Laughing and Crying

Yesterday, while we all generally agreed we don't see the point of comparing games to movies, we decided to embrace an analogy for the sake of discussion, and make the assumption that gaming will get its own equivalent of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane someday - an event that will blow the doors open on games' sophistication and cultural relevance to a larger audience.

And I said that while I feel, on an indescribable level, for Metal Gear Solid 4 more than perhaps any other game in my lifetime, it is not it.

This is largely because in MGS4, Kojima becomes more insular than ever. More literal, perhaps, and still masterful, but the MGS series, from its canonical beginning to its end, compares more to the great postmodern novel than to any film - I think of Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, for one thing.

Such stories in literature start out with a compelling set of metaphors and interconnected imagery, presented as grounded, digestible, concrete events. But as those themes dance spirographs around each other, creating nesting dolls of metaphor, the narrative density accumulates, it spins away from easy grasp and ends a painfully poignant human story, leaving the reader to search its obscure touchstones and attach them, often debatably, to the larger human experience.

At its end, Metal Gear Solid 4 resolved the series' characters much more neatly than it did its themes and messages - in that respect, it's like the postmodern novel in reverse. But this game demands a much greater emotional investment than those books. After all, it's, well, a game, and the player needs to maintain motivation to take often mechanically-challenging action, not simply ponder.

The concentration demanded by Kojima's often lugubrious narrative construction means that details are usually lost. The experience becomes accessible abstractly, in wide-lens view, but not in any concrete way. The greatest mark against Metal Gear Solid 4 is that it loses all its meaning when absorbed by someone who's not a fan - and the greatest mark against the series as a whole is that to invest meaning in new revelations, fans must discard the old ones.

A series meant to present the framework for commentary on both world events and the concept of the self has restricted its relevance only to those who are devoted to navigating that framework. It could have been a title for many, but it's a title only for a few. It is not our Citizen Kane; it's more like our Star Wars.

Now, being a Star Wars is no failure. Lucas' original trilogy brought an entire nation under the wing of science fiction, showed that we could have fantasy that wasn't solely for children, saw that relevant emotional and political themes could be successfully transposed into a completely imaginary world.

Beyond that, though, it was an experience that crossed formerly delineated social lines and enervated a nation. Would that the Metal Gear Solid series had an impact on that scale. It hasn't and likely won't, but it may have paved the way for its descendant. Maybe the world will be ready for Kojima's next project, when it arrives.

Until then, though, MGS seems destined to remain mostly within the loving cradle of its devotees. It's a shame, because it is indeed more sophisticated as a series than any of its contemporaries, and the fourth game's depth, elegance and maturity trumps any game presently in existence.

And it's doubly a shame, because even if MGS4 were the revolutionary, we'd never recognize it. And when the ambassador comes, we'll probably scorn it, because it will lack all of the conventions with which we're familiar. I agree with those commenters yesterday who said that the lens of history will determine our turning point, which will probably sneak quietly by us in a cardboard box when it comes.

That's right, we're far from blameless in this, and if anything, the non-fan response to MGS4 has proven it to me. I'll explain that next time.