That is one of those tell me without telling me deals.
All the “ai will take over a post truth society” bits and the focus on mercenaries was all over sci fi for decades by that point and a lot of the former goes back to a mix of the Frankenstein complex (which is literally creation myths) and the Reagan Nixon debate.
It is why there is so much truth in the torture Nexus memes.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 day ago
At least there aren’t walking nuclear battle tanks capable of launching undetectable nuclear strikes from any point on the globe.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Because submarines are even more terrifying and even more effective
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 day ago
They would be especially terrifyung if you saw one following you while hiking up a mountain trail.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 22 hours ago
Maybe? Any military presence on a mountain trail would make me break out the wipes and the poop bottle.
My point is more that it is one of those things that goes against “Kojima is a much less neocon version of Tom Clancy” that goes around.
The idea of Metal Gear as a tool to fire undetectable nukes from anywhere on the planet (that a giant walking mech can get to…) completely ignores that submarines are already doing that. And there really isn’t a defense to an ICBM unless you have Trigger themselves in the area of operations when the sub surfaces. The “defense” to an ICBM is to fire off all yours before it hits and make sure everyone dies. MAYBE Rex gives you one or two first strikes before the missiles start launching but… again, see “submarines”. The moment the first hit, President Solidus would say “ah no you di’n’t!” and have the subs surface and fire off their ICBMs and the end result would be exactly the same.
That also doesn’t get into how bad an idea any form of walking tank is (which, to be fair, was briefly acknowledged in MGS3). I love my Gundams and my Battlemechs but unless you have minovsky particle magic you just rapidly recreate the meta that thousands of house rules have failed to stop in Battletech: 1000 points of Atlas goes down REAL fast when you have even 500 points of effectively pickup trucks with gauss guns on the back. Jaburo wouldn’t have panicked and fed themselves to Kamille and Not-Char attacking. They would have grabbed their ATGMs and started leaning out of bolt holes to light those two up.
And if Rex hadn’t been inside of a giant missile silo (hmmm), it would have been lit up by a bombing run the moment someone saw it on satellite imagery.
But that is kind of my point. The MGSes, like Deus Ex, is mostly a hodge podge of conspiracy theories and cool concepts from other media. People see what they want in there and handwave the rest.
Does that mean the story is not political? Of course not (even if DX is inconsistent to the point it might be… Like… that Alex Garland Civil War might be less nonsensical in terms of sides somehow). But you can very much have an author(s) with no political intent make a political statement.