One reason these series have such staying power is that each installment, rather than feeling like a retread, tends to have its own vibe and unique aspects while keeping the core mechanical and narrative elements that endeared these games to players in the first place. More notably, and the reason I opened with a discussion of long-running series, is that these games incorporate this episodic nature into their themes, exploring cycles of behavior and the relationships we have with the past with protagonists carrying baggage and trauma from previous experiences - whether they were the events of the previous games or, in the case of their respective starting points, off-screen. (I am, for the sake of this argument, excluding the original Metal Gear (1987) as an exception proving the rule, as this narrative trope was introduced in its sequel, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990) and has been a part of every installment since.) This serves the practical purpose of allowing new players to start with later series entries and returning players to come back following a break without the need for a crash course to relearn the ongoing storyline. Indeed, off-screen storytelling built on audience imagination is so central to both series that they were not only able to slot prequel games into their main canon, but also to make those games beloved classics, rather than the disappointment prequels (regardless of media) are generally met with.
Aside from this, the two series have a number of themes and structural elements in common, despite operating within different genre conventions. Regardless of specifics, these are stories about emotionally damaged men who have found themselves outside of society in roles that (prior to the start of the series) required them to do morally questionable things on behalf of authoritative father figures, as well as the found families of outsiders they find themselves a part of and the way the trauma bonds connecting them can be abused by those same authority figures. Along the way, questions about power, responsibility, and loyalty will be asked, and often take the form of close quarters one-on-one combat (frequently shirtless). The endings are usually disquieting or bitersweet and never triumphant or celebratory. But for all the pain and growth along the way, they are about the way those men (and the people around them) break out of the cycles of trauma and abuse that have dominated their lives and subordinated them to powerful and selfish figures. At the end of the game, Snake (any of them) never goes back to the unit he had served when the game started. Kazuma Kiryu once again walks away from the Tojo Clan (except for Yakuza 0, since that's a prequel and, significantly, he only returns after the game has ended and the player is watching events play out). But in getting there, they question and strain the relationship they had with the groups they once swore allegiance to... and the people within (or previously attached to) those groups they once considered friends and even parental figures.
If you've played any of these games, examples should already be springing to mind - something I believe is very much intentional. The personal stakes that are highlighted in these games (not to mention the generally impeccable voice acting) provide emotional relevance and connection to plot-heavy stories that might otherwise feel impersonal. It's definitely a reason I've stuck with these two series where others that cover similar territory haven't made much impression on me. The antagonists will generally have concrete goals of growing their power, authority, wealth, revenge or any combination thereof, and time and again they use their "families" to these ends, frequently dooming themselves in the process, revealing just how much these figures had seen the people they brought in as expendable, even risky, if kept around. It's always be heavily implied that our protagonists have taken part in such dubious activities themselves (or, in the case of secondary protagonists, even depicted). The traumas they witnessed may have brought them into the shadows, but the ones they carry out themselves force them to stay.
Except, of course, they don't - otherwise these would be very different games that endorse (however grimly) military or criminal enterprises. But while the (Western) names may suggest one thing, they refer to what our characters are opposed to: Kiryu has left his Yakuza life in the past and the titular Metal Gear is a nuclear-equipped walking deathmobile physical incarnation of military force and projected power - something to be stopped at all costs. (Peace Walker notwithstanding, but even there it's symbolic of Big Boss becoming part of the "system" by adopting its methods.) These are the things that have dominated and defined our characters' lives, supported and built by the men who raised them. Opposing them means confronting their own pasts, and showing that other ways are indeed possible.
We can't close this out without at least acknowledging the way that the Metal Gear prequel games muddy this to some degree. After all, they have you playing as Big Boss, the first Bad Dad of these two series, someone who, we're told as early as the 8-bit Metal Gear 2, recruits child soldiers who look up to and even revere him. What does it say that, after all this time, we're told to embody the kind of character we've spent all these other games emancipating ourselves from? There is, of course, the "bait-and-switch" twist of The Phantom Pain, which offers players the opportunity for an "out" by saying "it's the real Big Boss that's doing the horrible things we've known about for the entire series, not the poor brainwashed body double we've been playing this entire game." Which, while convenient, misses an important detail: the first children brought under the sway of Big Boss, the real one, appear in Peace Walker before the player's very eyes. But we tend to miss it, it feels so natural that we're bringing these kinds aboard, and that's the point - it does feel natural to Big Boss, because it's the kind of circumstance he and Kaz both came from. They're children of war (Paz even more than he suspects) and rather than escape it, they're encouraged to find their place within it, to make it their own.
This is why the choices of the central characters of the main games so remarkable. Conflict and manipulation are all they've known, and yet they break the cycle, removing themselves and their families from the maelstrom... often at great personal expense. This is one reason, for all the darker parts of the human experience that these games depict, they ultimately feel uplifting, at least on some level. The cycle can be broken. We don't need to perpetuate the wrongs done to us, to our families. It may come at great personal cost, but we can do better - for ourselves, and for the people we see enough of ourselves in to know we'll do anything to keep them away from the horrors we've experienced. We can - we must do better than what was done to us.
Happy Father's Day, everybody.
- B
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