It’s been just over nine years since the release of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, the last game in the venerable stealth action franchise to be directed by its creator, Hideo Kojima. A lot’s happened in that time for Kojima: He founded his own independent studio, released 2019’s Death Stranding, watched a ton of movies, and practically went on to do whatever he pleases, to say nothing of all the celebrities he’s befriended and digitally scanned into his fictional worlds along the way.
But there’s still something Kojima hasn’t quite yet gotten around to yet: making an actual horror game. His upcoming game OD, announced last year, seems to be just that: a psychological horror game starring Hunter Schafer, with writing contributions from Hollywood horror auteur Jordan Peele, no less! However, it doesn’t seem like we’ll be seeing much of that game in the near future, or at least, not before Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is released sometime next year. In the meantime, though, if you’ve ever wondered what it would be like if Kojima really applied his sensibilities as a game designer to the horror genre, I would highly recommend you replay the opening mission of The Phantom Pain, “Prologue: Awakening.”
If you’re reading this, you’re likely already familiar with the opening moments of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. It’s also likely that, given the aforementioned time since the game was released, you haven’t played it in a while. So here’s a little background for the premise of the level before I get into the reasons why I think you should play it.
The Phantom Pain takes place after the events of 2014’s Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes. Players assume the role of Snake, a former CIA operative turned mercenary for hire, who wakes up in a hospital bed in Cyprus nine years after surviving a near-fatal helicopter crash. He’s lost his left arm and his body is riddled with fragments of human bone and shrapnel, so he’s understandably a little worse for wear, to say nothing of the fact he’s suffering from a minor case of amnesia and his muscles have deteriorated after almost a decade of involuntary bedrest.
Things quickly go from bad to worse when the hospital is attacked by an army of soldiers who proceed to indiscriminately mow down staff and civilian patients alike, presumably as part of a mission to exterminate their actual intended target: you. After being rescued from the brink of death by Ishmael, a mysterious patient with a heavily bandaged face, the two of you are forced to work together to find a way to escape the hospital alive.
If you’re a hardcore Metal Gear fan, you’ll know that there’s actually way more behind this whole situation than what meets the eye. As interesting — and frankly, baffling — as all those details are and how they fit into the larger Metal Gear universe as whole, they’re entirely beside the point of why I think you should play this particular mission of The Phantom Pain this Halloween. And that reason, pure and simple, is because it’s a fucking terrifying experience that blurs the line between implicitly psychological and outright supernatural horror.
For starters, you begin the mission extremely limited in your mobility, crawling on your belly and dragging your limp right arm behind you as you prop yourself against walls and objects, slipping off of surfaces and crashing against the floor as your body betrays you. It’s a frustrating and demoralizing experience, one deliberately designed to place the player in the role of a man practically fighting against the inertia of his own body to survive. This is not the legendary soldier fans of the series have come to know and love over the years. Or at least, not yet.
As the mission progresses, Snake gradually regains control of his motor skills. As a result, the player slowly learns the basic mechanics of walking, running, crouching, and covertly sneaking past roving squads of heavily armed wetworkers. As if that weren’t enough, you’re also being stalked by what appears to be a red-haired psychic child wearing a straight jacket and a gas mask, as well as a terrifying man on fire hell-bent on finding and killing you, à la Resident Evil 3’s Nemesis.
When played for the first time, it feels impossible to make sense of what’s real and what’s not in this situation. Did Snake really survive that helicopter crash, or is this hell? Is Ishmael really helping you escape, or is he just a fabrication conjured out of Snake’s fractured psyche? Then there’s the climactic horseback sequence of Snake and a mustached cowboy named Ocelot being chased by the Man on Fire atop a flaming horse. This might not be hell, but it sure as hell feels like it.
Oh, and did I mention the scene where an attack helicopter is swallowed by a whale thrown by that psychic child? Again, it’s best not to concern yourself too much with what all of this means within the broader scope of the Metal Gear universe. Just enjoy the experience for what it is: a bewildering, terrifying, and exhilarating fight for survival in a world that is both fantastical and macabre.
Even having described what occurs in the game’s opening mission, I still wholeheartedly recommend that you play it for yourself firsthand, if only to experience what I feel to this day is still one of the most memorable and horrifying levels Hideo Kojima has crafted in a game to date. As someone who loves the Metal Gear franchise, who loves survival horror games, and who loves Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, I wish that there were more moments in The Phantom Pain that resembled the tense survival horror vibe of its opening mission.
It’s important to mention that in 2014, partway through The Phantom Pain’s production, Kojima announced that his then-next project was supposed to be a Silent Hill game, Silent Hills, with Norman Reedus as the game’s protagonist and Kojima’s friend, director Guillermo del Toro, set to co-direct alongside him. As part of that game, Kojima Productions released a widely well-received “Playable Teaser” game, aptly named P.T., which was delisted almost immediately alongside Silent Hills’ cancellation in the wake of Kojima’s bitter, year-long departure from Konami following the release of The Phantom Pain.
Revisiting the first mission of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain in 2024 almost feels like peering into an alternate dimension, one in which Kojima’s career went in an entirely different direction and Death Stranding never happened. Would Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake still have existed in a world where Kojima had the chance to try his hand at the series? Would Kojima still have accomplished even a fraction of what he’s gone on to do since the release of The Phantom Pain if he hadn’t left Konami? The answer is, of course, who knows? Silent Hills never happened, and as a result, the course of the Silent Hill franchise and Kojima’s career diverged into entirely different directions.
The opening moments of The Phantom Pain feel like Kojima was testing out ideas he might’ve later honed in a horror game like Silent Hills, had he had the opportunity to see that game through to fruition. As bittersweet as that might sound, the fact remains that Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, in particular its first mission, is an enduring testament to what Kojima can accomplish when he really puts his mind and talents to the challenge of crafting an interactive experience that prioritizes psychological tension and horror over mere action spectacle. For all those reasons and more, I think it’s the perfect type of game to play during this year’s spookiest season.
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