cerastes:

The Boss is hilarious and extremely cool because, see, Solid Snake is a pop-culture icon of kickasstitude, his ‘superpower’ is literally being SO good at handling weaponry and using his head in a fight that he goes toe to toe with tanks and superpowered freaks of nature and wins, no powers, just some good ol’ cloning and a lot of field experience.

So MGS3 hits and we meet Naked Snake, AKA Big Boss, AKA the man they cloned Solid Snake from, as well as the final boss from the first two classic Metal Gears! The legend himself, Big damn Boss! You get to play Big Boss! Holy shit! And he has excellent controls, amazing CQC abilities, funny dialogue, the whole nine yards! You’re about to see the legend himself become the legend!

Half an hour into the game, you come face to face with his mentor, The Boss. “Oh, she’s the one that taught him everything, right? Is she gonna help Snake?”

And then she just

god damn

She just pulverizes him. Flips him around like a ragdoll, disassembles his pistol, breaks his arm, honest to god closed-fist punches his nose into a quantum reality from the sheer force with which her nuclear warhead she has the gall to call a fist impacted with his cranium, and then tosses him off a bridge.

Never before had Metal Gear as a franchise seen such a thorough ass-whooping. It was meant to establish The Boss as the greatest soldier that ever lived, and boy, let me tell you, it really, really worked. When the man that will become Big Boss in the future jobs to you, you know you are packing some serious canned heat.

The best part is that this is not played for male gaze in the slightest. Boss ain’t doing Frankensteiners or anything, she’s throwing straights and using a hybrid of Sambo and Systema to deliver the most cringe-inducing joint locks accompanied with the glorious sounds of bones shattering.

Now that is how you sell a character immediately.