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Essay:Worst Liberal Video Games

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** ''Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots'' has the player aiding implied Muslim terrorists and Communist insurgents in the first two acts. In addition, there was a brief promotion of the crackpot Global Warming ideology at the beginning of Act 4. It also depicts the main antagonist Liquid Ocelot's desire for the destruction of the Patriots and the creation of pure anarchy in a positive light nearing the end. It also juxtapositions the United States and the Soviet Union symbolism during Big Mama's speech, implying that they were little different from each other. It also glosses over the complications posed by Sunny "keeping the brain cell intact" (in particular, Drebin 893, a gun launderer, implies both that the resulting Patriot shutdown will result in a massive boom for his business, and also that the UN would end up taking over the entire planet after the events of the shutdown of the War Economy and the Patriots resulted in multiple countries going broke and being in significant enough debt that even PMC regulation laws wouldn't come close to closing it off, as well as America being affected to the degree that it has to give up on unilateralism, and also briefly implying that the UN will likely come the closest towards a successor group to the Patriots and that the cycle will continue, with the story treating it as drunken ramblings.), and also heavily implies a more unrealistic view of government control similar to more left-wing views on how things work when all the characters are acting as though if Liquid Ocelot either took control of the Patriots directly or otherwise just wiped them out altogether, the key essentials to human civilization - water, air, electricity, food, medicine, communication and transportation - would be negatively affected to catastrophic levels, many times forgetting that most if not all of those would either not have been impacted at all by the Patriots shutdown (due to existing well before the Patriots or the Philosophers before them were even an idea) or otherwise being a minor inconvenience at worst. Was also notable as being the first entry to the series to have a character (Laughing Octopus) drop the f-bomb in dialogue in the English release (in ''Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater'', the character EVA also dropped the f-bomb in English to Colonel Volgin in the Japanese version, but this was toned down overseas to "Go to hell!"). And while the game does have a subtle condemnation to [[gun control]] in the form of the Sons of the Patriots system, at the same time, it also seems to promote people killing each other for the sheer sake of it as evidenced by Liquid Ocelot's comments before his death, and also implies that to some extent, the gun control implanted by Liquid Ocelot when he took over the SOP system ended all conflict and treated that as a silver lining. While not in the game itself, the teaser site for the game and other games being made by Kojima Productions during that time, released during E3 2006 had an overall background theme that invoked left-wing revolutions and riots, even saying as their tagline "Kojima Productions' next revolt" including spraypainting and fists being raised with yells.<ref>http://www.konami.jp/kojima_pro/e3_2006/</ref>
** ''Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker'' was very left-wing in its outlook, even by ''Metal Gear'' series standards. One of the more infamous aspects of the game had the various main characters, including the co-protagonists Big Boss and Kazuhira Miller, giving a very fawning account on the Marxist terrorist Che Guevara, completely ignoring his role in nearly causing the Cuban Missile Crisis to become a full on nuclear war despite two of the main villains doing exactly that, not to mention Big Boss trying to put a stop to two attempts at launching a nuke twice, one at Cuba and another at America. In the case of Big Boss and Miller, it also conflicts completely with their histories, which had them, respectively, feeling guilt for killing The Boss (as well as implying at one point that the Cuban Missile Crisis was ultimately responsible for the aforementioned action) and growing up in Japan during that time with the adults explicitly panicking respectively. Aside from Che, Miller and Big Boss also proceeded to briefly mention Mao Zedong once via his book ''On Protracted War'' while implying they similarly held him in high regard as well. The various characters also gave very anti-American views, including condemning the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, the firebombing of Tokyo, the post-war period of Japan, and also repeating the usual condemnations towards American involvement in South and Central America, many times completely ignoring or at most glossing over Soviet involvement in the region as well. One character, a French woman named Cecile Cosima Caminades, also was implied to be very sexually loose, and also gives a glowing account of the horrendous events of the [[May 1968 riots]] in France (including falsely implying that the vast majority of Paris and even France as a whole had participated in or at least were influenced by the events of May 1968, despite it, similar to the Hippie movement, actually only being a minority rabble of Trotskyite and Maoist groups trying to impose their will on society, and that it actually ruined France rather than the game's implication that it actually turned out for the better unlike the Hippie movement or similar movements in Japan.) and also was a fangirl of notorious Existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre (her fangirlism to him was made more explicit in the Japanese version, where she actually squeals in excitement when Big Boss mentions that he was the same guy who infamously referred to Che Guevara as "the most complete man of the century."). It also has some implied LGBT agenda pushing in the form of Dr. Strangelove, who is strongly implied to be a lesbian, as well as one mission featuring Big Boss and Miller entering a date and being implied to have engaged in homosexual sex upon the completion. The CIA was also depicted in a very negative light, being the main antagonistic force in the game, and the initial main villain Hot Coldman, a station chief in Central America and an implied former Director for the CIA, was depicted as a madman. It also paints the FSLN in a sympathetic light and, in a clear breach with real-life history, depicts them actually revolting against the KGB late in the game, as well as largely glossing over their crimes (in an even more egregrious note, the Sandinista Comandante Amanda was implied in dialogue to be a Christian despite the fact that the FSLN, being a Communist organization, was explicitly Atheistic in its outlook). When covering the game at Tokyo Game Show 2009, Hideo Kojima heavily implied that deterrence was bad, as was holding any form of military at all,<ref>https://www.gamespot.com/articles/kojima-talks-peace-walker/1100-6230488/<br />"There's the philosophy of nuclear deterrence," Kojima continued. "America and Russia just kept piling up on their nuclear weapons. And when you have an army, it deters enemies from invading. That's yet another theory of deterrence. Why can't we get rid of nuclear arms and soldiers from the world? I'm sure that everyone's thought about it. And then there's the reality, which I hope players will think about as they're playing Peace Walker. Back then, it was a time when these theories were actually thought to be effective. And now, we're paying the price. We've still got tons of nuclear weapons scattered all over the world."</ref> which is further supported by the game frequently quoting Enlightenment philosopher and leftist [[Immanuel Kant]] and his tract ''On Perpetual Peace'', one of the quotes, given in the first ending, being from Chapter 1 of the treatise where he explicitly calls for the total abolishment of any and all armies. In addition, it also had Kojima during development reporting glowingly on Barack Obama's Prague Speech on a World without Nukes.<ref>http://ameblo.jp/kp-blogcast/entry-10361111977.html<br />『核なき世界』をプラハで宣言したオバマ大統領がノーベル平和賞を受賞した。 ようやく時代が動き出したのか。 ピースウォーカー計画始動?そうなる事を願いたい。 『平和は歩いては来ない』 『お互い歩み寄るしかないのだ』 Gymにて。 ("President Obama, who talked about a "world without nuclear weapons" in Prague, has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Has history finally made its move? Could this be the beginning of the Peace Walker Project? I hope so. "Peace won't come to us." "We have to meet it halfway" At the gym."?)</ref> There's also a slight joke where the characters refer to Hideo Kojima as "god." Paz also at one point channels anti-Colonial sentiments regarding outside markets. There are also two missions, one having Snake (who is 39 years old at the time of the game) date as well as being strongly implied to have had sex with Paz (who at the time of the mission was believed to be sixteen years old), and the other being the aforementioned Miller mission.
**''Metal Gear Solid V'': Like with ''Peace Walker'', it depicts several anti-American references throughout both games. In the first part of the game, ''Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes'', it depicts a black site in Cuba that was all but stated to be Guantanamo Bay in what was clearly intended to be a condemnation towards its existence, including implying that the terrorists placed there had just been abducted in the dead of night and didn't actually do anything wrong. It also showcased some extremely brutal torture, including them forcing a kid to rape a girl, as well as stuffing a bomb down said girl's vagina. It also depicts the Marines in a very negative light. One of the side missions for the game also has the player infiltrating the base with the explicit mission of assassinating members of a Marine Sniper-Spotter team who had previously been deployed to Laos due to their being successful in killing several high-ranking members of the NVA and other Communist organizations in the region, with the person giving the mission being KGB, while another mission has the player sabotaging anti-air guns as well as doing a helicopter raid on the base. Kojima, in an interview with the Guardian, also makes it perfectly clear that up to that point, he intended for his games to question America's role in the world, and implied he wanted to show it in a negative light.<ref>httphttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/18/hideo-kojima-interview-metal-gear-solid-phantom-pain
"With Ground Zeroes he [Hideo Kojima] escalated the stakes by taking aim at North America’s contemporary policies towards terror suspects. “In the past the US was the centre of the world, where everything was happening,” he says. “I think my stories have always sought to question this, maybe even criticise it. But the situation is changing. America is not seen as the centre of the world any more. So the focus of my stories is shifting alongside with that change in the real world.”
"It’s a diplomatic answer, but Ground Zeroes is not an especially diplomatic video game. Its incarcerated terror suspects kneel in wire cages, bound at the hands and feet with blinding sacks over their heads. As you hoist them on to Snake’s shoulder and sprint to the evacuation helicopter, some break down in tears either through fear or relief. It’s grimly political. “[Guantanamo] was definitely something that I made decision to address in the game,” Kojima says. “Hollywood continues to present the US army as being the good guys, always defeating the aliens or foreigners. I am trying to shift that focus. These movies might not be the only way to view current affairs. I am trying to present an alternate view in these games.”"</ref> The ending for the main mission as well as one of the tapes has the character Skull Face, when describing Here's to You, falsely referring to [[Sacco and Vanzetti]] as having been innocent of the crimes they were executed for. In the second half, ''Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain'', there were several anti-American references, such as having a character named Code Talker refer negatively to the American Indian Boarding School as well as developing genocidal views on the English language and his being portrayed sympathetically for this, as well as Miller making a reference to the pejorative "American Empire." Ronald Reagan was also mentioned as well as his Evil Empire speech, with a more sarcastic element to it. In addition, although the protagonists do fight against the USSR, their missions in Africa have them aiding the Communist backed MPLA, and also make several anti-Colonial references such as Western Powers being "parasitic" towards their natural resources. Like before, it mentions the FSLN in a glowing manner, even explicitly founding a socialist state as well as being backed by the USSR. In addition, writer Kenji Yano also implied that Big Boss being Ishmael instead of Huey Emmerich was because they wanted to avoid a pro-American bias regarding morality.<ref>http://www.metalgearinformer.com/?p=25955
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