Welcome to the second part of the MGS Structural Analysis that looks at the underlying message of Hideo Kojima’s post-modern Metal Gear Solid franchise. Starting with Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, we looked at how its story elements were used to weave a subtext into the plot. Underneath Snake’s mission to stop FOX-HOUND from stealing a nuclear warhead is a story about the battle between human will and genetic determinism.

Because each story’s theme connects to later titles to create a moral for the series as a whole, here is the second chapter.

Sons of Liberty

The second installment in the Metal Gear Solid saga is about the dissemination of information and how important ideas are to the beliefs of an individual and how they get passed within a society.

For those who never played The Twin Snakes, that story is recounted on disc as the fictional novel ‘In The Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth’ written by that games weapons specialist, Nastasha Romanenko. The book fulfills several important rolls all at once: it provides players of the first game with new story bits that happened on the opposite end of the Codec that Snake wasn’t privy to and exists in the Metal Gear universe as the tell-all that made Solid Snake and his crop of dark mulleted hair a hero the world over for preventing nuclear war.

After Metal Gear Rex’s battle data was stolen, it’s blueprints were leaked onto the black market allowing anyone with the means to build their own Metal Gear. To combat the threat, the famous hero of Shadow Moses, Solid Snake and Otacon formed a fringe group called Philanthropy. Receiving intel that the navy is transporting a new anti-Metal Gear Metal Gear code named Ray down New York’s Hudson river, Snake infiltrates the USS Discovery tanker housing it. Moments after drop, Snake watches a military unit led by Russian ex-patriot Sergei Gurlukovich seize the upper decks and claim the ship. In the holds, Gurlukovich welcomes his partner Revolver Ocelot, who claims Ray as his property, kills Commandant Scott Dolph and betrays the Russian. When Snake reveals himself to the old gunslinger, Ocelot, and his shiny new hand, go berserk. Snake watches in horror as his voice is replaced by that of Liquid Snake, who tells him he lives on through his arm grafted onto Ocelot’s. Activating Ray, Liquid tears out of the Tanker and records Solid Snake standing amidst it’s wreckage before disappearing into the depths of the Pacific.

The story jumps two years into the future. Terrorists comprised of the anti-terrorism squad Dead Cell and an Olga-run Gurlukovich army have taken over the Big Shell, a processing plant used to purify the water polluted by the Discovery’s destruction. Colonel Campbell, leader of the support team in Alaska is prepping Snake for infiltration into the facility. But something’s not right; Snake’s voice is wrong, his body too slim and movements too acrobatic. He enters from the water and has to wait for the elevator. The guards patrol and even though this is your first time in this room, you already know how to navigate it past them. The situation seems so…familiar. Even the cutscenes tug at your memory. As Snake rides the elevator up, he removes his mask and reveals a fair skinned and long blonde-haired young man.

This is where Metal Gear Solid 2: Son’s of Liberty takes an abrupt left turn from audience expectations and it’s first step towards the theme that pulses underneath the entire game. But to get there, we have to look at the marketing campaign that fueled its hype.

Unveiled at E3 2000, every piece of content for Son’s of Liberty prior to release exhibited Solid Snake front and center. Although primarily showcasing scenes from the Tanker section where Snake does appear, sections were released with Snake that were replaced with this new soldier in the final product. No one expected it. No one expected that this soldier would be the primary protagonist for the game. No one expected Raiden.

This switcheroo is information manipulation distilled into theme and goes layers deep into the narrative. It was Kojima playing with memes. Memes are information, concepts and ideas that are passed between people and are analogs to genes. Memes are copied, they mutate, they spread. Ideas are factors that build a personality and what they believe. Ideas can be passed on through books, marketing campaigns and story.

That last one is particularly important. Despite this being his first mission, Raiden performs in many of the same ways Snake did during the Tanker portion and with much the same expertise. And we know why. Raiden had been trained in VR simulations based on a limitless number of combat scenarios, many of which appeared on the MGS disc and its Integral special edition.

Where The Twin Snakes showed the variations of forms that genes create for themselves as different types of animals, Sons of Liberty focuses on how racial differences are merely variations on a single species. The human. By having each member of Dead Cell come from different ethnic backgrounds we are focusing on how humans have developed features that allow for survival in different terrains. By combating them, Raiden is fighting against social constructs that perpetuate ideas that can be harmful to the individual- classism, religion and government.

Olga is the human counterpart of the idea of pack mentality and pair bonding that Sniper Wolf had personified. She and her father’s Gurlukovich army were forced to become mercenaries to survive. Survival meant crossing social and national borders. They had to migrate. To a small extent, her story can be viewed as the adoption of culture into new and different social surroundings. It would seem that her presence is primarily to show the Nomadic herding of tribes, traveling together- of sharing ideas and information with other cultures.

Fatman, slurping down cocktails and with his manicured hands represents decadence and classism. He believes he is above socially placed morality because of the fact of his birth and builds bombs to blow the world apart.

Fortune represents mysticism that can be used to impose social controls. Her father, her husband and, to an extent Fortune as well, have been turned into martyrs whose lives and suffering have been exploited to become a rallying cry for Dead Cell. Her past has been twisted and distorted so she is more a symbol than a person, a dark reflection of Snake and Raiden’s relationship. Notice how Solidus uses her to make Vamp act while redirecting his aggression towards accomplishing his mission.

That’s what is so horrifying about Vamp. He represents the horror of zealotry for beliefs that have existed from early human thought. His characteristics are the classic representation of horror. He drinks blood, thrives in darkness and is immortal. Even if you are fast enough to get a shot in, he just keeps coming.

This installment also shed light on the code names for the Sons of Big Boss and how they represent distinct traits for those characters:

A Liquid takes the form of the container it’s placed in, regardless of its shape- whether it’s a cup or a Russian agent. Liquid Snake transcends the genes he was given, but not the personality that they helped to shape. The statement is that there are things that can be true of any person, regardless of the body that was built for them. He is the opposite of Solid Snake, who has always walked his own path. Until the Shadow Moses incident, Liquid possessed a body he despised, being ridiculed for having one that was inferior while becoming defined by it. Revolver Ocelot, the current vessel, has already been expressed as being an animal without a home and would seem the perfect choice for a soul without a form to occupy.

Which brings us to the third son of Big Boss. Solidus materials (think Silly Putty) are malleable substances that can be molded into whatever shape a set of hands wants it to, but never by its own will. It must be the hands of something else, which is exactly why the Patriots chose to place him into their ranks: it was their hand that shaped him with the fingers of environment and culture. What is so terrifying is that Solidus was a social leader, someone who dictated policy for the citizens of his nation, but only through cheating, deception and cover-ups.

We also learn that Raiden was raised in a child army led by Solidus and is haunted by what he witnessed and what he did. Their relationship closely resembles the relationships Big Boss has with both Liquid and Solid. The man himself aspires to be Big Boss. Until this point, every picture we have of that Legendary warrior is an old man with his white hair and trademark eye patch. When we meet Solidus, the similarities are startling. Even during Raiden’s fight with the Solidus-piloted Harrier, the former Presidents left eye is damaged, an injury the man meets with a wry smile. Later you understand his glee- he has donned an eye patch and his physical transformation into Big Boss is complete.

That’s where the plot veers back on course with the meme concept. Solidus is on the Big Shell for ulterior motives. The Big Shell was a front for a battleship-sized Metal Gear. Arsenal. Constructed underneath the facility, Arsenal Gear houses GW, a complex artificial intelligence network that processes all memes perpetuated through music, technology and the internet and promotes the ideas it wants while eliminating the ones it doesn’t. It is trying to build a program with the sole purpose of cultivating a society and breeding ‘proper’ citizens. The program is deemed the Selection for Societal Sanity, the S3 engine. But GW has activated. Its initial test run was to create a set of protocols that would shape a person into the perfect soldier. The scenario is based on data collected from the operation on Shadow Moses, an incident that the player is incredibly familiar with. That’s the familiarity you felt from the moment you saw Raiden swim into the Strut A Deep Sea Dock. Raiden’s entire adventure was a test run of GW’s simulation.

It’s an implementation of the very unique kind of experience storytelling provides- one that was never yours. Raiden learned something from fighting Liquid Snake, from enduring torture for Meryl, but he didn’t do them. Neither did you. Moreover, because the experiences affect us psychologically in the same way our own collected ones do, they can build a set of behaviors to dictate an individual’s actions. You are Solid Snake’s clone but not genetically. It would be hard to argue that playing through The Twin Snakes didn’t make the player better capable at completing Son’s of Liberty. In the young soldier, that behavior was a set of skills to complete his mission. That’s why Raiden has no defining characteristics, has an almost ethereal ghostly pigment and earns bonuses represented as differently-colored wigs; he is all men through all time. He was GW’s first prototype. So were you.

But GW wants Snake’s skills, not his unwavering sense of right and wrong. That’s why it needed to defame him. By painting him a terrorist, the world wouldn’t live in his inspiration. What it didn’t figure is that much of those skills come from his strength of personality and his will to do what he considered right. By electing to forego those characteristics, they wouldn’t be passed on to his copies. Notice how Raiden can fight, but he cannot defeat, Dead Cell- his impotency at fighting Fortune, his despair at Vamp’s refusal to die. He couldn’t beat them because Solid Snake never fought them.

But Raiden has changed. Betrayed, stripped and sneaking through the bowels of Arsenal Gear the young man is alone. Creeping along the corridors, he meets Solid Snake who has fully shed his Iroquois Pliskin disguise and is now dressed in his sneaking suit equipped with the infinite ammo bandana he earned by saving Meryl’s life. Through the madness of The Big Shell and witnessing Snake’s courage, Raiden has become his own man. Gripping the sword he inherited from Snake in his hands, he is stronger than he was; strong enough to face his past, create his future and defeat Solidus.

Raiden is the star of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, but Solid Snake remains its hero, a fact that had been with you from the beginning. From the moment you start the game, you think the title screen is the face of Solid Snake looking out. That’s not true. It’s the reflection of his face cast off the television that both Raiden and the player had been looking into. It’s by his inspiration that Raiden had been able to grow. No longer red, the color of the game’s lethal weapons, the title now has the blue, non-lethal reflection of Raiden, his own man, no longer a tool for death.

Part 3: Snake Eater

this essay can also be found on Script Routine

MEME, GENE, SCENE

As an aesthetic work, the Metal Gear Solid saga examines what it means to be human. The spine of the series revolves around the full development of an individual’s identity through the foundations of their biological makeup, the shaping of culture and art upon them, and the importance of the experiences that individual collects throughout their life that forms their beliefs and directs policies within their country and relative to countries across the globe. The series is creator Hideo Kojima’s answer to the nature/nurture debate.

Each game’s theme is split into a handful of concepts that best represent it and turned into villains that its hero must literally defeat. Every member of FOX-HOUND, Dead Cell and the Cobra Unit are abstractions of parts of a lager system and the hero’s fight to defeat them is the moral of the story in which they appear. The true beauty of this series is that each game’s theme is based on the foundations of the themes that proceeded.

The Twin Snakes

Solid Snake retired from FOX-HOUND after he saved the world. His last mission had been physically and mentally exhausting: he had destroyed Zanzibarland’s nuclear equipped Metal Gear D and killed its pilot--his friend Gray Fox--only to be confronted by a man thought dead- Big Boss. His former commanding officer reveals that he is Snake’s father as the two men are caught by explosions rocking the facility around them. After committing patricide and narrowly escaping destruction, Snake resigns himself to the snowy Alaskan countryside to live in seclusion.

His peace is short lived. On the nearby Shadow Moses Island, Terrorists have taken over a nuclear waste disposal facility. Colonel Roy Campbell, Snake’s CO during Zanzibar, comes to Snake’s home and gives the soldier reason to take on a new mission: the terrorists are comprised of the Next Generation Special Forces led by new members of FOX-HOUND. Among them, its current leader- a man named Liquid Snake who shares more with Solid than just a codename. They have a nuclear missile and hostages, including Campbell’s niece Meryl and executives in DARPA and the weapons manufacturing company ArmsTech. The two men were collecting final data on a newly completed black ops project. Metal Gear Rex. They have a single demand: Big Boss’ remains. Snake heads back into danger.

Snake swims the subarctic Alaskan waters and reaches the disposal facility at its dock. What he sees is a battalion of men and Liquid, with identical features but British accent, riding the elevator up at the back. Naomi Hunter, FOX-HOUND’s chief medical officer is on the missions support team and through her, Snake learns of the Genome Army; soldiers genetically modified with genes that build great soldiers, raising their IQ’s and combat ability. All of these genes had been recognized in the twentieth century’s greatest soldier; the terrorists honor him by appointing themselves the Sons of Big Boss.

This idea is the origin point for the story’s thematic subtext. The Twin Snake’s central thesis is about genetics; it explains how genes define our physical appearance while questioning whether they dictate the quality of our life. The answer is found in both plot and gameplay. It is man’s fight against nature, against genetic determinism. Snake’s test is one of character. It starts here:

Each member of the new FOX-HOUND represents a different aspect of a larger biological system within nature. To help represent it, each one is a different organism that a collection of genes has found to be the most effective vehicle to survive; a mantis, an octopus, a wolf and an ocelot, a raven, and a snake. This is why all the characters use animal codenames.

Sniper Wolf shows the pair-bonding nature of animals in general and the pack-based social structure of Wolves in particular. She can survive in any terrain and supports her family by slowly and relentlessly stalking her prey.

Revolver Ocelot is the migratory flocking of animals. The ocelot can be found in various places all over the world, and, so, holds no alliance to any one land, a character trait fitting of a man whose motives and allegiances only become more complex as the series continues.

Decoy Octopus, the master of disguise, absent of all personality to inhabit the person whose life he’s stolen. Biologically, he represents the mimicking nature of organisms who can take on the appearance and characteristics of other creatures to ward off predators and kill unsuspecting prey. Just as the process is faceless and unique to no one species in particular, the man himself has no distinct facial features or characteristics. The fact that he incorporates all the blood from his victim whose identity he steals and allows him to be any species, aligned with all and none.

Vulcan Raven is a metaphor for the circularity of biological life forms and the recycling of genetic material from one organism into another. The raven itself is a symbol of death and it would seem that the primary reason for its selection here is to show its inevitability. It’s no surprise, then, that Vulcan Raven’s birds consume him when he’s dying- he is a part of them as they will one day be a part of something else. Nothing goes to waste.

Psycho Mantis is an abstraction of the way that a brain functions. By taking control of the Genome Army, he is in essence issuing orders to many parts of a single ‘body’. In the same way we use our eyes to see a fly, tell the hand on our left arm to move to a flyswatter, to pick it up, to raise it above our heads and swing it down, Mantis collects the information from a soldier in the second floor basement of Nuclear Storage Building A who has seen Snake (he is, in effect, more eyes), deliver orders back to that soldier to attack and sends out commands to other units in the area to rush in and give support without the need for that soldier to radio it in personally (it’s also a clever solution to the technical limitations of the PS1). This is precisely why there was unanimous support for the revolt and why FOX-HOUND begins to lose hold on the Genome Army after Mantis’ death.

As Snake defeats FOX-HOUND and rescues the hostages, each executive dies of a heart attack before the warriors eyes. It’s not long until he discovers that Naomi Hunter had infected him with FOXDIE, a virus intended to kill those behind Rex and its theft to keep the Metal Gear a secret. This is where we are offered a Darwinian outlet. The FOXDIE virus is programmed to destroy only those with certain genetic strains, letting the strong- those organisms without that strain- to continue and flourish in their stead. In very real terms, Snake is a vector, the source where a virus enters into a population and spreads from one host to the next.

The cyborg Ninja illustrates the incompatibility of genetics and bio-technology; he is a being whose organic material can die, even though its metal frame cannot. The man who was once Gray Fox has been transplanted into a cybernetic exoskeleton and is a mind desperately trying to find a place in the world.

At the far end of the mission is Liquid Snake- the man who calls Solid ‘brother’. Raised by Big Boss, Liquid became a member of Britain’s Special Air Service, and is a dark reflection to our steely hero. Atop Rex’s burnt-out wreckage, Liquid reveals the truth: Solid and Liquid are not actually Big Boss’ sons, but his genetic duplicates, each composed of one half of that legendary soldier’s complete genome. The Les Enfants Terrible project had tried to build the perfect warrior and Liquid had long believed that he had received the recessive waste material that that resulted in the creation of Solid Snake. Liquids resentment towards his brother became an obsession to prove his own abilities- to his father, to his brother and to himself. It’s within the disparity of these twin snakes, now unrecognizably different, that the nature/nurture argument is most fully explored. They have become different because of their unique experiences and drives. This is where Kojima’s answer to the question of genetic determinism begins to form: genes are only the start of what a person can be, design a potential future.

This story is one of wills. Consider that The Twin Snakes is the only chapter in all of the Metal Gear Solid series with two potential endings. In Act 2, both Snake and Meryl have been captured. Snake has been strapped to a torture rack while Revolver Ocelot brutally interrogates him. There are only three options: submit, die and fight. Die and its game over, a fact Ocelot directly informs the player. Submit and the sadistic nut will have his fun on Meryl. Fight, by rapidly hitting the ‘Action’ button, and she may survive. It is the player-as-Snake’s struggle.

So as fist strikes bone and the Snakes last test commences, it’s no surprise that it’s Solid Snake who emerges victor. You had proven that he is the stronger of the two brothers. But as Snake escapes Metal Gear’s hangar, he finds that Liquid is beaten but not broken. Snake trapped and in Liquids crosshairs, something unlikely happens: Liquid Snake finally dies- of a heart attack. FOXDIE had taken another life, but perhaps not its last. As the virus is programmed to destroy specific genetic strains, if Liquid had its target genes, so could Solid. He leaves Shadow Moses—perhaps even with Meryl--and into an unknown future.

But over the course of this one mission, Snake had repeatedly beaten nature. His will overcame fate. That’s important for the story’s eleventh-hour reveal; it was Solid who was built of Big Boss’ weaker genes. It’s not Liquid’s physical inferiority but his blind obsession with it that deny him his victory over Solid Snake. In fact, he possessed the same determination and resilience that Solid does but chose to focus it on a different end- fight after fight, Liquid survives death because his life is dedicated to killing his brother; it has defined him and he has lost the perspective and strength of character to create his own path. Over the course of his life, Solid Snake had become a hero through his actions, one’s based on his personal choices and the will to fulfill them. He is more than a copy of Big Boss.

While genes build our body and that influences how we perform in the world we are not bound to a defined fate. We can set off in our own directions, with our own hopes and dreams- it’s up to us to live our lives as we see fit. Solid Snake will die, without warning, but he will be different than when he was born. That is true of us all.

Part 2: Son's of Liberty

this essay can also be found on Script Routine

Nintendo has defined videogames. Since it first threw its glove into the ring of arcade games in the 80's, the company has changed the way people view, build and play games and Jeff Ryan's Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America chronicles their rise from card game maker to ubiquitous icons of the industry.

This book offers 280 pages of well-organized content that profiles the games, tech and personalities that set the standard for the medium. Covering everything from Nintendo's days as a card game manufacturer to their successes with the Wii, Ryan introduces us to Hiroshi Yamauchi, the savvy entrepreneur who took his business into game cabinets, to his son-in-law Minoru Arakawa who put those machines in American arcades to Shigeru Miyamoto, the legendary game designer and Mario, his creation that he made the face of fun and quality..

A lot of the information is well-known but Ryan does a great job including the more esoteric history that sweetens the read that much more. Seeing Nintendo fight against Atari and the crash of the 1983 to come out on top and their refusal to cave into bullying from Universal Pictures about copy-rights infringement for Donkey Kong is inspirational and exciting. Plus it was interesting to see where Kirby got his name.

As the timeline progresses, Ryan does a great job of showing Miyamoto's thoughts on game design and how they became nuanced as tech became better while remaining simple to approach and fun. To see that his design fit well within Nintendo's philosophy of keeping their consoles inexpensive by using durable parts from old tech that didn't run up their price tag. It was a joy meeting Gunpei Yokoi, their engineer behind much of those decisions who would created portable gaming with his Game & Watch toys and cement them with the Gameboy, and the magic he could make.

But the relationships of these players remain the most fascinating part of the narrative. Seeing Yamauchi refuse to fully embrace Arakawa even after overcoming all obstacles is tragic. This book is as much about what Nintendo has been to this day as it is about their products.

While the format and pacing of the book hits most of the important milestone titles, the little time that is spent on particular games makes them seem trivial, especially when set against Yamauchi, never having played any of them, whose only interest in them is for the money they can generate. This is purely subjective to the emotional ties that the reader has with the topic but is unfortunate.

What's more, with the quickly evolving nature of tech, the book ends on the Wii's success and 3DS's release, which, since it's final draft, has taken a substantial reversal to affect Nintendo's stocks, the end already seems slightly out of date, but is irrelevant to all the great work throughout.

Special mention deserves to go to that cover. It's simple layout, 8-bit inspired font and gloss is beautiful. And that Mario sprite, jumping over all the rest.

Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America retails for $26.95 but you can find it cheaper on Amazon.

Hideki Naganuma is a producer who has earned an impressive amount of respect and professional accolades. Hit play below.

The above track is 'Let Mom Sleep', the opening of Jet Set Radio's soundtrack. Many people who played a Dreamcast remember tearing up JSR's streets to funky beats that added electricity to the gameplay and authenticity to it's alt-lifestyle and urban youth rebellion stylings. It helped to make that game lively and fluid, colorful and fun. It's simply amazing.

Combining hip-hop, soul and funk, every track from that game offered something different. Here's 'Sweet Soul Brother', track eight.

It's energetic without sloppy, passionate without sappy. It also is absolutely repetitious, but, a testament to his ability, never once becomes boring.

Jet Set Radio Future's soundtrack is just as good, a remarkable feat considering that much of its aesthetic sensibility and sound were different from it's predecessor. Less hip-hop and more techno, Future's soundtrack fit well with the faster paced gameplay provided by the more powerful XBox.

In harmony with the deviation in sounds, Naganuma cultivated a music philosophy that produced tracks that revolve around single themes by mixing lyrics that impress a cohesion within while deftly avoiding much of the problems that lyrically driven compositions. Structurally, when an artist puts lyrics into a song, that instrumentation needs to break or subdue so it neither interferes with, nor is drowned out by, the words. They tend to be poetry overlaid onto instrumentation. By creating samples that only relate in the larger context, they become both music and concept.

Listen to the track below, 'Funky Dealer', the third on the album.

It's a theme, not a dialogue, a large part of its appeal. His composition's successfully sidestep the two distinctly different styles of music which compete on a psychological level- that of the mathematically-based music's ability to generate pure emotion and the much more conceptual and reflective nature of story.

Think of the love song. They are often narratives that discuss love in explicit terms of celebration or mourning as the singer relays a progression of linear events. Now here's what Naganuma did with Future's first track, 'The Concept of Love'.

It's flexible enough to let the listener define what they bring into the experience while dealing with a concise topic.

Naganuma has gone on to do other works since these two releases but since Sonic Rush on the Nintendo DS, which followed both of them up, hasn't put much out with as much charge and creativity.

Here's to hoping he does.