Richard Ames

Colonel Richard Ames was an agent of the Patriots operating at the time of the Shadow Moses and Big Shell Incidents.

Early life and career
Richard Ames was a DIA operative. During that time, he was married to Nastasha Romanenko, but the marriage didn't last long and ended in a sudden divorce, shortly after Ames disappeared. At some point in his life, he suffered a heart attack, which required him to use a pacemaker afterwards. He was also the man who led the development of the FOXDIE program.

During the Shadow Moses Incident in 2005, then-Major Ames was working as a Patriot spy. He forced his way into Nastasha's home and forced her to act as a nuclear weapons consultant for Solid Snake and used this as a way to keep an eye on the operation. He intentionally kept information a secret from Nastasha, to the point where she began to wonder if she would even be allowed to live after the operation. It was revealed that at some point he was also having an affair with Naomi Hunter. After Snake destroyed Metal Gear REX, Liquid Snake used Snake's codec nanomachines to contact the Patriots directly, which included Ames. After hearing Liquid threaten him and the Patriots right when Solid Snake was on the other line, Ames merely replied that he'll "look forward to it." Towards the end of the operation, Ames demanded Jim Houseman be taken into custody, after Houseman directly intervened in the operation making a complete cover-up unquestionable. Ames commented that "they are not happy with this."

After the operation, Nastasha then wondered if she should report the conversation and confrontation, but Ames told her that the masses would still take it as a grain of salt. Ames handed a disc with all the information on FOXDIE over to Nastasha hoping it would keep her safe, as well as secretly helping her in terms of supplying evidence against The Patriots, as while what he did to Houseman can be labelled as plausible deniability, the FOXDIE disc would be undeniable evidence, and promptly disappeared. It would be four years before he would surface again. There was no record of him ever working at the DIA. Because of this, Nastasha feared that Ames was killed.

In 2009, Colonel Ames was supposedly taken hostage by terrorists, along with U.S. President James Johnson, while taking part in an inspection tour aboard the Big Shell offshore decontamination facility. Posing as a Secret Service agent, he had actually been planted by the Patriots in order to monitor Johnson's anti-Patriot actions.

Special forces operative Raiden tracked down Ames during his mission to rescue the hostages, using a directional microphone to identify him by his distinctive pacemaker. Ames almost accidentally revealed to Raiden that he was unknowingly working for the Patriots, but revealed to Raiden the location of the President. When Raiden mentioned the terrorists' $30 billion ransom to Ames, his reaction implied that the ransom had never been made to begin with. Shortly afterwards, his undercover identity was compromised with the arrival of terrorist member Revolver Ocelot. Ocelot stated that he knew Ames was a DIA agent, though Ames unexpectedly died in front of him from what appeared to be a heart attack. As Ames' succumbed to cardiac arrest, he advanced on Ocelot, realizing that he too was a Patriot spy. It was later revealed that Ames' nanomachines were shut down by the Patriots, causing his pacemaker to stop functioning. His death was ultimately a part of the S3 Plan, to further the similarities between the Shadow Moses Incident and the Big Shell Incident. The Patriots probably decided to kill Ames because he betrayed them in 2005, by giving Nastasha the disk containing data about FOXDIE and letting her escape.

Trivia

 * Ames enjoyed smoking Chesterfield brand cigarettes.
 * It is implied in In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth that Richard Ames started falling for Nastasha Romanenko again, which served as one of the reasons why he let her live.
 * By the time of the Big Shell Incident, Ames's paperwork allegedly only contained his name, and even then only on a roster for the Secret Service, and almost everything else about him was classified.

Behind the scenes
Colonel Richard Ames (リチャード・エイ� ズ大佐) and the DARPA Chief share the same Japanese voice actor, Masharu Sato. Given the fact that the plotline of Metal Gear Solid 2 was intended to be very similar to that of the previous game, this was presumably done intentionally.

In the original game plan, Ames's death scene was intended for Gurlukovich mercenary Johnny Sasaki, who was also to have been a Patriot spy in the game. Additionally, Ames was to have been executed by Revolver Ocelot and Solidus Snake, after speaking face to face with the terrorist leader and making hints towards his plan. In that version, Ames explicitly referred to "the Patriots," whereas in the final version his words were substituted with the phrase "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo" by his nanomachines.

Ames later appeared in the non-canonical Snake Tales chapter, "A Wrongdoing," included with Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance. In the story, Ames orchestrates the Big Shell Incident in order to exact revenge on Dead Cell member Fatman, due to his sister’s death in a church bombing he had committed years prior.

Ames's death, along with his meeting with Raiden, was omitted from the Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty comic. Similarly, his ex-wife was omitted from the Metal Gear Solid comic.

Appearances

 * Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty