Kojima has iterated and reiterated, despite Quiet’s verbal distemper and her aesthetic, that she will be a completely developed and significant character within the game. We’ve seen her skills as a sniper—and a pinpoint female sniper is a namesake in the franchise, ranking her alongside the great Sniper Wolf—but now we get a glimpse of her integrity. Even if we forget about her ability to teleport, Quiet clearly has an advantage as a sniper in being completely silent, but the newest trailer delivers that silence, and her appearance by proxy, with a new insight.
As we’ve seen before, Kojima-san doesn’t do anything by accident: He’s a meticulous creator that connects every aspect together in each game he generates, and the same goes for his trailers. The narrator, whom I believe is Kaz Miller, philosophizes on the intriguing idea that a language influences how one thinks. Specifically, he mentions that in being forced to speak the language of his oppressor, The Major—whom we can only assume is Major Zero—he was forced not only to speak like his oppressor but also think as such, coaxing a new way of thinking into his mind. With all of this in mind, the one line that stood out the strongest—apart from the ending, of course—was this:
In his eyes, the greatest symbiotic parasite the world has ever known is not microbial; it’s linguistic… Words are what keep civilization—our world—alive. Free the world not by taking men’s lives but by taking their tongues. With this, I’ll rid the world of infestation. *(Without frank language) the world will be torn asunder, and then it shall be free.
* – Assumed as a cognate with English, loosely perceived as free thinking
For the record, this was spoken when Quiet took a focal point in the trailer. Again, Kojima-san doesn’t do anything by accident.
The philosophy here is radical, much like you’d find in Plato’s Man in the Cave, but philosophies aren’t designed to exist outside a vacuum, which as a whole is what makes Quiet so intriguing: She’s a living and breathing allegory, a visual representation of herself and her circumstances, as well as a metaphor for the world that the assumed Major Zero is attempting to create. Quiet cannot speak, because her ability to speak has been taken from her—again, assumable—but she is not without the power to take on the world. In this philosophy, she now, when compared to every single character in the game—and even the franchise—is the only one completely capable of thinking for herself without the corrupting and subliminal influence of language.
In this light, her aesthetic begins to show meaning, as well. Her attire is at a minimum, bringing her to her very roots, and what attire there is is tattered. Coupling her inability to speak with her visual presentation leaves her in a complete representation of self: broken down by oppression but entirely powerful.
I’d like to disclaim that there is no justification here for how she is presented or how she becomes who she is in the final product narratively. However, I simply iterate that, in spite of the negativity surrounding her presentation, there is a developmental intention behind Kojima’s delivery of Quiet as a character and as a person.