Game:

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008)

Duration: 3:32:00

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288

It's finally over.

Most likely going to be a bunch of ending spoilers beyond this point. You've been warned.

Now I can finally talk about how insignificant MGS2 is, with the exceptions of Ocelot seizing GW, and Olga/Raiden fighting for Sunny. The actual 'simulation' doesn't matter. Most of the players in that 'simulation' don't matter. Arguably, Raiden's closure with Solidus doesn't even matter; the game could have effectively ended at the introduction of Emma's virus into GW. The only plot point that would have been altered if the game had ended right before Arsenal is Sunny's survival, since The Patriots would have most likely killed her if Raiden didn't kill Solidus. This would admittedly most likely change the entire outcome of MGS4, since Sunny's alteration the worm allows the crucial systems to stay intact. That said, it also stands to reason that, if all of Dead Cell had been killed at any point prior to Arsenal Gear (and Emma's cluster had been uploaded), the outcome the game--and the series--would remain unchanged.

I'm not really sure where to go from here. Part of me wants to discuss, at length, the ridiculousness that is Meryl and Johnny, but I'll spare everyone that pain. This series can be pretty silly at times, to be honest. Players are forced to take plenty of major plot points (Nanomachines, son!) at face value, no character is sacred from becoming the focus of a running joke, and the drama is always over the top. An outsider looking into the MGS universe would probably look away fairly quickly--but there's more to the series than that.

Gekko, Johnny, crotch grabs, missile flips; strip all of it away, and you're left with a chilling analogy. As I see it, MGS is a series about history--namely, the way that history influences the future. What started out as a feud over an interpretation of The Boss' will mutated into a sphere of artificial control over the masses. Simple values, ideals, and agencies were warped, appropriated to satiate the need of six capable, misguided, and/or angry people. Then they assumed life of their own. They became the ideals in which the world was governed, and it would take many years and many lost lives until anyone realized that those ideals were now defunct. It would take many more for anyone to do something about it. When I think about the games like that, they hit much closer to home.

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