As snow flurries drift across the frigid Alaskan landscape, security cameras whir. Guards march back and forth. You have 12 hours to prevent a terrorist nuclear launch and save the world. 

With the clock ticking, the mission falls to four buttons, an analog stick and your expert control over Solid Snake, the legendary hero and main character of the video game Metal Gear Solid. 

Created by game developer Hideo Kojima, the seven-part Metal Gear Solid collection, released from 1998 to 2015, directs its characters through solo infiltration quests to destroy the titular Metal Gear, a nuclear tank created for catastrophic warfare. While it has the makings of a generic action-adventure narrative, the franchise’s greatest strength is how it surprises audiences, both in the nuance of its subversive anti-military messaging and its push for Asian gaming, culture and characters to be taken more seriously. 

As Japan — home to titles like Super Mario Bros. and Pokémon — pioneered the game industry, the country built a positive reputation for its games. Japanese franchises are often tied to adorable avatars and colorful gameplay as a result of the Cool Japan movement, an attempt by the government to distance the country from violent parts of its past.

“Characters like Hello Kitty, Pikachu and Mario were explicitly mascots for that effort and to represent an image of Japan that was cuter, more humane and more friendly,” Asian American Studies Prof. Tara Fickle says.

However, departing from the animated look of Nintendo and the cyberpunk fantasies that Western films like Blade Runner (1982) expect Asian aesthetics to embody, Metal Gear Solid’s gritty realism and explicit conversations about war and violence align more with Hollywood’s action blockbusters and other military games. Though its American characters and setting might seem like an unconscious way to make the game more palatable to the West, Metal Gear Solid manages to retain its unique Japanese identity. From mecha-inspired, pilotable robots to subtle nods to Buddhist and Shinto philosophy, Kojima weaves homages to Japanese culture into the very DNA of his franchise. 

Metal Gear Solid also utilizes its character design and narrative choices to make two important points about masculinity. It undermines the emasculation of Asian men we see in Western spaces and dismantles society’s ideal of masculinity to broaden its definitions of what makes someone “man enough.” 

Western society’s perceptions of manhood often rest on pillars of dominance, detachment and self-sufficiency. Traditionally, to be a man was to be as physically fit as you were mentally and socially capable, never swayed by emotions or any other human shortcomings. Heterosexuality and attractiveness, too, have historically been tied to masculinity; if you couldn’t get a girl or simply didn’t want to be with one, you were painted as inferior. Through adverse portrayals in American media as nerdy, sexless, awkward and feminine, Asian men came to take on a subordinate status. Cisgender heterosexual white men were viewed as the standard, while Asian men found themselves struggling for the same kind of respect. 

Metal Gear Solid seems like it would easily lend itself to that Western male standard. In the first game, the seemingly impossible premise of saving the world falls on the main character Solid Snake, who is tall, muscled and stoic. These traits conveniently fall in line with what modern masculinity idolizes: heroism and strength. While the game does center itself on these two concepts, it’s much more effective in shattering the illusion of traditional masculinity. 

Where we might look up to Solid Snake for being a self-sufficient and independent man, the game underscores that his self-chosen solitude and nihilism come from deep-seated trauma and misery — instances of emotional weaknesses that are commonly seen as “feminine.” Where we want him to continue walking this path of being a deadly, domineering soldier-turned-mercenary for the sake of heroism, the game counters that mold by highlighting how much he’s been dehumanized while trapped in the makings of war. According to the game, the masculinity that Snake seemingly represents is nothing more than a curse and a myth. When showing his so-called weaknesses and breaking away from his macho action-hero archetype, he’s portrayed as no less of a man.

It goes beyond a single game, too. When fans wanted Snake to return for the sequel, Kojima instead made a new main character, Raiden, whose soft voice, slim waist and feminine features completely disrupted the “manly” precedent Snake had set before. These decisions force us to interrogate society’s obsession with upholding toxic masculinity and, by extension, its racial exclusivity, especially when we begin to take Snake’s identity into consideration. 

Snake, as we come to find out, is actually biracial, which takes on a new edge depending on which context his character is played in. When American fans play the Metal Gear Solid collection, Snake’s Asian American identity subverts the classic preconceptions they may have about Asian masculinity. Audiences are forced to divorce ideas of race and manliness when Snake proves that being of Asian descent can coexist with being respected as a man.

We shouldn’t ignore gaming’s massive presence and impact. It’s an industry with an estimated worth of $184 billion in 2022 — nearly seven times that of its movie counterpart. Yet analyzing its influence is all the more important when it comes to the massive contradiction existing at the heart of the gaming community: Video games are “the most advanced in terms of graphics and processors, but the most regressive in terms of social representations,” Fickle says.

When playable power is vested in the audience’s hands, it matters who these million-dollar franchises frame as protagonists we idolize and enemies we vilify. In a sphere where vestiges of Orientalism, toxic masculinity and swaths of bigotry still persist, it’s important that we have games willing to push back, rather than playing to stereotypes and the repression of diverse identities. 

The subversion in Metal Gear Solid breathes life back into characters who, in other circumstances, may have just been vessels for harmful rhetoric and shallow stereotyping. After nearly 27 years, the games leave behind a unique legacy that stands out amidst the spectacles of its action-adventure peers, preserving the humanity of both its in-game characters and the real communities they represent.