Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: Difference between revisions

* The Aesop of the entire ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' series basically boils down to "people need to fix their problems today instead of handing them down to the next generation", [[An Aesop]] strengthened by the number of former [[Child Soldiers]] among the characters in the series.

** Nuclear weapons are bad, bad, bad.

** The sheer, sheer ''weight'' of the anvil is a large part of why this works, too. The message of the series isn't just about people fixing their problems, it's about the individual, each person in the group of people, taking personal responsibility instead of sloughing blame off onto anything convenient.<br /><br />''Sons of Liberty'' is particularly genius in this, where Solidus Snake spends a good ten minutes monologuing in dramatic fashion about his plans to throw off the yoke of the Patriots, questionably making him seem sympathetic even though he was ''just a few minutes ago'' waxing nostalgia about ''being responsible'' for many of those child soldiers, the player's character included. He dies soon thereafter, and what's one of the things Solid Snake tells Raiden in the end? "The Patriots are a kind of ongoing fiction too, come to think of it."<br /><br />Explored further in ''Guns of the Patriots,'' where an individual's sense of self is am important theme; the B&B Corps receive ''no'' sympathy from Snake, he even expresses annoyance that Drebin insists on telling him their backstories and how they were mentally broken. Life can be horrible, but after a certain point, this stops being an excuse for your actions, and you will never truly have absolution unless you confront your own problems instead of blaming them on others. Contrast with Otacon, who was ''sexually abused by his stepmother,'' among other things, but has turned out as Snake's best friend. [[Ho Yay]] aside, they're close in a way that Snake, as a soldier, has probably only ever known with other soldiers. It's no coincidence they first meet because Snake's ''old'' best friend - a soldier with a dark past who turned traitor out of blind loyalty - was trying to ''kill'' Otacon at the time.

** Notice that Snake seems to believe in some sort of existentialism in the end of Metal Gear Solid 2. Great way to summarize some common existentialist beliefs: A person can do anything and are ultimately responsible for everything in life, including its purpose, so you have nobody or no circumstance to blame your flaws on.