MGS4 Article in NYTimes

[BlueFire]

I expected this.. I don't know who didn't.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/weekinreview/22itzkoff.html?no_interstitial

[TheGame]

Interesting article. I think the MGS has a lot of underlying truth to it (Especially MGS2), but its decorated with with a lot of fantasy enemies and situations. PMCs are real, the concept of the patriots (aka the Illuminati) existed before the game. Many people in reality believed that human cloning has been tried/done. Most people in america doesn't really feel that their vote counts for anything, and don't have faith inthe voting system. The government as a whole does censor a lot of information, and usually does keep the public in the dark about their true decision making. Etc..

And most importantly, thanks to our human nature. War is what build the world the way it is now. Any freedom anyone has anywhere, tons of people died for it. People call it blood money and don't want to accept money if someone was killed to obtain it... yet this whole country was built from killing millions of people.

MGS is just like a world where all this crap is brought to light. Be it realistic or not, no way to prove it one way or the other.

I find it funny that they even compared it to halo 2 at the end.

[magus113]

Me and BLue have definitely felt that Kojima is making comments on society as a whole. He takes the reality of the world or how it could be and tries to break down that wall between reality and video game with little snippets of dialogue saying "This is reality, not some sort of video game."

Even the fact that the Metal Gear saga has been formed around specific events taking place in the past shows some other comments about the world in general, although these messages probably didn't start to surface until MGS in 1998.

[Renwood]

Interesting article. I think the MGS has a lot of underlying truth to it
The fantastical portrayal of those few nuggets of truth cut into its effect.

Its nice that someone wants to bring up PMCs in a mainstream piece of entertainment, but this is presented as G.I. Joe teaching PMCs. Its flashy and simple and doesn't elicit real world thought. I learned nothing about PMCs from the game, beyond the definition of what they are.

There isn't a weight to it beyond how it applies in the fictional context it is being presented in. Probably for the best, because Kojima's anti-war, anti-nuke messages aren't very developed either.

Love the story. As long as it is just a story.

[TheGame]

Love the story. As long as it is just a story.

It is a mix of real world issues and fantasy. Story about human nature and its undieing struggle for power. And about how our leaders are a lot smarter these days, and how easilly people can be decieved. Also touches on the mentality of being a soldier having to deal with a change in times.

But.. it gets to be mixed with the fantasy of being single person heros (won't happen in war) and with those over the top bosses with their strange backstories. Though no matter how insane, to an extent, people believe in a lot of the issues presented in the game to one extent or another.

They say the best stories are the ones that really happend, or are the ones with some truth to them. That's what MGS is.. be it the real truth, or the false truth. Its very heavily based in reality and what people "think". That's why a game like that can be paired up with real events and times.

Can call it "nuggests" of truth if you like, just google something in the game (outside of the stupid bosses) that's a 'fake' real issue, and someone will be talking about it.

[Renwood]

You can use real world terminology without actually tackling the issue in a meaningful way though, lol.

There are rare glimmers of honest insight, like Drebin's comments on the role of the U.N., post-MGS4. A point was made there. A clear point. The rest is far too vague to be useful.

"War economy" and "proxy wars" are thrown around by nearly every character, but where the latter are never properly defined, even with the context of the story (the motivation for countries to hire PMCs in an age where there is no motivation for wars, since they are meaningless, still escapes me), and the former is a strange, strange idea. There is no war economy. There's just economy.

[TheGame]

Hmm, seems we're not on the same page. I'm more talking the MGS series in general, and you seem to be on the main point of MGS4. MGS4 is set to take place in the future, so the happenings in that game are not meant to be in line with real world events because we're not living in that time yet.

It just paints a future that a lot of alarmists may see as real... but not something that nesicarily could be linked with a real event and time. The funny thing about the whole War economy point is... have you ever looked at the numbers of how much the US spends on each war?

I'm pretty sure someone somewhere is throwing a party when a war starts because they're about to get paid. A point was made, that the people who gain money and power from supporting/supplying wars are the "enemy", in MGS4 ts just at a time where they're making any excuse to fight so people feed into giving them more money and power.

I would give specific examples, but don't want to toss spoilers into this mix.

That's the point I walked away with anyway.