![]() The machinations behind this madness are all rather simple. The infamous fight only ends when you finally figure out that the only way to defeat Mantis is by changing which port your controller is in so that he cannot read your mind. He is able to kill the game feed and make “Hideo” appear where the word “Video” usually is. He “reads your mind” and is able to tell you how cautious you are and what your favorite games are. He asks you to put your controller on the ground then makes it move. It is there that Mantis not only breaks free of the world established by Metal Gear Solidbut manages to enter the world of the player. Mantis’ ability to transcend worlds becomes even more terrifying during the legendary boss fight encounter with him. Perhaps this is why he floats when we first see him. He is grounded in this believable world, yet also not entirely tethered to it. The fact that the game tries to apply some of that real-world logic to his existence makes him all the more horrifying. He is the bridge between the (mostly) real world of Metal Gear Solid (terrorists, spies, governments, etc.) and a supernatural world that we cannot quite explain. Actually, he’s (appropriately) more of a medium. Mantis is the game’s direct link to the world of pure horror. ![]() Rather than allow that moment to linger and fester, Kojima gives us “a blood flowing out of the elevator” introduction to Metal Gear Solid’s horror just shortly after Anderson’s demise: the first appearance of Psycho Mantis. The fact that they can’t seem to comprehend this seemingly simple event clues you into the idea that there’s something happening here beyond a twist in the story. Until now, you and your associates have all been presented as some of the most capable espionage figures in the world. What makes it unnerving is both the suddenness of the incident and the fact that your contacts seem confused by Anderson’s death. In and of itself, there is nothing too horrific about the scene besides the obvious horror of watching a man die. Actually, both aspects of the game are arguably brought to the forefront during a scene in which DARPA Chief Donald Anderson, one of the hostages you’re tasked with saving during your infiltration mission, starts to violently convulse from an apparent heart attack. Much like how Metal Gear Solid’s weirdness is slowly introduced to the player, the game’s horror elements are not made immediately apparent. Where Metal Gear Solid got truly weird, though, are the moments in which Kojima and crew dipped their toes into the horror genre. ![]() Metal Gear Solid lured us in with a familiar action movie-like premise – even the game’s commercials greatly simplified the game’s premise – before smothering us with an incredibly deep video game story delivered through revolutionary means. What begins as the largely simple tale of a spy who has to infiltrate a military base that has been overrun by terrorists becomes a careful philosophical observation of war, humanity, and science. Yet, as cohesive as Metal Gear Solid’s story was and as familiar as its cinematic storytelling may have been, it remains one of the PlayStation’s most surprising and downright weird narrative experiences. Meanwhile, many of Metal Gear Solid’s cutscenes were either told through the in-game engine or were woven into the title’s stealth gameplay in such a way that made the whole thing feel cohesive. Playing M etal Gear Solid made you realize that games could finally be “just like the movies.” Commercials for other PlayStation games had teased such an accomplishment, but they often separated the cinematic from the interactive. It has been described as the first modern video game, and at the very least, Metal Gear Solid’s incredible cutscenes proved that games were finally capable of providing the kind of cinematic storytelling experience that had turned movies into the benchmark of visual storytelling. Even if they were, there was very little that could prepare them for what Metal Gear Solid was. The point is that the PlayStation appealed to a broader demographic of players who almost certainly weren’t aware of the Metal Gear series and weren’t inherently interested in the game based on the fact that it was a sequel.
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