AFTERWORD
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A NOVELIZATION. A book taking a story written as a movie, anime, or other media and changing it to prose.
“Will you do the novelization for Metal Gear Solid 4?”
To be entrusted with the novelization of such a monumental work was too great an honor for a novice with only one novel to his name. A newcomer might quietly undertake the job, receive the script, and dispassionately adapt it into a novel. A basic, sincere approach within the novice’s abilities.
But I had reasons that made such an approach out of the question.
I had been a fan of the Metal Gear series’ creator, Hideo Kojima, for twenty years.
Because I was a fan, I didn’t want to treat this like a typical novelization. I didn’t want to present a fleeting memory to be read and then discarded; I wanted to offer something that would remain forever on the bookshelves of whoever picked it up. I wanted a novel worthy of being read more than once. As Hideo Kojima’s stories held a special place for me in my youth, I hope that this ending to the Metal Gear series will be special for you. That’s what made this novelization what it is.
Perhaps I should have written shorter sentences. Perhaps I should have cut everything but the dialogue as much as I could. Perhaps I should have shortened the paragraphs and made it easier to read. As a reader, I’ve been under the care of novelizations like that. A rumination of the experience of the “real thing.” Since this book tells the story of the game as it was, perhaps I didn’t need to produce detailed descriptions.
But as long as the name Metal Gear was attached, I decided I wouldn’t let this be something merely peripheral.
Yet I didn’t at all want to make the novel special to myself by using the worldview and characters to assert myself through the narrative. How furious would I have been as a fan if some inexperienced nobody came in and asserted himself through the narrative and presented an original story with the same world and the same characters? Were it a famous, accomplished author, I might forgive, but someone new to the field like me couldn’t do that, nor did I want to or feel the need to. It’s easy to assert your ego through an “original” story. But I knew that the possibility of the novel lay in a place outside the story.
It was the choice to make Otacon the narrator.
How would the story be told? I know that a novel’s essence resides in that how. Moses parted the Red Sea, and Jesus turned water into wine. The soldier put his life on the line for the princess, and the little boy left on a journey. Once upon a time … In the past, stories didn’t belong to novelists, but to someone, somewhere. The passing down of another person’s deeds. From the likes of minstrels, tellers of lore, and the faithful apostles came many styles of storytelling to pass on the tales to the future world.
The method of the telling has as much meaning and importance as the story itself. Though The Lord of the Rings films are loyal to Tolkien’s creation, Peter Jackson’s presentations of the stories make the films distinctly his own. One might say that Peter Jackson told his own story through the way he told The Lord of the Rings.
I thought the same might be possible with a novelization. Moreover, I thought that was the only possible avenue through which to make my novelization personal. I could faithfully tell the story Hideo Kojima painstakingly built without losing its emotional impact. A careful and thorough consideration of that method resulted in this novel. This is a book that stands complete on its own and can be read even by those who aren’t familiar with the Metal Gear series, and yet contains new discoveries for those who have already reached the end of the Metal Gear tale.
My long deliberation on the nature of novelizations produced a story informed by the meaning of telling the Metal Gear story—a story about stories, a story about what the Metal Gear saga is, what it symbolizes about the structure of the world we live in, and even an evaluation of Metal Gear.
Nothing would make me happier than if you took from this novel the meaning of passing down another person’s story. I hope this story will enrich your bookshelf and become a fond memory.
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—Project Itoh
June 2008