YOUR ROOM IS AS EMPTY AS YOUR HEART D:
Jun. 24th, 2008 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
croikBeat MGS and MGS2 :D
Even though MGS is so last gen now, it still provides a very unique Metal Gear experience. It's hard for me to call it the "best" because it just doesn't have the benefit of the technology the later games have: going from MGS3 to MGS, I really missed having first person aiming and just being able to roll. It doesn't have the interactivity and the humor later games have. But in terms of character and plot, it's still high up there. I definitely enjoy it over 3.
As much as I enjoy the "nicer" Snake in 2 and 4, I still have a big soft spot for the angry, semi-emo Snake in Shadow Moses. The strength of his personality shows through in every instance, and it's here that he forms relationships with the most important characters in the series. Seeing him and Otacon interact for the first time makes me happy every time I play through it: even though Otacon proves immediately that he's a clueless nerd, and Snake could have easily written him off as useless and a coward, he never really underestimated him. By the end he even trusted and depended on him. They make such a great team...! <3333
I'd forgotten how sappy Snake and Meryl got by the end, though XD;;. They were practically a couple. Gotta keep that in mind next time I play 4, since that is the canon ending.
MGS really does make me wish that they had redone MG1 and 2 at some point, though. Even if it wasn't a full remake - just an upgrade with extra dialogue or something, to give us all more of Snake and Fox, since they were supposedly so close. When Snakes says they were best friends, I believe him of course, and the actors do a great job of giving us a taste of their relationship. But I still wish we had a liiiiittle bit more.
REX is also really annoying to fight when you're used to having a roll button and then you don't have it >:I
...And I still prefer all the original accents to the Twin Snakes ones!!
And then, you have Raiden :D
MGS2 was the first of the series I played, so it'll always have a special place in my heart <3 (I can admit it: someone told me I should play it because Raiden is hot, so I rented it. I didn't really know much about the series before then - I was originally more of an RPG fan). It has a totally different feeling from MGS in a lot of ways: most of the game takes place in broad daylight, with clean military settings rather than the dark, bleak Alaskan Shadow Moses, and I did kind of miss that darker, more urgent atmosphere.
But the Big Shell does do one thing I really liked that the other games didn't use as much: the use of a very contained environment. Because most of the action takes place at various places within the same facility you really get to know the place. I'm sure not everyone appreciates the amount of backtracking, but I liked that feeling of containment. If you need to get from one place to another, you already have an idea of how to do that. MGS was kind of like that, too, but 3 felt more linear - there were places that cut you off from going back, and the majority of the game was all about going north. Not to spoil anything, but 4 is probably the most linear of them all in terms of the gameplay areas, which was one of my minor complaints about it.
MGS2 takes a lot of heat for Raiden, Rose, and the wackiness of the ending, but I love all those things. Raiden is whiny but at least he had a lot of presence - he had something to say about everything that happened, went between depending on and not trusting Snake, and over all gave the game a unique feel to it. After playing as Snake, bitchmaster, it's fun to play the other end of the spectrum and see someone unsure. Especially when him attaching onto Snake is so cute <3
And seriously, forcing you to run naked through a metal intestine full of cyber Tengu while your codec barks nonsense is pure brilliant fun >:D
And then there's The Patriots... Watching the end of 2 takes on an entirely different meaning when after seeing 4, but in order to talk about it there must be spoilers. Here's some space to prevent spoiling.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
P
A
C
E
*
*
*
*
*Spoiler Space*
At the end of MGS2 we learn that The Patriots are not a group of twelve men, but an inhuman entity. That's just awesome.
When you think about it, what makes up self-aware being anyway? A living brain is, more or less, a means of collecting and reacting to data. Information comes to the brain from the rest of the body or from the senses. The brain processes this information and reacts - either to direct bodily functions or respond to some kind of danger in the enviornment. The more information an animal is able to process and respond to, the smarter they are: humans are separated from other animals because they have more complicated means of taking in and responding to the world around us. We identify and find solutions for issues that animals don't.
I'm sure a biologist would give a different explanation, but that's just one way of looking at it.
So what happens when you have an advanced AI system that is able to taking in, process, and react to information 100x times the speed and efficiency of a human? Information comes in to the White House all the time. The government procesess and responds to it. It commands "organs" that have specific functions. Looked at on a whole, you could say that a country behaves like a living body - it's all about working as a unit with a brain at the center, and each cell (each person) carrying out their function properly.
So if an AI were at the head of a country, taking over the principle functions of the "brain" better than any biological brain could, is it so insane to think that a country itself could achieve consciousness? A religious person might say you need a soul for that, but the truth is no one knows for sure what it was that really gave humanity its self-awareness. Is it so hard to believe that it could be created artificially?
I think that's what The Patriots were originally intended to be: a conscious entity that formed across America over the course of hundred years, as technology improved to the point of instantaneous data transfer.
MGS4 retcons that a little by stating The Patriots was really a system of AIs intentionally created to rule the country - it was not something that self-formed in the White House, as the fake colonel describes. They don't specifically talk about all the babble Raiden got at the end of 2, except to say that The Patriots have assumed the kind of control they were intended to have: control over all information, all weapons, all systems relevant to life. And by the end of the game, they wipe that AI out.
Knowing now that The Patriots were always an AI in a computer, that begs the question... were they still self-aware? Zero created The Patriots to carry on his legacy, to rule the world as he saw fit, but unless you believe that MGS2's explanation was entirely retconned, you *could* say The Patriots as an entity already existed, and Zero's technology merely granted it the means to carry out its will. 4 describes The Patriots as having "taken on a life of its own" and expanding beyond Zero's original intent, just like any sci-fi movie about artificial intelligence. Make a computer too smart and it will think for itself. But is that the same as developing consciousness? And if a computer really were to develop not just intelligence but consciousness, would breaking the computer really destroy that?
If you assume the consciousness of The Patriots wasn't formed just because of a system of AIs but because of the flow of information/reaction through the White House iself, did destroying JD really "kill" The Patriots at all?
I'm sure Kojima would say, "YES CROIK, IT'S OVER, SHUT UP." But I still think it's an interesting topic.
...It's going to make me want to fic >:I
Even though MGS is so last gen now, it still provides a very unique Metal Gear experience. It's hard for me to call it the "best" because it just doesn't have the benefit of the technology the later games have: going from MGS3 to MGS, I really missed having first person aiming and just being able to roll. It doesn't have the interactivity and the humor later games have. But in terms of character and plot, it's still high up there. I definitely enjoy it over 3.
As much as I enjoy the "nicer" Snake in 2 and 4, I still have a big soft spot for the angry, semi-emo Snake in Shadow Moses. The strength of his personality shows through in every instance, and it's here that he forms relationships with the most important characters in the series. Seeing him and Otacon interact for the first time makes me happy every time I play through it: even though Otacon proves immediately that he's a clueless nerd, and Snake could have easily written him off as useless and a coward, he never really underestimated him. By the end he even trusted and depended on him. They make such a great team...! <3333
I'd forgotten how sappy Snake and Meryl got by the end, though XD;;. They were practically a couple. Gotta keep that in mind next time I play 4, since that is the canon ending.
MGS really does make me wish that they had redone MG1 and 2 at some point, though. Even if it wasn't a full remake - just an upgrade with extra dialogue or something, to give us all more of Snake and Fox, since they were supposedly so close. When Snakes says they were best friends, I believe him of course, and the actors do a great job of giving us a taste of their relationship. But I still wish we had a liiiiittle bit more.
REX is also really annoying to fight when you're used to having a roll button and then you don't have it >:I
...And I still prefer all the original accents to the Twin Snakes ones!!
And then, you have Raiden :D
MGS2 was the first of the series I played, so it'll always have a special place in my heart <3 (I can admit it: someone told me I should play it because Raiden is hot, so I rented it. I didn't really know much about the series before then - I was originally more of an RPG fan). It has a totally different feeling from MGS in a lot of ways: most of the game takes place in broad daylight, with clean military settings rather than the dark, bleak Alaskan Shadow Moses, and I did kind of miss that darker, more urgent atmosphere.
But the Big Shell does do one thing I really liked that the other games didn't use as much: the use of a very contained environment. Because most of the action takes place at various places within the same facility you really get to know the place. I'm sure not everyone appreciates the amount of backtracking, but I liked that feeling of containment. If you need to get from one place to another, you already have an idea of how to do that. MGS was kind of like that, too, but 3 felt more linear - there were places that cut you off from going back, and the majority of the game was all about going north. Not to spoil anything, but 4 is probably the most linear of them all in terms of the gameplay areas, which was one of my minor complaints about it.
MGS2 takes a lot of heat for Raiden, Rose, and the wackiness of the ending, but I love all those things. Raiden is whiny but at least he had a lot of presence - he had something to say about everything that happened, went between depending on and not trusting Snake, and over all gave the game a unique feel to it. After playing as Snake, bitchmaster, it's fun to play the other end of the spectrum and see someone unsure. Especially when him attaching onto Snake is so cute <3
And seriously, forcing you to run naked through a metal intestine full of cyber Tengu while your codec barks nonsense is pure brilliant fun >:D
And then there's The Patriots... Watching the end of 2 takes on an entirely different meaning when after seeing 4, but in order to talk about it there must be spoilers. Here's some space to prevent spoiling.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
P
A
C
E
*
*
*
*
*Spoiler Space*
At the end of MGS2 we learn that The Patriots are not a group of twelve men, but an inhuman entity. That's just awesome.
When you think about it, what makes up self-aware being anyway? A living brain is, more or less, a means of collecting and reacting to data. Information comes to the brain from the rest of the body or from the senses. The brain processes this information and reacts - either to direct bodily functions or respond to some kind of danger in the enviornment. The more information an animal is able to process and respond to, the smarter they are: humans are separated from other animals because they have more complicated means of taking in and responding to the world around us. We identify and find solutions for issues that animals don't.
I'm sure a biologist would give a different explanation, but that's just one way of looking at it.
So what happens when you have an advanced AI system that is able to taking in, process, and react to information 100x times the speed and efficiency of a human? Information comes in to the White House all the time. The government procesess and responds to it. It commands "organs" that have specific functions. Looked at on a whole, you could say that a country behaves like a living body - it's all about working as a unit with a brain at the center, and each cell (each person) carrying out their function properly.
So if an AI were at the head of a country, taking over the principle functions of the "brain" better than any biological brain could, is it so insane to think that a country itself could achieve consciousness? A religious person might say you need a soul for that, but the truth is no one knows for sure what it was that really gave humanity its self-awareness. Is it so hard to believe that it could be created artificially?
I think that's what The Patriots were originally intended to be: a conscious entity that formed across America over the course of hundred years, as technology improved to the point of instantaneous data transfer.
MGS4 retcons that a little by stating The Patriots was really a system of AIs intentionally created to rule the country - it was not something that self-formed in the White House, as the fake colonel describes. They don't specifically talk about all the babble Raiden got at the end of 2, except to say that The Patriots have assumed the kind of control they were intended to have: control over all information, all weapons, all systems relevant to life. And by the end of the game, they wipe that AI out.
Knowing now that The Patriots were always an AI in a computer, that begs the question... were they still self-aware? Zero created The Patriots to carry on his legacy, to rule the world as he saw fit, but unless you believe that MGS2's explanation was entirely retconned, you *could* say The Patriots as an entity already existed, and Zero's technology merely granted it the means to carry out its will. 4 describes The Patriots as having "taken on a life of its own" and expanding beyond Zero's original intent, just like any sci-fi movie about artificial intelligence. Make a computer too smart and it will think for itself. But is that the same as developing consciousness? And if a computer really were to develop not just intelligence but consciousness, would breaking the computer really destroy that?
If you assume the consciousness of The Patriots wasn't formed just because of a system of AIs but because of the flow of information/reaction through the White House iself, did destroying JD really "kill" The Patriots at all?
I'm sure Kojima would say, "YES CROIK, IT'S OVER, SHUT UP." But I still think it's an interesting topic.
...It's going to make me want to fic >:I
