Metal Gear Solid 2 is a game that explores many themes and, at its core, one of the most
central themes are memes...
no, not "genes", which was the main concept of the previous game, 1998's Metal Gear Solid,
and also NOT the types of memes that nowadays you'll likely be most familiar with.
You see, before the internet took this word and completely altered its meaning, memes
was a term used to describe the things that are passed down through generations outside
of biological methods such as genes -- things such as ideas and behaviours that spreads
from person to person within a culture.
"A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted
from one mind to another through things such as writing, speech and gestures."
...also, interestingly, the Wikipedia entry has had to create a new page for the internet
type of memes to get around this later definition.
But, I digress.
Memes are a huge part of Metal Gear Solid 2's narrative, which has many themes based
around the importance of passing on information and the power that comes with this.
Towards the end of the game, you learn that, in fact, this has been the enemies' objective
all along and that their mission was creating a system where they could control information
at its highest level and then, consequently, control humans' thoughts and actions.
Within the world of Metal Gear Solid, a secret force known as The Patriots rule the world
from behind the curtains and are above even the president.
By the time of MGS2, they are already in control of most things and are able to manipulate
the population into acting however they want them to.
However, with the birth of the digital age a threat to The Patriots' control emerged.
This being the new influx of digital information that was accumulating rapidly, following the
creation of things such as the internet.
No longer could The Patriots easily ensure that the general population only heard the
things they wanted them to hear.
With the creation of the internet, people from all over the world could easily share
information and this was naturally a big problem.
Thus, they launched a new initiative to not only try and fix this issue but to control
people even further.
They called this the S3 Plan aka Selection for Societal Sanity.
The first part of The Patriots plan was carried out under the context of the infamous Y2K
bug.
It was thought that once 1999 came to end and the year 2000 began, computers all around
the world would suddenly glitch out not knowing how to process the new millennium.
So, under this disguise, The Patriots sent out a counter measure to every government
organisation throughout the world, with this countermeasure containing a backdoor into
their systems.
Additionally, this same program was also included in operating systems for distribution among
the public and everything supplied from that day onward contained the same program.
However, that was only stage 1 of their plan.
The Patriots felt that their system lacked the necessary data for judging complex situations.
They couldn't have a program that was censoring the wrong kinds of information or missing
things.
The Patriots also had grander plans that just censorship.
They wanted to be able to edit digital information in such a way that it would manipulate people's
thoughts and actions and, whilst an extremely ambitious plan, they were still unsure whether
people would believe the lies they were being told and react like they hoped.
And so, for the final phase of their plan they created an exercise that would generate
the data needed to be able to test and perfect their system.
The mission was simple.
Pit a soldier in an extraordinarily extreme situation and see if they acted how they were
meant to act and believed the things they were meant to believe.
And it's right there how the game begins.
Raiden, a former child soldier, is chosen as The Patriots' guinea pig and the game starts
as he commences the mission.
It's all a very interesting story and as the S3 Plan and even just The Patriots in general
have lots to do with censorship, I thought it could be good to give this a bit of an
overview on the channel.
There aren't many games were censorship is such a big theme in the story and would love
to hear any others that you can think of in the comments.
There is still much more to it than that though!
But, if I was to go into everything I'd end up having to retell not just virtually the
whole of this game, but also the rest of the series.
However, to finish up, I'm going to show 2 very interesting conversations from the game
about what's just been discussed and, even if for some reason you're not a Metal Gear
fan, you may still be interested in the things they talk about.
Until next time, thank
you
for watching.