The Character Single-Handedly Ruining 'Metal Gear Solid' Games

One of the most defining traits of the Metal Gear Solid series is its unwavering commitment to exchanging any semblance of plot coherence for neat cutscenes. That's one of the series' main sources of criticism, but also one of the best reasons to love it if you're one of the cool people. One of the things few people notice is how most of the inexplicably bizarre plot twists come specifically out of one character: Ocelot.

The first game is mostly simple stuff that just lays the groundwork for the avalanche of madness that'll come later. A Japanese version of the Predator cuts off Revolver Ocelot's arm, and then we see a post-credits sequence where we find out that he, a Russian soldier supposedly loyal to the terrorist leader, had been secretly working with the president of the United States all along.

In Metal Gear Solid 2, we learn that Ocelot has replaced his arm, too bad he replaced it with the arm from the terrorist of the first game, who can now somehow gain control of his brain via the arm. That's the most hated plot twist in all of gaming, but pretty brilliant in hindsight because it made fans ignore an equally dumb plot point. By the end of the game, Ocelot reveals he owns a mysterious item that makes him completely impervious to any projectile.

The gizmo (yeah, that's what they call it) is incredibly overpowered, so overpowered that in the sequel to Metal Gear Solid 2, Metal Gear Solid 4 (yes, 4), it's completely gone and it's as if it had never even existed in the minds of those characters. It's bizarre to learn that Ocelot's plan in MGS 4 is to gain control of the DNA recognition systems of all weapons to prevent getting shot at knowing he should be way beyond caring about bullets by then.

One could therefore posit that MGS would be damn close to a normal series without Ocelot, the cause and/or object of all dumb twists and retcons. In Metal Gear Solid 3, however, a game that actually takes place before all the other games in the series, we'll come across a younger version of Ocelot. The first reaction might be trying to go Terminator on his ass to save the game's timeline, but that'll result in a Game Over caused by a time paradox.

A paradox that I'm certain is way less paradoxical than this series on a regular day.

Top Image: Konami