The main theme of the series deals in general with militarism with all its facets and nuances. Tobias Meißner describes the achievement of Metal Gear Solid as such:
Although the game deals with the use of violence and militaristic precision […], cause and morality are repeatedly questioned in an unusual insisting kind of way. During the constant radio-contact with com-bat head office, all schemes of loyalty and motivations are uncloaked as a complex construct of disin-formation and delusion (Meißner, Mertens 2002: 89f)2.
1 Bogost’s insufficient transformation of Aristotle’s theories is addressed in a separate paper Advertisers Beyond Borders, which is to be published in Polish by Facta Ficta Research Centre in a forthcoming book 50 twarzy popkultury [50 Shades of Popular Culture].
2 Translated from: „Obwohl das Spiel von Gewaltanwendung und militärischer Präzision handelt […] warden auf un-gewöhnlich insistierende Weise immer wieder Sinn und Moral in Frage gestellt. Während des andauernden Fundverkehrs mit der Einsatzbasis entpuppen sich sämtliche scheinbar festgefügten Schemata von Loyalität und Moti-vation als komplexes Geflecht aus Desinformation und Selbsttäuschung”. If not stated otherwise, all translations from German are mine.
The narrative has evolved over time into a grand scale criticism of develop-ments within contemporary society and refers to its dangerous dystopian potential.
Unlike other intellectual properties that focus on specific themes, yet tell an inde-pendent story with each game, Metal Gear Solid constitutes a grand tale of human struggle to prevent rising dystopia and displays conflicting personal vision of a uto-pian society. Metal Gear Solid set the standard and revealed the bright future of mod-ern video game rhetoric.
Metal Gear Solid (also MGS1) is regarded as the cradle of the series. Released in 1998, it was an exclusive title for the Sony PlayStation and subject of a remake for Nintendo’s GameCube in 2004 under the subtitle The Twin Snakes (Lechner 2012a).
The story takes place in a not so distant future of 2005 at Shadow Moses Island; a nuclear waste disposal facility to the public eye and a secret black ops R&D site below the surface. The main protagonist, Solid Snake, is sent to stop members of his former unit FOXHOUND (Lechner 2012b). These rogue agents threaten the US president with several nuclear warheads that they have captured while taking over the facility.
By doing so, they gained control of the top-secret super-weapon called Metal Gear REX, which becomes the constant theme throughout the series and after which the series is named. REX is a bipedal weapon system that allows launching nuclear war-heads from any location without the need of rocket propulsion. These projectiles would be undetectable for satellites and end the doctrine of mutual assured destruc-tion in favour of its owner’s victory. Throughout the game, the player realizes that many of her early assumptions about the roles and power dynamics within the sce-nario are different than expected and they hint towards a dystopian society.
Dystopian ideas reoccur throughout the Metal Gear Solid saga and MGS1 lays out the ground work for it. In the very beginning of the game, the plot suggests a poten-tial dystopian outcome if the player fails in her mission. Foxhound’s threat of using nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip is a direct reference to the continued real life threat of MUF (Material Unaccounted For) and its destructive potential in the hands of terrorists (Office for Nuclear Regulation 2006, KefkaProduction 2016: 48:00-49:40). Likewise, the presence of genetically enhanced soldiers as well as human clones alludes to structural changes in the military. Instead of searching and training humans to become better combatants, gene manipulations shall engineer the quali-fied specialists (KefkaProduction 2016: 13:00-14:38). Humans lose their value as indi-viduals and are represented as tools. This narrative framework perfectly supports the
gameplay. Instead of buying into these ideological premises delivered by the antag-onists, the player always has to keep her cover and preserve lives by not engaging in direct conflicts. Overall, the topic of weaponization is present not only through hu-man enemies. The secret development of super weapons like Metal Gear REX is a Janus-faced element. The idea of superior battle equipment as a solution to the con-flict encapsulates the utopian hope of militarists willing to reach a distinct pivot point, at which confrontation is useless because one power massively surpasses the other. However, the game clearly states repeatedly that such weapon systems are not tied to a certain entity (KefkaProduction 2016: 4:54:23-4:54:43). Eternal warfare is an equally likely scenario portrayed in the game as well as the danger of a single dan-gerous individual abusing the destructive potential of such superior weapons.
Released 2001, Metal Gear Solid 2—Sons of Liberty was the flagship product for a new Playstation 2 and took an unexpected narrative turn. In 2007 Snake has left the military and founded “Philanthropy” with his friend Otacon. This fictional NGO pursues the quest to stop the distribution of Metal Gear units. In a prologue level, the player sneaks into a tanker just to witness how Revolver Ocelot, one of his opponents from MGS1, steals a Metal Gear Ray unit and sinks the entire tank. Two years later, the protagonist of the game infiltrates the offshore clean-up facility Big Shell that was constructed to deal with the massive oil spillage of the sunken tanker. Like in the first game, the agent enters the scenery by diving. In an iconic homage of MGS1, the character lifts his breathing mask in the first elevator and shocks the audience. In-stead of Solid Snake, the player is in control of a new character with the code-name Raiden. This rookie agent must fight against a group of rogue agents called Dead Cell that threaten to destroy the facility.
If the story sounds familiar at this point, it is neither a coincidence nor laziness of its creators, but a dystopian narrative of data control that is revealed over the course of MGS2. Raiden turns out to be the king’s pawn in the elaborate plot of The Patriots. This secret-society planned and staged the entire attack on Big Shell in order to “create” a second Solid Snake (Stanton 2015). After the Shadow Moses incident, Solid Snake has become a legend. By posing the same challenges to another talented solider, The Patriots hoped to engineer a new superior fighter (Lechner 2012c). As a result, the player has to face enemies that highly resemble the foes from the first MGS title. The dystopian narrative is interwoven in every part of MGS2. The Patriots not only are a threat to a liberal society by secretly taking over the economy, military, and politics but they also execute programs to restructure society (Howell 2016). The
entire game refers back to the questions of the first game and goes a step further.
The idea of weaponization is extended to the flow of information in the form of
„Arsenal Gear”. This new super weapon not only is a giant battle station but contains the super-computer GW. It was designed to integrate itself into the internet and serves as an instrument for information control with the power to alter or delete any form of digital data (KefkaProduction 2013a: 03:16-56-03:19:50). Taking into account that MGS2 was released in 2001, it is a strikingly accurate prediction of up-coming ideas like the PRISM surveillance program. Total information control as a way to reorganize and control society is one of the most explicitly described dystopian nightmares presented in the saga.
Metal Gear Solid 3—Snake Eater goes back to the future with its audience and says
“Welcome to the Jungle”. The game series, released in 2004, does not continue its narrative path of an imminent future, but it moves back to the year 1964. In the mid-dle of the Cold War, the player gets to understand how the legendary Big Boss earned his namesake in the rain forests of the USSR. MGS3 is a James Bond-esque tale of loyalty and betrayal. Focusing this time on the agents, the dystopian narrative poses the question of soldiers losing any meaning due to the rise of super weapon such as Metal Gear (KefkaProduction 2013b: 02:02:07-02:04:35). This super weapon serves again as a metaphor for the strife to raze out established power structures. Once more, militarists’ utopian hopes collide with the overall dystopian consequences.
The Cold War is reframed and understood as the seed of dystopian futurism.
While the player is aware that no dramatic negative incident could have happened in this timeline due to the a priori knowledge of the franchise to that point, several distinct moments hint towards the origin of future problems dating back to these events. A very prominent moment is the dialogue between Snake and Aleksandr Granin. It turns out that the former director of the weapon design bureau is the in-ventor of the Metal Gear concept (KefkaProduction 2013b: 01:24:42-01:25:36). His designs at that time were too advanced to be realized but marks the rise of a dysto-pian phantasy slowly realizing itself. The same holds true for The Patriots. Their origin is intensely discussed in the game and states that a vast secret fund to finance the war effort against Nazi Germany created the precursor of this organization and explains its source of influence. This scene can be interpreted as “a typical dystopian confrontation between equally impersonal instances of The Lord of Logos and The Enemy of the State” (Maj 2013: 71). Snake represents the rebel that tries to single-handedly overthrow the Russian forces. Meanwhile, Granin can be understood as a
Lord of Logos. Despite his discharge, he keeps shaping history behind the curtains—
originally, as the architect of Russian military power, later as the traitor who allowed to raise Metal Gear technology in the west. In both cases, his acts lay the foundation for the entire dystopian narrative frame of the MGS-saga. He is the untouchable puppet master pulling the strings, whose death can only be caused by a mentally deranged antagonist, and still it has no impact on his overall legacy.
Metal Gear Solid 4—Guns of the Patriots leaves the past behind and confronts the gamer with a possible dystopian future. The game, released in 2008, was again a flag-ship title for Sony and its Playstation 4. MGS4 offers the most complex storyline so far and reunites different narrative threads. The player is back in control of Solid Snake.
The protagonist body ages at an accelerated pace due to a genetic malfunction and has only very limited time to live. “War has changed” (Globalgamereport 2008: 1:24-1:28) is the main theme under which the game presents various dystopian notions.
Most importantly, this tag line sums up the entire experience of the game that the player gains. Not only have the pacing and controls changed in comparison to the older MGS games, but so has the storyworld.
In 2014 unfolds militaristic dystopia in which large private military companies dictate world events. Technological advancements of all kind further extend their might by increasing effectiveness and progressing dehumanization of the individual solider. Meanwhile, the series antagonist, Revolver Ocelot, plans to overthrow The Patriots and re-establish the mercenaries’ utopia Outer Heaven. Originally founded by the deceased Big Boss, Outer Heaven stands for an army without a nation that only responds to its own agenda. At this pivotal point, it is most apparent how “uto-pian impulses” become the driving force in the narrative of the game franchise (Jameson 2005: 5). Each antagonist operates on a utopian impulse that motivates the character to restructure society. In the end, a utopian hope’s origins lie in a dystopian weapon: the FOXDIE virus servers as a blueprint for FOXALIVE—a computer virus that destroys the entire surveillance and power structure of The Patriots (MGS 2008).
As a result, society regains a chance to negotiate a new social contract.