#echo snake

I’ve been binging video essays on the Metal Gear franchise recently because literary analysis is a pit as deep as the depression my mind finds itself mired in, and I came up with an idea for a new Metal Gear game.

Set almost two hundred years in the future, mankind has finally begun to colonize the stars. Governments still exist, but they are all but shells. All the power is now concentrated in the hands of a few megacorporations, keeping the masses happy with an endless stream focus tested of entertainment slurry as they divide up the stars for themselves.

But then, the worst case scenario happens. An alien invasion strikes, and humanity is thrust back into war. One corporation goes back to the drawing board and uses their advanced technology to resurrect Les Infant Terribles. Using the last remaining bit of Big Boss’s DNA they create a final clone: Echo Snake.

Thrust into a sci-fi cyberpunk hellscape, Echo Snake is tasked with turning the tide against the alien threat. But he is no secret like his predecessors. His exploits are televised. he is a celebrity. The megacorporations sell his merch. He becomes a commodity to be bought and sold.

Throughout the first half of the story, Echo Snake will make friends and allies. Cyborgs and genetically mutated warriors, all with express purpose of fighting this infinite cosmic threat, and making the Megacorporations money.

But, midway through the game, the terrible truth is revealed: There are no aliens. There is no invasion. Only a series of proxy battles and sham fights crafted for the express purpose of manufacturing conflict for the megacorporations to make money off of. And you, Echo Snake? You’re just another product, created to cash in on the legend of Snake and Big Boss. Nostalgia sells, after all.

Cast aside and left for dead, Echo Snake is rescued by a band of colonists on the moons of Jupiter who nurse him back to health. These colonists are not a part of any listed colony. They are, in fact, rebels, trying to make a life free of the megacorporations.

With renewed purpose, our hero casts off the name Echo Snake, and takes up the name Ghost Snake, the Phantom of History.

The second half of the game is dedicated to fighting the megacorporations, and exposing their dirty laundry. Those allies you made in the first half become your enemies, unable to break free of the corporate shackles around their necks. You are forced to put them down.