Snake Eater Operation The End Battle ～ The Fury Battle

During the scene where Snake enters The End's forest, if you go into first person view, you will see The End's location. This was not how it was planned in the beginning. Originally, it was Snake's view of the forest, and you can pan the camera around to get a good look at the entire forest. This got changed later.

The End fell asleep in the sniping stance. Because he's wearing a ghillie suit (ギリースーツ), he's completely blended in with the forest.

Landing on the old man's shoulder is the "Emma Parrot (エマオウム)", it is the same parrot as the one Emma owned in MGS2. (I assume same in the sense that the CG model is the same.)

Not only are the spots fading from his face, wrinkles are disappearing as well. The old man is literally returning to youth. At first, his voice is soft and weak, as his youth returns, his voice becomes louder and stronger.

The End is having a difficult time speaking because his false teeth keeps falling out.

The "Emma Parrot" flies away, but is still somewhere in the forest. If you capture the parrot, you will find out the location of the old man.

After The End's name appears on the screen, and before Snake hides behind a tree and calls Eva, this shot of the forest is supposed to show the trees making fun and laughing at Snake.

The End is among one of the most troublesome enemies, isn't he. Not only are there many ways of defeating him, if you just fight him head on it can take hours. The test players took several hours to defeat him. However, in the original concept, we were going for a more genuine sniper battle. I had the production team read Stephen Hunter's "Point of Impact" and James Thayer's "White Star". We were really thinking of a duel that will take around a week long, but it gradually went away while we were staring at the monitor.

The End's voice actor, Mr 阪脩 Saka Osamu (v.a. MGS2 Sergei Gurlukovich), was incredible. He can even act out the sound of fake teeth going in and out. He's really a genius. Before, when doing "Policenauts", he acted in the role of トクガワ Tokugawa, during rehearsal of the line "You were his zensai (前妻 zensai = ex-wife)", he said "You were his hor 'dourve (前菜 zensai = hor 'dourve)". At the time I thought, what the hell is this man talking about? He's a very cool and humorous person. While on the subject, the person who's responsible for the parrot accompanying The End is Ms 桑島法子 Kuwashima Houko (v.a. Para-Medic, Mei Ling). Miss Kuwashima is the voice of the parrot, she was very good.

There are four different outcomes to this battle, with four different cinema cutscenes. 1. Two weeks pass in real life time - The End dies of old age. 2. Save and quit the game with The End in the same area as Snake - Snake defeated in his sleep. 3. Snake loses consciousness by The End's tranquilizer bullets - Snake falls asleep. 4. Defeat The End - The End dies.

1. Starting from the time the battle with The End begins, if you Save the game and turn off the game console, and two weeks pass in real life time, The End will die because of old age, and the player will discover his dead body.

2. During the battle with The End, even when you are not in the same area as The End, if you Save the game and stop playing for a certain period of real life time, right after you load the game The End will shoot Snake. After the player loads the saved game, and sees the polygon demo of Snake being shot by The End, the player will start again from the Granin research facility (Graniny Gorki Lab B1 East). We considered whether or not to create three separate cinema demos for each of the three stages of the The End battle. In the end, we made the demo to be in one specific location.

3. During the battle with The End, if Snake loses consciousness because of the tranquilizer darts The End shoots, this polygon demo will play, and Snake will wake up in the cell in the Granin research facility (Graniny Gorki Lab B1 East).

Here is Mr Saka's best acting. The End gradually withers. Slowly and rustily, even his camouflage withers, even his skin withers. The explosion at the end is the thing to see, because his fake teeth flies!

With the leaves of The End's ghillie suit scattered in the forest, the life breath of the forest is revived. There were going to be shots here of fishes swim up the stream, and birds and trees give voice to the forest. As if the inhabitants of the forest are crying over the loss of The End's death.

Originally, Snake walks in on Eva while she is in the middle of changing her clothes, and the scene of her changing was much longer. But it all got cut down to Snake walking in when she is just about finished changing. The main thing that was left in is the emphasis on the marks on her boot. On the leather of her left boot are scratch marks made by the gear shift pedal of the bike.

On Eva's back are signs of torture. There are burn marks and cut marks, as well as some very old scars. The Colonel interrogated her with "hentai play (変態プレイ)".

Snake : "どこでこんな古い傷を？ Where did you get a scar this old?" Eva : "知りたい？ Want to know? 教えない I'm not telling." What a woman with a nasty personality (laughs). I heard that she was disliked by the American voice actors. They said "what a woman!" Sokolov, Granin, Colonel Volgin, Snake, all of them are played within the palm of her hand. Well, the only one she had physical relations with was the colonel though. While on the subject, Eva's body, at the time, I gave to Johnny (佐々木英樹 Hideki "Johnny" Sasaki) a photo book of ○○○里, a gravure idol I liked, and had the character model team create Eva's body based on that. (Speculations indicate 森下千"里" Morishita Chisato, but there exists no actual proof whatsoever.)

Eva says "知りたい？" ("Want to know?") because she notices that Snake is starting to hold suspicion over her made up background history, and she is trying to change the subject in order to shift the focus away from her cover.

The photograph of Volgin and Raikov, look at them smiling. It is cut off in the photo so it isn't clear, but the Colonel's hand is reaching towards the direction of Major Raikov's crotch.

Here he comes! Because he's raiden-no (thunderbolt's) "bitch" (Raidenovich). However, 雷電 Raiden is surprisingly popular actually.

Eva : "バイクの運転を見たでしょう？ You've seen my technique with a bike, right?" Snake : "… ..." Snake looks at Eva's boots. Because of excessively forceful clutch operation, the leather surface of the left boot is all scratched up. Having seen Eva's riding technique with a bike, Snake is uneasy.

Eva : "ザ･ボスの暗殺、それがあなたの任務でしょ？ Assassinate The Boss, that is your mission, isn't it?" I wanted this silence to be around 30 seconds. (The silence lasts for 12 seconds in the game.)

Eva : "スネーク、恋人は？　好きな人はいるの？ Snake, Do you have a lover? Is there someone you like?" Snake : "他人の人生に興味を持ったことはない… I have never held interest in the lives of other people..." This is Meryl's line in MGS. Plus, this is the time between the 60's and the 70's, the era of free sex, the era of hippies. In the 1976 movie "The Great Hunting" (Ultime grida dalla savana: la grande caccia, 1974), in the opening, a man is reading a book, and a woman suddenly reaches out her hand into his crotch, and that's how the movie began. I got really surprised. It's a recoil from the era up to that point, isn't it. So, with what that era symbolizes, out comes Eva. However, Snake is still stubbornly resisting there.

When Eva leans in to kiss Snake, it is Snake's motion actor Mr 吉田瑞穂 Yoshida Mizuho that got nervous and froze. It wasn't Snake that froze and became motionless, it was Mr Yoshida himself that froze (laughs). This time, we had action actors doing emotional acting, while on the other hand we had regular actresses doing action scenes. The filming was topsy-turvy and so it was a lot of fun.

The far away echoing gunshot sound that interrupted Eva's kiss is from the Colonel's fist.

Riding down the mountain range, Eva is balancing the motor bike like a mountain bike.

Eva leaves but forgets and leaves behind the military boots of her disguise back in the cabin. There was a scene of Snake noticing this and calling out to Eva. He only manages to call out "ah...", but Eva is already out of sight. In the finished game, this sequence is not seen. Eva still forgets her boots, Snake just doesn't seem to notice it.

Through the binoculars, Snake sees the iron walled base guarded by patrolling soldiers, and with tanks, armored cars, jeeps, and military trucks parked in rows. And deeper in the base is a runway with a parked WIG, and fenced areas with more soldiers and some scientists. In the game the WIG and stuff are cut. The base only went as far as the rows of tanks.

The Colonel is punching the oil drum using his "bullet punch", that is why it sounds like gun shots firing when he hits it.

I don't know if it's clear, but the oil drum is supposed to be full of (bullet) holes.

The slow motion shot of the oil drum flying high up in the air, this is an homage to Renny Harlin. "Die Hard 2"! This is a cut that Director 北村龍平 Kitamura Ryuuhei especially likes. In "あずみ Azumi", I think there is also a similar cut like it.

The model of Granin's dead body, it was too scary looking, that it became a hot topic of discussion among the staff. It looked too much like Rick Baker's "Zombie". Even though Shinkawa already tried to do something about it with different lighting effects.

Ocelot : "同志を疑うなど But to suspect comrades..." Because he himself is a spy of the Khrushchev faction.

Eva hurriedly stumbles into the scene. Ocelot : "どこへ行っていた？ Where have you been?" Ocelot, he is suspicious of Eva.

The Boss : "ザ･フィアー、ジ･エンドがやられた The Fear and The End are defeated." Ocelot : "さすがだ… He's really something..." Volgin : "惚れたのか？ Fallen for him?" In an off guarded moment, Ocelet accidentally spoke his real mind. Ocelot has already fallen into a dream state regarding Snake.

Volgin : "奴の狙いはなんだ？ What is that man after?" Notice The Boss look towards the direction of the cliff while on her horse. She is answering the Colonel's question while looking up at Snake's eyeline.

When Colonel Volgin utters the words 遺産 Legacy, lightning strikes, that is done after the image of the Tuesday Suspense Theater (火曜サスペンス劇場). Representation of emotion through thunder and flash, very crude method indeed. In MGS, it was always like other RPGs, where the kind of "meanwhile, somewhere else" type of scene change to a location where the player isn't was never used. Because this is an action game, care is taken to keep the story-flow constantly close to being in first-person. This scene is an exception.

Originally in the script, the lightning strikes after the Colonel says "遺産 Legacy". In the finished game, the lightning strike got changed to after The Boss says "賢者の遺産 Philosopher's Legacy".

I wrote in the script for the Colonel to say "遺産 (レガシー) regashi = legacy", but decided in the end still for the proper "遺産 (いさん) isan = inheritance". I also considered adding the pronunciation of レガシー regashi = legacy to the caption here of 遺産 isan = inheritance, but decided not to do that either. (In the game, the phrase is pronounced 遺産 isan = inheritance, and the captions read 遺産 isan = inheritance only.)

Originally, after The Boss rides off on her white Andalusian horse, there is a cut here of the screen switching to Snake's binocular view, and Snake sees The Sorrow riding behind The Boss.

The Colonel looks up at the sky because he's worried that it might rain.

Ocelot : "香水か？ Perfume?" Here he's thinking he remembers having smelled the odor from somewhere. Ocelot : "ふむ… Hum..." Now he's thinking that he can't remember.

To show Eva was in a hurry and didn't have enough time to change into her disguise completely, I considered either to use the scratched up boots, or to have her still wearing her goggles around her neck. In the end, I decided on the boots.

The left foot leather of Eva's bike boots is severely scratched up by her bike's gear shift pedal. It is because of how wildly she rides, combined with her personal gear shift habit that the scratches form a unique pattern that looks like a letter E.

The Fury, right off the bat only concentrates on talking about himself, a nonsensical odd man (怪人). In accordance to the 70's sci-fi movie cinematic style, an explosion goes right here. In relation to the main character's position, him appearing in the scene facing sideways, that's John Carpenter style.

The letters CCCP printed on the face plate of his helmet is the Russian abbreviation for ソ連 Soviet Union, or the ソビエト社会主義連邦共和国 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (CCCP, Russian for SSSR - Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - USSR.) (In the finished game, the letters on The Fury's helmet is not CCCP, but is БЕИ, the Russian equivalent of the letters BEI.)

If you look at The Fury's flames in first person view or with Thermal Goggles, your vision will be burned, and everything will turn white for a while and you won't be able to see. Turn your face away, battle is imperative.

The Fury went to space like The Boss. During re-entry into the atmosphere, an accident happened and caused 1/3 of his entire body to be burned. Now he doesn't feel pain.

What he's saying during his death scene, that's because he's seeing flashbacks of his memories during the entry into the earth's atmosphere.

The flying face of flame. That's inspired from "The Mummy" (laughs). The CG of this face of flame, it took a lot of time.