The Phantom Pain Alternative Trailer January 22, 2013

Moby Dick Studio has released this updated version of the trailer they released at the VGAs.  This alternate trailer doesn’t change much with the trailer itself but it does bring in an entirely new music soundtrack.  The footage is still being rendered entirely on a high-end PC, but the studio promises that the game will release to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

The more times I see this trailer the more I believe the online community in their belief that this trailer is a hoax for the next Metal Gear Solid game.  The game’s protagonist, although his face is partially bandaged, looks very similar to Naked Snake’s face from the Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes trailer.  One of his eyes is clearly bandaged, showing that the character could have lost it.  Naked Snake is already missing an eye.

The character’s movement when shambling around with difficulty reminded me of a very similar moment in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, where Solid Snake had to walk through a corridor bathed in intense microwaves.  As time progressed it became harder and harder to move through the area, and Snake became weaker and slumped closer to the ground, bringing his movement to a slow crawl.

The new music track included in this alternate trailer at the two-minute mark also sounds very similar to a track from the Metal Gear Solid games.  The new music has a very similar guitar rhythm to ones that would play during a boss fight or action sequence.

But I believe the two strongest pieces of evidence that the trailer is a hoax comes from two very important moments towards the end of the trailer.  At 2:36 in the trailer, a giant flaming whale comes out of the sky.  Could this be where the studio, if it is a fake, got its fake name from?  It is highly unusual that a brand new game developer would name themselves directly after an event or character of their flagship game, particularly one that would be so plainly seen in their first game trailer.  Usually game studios are named after unrelated things or were references to popular projects the studio heads had done in the past.

The other, and the one that brings it to the closest connection with Metal Gear Solid is the appearance at 2:57 of what looks to be a doll of The Sorrow floating above someone in pain.  The Sorrow was a boss in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.  He was a member of The Boss’s Cobra Unit, and while he was already dead before the game began, he somehow had the power to act as a ghost and impact the real world.  Though he was defeated in MGS3, a doll of him was used by another boss in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.  It was wielded by Mantis, one of the final members of the Beauty and the Beast Corps that Snake battled in the game.  The Sorrow’s doll could even be collected and used by Snake as a special item.  While the B&B Corps would not be around during the events of Ground Zeros, The Sorrow would still be dead.  Could this explain the origin of Mantis’s doll?

The Phantom Pain is coming to Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.