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    Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

    Game » consists of 15 releases. Released Nov 17, 2004

    The third installment in the Metal Gear Solid franchise is swathed in the Cold War, and it's up to a strangely familiar soldier codenamed Naked Snake to keep the Soviet Union and the United States from all-out nuclear war.

    Ocelot and his "middle-eastern technique"

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    T0FFE

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    This has been bugging me since the first time I played Snake Eater and I've never been able to find a good answer for this. Also, I guess some people would consider this spoilers so now you're warned.

    When Snake first encounters Ocelot, he sees him ejecting the first bullet in his Makarov(?) by hand. When they fight later on the gun jams and Snake tells Ocelot that it was because of him trying to show off with a technique he had only heard/read about. Later on the codec Snake refers to this technique as "The middle-eastern-technique" if I remember correctly.

    So my question is what exactly is this technique supposed to do? Is it supposed to have any benefits? I've read various theories and one popular is that by doing the technique the gun can hold one extra bullet by getting one bullet in the chamber and then inserting a full magazine. The theory is that this would allow a gun to hold one extra bullet. One in the chamber and I believe it's eight bullets in a makarov-magazine. I have never bought in to this theory since he would have been able to achieve the same result by firing 7 bullets and then inserting a new magazine, or simply chamber the first round and then changing magazine. So, does any of you duders know what this technique is all about? And also, I don't see any reason why it would make his gun jam?

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    rethla

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    #2  Edited By rethla

    Call your crew on the codex and they will give you this information and much more

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    T0FFE

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    #3  Edited By T0FFE

    @rethla: The problem is that I played the game on PS2 and don't have any way to play it now. :/

    Edit: I found a script for all the codec-conversations and found the answer! Thanks for the tip rethia :) Turns out it wasn't his middle-eastern-technique that made the gun jam. It was the fact that he absorbed the recoil with his elbow and didn't allow the recoil to clear the chamber before a new bullet was chambered.

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    alexl86

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    I'm by no means an expert, but I thought he ejected a bullet into the chamber so that the next time he pulled the trigger, the gun would fire, instead of dry-firing and then automatically ejecting a bullet from the magazine.

    I also thought the gun jammed because he was ejecting by hand while there was still a bullet in the chamber.

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    T0FFE

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    I'm no gun-expert myself, but I think the bullet wouldn't be loaded into the chamber without cooking the hammer so the bullet could be fired. The fact that a bullet is ejected when he cocked the gun should mean that he had already chambered the first bullet when he inserted the magazine.

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    T0FFE

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    "Whenever he put a new clip in his gun he'd always load the first round by hand, whether there was a round left in the chamber or not. It's a technique they teach in the Middle East. By making sure there's always a round in the chamber, you eliminate the risk of pulling the trigger with nothing to fire."

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    BisonHero

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    It sounds like the idea is that you always cycle a bullet into the chamber so you don't have to remember whether you already have a bullet in the chamber or not. It's wasteful because you're sometimes going to eject an unused bullet, but I guess if you're switching out magazines constantly and not sure how thorough you were, it's useful?

    As for the jam, I don't know, he was trying to cycle out the bullet as part of drawing it I guess, so it's possible he didn't pull it all the way or something so it fucked up.

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    T0FFE

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    @dudeglove: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItvclICnwgI&t=143 This is the part where he ejects the bullet, and you can see the bullet clearing the slide. After reading the part in the codec I think it's his twisting of the elbow that causes the jam. He twists his elbow and lessens the recoil so much that the slide doesn't slide back far enough so the casing gets stuck and causes the jam. So I don't think his manual ejection has anything to do with the jam since he's able to shoot a number of shots before the jam.

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    ArtisanBreads

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    #11  Edited By ArtisanBreads

    Well Ocelot is supposed to be wrong about the whole thing, playing the young Ocelot role of a flashy but inexperienced and foolish soldier. Keep that in mind.

    Good posts though, interesting part of the game I hadn't investigated.

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    T0FFE

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    @dudeglove: I guess Snake says that a revolver would be more suitable for Ocelot since him twisting and turning while shooting wouldn't effect a revolver since there's no slide that's supposed to slide back from the recoil with every shot?

    @artisanbreads: I think it's a really nice way of showing some backstory for Ocelot and showing how Boss started to become some kind of role model for him :) In the codec call after the fight, Para-medic even questions why Snake is giving an enemy pointers during combat! :)

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    ArtisanBreads

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    @t0ffe said:

    @artisanbreads: I think it's a really nice way of showing some backstory for Ocelot and showing how Boss started to become some kind of role model for him :) In the codec call after the fight, Para-medic even questions why Snake is giving an enemy pointers during combat! :)

    Yes I like that. I love just kind of them going into extreme minutia a marksman would use in such a silly game. The way Kojima goes to such accuracy with say some of the military aspects even when you're fighting a guy made of bees is oddly appealing.

    I love how they handled Ocelots arc in 3 and then how he goes on later. Interested to see him in V too.

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    deactivated-5e49e9175da37

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    @dudeglove: That's interesting!

    So Makarov 9mm bullets won't work in western guns, is it designed so Beretta 9mm bullets work in Makarovs?

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    ArtisanBreads

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    #16  Edited By ArtisanBreads

    @dudeglove said:

    @artisanbreads: There's a fan theory of sorts out there than the MGS games aren't about Snake at all, when you consider that Ocelot is pivotal in nearly every game.


    Yeah I mean I would say that is the case in so far as Snake is kind of a stand in for the player character. Most of his dialogue is just asking what someone said a second ago. I like Big Boss and Snake and there is some nuance to them, but they are both pretty straight forward. Kojima said this about the series when talking about V supposedly and I guess he is going further now with it so that Snake will talk even less in the new game.

    Over the course of the games you do get a good look at Ocelot evolving and like I said before I really like his arc how they set him up as a fool in 3.

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    poobumbutt

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    @artisanbreads: I really like how young Ocelot is just like his older self, but he doesn't have all the skill yet. He thinks he's such a cool dude, what with his little "point" gesture and high-and-mighty attitude, but he comes off as a bumbling try-hard. But by the end of the game, he becomes pretty awesome. The technique probably would be pretty effective if used by experts (as Drew says) like the Mossad, but like Snake says: "testing a technique you've only heard about in the middle of battle wasn't very smart."

    And can I just say how cool it is that this is a thread? I obsessed over this specific scene and others like it when I first played this as a kid because I thought it was such an interesting detail to put in your game. It's great some other people are intrigued, too.

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