This is the sixth entry in my ongoing series chronicling my mission to play every Kojima game, dubbed “Operation H.I.D.E.O.” You can read Part 5 here.
The artistic process can be a frightening one. You toil away for hours, days, even years on a project that consumes your waking moments and haunts your nightly dreams. You examine your fears and aspirations, break them down to their most basic elements, and rebuild them into a story or poem or painting, all in the hopes of understanding the world around you and forging a connection to those in your community.
But it’s not math…there is no formula at your disposal, no “right” way to create art. You simply Make. You then decide that, for one reason or another, you’ve done all you can do, and it is now time to Release. This can be a terrifying moment for an artist; what if they hate it? What if they hate me? What if I’m no good and this whole thing was a big waste of time?
Artists want to be successful, just like anyone else. They want their work to touch people, to change lives, and to open minds. If an artist’s work finds an audience and that audience loves said work, then mission accomplished, right?
Right?
Success, like everything else in the world, is complicated. Actors can become so successful that they are typecast. Singers can find that the incredible contract they signed is actually pretty restrictive. And writers can see their stories misunderstood and misconstrued. Perhaps the artist has unsuccessfully succeeded.
So where does the artist go from here? Does she retreat, never to try again? Does he cave to demand and continue releasing products that make money, unfulfilling though they are? Or does the artist examine their place in the world, and try, try again?
The Metal Gear series is deeply anti-war. It features broken characters doing their best to help a world that does not want their help. Whether its politicians manipulating their soldiers in order to gain a strategic edge or noncorporeal puppet masters orchestrating terrorist attacks from the shadows, our protagonists struggle, and often fail, to find peace among warring nations and within themselves. Those moments, profound though they are, often take a back seat to others in the series. These tragic stories are overshadowed by The Cool.
There is a walking bi-pedal tank that shoots rockets! Cool. There is a motorcycle chase down a collapsing corridor! Cool. You shoot down helicopters and blow up submarines! Supervillains shoot lightning out of their hands and cyborg ninjas come to the rescue! Cool, cool, cool!
From a functional standpoint, each Metal Gear game is a series of setpieces strung together end-to-end. Elaborate facilities allow players to execute sneaky heists while flashy bosses add a cinematic flair to the whole ordeal. It’s hard to loath the cold war at hand when the existence of said war is letting you, the player, do cool stuff.
Though each Metal Gear game was released to critical acclaim, the industry, for all intents and purposes, learned the wrong lessons. No, it did not encourage producers to tell complex stories and explore moral quandaries…instead, it emphasized the importance of making war feel cool.
This is a blanket statement, of course. Brilliant stories continue to emerge from the gaming industry and even mindlessly violent games have their time and place. It’s possible for players to connect with the empathetic morals of Undertale while likewise murdering hordes of encroaching demons in Doom.
From an artist’s perspective, however, we can see that frustration bubble to the surface. Hideo Kojima worked tirelessly to explore the horrors of war, and yet Call of Duty, Battlefield, Gears of War, and Halo go out of their way to make death Fun. Kill streaks and high scores abound in games who’s multiplayer deathmatches are a greater draw than the single-player campaigns. Would the popularity of the Cool Fight exist without Metal Gear? Did Solid Snake’s action setpieces influence the developers who want to just make bombastic battles without nuance or morals? Did Kojima’s anti-war work popularize pro-war* games?
It's now 2008, and Hideo Kojima has a bone to pick with the First Person Shooter.
We see, right off the bat, that Kojima has the FPS genre in his sights. (I’m sorry). “This is no first-person shooter,” the trailer exclaims, and how dare you think otherwise. This is so much more than all of that…this is Metal Gear Solid IV: Guns of the Patriots!
The game opens up in the middle of warzone. Which warzone? Well, take your pick. Ever since the events of Metal Gear Solid II, the world is in a state of near-total war. It’s not World War III, of course, but rather a collection of small, local uprisings between governments and well-funded insurgents.
Snake, old and grey, is tasked with meeting with an informant on the other side of the city. This journey is treacherous, as gunfire is exchanged between two warring factions. We barely have a chance to ponder the Who’s and Why’s of this conflict, because the How comes to the forefront.
Nanomachines in the combatants’ blood enables combat. Guns are linked to these signals and allow for soldier supervision and, more importantly, commerce. In order to purchase additional guns and ammunition, soldiers (and Snake) are electronically billed and, once payment is received, the triggers unlock, and the weapon can be used.
The player navigates through a wide-open city full of bullets and blood. Like in previous games, Snake can use stealth to avoid detection, or fire at will at those in his way. Things, however, are different this time around. Prior entries touted a singular adversarial force, one that we could safely call The Enemy because of their treacherous plans for conquest. Snake was encouraged to use stealth to avoid rustling feathers…the quieter the entrance, the more unsuspecting the enemy.
But here, guns blaze for no discernable reason. Soldiers from either faction may shoot at Snake, or they may not, who cares? Snake can kill soldiers in his way and, yes, it may draw the attention from more guards, but the affair is chaotic regardless. The violence surrounding Snake may be a direct result of his actions in prior games, but the world is indifferent to his presence, nonetheless. These are nameless soldiers fighting a pointless battle in a nondescript country, all because war drives profit.
It’s here that we need to step back and re-examine our setting.
We have a man surrounded by violence that he had a hand in creating, violence that is meaningless, and continues solely for financial betterment of its profiteers. Yes, Snake is navigating a war whose flames are stoked by arms dealers and power brokers, but at the same time, Kojima is navigating an industry where war is sold by game developers and boards of directors. Both of these men have found themselves in a world they don’t recognize anymore, confused as to how their best efforts to promote disarmament, have somehow bred directionless violence.
This is a not-so-subtle commentary on the industry as a whole, as its criticism isn’t aimed at any one particular party. Yes, the developers who churn out these shallow shooters are doing so because it’s profitable, however the players are equally at fault here. Gamers agree that, here, it does not matter who is fighting who, just that they get to play along.
The aforementioned microchips embedded in each soldier’s body do more than unlock ID-tagged guns. No, these nanomachines can regulate the emotions of any person who feels too much of anything. These chips keep the anxious calm and the bloodthirsty in check, yes, but in so doing, also prevent soldiers from feeling guilt, shame, or fear. In the event that these microchips fail, as they do towards the end of Chapter One, these suppressed emotions bubble to the surface, and a lifetime’s worth of traumatic memories rush to the surface. Some collapse in anguish, others are driven mad, and no one is spared.
If soldiers were cognizant of the horrors caused by their actions, they may not perform on the battlefield and the entire money-making scheme would come grinding to a halt. In the same vein, if video games presented a realistic depiction of war, players, too, would likely turn off their consoles. Instead of the screams of men in excruciating pain, successful kills in many a shooter reward the player with satisfying chimes that boost serotonin. You did good, kid!
Ca-ching!
On its surface, Metal Gear Solid IV: Guns of the Patriots almost feels hypocritical. For the first time in the series, gunplay is a buttery smooth experience. The clunky top-down camera and awkward aiming are replaced with the most user-friendly interface the franchise has ever seen. As hordes of nameless soldiers storm the building in which Snake finds himself, the ensuing bloodbath feels less like a Metal Gear game and more like a round of zombie killing in Call of Duty. Of course, like many entries before it, killing here is entirely optional; tranquilizers and stun grenades are a viable option while Snake stages his escape. However, guns are the easy way out. So, easy, in fact, that Kojima is tempting the player. It’s so easy, isn’t it? Just fire away!
As it stands, Metal Gear Solid IV was conceived as the finale to the Metal Gear series and, given its ruminations on action and consequence, initially reads as a brilliant metatextual experience. The world, our protagonist, and the intersection of the two make for a game that is ready to grapple with the metaphorical legacy of Komija-via-Snake’s career. These profound declarations, however, are muddied by the game’s infatuation with itself.
To be frank, recounting the beat-by-beat plot points of Metal Gear Solid IV is a pointless exercise for several reasons. For starters, Kojima tries so tirelessly to weave in story elements from every other game in the series that one would need a Metal Gear encyclopedia just to keep up. Characters from prior installments show up and the game responds by presenting these moments as weighty and important. Often times, however, we find ourselves pausing the cutscene to remind ourselves of who these people are and what connection they have to Snake. Only fans who are steeped in the rich nuance of these games will respond with the emotions expected by Kojima. On more than one occasion, I found myself saying “Oh, I thought they were dead.”
Furthermore, the knowledge gained from said encyclopedia wouldn’t help because the story itself is so nonsensical. Revolver Ocelot replaced his severed arm with that of Liquid Snake’s and, as a result, Liquid Snake’s mind took over Ocelot’s? Seriously? Even in the game’s final minutes, we’re still being introduced to new characters and acronyms and organizations, all of which serve a story that, at this point, has overstayed its welcome. We’re ultimately left confused by this chaos, instead of relishing in the razor-sharp and incisive morals of prior entries.
Finally, and most egregiously, the game’s laborious efforts to be a grand culmination of all things Metal Gear actively undermine the nicely tied bows of previous entries. The final moments of Metal Gear Solid II: The Sons of Liberty are troubling but, at least for Raiden, optimistic. He is reunited with Rose and vows to make a life with her, one that is truly worth living. Now, years later, we see that Raiden has left Rose to become a cyborg mercenary. It’s upsetting, unnecessary, and inconsistent with the broader world Kojima had previously been so strict about managing.
Ironically, this “greatest hits” approach works best in the gameplay, instead of the narrative. Midway through our mission, Snake finds himself wandering the ruins of Shadow Moses Island, and the memory this exploration sparks serves to draw an excellent contrast between the beginning of this grand adventure and its conclusion. Similarly, the final boss fight is presented through several phases, each one mimicking a fight from the other Metal Gear Solid games. It’s tactile, it recalls muscle memory, and it reinforces the feeling that this moment is a culmination of all our past efforts.
When describing Guns of the Patriots in this way, one would be justified in believing that this “final” entry is a series of unrelated Metal Gear ideas Frankensteined together into one self-indulgent victory lap. Though that indictment isn’t entirely unfounded, things aren’t as bad as they seem. What tips the scales in Metal Gear Solid IV’s favor is a decisive tone that only strengthens as the story progresses. As the narrative moves forward, we realize just how dire our situation is and just how critical it is that we do something about it.
There is a sense of dread looming over our heads the entire game. As we learn more about this world in disarray, we begin to wonder if there’s anything we can really do about it. The powers that be are formidable, yet formless, influencing so many different events from the shadows that we can barely keep up. Who are we, one man left behind by society, to stop them? What hope do we have to set things right?
Metal Gear Solid IV assures us that nothing we do is in vain. Yes, this is a march towards death, a suicide mission, but that sense of foreboding is lessened at the right times thanks to those small, little victories we score along the way. They aren’t much, but they’re enough to keep us going.
And its important to feel this, now more than ever.
The urge to give up and accept our fates is strong. What can we do to change things? As I write this, women are being stripped of their rights, people of color are being further excluded from the democratic process, and the working class is being demonized for having the audacity to ask for a living wage. A generation who was handed opulence on a golden platter are denying their successors a fraction of that same generosity, unwittingly aware of how little they did to earn it or baselessly claiming that we don’t deserve it. The planet is dying and those with the power to stop it have no incentive to do so. Who are the powerless to stop the powerful?
We can’t stop them, if we resign ourselves to that belief. Throwing in the towel feels good because it feels bad. It’s decisive; it’s a way of letting that story come to a clearly defined end. We’re the main characters in a tragedy and the credits are rolling. Giving up is the easy thing to do, especially when it looks like the only option.
And winning, by contrast, is rarely as spectacular. Those tiny victories rarely grab headlines, so we may overlook how many millions of people have been given access to clean drinking water in the time since this game has been released, how many diseases are on the brink of eradication as vaccine availability expands, the increasing rates of literacy, information access, and life-changing technology worldwide. We could have given up decades ago, but we didn’t. So we shouldn’t now.
Sure, it sounds glib to infer this heady conclusion from Metal Gear Solid IV: Guns of the Patriots. In fact, it would be almost embarrassing to profess this while simultaneously watching a cutscene of a cyborg swordsman fighting a vampire. And, you know, I could be wrong. This whole thing could just be one man’s way of complaining about the trends in the video game industry. This game may simply be a critique of the interactive marketplace, yet here I am using it to cope with the world around me.
But that’s art. Metal Gear has left Kojima’s hands and it’s up to me to draw my own conclusion. It doesn’t belong to Kojima anymore, no more than David belongs to Michelangelo or Star Wars belongs to George Lucas. The artist has released his art, and I am free to interpret it any way I see fit. But I don’t think I’m wrong. For all of his faults as a storyteller, there’s often more to Hideo Kojima’s work the more we look beyond the surface. After all, this isn’t the first time we’ve found ourselves in world he has foreseen. And I’d be willing to be that it won’t be the last….
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