ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Konami’s Metal Gear series and moments where narrative and play intersect in radical ways. Drawing on a personal play-through of the series, the act of playing as Metal Gear’s central player-characters, the heroes collectively known as Snake, engages with three tenets of video game play: limitation, identity, and iteration. We argue that Metal Gear’s creative interrogation of these three tenets suggests a blueprint for games writing where narrative and play can operate in symbiosis.
