Just like stories of old – the pursuit of power necessarily produces resistance. Information and identity in Metal Gear Solid are the core themes that emerge, along with the repetition of history and the art of war. Here’s just a few of the reasons why I love this franchise, and some IRL parallels that makes these stories relevant.
Information and Identity in Metal Gear Solid
In the original PS1 game, you play Solid Snake, a secret agent on a mission to rescue the DARPA chief. FOXHOUND, the group overseeing an Alaskan nuclear facility on Shadow Moses Island, seized an opportunity. They turned on the senior officials and decided to run the show under the new leadership of Liquid Snake. It’s a sci-fi espionage classic, replete with a roster of villainous psychics, mutants, cyber-ninjas and in later instalments, vampires. The narrative blends modern themes with age-old mythos, guaranteed to satisfy anyone from spotty teens to malcontent sceptics like myself.
Information and Genetics
As Solid Snake unearths deeper secrets, he learns the he is a genetic clone of a super soldier called Big Boss. The antagonist, Liquid Snake, learned the same thing at a young age, back when he was named Eli. The knowledge twisted him, and in grieving the loss of his identity, swore revenge on The Patriots, the shadow Government responsible for all of it. Liquid builds an army challenge the hegemony The Patriots. You know how it is with these powerful clandestine institutions, blood pacts, secret islands, all that jazz. The Patriots selected Solid and Liquid’s genetic traits based on Big Boss’s strengths. (Some control is alright – I mean, it’s not like you can negotiate with nature passing down your grandmother’s facial moles.)
Shadow Governments and Clones
As if to spite the pattern, Liquid makes his own clones – giving rise to the Genome Soldiers. Only downside is that nature favours diversity and if there is a weakness in one soldier, there is a weakness in the chain. Now imagine the player’s surprise when you learn Solid Snake becomes the unwitting carrier of a virus called FoxDie. It puts the indirect death of every soldier you were sneaking around squarely at your feet. You killed them, all the while trying to avoid them. Why?
Information Control – A Narrative Technique
Because the cruel narrative behind Metal Gear Solid is that you, the player, were lied to. And as you go deeper into the lies, you uncover more perplexing mysteries. MGS lore is very convoluted, and this article won’t deep dive, but the FoxDie virus is also slowly killed Solid Snake. In later instalments, the virus prompts a new control strategy using “-nanomachines, son!” One of the clear narrative techniques in the game involves breaking down of the 4th wall, inviting the player to see beyond a fictional world. It asks you to decode a grand narrative of the real world where you believe you’re playing a game – all the while you’re the one being played.
It’s is a satire that doesn’t just break the 4th wall, it hacks the screen and leaves you mass deleting your digital footprint all the way to Moldova.
Information and Identity: IRL Parallels
While there’s a great deal of fun, playfulness and embellishment to the story, MGS touches on some real world worrying trends. Proxy wars controlled by private companies almost feels like a direct finger wagging at Blackrock or Halliburton. A quick look at the way The Patriots use spectacle to keep people docile and dependant feels very relevant in today’s crypto-golden age. It embodies the tone of older ‘elite’ thinkers like Walter Lipman, best summarised here by Noam Chomsky. Ideally, people are the bewildered herd who need to be guided and should have no involvement in politics.
It’s all a show, a spectacle with very limited democratic involvement. That couldn’t be more blindingly obvious, not unless the rock you were living under was your actual head.
Digital ID’s – A Narrative Deconstruction
Yes, digital IDs are all the rage in Parliamentary discussions right now. With about as much political intuition as a dustpan in a desert, The UK Labour Leader Kier Starmer is reading the room. He hears “immigration….immigration….pspspspspsps….immigration.” And like a candle in a fart, he ignites to the challenge. Yes, people hate immigrants, he says, and I can lean into that thing. By introducing a system nobody wants, he seeks to rescue his image by being the man who brought the UK into the 1984 Orwellian hellscape of digital ID control. Need a job? Better get your smart phone ready. Need health care? Crack open your ID QR codes. Want a loan? A house? Did you just use a public toilet?
Nigel’s1984 Who-Knighted Kingdom
Oh yes…total control. Starmer is an actor. He is warming the stage for the next government – a Nigel Farage government, allowing the old Faragian bar waffle to wash his hands of authoritarian rule because the system was built for him. Starmer is the midwife to the birth of a fascist nation of complete control of the bewildered herd. Just like in China, your consent is not necessary – and your dissent will get you blacklisted.
Joining the chorus of angry voices raising awareness about the vulnerability of our personal identity, Massive Attack started using facial recognition tech in their performances. To see this conducted so easily demonstrates that powerful institutions are capable of much more.
So far, millions have signed the Petition to stop this process and YOU should too while you can. Not that it makes a difference. Unlike MGS, we don’t get the fun heroes like Solid Snake saving us. Our antagonists are right there on TV. They tell us who they are and spin wild stories about dangerous foreigners. We shake our heads, tut, sell our souls to fear and say “not in my name.”
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