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Doctor Petrovich

Doctor Petrovich is a Slavic weapons scientist, and the designer of TX-55 Metal Gear.

History

Sometime during the late 20th century, Petrovich fathered a daughter, Ellen. Around the late 1980s, Petrovich and his daughter attempted to seek asylum in the United States, but were kidnapped by Outer Heaven during the process. The pair were subsequently imprisoned within Outer Heaven Building 2, where the fortress nation used Ellen as leverage to coerce Petrovich into building weapons for them, including a nuclear weapon.

Among Petrovich's creations during his time at Outer Heaven were the cyberoids TX-11 Arnold (autonomous, bipedal combat androids with bulletproof armor), and more importantly, TX-55 Metal Gear, the nuclear-armed bipedal tank. After Petrovich began development on Metal Gear, rumors of a mysterious "ultimate weapon" reached the ears of the Western Bloc. In response to this threat, they sent the covert unit FOXHOUND to investigate Outer Heaven, with Gray Fox heading the infiltration. Fox discovered the ultimate weapon, Metal Gear, and learned of its nuclear capabilities; he also learned of Petrovich's role in the weapon's creation, as well as the scientist's location. However, Fox was captured, and his mission was instead continued by Solid Snake. Using intel gathered from Fox, Snake set out to find Petrovich.

Scouring Building 2 in search of Petrovich, Snake finally met with the scientist, who refused to help the operative until his daughter was safe. Left with no choice, Snake set off to find Ellen, and freed her; the woman confirmed to Snake that her father was indeed forced to create Metal Gear, and asked him to help her father. Now that Ellen was rescued, Snake returned to Dr. Petrovich, who informed him of Metal Gear's location: the 100th floor basement of Outer Heaven's Building 3. He also told Snake that Metal Gear had a weak point: its thinly-armored legs, which could be easily damaged by plastic explosives. By applying the bombs, sixteen in total, in a specific order and detonating them one-by-one, the legs could be destroyed, crippling the entire craft. However, Petrovich forgot which leg the final bomb must be placed on.

After locating Metal Gear, Snake successfully placed the explosives on its legs, and correctly guessed the ending to Petrovich's sequence, which caused Metal Gear to collapse and explode. It's unknown if Petrovich survived Outer Heaven's self-destruct sequence.

Gameplay

Interacting with Petrovich

As with all prisoners, rescuing Petrovich will contribute to the player's Class, while killing him will reduce it. Despite being an important character, it's still possible to kill him and complete the game (at the cost of a reduced Class).

As long as the following conditions have been met, Petrovich can be killed:

• The Rocket Launcher has been collected.
• The Compass has been collected.
• The player already knows how to defeat TX-55 Metal Gear.

Behind the scenes

His name is spelled as "Dr. Pettrovich" in Metal Gear's original manual. As with the rest of the illustrations in that document, it's suspected that his portrait was drawn by the same artist responsible for Nemesis 2's manual.

Trivia

• In the basement of Building 2, there was a Petrovich impostor that attempted to lure in Solid Snake and defeat him with a pit trap.
• The spelling of Petrovich's name (corrupted as "Pettrovich" in the original version), is of Eastern Slavic origin, indicating that he is likely Russian, Ukrainian, or Belarusian.