Okay, here’s a way too long post that I’ve been meaning to write for a while about my thoughts concerning the new “Metal Gear Solid” game. Only subject yourself to this if you’re willing to slog through what essentially amounts to some kind of first-draft essay.

Expressive Design in “Metal Gear”

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what ideas are best communicated through video games, and how usually the easiest ones to relate between an author and audience are the simplest. Miyamoto’s games all function on the theme of exploration, which he varies throughout all the “Super Mario” and “Legend of Zelda” iterations. Will Wright’s games all meditate on various aspects of authority as expressed through micromanagement, as seen in the civic, global and interpersonal installments of the “Sim” series. Ueda seems primarily concerned with intimate, one-on-one relationships, as seen in the pairs of mutually dependent characters found in “Ico” and “Shadow of the Colossus.” What sets these designers apart from most creators is the fact that they’ve usually found ways of expressing their ideas as part of the concrete, cause-and-effect balance of gameplay itself.

However, far too many of their colleagues, while maintaining similar ambitions of stretching the expressive possibilities of the medium, have been content to simply maintain the status quo of uncreative design while relegating the artistic motivations of their titles to non-interactive cut-scenes and dialogue. Among these designers are otherwise talented individuals like Tim Schaffer, whose adventure games and recent platformer “Psychonauts” receive great deals of critical acclaim for creative art, characters and storylines without really breaking much new ground in terms of game design itself, and the omnibus staff of Square-Enix, whose countless “Final Fantasy” games create complex narratives rooted in classical drama and tragedy while remaining almost entirely beholden to a menu-based system of decisions which places a suffocating limit upon actual interaction.
If there has been a designer whose reputation has been perennially notorious for exhibiting symptoms of this troubling case, however, it has been the enfant terrible behind “Metal Gear” himself, Hideo Kojima. While his critics have been correct in many of their accusations that far too much of his games are dedicated to lengthy cut-scenes, that his perspectives of game design seem rooted in an out-dated period from the 8-bit/16-bit era and that the basic mechanics of the stealth genre he practically pioneered often demand far too much patience for the modern gamer, it is not entirely accurate to label his work as being devoid of message-motivated design. On the contrary, in each installment of the “Metal Gear” series so-far, Kojima has demonstrated the ability to communicate ideas both simple and sophisticated through elements of gameplay subtle enough to go unnoticed during initial run-throughs and complex enough to provoke deep thought on the nature of games themselves.
Despite its primitive roots, the original MSX “Metal Gear” (1987) does a rather impressive job of putting one of the core motifs of the MGS experience, betrayal at the hands of a corrupt authority figure, into the design of the game’s mechanics. Throughout the game, the player must call in radio support from a team of allies, led by Big Boss, who feeds the player mission objectives, helpful hints and occasional comic relief. At the game’s end, his radio messages become directions into enemy booby traps, signaling that Big Boss has turned against the player. By making the player dependent upon this system of providing in-game strategy and then inverting it, Kojima presents a uniquely subversive act of game design, presenting obstacles in a zone previously thought to be safe and informative. When Big Boss later commands to abort the mission and turn off the game console, the fact that the player continues serves to demonstrate the lesson learned of independence over blindly following orders.
If the original “Metal Gear” game provided one of the first genuinely paranoid moments in game design, the climax of “Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake” (1990) made for one of the first genuinely desperate moments, yet one which prompts the player to develop lateral thinking of their own to survive and depend upon themselves once again via their own resourcefulness. Confronting Big Boss again, this time without any weapons, the player must navigate a maze of locked doors and deadly acid, trying to find the right keys and avoid the enemy while trying to figure out how to defeat him. Amidst the items scattered across several locked rooms, the player finds a lighter and an aerosol can, and must intuit the solution of selecting both and turning them into a makeshift flamethrower. Today this puzzle scenario may seem fairly transparent, considering the lighter and the aerosol can are the extra only items to be found, making the combination one which does not require that much thought to the sophisticated gamer, but as one of the first of its kind in gaming, the final Big Boss battle counts as a pioneering moment in expressing creativity within the player during gameplay, encouraging the imagination necessary to put two and two together.
While Kojima’s original two “Metal Gear” games themselves provide excellent examples of expressive gameplay design, the subsequent first two “Metal Gear Solid” installments fall comparatively short of the mark, depending mostly upon the advanced graphics and sound-storage capabilities of the first two generations of the Sony Playstation to convey their ideas, often at the expense of interactive mechanics. While commentators often flock to the Psycho Mantis battle as an example of innovative gameplay, the fight does not provide as much in the way of expressive game design as its reputation suggests, as it does not utilize any useful strategies that can be used throughout the game as a whole. Plugging the controller to a new socket in order to avoid the psychic’s telepathic abilities makes for a clever diversion in an otherwise common boss battle, but there are no other points in the game during which the player needs to unplug the controller again. Another moment in the game which shows promise as an example of expressive design is the moment where the player must face torture at the hands of Revolver Ocelot, repeatedly pressing a button in order to resist giving up the life of an ally or die from exhaustion. The player’s actions directly affect the story’s outcome, providing genuine consequences for their decision, which does a modest job of dramaticizing the suspense of torture by making the player directly responsible for another character’s life.
Unfortunately, neither of these moments live up to the standard set by Kojima in his previous titles, upon closer inspection. Unlike the Big Boss encounters from the first two “Metal Gear” games, neither the Psycho Mantis fight nor the Revolver Ocelot torture scene utilizes gameplay from throughout the game as a whole and give it new context within another situation. In his MSX games, Kojima used the conventions of providing players with strategic hints and the process of selecting items and weapons and used them against the player in new, unexpected ways, rather than invent a new type of gameplay only to be used once and just as quickly discarded. Interestingly, both examples from the first two “Metal Gear” games utilize aspects of the game design rooted in the pause screens of radio support and inventory, and how they relate to the larger gameplay as a whole. Meanwhile, the Psycho Mantis and Revolver Ocelot scenes both function directly within the main course of the gameplay itself, rather than one of the static pause screens. If there is a use of ordinary game design within the structure of “Metal Gear Solid” that breaks down how it’s been used ordinarily throughout the game, perhaps it is that during the torture scene the player will break down and submit if they press the button usually dedicated to radio contact, placing the player in a unique form of isolation.
Radio conversations again seem to become the main method of communicating Kojima’s ideas in the next “Metal Gear Solid” installment, titled “Sons of Liberty” (2001), which notoriously turns the tables on players during the infamous “Naked Raiden” and “Fission Mailed” sequences towards the end, and while these two instances are examples of excellent post-modern game design imploding upon itself to comment upon the medium of gaming, they do not quite utilize gameplay mechanics as a whole in communicating their core ideas. “Naked Raiden” feels very much like a next-gen remake of the Big Boss episode from the first “Metal Gear” games, putting the player in a helpless position, literally naked before heavily armed troops and hounded by questionable orders over the radio. This time, however, the radio communicates are not so much self-destructive as they are surreal non-sequitors, bearing no relevance whatsoever onto the gameplay itself. Whereas “Metal Gear” dramaticizes the game’s betrayal to the player, “Sons of Liberty” dramaticizes the game’s abandonment of the player, isolating them before hopeless odds and forcing them to rely on skills at stealth and evasion, the backbone mechanics of the game.
Unfortunately, while it might seem that Kojima is using the “Naked Raiden” sequence to recontextualize the solo-sneaking mechanic as an instrument of helpless abandonment, he is instead merely heightening the danger already present in the solo-sneaking mechanic, which amounts to providing a more challenging iteration of the same old design found throughout the game of hiding from the enemy. Decorating the process by psychologically bombarding the player with strange radio calls and underlining the player’s vulnerability by rendering the avatar naked, Kojima more or less sticks to the routine gameplay throughout the title, serving only to make explicit what had already been implicit throughout each and every “Metal Gear” installment. The “Fission Mailed” sequence is interesting, if mechanically unsatisfying, in another respect, in that it makes explicit what is implicit throughout almost all video games, themselves. Manipulating the HUD, especially regarding the game’s standard Game Over screen (“Mission Failed”) during a seemingly endless battle against waves of soldiers, Kojima does a clever job of using the mainstay conventions of gaming itself as a psychological tool against the player, forcing them to confront conceptual obstacles as well as mechanical ones, creating a new gameplay of filtering out the extraneous details.
While tuning all the irrelevant HUD in “Mission Failed” points out how necessary it’s become in almost all games on the modern market, it still mainly counts as a one-time event during the game, rather than one which builds upon gameplay that leads up to it. Kojima’s next “Metal Gear Solid” installment, the prequel “Snake Eater,” takes the challenge further by providing new context for exiting gameplay on several occasions of two basic types, both revolving around the title’s most intriguing boss battles. Against the Sorrow, the objective is to navigate through droves of ghostly soldiers the spiritual-medium boss has called up to haunt the player and drain their energy. As the number of ghosts the player encounters is dependent upon the number of soldiers the player has killed during the course of the game, Kojima brings gameplay from throughout the rest of the title into this moment, rendering every decision made until now a cause to an effect the player could not have initially foreseen. While all the “Metal Gear” installments have made pacifism and the importance of non-aggression as part of their cut-scene rhetoric, confronting the Sorrow makes that pacifism and non-aggression actually practical to the gameplay itself, as the less soldiers the player kills the fewer dangers they’ll have to face in this level.
Furthermore, “Snake Eater” toys with the longstanding mechanics of the “Metal Gear” franchise by extending its signature hide-and-seek gameplay into several boss battles themselves, whereas in each previous installment players had no choice but to stand their ground and confront rather straightforward enemies. In the celebrated duels with The End and The Boss, Kojima puts the players up against masters of stealth from whom they must hide, as they have done with all the other minor soldiers throughout, and whom they must also seek, the same way those minor soldiers have searched for the player. Implicitly inverting the circumstances of these battles, the gameplay of solo-sneaking gains new meaning in its new context, dramaticizing the turn from the hunted to the hunter, a potent narrative device in a story dedicated to a mission leading up to the assassination of a traitorous mentor. Up against a different kind of boss, the gameplay forces the player to turn against the traditional hide-and-seek tactics they’re used to and switch the circumstances, which also implicitly facilitates a theme of betrayal itself within the fabric of the mechanics. Ironically, Kojima creates this feeling of betraying the standard rules-of-the-game by placing those same rules within a structure which had previously held a different set, and had long been a different, more conventional sort of game all along.
In that sense, the fights with the End and the Boss are truly the first actual “Metal Gear” boss battles at the foundation of their design since the latter-stage matches in “Metal Gear 2,” including the flamethrower duel, which makes for a particularly effective parallel, considering that in “Snake Eater” the player assumes the role of a younger version of Big Boss himself. Finally, Kojima’s latest installment, “Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops” (2006) for the PSP, demonstrates another effective display of message molded into mechanics, with a set of experiences designed to put us into the mind of the protagonist more than many other games have in the past. If “Snake Eater” gave the player the experience of becoming Big Boss, “Portable Ops” effectively allows the player to be Big Boss, in all roles as a soldier, a field commander and as a terrorist leader of mercenary units.
Throughout the game, the player must knock enemy soldiers unconscious in order to recruit them as playable characters, who can then be sent out on missions of their own. Besides adding another layer of pragmaticism for tranquilizing enemies, rather than killing them, the mechanic of building armies forces players to assume the mindset of a ruthless commander if they hope to secure victory over the course of the game, or else fail. Early on it becomes apparent that certain missions are too dangerous to risk injuring the leader, Big Boss, making it necessary to delegate such assignment to lesser soldiers who can easily be replaced if killed. Often, especially in challenging boss battles, the game encourages players to send soldiers as sacrificial lambs out to weaken opponents in order for Big Boss to sweep in and finish them off. Wearing down adversaries on suicide missions makes for an interesting, provocative gameplay experience, as the player is now responsible, as in the first “Metal Gear Solid,” for the well being of comrades, although this time more directly. Furthermore, the mechanic of subduing enemies in order to convert them provides another layer to an already morally ambiguous system, expressing a world in which force alone allows players to dominate their will upon soldiers.
The fact that former bosses can be recruited within the course of the game amplifies this message, another which was usually delegated to cut-scenes in the franchise, which meditates on the thin line between enemies and allies, and how easily such definitions can change. Such fluidity as expressed in the gameplay helps to bring the story’s themes into greater focus, as Big Boss’s transition from being the military commander of solo-sneaking unit FOXHOUND to becoming the leader of underground military nation Outer Heaven is portrayed explicitly through mechanics as it is done implicitly through the narrative presentation. Amassing soldiers previously fighting as enemies, the player winds up recruiting an army of masked men and beret wearing specialists identical to Big Boss’ henchmen in the original “Metal Gear” games, effectively putting the player in control of the same forces of mercenaries they once had to fight in previous titles. Sending soldiers out to die on missions designed to weaken the enemy’s psychological resolve, the player winds up playing the same terrorist tactics found throughout the series’ antagonists as a whole.
Finally, in confronting the final boss of the game, another military commander turned rogue dictator, ironically named Gene, the player is presented with a manipulation of on-screen HUD graphics which, unlike the elaborate but strained effects of “Fission Mailed,” performs an excellent job of connecting the player with Big Boss, all bosses and the game’s play itself. When Gene attempts to use his psychic powers to weaken Big Boss in the same way he converted enemies to his cause, with supernatural rather than physical violence, a bright set his glowing eyes are superimposed upon the screen, as well as trace elements of Gene’s face as he delivers a propaganda rant which drains the player’s energy. While at first this seems to merely act as a clever act by Kojima of turning Gene into a Big Brother type dictator, which suits directly into his themes of avoiding surveillance, a deeper realization is made upon examining the episode within the context of the PSP system as a whole.
While playing a game on the PSP it’s very common for the player to see their face, especially their eyes, reflected in its plasma screen, and placing Gene’s eyes and face directly where the player would see their own allows for the two to become synonymous with each other. When one considers that this is occurring as Gene attempts to superimpose his will upon that of Big Boss, whose role the player assumes, it becomes clear that Kojima is using the physicality of the PSP in the same way he used that of the original Playstation, only now speaking to a far more direct association between the player, their avatar and even that of the non-player character. Thus, through gameplay there is an expressive dramaticization of the act of spiritual possession, and while the end condition of this situation only results in death, rather than true loss of Big Boss’ control, the whole encounter does a good job of approximating an experience which heightens the degree of paranoia already exhibited throughout the “Metal Gear” series.
Furthermore, it calls into reference all the moments throughout the franchise, including the inversions of “Snake Eater” and “Portable Ops” as a whole that deal with the reversals of allies to enemies and commanders to terrorists, as now the player is linked so much with both Big Boss and any final boss character that in order for them to see how easily they can be turned into an antagonist, they need only look at their own reflection.