Were you worried that Solid Snake's upcoming Rainbow Six Siege career would interfere with the Metal Gear series' famous ironclad cannon? Good news. Not just cannon not iron clad, but even if it were, we seriously shouldn't think too much about this.
Even better news: Ubisoft and Konami have decided to think hard for us. It's been revealed that – to the extent that anyone should actually care – Snake “officially” becomes an operative between the central events of Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of the Patriots. And by “official” I mean, it comes with the understandable disclaimer that it's not actually being considered official. But it still has something of a logical explanation. Type. Cool? Cool.
Here's to you
Late last month, we reported that Ubisoft teased Metal Gear's most popular and long-running hero as Rainbow Six Siege's next operator. It was a monumental performance; for all the skins the developers have thrown into the game over their many years on the market, they've never been so bold as to throw in someone from another publisher as a full-fledged operator.
Now we know. He arrives on March 3rd and Solid Snake has all sorts of surprises in store for his enemies. But what about that precious chronology, I hear six of you say? The event takes place after the 2005 Shadow Moses Incident, but before Snake's big fall aboard a tanker in 2007. I'll be real; I'm not much of a Siege player, so I don't know if that interferes with things to the game's timeline. Is it played during the mid-2000s? If not, is this easy to fit into that universe's past?
In an interview with Japanese publication GameSpark (translated by Metal Gear Network), Konami's own Yuji Korekado explains:
“Specifically, it takes place between METAL GEAR SOLID and METAL GEAR SOLID 2: SONS OF LIBERTY, during the period when Snake and Otacon founded Philanthropy, the anti-Metal Gear organization, and traveled the world. We won't call it official canon, but we monitored it as a reasonable 'What if' scenario.”
Snake and Otacon's adventures with Philanthropy have always been something I've wanted to see explored in sharper detail. A Rainbow Six Siege event has literally never been on my bingo card for that, but in all fairness it's been about 20 years since I thought there was a real chance we'd have seen any of that anyway.
David Hayter's iconic operative is becoming, with a capital letter now, an operative in Ubisoft's mega-popular shooter. Good for him, I say. And good on Otacon for supporting his brother.
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“Get over yourselves, man.”
