Post by The Mad Jackyl on Jul 11, 2006 3:48:16 GMT -5
Alright, it's done (I think), so here's the brain trust I've been working on a few nights this week. Let's hear your reactions and give me some feedback if you want.
METAL GEAR SOLID 2:
“SPECIAL” OPTION ANALYSIS
The storyline of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, with its confusing presentation and intriguing elements has been discussed at length by people all over the internet as well as in real life. It is sometimes considered the first post-modern videogame because of its unique approach to storytelling. Since it was released, this heady and easily misunderstood work by series creator Hideo Kojima has been the subject of debate perhaps more than any other current game on record. While insights into the various intricacies pertaining to the plot and motives could be detailed here by me, I feel enough has been said and discussed about those subjects already that I won’t go into them myself. What new insight could I really have on the matter that hasn’t already been said?
Instead, I would like to point out something that I feel has gone unnoticed by the scruples of many casual and hardcore fans of the Metal Gear series. Contained within the original game disc in the “Special” section on the main menu, a “Previous Story” sub-menu section is able to be viewed. Three selections are able to be accessed from this menu: a newspaper review for Nastasha Romanenko’s book, written after the events of Shadow Moses Island, entitled, “In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Shocking Truth”, an 129 page editorial, and the book itself. While these three texts appear to be complementary in giving us further insight into the events that take place during the Shadow Moses Island incident, they are only this when taken at face value. While the newspaper review and the editorial seem to be superfluous material that serves no further purpose other than fleshing out the unseen world outside of the espionage-laden battlefields represented in the Metal Gear series, they serve a much higher, nearly concealed purpose. It is my hope to show to the reader that these articles are not superfluous by any means and their contents were deliberately written, arranged and contained within the disc to prove a certain point, however obfuscated and non-intuitive that point should be. After reading this essay, I hope you, reader, will see that the “Previous Story” section has less to do with Metal Gear Solid and what we already know about that and more to do with the ideas relevant to Metal Gear Solid 2. Proceeding forward, I will now attempt to deconstruct and analyze each article for you in an attempt to prove my proposal.
The first article available from the “Previous Story” sub-menu is a newspaper review for In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth, from the fictional newspaper The New York Mirror reviewed by one George Franklin. It begins by addressing the memetic legacy that some places hold in our collective imagination; “The Grassy Knoll” and “Roswell” are cited as examples. Think of one or the other and you think things such as “Dealy Plaza, 1963”, “JFK assassinated” or respectively, “Aliens!” They also might conjure thoughts of conspiracy. Both concern highly secretive events whose truth may never be fully known. Franklin contends that “Shadow Moses” is bound to become one of these. He also reminds us that the official history, which happens to be drastically different from Romanenko’s version of the events, is that the nuclear weapons disposal facility on Shadow Moses was taken over by a radical right-wing group demanding the release of incarcerated group members in federal penitentiaries and that the incident was speedily resolved by the deployment of a commando unit. Nothing is mentioned about a secretive government project or the struggle to control it. Franklin’s review sees him as somewhat lenient towards the truth Romanenko sets forth in her book as he cites the growing number of eyewitness accounts cropping up on the internet that further back up her claims. By doing this, he offers validity to Romanenko’s version of the truth over the massive government denials and denouncements of her work. This first document serves to bolster confidence in such eyewitness accounts as Romanenko’s and sets the reader up to more readily accept the non-governmental take on the events of Shadow Moses, which segues into the second article able to be accessed.
This next article available is a long-winded editorial by author Gary McGolden entitled, The Shocking Conspiracy Behind Shadow Moses. The story is written from the first-person perspective, taking place shortly after the events of Shadow Moses. It begins with the author bound to a chair in a small weather station outpost on the remote Alaskan island of Shadow Moses. He explains how he has been brutalized and interrogated for hours on end by unknown assailants about the contents of a disc, which he later explains as being a copy of Romanenko’s In the Darkness forwarded to him by a friend, Max Smithson. When McGolden’s captives explain that they “have the disc back,” he gathers for himself that everything recorded on the disc is true and that there is indeed a conspiracy involved, as Romanenko so convincingly demonstrated. This short introductory exposition lends credit to the truth that we, the gamers, know by now since we have experienced the events of Sons of Liberty. Since Romanenko’s account of In the Darkness is how we know the actual facts to be, we are granted a privilege that many of the characters themselves do not have; we, like Nastasha, know the truth of the matter. So now we know that the author, Gary McGolden, knows the truth about what really happened at Shadow Moses. We are on the same page as the author now that both he and us, the gamers, share this knowledge. This works tremendously in favor of his credibility and cements the notion that this account is the real deal.
Shortly after his interrogation, McGolden is rescued by an unknown hero who we may assume is Solid Snake. We never find out for sure, however, and the story takes a drastic turn next to earlier events which happened one month prior- the obtaining of the disc and his decision to undertake a journalistic endeavor which lands him on Shadow Moses. Before getting into these events though, the author piques our interest by relating a tale of being abducted by aliens in his childhood. This is a key point in the story because it is the point from which we start to doubt the author. As he diverges on this tangent about aliens, he reveals more about himself that really hurts his credibility. Searching his body for proof that he was abducted after the incident as a boy, he admits that you “learn a little something when you watch as much TV as I did.” This paints our author as one prone to having both an overactive imagination and someone who is open to suggestion by something as questionable as TV programming. Further compounding upon his depreciating credibility is his admittance that no one in the area saw this UFO which supposedly abducted him. When next, in the present day, the optical disc is mailed to him by a longtime associate, we find McGolden to be a very high-strung individual. This is demonstrated by his conspiratorial notions that the envelope containing the disc is actually a letter bomb. Clearly paranoia is one of his neuroses. The envelope, it turns out, had been mailed to him by one Max Smithson, Editor-In-Chief of MEGASURPRISE magazine, who offers the disc along with a letter suggesting he gather more info in order to publish a book.
In his telling of the tale, McGolden seems particularly prone to absurd actions and stretches of truth. For instance, when asking his neighbor for help retrieving the contents of the disc, he resorts to knocking him out with a punch to the solar plexus (or so he claims). Another absurdity is the manner in which McGolden says he made it on to Shadow Moses undetected – by swimming at least twenty miles from a boat inside a gutted super-size Alaskan tuna - in frigid artic waters. He also implies that upon reaching the cavernous docking area we remember from Metal Gear Solid, he is shot at by Revolver Ocelot (though he doesn’t mention the name) while still wearing his tuna suit and manages to escape being captured or wounded. Makes him sound like quite the adventurer, does it not? In the afterword, we learn some amusing facts about Gary as they are related by Max Smithson of MEGASURPRISE magazine. One, that he’s best known for his past bestseller, The Telekinetic Powers of the Loch Ness Monster – The True Energy Source of UFOs and secondly, that Smithson never actually mailed him that disc. Furthermore, Smithson relates that there is ample evidence that McGolden was swept out to another small island several miles south of Shadow Moses instead and simply failed to realize that fact.
Despite the over-the-top behaviorisms, jumping to conclusions often and bouts of excessive imagination, the things McGolden relates to us about Romanenko’s work seem to be the only elements which help keep his credibility intact. The sense that he is relating the truth as Romanenko puts it forth rings true with us because after all, we know how the story really goes. We know more than enough examples now of Gary McGolden’s character. While he seems to mix in misinformation with actual facts at times, we could totally write off this story as fiction written by a total nutcase. Except we can’t ignore that there is some truth in his account and therefore we can’t dismiss it outright. Another conclusion we could come to is that the author is either directed by the Patriots to discredit Romanenko by publishing this wacky story or simply he is non-existent and there is no one actually named Gary McGolden. It could be said that McGolden is a conspiracy nut and that his acceptance of such a wild story as told by In the Darkness means that anyone else who also subscribes to this version of the truth would be labeled right along with the likes of McGolden. That would make for an effective psychological smear campaign. I, however, don’t accept that McGolden is either a puppet for the Patriots or that is he non-existent, a non-entity.
For one, he did write the The Telekinetic Powers of the Loch Ness Monster – The True Energy Source of UFOs years before the events of Shadow Moses. Max Smithson also has had some sort of relation with McGolden in the past. These two facts, coupled with the truths he relates from the manuscript for In the Darkness which would not have been included were his hand actually guided by the Patriots, proved to me that Gary McGolden is or was an actual person. Since I make the case that his story is not just a foil by the Patriots in order to discredit Romanenko like one might think, I will now demonstrate why this still fits in with and even benefits the Patriots ideology.
Near the end of Metal Gear Solid 2, after Rose and Colonel Campbell are revealed to Raiden as nothing more than an A.I. program, an interesting conversation takes place over Raiden’s codec. Divulging the Patriots’ plans to control all digital information to Raiden, the A.I. mimicking Campbell explains that “trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness.” All of this superfluous data is out there in various forms of media – from the written word to television. As Campbell explains, all of this information is created by people to suit their means, by “leaking whatever ‘truth’ suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large.” This would certainly apply to Gary McGolden’s flamboyant flourish for storytelling. In one way, he is using his own version of “truth”, misinformation and all, to convenience himself by making his comeback in the publishing world. Somewhere in all this, the truth suffers as a direct result of this ‘junk data’. Thus the reasoning behind the Selection for Societal Sanity, or S3 plan. In the digital age, the common person is nearly incapable of knowing what’s absolutely true. While the problem is not necessarily that people are dumb, it revolves more around the idea that there is no way for a person to know what’s really real and how to tell truth from falsehood. It then becomes a matter of what you want to be true and what you feel is the most likely version of the truth that is closest to the actual truth. While things may feel true and are most likely to be true, it can be impossible to know. For example, water is considered the basis for life. But that’s as we know it within the context of our experience. For all we know, there are life forms out in the universe which do not require water. Or how about politics, where there is no one truth? The Republicans have their version of truth and Democrats have their own as well. Who then is wrong if everybody is right? So in conclusion, the three articles included in the “Special” sub-selection menu are more than just a reflection on the previous entry in the series. They also serve as a reminder of one of Metal Gear Solid 2’s main themes. It’s a subliminal message set up right under our very noses. A perfect example set up to remind us of our own incompetence and the absurdity of the information age, a tongue-in-cheek jab if you will, by the Patriots.
Copyright The Mad Jackyl
You may not use this essay or otherwise plagiarize any part therein without the full consent of the author on any other site. Reposts on message boards such as this one are permitted with proper accreditation.
---------------
That last part was for any wise guys who might come along from other sites and try to swipe this for their own use.
METAL GEAR SOLID 2:
“SPECIAL” OPTION ANALYSIS
The storyline of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, with its confusing presentation and intriguing elements has been discussed at length by people all over the internet as well as in real life. It is sometimes considered the first post-modern videogame because of its unique approach to storytelling. Since it was released, this heady and easily misunderstood work by series creator Hideo Kojima has been the subject of debate perhaps more than any other current game on record. While insights into the various intricacies pertaining to the plot and motives could be detailed here by me, I feel enough has been said and discussed about those subjects already that I won’t go into them myself. What new insight could I really have on the matter that hasn’t already been said?
Instead, I would like to point out something that I feel has gone unnoticed by the scruples of many casual and hardcore fans of the Metal Gear series. Contained within the original game disc in the “Special” section on the main menu, a “Previous Story” sub-menu section is able to be viewed. Three selections are able to be accessed from this menu: a newspaper review for Nastasha Romanenko’s book, written after the events of Shadow Moses Island, entitled, “In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Shocking Truth”, an 129 page editorial, and the book itself. While these three texts appear to be complementary in giving us further insight into the events that take place during the Shadow Moses Island incident, they are only this when taken at face value. While the newspaper review and the editorial seem to be superfluous material that serves no further purpose other than fleshing out the unseen world outside of the espionage-laden battlefields represented in the Metal Gear series, they serve a much higher, nearly concealed purpose. It is my hope to show to the reader that these articles are not superfluous by any means and their contents were deliberately written, arranged and contained within the disc to prove a certain point, however obfuscated and non-intuitive that point should be. After reading this essay, I hope you, reader, will see that the “Previous Story” section has less to do with Metal Gear Solid and what we already know about that and more to do with the ideas relevant to Metal Gear Solid 2. Proceeding forward, I will now attempt to deconstruct and analyze each article for you in an attempt to prove my proposal.
The first article available from the “Previous Story” sub-menu is a newspaper review for In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth, from the fictional newspaper The New York Mirror reviewed by one George Franklin. It begins by addressing the memetic legacy that some places hold in our collective imagination; “The Grassy Knoll” and “Roswell” are cited as examples. Think of one or the other and you think things such as “Dealy Plaza, 1963”, “JFK assassinated” or respectively, “Aliens!” They also might conjure thoughts of conspiracy. Both concern highly secretive events whose truth may never be fully known. Franklin contends that “Shadow Moses” is bound to become one of these. He also reminds us that the official history, which happens to be drastically different from Romanenko’s version of the events, is that the nuclear weapons disposal facility on Shadow Moses was taken over by a radical right-wing group demanding the release of incarcerated group members in federal penitentiaries and that the incident was speedily resolved by the deployment of a commando unit. Nothing is mentioned about a secretive government project or the struggle to control it. Franklin’s review sees him as somewhat lenient towards the truth Romanenko sets forth in her book as he cites the growing number of eyewitness accounts cropping up on the internet that further back up her claims. By doing this, he offers validity to Romanenko’s version of the truth over the massive government denials and denouncements of her work. This first document serves to bolster confidence in such eyewitness accounts as Romanenko’s and sets the reader up to more readily accept the non-governmental take on the events of Shadow Moses, which segues into the second article able to be accessed.
This next article available is a long-winded editorial by author Gary McGolden entitled, The Shocking Conspiracy Behind Shadow Moses. The story is written from the first-person perspective, taking place shortly after the events of Shadow Moses. It begins with the author bound to a chair in a small weather station outpost on the remote Alaskan island of Shadow Moses. He explains how he has been brutalized and interrogated for hours on end by unknown assailants about the contents of a disc, which he later explains as being a copy of Romanenko’s In the Darkness forwarded to him by a friend, Max Smithson. When McGolden’s captives explain that they “have the disc back,” he gathers for himself that everything recorded on the disc is true and that there is indeed a conspiracy involved, as Romanenko so convincingly demonstrated. This short introductory exposition lends credit to the truth that we, the gamers, know by now since we have experienced the events of Sons of Liberty. Since Romanenko’s account of In the Darkness is how we know the actual facts to be, we are granted a privilege that many of the characters themselves do not have; we, like Nastasha, know the truth of the matter. So now we know that the author, Gary McGolden, knows the truth about what really happened at Shadow Moses. We are on the same page as the author now that both he and us, the gamers, share this knowledge. This works tremendously in favor of his credibility and cements the notion that this account is the real deal.
Shortly after his interrogation, McGolden is rescued by an unknown hero who we may assume is Solid Snake. We never find out for sure, however, and the story takes a drastic turn next to earlier events which happened one month prior- the obtaining of the disc and his decision to undertake a journalistic endeavor which lands him on Shadow Moses. Before getting into these events though, the author piques our interest by relating a tale of being abducted by aliens in his childhood. This is a key point in the story because it is the point from which we start to doubt the author. As he diverges on this tangent about aliens, he reveals more about himself that really hurts his credibility. Searching his body for proof that he was abducted after the incident as a boy, he admits that you “learn a little something when you watch as much TV as I did.” This paints our author as one prone to having both an overactive imagination and someone who is open to suggestion by something as questionable as TV programming. Further compounding upon his depreciating credibility is his admittance that no one in the area saw this UFO which supposedly abducted him. When next, in the present day, the optical disc is mailed to him by a longtime associate, we find McGolden to be a very high-strung individual. This is demonstrated by his conspiratorial notions that the envelope containing the disc is actually a letter bomb. Clearly paranoia is one of his neuroses. The envelope, it turns out, had been mailed to him by one Max Smithson, Editor-In-Chief of MEGASURPRISE magazine, who offers the disc along with a letter suggesting he gather more info in order to publish a book.
In his telling of the tale, McGolden seems particularly prone to absurd actions and stretches of truth. For instance, when asking his neighbor for help retrieving the contents of the disc, he resorts to knocking him out with a punch to the solar plexus (or so he claims). Another absurdity is the manner in which McGolden says he made it on to Shadow Moses undetected – by swimming at least twenty miles from a boat inside a gutted super-size Alaskan tuna - in frigid artic waters. He also implies that upon reaching the cavernous docking area we remember from Metal Gear Solid, he is shot at by Revolver Ocelot (though he doesn’t mention the name) while still wearing his tuna suit and manages to escape being captured or wounded. Makes him sound like quite the adventurer, does it not? In the afterword, we learn some amusing facts about Gary as they are related by Max Smithson of MEGASURPRISE magazine. One, that he’s best known for his past bestseller, The Telekinetic Powers of the Loch Ness Monster – The True Energy Source of UFOs and secondly, that Smithson never actually mailed him that disc. Furthermore, Smithson relates that there is ample evidence that McGolden was swept out to another small island several miles south of Shadow Moses instead and simply failed to realize that fact.
Despite the over-the-top behaviorisms, jumping to conclusions often and bouts of excessive imagination, the things McGolden relates to us about Romanenko’s work seem to be the only elements which help keep his credibility intact. The sense that he is relating the truth as Romanenko puts it forth rings true with us because after all, we know how the story really goes. We know more than enough examples now of Gary McGolden’s character. While he seems to mix in misinformation with actual facts at times, we could totally write off this story as fiction written by a total nutcase. Except we can’t ignore that there is some truth in his account and therefore we can’t dismiss it outright. Another conclusion we could come to is that the author is either directed by the Patriots to discredit Romanenko by publishing this wacky story or simply he is non-existent and there is no one actually named Gary McGolden. It could be said that McGolden is a conspiracy nut and that his acceptance of such a wild story as told by In the Darkness means that anyone else who also subscribes to this version of the truth would be labeled right along with the likes of McGolden. That would make for an effective psychological smear campaign. I, however, don’t accept that McGolden is either a puppet for the Patriots or that is he non-existent, a non-entity.
For one, he did write the The Telekinetic Powers of the Loch Ness Monster – The True Energy Source of UFOs years before the events of Shadow Moses. Max Smithson also has had some sort of relation with McGolden in the past. These two facts, coupled with the truths he relates from the manuscript for In the Darkness which would not have been included were his hand actually guided by the Patriots, proved to me that Gary McGolden is or was an actual person. Since I make the case that his story is not just a foil by the Patriots in order to discredit Romanenko like one might think, I will now demonstrate why this still fits in with and even benefits the Patriots ideology.
Near the end of Metal Gear Solid 2, after Rose and Colonel Campbell are revealed to Raiden as nothing more than an A.I. program, an interesting conversation takes place over Raiden’s codec. Divulging the Patriots’ plans to control all digital information to Raiden, the A.I. mimicking Campbell explains that “trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness.” All of this superfluous data is out there in various forms of media – from the written word to television. As Campbell explains, all of this information is created by people to suit their means, by “leaking whatever ‘truth’ suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large.” This would certainly apply to Gary McGolden’s flamboyant flourish for storytelling. In one way, he is using his own version of “truth”, misinformation and all, to convenience himself by making his comeback in the publishing world. Somewhere in all this, the truth suffers as a direct result of this ‘junk data’. Thus the reasoning behind the Selection for Societal Sanity, or S3 plan. In the digital age, the common person is nearly incapable of knowing what’s absolutely true. While the problem is not necessarily that people are dumb, it revolves more around the idea that there is no way for a person to know what’s really real and how to tell truth from falsehood. It then becomes a matter of what you want to be true and what you feel is the most likely version of the truth that is closest to the actual truth. While things may feel true and are most likely to be true, it can be impossible to know. For example, water is considered the basis for life. But that’s as we know it within the context of our experience. For all we know, there are life forms out in the universe which do not require water. Or how about politics, where there is no one truth? The Republicans have their version of truth and Democrats have their own as well. Who then is wrong if everybody is right? So in conclusion, the three articles included in the “Special” sub-selection menu are more than just a reflection on the previous entry in the series. They also serve as a reminder of one of Metal Gear Solid 2’s main themes. It’s a subliminal message set up right under our very noses. A perfect example set up to remind us of our own incompetence and the absurdity of the information age, a tongue-in-cheek jab if you will, by the Patriots.
Copyright The Mad Jackyl
You may not use this essay or otherwise plagiarize any part therein without the full consent of the author on any other site. Reposts on message boards such as this one are permitted with proper accreditation.
---------------
That last part was for any wise guys who might come along from other sites and try to swipe this for their own use.
"
