The Spirit of Metal Gear April 3, 2013

I’ve been playing the games of the Metal Gear series ever since Metal Gear Solid released for the Playstation in 1999. Having grown up on PC action games where your only friend was the biggest weapon you could find in the map, I felt that Metal Gear Solid showed that you could have the polar opposite of what games before it had done and still deliver one of the most immersive cinematic experiences I had ever played.

I still remember the scene that forever grabbed me in the early portion of the game. Snake has found the man he believes to be the DARPA Chief and the player is given the first glimpse into the world Hideo Kojima had created. The player was going to face a nuclear equipped walking death machine which, if used, could mean the end of the world as we knew it. After battles with a M1 Tank, Hind-D Helicopter and one of the world’s greatest snipers, by the time we faced off with the most horrific weapon ever conceived it became clear that the point of the Metal Gear games was never to glorify war, but to demonize it.

I don’t believe you could ever trace back to a time where war was a simple concept, but if we think of the wars of the past I’m sure most people could imagine that it involved soldiers wearing their uniforms and killing their enemy. In a modern world where most games strive for realism above all else, Konami has stood against realism and instead produced some of the coolest stories I’ve ever seen in a video game. But more than that the story of Metal Gear is designed more than just to be cool, but to make the player think. The original Metal Gear Solid focused very heavily on the danger of a modern nuclear war that could still have happened after the fall of the Soviet Union. The game’s end scroll just before the credits detailed just how far behind the world was in dismantling the overabundant supplies of obsolete nuclear weapons left over from the Cold War by the end of the 90s. This was all coming from the same game which featured a Cyborg Ninja being crushed by a Nuclear Equipped Walking Battle Tank!

With Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, the gameplay may have changed but the spirit of Metal Gear is quite intact. Just like the world we live in now, wars are a consistent financial opportunity and mercenaries with no ideology of their own other than the pursuit of a paycheck fight wars on behalf of countries they are not a part of with weapons and technology far superior to what can be obtained by local armies. After the fall of SOP at the end of Metal Gear Solid 4, private military companies needed new technology to stay competitive in the ongoing global instability. Eventually, soldiers received cybernetic upgrades to stay on top of their game. Cyborgs are faster and more resilient to harm than normal humans, making it a attractive option to people who make their living fighting wars. Unlike drones or artificial intelligence, cybernetic troops are still human, and because they’re being used by Private Military Corporations and not the military of any specific country, they’re under the PR radar.

It’s funny how this looks to be the logical evolution of the nanomachine theories that were first tested in Metal Gear Solid, and fully implemented into all soldiers by the end of Metal Gear Solid 4. In fact, Kevin Washington referred to cyborg implants in the game as, “SOP by any other name.” Metal Gear has always tried to be ahead of the curve on what is currenly possible with the technology of our day. Could this be where the military is headed in the future?

Instead of telling another story about nuclear armageddon, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance chose to tell a much more personal story to connect to the main character. The game focuses very strongly on the horror of child soldiers being used as pawns in other people’s wars. We knew this was something that had happened to Raiden when he was first introduced in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and that angle is greatly expanded upon in Rising. Sadly this is something that happens in many third-world nations and the game developers must have done a lot of research on the subject because the game is full of optional codec conversations where the player can hear real information from our world woven into the story, making the tragedy all the more real to the player.

Its more than just entertainment, it makes you think. This is why I liked the Metal Gear Solid series, it serves as a scary reminder of what technology can bring to war when technology isn’t held back. After playing the final version of the game, it seems this spirit is still alive and well in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. I can’t wait to hear more about the next title in the Metal Gear series, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.