The Phantom Pain Is Weird In Russian

How Metal Gear Solid 5 tries to convince you you're monolingual

Here’s a fun fact: I speak Russian.

I wouldn’t call myself native-level and my grasp of the language certainly isn’t perfect (any language with a case system is a grammatical minefield) but I was good enough to pass a B2-level certification test and I can communicate with natives about anything besides hyper-specific topics relatively painlessly.

I mention this because a little while ago I decided to boot up 2015’s Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain with the language set to Russian to see how it handles an impossible task.

Russian (depending on who you ask and what statistics you follow) is somewhere in the region of the 5th-8th most-spoken language in the world, the most-common first language in Europe, the second most-spoken language on the internet when taking into account the largest websites and is the 3rd most spoken language on Steam. This presents a conundrum because The Phantom Pain obviously saw release in Russia and the rest of the Russophone countries with a full subbing job.

For those unfamiliar, half of MGS 5 takes place in Soviet-occupied Kabul, Afghanistan during the USSR’s intervention in the country in the 1980’s. In The Phantom Pain, before you can understand enemy communications, interrogate guards or acquire additional mission data in the region, you need to capture a Russian interpreter. This creates a kind of Linguistic Dissonance for some.

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Russkoye Radio

Let’s start with how the game handles enemy radio broadcasts and chatter, or rather… how you gain a temporary advantage.

Raw, unfiltered audio cannot be obfuscated in the same ways that the game uses later, so for that brief window in which you are operating in Afghanistan and the mission to capture this paren’ hasn’t appeared yet, you enjoy a slight advantage over those who don’t speak the language.

But I decided to take things further: what if you decide to never extract the interpreter?

Well, that’s when things get weird and convoluted. To be fair, at least for a non-native speaker like me, most of the guards’ radio broadcasts are too Xbox 360 mic quality to hear clearly, especially when you’re focused on doing other things, however Ocelot: the Russian double-agent who protagonist Big Boss coordinates with throughout the game, categorically refuses to interpret for you… my man from Moscow! My buddy from Belgorod! My colleague from Kursk! My chum from Chelyabinsk! You speak the damn language! This man is an expert in hypnotic suggestion and can implant false memories but he can’t interpret his first language into his second.

Unfortunately, even with the language set to Russian the game will never let you interrogate what, for a lot of players, are likely guards who speak their own language and eventually you cannot unlock the next story mission without the interpreter. But even then they get lazy and Kiefer Sutherland still commands the enemy to “Speak!” When you interrogate them. Look, I’m aware he was likely an expensive hire and I’m not expecting Kiefer to start reciting Tolstoy but it would have looked a lot less lazy if they at least recorded a couple more lines to use like “Говори!” (Speak!) or “Где твои друзья?” (Where are your friends?)

This isn’t strictly on topic but I’ve always thought it was an enormous missed opportunity to not include any Soviet-era rock or pop in this game, since Kojima threw in a lot of iconic 80’s songs… which are just being played by Soviet troops for some reason. The 1980’s saw an expansion of personal freedoms for the Soviet people and for the first time, its citizens began to harshly criticise the government, a situation worsened by Ronald Reagan stoking an arms race that the USSR couldn’t afford leading to economic downturn and lower standards of living. A pretty extensive counter-culture took root in which rock music: previously banned, played a big part. In general, the Soviet-Afghan War stirred up a lot of folk/acoustic music, so much so that there are YouTube playlists full of the stuff and Russia specifically has a long history of this kind of thing while at war.

An excerpt from ‘Wolf Hunt’ by Vladimir Vysotsky: a name most from the former-USSR will be well-aware of

A Million Scarlet Roses by Alla Pugacheva, a very well-known song from the biggest Soviet pop-star

Goodnight by Kino: one of my favourite Russian songs and from the USSR’s most popular counter-culture band. This song falls a few years after the game’s 1984 setting but so does The Final Countdown by Europe, it also has giant bipedal mechs so who cares?

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Kojima-Isms

One of my favourite parts of The Phantom Pain is how, despite Konami’s heavy restraining of the man and the newfound focus on gameplay as opposed to 20-minute cutscenes, Kojima’s weirdness, his writing’s complete lack of subtlety and other loveable nonsense still seep their way into the game.

How do we keep our on the nose Moby Dick references flowing? Drop a random flaming whale on a helicopter in the intro.

How do we ensure the player knows that Kazuhira Miller suffers from PTSD and is seeking revenge? Have him mention it in every sentence and make vague statements about “Our past.” While he clenches his fist in that very Japanese video game way and scowls off into the distance.

How do we explain away that our mercenary army, abducted from Angola, Kabul and comprising any randomer that signs up: an army of hundreds of nationalities and languages somehow runs fine and can coordinate enough to run military operations? We don’t.

One of my favourites is how they try to explain away Big Boss: a character who has been shown to be at least trilingual in earlier Metal Gear Solid games just somehow forgets how to speak any Russian: it’s because of the heckin’ wad of shrapnel in his forehead. Avoiding spoilers as best I can, there are of course other reasons this could be the case but even so, you’d think Big Boss could have had these skills psychologically implanted, that’d be pretty mild on the scale of MGS shark-jump moments.

We’ll try and ignore the fact that none of the places the shrapnel hit are language centres of the brain.

Ultimately? The whole point of this article isn’t to criticise The Phantom Pain or to poke fun of it, rather… I’m laughing with it. Metal Gear Solid 5 is an intentionally weird and schizophrenic experience that feels nothing like a Metal Gear game half the time, despite this? The gameplay is sublime and it’s just a whole vibe (I hate that word) years later, fans are still discovering 80’s songs that would have fit the game well and almost claiming them for the fandom which is hilarious.

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain turns 10 years old on the 1st of September, this was one of the few games I enjoyed from its generation and I’ll be remembering it fondly.

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