Summary
Despite the issues that many players have with it, this year’sMetal Gear Solid Master Collectionstill brings three extremely important games to a wide audience and makes them available on modern platforms. To this day, the first three games in theMetal Gear Solidseries are some of the best examples of one of the industry’s most talented and creative visionaries at their peak, and the level of cohesiveness that exists across Kojima’s design and approach to the initial trilogy is still a bar worth striving for. In particular,Metal Gear Solidholds up as a PS1 game unlike any other and lays the foundation for the greatness of its sequels.
Perhaps no other section in the game is as indicative of this as the final puzzle the player must complete before facing off against Metal Gear Rex and Liquid Snake: the PAL Key section. While absolutely a “love-it-or-hate-it” moment among fans in terms of the backtracking necessary and level of tedium involved in essentially performing busy work ahead of the game’s final encounter, the PAL Key puzzle is both a crucial moment inMetal Gear Solid’s narrativethat underscores Snake’s manipulation and a profound moment of metanarrative that comments on the player’s role within the game.
What Makes Metal Gear Solid’s PAL Key Puzzle So Special
The PAL Key is, among other things, a classic example of Kojima’s penchant for misdirection that would become a signature element oftheMetal Gear Solidseries. Players receive the key early on in the game’s story, right after defeating Revolver Ocelot, but are told that it’s only one of three keys necessary to override Metal Gear Rex’s detonation codes. With the clock ticking and the terrorists led by Liquid Snake preparing to use Metal Gear to launch a nuclear strike, finding the location of the other two keys becomes a recurring errand for Solid Snake as he makes his way through Shadow Moses island.
As the game reaches its penultimate moments, Snake learns via Otacon that the PAL Key is actually three keys in one, made using a temperature-sensitive shape-changing alloy. Snake has been in possession of all three keys since the beginning of the game.Revolver Ocelotand Liquid then discover Snake, prompting him to drop the key and have to retrieve it from the drainage ditch in Metal Gear’s hangar, and then it’s up to the player to revisit previous areas of the base on Shadow Moses to get the key to change shape.
The “puzzle” element boils down to remembering where on the island the temperatures drop below freezing or increase to boiling, but it’s essentially three rounds of backtracking that culminate in Snake successfully using the key on all three PAL terminals, only to then discover that he’s done the terrorists' job for them and activated Metal Gear’s nuclear warhead. As it turns out,Solid Snake(and, by extension, the player) has gone through all of that trouble for nothing. Not only does this moment underscore Snake’s inability to trust anyone and his continual manipulation from both his allies and enemies, but it’s also a brilliantly executed meta sequence reflecting on the pointlessness of video game fetch quests.
Metal Gear Solidbuilds up the PAL Key as Snake’s last and only means of stopping the terrorists and preventing nuclear annihilation, requiring the player to tediously backtrack through the same general area three separate times, only to pull the rug out from both the player and Snake’s feet. It’s the kind of tongue-in-cheek self-awareness that eventually became atrademark of theMetal Gear Solidseriesand Kojima’s work in general, and it still stands out as one of the best moments in the franchise.
Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1
WHERE TO PLAY
Released in 1998, this was the first 3D title in the METAL GEAR series. The game pioneers 3D stealth action against the threat of war and global nuclear weapons, using live action footage, cinematic cut scenes, interwoven with innovative gameplay.The storyline, a whirlwind of intrigue and betrayal, has been hailed as the greatest story of the 20th century and was the third title in the METAL GEAR series to become a hit in subsequent years.Also included: Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, an exclusive digital Screenplay Book and Master Book that details the story and characters in Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear & Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.
