The Shootout Over Hidden Meanings In A Video Game
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It’s been just over a week since the release of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, the latest chapter in the popular video game series about a covert military agent named Solid Snake. And already, fans are exchanging rhetorical fusillades on the Internet, teasing out what the underlying political and philosophical messages of Metal Gear Solid 4 might be.
Others object to the sheer density of the story, spanning seven games released over 20 real-world years, that players are asked to master. “Let’s just say it’s not something any of us gamers are nearly as used to doing when we’re playing a game as when we’re reading a novel,” Mr. Totilo said.
Players can skip over the storytelling elements in Metal Gear Solid and still play the game.
But unrepentant fans like Ms. Alexander of Kotaku.com argue that, coherent or not, the narrative of Metal Gear Solid 4 is an inseparable part of the “package experience” that makes it an evolutionary step beyond fare like Halo 3, a first-person shooting game designed to soothe itchy trigger fingers.
Metal Gear Solid, Ms. Alexander said, “has the characters and the narrative, the symbolism and the metaphors, and all of the lore that ties it together,” whereas Halo is popular “not because of any of its peripheral elements or anything else about it, other that you shoot people.”
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