UNIMAK ISLAND, Alaska — Shortly after beating Metal Gear Solid for the first time, comedian Nathan Fielder has constructed a fully accurate replica of the fictional military base on which the game is set, and begun a live-action re-enactment of his playthrough in real-time.
“Video games ask the player to become their protagonist, but nobody ever truly does,” narrated Fielder as he crawled beneath a crate to avoid one of the actors he hired to perfectly imitate the game’s guards. “I couldn’t truly say I beat Metal Gear Solid until I had become Solid Snake. I never felt the snow on my belly, or killed any members of FOXHOUND, or repeated everything I heard as a question. But maybe, with the resources at my disposal, I could become the first person to ever complete it.”
Following meticulous analysis of the game’s maps, Fielder’s recreation of Shadow Moses Island features every in-game item in its original location, as well as a full staff of actors to portray every character in the game.
“When I took this job, I thought it was a Metal Gear Solid movie,” explained Ellen Che, the actress cast to play Mei Ling. “Instead I’m sitting in this room for hours and occasionally reading a Chinese proverb over the phone. But it could be worse, at least I’m not one of the guys out there. Just to start, they have to constantly wear these prosthetic masks that make them look like PlayStation char…oh, sorry, he’s trying to save again. What can I do for you, Snake?”
The audacious experiment has been praised by critics as a revolution in television, simultaneously elevating comedy and video games as an art form, and praised by those critics’ friends as “that weird show you keep trying to make me watch.”
“I had almost done it,” continued Fielder over footage of him fistfighting Liquid Nathan on top of the fully-functional Metal Gear REX he had built. “I only ate rations. I endured real electrical torture. I re-enacted Symphony of the Night in full too just so Psycho Mantis could mean it when he said I liked Castlevania. And in those final moments, I had become Solid Snake. I was a bitter old soldier, tired of a life of violence yet unable to know anything else. My accomplishments were nothing more than painful memories, and I wished for the only corpses I ever saw to be pixels on a screen. Solid Snake would’ve given the world for the Shadow Moses Incident to never happen. Yet Nathan, the fool I used to be, made sure that it did. I had beaten Metal Gear Solid, and with it fully understood its ending.” Fielder got on a snowmobile with a very confused actress playing Meryl, looked at the caribou he had arranged to be in that location, and enthusiastically delivered his final scripted line. “Come on, let’s enjoy life!”
At press time, Fielder had found the perfect Liberian child soldier for his re-enactment of Metal Gear Solid 2.
