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In 2014, author Natan Dubovitsky published a short story entitled “Without Sky”,
in which he described the concept of “non-linear war” through the lens of a fictional, futuristic
conflict.
Here, war was no longer a fight between two easily-defined sides but instead multiple
factions with varied goals and constantly changing allegiances colliding with each other;
where merely emerging victorious was a goal of the “simple-hearted commanders of the
past” and instead defeat could be just as useful a means of controlling a population
looking for answers in the resulting chaos.
It’s important to note that Dubovitsky is in fact the pen name of Vladimir Putin’s
political advisor, Vladimir Surkov.
A man with a background in avant-garde art and, as documentarian Adam Curtis describes,
whose aim it is to turn Russian politics into a “bewildering, constantly changing piece
of theatre” in which the state would directly sponsor opposing political groups in very
public ways; all as a means of keeping dissident voices confused and unable to provide a coherent
narrative with which to effectively oppose the establishment—essentially, you can’t
fight what you can’t accurately define.
No one can predict Putin’s movements as directed by Surkov, and so his power has broadly
remained unchallenged.
The world, as it turns out, is a pretty terrifying place where the idea of not making sense is
a powerful political tool.
It’s also what you might be thinking as you hit new game on MGS4 and after some odd
TV shows and adverts for private military contractors are transported directly to a
battlefield with multiple factions battling it out and seemingly no reason as to why you’re
actually there.
It seems like there should be some kind of briefing in between, but as long as you pick
new game, that briefing might as well not exist.
Wait a minute, this was supposed to be the big conclusion to wrap up everything from
Metal Gear’s past!
What’s the deal, Kojima?
This doesn’t make any sense.
But, playing it now, I feel like it might be better this way—that it’s better, or
at least more true to life, that things don’t make sense here.
See, I’ve always appreciated this game in a lot of ways but I get that it’s flawed—that
its dialogue is inelegant, the length of its cutscenes is ridiculous and that its narrative
reveals are daft.
But there’s something about booting up MGS4 in 2019 that gives it a new sense of meaning,
going beyond ironic enjoyment of its big dumb action and incredibly bloated melodrama.
Rather, in the same way MGS2 has been revisited as some kind of prophecy as to the progression
of internet culture, for example, there’s something about the ways MGS4 diverts from
series formula coupled with the sheer absurdity of its campier moments that all help to cement
Snake as a character truly out of time, that have us sharing in his struggle to find narrative
resolution in an increasingly nonsensical world and, as a result, end up reflecting
some of the anxieties that almost inevitably come with living in the modern age.
And it all starts with that first cutscene, where we begin to see things changing in subtle,
uncanny ways—the slow, measured infiltration sequence in which Snake enters a facility
solo while getting the mission deets in hushed terms, is replaced with a truck barrelling
into a town centre as Snake solemnly reflects on how things aren’t the same anymore.
We’re long past the age of good guys vs bad.
Previously it was him vs the world—the lone action hero vs the people in the way whose
singular goal was to eliminate said action hero.
Now, you enter a battle with some soldiers against… some other soldiers and some robots
and no faction is really bothered about your presence.
Is it a stealth game?
Does stealth really play into things when you can freely run around?
Who are you really hiding from here?
Who are you fighting for?
Who is anyone fighting for here?
Does anyone care about your previous heroism?
Clearly not.
The masterful conclusion of Sons of Liberty, the point at which its world falls apart—as
Raiden turns to Jack the Ripper; as the famously stealth-oriented franchise morphs into what
fellow YouTuber Super Bunnyhop described as a total bloodbath, shaking our understanding
of that world to its very core—is precisely the starting point of Guns of the Patriots.
We start at pure chaos.
Snake has to deal with the fact that everything is rejigged here.
Hell, things as simple as items are real-world objects now; a far cry from the big spinning
boxes floating in the air found in previous instalments.
They’re non-descript; strewn about the landscape in a way that makes them indistinguishable
from rubbish; and Snake can’t readily identify any of it until he puts on the equivalent
of his reading glasses.
The world can’t be so easily broken down into discernible blocks now.
Snake’s self-worth is mechanically attached to a military framework he can’t so readily
engage with anymore—that has moved past him and his prior achievements.
In this new chaotic world (in a moment that, when I first played it, had me internally
cheering at the return of the legend) he can disguise himself as, well, his former self
and walk right out in front of people; because as much as we know him as a truly iconic action
hero, in the grand scheme of things heroism doesn’t mean anything here.
What we’ve come to know about the world of Metal Gear Solid is butting up against
the fact that, well, the world we find Snake in really is different now and starting from
the TV segments, the game honestly does a pretty good job at illustrating how ingrained
into modern culture the militaristic mindset has become—with an advert for a private
military somehow feeling less uncomfortable than David Hayter being asked about a tattoo
behind his ear.
What struck me as I played through recently, however, was just how well this sentiment
was conveyed throughout the rest of the game.
The glimpses we get of normalcy in this world—friendship, family and home life, love—all occur within
a military context.
It’s what makes these scenes as goofy as they are—most moments of melodrama in previous
games occurred outside of battle but here, the world has been engulfed by war; as the
game states, it’s routine.
There’s no other opportunity for these scenes to play themselves out, as nonsensical as
they are.
Even when Snake saves the day and Jonny gets the girl in perhaps the daftest circumstances
ever, the wedding takes place on a military airstrip because, well, where else is it going
to happen?
The theatrics of it all are beyond ridiculous in their portrayal of such a relatively saccharine
ending, but it’s because of this weirdness that it ends up saying a lot about the world
these characters are currently inhabiting and the potential futility of their actions.
The war economy that turned conflict into routine may be dead, but it isn’t some new
world order they’ve built by winning here, the quote-unquote “heroes” have done what
they’ve always done in some capacity—uphold the status quo and keep the plebs from being
affected too much.
The old relics still stand though—relics that apparently bear a striking resemblance
to the shadowy organisation our protagonists have just taken down.
Snake has managed to halt forward progress momentarily, but that’s not to say the same
conflicts won’t start right back up again in a matter of time.
And the interesting thing to me about all of this is how, as much as the Metal Gear
games have helped define the way games tell their stories, they’re also arguably games
about storytelling; about being able to find and convey a coherent narrative in all of
this morally grey noise.
The Boss had to die as a scapegoat at the end of 3, regardless of the truth, because
it was a more convenient story for the higher ups and the alternative was nuclear war.
It was chaos.
Defining his own legacy is the only way Raiden can deal with the existential teardown he’s
just experienced at the end of 2.
It’s what Snake told him to do; it’s the hero of the story appearing at the end to
tell you that everything’s going to be OK if you find your own way… and, well, we
see how that turns out.
See, MGS4 to me is the most direct the series has been in confronting the notion that finding
such a convenient answer might not always be possible (or that even if one is found,
that the world doesn’t simply stop at the end of a story)—that the chaos our protagonists
have always fought against in some way might end up winning out in the end and, as Surkov
detailed in “non-linear warfare”, things just might not ever make sense… and that’s
terrifying.
The realisations and mysteries solved along the way read as absurd and shmaltzy because
of course they do.
The idea that Para-medic is a founding member of the Patriots ends up feeling as quaint
as Naomi and Otacon suddenly getting the hots for each other or Sunny being bad at cooking
eggs.
It’s all on the same level; all ultimately bears the same level of meaning and impact.
If you want a neat little bow put on everything, of course it’s going to ring dissonantly—the
world doesn’t work like that.
And when you break all of that down, these are pretty dark themes the game is tackling—confronting
us with the idea that our actions don’t matter in the way we thought they once did;
that the world is moving to a place where meaning becomes harder and harder to distinguish,
which in turn leaves us feeling more and more powerless to make positive change within it.
You can’t fight that which you can’t accurately define.
And playing MGS4 in 2019, free from the hype that the game would resolve all the questions
I thought I wanted answered from previous titles, I found myself less disappointed with
the reveals of the Patriots or the Meryl and Jonny situation or the ridiculous amounts
of sensational theatrics on show, and found that, combined with the game’s deconstruction
of heroism and legend, it all instead contributed to a greater sense of unease that harkened
back to the original TV segments; all of which had me asking myself “is this a world I
really want to preserve?
Or was Ocelot right to want to burn it to the ground?”
Of course I’m not saying that this is somehow the *right* way to read MGS4 or even that
it was intentional—over the years I’ve come to view the idea of some singular auteur
guiding the entirety of a title’s vision as a little hard to believe.
It’s beyond flawed, for sure; I can’t disagree with almost any criticism brought
up against the game.
I’m just saying that, taken within a modern context (in the same way we continue to revisit
and re-evaluate other Metal Gear games), MGS4 might not be the unwanted break from series
tradition that so many have brushed it off as and might, in fact, have some interesting
insights to offer on the nature of political control in the modern age.
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And with that, this has been another episode of Writing on Games.
Thank you very much for watching and I will see you next time.