Eva Potts
LIT3605
12/11/19
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
	Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is an oddity as far as media about war goes, and especially as far as video games about war go. It’s a hack ‘n slash title, wherein you play as a cyborg ninja called Raiden in his single-minded revenge quest to take down the private military company Desperado. The gameplay consists largely of you butchering your way through hordes of cybernetic soldiers with nothing but your wits, your strength, and a sword that can cleave through steel like a lightsaber through butter. It contains no depictions of warfare in the modern, mechanized sense, and indeed, the very concept of conventional warfare has been rendered obsolete. It takes place in the near-future of 2018, where readily available cybernetic enhancements have rendered the common foot soldier nearly immune to bullets, and battles are waged with futuristic high-frequency blades. Raiden, the protagonist, throws a fifty-meter tall armored fighting robot fully into the air before slicing it into tiny pieces, in a bout of action that’s more akin to an outlandish action movie than anything resembling real warfare, and this happens within the game’s first ten minutes.
	With the game being a squarely fantastical rendition of cybernetically enhanced melee combat, and never dealing with the massive engagements that define warfare in the usual sense, one might ask if it’s actually a war story, or indeed, a story that has any bearing on war at all. Our protagonist certainly isn’t the fragile human infantryman that stars in All Quiet on the Western Front or Saving Private Ryan. Raiden is a custom-enhanced cyborg, fast enough to swat bullets out of the air with his sword, strong enough to cleave through armored vehicles, and no number of normal soldiers can pose a threat to him consequently. It’s divorced from war in the usual sense, and our protagonist has little of the vulnerability that creates the greatest conflict in any war story, survival.
	It’s fortunate, then, that the game’s story deals almost entirely with the conflicts of ex-soldiers, and details in length what it is that drives them to fight. It’s a story that deals with perhaps the most fundamental question any war story asks, but that few dare to answer; why is it we fight, and does our reasoning make the bloodshed worthwhile? These questions are presented by the game’s casts of antagonists, all of them lethal cybernetic soldiers, as you battle with them. They’re all veterans of warfare, and all of them have adopted their own philosophy and reasoning for why it is they fight, and what justifies the violence they inflict. All their philosophies are in contrast with Raiden’s own, and the resultant clash of ideology is presented through frenetic melee combat, with the dominant philosophy winning out.
	All that being the case, we should start with the game’s beginning. A few important details are established in the game’s opening moments. Our protagonist, Raiden, is operating on behalf of Maverick, a private military company currently fulfilling a security contract in a nondescript African country. The country was previously war-torn and instable, but in the span of three years, Maverick’s efforts, with Raiden at the helm, has turned their army into a well-trained professional outfit, one able to keep order in the country, and transform it into a quaint but peaceful nation. Raiden’s guiding philosophy is made evident quickly; he believes that it’s the duty of the strong to protect the weak, and that preemptive violence against potential threats can stop greater bloodshed from arising. In his words, “one sword keeps another in the sheath.” He’s a veteran, an ex-child soldier from Liberia, and his affinity for other people caught in situations where they’ve no choice but to fight is his ultimate motivation to defend them.
	Of course, the game doesn’t start in Africa so Raiden can see the sights. He’s defending the country’s prime minister in what should be an uneventful bit of security detail, but the situation goes sideways when the prime minister’s motorcade is assaulted by a rival private military company, the aforementioned Desperado. The motorcade is halted and destroyed piecemeal by an assault of cybernetic infantry, and the prime minister is kidnapped by Desperado’s own de facto leader, a cyborg super-soldier called Sundowner. The motivation given is simple enough; Sundowner profits from the war economy, and peacekeeping missions in Africa are tantamount to lost income for him and Desperado both. He’s assassinating the prime minister purely to destabilize the region and fan the flames of conflict. We’re not told yet, but ultimately, his guiding ideology is profiteering, and the sheer enjoyment of war itself. He’s the rare soldier that enters battle and is left wanting for more when it ends, and propagating conflict so he always has a war to fight is his largest motivation.
	Sundowner, of course, doesn’t kill the PM immediately. He flees, and Raiden has no choice but to give pursuit, and in the process, destroy a Desperado-owned fighting machine, a fifty-meter tall bipedal robot called a Metal Gear. The fight is largely a diversion but comes replete with a Japanese power rock theme song whose lyrics foreshadow the changing nature of warfare in this setting’s earth. Military power is being increasingly centralized in the hands of single, extremely capable cyborgs like Raiden. Mostly, it’s a justification for the player to hit things with a sword as a one-man army.
	Nevertheless, Raiden is undeterred, and finally catches Sundowner, only for the Desperado leader to kill the prime minister in front of him and flee, but not before espousing the virtues of war. It creates jobs, gives a nation a common purpose, and furthers technological advancement. In a cynical mockery of an old slogan, Sundowner yells that everyone should simply “Give war a chance!”
	This leaves Raiden to his first true fight of the game. Accompanying Sundowner is an unestablished character, a Brazilian swordsman named Jetstream Sam wearing powered armor. He’s simply spoken, and aloof at best, but has been hired by Desperado as a mercenary, and is effective at his task. Compared to Sundowner, he has little to say. There are no speeches about higher causes, no ultimate principle given that justifies his violence. He’s here purely to cut Raiden down, and plant a seed of doubt in the process. He gives Raiden a cryptic message, telling him that he “denies his weapon its purpose,” creating just enough hesitation to end the battle with a single strike from there. That purpose, of course, is bloodshed, and though Jetstream Sam doesn’t offer any competing ideology to Raiden’s own desire to defend the weak, he does cause doubt. Can someone really defend the weak, when they’re doing so by killing those who would oppose their goal? Defending the weak by killing the weak is the contradiction offered, and one Raiden can’t resolve.
	This, of course, is far-removed from traditional war media. It is, so far, a conflict between Raiden, and single other individuals. In many respects, it’s more akin to superhero fiction, featuring impossibly strong warriors settling their difference with fantastical combat. Still, though the people involved are just that, individuals acting of their own accord, rather than cogs in a war machine, it is irrevocably linked to warfare, and the violence it entails. Both Raiden and Sundowner are ex-soldiers, and their ideologies are mechanisms developed to justify the violence and bloodshed they encountered. For Raiden, war and violence are permissible if it results in justice for the weak. For Sundowner, war can be enacted if it’s profitable, a sentiment that’s eerily reflective of certain contemporary wars.