This thread is a modified repost (or as I like to call it, a remaster) of a thread I originally made in 2015. It didn't get a lot of attention then and maybe it won't now either, but with the Kojima era of Metal Gear concluded, all we can do is forever revisit what made these experiences so memorable. These are our visitation rights.
If you like this thread, please leave a comment. My posts are written to be evergreen and it is never too late for a bump. These threads also take a long time to read, so by the time you're done, this thread will already be gone. I rely on the kindness of commenters to ensure these threads are seen by anyone at all.
Foreword(hasty readers can skip to Section One)
This analysis is in two sections, the second of which has multiple parts. The first section is a brief recap on the scene itself that leads up to the analysis itself in section two. I have tried to make the recap accessible to players who have not played the game, but I imagine this post will be far more meaningful to people who have properly completed Metal Gear Solid. This thread does not acknowledge Twin Snakes and uses the original Metal Gear Solid for PS1 as the primary text.
This was one of the earliest games I ever played on my Vita. I was confined to my bedroom during a blizzard, then in the ground-level basement of my parent's house, with no electricity, no heat, no running water, and no way to leave. Everyone else in the house had resigned to the darkness and gone to bed. But I was up. I couldn't sleep. Without getting out of bed, I turned the brightness all the way down on my Vita to conserve its battery and played Metal Gear Solid for the first time. This was three years ago, in January 2015, and I've been thinking about it ever since.
This thread is about what I consider one of the most exemplary instances of Kojima's early genius and the most narratively effective moment of the original Metal Gear Solid game. This is about the torture scene.
[Section 1] Part I: Background and setup; or, "Even I know that, it's the oldest trick in the book"
Even mentioning "the torture scene" surely reminds players of desperately pressing the circle button to keep Snake alive, or perhaps using the auto-fire function on a turbo controller to make the scene entirely trivial. But despite a formal monologue by Revolver Ocelot indicating the torture is about to start, the scene itself actually begins with Snake's first encounter with Sniper Wolf.
When Snake and Meryl first encounter Sniper Wolf, they are unaware of her presence, and Meryl is subsequently shot. The new situation is immediately apparent to them both: they are using Meryl as bait to lure Snake to either cooperate or be killed himself. Meryl urges Snake to kill her, or at least to leave her behind, but Snake refuses. Partly out of his obligation to her uncle, Colonel Campbell, but mostly out of his own compassion. Vetted soldier or not, Snake is not about to let Meryl die, even if he knows he is endangering himself in the process.
Fully aware of the trap, but resigning himself to the circumstances, he leaves Meryl behind to retrieve a sniper rifle. But when he returns, only a blood stain remains where Meryl once lied. Is she alive? Where has she gone? Snake doesn't know and neither does the player. But Snake has played right into Sniper Wolf's hand - she ambushes him in a narrow outdoor passage and suppresses with her marksmanship. Although Snake is able to out-snipe her, his victory is short lived.
As Snake takes his first few steps forward, he is interrupted via Codec by Mei Ling, his data analyst.
Saving one's game is, in almost every circumstance, dictated by player autonomy. A player might save obsessively, or rarely, or only at the end of their game sessions, or right before a challenging boss. But saving a game is a failsafe. It is preparation for whatever is about to happen next, regardless of what that is.
Here, Kojima uses the save function to foreshadow something terrible. He is certainly not the first to do this. Many RPGs feature ominous save points just before boss doors to warn the player of imminent danger. But in these circumstances, the decision to save and the ability to prepare for the challenge remains in player control. The player might heal up, or equip some items, or double back to be sure they haven't missed anything before leaving, or otherwise prepare themselves for the subsequent business.
But Snake has just completed a boss battle. There are no new items to equip. There is no boss door. The area is fully explored. There is only Mei Ling's warning of something sinister. Whatever is ahead, it is nothing Snake or the player can prepare for. The situation is out of the player's control.
Immediately thereafter, Snake is surrounded by Sniper Wolf and enemy troops. At gunpoint, and with no other options, Snake is forced to surrender.
Snake is dragged away to Liquid and Ocelot to be tortured for information. He is told that Meryl is still alive, but maybe not for much longer. Further, Ocelot tells Snake that he is testing what kind of man he is. If Snake bows out of the physical torture and confesses the information Ocelot wants, Ocelot will simply torture and kill Meryl instead. Snake's options are clear:
Option two leads to the good ending, which is also canon. Option three leads to the bad ending, which is not canon. To properly complete Metal Gear Solid, the player must survive the torture.
Here, the player must rapidly press the circle button to prevent Snake's will to live from depleting. If the player fails, Snake dies, and the campaign ends. There is no option to continue, and the player must begin again from the main menu, resuming where they hopefully saved with Mei Ling. The sequence is extremely difficult and requires very rapid inputs to prevent failure. If the player simply cannot perform the inputs fast enough, they can confess the information that Ocelot wants. This will allow the player to proceed, but of course, at the cost of Meryl's life.
If the player survives the first round of torture, Snake is thrown into a solitary cell where he can converse with his contacts through Codec. Eventually, he will be taken back to the torture device, where he will be forced to endure the sequence a second time. If he doesn't discover a way to escape the cell, the torture will continue indefinitely.
Snake escapes by faking his suicide with packets of ketchup from Otacon, ending the scene. You can also hide from the guard while he is asleep and lure him into the room. If the player cannot figure this out, they will be eventually liberated by Gray Fox after further rounds of electroshock. The other option, of course, is for the player to never figure it out and quit the game forever.
[Section 2] Part I: Player empathy and real world parallels; or, "My arm hurts"
Video games are unique in the way they allow self-insertion by the player to experience the story in a deeper way. A player might be pressed with a tough choice, or enjoy a cathartic release upon beating an obstacle, or take pride in the responsibility of completing an objective. Horror games arouse and sustain player anxiety. Action games might make your palms sweat and elevate your heart rate. Player empathy is common, but largely underutilized in game narrative. While stories can still be effective, it is rare for a game's story to be inextricably entwined with its mechanics. While mechanics might advance a story the way a reader might turn the page of a book, mechanics do not always become the words on the page and help tell the story itself.
The genius of the MGS torture scene is how it brings the player into the same space as Snake and forces empathy towards the action unfolding. The player is not just watching Snake be tortured, they are being tortured themselves.
Players of Metal Gear Solid, did your arm begin to hurt during the torture sequence? The answer is probably yes.
Throughout the years, many players have realized that they themselves are being tortured during this sequence. Rapidly executing the circle input is a painful experience that often causes the player's forearm to become sore. The game itself even directly acknowledges this when Snake tells Naomi Hunter over Codec that his arm hurts. She instructs the player to put the controller on their arm and activates the vibrate function. This is really cheesy, but it is clear that causing the player physical pain was deliberate and intended.
But this is not where the connections end.
How long was it before you bugged out? How many times did you bang on the walls, knowing the only result would be the guard telling you to shut up? How many times did you run around in circles? How long was it before you did crazy stuff like crawl underneath the bed? Did you try to punch down the door?
In gaming as a whole, some player habits are not anticipated. For example, players who begin Portal also spend sixty seconds in solitary confinement. They have a radio, a clipboard, and a toilet. As the timer counts down, players do strange things to combat the feeling of containment. Quite humorously, most players put the clipboard in the toilet.
These impulsive gestures, triggered by forced containment in a small space, are a form of anxiety. The player feels compelled to do something. Not being able to do something makes them antsy. It makes them impatient. Unable to proceed how they want to, they do strange and compulsory things to satisfy their frustration. Like a nervous tick, or an involuntary jitter, the player seeks ways to alleviate their stress, however minor.
These compulsory actions are anticipated by Kojima. Knocking on walls and crawling under the bed triggers unique dialog from the guard. To alleviate the player stress, Snake eventually receives a Codec call.
[Section 2] Part II: Cutscenes as reward; or, "Say something to take my mind off the pain"
Metal Gear Solid came out during, and was the product of, the FMV movement on CD games. The inclusion of full motion video was a major selling point for the PS1 and its new content delivery format. Cutscenes were routinely used as a form of reward for the player. Clearing a certain boss, or beating the game, or even turning the game on for the first time, usually played an exciting CG cutscene that previous technology could never render. This notion was more than just a concept, it was a design philosophy. In a PlayStation 20th Anniversay Retrospective, Kat at USgamer mused:
Even as late as 2013, the philosophy of cutscenes as a reward was alive in the mind of director Masahiro Sakurai, who lamented YouTube's cheapening of the concept.
While both of these quotes acknowledge the impact of the cutscenes-as-rewards being lessened, it is important to remember how different it was in 1999. Metal Gear Solid's long cinematics and high-quality voice acting were cutting-edge selling points for the game. They remained a hallmark for the series well beyond MGS1 and perhaps reached their nadir (in terms of effectiveness) in MGS4. But for Metal Gear Solid in 1999, there was no better way to alleviate the stress of the player and reward their endurance than to comfort them with a conversation.
When prisoners of war are tortured, but otherwise contained together, there is no greater asset to their survival than interpersonal bond. The mere presence of another human is enough to comfort a prisoner. Even though Snake has reason to be distrustful of Roy Campbell, the leader of his operation, he verbalizes that he still considers him a friend, and although he has no relationship with Naomi Hunter, he presses her to tell him about her life. In a period of great stress, Snake wants to talk to whoever he can. He wants to use whatever lifelines are around him, and in times like these, anyone at all welcome companion.
Like a tortured prisoner, the player is thrown back into Snake's cell and becomes anxious for interaction. Although not the longest in the game, Snake's seven-minute conversation between Roy Campbell, Naomi Hunter, and himself, serves as a stand-in for the inter-prisoner support system that POWs form. The ability to compassionately communicate with another human being is a luxury many prisoners are not afforded, but it makes all the difference.
Both Snake and the player have their stress soothed by the presence of another human being and conversation.
[Section 2] Part III: The Torture Itself; or, "Torture? This is an interrogation"
Of course, no part of this sequence would work if the actual act of torture were not effective. Thankfully, and of course, it is. To this day, first time players are agitated and tested by the difficulty of the sequence. Searching the scene will reveal two decades worth of people asking if the sequence can even be completed. Resisting the torture and surviving the electrocution is agonizing. Like Snake, the only thing that keeps the player involved with the sequence is their will to complete it. At any time, they can press select to confess the information and betray Meryl. I'm sure many players begin with the intention of keeping quiet, but find the torture too extreme, and are forced to press select to continue. It takes a committed player to get past the sequence, even if they are fortunate enough to pass on the first attempt, and it is a great relief when it is over.
After the initial electrocution, Snake is returned to his cell.
Once the player is here, and it is clear they cannot escape, anxiety and concern begin creeping again. Will they guards come back for me? Will Ocelot torture me again? The answer is, of course, yes. Yes they will. There is nothing you can do but wait, and when the time comes, you are strapped right back into the machine and forced to survive it again. If it was difficult the first time, it is even worse a second time. The player is tired. The player is upset. Like Snake, your will to proceed is being challenged. Your physical fortitude is being put to the test. Your loyalty to Meryl is the only thing keeping you strapped in this machine.
The challenge here is not one of skill or even luck. It is a test of will.
People do not usually forget this sequence. They remember how difficult it was, they remember how frustrated they felt, and players collectively moan and groan over having had to complete it. This section is not fun at all. People's experience this scene are almost universally negative. The long-term effects of this scene reflect the PTSD of torture victims who are permanently altered by their experiences. Like a torture victim yourself, you will never forget what happened to you. You will never forget what you endured. You will never forget how you suffered.
Thankfully, it's just a game.
[Section 3] Conclusion: "This is what it means to create context"
I anticipate that some folks reading this may be put-off that I am mentioning a difficult video game level in the same breath actual real-world torture. I hope it is obvious that the player experience with Metal Gear Solid is metaphoric and this thread is about comparison rather than equivalency.
Within the context of a video game, and in regards to player empathy and self-insertion, the torture sequence is a stressful and memorable event that forces you to come to terms with your own willpower. It uses tools that are unique to video games to portray its narrative through its mechanics and synchronize the player POV with that of its lead character. The player should now have some understanding of what Snake endured and, like many lessons from fiction, this understanding has practical value. But the player now has some context through which they might better understand their own world. Sometimes, just a taste is enough.
As I define more fully in my Luigi's Mansion thread, truly successful interactive narratives make mechanics an integral and indivisible component of the story. MGS was a groundbreaking video game that understood the scope of what was possible in the medium, but it far from perfected the balance between gameplay and cinematics. The game tends to trade these features off, giving each a turn, confining the story to cutscenes and full-screen conversations while the player partakes in somewhat detached character action. Gameplay doesn't become the fabric of the narrative except for this estimable part of the affair. Here, player and plot become seamless and inseparable. Neither exists without the other and the player becomes a fully immersed actor in the experience. What Kojima accomplished here in the torture scene, to me, is a early hearkening forward to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, our increasingly relevant postmodern masterpiece.
As video games become more and more advanced and the technology available allows us to interact more and more directly with the stories we consume, I think there will be renewed interest in how games historically tried to pull the player close and not let them go. Even though it's been three years, this one still holds me tight.
If you like this thread, please leave a comment. My posts are written to be evergreen and it is never too late for a bump. These threads also take a long time to read, so by the time you're done, this thread will already be gone. I rely on the kindness of commenters to ensure these threads are seen by anyone at all.
Foreword(hasty readers can skip to Section One)
This analysis is in two sections, the second of which has multiple parts. The first section is a brief recap on the scene itself that leads up to the analysis itself in section two. I have tried to make the recap accessible to players who have not played the game, but I imagine this post will be far more meaningful to people who have properly completed Metal Gear Solid. This thread does not acknowledge Twin Snakes and uses the original Metal Gear Solid for PS1 as the primary text.
This was one of the earliest games I ever played on my Vita. I was confined to my bedroom during a blizzard, then in the ground-level basement of my parent's house, with no electricity, no heat, no running water, and no way to leave. Everyone else in the house had resigned to the darkness and gone to bed. But I was up. I couldn't sleep. Without getting out of bed, I turned the brightness all the way down on my Vita to conserve its battery and played Metal Gear Solid for the first time. This was three years ago, in January 2015, and I've been thinking about it ever since.
This thread is about what I consider one of the most exemplary instances of Kojima's early genius and the most narratively effective moment of the original Metal Gear Solid game. This is about the torture scene.
[Section 1] Part I: Background and setup; or, "Even I know that, it's the oldest trick in the book"
Even mentioning "the torture scene" surely reminds players of desperately pressing the circle button to keep Snake alive, or perhaps using the auto-fire function on a turbo controller to make the scene entirely trivial. But despite a formal monologue by Revolver Ocelot indicating the torture is about to start, the scene itself actually begins with Snake's first encounter with Sniper Wolf.
When Snake and Meryl first encounter Sniper Wolf, they are unaware of her presence, and Meryl is subsequently shot. The new situation is immediately apparent to them both: they are using Meryl as bait to lure Snake to either cooperate or be killed himself. Meryl urges Snake to kill her, or at least to leave her behind, but Snake refuses. Partly out of his obligation to her uncle, Colonel Campbell, but mostly out of his own compassion. Vetted soldier or not, Snake is not about to let Meryl die, even if he knows he is endangering himself in the process.
Fully aware of the trap, but resigning himself to the circumstances, he leaves Meryl behind to retrieve a sniper rifle. But when he returns, only a blood stain remains where Meryl once lied. Is she alive? Where has she gone? Snake doesn't know and neither does the player. But Snake has played right into Sniper Wolf's hand - she ambushes him in a narrow outdoor passage and suppresses with her marksmanship. Although Snake is able to out-snipe her, his victory is short lived.
As Snake takes his first few steps forward, he is interrupted via Codec by Mei Ling, his data analyst.
Saving one's game is, in almost every circumstance, dictated by player autonomy. A player might save obsessively, or rarely, or only at the end of their game sessions, or right before a challenging boss. But saving a game is a failsafe. It is preparation for whatever is about to happen next, regardless of what that is.
Here, Kojima uses the save function to foreshadow something terrible. He is certainly not the first to do this. Many RPGs feature ominous save points just before boss doors to warn the player of imminent danger. But in these circumstances, the decision to save and the ability to prepare for the challenge remains in player control. The player might heal up, or equip some items, or double back to be sure they haven't missed anything before leaving, or otherwise prepare themselves for the subsequent business.
But Snake has just completed a boss battle. There are no new items to equip. There is no boss door. The area is fully explored. There is only Mei Ling's warning of something sinister. Whatever is ahead, it is nothing Snake or the player can prepare for. The situation is out of the player's control.
Immediately thereafter, Snake is surrounded by Sniper Wolf and enemy troops. At gunpoint, and with no other options, Snake is forced to surrender.
Snake is dragged away to Liquid and Ocelot to be tortured for information. He is told that Meryl is still alive, but maybe not for much longer. Further, Ocelot tells Snake that he is testing what kind of man he is. If Snake bows out of the physical torture and confesses the information Ocelot wants, Ocelot will simply torture and kill Meryl instead. Snake's options are clear:
- Die by electrocution
- Resist the painful electrocution and possibly save Meryl.
- Opt out of the torture, but suffer the anguish of knowing his friend died in his place.
Option two leads to the good ending, which is also canon. Option three leads to the bad ending, which is not canon. To properly complete Metal Gear Solid, the player must survive the torture.
Here, the player must rapidly press the circle button to prevent Snake's will to live from depleting. If the player fails, Snake dies, and the campaign ends. There is no option to continue, and the player must begin again from the main menu, resuming where they hopefully saved with Mei Ling. The sequence is extremely difficult and requires very rapid inputs to prevent failure. If the player simply cannot perform the inputs fast enough, they can confess the information that Ocelot wants. This will allow the player to proceed, but of course, at the cost of Meryl's life.
If the player survives the first round of torture, Snake is thrown into a solitary cell where he can converse with his contacts through Codec. Eventually, he will be taken back to the torture device, where he will be forced to endure the sequence a second time. If he doesn't discover a way to escape the cell, the torture will continue indefinitely.
Snake escapes by faking his suicide with packets of ketchup from Otacon, ending the scene. You can also hide from the guard while he is asleep and lure him into the room. If the player cannot figure this out, they will be eventually liberated by Gray Fox after further rounds of electroshock. The other option, of course, is for the player to never figure it out and quit the game forever.
[Section 2] Part I: Player empathy and real world parallels; or, "My arm hurts"
Video games are unique in the way they allow self-insertion by the player to experience the story in a deeper way. A player might be pressed with a tough choice, or enjoy a cathartic release upon beating an obstacle, or take pride in the responsibility of completing an objective. Horror games arouse and sustain player anxiety. Action games might make your palms sweat and elevate your heart rate. Player empathy is common, but largely underutilized in game narrative. While stories can still be effective, it is rare for a game's story to be inextricably entwined with its mechanics. While mechanics might advance a story the way a reader might turn the page of a book, mechanics do not always become the words on the page and help tell the story itself.
The genius of the MGS torture scene is how it brings the player into the same space as Snake and forces empathy towards the action unfolding. The player is not just watching Snake be tortured, they are being tortured themselves.
Players of Metal Gear Solid, did your arm begin to hurt during the torture sequence? The answer is probably yes.
Throughout the years, many players have realized that they themselves are being tortured during this sequence. Rapidly executing the circle input is a painful experience that often causes the player's forearm to become sore. The game itself even directly acknowledges this when Snake tells Naomi Hunter over Codec that his arm hurts. She instructs the player to put the controller on their arm and activates the vibrate function. This is really cheesy, but it is clear that causing the player physical pain was deliberate and intended.
But this is not where the connections end.
How long was it before you bugged out? How many times did you bang on the walls, knowing the only result would be the guard telling you to shut up? How many times did you run around in circles? How long was it before you did crazy stuff like crawl underneath the bed? Did you try to punch down the door?
In gaming as a whole, some player habits are not anticipated. For example, players who begin Portal also spend sixty seconds in solitary confinement. They have a radio, a clipboard, and a toilet. As the timer counts down, players do strange things to combat the feeling of containment. Quite humorously, most players put the clipboard in the toilet.
These impulsive gestures, triggered by forced containment in a small space, are a form of anxiety. The player feels compelled to do something. Not being able to do something makes them antsy. It makes them impatient. Unable to proceed how they want to, they do strange and compulsory things to satisfy their frustration. Like a nervous tick, or an involuntary jitter, the player seeks ways to alleviate their stress, however minor.
These compulsory actions are anticipated by Kojima. Knocking on walls and crawling under the bed triggers unique dialog from the guard. To alleviate the player stress, Snake eventually receives a Codec call.
[Section 2] Part II: Cutscenes as reward; or, "Say something to take my mind off the pain"
Metal Gear Solid came out during, and was the product of, the FMV movement on CD games. The inclusion of full motion video was a major selling point for the PS1 and its new content delivery format. Cutscenes were routinely used as a form of reward for the player. Clearing a certain boss, or beating the game, or even turning the game on for the first time, usually played an exciting CG cutscene that previous technology could never render. This notion was more than just a concept, it was a design philosophy. In a PlayStation 20th Anniversay Retrospective, Kat at USgamer mused:
Even as late as 2013, the philosophy of cutscenes as a reward was alive in the mind of director Masahiro Sakurai, who lamented YouTube's cheapening of the concept.
While both of these quotes acknowledge the impact of the cutscenes-as-rewards being lessened, it is important to remember how different it was in 1999. Metal Gear Solid's long cinematics and high-quality voice acting were cutting-edge selling points for the game. They remained a hallmark for the series well beyond MGS1 and perhaps reached their nadir (in terms of effectiveness) in MGS4. But for Metal Gear Solid in 1999, there was no better way to alleviate the stress of the player and reward their endurance than to comfort them with a conversation.
When prisoners of war are tortured, but otherwise contained together, there is no greater asset to their survival than interpersonal bond. The mere presence of another human is enough to comfort a prisoner. Even though Snake has reason to be distrustful of Roy Campbell, the leader of his operation, he verbalizes that he still considers him a friend, and although he has no relationship with Naomi Hunter, he presses her to tell him about her life. In a period of great stress, Snake wants to talk to whoever he can. He wants to use whatever lifelines are around him, and in times like these, anyone at all welcome companion.
Like a tortured prisoner, the player is thrown back into Snake's cell and becomes anxious for interaction. Although not the longest in the game, Snake's seven-minute conversation between Roy Campbell, Naomi Hunter, and himself, serves as a stand-in for the inter-prisoner support system that POWs form. The ability to compassionately communicate with another human being is a luxury many prisoners are not afforded, but it makes all the difference.
Both Snake and the player have their stress soothed by the presence of another human being and conversation.
[Section 2] Part III: The Torture Itself; or, "Torture? This is an interrogation"
Of course, no part of this sequence would work if the actual act of torture were not effective. Thankfully, and of course, it is. To this day, first time players are agitated and tested by the difficulty of the sequence. Searching the scene will reveal two decades worth of people asking if the sequence can even be completed. Resisting the torture and surviving the electrocution is agonizing. Like Snake, the only thing that keeps the player involved with the sequence is their will to complete it. At any time, they can press select to confess the information and betray Meryl. I'm sure many players begin with the intention of keeping quiet, but find the torture too extreme, and are forced to press select to continue. It takes a committed player to get past the sequence, even if they are fortunate enough to pass on the first attempt, and it is a great relief when it is over.
After the initial electrocution, Snake is returned to his cell.
Once the player is here, and it is clear they cannot escape, anxiety and concern begin creeping again. Will they guards come back for me? Will Ocelot torture me again? The answer is, of course, yes. Yes they will. There is nothing you can do but wait, and when the time comes, you are strapped right back into the machine and forced to survive it again. If it was difficult the first time, it is even worse a second time. The player is tired. The player is upset. Like Snake, your will to proceed is being challenged. Your physical fortitude is being put to the test. Your loyalty to Meryl is the only thing keeping you strapped in this machine.
The challenge here is not one of skill or even luck. It is a test of will.
People do not usually forget this sequence. They remember how difficult it was, they remember how frustrated they felt, and players collectively moan and groan over having had to complete it. This section is not fun at all. People's experience this scene are almost universally negative. The long-term effects of this scene reflect the PTSD of torture victims who are permanently altered by their experiences. Like a torture victim yourself, you will never forget what happened to you. You will never forget what you endured. You will never forget how you suffered.
Thankfully, it's just a game.
[Section 3] Conclusion: "This is what it means to create context"
I anticipate that some folks reading this may be put-off that I am mentioning a difficult video game level in the same breath actual real-world torture. I hope it is obvious that the player experience with Metal Gear Solid is metaphoric and this thread is about comparison rather than equivalency.
Within the context of a video game, and in regards to player empathy and self-insertion, the torture sequence is a stressful and memorable event that forces you to come to terms with your own willpower. It uses tools that are unique to video games to portray its narrative through its mechanics and synchronize the player POV with that of its lead character. The player should now have some understanding of what Snake endured and, like many lessons from fiction, this understanding has practical value. But the player now has some context through which they might better understand their own world. Sometimes, just a taste is enough.
As I define more fully in my Luigi's Mansion thread, truly successful interactive narratives make mechanics an integral and indivisible component of the story. MGS was a groundbreaking video game that understood the scope of what was possible in the medium, but it far from perfected the balance between gameplay and cinematics. The game tends to trade these features off, giving each a turn, confining the story to cutscenes and full-screen conversations while the player partakes in somewhat detached character action. Gameplay doesn't become the fabric of the narrative except for this estimable part of the affair. Here, player and plot become seamless and inseparable. Neither exists without the other and the player becomes a fully immersed actor in the experience. What Kojima accomplished here in the torture scene, to me, is a early hearkening forward to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, our increasingly relevant postmodern masterpiece.
As video games become more and more advanced and the technology available allows us to interact more and more directly with the stories we consume, I think there will be renewed interest in how games historically tried to pull the player close and not let them go. Even though it's been three years, this one still holds me tight.
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