Metal Gear Solid 3: Patriotism and Humanity
- Jing
- Jan 20
- 4 min read
Is there such thing as an absolute timeless enemy? There is no such thing and never has been. And the reason is that our enemies are human beings like us. They can only be our enemies in relative terms.
------The Boss
When people talk about the Metal Gear Solid franchise today, the first image that often comes to mind is a badass middle-aged man wearing a bandana, an eye patch over his right eye, and a cigar in his mouth. Of course, there is always some dramatic music playing in the background—something like Invisible by Duran Duran.
Yes, these images feel accurate, even though most of them come from meme videos, and Invisible was released in 2021—six years after the last Metal Gear Solid game. Still, somehow, these memes capture the spirit of the series surprisingly well. But beyond the jokes, the music, and the iconic imagery, do we really remember what Metal Gear Solid is actually about?
The Metal Gear series is a classic video game franchise created by Hideo Kojima and published by Konami, beginning in 1987 on the MSX platform. Across its many entries, the series explores themes such as the Cold War, nuclear deterrence, information control, and human identity, telling complex political and personal stories centered around the bipedal nuclear weapon known as “Metal Gear.”
On the gameplay level, Metal Gear Solid reinforces these themes through stealth. Instead of rewarding aggression, the game encourages avoidance, patience, and restraint. Players hide, listen, and survive rather than dominate. This design choice subtly aligns the player with Snake’s inner conflict, making the act of playing feel cautious, lonely, and morally uncomfortable.
Among all these stories, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater stands out as one of the most emotionally powerful. Kojima created many memorable characters in this game, but none is more important than The Boss. The game never tells us her real name. What we know is that she is Snake’s mentor and spiritual leader—the person who shaped him into the man who would later become Big Boss. She is a legendary soldier who fought in World War II and served the United States for decades.
In MGS3, The Boss is presented as a traitor to the United States and the main villain the player must defeat. By the end of the game, the player—controlling Snake—is forced to kill her, only to discover the truth: she was never a traitor. She was a double agent who remained loyal until the very end—not to any country, but to her mission.
What makes this tragedy even heavier is that Snake and The Boss were given parallel missions. Snake’s mission is to destroy Metal Gear and eliminate The Boss. The Boss’s mission, however, includes one final condition: if necessary, she must allow herself to be killed by the next American agent—Snake himself.
After The Boss’s death, Snake begins to realize that there is no such thing as an absolute enemy. Politics, economics, and the arms race are nothing more than arenas for endless, meaningless competition. The Earth itself has no borders—no East, no West, no Cold War. To achieve this, friends can become enemies, lovers can be separated, and even one’s own life can be sacrificed.
Snake’s reaction to this realization is deeply human. He does not try to reform the system, nor does he fully reject it. Instead, he steps outside of it. Outer Heaven is not born from hatred or ambition, but from exhaustion—from the realization that soldiers are treated as expendable assets, reduced to numbers on reports and statistics on a map. Snake’s dream is flawed and ultimately tragic, but it comes from a desire to protect humanity in a world that demands obedience above all else. In this way, even his most radical choice is rooted not in ideology, but in compassion.
What makes Metal Gear Solid especially powerful is that these ideas are not delivered only through dialogue or cutscenes, but through the player’s own hands. Stealth is not just a gameplay mechanic; it is an emotional position. The player is constantly asked to slow down, to observe, to avoid unnecessary violence. Every unconscious guard, everybody hidden out of sight, becomes a quiet moral choice. The game never explicitly praises mercy, but it creates a space where restraint feels more meaningful than domination. In doing so, Metal Gear Solid turns the act of playing into an act of reflection.
In the end, MGS is not asking us to hate our country, nor is it trying to tell us who the enemy is. Instead, it asks something far more uncomfortable: how easily are we willing to accept an order that turns another human being into an enemy? The cost paid not only by nations or ideologies, but by individual human lives. This idea becomes even clearer in Metal Gear Solid V, where the enemy is no longer a specific country, but the systems that draw lines between people in the name of authority, the orders that erase humanity in the name of duty, and the ideologies that justify violence in the name of values.
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