MGS: Portable Ops: the foundation of unit FOXHOUND

More Portable Ops posts... Sorry, slow news day again (Easter weekends are boring) and I recently finished it. This was written for those Metal Gear fans have yet to play Portable Ops for whatever reasons. Anyway with Metal Gear Solid 4 incoming in June this year, some of the key plots in Portable Ops should be known. It is assumed that you are familiar with the key plots in the other five released canonical titles.

The story of Portable Ops began in 1970, six years after the events of Operation Snake Eater, when Naked Snake inherited the title of Big Boss after being forced to defeat the Boss as part of her covert operation. Snake, now disillusioned has discharged himself from the FOX unit. However he was captured and sent to a prison in the San Hieronymo Peninsula, the site of an abandoned Soviet nuclear missile silo in Colombia, South America. Naked Snake's former team FOX unit has rebelled and broken their once strong allegiance to the CIA. Snake was tortured by ex-CIA and FOX Lieutenant Cunningham, who was demanding half of the Philosopher's Legacy. It was here where Snake first met Roy Campbell, the sole survivor of an American Green Beret team sent to investigate.

After escaping with Campbell, Snake learnt from his former FOX members, Para-Medic and Sigint that they and their former Commanding Officer from Operation Snake Eater, Major Zero, were accused of instigating the FOX up-rising. In order to clear their name, Snake had to crush the insurgency and its leader, Commander Gene - who was a product of the Successor Project and was promoted to leader of the FOX unit when Snake left. With the renegade FOX unit, as well as morally low Russian soldiers stationed at the abandoned base, Snake was far outnumbered. After a suggestion by Campbell, Snake started knocking out Russian and FOX soldiers, bringing them back to his truck and convincing them to join his side. While it wasn't official yet, this was the events that cemented the creation of unit FOXHOUND.

Campbell and Snake recruited not only front line sneaking members, but also established a spy unit, a tech unit and a medic unit. Through this bolstered unit, Snake and his crew set out to investigate the various aspects of the base as they plotted their way deeper within the base through sabotaging as well as recruiting an insider known as Elisa, an ESP. Snake also learnt of machete-wielding member of FOX called Null, the sole survivor of the 'Perfect Soldier' project. Snake later found out that Null was Frank Jaeger, a former child soldier mercenary whom Snake once helped years ago in Mozambique. Snake fought Null twice, beating him both times and finally recruiting him. Null would eventually come to be known as Gray Fox years later (in Metal Gear, MG2 and Metal Gear Solid). Snake also defeated a Metal Gear RAXA prototype being controlled by Ursula, Elisa's renegade personality.

Snake eventually confronted Cunningham who revealed that he was an agent working for the Pentagon. Gene and the Pentagon plotted on using Snake into provoking Gene to launch a nuclear warhead into the Soviet Union. This was to crush the CIA's desire for peace as well as to prolong the Cold War, thus retaining the Pentagon's status quo and possibly strengthening the organisation. Cunningham attempted to talk Snake into his scheme and promised that he would be awarded as a hero. Refusing the co-operate Snake kills Cunningham.

When Snake and Gene finally met, Gene confessed that he was actually aware of Cunningham's plan from the beginning and wanted to launch the Metal Gear with its nuclear warhead payload onto the Pentagon itself, thus destroying the Philosopher's Legacy and the New World Order. Gene also revealed his intention of establishing a state called the Army's Heaven, a country to populated by elite mercenaries whose life revolves around the battlefield. Ursula, determined to avoid a Nuclear war, attacked Gene but was easily defeated. Dying, she predicted that Snake would build his own Metal Gear and that out of the Les Enfants Terribles, one would seek to destroy the world (Liquid Snake) and the other save it (Solid Snake). Snake eventually defeated Gene, who before dying acknowledged Snake as the true successor to The Boss and relinquished his funds for the Army's Heaven to Snake. The funds would later be used to establish the Outer Heaven.

In Washington, sleeper agent Ocelot assassinates the Director of Central Intelligence and obtains the Philosopher's documents for himself. He has had enough with the Philosophers. It was later revealed that Ocelot was in contact with a man "with the same codename as Null". Ocelot planned for Gene to send the nuclear warhead to Washington in order to get the DCI to bring to Philosopher's documents to him, in which he succeeded. Ocelot was also planning on using the Philosopher's Legacy to form the Patriots and in his conversation with the unknown man, requested that Big Boss be recruited as well.

It is unknown whether Big Boss would join the Patriots, but hopefully the answer would be revealed in Guns of the Patriots or in the sequel to Portable Ops.