Quote Originally Posted by Rater202 View Post
Part of the point of the first Metal Gear Solid is that genetics isn't as important as training, experience, and strength of character when it comes to what makes a soldier, with Solid Snake, who is revealed in a post-credit scene to be the "inferior" clone of Big Boss despite Liquid's ravings* overcoming the implicitly and explicitly superhuman members of FOXHOUND, his genetically superior twin, and the genome soldiers who were modified to b genetically similar to Big Boss through raw skill and determination.

...But even in that same game Liquid was exposed to the FOXDIE Virus multiple times and it still took him hours to die(and according to supplemental material his heart stopped about a minute before he collapsed) when everyone else had a fatal heart attack within minutes of exposure and they do explicitly state that the Genome soldier project did increase the physical abilities, intelligence, and aptitude for weapons and vehicles of all test subjects. Liquid also shrugs off more damage than every other boss in the game combined.

Various prequels and side games, meanwhile, confirm the existence of biological superpowers in the setting and show Big Boss showing off superhuman feats of strength(overhead pressing away the leg of a metal gear trying to crush him,) toughness, and regeneration(recovering from the prolog of MGS3 in a week, anyone?)

The game presents the concept as being silly but... No, there was merit to the theories about Big Boss's apparently superhuman genetics and Les Infante Terrible and the Genome Soldier Project proved that there was a genetic component to his apparently superhuman level of skill and aptitude.

Kind of undermines the morale.

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And MGSV kind of undermines the moral of 2: "Real Experience and Individuality wins out over Simulated training and trying to make people into psychological copies of other people" being undermined all to hell and back by "this random guy gained all of Big Boss's skills and physical ability from fake memories and being gaslit into thinking he was Big Boss" Venom Snake getting all of Big Boss's powers from being made to think he as big boss proves the "memes" theory that the Patriots were testing in 2
1. But Liquid still lost to Solid

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2. But all this genetics and bio-engineering in the world of Metal Gear really doesn't matter. All the Snakes win their fights through practical normal soldier stuff, and the super-soldier genome stuff all seem to be incredibly impractical as the results they make aren't mass-producible and only end up making one-off freaks of nature that despite their physical power often have mental problems, Psycho Mantis being one of the more stand out examples. one of the most clear evidence that psychic powers exist in Metal Gear Solid.....and everyone ignores it to make the next mech model or cybernetics. and for good reason! people have no idea how Psycho Mantis got those powers, growing more people like him takes more time than just building tech they know works and can be made faster, no ethical problems about raising child soldiers, same with Big Boss and such. ultimately the whole MGS nonsense about genes isn't replicated by anyone outside of the kooky group obsessed with it as the world is shown to have to changed to fight using robots and cybernetic sharing skill over the much more complicated and impractical bio-engineering.

benefits alone aren't the be-all, end-all of a technology, Rater. the cost, how much can be made, how reliably it can be made, whether its worth the improvement you gain for the investment you put in....I'd confidently argue that all the genome improvements no matter how great are marginal ones at best compared to Raiden just getting a bunch of cybernetics and going super-acrobat kill ninja in Revengeance. like compare the unrealistic yet relatively down to earth action movie stunts Liquid and Solid Snake and Big Boss do to cyber-Raiden busting out ridiculous anime feats against things years technologically more advanced with nothing but a katana. improvements like those are clearly worth it.

but the whole genome nonsense? its questionable if you can say the same for that, as the benefits are marginal: at best they provide slight performance boosts to all the soldiers skills that use them and they could probably be just as good at their jobs without them. Ocelot survives longer than most of these genetic super-people just by being smart, manipulative and very good at gunplay and he was never enhanced.