Venom Snake

For the reptiles, see Venomous snake.

Venom Snake
Metal Gear character
255px Promotional CGI render of Venom Snake
First game	Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015)
Created by	Hideo Kojima
Designed by	Yoji Shinkawa
Voiced by (English)	Kiefer Sutherland
Voiced by (Japanese)	Akio Ōtsuka
Motion capture	Kiefer Sutherland (facial) Erik Brown (body)
Fictional profile
Aliases	Punished Snake, Ahab, Big Boss, V, Medic, Big Boss's phantom
Nationality	American
Affiliations	Diamond Dogs Militaires Sans Frontières Outer Heaven

Venom Snake (ヴェノム・スネーク, Venomu Sunēku), also known as Punished Snake (パニッシュド・スネーク, Panishudo Sunēku), is the lead playable character in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. The leader of the fictional mercenary unit "Diamond Dogs", he is Big Boss's doppelgänger that is also retroactively revealed to be the antagonist of the original Metal Gear game. The character has divided critics, with most commentary focusing on the dramatic implications of the game's closing twists.

Appearances

Metal Gear series fictional chronology
1964 – Snake Eater 1970 – Portable Ops 1974 – Peace Walker 1975 – Ground Zeroes 1984 – The Phantom Pain 1995 – Metal Gear 1999 – Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake 2005 – Metal Gear Solid (The Twin Snakes) 2007/09 – Sons of Liberty 2014 – Guns of the Patriots 2018 – Revengeance

Metal Gear Solid V

The character is alluded in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes as a Medic (whose face is obscured). A loyal soldier within the Militaires Sans Frontières, he provided medical assistance during a mission where Big Boss rescues someone from an American black site on Cuban soil. While MSF is destroyed by the invading paramilitary force XOF, the medic shields Big Boss from the concussion wave released from a bomb.

Venom Snake's first official appearance is in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain as the protagonist. After falling into a coma after taking that blast, he was subconsciously brainwashed and underwent facial reconstruction to serve as Big Boss's body double who assumes the codename Punished "Venom" Snake. With Ocelot and Kaz Miller on his side for advice, Snake serves as the leader of the "Diamond Dogs" mercenary group while venturing into Soviet-controlled Afghanistan to seek revenge against Cipher. As he recruits individuals like Quiet and Eli, Snake defeats XOF's leader Skull Face after a showdown with a new Metal Gear prototype. At the game's conclusion, he receives a cassette tape that leads him to realize his true nature; Venom Snake serves as Big Boss's phantom decoy in order to spread the mystery of the legendary mercenary.

Metal Gear

The character retroactively appears in the original Metal Gear game, posing as the true Big Boss and serves as the game's final boss. When Solid Snake infiltrates the fortified Outer Heaven state to destroy the weapon Metal Gear, Solid Snake confronts the terrorist leader. Solid Snake kills this character which Metal Gear Solid V now establishes was Big Boss's phantom decoy.

Creation and design

Physical appearance

File:Venom Snake.jpg

Pre-production concept art of Venom Snake shown at GDC 2012.

Venom Snake is distinguished from the real Big Boss by his bionic left arm, the numerous facial scars and the shrapnel "horn" sticking out from the right side of his forehead. The player is given the option to use the avatar's natural face in place of Snake's after clearing Episode 46.

The game features a hidden "karma" system which causes Venom Snake's appearance to change based on the player's behaviour. Negative actions such as killing people and animals or developing nuclear weapons earn Demon Points. Earning 20,000 causes Snake's horn to grow, and reaching 50,000 makes it grow even longer, with Snake becoming permanently soaked in blood. This demonic appearance is accentuated by Snake's belt, which resembles a tail. Positive actions such as extracting animals and child soldiers, earning certain achievements, or visiting Mother Base's zoo will eventually reverse these changes, which are purely aesthetic.

Casting

In Metal Gear Solid V, Venom Snake is portrayed by Canadian actor Kiefer Sutherland through voice-over and facial motion capture, briefly appearing as the medic in Ground Zeroes, then as the player character throughout The Phantom Pain. In a double role, Sutherland also plays the original Big Boss in both games. The casting was announced by Konami on June 6, 2013, during the annual Konami Pre-E3 show. Kojima's reason for selecting Sutherland rather than usual Snake actor David Hayter was to "have a more subdued performance expressed through subtle facial movements and tone of voice rather than words", and that he "needed someone who could genuinely convey both the facial and vocal qualities of a man in his late 40s". Hollywood producer and director Avi Arad suggested to Kojima that Sutherland could fulfill his requirements. Akio Ōtsuka was unaffected by this casting change and continued to voice Snake in the Japanese version. On March 4, 2015, Kojima said that Snake would have less dialogue in The Phantom Pain than in previous installments, explaining that this would make Snake more an extension of the player, and that he would act based on the player's actions "rather than doing things like making spontaneous comments or flirting with women."

Reception

Asserting that Metal Gear Solid has always been a primarily metafictional series, Dave Thier of Forbes praised the game's substitution of a player-created avatar for Big Boss: "It's not ending the actual plot – lord knows how anyone would actually go about doing that – it's ending the game, and the series as well. You’ve made it through every mission, you've backtracked, perfected, gotten your S ratings and employed perfect stealth. That's it, you're Big Boss, you're Snake, You're 'you.' And you're done." Chris Carter of Destructoid said that Venom Snake made sense within the context of the series, as the games have "always dabbled in the concept of 'the legend' being stronger than the actual person", but suggested that a depiction of his death at the hands of Solid Snake (recreating the original Metal Gear from the villain's perspective) would have been a stronger ending.

Writing for PC Gamer, Samuel Roberts called the revelation of Venom Snake's identity "one perfect moment in a bad story". The reviewer elaborated: "The epilogue takes away the pillar of his identity as Big Boss, and all you're left with is every unscripted experience you've had in the battlefield, no backstory other than the one you’ve just created. The ending is about what MGSV 'the game' is ... a freeform experience shaped by your intent – and such an ending is a perfect thematic match for this game Kojima Productions has created, a true military action sandbox where few situations ever play out the same way." Roberts also noted that the twist worked on a literal level, making the medic a "tragic and unsettling" figure whose only meaningful relationship is with a woman who thinks he is someone else.

Writing for Kotaku, Jason Scherler said: "Scrutinized in a vacuum, this twist is kind of neat – turns out the 'legend' of Big Boss had always trumped the man himself – but the harder you think, the more it unravels, leading to all sorts of questions with no clear answers ... Turns out that while we thought we were experiencing Big Boss's revenge-driven evolution from noble soldier to misguided villain, we were actually watching someone else entirely, which seriously cheapens the emotional effects of Mission 43 and just about everything else you do in The Phantom Pain."