But who cares about all that noise? I just finished the Metal Gear Solid HD collection on my Xbox so we're going to talk about that instead.
From hiimdaisy's "Let's Destroy the Shagohod!"
See, there are few things I feel as confused about as I do about Metal Gear Solid. I love to play it and talk about it despite the fact that I think pretty much every game in the series is deeply flawed.
I'm not just talking about the plot, although yes, that part of the series is also batshit crazy. Basically what started out as a straightforward story about nuclear equipped giant robots metastasized into a gigantic parable about Cold War era policies of deterrence, the control of digital information, genetics, and sociological memes. And that's not even touching on the post-modern craziness at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2. As TvTropes.org puts it, the game "Viciously tears into the series, sequels, blank slate protagonists and playing video games as power fantasies,the concept of linearity in video games, free will, reality vs. fantasy, video games in general, and most of all, the player."
But not only is the plot unnecessarily complex, it's delivered in some of the most obtuse and melodramatic ways possible. Playing a Metal Gear Solid game has been compared to taking part in an interactive story. A healthy chunk of every game is devoted to cutscenes where the characters routinely launch into huge tangents about the nature of soldiers or any of the other themes mentioned above to which the series keeps returning. You'll be deep in the heart of the USSR at the height of the Cold War and the characters will decide that now is the best time to spend 10 minutes talking about what it means to devote yourself to a cause.
Now the long talking bits and over-explanation are understandable. You'll find the same thing in a lot of other story-centric Japanese games, particularly RPGs. It's a cultural thing borne out of an intense need to not leave anyone out and make sure everyone is on the same page as well as a preference for melodrama that isn't shared by developers or players in most western cultures, particularly the US. That's not a problem inherent to Metal Gear Solid. It's just a general difference between a good amount of games made in Japan and the expectations of American gamers. There are plenty of other things in the series that aren't so easily explained away. Like the crotch grabbing.
And hoo boy do these games feature them some crotch grabbing.
Also hiimdaisy, this time "Let's Destroy Metal Gear Again!"
Yep, that happens. In the game. You finally make it to the President - whom it's your mission to rescue - and the very first thing he does upon meeting you face to face is yank on your ding-dong to confirm that you are in fact a man. This is then followed by a twenty-minute long exposition of a super bonkers conspiracy theory that only gets crazier for the rest of the game. Oh that's right, I forgot to mention the tonal shifts. This series has got plenty of those too.
At its heart you could call Metal Gear Solid a "Dumb-Smart" game. It clearly wants to talk about very complex philosophical and sociopolitical issues, but it approaches them in a very jarring and roundabout way. It frequently bungles its themes or has them buried beneath so many gameplay systems and obtuse conspiracy theories that they begin to seem largely irrelevant. By contrast, a "Smart-Dumb" game would be something like Saint's Row, which is clearly setting out to entertain in the most ridiculous way possible. Case in point: all the melee attacks your character performs go right for the nuts. But the development team clearly spent a lot of time and thought to make sure that there was not only a healthy variety of attacks but that each one felt intensely satisfying. It's a dumb game that's very smartly designed.
So how did Metal Gear Solid get to be the jumbled mess that it is? In a word: auteurs. In two words: Hideo Kojima. He's directed all the Metal Gear Solid games and his imprint is clearly felt. Pretty much all the creative decisions in the game, particularly where story is concerned, can be traced back to him. Ken Levine of Irrational Games occupies a similar role with respect to Bioshock. To get an idea of how this works we're going to stick to the testicle theme that this post is developing for some reason and examine how the crotch grabbing in Metal Gear Solid might have come about.
Most big budget western games suffer from too many chefs spoiling the stew. When games made by European or American developers have obtuse and confusing stories it usually takes the form of a hasty resolution or the lack of discernible character arcs. The tendency here is to try and complete the story as efficiently as possible so that the player can get on to the multiplayer or back to the side quests where most of the gameplay is to be found. Decisions flow in a top-down manner with the goal of trying to ensure a safe and profitable product.
If you were working on one of those games, the bad guy grabbing the main character's crotch would never be a concept that would enter anyone's head. It's weird and unnecessary and takes away from time that could be spent working on the gun models or how the reload animations feel. I realize this is a wild over-simplification but it helps as both a thought-experiment for the creative process and a frame of reference.
Because now let's say you're an animator at Kojima Productions and one day the bossman comes over and says that he wants you to put together a short little scene where the antagonist just happens to squeeze really, really hard on the player-character's gonads. If you were the one to pitch that as something to include in the game at a western studio you'd be laughed out of the building by the guys at the top. But now, since it's just one guy with a really weird set of sensibilities insisting that this be included in the game, there's a much higher chance of it getting in there. It doesn't help that Kojima very clearly wants to be a film director and tries to exercise that same level of authorial control and intent in his games. (This also explains both the hour-long cutscenes and the character in MGS3 who won't ever shut up about all the movies she's seen.)
So take the previous example and substitute "crotch grabbing" for any of the other weird things that Metal Gear Solid is loaded with and it makes more sense why the games are as unique (and at times incongruous) as they are. This leaves us in a very strange place. Because as you might have gleaned by now, the Metal Gear Solid series is weird, almost impenetrably so. It's hard to say definitively whether it succeeds or fails in its intent because it can be impossible at times to determine just what that intent is, like at the end of MGS2.
On the other hand, the result is a game that has inspired tons of discussion about all sorts of things. They can range from the topics brought up in-game to the way the franchise uses post-modernism as a hallmark to try and deconstruct and examine video game stories and the role of the player (though it's usually the latter). Metal Gear Solid is undoubtably an important franchise, just probably not for the reasons the creator intends. Like Bioshock Infinite, the fact that so many of the decisions that went into making this game can be traced back to one person has resulted in a game that might not be as polished as some other big budget titles, but instead offers much to talk about. This is where video games as a medium can draw much of their vitality: a more singular vision produced by a smaller entity can more clearly articulate actual themes and depth than the rote by-the-numbers stories tacked on to many games made by larger teams. This is part of the reason why indie games routinely feature much more fascinating examples of video games as a narrative medium.
Also it makes it so much easier to test out your testicular based humor on a wide audience. If you're into that sort of thing.
God I love these comics.
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