Random Banter #239 - Now 50% more tangible!

[Rater202]

1. But Liquid still lost to Solid

Spoiler

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2. But all this genetics and bio-engineering in the world of Metal Gear really doesn't matter. All the Snakes win their fights through practical normal soldier stuff, and the super-soldier genome stuff all seem to be incredibly impractical as the results they make aren't mass-producible and only end up making one-off freaks of nature that despite their physical power often have mental problems, Psycho Mantis being one of the more stand out examples. one of the most clear evidence that psychic powers exist in Metal Gear Solid.....and everyone ignores it to make the next mech model or cybernetics. and for good reason! people have no idea how Psycho Mantis got those powers, growing more people like him takes more time than just building tech they know works and can be made faster, no ethical problems about raising child soldiers, same with Big Boss and such. ultimately the whole MGS nonsense about genes isn't replicated by anyone outside of the kooky group obsessed with it as the world is shown to have to changed to fight using robots and cybernetic sharing skill over the much more complicated and impractical bio-engineering.

benefits alone aren't the be-all, end-all of a technology, Rater. the cost, how much can be made, how reliably it can be made, whether its worth the improvement you gain for the investment you put in....I'd confidently argue that all the genome improvements no matter how great are marginal ones at best compared to Raiden just getting a bunch of cybernetics and going super-acrobat kill ninja in Revengeance. like compare the unrealistic yet relatively down to earth action movie stunts Liquid and Solid Snake and Big Boss do to cyber-Raiden busting out ridiculous anime feats against things years technologically more advanced with nothing but a katana. improvements like those are clearly worth it.

but the whole genome nonsense? its questionable if you can say the same for that, as the benefits are marginal: at best they provide slight performance boosts to all the soldiers skills that use them and they could probably be just as good at their jobs without them. Ocelot survives longer than most of these genetic super-people just by being smart, manipulative and very good at gunplay and he was never enhanced.

Spoiler

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1: Liquid didn't lose to Snake, he lost to FOXDIE. One minute before he noticed that his heart had stopped he was still in decent condition and willing to throw down.

2: The Genome soldiers were, in fact, mass-producible. You'll notice that there were hundreds of them in Shadow Moses. In fact, mass production was part of the problem: They all went rogue becuase the Government decided "this is good enough" when the tests had promising results instead of perfecting the procedure before going to mass deployment. Thus, enough Genome soldiers suffered side effects that it, combined with the implications that no one volunteered for this(in fact, we later find out that Johnny, the only named Genome soldier, is afraid of needles and skips out on them whenever possible meaning he must have been forced) led to them going AWOL en mass when liquid promised to perfect the procedure and cure the ones suffering side effects.

3: I'm not sure "This technology makes the other obsolete" means that the other was worthless all along. Years at a time passed between these games. The cyborg ninja technology was developed at the same time as the Genome soldier treatments, I don't think the people working on the at the time would have known for sure which one would have ended up being worth it in the long run.

Looking at Grey Fox, who had the prototype cyborg ninja tech and the genome soldier treatment, and comparing his showing to later models of cyborg I don't think anyone could have predicted just how explosively the cyborg technology would advance.

The and even then, cyborg ninja tech didn't become commonplace until after using Nanomachines to enhance soldiers stopped being viable.

[Beeftank]

I haven’t played metal gear solid but I’m assuming throughout the game Snake was able to foil the bad guys plot and still win in the end even if some virus ended up killing liquid, right?

If that’s the case then despite liquid being better “on paper” due to his genes, he isn’t as good as snake because in the end snake got the W and that’s really all that matters.

[Lord Raziere]

1. But Liquid still lost. If he was so genetically superior to Solid that it was worth bio-engineering him with these supposed genetic super-powers, then he should've won despite having the handicap or be super-intelligent enough to avoid the FOXDIE. He was neither of these things.

2. and yet, what was the actual difference that these Genome soldier made? they were just mooks that Snake triumphed over anyways. might as well have sent out ordinary soldiers and not wasted the money on expensive bio-engineering.

Spoiler

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3. Okay, but Revolver Ocelot still. Guy outlived a bunch of "genetically enhanced" beings and other strange beings, being a consistent recurring enemy throughout the games, and got results, was there in the beginning to witness the first Big Boss and her ideals and spent decades being a successful quadruple agent betraying people around him, no enhancements, all skill, and he is a villain so he doesn't even have protagonist protection backing him to do all this. Ocelot was intelligent enough to pull all this off, but Liquid was so dumb he died in one game and had to piggyback on Ocelot's competence to even come back for a minute. so much for the genetically superior Liquid Snake!

[Peelee]

I haven’t played metal gear solid but I’m assuming throughout the game Snake was able to foil the bad guys plot and still win in the end even if some virus ended up killing liquid, right?

If that’s the case then despite liquid being better “on paper” due to his genes, he isn’t as good as snake because in the end snake got the W and that’s really all that matters.

Also never played MGS, but yeah, that's exactly my impression as well.

[BisectedBrioche]

If I'm honest, I think the moral of MGS is less "perseverance and grit triumph over inherent advantages", and more "your choices matter more than what you're born with. With a little bit of "war overriding your choices is what makes it so terrible".

Spoiler: MGS1 thoughts

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The point of MGS1 is less "Hah, Solid was the better soldier, even though Liquid was the one with the genetic advantages!" and more "Even though Solid is the perfect soldier, and on some level even loves killing, given the choice he wants a peaceful life, and that's what matters."

The entire plot is him struggling with this. At the end of MG2, he killed his old war buddy Grey Fox (who sided with Big Boss because he was rescued by him), and the trauma of being forced to kill a friend on the opposing side of a battle (along with hating the idea of being a born killer) makes him decide to become a hermit.

MGS1 begins with him being forced out of retirement when his old CO has him outright kidnapped. He's literally forced into the situation because of all the plots and plans he wants no part of or say in. He meets Grey Fox again, and tries to battle him in a way that won't hurt him too badly (or at least this is how I interpret the game mechanically nudging you into fighting Grey Fox hand to hand). He's taunted by multiple bosses that he's not only a born killer, but enjoys it (implicitly because he's good at it).

In the battle with Metal Gear Rex, Fox's last words to Snake are "I was only ever good at fighting, but at least I always thought for what I believed in". Snake for his part can't bring himself to kill him, even though it would destroy Rex (and Fox was about to die anyway). Snake humanises himself in other ways (such as his love of dogs, showing concern for Otacon and Meryl).

There's an entire monologue about choices being more important than genes in Octacon's ending. Meryl's ending also has it a little more subtly, in that the only way to keep her alive is to risk a game over and win at the torture minigame.

In short, it was about the "perfect soldier" being repeatedly told he was such, and had nothing in his life but killing, deciding that he didn't want that. He tries to have a peaceful life, and when that doesn't work out (because of circumstances beyond his control), he settles for fighting for peace by bringing an end to Metal Gears (echoing Fox's last words).

Ultimately, his posthumous cameo (as an unlockable haunted wooden katana) in Metal Gear Rising validates that (it's an easy-to-use non-lethal weapon in a game built very much around lethal combat).

War overall is depicted as a dehumanising force (almost like an Augustinian model of evil), that strips people of their freedom to choose ("war ruined my life, so now I'm going to wage war" is basically the goto villain backstory). MGS3 builds even more heavily on the idea of people being forced to fight and kill loved ones. The later games start dipping into cyberpunk style themes of bodily autonomy and transhumanism (more specifically people having their own bodily autonomy undermined as technology that could help people is instead used to make them better soldiers).

[Rater202]

I've seen the argument that Metal Gear as a franchise isn'tso much anti-war as it is pro-peace.

Like, soldiers and weapons are consistently present as cool and it's pretty clear from how the games present things that there are times when war and violence are necessary.

...Hell, the moral of Revengence seems to be "Don't be too quick to choose violence lest you become a monster, but if you must choose violence, choose overwhelming violence."

But at the end of the day the goal of Snake and Raiden is to preserve peace and even Big Boss wanted peace at first before he realized just how severely he and The Boss got screwed and switched to "created a paradise for soldiers where we'll always have a purpose without getting screwed over and **** everyone else."

[LaZodiac]

I've seen the argument that Metal Gear as a franchise isn'tso much anti-war as it is pro-peace.

Like, soldiers and weapons are consistently present as cool and it's pretty clear from how the games present things that there are times when war and violence are necessary.

...Hell, the moral of Revengence seems to be "Don't be too quick to choose violence lest you become a monster, but if you must choose violence, choose overwhelming violence."

But at the end of the day the goal of Snake and Raiden is to preserve peace and even Big Boss wanted peace at first before he realized just how severely he and The Boss got screwed and switched to "created a paradise for soldiers where we'll always have a purpose without getting screwed over and **** everyone else."

Inside of Hideo Kojima there are two wolves.

One says "war is an abhorrent thing, killing another is monstrous even if necessary, and humanity should be interconnected"

One says "holy **** that tank is so cool look at all it's mechanical parts look at that jet oh man that gun sounds cool oh **** oh man this is rad as hell!"

Revengence is a special case in that it's not made directly by him but is the perfect distillation of all of that, plus a full admission of the secret desire of everyone who has ever had the brutality of modern day monsters press down on them; to reach into their abuser's chest, rip out their heart, and crush it. Because, as you said above, sometimes that's something that needs to be done, even if it's not a morally right thing.

And damn if it isn't satisfying to do.

[Lord Raziere]

Inside of Hideo Kojima there are two wolves.

One says "war is an abhorrent thing, killing another is monstrous even if necessary, and humanity should be interconnected"

One says "holy **** that tank is so cool look at all it's mechanical parts look at that jet oh man that gun sounds cool oh **** oh man this is rad as hell!"

Yeah, thats basically my thought process when contemplating this sort of thing to. Because on one hand the world would be a better place if all just be peaceful and cooperative, and but on the other hand "man that ki attack/jutsu/weapon/anime stunt/etc is awesome." So its not something thats unique to him I think.

[Fyraltari]

It's been said that there are no truly anti-war movie, because every anti-war movie ends up unwillingly glorifiying war.

The same goes for many media, unfortunately.

[Peelee]

It's been said that there are no truly anti-war movie, because every anti-war movie ends up unwillingly glorifiying war.

Note to self, Fyraltari has not seen Life is Beautiful.

[LaZodiac]

It's been said that there are no truly anti-war movie, because every anti-war movie ends up unwillingly glorifiying war.

The same goes for many media, unfortunately.

You can still be anti-war and end up accidentally showing some glorification of war. These two ideas can be held at the same time. Look at something as brutal, horrifying, and bone-chilling as the depicting of the Bay of Pigs in Saving Private Ryan. That sort of ruthless presentation is, so very clearly, anti-war.

And yet it is, without a doubt, and showcase of American exceptionalism and "we are bringing the fight, dying and bleeding but winning, knife in our mouth and gun in our hands". Both of these things do stand out as true.

[Form]

Inside of Hideo Kojima there are two wolves.

One says "war is an abhorrent thing, killing another is monstrous even if necessary, and humanity should be interconnected"

One says "holy **** that tank is so cool look at all it's mechanical parts look at that jet oh man that gun sounds cool oh **** oh man this is rad as hell!"

Revengence is a special case in that it's not made directly by him but is the perfect distillation of all of that, plus a full admission of the secret desire of everyone who has ever had the brutality of modern day monsters press down on them; to reach into their abuser's chest, rip out their heart, and crush it. Because, as you said above, sometimes that's something that needs to be done, even if it's not a morally right thing.

And damn if it isn't satisfying to do.

In think video games in general tend to run into that problem. A game may be able to portray the horrors of war well enough to deliver an emotional gut punch to the player, but for it to draw players and warrant playing it still needs to offer good gameplay or a compelling narrative or something, at least. It still needs to make war interesting or 'fun' in some way.

[Peelee]

Look at something as brutal, horrifying, and bone-chilling as the depicting of the Bay of Pigs in Saving Private Ryan.

So the Bay of Pigs is on a different continent than Normandy is.

[Rater202]

In think video games in general tend to run into that problem. A game may be able to portray the horrors of war well enough to deliver an emotional gut punch to the player, but for it to draw players and warrant playing it still needs to offer good gameplay or a compelling narrative or something, at least. It still needs to make war interesting or 'fun' in some way.

And if you don't do that, you get Spec Ops: The Line, which is a shooter that criticizes you for playing it and railroads you into doing bad things so it has more ammunition to criticize you.

Like, there's a scenario where the developers intend for you to use white phosphorous artillery to take out a heavily defended checkpoint in order the progress only for it to turn out there were innocent civilians in the checkpoint that you have no way of knowing about.

If you try to fight through the checkpoint without using the artillery, the game will just keep spawning in endless waves of enemies until you're overwhelmed.

If you metagame and aim the artillery so that the civilians aren't in the blast area the game will just flat out spawn in an armored vehicle that wasn't there before that you're required to destroy to progress and hey it's right next to the civilians.

The game just flat out says that you should have stopped playing the game and like... Why even make a game if you don't want people to play it?

The developers eventually admitted that they got pissy because the Playtesters kept resuing to do a warcrime and kept finding ways to clear the objective without doing the thing so they kept reprogrammign the scenario until it was literally impossible to pass until you warcrimed.

[Lord Raziere]

And if you don't do that, you get Spec Ops: The Line, which is a shooter that criticizes you for playing it and railroads you into doing bad things so it has more ammunition to criticize you.

Pretty much. such a game is only enjoyable if you take a dissociative view of player and the character: the character is criticized for their actions and the player is just someone piloting the character through the story they're meant to go through and thus experience through the character without actually being the same. but often it seems that people take an associative view and equate the character they control with themselves, even if the character has their own personality and issues that don't relate to the player's own issues or identity. which I find strange myself.

[LaZodiac]

In think video games in general tend to run into that problem. A game may be able to portray the horrors of war well enough to deliver an emotional gut punch to the player, but for it to draw players and warrant playing it still needs to offer good gameplay or a compelling narrative or something, at least. It still needs to make war interesting or 'fun' in some way.

Yeah, this is the real difficulty. Games are a much more hands-on experience, so it can be very difficult to both get across the horror, without indulging too much in the cool war otaku stuff.

So the Bay of Pigs was a different continent than the Normandy beach invasion.

I'm not a historian my point still stands.

And if you don't do that, you get Spec Ops: The Line, which is a shooter that criticizes you for playing it and railroads you into doing bad things so it has more ammunition to criticize you.

Like, there's a scenario where the developers intend for you to use white phosphorous artillery to take out a heavily defended checkpoint in order the progress only for it to turn out there were innocent civilians in the checkpoint that you have no way of knowing about.

If you try to fight through the checkpoint without using the artillery, the game will just keep spawning in endless waves of enemies until you're overwhelmed.

If you metagame and aim the artillery so that the civilians aren't in the blast area the game will just flat out spawn in an armored vehicle that wasn't there before that you're required to destroy to progress and hey it's right next to the civilians.

The game just flat out says that you should have stopped playing the game and like... Why even make a game if you don't want people to play it?

The developers eventually admitted that they got pissy because the Playtesters kept resuing to do a warcrime and kept finding ways to clear the objective without doing the thing so they kept reprogrammign the scenario until it was literally impossible to pass until you warcrimed.

They also left in ways to avoid some things- like if you're skilled enough you can save both hostages, and you don't need to shoot at the crowd or let your sniper friend die near the end. Spec Ops The Line is absolutely brilliant and I just flatly disagree with most criticisms against it because it does successfully get across the horrors of this stuff, and how someone in this situation might fall into them so easily and readily.

I've always felt the "if you want an ending where they walk away, just walk away yourself" stuff was partly tongue in cheek. Because it's true, in that situation, the heroes could have left. They went in too deep, almost did something bad, and left. But that's not how the story progresses, that's not the thesis of the work. It's not making you play the game, you're choosing to, and if you don't feel comfortable with it don't play. It's not bad to tap out if it's not to your taste.

Or, as Raziere says below; while you may be hands on with the game, you don't have to take responsibility for the actions of the character. You just gotta think about them.

Pretty much. such a game is only enjoyable if you take a dissociative view of player and the character: the character is criticized for their actions and the player is just someone piloting the character through the story they're meant to go through and thus experience through the character without actually being the same. but often it seems that people take an associative view and equate the character they control with themselves, even if the character has their own personality and issues that don't relate to the player's own issues or identity. which I find strange myself.

Yeah, that's always been really easy for me, especially in games where the player is very rigidly defined and stuff. I don't feel responsible for my actions in Spec Ops, I'm just playing out their essay, effectively. I'm not a sinner for reading it. It's so easy to drift into that mentality though, so I get it- some games encourage it, and everyone feels connected to a point with the characters they play. It's "your guy" even if it's not "you".

[Rater202]

Pretty much. such a game is only enjoyable if you take a dissociative view of player and the character: the character is criticized for their actions and the player is just someone piloting the character through the story they're meant to go through and thus experience through the character without actually being the same. but often it seems that people take an associative view and equate the character they control with themselves, even if the character has their own personality and issues that don't relate to the player's own issues or identity. which I find strange myself.

To a lesser extent, railroading you and then criticizing you for what the game made you do is a recurring problem in the game industry.

The only way, for example, to not realize that your dead drops have been tampered with in the Dark Brotherhood questline in Oblivion is to not even look at them and not loot the bodies of your next five targets. Then later you get proof that this wasn't the doing of your handler and he's been set up but isn't able to stop him from being tortured to death... Or show your evidence to his killers, which results in most of them being killed by the real traitor.

Psychonauts 2 and Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword both have characters criticize the player character for being late when you have no choice but to be late.

[Fyraltari]

You can still be anti-war and end up accidentally showing some glorification of war. These two ideas can be held at the same time. Look at something as brutal, horrifying, and bone-chilling as the depicting of the Bay of Pigs in Saving Private Ryan. That sort of ruthless presentation is, so very clearly, anti-war.

And yet it is, without a doubt, and showcase of American exceptionalism and "we are bringing the fight, dying and bleeding but winning, knife in our mouth and gun in our hands". Both of these things do stand out as true.

Yeah, no. If you try to paint war as bad and end up making it look cool, you're just communicating poorly.

I'd say, the way to do an anti-war movie is to not do a war movie. Don't follow soldiers, follow the civilians caught in the conflict. Or if you must follow soldiers follow deserters or don't have them win at the end.

[LaZodiac]

Yeah, no. If you try to paint war as bad and end up making it look cool, you're just communicating poorly.

I'd say, the way to do an anti-war movie is to not do a war movie. Don't follow soldiers, follow the civilians caught in the conflict. Or if you must follow soldiers follow deserters or don't have them win at the end.

That's a way to do it, of course. You could also linger on the devastation of it.

But there'll always be the tank freak in the audience going "oh **** that's an M69 Abrams they used children to load the shells as opposed to auto loaders since it was actually faster" or something. So you cannot ever make it perfect, no matter how much you try to present the cool bad thing as more bad than cool.

[Lord Raziere]

That's a way to do it, of course. You could also linger on the devastation of it.

But there'll always be the tank freak in the audience going "oh **** that's an M69 Abrams they used children to load the shells as opposed to auto loaders since it was actually faster" or something. So you cannot ever make it perfect, no matter how much you try to present the cool bad thing as more bad than cool.

Yeah and what if you want to make a piece of media with awesome fight scenes? are you not allowed to say that war or fighting is bad if you want to make something like that? are you supposed to hope that everyone takes it as escapism and not as a pro-war message? wouldn't that be worse than at least acknowledging that its bad on some level?

[Peelee]

I'm not a historian my point still stands.

A.) it absolutely stands, yeah. Which is why the only nut I picked was the location.
2.) technically it's "I'm no geographer".

[Form]

Yeah, no. If you try to paint war as bad and end up making it look cool, you're just communicating poorly.

I'd say, the way to do an anti-war movie is to not do a war movie. Don't follow soldiers, follow the civilians caught in the conflict. Or if you must follow soldiers follow deserters or don't have them win at the end.

This War of Mine is an example of a game that does this. In that game you play as a few civilians stuck in a war zone trying to scrounge together whatever they can find to survive. Though even then there's nothing stopping the player from using the weapons they can find for defense against bandits and raiders for raiding themselves. There's nothing stopping you from shooting that sick old man's son and looting all the food and medicine they have.

It comes at a psychological cost to your characters and is not a decision meant to be taken lightly, but if you want to then you absolutely can play that game as a violent munchkin.

Yeah and what if you want to make a piece of media with awesome fight scenes? are you not allowed to say that war or fighting is bad if you want to make something like that? are you supposed to hope that everyone takes it as escapism and not as a pro-war message? wouldn't that be worse than at least acknowledging that its bad on some level?

You can still do that, but it depends on how you do it and on what message any given member of the audience wants to take home. It's very easy to add awesome fight scenes to an anti-war film and end up giving mixed signals, though, but I wouldn't say it's impossible. Just more difficult than without those awesome fight scenes.

Of course it's also perfectly possible to understand the horrors of war whilst making a piece of media that's mostly awesome fight scenes without an anti-war message. You don't have to add a moral to everything you make.

I mean, I've greatly enjoyed committing various warcrimes in Brigador myself, but I certainly hope that people don't hold that against me and think I'm really some mass murdering psychopath.

[HalfTangible]

It's been said that there are no truly anti-war movie, because every anti-war movie ends up unwillingly glorifiying war.

The same goes for many media, unfortunately.

All Quiet on the Western Front

Next.

[Peelee]

All Quiet on the Western Front

Next.

Haven't seen Next, but Jojo Rabbit is particularly delightful.

[Beeftank]

My flight physical today consisted of quickly getting my eyes checked followed by sitting for 5 hours only to be told to come back tomorrow. I do not have a very good relationship with Navy Medicine right now.

[Peelee]

My flight physical today consisted of quickly getting my eyes checked followed by sitting for 5 hours only to be told to come back tomorrow. I do not have a very good relationship with Navy Medicine right now.

I have a very important question that will frame how big an inconvenience I see this as.

Did you get paid for those five hours?

[Beeftank]

The way the pay works is more like salary instead of hourly, but yeah, I’m getting paid. The training pipeline is backed up right now so a lot of Ensigns are sitting around doing minimal duties, but it’s still a pain to wake up at 4AM just to sit in a health clinic waiting room.

[Peelee]

The way the pay works is more like salary instead of hourly, but yeah, I’m getting paid. The training pipeline is backed up right now so a lot of Ensigns are sitting around doing minimal duties, but it’s still a pain to wake up at 4AM just to sit in a health clinic waiting room.

I understand (also going for a fed job, but not military). So it's still annoying, but I can at least put my torch and pitchfork away.

[Rater202]

So my mother went over to my aunts house to see my cousins and and when she came back she said they were getting ready for the kids first haircut.

And for some reason it made me think of his kid who I met in the sixth grade. When I met him, his hair was like, a centimeter long but he never got a haircut in the entire time I met him and by graduation he had a mullet down past his ass.

And out no nowhere I started wondering if he ever got his hair cut.

I have the mental image of showing up to my high school reunion and there'll just be some Cousin Itt looking sonovagun chilling on the sidelines.

[Peelee]

So my mother went over to my aunts house to see my cousins and and when she came back she said they were getting ready for the kids first haircut.

And for some reason it made me think of his kid who I met in the sixth grade. When I met him, his hair was like, a centimeter long but he never got a haircut in the entire time I met him and by graduation he had a mullet down past his ass.

And out no nowhere I started wondering if he ever got his hair cut.

I have the mental image of showing up to my high school reunion and there'll just be some Cousin Itt looking sonovagun chilling on the sidelines.

Depends on his genetics. Hair has a growth cycle and will only get so far before it stops, which differs person to person.