Wow, the characters in the latest Death Stranding trailer sure do look neat!

Silly Metal Gear Bosses: Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar

I find it educational to occasionally disregard the long-held tradition of Gameplay and Story Segregation—to remove player input from the equation and evaluate in-game actions as character choices.

This thought experiment makes Drago Pettrovich Madnar’s sub-boss fight in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake a whole lot more entertaining.

In the first Metal Gear, Madnar is little more than a plot device: he provides a vital piece of information exactly once and, his purpose in life fulfilled, proceeds to sit on his behind for the remainder of the game.

Like everyone else who migrates over to the sequel, Madnar develops just enough as a character to stab you in the back. Growing pacifistic sentiments in the West have rendered his field of study obsolete, so he defects to Big Boss’ mercenary paradise, where he finds the political freedom he needs to complete his pet project: Metal Gear D.

Now, let’s examine the stunning revelation of Madnar’s treachery from Snake’s perspective. While the hero of Outer Heaven is busy talking to his lady friend on the radio, this seventy-year-old nerd latches onto his back like a man-sized leech and tries to strangle/bite/dry hump him to death.

Naturally, our favorite legendary soldier responds by pelting the crazed Einstein lookalike with remote-controlled missiles. Yes, you read that correctly: Snake fires upon Madnar—the man currently doing his best impersonation of a backpack, the man who is close enough to rub his mustache up and down Snake’s neck—with remote-controlled explosives. Picture that image flickering across the silver screen at twenty-four frames per second. It would be absolutely ridiculous—the most epic thing committed to celluloid since D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, perhaps, but ridiculous nevertheless. We would question the protagonist’s sanity.

Of course, at that point, we would have to ask ourselves, “Why in God’s name did I do that?”

Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar, you force players to abandon rational thought and shoot rockets at themselves. I think that deserves an enthusiastic salute!

Silly Metal Gear Bosses: Running Man

The boss characters in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake include a space ninja, a wall-crawling grenadier, and two guerilla warfare experts transparently (ha!) inspired by Predator. If nothing else, they’re a lot more interesting than their predecessors—a guy with a shotgun, a guy with a machinegun, a guy with a flamethrower, etc.

Then there’s Running Man…

Poor, pitiful Running Man. His comrades get cool, practical combat skills. Black Ninja can teleport. Night Fright can blend seamlessly into his surroundings.

Running Man can run.

Run very, very fast.

Away from the enemy.

The fight against Running Man is really more of a fight against time. The object of the battle is to deplete his health before the flood of poison gas depletes yours. But he refuses to show himself outside of cutscenes; all you see of him is a white dot zipping across your radar every time you advance a screen.

The solution is simple (and obvious, considering you passed through a minefield twice to get this far): lay a trail of land mines as you jog laps around the room. Running Man, desperate to avoid (gulp) direct confrontation, will blindly dash into every single one until he finally burns to a crisp, allowing Snake to crack jokes over his mangled carcass.

This is an example of a gameplay mechanic dictating the story, rather than serving it. In the first Metal Gear, each screen loaded individually; therefore, enemies and items would respawn every time you returned a particular part of the map (exploiting this was the quickest and safest way to stock up on rations). In Metal Gear 2, however, patrolling guards are able to freely pass between screens (just look at the blip on your radar!); likewise, any mines you lay won’t simply vanish when you exit the screen. And so, for the sake of showing off this shiny new multi-screen map system, Kojima contrived the least dignified soldier of fortune in the history of armed warfare.

For existing solely to flaunt the improved game engine, I salute Running Man, Zanzibar’s wimpiest warrior! 

Silly Metal Gear Bosses: Dirty Duck

I feel sorry for the boss characters in the first Metal Gear game. The technological limitations of the MSX2 didn’t leave them much room to develop… personalities. All they could do was shout their names, run from side-to-side along the very top of the screen, and spray bullets at random until their health was depleted. Compared to the rogue FOXOUND operatives in Solid, the Cobras in Snake Eater, and even the ragtag band of Zanzibar mercenaries in Solid Snake, the masterminds of the Outer Heaven uprising aren’t terribly memorable. Let’s be honest: Shotmaker, Machinegun Kid, Fire Trooper—these guys are just regular guards with more hit points and bigger guns.

Then, about twenty minutes from the end, you battle Dirty Duck, one of the franchise’s first legitimately interesting—and truly bizarre—antagonists. Not only does he have the least dignified codename of the game’s rogues gallery, his pre-fight taunting suggests he’s proud of it (though it’s a step up from “Coward Duck,” his name in the original NES translation). Considering he apparently called his terrorist organization “Egg Plant” (according to the wiki, anyway), this seems to be his core character trait. But Dirty Duck endures for reasons beyond having some semblance of a personality; he’s also the first foe that forces the player to formulate a strategy other than “find a safe zone and pelt him with remote-controlled rockets.”

Granted, he does this by (true to his name) cheating: he hides himself behind three hostages (who you really can’t afford to kill at this point), tosses multiple boomerangs that fly in near-unpredictable patterns, and severely restricts your movement by opening a trap door in the center of the room. And that “strategy” boils down to standing in one spot (either the far left or far right side of the screen, where he can’t dodge your shots) and praying your health bar outlasts his (hope you saved up some rations).

Still, he represents a huge step forward: he provides a unique gameplay challenge, behaves in a way that suggests “characterization,” and foreshadows the proud tradition of colorful villains to follow. Dirty Duck, I salute you.