MBTI: The Boss- INFJ
Of all the characters in all of video game-dom, there’s only one that seems to have inspired as much throughout as series- and we didn’t even know it until the third game (technically the fifth).
Metal Gear Solid 3’s Boss is an extremely complicated character; a woman of brains, action and knowledgeably working within the framework of the big picture. While many thought of the main hero, Solid Snake as the catalyst for the stories, we took a step further back to see it was Big Boss.
Then we took another step back to reveal The Boss. Just another example of the INFJ setting things in motion.
If you don’t know anything about the MGS series, you’re missing out. Not a regular player of video games, I still become completely immersed in all the characters, dialogue, action, story and overall uniqueness the games have that no other series can compete with.
That being said, The Boss is no exception. In fact, she’s a template.
Throughout MGS3, we’re led to believe (while playing as Naked Snake) that The Boss has betrayed her country, America, in favor of siding with militant sadist Volgin that plans to use the walking nuclear arsenal, the Shagohod; the earliest metal gear.
During the game, you come into contact with The Boss a number of times. Her personality remains the same even though she’s just switched sides and nearly kills her protege a number of times. Snake can’t understand why she’s done it.
Here’s the first of several scenes featuring Snake pleading with The Boss to know why she’s defected.
In the final battle, The Boss reveals that she’s been ready to die and Snake is the one to do it. After reluctantly taking her life, Naked Snake accepts the title of “Big Boss” only to find out that The Boss wasn’t a traitor at all but accepted her role so the US and Russia wouldn’t go to war with each other over a bomb Volgin himself set off.
She knew that she would go down in history as a traitor and that know one could ever know the truth, but she accepted it.
“It’s actually all been for the rubles, Snake.”
It’s these events that set in motion the rest of the series as Big Boss himself becomes a “freedom fighter/terrorist” for the rest of the series. The games he’s not directly featured in, involve him heavily still, as it’s his legacy that’s more or less fought over.
But it’s all because of The Boss still because of what she’d done, and much of what she’d done was a product of Ni.
As mentioned in previous posts, Ni is Introverted Intuition and it’s involved in long range planning. It’s seeing multiple possibilities out of a single thing and then the user chooses what to move forward with. In this case, the “single thing” the boss saw was the act of taking responsibility for a war crime she didn’t commit; the “possibilities” she saw involved the closest thing to peace that the times would allow.
“Peace later. This…NOW! Budda budda budda!”
She acknowledges that there will always be fighting, but immediate war could be averted if she just made this sacrifice- something she was ultimately willing to do because she only saw more fighting coming her way with the life she’d lived.
“The foibles of politics and the march of time can turn friends into enemies just as easily as the wind changes.”
There are several great lines in that video alone, but the one above is to give you an idea of how the boss thinks. In the above video, she talk to Snake before their last fight, she waxes that enemies are all relative to the times. “Yesterday’s allies are today’s enemies” she says. It all depends on the current political climate. She knows that her death won’t secure peace, but it will hopefully last a while.
The Boss’ second function is Fe. In a battle hardened soldier, Fe doesn’t seem fitting, does it? But this isn’t a battle-hardened soldier; this is a woman that’s been through the meat-grinder, come out in pieces, rebuilt herself and seen the machine for what it is. She’s not looking for another fight to get into, yet she doesn’t expect people to “just get along” with no method or idea of how that could ever happen.
Her Fe is displayed in the obviously heavy burden she carries knowing the truth of all this. She knows she’s only a little more than a pawn no matter what she does and she seems sincerely sad for mankind in this respect.
“6’5 Snake. Whut.”
Most types would be more about carrying out the job or feel it too big a task, seeing a futility of it all, but the INFJ Boss takes it all on. Introverted Feeling is a more internalized (duh) form of feeling; “How does what’s happening affect me?” while Extroverted Feeling places more emphasis on how it affects others. Both are valuable of course but it’s The Boss’ Fe that has her placing humanity’s long range peace above her own immediate place in life.
The voice actress Lori Alan does a great job at portraying this. She’s also the voice of Diane Simmons, the female news anchor on the show designed to make a person’s ADD worse, Family Guy.
No wonder Quahog is so messed up. Heh. As if ‘real’ news isn’t.
While keeping up the charade of a traitor, The Boss stays steady. What got me initially about her performance was that she didn’t seem to turn into a heartless monster to sell her betrayal, but she seemed much more somber.
So to find out that she was actually performing possibly the most important task of all knowing she’d be spit on for it and the entire truth coming out would be detrimental to the goal so she’d always be remembered as a backstabber, this is what lets you really feel The Boss and Big Boss’ pain.
Tell me you didn’t shed a tear. LIAR!
Taken from Wikipedia (of all pages, right?)-
“INFJs may “silently withdraw as a way of setting limits” rather than expressing their wounded feelings—a behavior that may leave others confused and upset.”
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