Old Snake's Cultural Significance

“War has changed. It’s no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity. It’s an endless series of proxy battles, fought by mercenaries and machines. War, and its consumption of life, has become a well-oiled machine... ID-tagged soldiers carry ID-tagged weapons, use ID-tagged gear... nanomachines inside their bodies enhance and regulate their abilities. Genetic control. Information control. Emotion control. Battlefield control. Everything’s monitored and kept under control... The age of deterrence has become the age of control; all in the name of averting catastrophe from weapons of mass destruction. And he who controls the battlefield controls history. War has changed. When the battlefield is under total control, war becomes routine.”

Hideo Kojima’s fourth entry in the Metal Gear Solid universe, Guns of the Patriots, is now almost a year old, but politically significant as ever. While some may see its departure from core gameplay mechanics to adrenaline-packed cut scenes annoying (how many amazing ninja sequences do we have to look at?), Guns of the Patriots became a perfect reflection of where cooperative storytelling is heading: namely, toward the emphasis of quantity, power, and “empty sensations” versus the beating heart of experience; the loss of quality that has come with our social and technological achievements, ever-questioning what must be done to make everything simple again.

Instead of carefully chosen weapons or tactics, Old Snake can use practically any skill that can be dreamt up--his arsenal is mostly imaginary and immaterial, easy to just Superman your way through the game at the press of a button--also reflective of the thousands of options our society has begun to give its participants in the past few years of evolution. The game's flashy, uncompromising attitude toward its own greatness--not to mention the infliction put upon our dying hero--is perhaps meant to suggest, "Is this too much?" from the player, that they then, in fact, may unknowingly look upon their own life with the same question, and become aware of their own distractions, what keeps them from being still and content, and what can be changed for the better.

And, my favorite: Metal Gear knows it’s a video game. Constantly reminding the player that what they’re going through is an imitation--false, entertainment, something to pass the time--there’s no “high art” mantra that some developers try to implore onto players, as if they would suddenly draw in the same crowd at the Corbet exhibit downtown. And maybe, by realizing that, it does become something more.