I have been playing quite a lot of Substance recently, so my imagination began pondering. What if…? and Wouldn’t it be cool if they…?
Konami Computer Entertainment, in partnership with SEGA Enterprises,
…presents…
An intense, emotive, intelligent, involving, strategic and explosive prequel to the travails in the Solid arc.
[size=134]METAL GEAR LIQUID: WHITE ENSIGN[/size]
18th March, 1982: Posing under the thin masque of scrap-metal merchants, Argentine troops land at the abandoned whaling facility at Leith, South Georgia, and raise the Argentine standard.
2nd April, 1982: Argentina officially commences its invasion of the Falkland Islands, occupying Port Stanley, East Falkland.
5th April, 1982: To immense jubilant fanfare, the British Task Force sails from Portsmouth harbour.
25th April, 1982: South Georgia is recaptured. HMS Antrim broadcasts: “Be pleased to inform Her Majesty that the White Ensign flies alongside the Union Jack in South Georgia. God Save the Queen!”
2nd-4th May, 1982: The Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano and the British frigate HMS Sheffield are sunk.
21st May, 1982: The British vanguard effects a successful landing in San Carlos Water, on the western shores of East Falkland.
14th June: After being soundly trounced in the battles for the mountains about Port Stanley, the incompetent Argentine General Menendez finally acquiesces. Argentines on both West and East Falkland surrender.
And the rest, to defer to the wearied but still apposite clich?, is history. The military junta that was Argentina’s government imploded and the country enjoyed its first free elections for decades. Margaret Thatcher was cemented as Prime Minister in the U.K. The British public, exhausted, enervated and depressed after the domestic disasters and increasing impoverishment in the 1960s and 70s from the collapse of Empire to trade-union insurrection and runaway inflation, enjoyed a new and effusive lease of national self-confidence. The “close-run thing” of the Falklands War had come down wholly in Britain’s favour and it was rightly and justly acclaimed as a triumph. Whilst Argentina never officially abandoned its tenuous claim to the “Malvinas”, the Argentines had been shamed and humbled by the trial of arms and never engaged on any other plan to thieve them again.
Or did they…?
30th March, 1992. The South Atlantic.
Approaching the tenth anniversary of Operation Rosario - the Argentine Falklands Invasion - a soupy, stodgy, unnatural and cloying fog has rolled over Gyrtviken, the civilian British Antartic Survey’s installation on South Georgia. The various scientists and geographers that staff the station, and the score of Royal Marines that form the island’s garrison, remain cooped up inside their huts biding their time for this unexpected miserable weather to pass over. Yet these helpless and hopelessly doomed pawns are ignorant of the darker, more malign, and insidious machinations are being realised as three dark silhouettes slip through the murk, slitting a course through the fog like the most finely-honed knives.
The British personnel didn’t have even the slightest chance. The first they are aware of their impending death is when, abruptly and spectacularly, the fog is swept away as if it never was - and two frigates are suddenly found to have nosed their way into Fortuna Bay. The staff at the science base have only a few seconds to see with shock and astonishment the Argentine ensigns fluttering from each ship’s stern before the massacre commences.
The frigates’ guns begin firing indiscriminately, raining a torrent of artillery shells down on Gyrtviken and ripping it to shreds and pulping scientist and soldier alike in a firey and heated whirlwhind of oblivion, at the same time as a horde of amphibious troops begin scrambling up the shore. The few Royal Marines that successfully stagger out of the inferno that has devoured the BAS settlement make a decent showing of themselves and take a number of Argentines with them, but they are all cut down by the madly-frothing invaders.
Surprise was absolute, and Navy commodore Rodrigo Peronista viewing the slaughter from the bridge of his frigate is satisfied with the victory, a first step to avenging tarnished Argentine pride. This audacious action will force the hand of Argentina’s government, which will be compelled to start a second Falklands War rather than endure the humiliation of acceding to British demands to withdraw once news of the event leaks out…
…the South Sandwich Islands, southwest of South Georgia and also incorporated into the British Falkland Islands’ dependencies, are officially uninhabited. However, these bleak, barren and unloved rocky seabed hernias, far removed from any merchant shipping lanes, are the perfect location to conduct activities far removed from awkward prying eyes. As such, the South Sandwich Islands also house a secret training facility, under the administration of M.I.6, for the SAS, SBS and M.I.1. The base is perplexed to receive a garbled, confused, nigh-illegible shortwave radio transmission from South Georgia - but it’s quite obvious that something rather ominous has transpired. Not wishing to delay matters by wasting time conversing with London when a potential crisis could be developing, the commanders of the base - going under the codenames of ‘DM’ (“Duke of Marlborough”), ‘LN’ (“Lord Nelson”) and ‘SW’ (“Sandy Woodward”) - decide to take the initiative, sending a glider to parachute in a unit of SAS troops to investigate the condition of South Georgia.
One of the men selected is none other than one of Les Enfants Terribles, the man who would later become Liquid Snake, and currently is known by the generic title of ‘TA’ (“Thomas Atkins” - the archetypal Tommy). Despite being highly decorated for serving with superhuman endurance and skill in the secret SAS deployment during the Panama incident and the special forces’ more overt involvement in the First Gulf War, TA has been languishing in the South Sandwich Islands ever since then. Ostensibly it’s nothing more than a routine cyclic posting, but he suspects it’s to keep his awkward discoveries about the true nature of anti-chemical inoculations made on allied troops in the Gulf out of the public domain.
TA is separated from the remainder of his unit at the very start - a stuck parachute cord delays his launch from the glider by several seconds, and once he does a heavy wind blows him off-course, causing him to land in the middle of the rotten abandoned whaling station of Leith, far removed from his comrades. Utilising a handy piece of equipment on loan to the SAS from the American SSCN - the Codec - however, TA is able to keep in contact with the rest of the troops. His objectives are simple:
-Rejoin the rest of his unit.
-Discover what has happened to Gyrtviken.
-Recover any British survivors.
-Eliminate any and all hostiles that intervene.
Yet it rapdily becomes clear that there is more - much more - transpiring on South Georgia than a simple example of jingoism and realpolitik.
Why are the Argentines equipped with American, Russian, and French armaments?
Whilst the two frigates are undeniably Argentine, how does that square with intelligence reports and satellite surveys accounting for every ship in the Argentine Navy either being in port or on exercise with the Uruguayans?
Why does he chance upon bullet-riddled Argentine corpses, as if they have been fighting themselves?
Why is there no-one called Rodrigo Peronista in Argentina’s census?
How is it that whenever he and his fellow SAS soldiers launch an attack against an Argentine patrol, the weather turns against them like the flick of a switch?
How does the only Royal Marine survivor, Major Hartley, seem to be so knowledgeable about secret SAS operational practices?
And what is that weird, arachnid-like, angular and obsidian shadow he can just glance in the lulls between jets of sea-spray, circling around the island?
As he seeks to reassert British sovereignty over the Argentine invaders, TA begins to uncover a conspiracy that is, if anything, even more malignant, appalling and horrifying than his uncovering the birth of the Genome Army that is masked by the Gulf War Syndrome. Reprising the roles of FOXHOUND members Sniper Wolf, Decoy Octopus, Vulcan Raven and the grizzled veteran Big Boss and featuring a new (and short-lived) warrior, Incendiary Salamander, Metal Gear Liquid: White Ensign is an enthralling and exhilerating feast of Tactical Espionage Action as, in the name of Queen and Country, TA seeks to avoid being grasped as a pawn in the Patriots’ first S3 experiment, battles the deadly prototype Metal Gear Oct, and has to consider an offer of employment from Big Boss…
Coming soon to the Sega Gigadrive, Nintendo Revolution, and X-Box 2!
But not the PS3 