You Missed the Point of MGS4

[Music] in 2008 a high-profile game debuted called metal gear solid 4 guns of the patriots while a critical and commercial success a consensus has emerged over the years since that this game was ultimately a disappointing mistake fans have sometimes asked where's the good old mgs why is mgs4 such a retread and why couldn't it be more like mgs3 this is a video arguing that's what's happened is fans have focused only on the mgs content in guns of the patriots single-mindedly as though there wasn't also an entire rest of the game there as well i submit that when taken in its proper context many of the elements people have taken to be bugs and how mgs-4 is put together are in fact features this is a game about fandom and about what gets lost when you take a good thing and try to stretch it out to last forever well past its natural lifespan mgs4 is about the sequel and spinoff machine the hollywood system and the endless procession of soulless and diminishing returns it produces guns of the patriots is about what the hollywood system looks like when it takes over the world and when technology advances to such a degree that it can erase human minds and original ideas out of the creative even cultural equation mgs4 is about death even the most simple-minded of its critics can grasp that but more accurately mgs4 is also about something that should have died and simply refuses to propped up by the drug-like stimulant jolt of consumer demand [Music] we open mgs4 already with the central themes in full view in a characteristically meta-referential way it is mgs itself that has as a game based around warfare changed war has grown old lifeless and routine and so has snake the accelerated aging is really just a metaphor for what was supposed to be mgs's limited shelf life snake is dragged back onto the battlefield just like mgs as a series is dragged back to rehash the same old stories with the same old heroes and villains all over again except this time around the logic of 21st century globalization has invaded everything including what used to be the strict purview of state armies warfare this coincides and continues off one underlying theme from mgs2 or as a perverse form of video games mgs4 makes an explicit link between the neverending spirals of its so-called war economy and the commercialization of war with video games leading the tip of the proverbial spear alongside energy drinks daytime television and other minutia of the mundane never-ending everyday world but this sad excuse for warfare that we see in the game is only the sequel the leftovers from the last truly great war in the eyes of the system world war ii this theme of endless sequels and reruns we find even in the main antagonist liquid ocelot the meme or identity of the original mgs's antagonist liquid lives on only in a diluted second hand form inside the body and mind of a different adversary revolver ocelot this brings to mind however since world war ii the united states was in search of another hitler another nazi to fight another enemy force on par with that legendary foe the algorithmic logic of a machine the distinction between substance and its resemblance or its facsimile is past a certain point irrelevant and incomprehensible this literal chimera of two different mgs hitlerian bad guys in one perfectly resembles the sort of soulless automated rinse and repeat recombination that mgs4 props itself up precisely to critique then begins the game's obsession with the real big boss everyone's trying to find the real or substantial big boss because of what his biometric and we might add mimetic signature is worth the endless repetitions are all in search of a true second coming a true return of the savior and not merely a limitless procession of his pretenders imposters body doubles and clones along our hunt for the real heart and soul of mgs at large in other words mgs4 brings us back to familiar locations and more than a few familiar faces but over and over again it is only play acting only shadows in the shapes of men nostalgia and the shape of their own referent points it's not before act 3 in central europe that the aim of mgs4 to question the very impulses and obsessions that forced mgs4 itself into being is laid bare and it does so by directly comparing the lore of the mgs series to a monotheistic religion all the familiar tropes are there from an immaculate birth to a martyred messiah even to a great schism within the church these all refer to events within the series timeline but the point is to convey the tragicomic irony that mgs has surpassed merely a series and become for many who play it an almost religious crusade for truth and life everlasting [Music] the chapter where we return to shadow moses expands on this and subverts it by rubbing it in that you can never truly go back to the same place and as the same person as you were in your cherished memories mgs4 prepares the player with this chapter to accept the death of the series in fact as we see conveyed by naomi's speech at the end of act four the mount rushmore like whole of ocelot's arsenal ship outer haven meanwhile is a borderline parody of the idol worship that characterizes the fandom as we see each of the snakes have been made into eternal emblems on its side over and over again familiar patterns play out devoid of all their original substance or purpose from the reappearance of sniper wolf's companion to hal's sorrow to even a reprise of jack and rose as solidus said at the end of mgs2 we seem trapped in the endless spirals of our own double helix this theme is again made clear by the last act which brings the game-long double helix of commentary on the franchise and commentary on modern warfare together in a stunning spectacle that draws heavily from iconic images taken from the pacific war the closer we get to the end the more old snake withdraws from this endless cycle in merrell's case he gets replaced by his own doppelganger johnny while snake seems to disintegrate literally as he approaches his final battle the loop is finally closed as one by one from ocelot to snake to even big boss himself we the players count backwards on making the system that we love so dearly from countless iterations of itself back to one and finally back to zero guns of the patriots took direct aim not only at the fans of mgs but also of fps's in the same way it gave mgs fans precisely what they wanted only to subvert and even criticize their very demands mgs4 is a hybrid of fps and stealth action to show not tell its point about the proliferation of this genre fps's at the time of its release seem to be taking over the industry and as we see they've taken over even mgs this uniformity disguised as diversity is exactly the character of modern culture that mgs4 wanted to satirize all fps's need to sell are more guns better graphics and new settings from one release to the next mgs4's own structure is arguably a half parody of just this very fps business model where in place of any new ideas or creative vision you have instead the cold and ruthlessly repetitious logic of the machine mass producing one fps after another in rapid succession just as we move from one act to another it's as if video games themselves have died and the fps lives on as their phantom in the same way mgs is about the quest to regain what can never return after death it seems to present the fps and its popularity as a desire on some level to return to the cultural substance of world war ii from the american point of view just as liquid seeks a more and more perfect facsimile of the sacred original big boss we seem to move in reverse order throughout the game from the modern battle space of the middle east to the proxy war fields from the 1970s in latin america to the thrill of world war ii era espionage and the cold war in eastern europe to finally the world war ii era battlefields of the aleutian islands and the pacific ocean this gentle mocking of our own latent urges to return to the glory days of a heavenly past that may have never truly existed is a hallmark of post-modern fiction something that has defined mgs as a series since at least sons of liberty the recursive or self-referential meta quality to mgs4 which after all depicts characters grappling with their own statuses as characters who've long outlived their shelf lives is deeply postmodern the recursion verges at time on the ridiculous as new boss characters show up with names that are simply recombined from earlier ones and old locations are revisited bereft of any of their original substance we are entering a total artificial zone in mgs4 a fictional never never land that fittingly draws from such disney films as beauty and the beast as it weaves its tale of neural ais and copies of men fighting their own phantoms maybe the ultimate example of how mgs4 deals with the presence of absence if you will of the substanceless modern digital reality is how the fox divirus in snake's body loses its original genetically targeted code the original substance the initial genetic target becomes lost information and in its wake anyone can fit the parameters anyone can replace snake as its target because apart from how the fox divirus has mutated the snake that we knew from mgs1 in a very literal sense no longer exists this is the tragic revelation nearly every one of our old friends from merrell to naomi must face by the end how we see this dynamic play out is a crucial yet all too often overlooked aspect to mgs4 and its entire purpose mgs4 is by no means perfect one could argue it's a downer game that harshly contrasts against the other mgss but it's at the very least a misunderstood game that both tried to give the fans what we wanted while in signature mgs fashion subverting that very want at the same time until next time boss [Music] hey [Music] you

Channel: Futurasound Productions

Views: 157,067

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Id: yMuPgGz_jZU

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 14 2020