The Phantom Pain: Declassified

It’s been a month since we caught our first glimpse of the trailer for upcoming title, The Phantom Pain. Since then, the gaming community has disected and theorized on what this mystery game from upstart swedish developer Moby Dick Studio really is. To many gamer’s delight, the signs all point to a brand new Metal Gear Solid title.
This article will touch on some of the major theories and facts surrounding the mystery all in this one handy post.

The Vga awards and the phantom studio:

Since its inception back in 2003, the VGAs have gained media recognition and revere making it one of the few award shows only for video games. Because of this, it has become one of the ways big name developers have used to show off their newest games. So imagine everyone’s surprise when a brand new rookie studio emerged on stage to show a very high fidelity trailer for a previously unannounced game.

The developer, aptly named Moby Dick Studios, is headed by a Joakim Morgen whose goal is to, ” deliver an uncompromising, exciting and touching game experience to people all around the globe.” To start, their domain had not been live for more than a few weeks before the VGAs. Second, you can easily discern that “Joakim Morgen” is an anagram for Kojima who happens to be the father of the Metal Gear Solid Franchise.

Finally, at the VGAs, witnesses claim that they saw members from the Moby Dick Studio team relaxing in the Konami booth after their presentation. Suspsicious much?

But what about the trailer?:

Perhaps I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, let’s take a look at the trailer shall we?

First, the trailer is very reminisicient of the previous titles in the series. Lots of gunplay mixed with a touch of supernatural events and beings.
Delving deeper, we begin to see a few more interesting tidbits.

If you stop the video at ~0:20 then you’ll notice white flower petals floating down as an artificial limb seems to reach for them. Veterans of this series will be able to trace these petals back to MGS3 where a certain Boss was surrounded by these same flowers. This points to it being related to MGS3 and we can guess that the man in the bed may in fact be Big Boss.

Continuing with the trailer, there are plenty of theories of who is what but finally, after the flash of the Phantom Pain logo, we see the protagonist’s face for the first time and he strikes an uncanny resemblance to the series’ hero Solid Snake who we all know is a clone of Big Boss. And if not, spoilers.

Now, for the big one and a bit of a stretch. Let’s take a look at the actual title shot of “The Phantom Pain” At first glance, there’s nothing too glaring but if you look close enough, you’ll start seeing a little something off.

See it yet? If not, let this .gif help you out.

Yeah, pretty “coincedental”.

So what does it all mean?:
Honestly, at the moment, it’s heresay. Kojima recently came out and informed the media that he was amused that the protagonist of this game looked so much like Snake but he has nothing to do with the development of this title. Now, we know that this is a true statement as he has said before that he wants his team to take the series in a new direction. However, hidden once again in the name Joakim Morgen is the word Ogre which is the major project Kojima has been working on in earnest over the past few years.

Time will tell whether or not this is a brand new MGS game or simply a brand new IP but my money is on the former. I’m sure all will be revealed this June at E3.