942, she assembled a disparate group of exceptionally talented fighters from various Allied countries under her leadership. Calling themselves the Cobra Unit, this group undertook only the most dangerous and covert operations throughout the war. Their activities were so secret that every member of the group was required to have a microbomb implanted in their body, triggered to detonate at the moment of their death--they were forbidden from leaving behind even a corpse as evidence. The Cobra Unit and The Boss became the stuff of battlefield legend, so much so that they were regarded as a major factor in the Allied victory in World War II.

This was not the only major event in The Boss's life during the war, however. At some point in 1943, she became pregnant. One of the other members of the Cobra Unit, a Russian man known as The Sorrow, was the father. Despite her condition, The Boss continued to lead her unit during the massive invasion of Normandy that took place in June, 1944. The Cobras had been given a secret mission of infiltrating enemy territory to destroy V-1 rocket installations, in order to clear the way for the Allied advance. In the course of that mission, The Boss was shot in combat and immediately went into labor, delivering her child right there on the battlefield, with bullets whizzing overhead. She and her newborn son both survived, but The Boss would never have the chance to be a mother--shortly after the delivery, her child was snatched away by an unknown agent of The Philosophers. Though they would meet again many years later, The Boss never learned what became of her son.

In 1947, as the iron curtain dividing East from West fell, the Cobra Unit was disbanded; its members returned to their native countries. Now a living legend on both sides of the globe, The Boss was nevertheless left alone--both her comrades and her son had been taken from her. Perhaps that was why, in 1954, she took a promising young soldier named John (aka Jack) as her new apprentice.

The Prodigal "Son"

Little is known about Jack's life before he became a disciple of The Boss, but he must have been about 25 at the time. No doubt he showed considerable talent if a legend like The Boss considered him a worthy apprentice. But it was more than that: on March 1st, 1954, Jack was one of the American soldiers stationed on Bikini Atoll to oversee the nuclear tests that took place there. He was exposed to heavy amounts of radiation and rendered sterile. The Boss, who had been exposed to atomic tests in Nevada some years earler, later stated that this shared trauma was part of what drew her to Jack.

In the five years they spent together as master and apprentice, Jack and The Boss undertook many top-secret missions and co-developed CQC, a new fighting style specifically tailored for military operations. Jack proved himself to be the most promising student The Boss had ever trained, and for a time the two were as devoted to one another as a mother and son.

Then, in June, 1959, The Boss suddenly left Jack without a word of explanation. Hurt and confused by this sudden abandonment, Jack did his best to carry on alone, continuing to prove his abilities in various missions undertaken for the U.S. Army. One of his few friends over the next several years was a comrade-in-arms who went by the codename "Python." A veteran of many battles, Python was a consummate soldier--tough as nails, and unflinching in the face of danger. However, Python was gravely injured during a secret mission in Vietnam. Jack believed he was dead, but they would meet again many years later under very diffferent circumstances.

After Python's alleged death, Jack spent some time in the elite Green Berets unit of the Army. It was during this period that he met Major Zero. Zero was a former director of the British intelligence agency MI-5, and an acquaintance of The Boss. He was so impressed with Jack that he asked him to join the new unit he was assembling. This unit, called FOX, was unlike any other in existance at the time. It was conceived as a group specializing in single-man infiltration missions, emphasizing silence and stealth above all else. Tired of the internal power struggles typical of the regular military, Jack accepted Major Zero's offer without hesitation. It was a decision that would greatly impact his life in the not-too-distant future.

Making the World Whole

The Boss did not leave her star apprentice's side on a whim when she vanished in 1959. She had been recruited by the U.S. government to take part in a mission unlike any other she had ever experienced. Since the successful launch of Sputnik in 1957, America had lagged behind Russia in the space race, and now they were determined to pull ahead--but to do so, they needed to study the effects of space travel on an actual human. NASA had not yet developed the technology to completely block out cosmic rays, so whoever was sent up would be exposed to dangerous amounts of radiation. The Boss was selected because she had already been irradiated once.

In 1960, a year before Yuri Gagarin's world-reknowned space flight, The Boss became the first human being to leave the Earth's atmosphere. Given the illicit nature of the experiment, she knew that she would never be recognized as such by history. The sight of the planet beneath her deeply moved The Boss--seeing the world from above, without borders or boundaries, made her reflect on the foolishness of the Cold War; the division betwen East and West. Upon her safe return, she silently vowed to "make the world whole again."

The Boss began to work closely with the American branch of The Philosophers. Presumably, she reasoned that the only way to "unify" the world was to bring it back under the control of a single group--which meant that the American Philosophers needed to eliminate their now-rival Russian and Chinese counterparts. In 1962, The Philosophers sent The Boss to a remote region of the Soviet Union called Tselinoyarsk on a mission to eliminate an enemy agent. When she finally met her target, she was horrified to discover that it was The Sorrow--her former comrade, lover, and the father of her long-lost child. They had both been assigned to kill the other. Only one of them could live. Finally, after much urging from The Sorrow, The Boss pulled the trigger and carried out her mission. "The spirit of the warrior will always be with you," were his dying words to her.

It's not clear if The Philosophers knew The Boss would be forced to face her old friend on that mission--it may have been their way of testing how loyal she truly was. If that was the case, it was a test she passed with flying colors. At that point, The American Philosophers began to work with The Boss to formulate a plan that would let them reclaim the stolen Legacy from the Russian branch. Together, they began laying the groundwork for what would surely be The Boss's most important mission ever...

But that's another story.


OK, that was pretty fricking long. Ironically, I think it will take a lot less time to recount the stories of the actual games than it did to cover all of the background plot. Check back for a recap of MGS3 later this week!