The Ground Zeroes Controversy: A Response

by Gary Alexander Stott

Warning: Major spoilers for Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes follow. DO NOT read on if you wish to avoid major plot details.

First off, a disclaimer: I'm a long-term Metal Gear fan, and I love Ground Zeroes. This article is written in defence of the title and the controversy it has created.

In order to respond to the controversy, however, we must first establish what, exactly, that controversy is. I feel there are actually three separate issues, two of which concern the actual content of the game and one of which concerns the title's length in relation to its price. With that in mind, I shall now proceed to discuss these issues one-by-one, starting with the latter, as it is somewhat lighter in gravity.

BAM! And THAT'S for giving the plot away.

Length/Price

The title's primary and eponymous mission, 'Ground Zeroes', will take the average player less that two hours to complete. I'm not going to deny this: it's absolutely true. In my case, it took me an hour and a half. This overall time includes the duration of several cutscenes, some of which run close to ten minutes long. At the time of writing, Ground Zeroes costs £24 on Amazon UK.

Is a mid-range price mark justified by such brevity? My answer is yes, because the game only truly begins once when the credits start rolling. While the central mission takes less than two hours to complete, it must be completed several times in order to unlock everything. There are cassette tapes and military patches to collect. There are logos to erase. There are weapons to find. Moreover, there are countless ways to complete the mission. Many stealth games offer branching paths and different ways to go about a scenario – the Hitman series is renowned for this – but in reality, many of these titles simply offer a series of convenient solutions. Perhaps a guard will walk right underneath a heavy object hanging overhead. Maybe a room can be accessed via a ventilation shaft, a door, and a rooftop hatch. Regardless of how it's dressed up, all of these solutions have been thought out by the developer in advance and just lie in wait for the player to discover. Ground Zeroes, on the other hand, marks Metal Gear's first step into dynamic open world stealth. That doesn't sound particularly ground-breaking until you realize just how dynamic Ground Zeroes is. Yes, there are a few solutions that Kojima Productions have clearly thought out in advance – a truck might park in a convenient area, just waiting for you to climb aboard so it can carry you into a highly-guarded base – but all the same, the game is wide open to solutions Kojima Productions didn't think of, thanks to the layout of the environment. Indeed, the developer designed the game with this in mind – they want players to be able to do things they didn't think of. Camp Omega is buzzing with life: guard patrols, vehicles, interrogation options – all of these elements can be exploited in creative ways. No single play-through will ever be the same as another. I can attest to this.

I've also saved the best for last: 'Ground Zeroes' is but one of the options on the mission select screen. Unlocked after completing the former, these 'Side-Ops' place Snake in different start points, alter the time of day, feature different patrol patterns, and most importantly, feature new objectives. Furthermore, all of these missions feature a 'hard' difficulty option, and players are rewarded with new starting weapons by achieving certain grades on these respective challenges – some of which have the potential to offer new strategies altogether, such as the sniper rifle. When trophies/achievements are added into the mix, it's easy to see why I disagree with the notion that Ground Zeroes is overpriced. It's the next-gen equivalent of the original game's VR Missions spin-off. Oh, and the gameplay is bloody fantastic, by the way.

Ultimately, Ground Zeroes isn't intended for new Metal Gear players. Rather, its intent is to show off the new Fox Engine, to familiarise players with the dynamic, open-world gameplay style, and to tide us over until The Phantom Pain in released by introducing its story. It's a deep, lengthy opening mission with tons of extra stuff thrown in for good measure. And it's worth £24. I'm currently pushing 6 hours, and I'm only at 30% completion.

Violence

And now we enter onto the game's narrative content. With the title taking place in a Guantanamo Bay-style military camp, it naturally features unpleasant sights. However, I will add that most of the torture is implied rather than explicitly shown, and this is done through the game's cassette tapes. We do find nails bolted into Chico's heels, but we don't actually see the process that put them there. With regard to violence, it's really the game's ending that has sparked debate. In short, after rescuing Paz, Snake and his team discover she has a bomb planted in her abdomen. Under time pressure, they hold her down and cut her open without the use of anaesthetics. Her organs are shown in full, medically-accurate detail, and as Paz struggles in pain, the scene is unpleasant to watch. It's shocking new territory for a Metal Gear game, but I found it felt less out-of-place after a few play-throughs, once I'd grown accustomed to the darker tone of Kojima's reimagined universe.

The bomb is found and removed, but the final scene of the game reveals the presence of another explosive. 'It's in my...' says Paz, right before the bomb detonates. There are those such as IGN's Lucy O'Brien who have actually found the second bomb to be more offending, as it renders the previous scene unnecessary. As a character, Paz suffers throughout Ground Zeroes, and her only freedom is given through death. To put a female character through such an ordeal has inevitably concerned some, particularly as she is the only female character in the whole game.

However, I would argue that this violence towards Paz is not simply there for shock value. Kojima has expressed interest in tackling darker subject territory in order to bring videogames in league with other mediums. With revenge said to be a primary theme in The Phantom Pain, it makes sense to burn a painful image into our minds in order to give us something to avenge.

Furthermore, it adds a sense of moral ambiguity to the apparent heroes of the title – a necessary feature when we consider that Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain are intended to depict the events that turned Snake from a heroic soldier into the more villainous Big Boss (it's worth noting that Kojima has expressed admiration for the moral complexity of Breaking Bad's Walter White and our inability to define him as a hero or villain). In the overall context of Metal Gear Solid V, I think this scene will stand out less, though it's easy to see why its inclusion in Ground Zeroes has become noteworthy. Being the very first step Metal Gear has taken into this territory, it has a particularly strong resonance. That may just be what Kojima intended. Ultimately, I didn't find the scene as shocking as the controversy had led me to believe, and I came to ask myself: would Ground Zeroes be better if this scene was removed? And my answer was, and still is, no. Ground Zeroes ends with a lot of things falling apart, and the tension of this scene only adds to that sense.

Implied Sexual Abuse

We now come to the third element of the controversy. It's important to notice the first word, here – 'implied'. Such strong subject matter needs to be handled with taste, and if Ground Zeroes had actually shown sexual abuse it would have felt significantly more like it was for shock value alone. Nonetheless, let's go over what we have. With regard to the final scenes, there are obvious sexual connotations with the prospect of several men holding Paz down and rummaging around inside her. The location of the second bomb, however, is more significant. While it is not actually revealed, it's easy to interpret where it is. This makes Paz's demise even less dignified, but again I would argue that this is intended to trigger the theme of revenge in The Phantom Pain. The truth is, most of the implied sexual abuse comes from Chico's cassette tapes, which the player must voluntarily search for in order to hear them.

One of these tapes involves the villain of Ground Zeroes, Skull Face, interrogating Chico and Paz. We hear him beating the latter, and tearing her clothes. He then insults her body, and orders Chico to 'take her'. This, for me, is the most shocking moment in the whole of Ground Zeroes, and indeed one of the most shocking things I've ever heard in a game. I feel this particular moment is perhaps made unnecessary by the implied location of the second bomb, which already hints at sexual abuse. However, it also reveals that Chico was forced into sexual conduct against his will, which should allay some of the concerns regarding gender bias.

Ultimately, this is a bold move by Kojima, and all the confirmation we need that Metal Gear Solid V aims to tackle more mature themes than we're used to seeing in games. There's a relevant question to be asked here: are we shocked by the implied sexual abuse, or are we shocked by the fact it's in a videogame? For me, the answer is definitely the latter. This is still very dark and controversial subject matter, but its impact would be less controversial in the context of a film or novel, because those mediums have a history of dealing with such themes. Gaming, however, is still growing, and I would argue that it is partly for this reason that the thematic concerns of Ground Zeroes have sparked controversy.

Has Kojima gone too far? That's for each individual player to decide. For me, Ground Zeroes is shocking, but it's not offensive. I'm very interested in seeing how it will be followed up by The Phantom Pain, and in that regard, I guess you could say that Ground Zeroes has done its job well.