The world seems best appreciated vicariously through the metaphysical virtues that care and reasoning may provide, though it is most often only enjoyed for the shallow offerings that vice and consumption may offer us.

It do be like that sometimes

My journey into the heart of the Cold War has been a surprisingly cynical experience, which, given both the subject material, and my own personally self-acknowledged outlook, is absolutely fucking looney tunes, all things considered. To clarify: I am speaking about my general findings and focuses involved with my current playthrough of the Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (MGS3) remake, dubbed Delta. I’ve been referring to the title in shorthand as MGS3, as for all intents and purposes, both the remake and the original, are largely the same game, which I’ve successfully avoided throwing a Tasmanian devil level shit-fit about, unlike so many others in the community, but no matter. There’s still much to discuss in relation to the atmosphere of what MGS3 brings to the table, and like most of my attempts about discussing games that have been analyzed ad nauseum by the time I get around to writing about them, I always enjoy trying to find new ways of discussing them, or at least, taking a path less traveled, in terms of seeing them from a more novel perspective, for both yours and I’s sake in the matter.

I mentioned awhile back that I was interested in breaking down the semantics of why people seem to struggle with stealth, at least, in the context of MGS3. To be honest, what I’m about to detail about how the enemy AI operates in MGS3, is I think, mostly how AI functions in most stealth games, but we will remain yet fixated on this title alone for the time being So, while I remain confident that for many, the reason a lot of people who don’t do “the thing” they are suppose to, I.E. be the fuck quiet, to succeed in the MGS universe, through appropriately utilizing the in-game systems the way they ought to be understood, is because they don’t apply themselves more regularly, and therefore, fail in achieving a bare minimum standard, which was a point of contention I laid out in detail some articles back. I think the points I made, in reference to the Turn Signal Paradox, were all fair, albeit speculative, but certainly in line with the notion that some people are just too abjectly apathetic and or listlessly lazy to navigate something like a stealth game in its intended manner, the way it was intentionally designed to be played like, but at least in the realm of MGS3, not playing quiet like is not a make or break for those with a louder disposition at the ready. However, we press on to discuss relevant matters at hand: what about the people who authentically care about being stealthy, not the apathetic or lazy portion of the player base that do in fact, possess iotas of fucks to give in the matter, about playing in a low key way, but just can’t wrap their head around how to do so more efficiently? Where is the disconnect there? Well, when I was considering why more people aren’t better at stealth games, I realized that it might be due to the fact that stealth games are largely predicated on logic, but in more rigidly extreme ways then how other games operate, and in ways gamers may tend to discount or are otherwise completely oblivious about, in just how logical the game prefers you to be.

To that point, for anyone who played MGS1, they probably remember Mei Ling’s magnum opus in the realm of invention, which came in the form of the Soliton Radar, which essentially was an advanced motion tracker of sorts. The unique thing about the Soliton Radar, was that it revealed to the player more detail about the enemy combatants than most other devices like it in the field. (For full transparency, and in a moment of radical disclosure, I can’t remember exactly the precise amount of detail the Soliton Radar shows at the current moment***, ***dependent on difficulty levels*** in MGS1, so for all intents and purposes, I’m just referring to normal for now.) At least on default difficulty, one could see the enemies “cones of vision” on the Soliton Radar, which meant you could see what was essentially a massive colorized triangle, that acted as the enemies sight reference point for how far and wide they could see. This was obviously very helpful in helping the player navigate where not to be, in terms of not being seen by the enemy. On higher difficulties, the cone of vision expanded and lengthened, to accommodate for the extra difficulty of course. Auditory receptivity is in play here as well, but at least when the soldiers hear you moving, they come to investigate, and it’s not an instant make or break (except for firing an unsilenced gun/setting off an explosion), so making some noise is not the end of the world, as one can obviously hide (doi), which on some level, makes the more vague nature of just how to navigate the audio space more justified, in not having a greater exactness of boundary on the matter, and this is all covered in a tutorial in MGS1, of course. It’s worth it to mention the Soliton Radar is not available in every game in the series (See: MGS3), and not on every difficulty level even in the games it is, either.

So what does that all mean? What this essentially means is that this schema, as it were, involving the basic standards of sense-data of how enemy perception works, does carry forward and is basically the standard for the entirety of the MGS series. However, there are a couple of things worth noting here, some of which are objectively true, some of which are subjectively reasonable to assert, but largely fair critiques based on prior experience in the matter. Firstly, the series never really beats the dead horse of understanding on this matter throughout the series, which means, at least in how I interpret this, is that the assumption on the dev teams part, for anyone who plays any game in this series, hopefully remembers this exact tutorial from MGS1 as a reference point, which you know, big ask from gamers at large, in my opinion. That doesn’t mean one can’t understand this through experimentation of play to understand, or that one can’t “manage” without knowing this, but one will likely be more hobbled in efficiency having not known this fact. Secondly, and perhaps from a more humorous point of fair contingency related to my article detailing the Turn Signal Paradox, in that we can’t seemingly trust people to hit a bare minimum standard in being “responsible drivers”, in being able to do something as easy as use a turn signal with regularity (which, in continuing to beat the dead horse of understanding at this very moment, “being a responsible driver” is an implicit metaphor for “one in control”, I.E., a gamer “driving the experience”), and it brings into focus an extraordinarily relevant question, as to how many people will really retain/understand/give a shit at getting the hang of this kind of spatial awareness system for the entirety of an in-game universe, one of which they may or not revisit once every several years, depending on their levels of interest.

I think thirdly, and what helps to bring into question the concern of whether or not one would memorize this, is due to the ides that enemy AI in other games, like any basic shooter for example, doesn’t necessarily use this same logic, at least, in reference to games outside of the stealth genre, nor does either that systems existence, or how this one functions, means either of said systems are at all understood or acknowledged by the average laymen, so keeping in mind a separate logic system in one’s own head, totally independent of how a separate reality may function in reference of all that has been said, is totally up for extremely dubious fucking grabs.

Which kind of has me arriving at my point here, though I’m not sure I’ve adequately “earned it” on some weird level, as there is a lot to explain on this matter, more so than I think I even initially realized, and that people are likely troubled in coping with, in terms of being stealthy in the MGS universe at the very least, and that is because to be effective at being stealthy overall, it is actually more reliant on the metaphysics of logic, more so than the rationale of common sense vis a vie spatial awareness, which are indeed, two separate entities, and something I feel as if I’ve established here and elsewhere, people absolutely do not fucking possess.

As I check the time, the word count, and attempt to search my own mind for something which I thought was going to be a more solid conclusion to all of this when I first conceived of this article, I’m now realizing that the piece de resistance that was to act as a finalization of this whole conceit has seemingly left me, creating a sadness within, as I don’t feel as if there remains a sufficient wrap up to bring all of this together in a better final summation on the matter. All I can conclude is that, considering how all of the systems function in MGS, there is a surprising amount of depth to contend with, most of which I think is totally lost on the player, truth be told, and leads me to believe that it was likely not necessarily the mechanics at play as to why people fell in love with the series, but the overall “zeitgeist” and personal branding that Kojima injected into the entire thing, but that might be something we have to save for another time.

The sad standard of the human condition was the only commonality across all realities.

-Pashford