Metal Gear Solid: This Could've Been Your History

Welcome to Pixellated Culture. This week we'll be discussing the history around the Metal Gear Solid franchise.

Image taken from Gamespot. 

Now the Metal Gear Solid is a large franchise and each game is very long and in detail so we won't be getting into all the nitty-gritty. We're going to do a quick overview of some of the history the game is commenting, that is no way the end-all-be-all. I'm also going to but up the nice big Spoiler Warning here and now for the whole blog post.

We're going by game continuity chronology. Metal Gear Solid 3 takes place in 1964, invading a Soviet Jungle to rescue a scientist. There is a group making nuclear weapons. This sets up Naked Snake, Solid Snake's father, and the original Big Boss. The game also provides the beginning of the Patriots, which we'll discuss later. The important part of this is the date. Kojima choose 1964 on purpose, especially for a Soviet jungle with nuclear weapons. 1962 was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This sets the tone for the whole game, as the player can feel the people in the game are tenser because of the closeness of the two events. Of course, this is worse than the missile crisis, as this game includes two prototypes: Metal Gear and Shagohod. Both are nuclear tanks that could change warfare as it is known. Kojima is acknowledging real nuclear history, acknowledging how horrible that crisis was. He has added something to say how much worse it could have been, saying this crisis could have led to a worse history than the one we're in.

The first Metal Gear Solid was released in 1998, but the game's plot occurs in 2005. In the game universe, the START III treaty is being negotiated, thus why Solid Snake has to go stop the terrorists from using Metal Gear Rex to launch nukes via railgun. This is actually a comment on the actual historical START treaties, as the U.S. and Russia did sign START II in the early 1990s, but it was never ratified by the U.S. Negotiations for the real START III happened in 1997, but they fell apart. Kojima here may have been making a jab at the current politics by having START III occur later, but it sounded like the negotiations were going about as well as they did in real life. This is important for the rest of the franchise, as START treaties would limit the Metal Gears, as they are nuclear weapons.

The series continues looking toward the future with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, released in 2004, but takes a different approach. The game is divided into a prologue, taking place in 2007, and the main plot, in 2009. The prologue focuses on Solid Snake, who is now working for an NGO he founded called Philanthropy. Philanthropy is an anti-Metal Gear group, as Metal Gears by this point have become the main nuclear weapon. However, the operation in the prologue goes wrong and Philanthropy is framed and now Solid Snake is believed dead. The game switches to Raiden's mission, with many, many plot twists which can all boil down to one idea: the government is evil! OK, I'm overreacting, but the game ends with the idea of government lying to soldiers or controlling their whole lives. Raiden's whole life has been set up by a group called the Patriots. The Patriots are a group above the government supposedly controlling everything. Conspiracy theories are nothing new, but the Patriots take it above and beyond your usual theory about the government. The Patriots controlling everything across all governments. This is most likely a stab at government corruption across the board, as both the U.S. and Japan have been accused of various levels of corruption in the 1990s and 2000s.

Metal Gear Solid 4, released in 2008, takes place in 2014. Hooray, humanity lived past 2012! Boo, the world in now caught in an endless war with nuclear weapons and nanomachines everywhere. Nanonmachines allow all the soldiers to do perfect maneuvers, fire the guns, and be awesome in general. Here we see what happens when nuclear weapons get out of hand, on top of world government being corrupt. This is Kojima giving us the bad future, what would happen if we let weapons and government get out of hand. Unlike Fallout 3, which is a pretty crappy world, but livable, there is nothing enjoyable about the world of MGS4. The two main colors in the game are gunmetal gray and brown. Fallout 3 had splotches of color here and there, such as in the oasis or Three Dog's outfit, but not in MGS4. Some of the first images we see are our hero being old despite the short time distance (due to FOXDIE, a genetic virus killing him), all the soldiers have nanomachines in them (soldiers on both sides have these) and are quickly taken out when the villain uses a signal to affect them, and the villain is trying to hijack the nanomachine system. Highly fantastical, yes, but also highly terrible.

However, there is hope in this series and his name is Johnny Sasaki. Johnny started off as a joke character in MGS1, where his only role is to get his clothes stolen and having a bowel problem because he didn't get a medical shot due to his fear of needles. However, this fear becomes useful in MGS4, where the nanomachines are injected. He skips out of the shots again and is therefore the only one capable of functioning when the villain messes with the nanomachines. What was a moronic soldier suddenly becomes the great hope for the heroes. Johnny gets his own moment of badassery with Meryl, to show that he is no longer a joke. Kojima's message here is about technology. We can't let technology do everything for us, especially if technology is dedicated to war. Johnny can become just as much a hero as Snake.

This is only a sampling of the possible messages of Metal Gear Solid series. The series is up for many, many interpretations, so feel free to come up with your own.

Bioshock: Metaphors, Mr. Bubbles!

Welcome to Pixellated Culture. This week's topic is the literary aspect of Bioshock.

The obvious theme of Bioshock is that an objectivist run city is just silly. However, the developers themselves has stated that is was supposed to be a stab at extremism in general. They explain much of their intent on a Making of Bioshock DVD, which sadly I don't have so I have to work with word of mouth...or internet. Personally, I think they chose objectivism to lampoon because, let's face it, it was pretty easy to lampoon. The sequel helped address the broad angle.

But there's more to Bioshock than just objectivists. If you look closely you can see jabs at broad extremism around you. The most obvious in my mind is Mr. Bubbles... I mean, the Big Daddies. While not as obvious a reference as Big Sisters, Big Daddies are probably meant to evoke the Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984. Big Daddies are the toughest enemies in the game and are in every area except the end game. These are the only semblance of order left in Rapture: They do their job of protecting the Little Sister and nothing else. They do only their assigned mission and keep their Little Sister safe. Even the Splicers, who seem to have no problem attacking you or anything else, are afraid of Big Daddies. The most dangerous thing in the game, even tougher than the final boss. And Big Daddy is always watching you, he's always aware of where you are and if you get too close he'll "unzip" you. Yes, that's what the Little Sisters call it. Isn't it adorable?

Another stab at extremism is the two scientist: Dr. Suchong and Dr. Tenenbaum. One is portrayed a bit more sympathetically in game. Both of them share one motivation for all of their actions in the game's backstory: SCIENCE! Now, I know this could be taken as an example of objectivism, as Ayn Rand did include letting scientists do whatever they want, but their backstories do include them acting like this before Rapture. An argument could be made for Suchong being an objectivist, but he never seemed to care about anything except the next great discovery. Tenenbaum also is now repenting as she realized everything has a limit, so she has become more moderate as opposed to extreme. Suchong and Tenenbaum created the Little Sisters and Big Daddies, with Tenenbaum finding ADAM, the thing that supplies Rapture with Plasmids and such, and Tenenbaum the head of creating Big Daddies and their bond to Little Sisters. Suchong is portrayed as a heartless maniac, willing and able to do anything to discover and make some cash. He is dead before the game begins, having died by a Big Daddies drill as his work was successful. Tenenbaum's backstory includes her working with the Nazis, helping them with their experiments when she was a young girl in the camps. She is directly responsible for the Little Sisters and owns up to this throughout the game. Realizing the damage her finding ADAM and creating the Little Sisters has caused, as ADAM has made all the people in Rapture insane drug addicts, she is now repenting. She discovered the Plasmid/tonic given to the player to save the Little Sisters and has saved some herself, as indicated in the sequel. Tenenbaum is repenting and trying to save what she can in Rapture. So the game, through the tale of the two scientists, insists on one thing: moderation and morals or extremism and death.

Of course, this is just a couple examples. Please, if you think of anymore leave them in the comments. Also, I would be happy to discuss the literary or historical aspects of Bioshock 2 or Bioshock Infinite at some point in the future.

Fallout 3: Colonists and Nukes

Welcome to Pixellated Culture. This week we'll be looking at the history surrounding and inside Fallout 3.

I know discussing the surrounding history of Fallout 3 sounds strange, but hear me out. This game came out 10 years after Fallout 2, so why did Bethesda feel a need to release Fallout 3? Of course, I can only speculate, but here's a guess. There are two main reasons and they have to do with the messages of the game.

First message: War Never Changes. These are the first words spoken directly to you when you start up Fallout 3, after a nice rendition of "World on Fire."The monologue focuses on how violent man is before setting up the world with Vaults and the wasteland. But what does this mean in the context of the release. The game was released in October 2008. Bethesda, located in the Maryland city of the same name, would be well aware the war in Iraq and the nuclear controversy around that. Some would consider this a pointless war, a quagmire, and comparisons to the Vietnam War were rampant. So here we have a war similar to another war. War didn't change. Also, around this time were problems in India concerning the U.S-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Initiative, so nuclear issues everywhere. This game could be taken as a warning about war in general and specifically the devastation of nuclear war. War's been fought for the same thing and now we have the Capital Wasteland.

Second message: Revelation 21:6. For those unfamiliar with the game, I'm not getting preachy, these are the other arc words in the game. In a twist, the game doesn't focus on the Alpha and Omega bit, but instead the part about water. That's right, this game is environmental. In lots and lots of ways. Not only is  your potential (there's a morality system) main goal <potential spoiler> to clean the water supply in the DC area, making it free from radiation </potential spoiler> but there are plenty others. Fallout 2 had <more spoilers> the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (G.E.C.K) and this game follows in its footsteps.</more spoilers> Fallout 3 took it one step beyond. Since you're in a wasteland, seeing anything green that doesn't glow is amazing and there's a whole spot called Oasis that's full of trees. And you want it to live as it stands about from the brown, dull, dangerous wasteland. So why is this historically relevant? Remember 2008: there was Katrina, Inconvenient Truth, proof of global warming everywhere. So being green and environmentally aware was and is the right thing to do. Or maybe they were Pink Floyd fans. Probably the former though.

So now we know the history surrounding Fallout 3, lets take a quick look at the history inside Fallout 3 because that's fun! Fallout 3 definitely looks to previous 1950s apocaplyse works such as Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. But there's a twist: DC survived, instead of being target #1. Oh, it got hit, but consider that the whole Midwest in uninhabitable in the Fallout-verse. Fallout 3 wants us to remember the past, hence the nostalgia. It wants us to learn from the past. So who better to meet than Declaration of Independence signer Button Gwinnett! OK, it's a robot who thinks he's Button Gwinnett, but this isn't the future with heads in jars so this is close enough. Button thinks the Revolutionary War is still going on thus has his robot army defending the Declaration (back to War Never Changing). And you can get that Declaration as you need it for a quest. A quest for historical preservation given to you by a man named Abraham Washington. Abraham Washington wants to preserve history and use it for good, in contrast to the slaver who wants to destroy Lincoln's legacy. So do you support the 13th, 14th, and 15th ammendment or do you want a slave? The game lets you decide but as a constant reminder you can carry a gun based off one Lincoln owned. And as an added bonus, you can carry around reminders of what started this crazy mess. So look to the past to save the present and future. Because I don't want to live in Vault-tec vaults, I'm sure they aren't exactly fresh as a daisy.