‘Metal Gear’ Anniversary: 5 questions we thought would be answered by the series’ 30th birthday
It’s Metal Gear’s 30th birthday, and we’re taking a look back at some of the questions we’ve been dying to know the answers to for years. The Metal Gear series has taken us across the world and told us the stories of two legendary soldiers and is truly a modern epic.
Series creator Hideo Kojima’s departure from Konami seems to mark the end of the narrative, with only the side story Metal Gear Survive heading for release. Unfortunately, that leaves us with a ton of unanswered questions. Fans had hoped that 2015’s Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain would wrap the series up, but the last third of the game ended up being rushed, and we were left with more plot holes and questions than ever (and that’s not counting non-canon entries).
Below are the five questions we’re dying to have answered about the Metal Gear saga.
(Editors Note: Massive spoilers for the entire Metal Gear series below)
Five questions we’re dying to have answered about Metal Gear
A lot of Metal Gear related questions involve knowing what characters were doing while they weren’t on screen. The two that stand out the most, because of their prominence in their respective games, are EVA and Meryl Silverburgh.
1. Where did EVA go?
We found out EVA was a triple agent in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and that she later joined Major Zero’s Patriots. She ended up becoming the surrogate mother for the Les Enfants Terribles project that resulted in the births of Solid Snake and Liquid Snake. However, between the last cassette tape, we hear from her in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker set in 1974, and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots set in 2014, all we know about her is that she somehow teamed up with Naomi Hunter and Gray Fox to kill Para-Media in 2003. That’s a gap of 40 years.
Further complicating matters is that we don’t hear a peep from her in MGS5: The Phantom Pain. It could be argued that she was with the real Big Boss while Venom Snake was building Diamond Dogs, but without confirmation, there are four decades of EVA’s adventures we don’t know about.
2. Where did Meryl go?
Meryl has a much smaller absence than EVA, but it’s glaring all the same. She plays a significant role in the original Metal Gear Solid set in 2005 but falls off the map after its conclusion. We don’t hear anything about her until MGS4 set in 2014. That’s almost a decade of absence.
In MGS4 we learn she’s been working in the US Army’s Criminal Investigation Command and leads her own team. However, we don’t know any real details of what she was up to during the decade between MGS and MGS4.
3. What happens to Mother Base and the Diamond Dogs?
One of the biggest holes in the Metal Gear canon is the fate of Mother Base and the Diamond Dogs. The ending of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is pretty abrupt, and we just kind of skip from Venom Snake leading the Diamond Dogs to him being in Outer Heaven. It would have been nice to get a little more closure after spending a whole game with them.
4. What was Solid Snake’s history before Metal Gear?
We got to see Eli’s (Liquid Snake) adolescence as a child soldier during Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. However, we don’t get to see anything related to David’s (Solid Snake) childhood in any Metal Gear entry. Seeing as they would have been the same age in MGSV, it seems like a missed opportunity to offer some insight into what Solid Snake’s early life was like besides the vague descriptions we’ve received so far.
5. What happened to Camp Omega?
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes had Big Boss infiltrating Camp Omega, a black site in Cuba, to rescue Paz and Chico, two compatriots in 1974. That mission ended in failure and set off the events that would occur in MGSV, and we never find out what happens to Camp Omega.
Kojima teased at a return to Camp Omega in MGSV, but we never got any single-player content set there. In fact, Camp Omega isn’t even mentioned in the game in the present tense, so we don’t even know if it exists as of 1984 when The Phantom Pain takes place. Given the horrible events that transpired there in Ground Zeroes, the return to Camp Omega could have provided fans some much-needed closure.
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