History VideoGame / MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots

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''Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots'', the sixth main entry in the ''VideoGame/MetalGear'' storyline, launched on the UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 on June 12, 2008.

** Additionally, [[VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2 once again]], a character [[Creator/PhilLaMarr voiced by]] the TropeNamer experiences this.

* GameplayAndStorySegregation: Snake's inventory can be up to 70 weapons, but he'll usually stick to the M4 Custom with no mods or the Operator with no silencer in cutscenes, with other weapons usually only acknowledged if he receives them in a cutscene (Skorpion before the chase in Act 3, the BB Corps' guns) or is in a situation that the M4 or Operator would not work in (using a DSR-1 from the rear of Otacon's chopper). Mods do occasionally show up, however. Also, Snake's worsening health in the cutscenes has far less significance once you get to the actual game, except when your Psyche gets too low.

* LetsPlay: Two notable ones, one by the LetsPlay/TippingForties and another by LetsPlay/ChipCheezum. If you hate this game, watch the former, and if you like it, watch the latter.

* AttractMode: The main menu is overlaid on top of a scene of Snake [[DueToTheDead visiting a veterans graveyard]], [[OneLastSmoke smoking a cigarette]], removing and inspecting his gun, falling to his knees, [[AteHisGun putting the barrel in his mouth]], and having [[GoryDiscretionShot the camera {{pan}} up just before the gunshot is heard]]. As mentioned above, the rest of the game is leading up to this.

* AttractMode: The main menu is overlaid on top of a scene of Snake [[DueToTheDead visiting a veterans graveyard]], [[OneLastSmoke smoking a cigarette]], removing and inspecting his gun, falling to his knees, [[AteHisGun putting the barrel in his mouth]], and having [[GoryDiscretionShot the camera pan up just before the gunshot is heard]]. As mentioned above, the rest of the game is leading up to this.

* CloningBlues: For once, there's no real identity dilemma going on with this; now that he's old, we see that Solid Snake is clearly a different man than his father and both he and Liquid realize this. "We're not total copies of our father after all!" Which is not to say that there aren't a lot of ''other'' sucky things about being a clone that were forced upon him.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Yes, the Patriots' computer system has been disabled by a large part, cutting down the war economy that has tortured Earth for years. Also, Meryl and Johnny are happily married, and Raiden reconciled and reunited with his family, having learned that Rose's marriage to Roy Campbell was a sham and that Raiden's miscarried child is alive and well. However, Otacon lost Naomi, who essentially killed herself out of atonement, and Snake, whose father has come back from the dead, told Snake he respects him, and died, has a year to live]].
** However, [[spoiler:while Snake only has a year to live, he also plans on spending that last year in peace and he will also spend it with his best friend, Otacon, and Sunny by his side.]]

* DiscOneNuke: The M14 EBR. It is incredibly versatile, being the only sniper rifle that can take a suppressor and change fire modes without firing an extremely rare proprietary ammo - it instead uses the most common ammo type in the game - and you can get it almost as soon as Drebin opens up his shop to you within the first fifteen minutes, between its cheap cost and the fact that one in every three bad guys carries one.

* ByThePowerOfGreyskull: The Solar Gun. '''"Sunlight!!"'''

* ComicBookFantasyCasting: Both Liquid Ocelot and, to a lesser extend, Old Snake greatly resemble the late actor Creator/LeeVanCleef. Van Cleef was in two of Sergio Leone's ''Dollars Trilogy'' of which Kojima is a huge fan.

** A lot of the guns available for purchase showed up in some form in previous games, often unusable to the player in its initial appearance - among others are Meryl's Desert Eagle, Fatman's Glock 18, the Gurlukovich soldiers' AN-94, The Boss' Patriot pistol, Big Boss' custom 1911, and the [=MP5SD=] from the ''Integral'' and PC versions of the original ''Metal Gear Solid''. Even the Five-Seven pistol has a reference in its description to the mission to Galuade from ''VideoGame/MetalGearGhostBabel'' - which isn't even canon to the main series.

* CoolBoat: Ocelot's base is pretty much a boat version of a BaseOnWheels, being a new version of Arsenal Gear (a floating fortress so huge it had its own ''series'' of giant robots to protect it).

* {{Cutscene}}: And how. ''[=MGS4=]'' currently holds an official Guinness World Record for longest cutscene within a game. Several cutscenes last for 20 minutes or more (and while they can be skipped, see "Unskippable Cutscene" below for reasons why this isn't a good idea), with the granddaddy being [[spoiler: the cutscene that ends the game, which is a movie unto itself lasting ''more than an hour''.]] An {{urban legend|s}} emerged when some media reported rumors of the game featuring a ''90-minute-long'' cutscene, but this was denied via WordOfGod prior to the game's actual release.

** Gekko suffer routinely from a combination of this and {{mook chivalry}}: during gameplay, they're extremely deadly, but in cutscenes they're stunningly dumb and often forget they're armed. The one that chases Snake near the start of the first mission repeatedly has an M2 heavy machine gun pointed directly at him but never fires (and when it does, it apparently forgets how to change where the gun is aiming while it's being fired), while Raiden-versus-Gekko has them attack him one at a time for most of the sequence, and they pause after each attack so he can murder them to death more easily.

* DiscOneNuke: The M14 EBR, see GameBreaker.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Yes, the Patriots' computer system has been disabled by a large part, cutting down the war economy that has tortured Earth for years. Also, Meryl and Johnny are happily married, and Raiden reconciled and reunited with his family, having learned that Rose's marriage to Roy Campbell was a sham and that Raiden's miscarried child is alive and well. However, Otacon lost Naomi, who essentially killed herself out of atonement, and Snake, whose father has come back from the dead, told Snake he respects him, and died, has less than a year to live]].
** However, [[spoiler:while Snake only has less than a year to live, he also plans on spending that last year in peace and he will also spend it with his best friend, Otacon, and Sunny by his side.]]

* TooAwesomeToUse: Chaff grenades. The fact that there's many more unmanned weapons in this game, especially in later chapters, makes them doubly useful. Naturally, you'll be likely to only find ''three'' of them over a normal playthrough.

* NewMediaAreEvil: The Patriots are all for perpetuating the constant state of war globally, using those terrible ''first person shooters'' to indoctrinate people as soldiers.

* InjuredBodyDrag: Upon reaching the microwave corridor, Old Snake begins to receive the impact of said microwaves onto his body (as they heat the molecules of the water present in his body). Though Raiden offered himself to go in his place, Snake persuaded him to keep the enemy soldiers distracted while he traversed the perilous corridor. Snake walks through the corridor with extreme difficulty, and when he can't do so anymore he crawls, and when he's too weak to do ''that'' he creeps forward. [[{{Determinator}} He succeeds in reaching the other end]].

* InformedEquipment: Otacon's description of the inventory says Snake stores weapons he has equipped but isn't using in his backpack. Snake isn't actually wearing a backpack. He's wearing heavy combat webbing, but unless those pockets are hyper-dimensional, he ain't fitting a rocket launcher in there.

** Besides MAYBE the final boss battle, it's easily the most awesome fight in the entire series.

* UnexplainedRecovery: [[spoiler: Raiden's HeroicSacrifice to save Snake on Shadow Moses is given a very definitive air of finality, as he cries out for Rose and remembers their first date as he is being crushed beneath the charging Outer Haven ship, complete with a sad piano interlude and a fade to black as his cyborg body shuts down. Which makes it really jarring when Snake and Otacon are seen not 10 minutes later chatting fairly nonchalantly about the fact that he survived. Also, resident ButtMonkey Johnny Sasaki falls into the ocean [[ItMakesSenseInContext after being launched from a rocket-powered catapult]], but later on, he suddenly comes back in a BigDamnHeroes moment.]]

* BadassBaritone: Ed, the {{token minority}} on Meryl's team, has a noticeably deep voice, which we only hear more than a couple lines of when he's [[spoiler:playing the role of the priest during her's and Johnny's marriage.]]

* FiveManBand: Rat Patrol 01.
** TheHero: Meryl.
** TheLancer: Ed.
** TheSmartGuy ''and'' TheChick: Akiba.
** TheBigGuy: Jonathan.
** The SixthRanger: Old Snake.

* RelationshipVoiceActor: In the Japanese version, [[spoiler: Big Boss is voiced by Chikao Ohtsuka and Solid Snake is voiced by Akio Ohtsuka, the father and the son, respectively]]. WordOfGod stated that this was deliberately invoked because they weren't on speaking terms prior to this.

* ContinuityLockout: If this is your first ''Metal Gear'' game, you ''will not'' understand anything that's happening or why. If you've played ''[[VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater Metal Gear Solid 3]]'', at least ''seen'' some of the major scenes of ''[[VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty Metal Gear Solid 2]]'' (at least one with each character), and been sprinkled with bits of info from a bunch of other scattered sources, [[note]]you ''might'' be able to make just enough correct assumptions and ignore ''just'' enough off-hand remarks referencing stuff from the previous games that you don't know about that[[/note]] the ''barest possible minimum'' of what's going on may be in your poor, befuddled grasp. ''[[EmphasizeEverything Maybe]]''. Simply put, your knowledge needs to be more advanced than "Solid Snake fights giant robots with a cardboard box," and sometimes even more than the essential "[[VideoGame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance Nanomachines, son.]]"
** This applies to gameplay as well. The game literally drops you in the deep end and if you aren't intimately familiar with the franchise's stealth-play nature, you'll find it very hard to survive more than a few minutes once the game proper begins. And the fact the game rewards you for not using lethal force is not made evident to newbies until well into the first, perhaps even as far as into the second act (the fact non-lethal weaponry and ammo, beyond the Mk. II tranquilizer pistol you're given early on - which, for the record, Snake glosses over entirely in favor of the traditionally lethal Operator - is not clearly provided doesn't help).
** The start of Act IV ([[spoiler:which begins with a simulation of one of the beginning areas from the first ''Metal Gear Solid'']]) is likewise a treasure trove of confusion, especially since [[DamnYouMuscleMemory the controls are changed to how they were in that game]] - even people who are familiar with that game, but only through its [=GameCube=] remake, are in for a spot of hell on that one.