Garo
Boy Wonder
Last night, December 7th, at the Spike VGAs, the world premiere trailer for a game called The Phantom Pain was shown. That's not uncommon; Dark Souls 2 was also announced with a trailer, and games like Skyrim and Arkham City have been announced at the show in previous years. What's odd is that this game was being developed by a studio called Moby **** Studio, one that the gaming industry has never heard from before. This would be their first game. They appeared to have no major publisher backing them, either, which begs the question: how could a small upstart studio afford placing a trailer for their game at the VGAs?
So that was fishy, and so kicks off the mystery of The Phantom Pain.
Not long after, the website for the studio was found. It's a very sparse website with hardly any actual content, and contains no real answers to the intriguing studio's history, other than the name of its CEO, Joakim Mogren. Mysterious.
Now the trailer itself presents a few interesting bits of information. It appears to be an action/stealth game in which you control a previously comatose patient who lost his left arm while soldiers of an unknown military force invade the hospital, and apocalyptic events (including a flaming unicorn and giant flaming whale) occur all around you. But the strangest thing is that the protagonist looks EXACTLY like Snake, the protagonist of the Metal Gear series. In fact, before the title dropped, I was convinced I was watching the trailer for a new Metal Gear game of some sort. After all, Kojima has been working on a secret project (referred to as Project OGRE) for some time now in addition to the previously announced Ground Zeroes. But no, it's called The Phantom Pain, and appears to have nothing to do with Kojima. But this is just where the weirdness starts.
People started thinking, and found a few interesting connections. Take the CEO's name: Joakim Mogren. The first name is an anagram for Kojima. The last name? Mogren = Mogren. Interesting. Very interesting. Then consider the protagonist, who is missing a left arm and appears to have amnesia, and looks like Snake. There are four individuals with the name Snake in the Metal Gear series - Naked Snake (or "Big Boss"), a former antagonist but current protagonist of a number of titles in the series; Solid Snake, the protagonist of the Metal Gear games and MGS1 and MGS4; Solidus Snake, the antagonist of MGS2; and Liquid Snake, the antagonist of MGS1. Liquid Snake lost his arm at the end of Metal Gear Solid, an arm that eventually was grafted onto Revolver Ocelot, turning him into Liquid Ocelot (basically allowing Liquid to control Ocelot). Are we looking at what happened to Liquid Snake after the events of Metal Gear Solid?
I think we are, because the trailer contains two more exciting nuggets of information. I'm going to hide these images behind a spoiler, because you may want to go see for yourself. At the end of the trailer, we see Liquid (I'm assuming he's Liquid, let's just go with it) slumped against a wall as a soldier examines him with a bright light. In the background, we see a pair of feet slowly rise into the air - and in the next frame, we can clearly see Psycho Mantis, the iconic boss from the first Metal Gear Solid game, floating in the air. Additionally, the title card for The Phantom Pain had a lot of strange typographical quirks, such as parts missing from letters and some extraneous lines floating around. A few people did some sleuthing and found a nicely concealed message in the title.
Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have just witnessed one of the most clever and intriguing game announcements of all time. Metal Gear Solid V, bring it on.
So that was fishy, and so kicks off the mystery of The Phantom Pain.
Not long after, the website for the studio was found. It's a very sparse website with hardly any actual content, and contains no real answers to the intriguing studio's history, other than the name of its CEO, Joakim Mogren. Mysterious.
Now the trailer itself presents a few interesting bits of information. It appears to be an action/stealth game in which you control a previously comatose patient who lost his left arm while soldiers of an unknown military force invade the hospital, and apocalyptic events (including a flaming unicorn and giant flaming whale) occur all around you. But the strangest thing is that the protagonist looks EXACTLY like Snake, the protagonist of the Metal Gear series. In fact, before the title dropped, I was convinced I was watching the trailer for a new Metal Gear game of some sort. After all, Kojima has been working on a secret project (referred to as Project OGRE) for some time now in addition to the previously announced Ground Zeroes. But no, it's called The Phantom Pain, and appears to have nothing to do with Kojima. But this is just where the weirdness starts.
People started thinking, and found a few interesting connections. Take the CEO's name: Joakim Mogren. The first name is an anagram for Kojima. The last name? Mogren = Mogren. Interesting. Very interesting. Then consider the protagonist, who is missing a left arm and appears to have amnesia, and looks like Snake. There are four individuals with the name Snake in the Metal Gear series - Naked Snake (or "Big Boss"), a former antagonist but current protagonist of a number of titles in the series; Solid Snake, the protagonist of the Metal Gear games and MGS1 and MGS4; Solidus Snake, the antagonist of MGS2; and Liquid Snake, the antagonist of MGS1. Liquid Snake lost his arm at the end of Metal Gear Solid, an arm that eventually was grafted onto Revolver Ocelot, turning him into Liquid Ocelot (basically allowing Liquid to control Ocelot). Are we looking at what happened to Liquid Snake after the events of Metal Gear Solid?
I think we are, because the trailer contains two more exciting nuggets of information. I'm going to hide these images behind a spoiler, because you may want to go see for yourself. At the end of the trailer, we see Liquid (I'm assuming he's Liquid, let's just go with it) slumped against a wall as a soldier examines him with a bright light. In the background, we see a pair of feet slowly rise into the air - and in the next frame, we can clearly see Psycho Mantis, the iconic boss from the first Metal Gear Solid game, floating in the air. Additionally, the title card for The Phantom Pain had a lot of strange typographical quirks, such as parts missing from letters and some extraneous lines floating around. A few people did some sleuthing and found a nicely concealed message in the title.
Psycho Mantis:
Title:
Title:
Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have just witnessed one of the most clever and intriguing game announcements of all time. Metal Gear Solid V, bring it on.
