I completely disagree that Raiden didn't listen to what Armstrong had to say. In the post credits scene he quotes Armstrong to Boris and says he has his own war to fight. Literally what Armstrong said would happen, that Raiden would follow in his footsteps and try to end war as a business through whatever means he sees fit. Now those methods are different from Armstrong's and that is why he had to die, but the ideology is partly Armstrongs. It was synthesized from both raidens and his.
Yeah. I feel like it's too simplistic a reading to talk about sides having ideologies and memes without talking about how they intersect and what those ideologies actually were. "Cold blooded murder beats memes" is a weak take on the final fight failing to discuss the actual discussion at play between ideals of justice and individualism.
"Take the meaning behind words, and then decide" That's what Solid Snake told him at the Big Shell. He agrees with Armstrong that war for profit is bullshit, but notice at the end he dealt the biggest blow to the war economy: He made sure children won't be turned into child soldiers, and his action caused Cyborgs to branch out into more honest and less violent labor, he took Armstrong's ideology but turned it around where there's no need for senseless violence.
My favorite thing about MGR is that, on Paper the dialogue should be insanely cringe. But somehow they turn it into something entertaining, thought provoking and cool as all hell When it comes to Metal Gear. I've only played MGR and a bit of The Phantom pain. Despite my lack of knowledge regarding Metal Gear I can't help but adore MGR. Its insanely fun and has delivered some of the most memorable (and memeable) characters in all of gaming. Despite it bordering on absurdity at times it still delivers a really interesting narrative, its a game that deserves the recent resurgence in popularity and its a game that I don't doubt will live on for years to come.
I never liked the idea of "cringe" since I've mostly seen it being used on furries or people in general just being weird by doing things in public others would consider shameful. That being said I know that MGR is cringe although I don't feel that way. What I think makes people look past this is that all of the hardcore edgelord dialouge is backed up by the most insane action I have ever seen. Not only this but the game presents all this cringe worthy stuff with full confidence and sincerity. Think about it. Some 16 year old saying how they "hate all humans" or "has studied the blade" is really just trying to cope with their insecurites and isn't being sincere. We recognise this and feel cringe. One day at the train station I saw a girl with a stick horse. She was gallopping with it across the platform doing her routines and what not. I stood the entire time in the smoking area watching her. I was amazed. Not a care in the world free, confident, using the time she's waiting on a train to pursue a passion. tl;dr Basically what the other replies here are saying but cringe lol (see how I undermine the sincerity of my comment with this one line (we do live in a society))
How did jet stream sam know riden was going to take that one road to get to that one rocket to go to the secret basr that sam didnt even know riden knew about
Not wanting to get into “memes” when discussing this game, is like not wanting to get into “control schemes”, when discussing how to play a specific video game.
I disagree with something you said. That all the bosses in the game were just like Sam, people who don’t have ideologies but that’s ABSOLUTELY FUCKING WRONG. See sundowner for example, he thrives in the sadistic world uses the excuse of civilisation advancing a ton due to war and thus wants to restore the war economy (unique thing about him is that he isn’t subtle at all, he tells what he wants to do blatantly. Something fresh, ironically paired with the most difficult to understand lyrics). Mistral is sadly just an antithesis to raiden, about ideals. Monsoon is about nihilism (being born in pol pot’s era truly does shit, it showed monsoon the power of “memes”, that people would do unspeakable things in the name of their ideas). Bladewolf is about his freedom, this character focuses on his character and his unique version of freedom (also kinda anthesis to raiden, being a cog in the machine and being used. It’s probably why raiden brought him back), you’re correct about jet stream Sam ig. Also you should probably talk about the vocals on the songs. THEY GIVE MUCH NEEDED BACKSTORIES AND THEIR IDEOLOGIES WHILE BEING BANGERS. Also I interpret raiden being in silence to Armstrong was him getting passed ideals as that’s what was happening before. It’s not about the ideal of murder being able to beat ideals. He inherited and actually believed in his cause as true, he didn’t refute his points because he agrees with it hence the song lyrics and the ending cutscene showing his mimicking of Armstrong’s phrases. At the end of the day that’s my interpretation. Raiden embraced his past motives.
Hey Ledhead, I just wanted to let you know that I would LOVE to see you cover the entire MGS series. I've been playing through a few of the games (and saving up for Twin Snakes) and would be super interested. :)
I don’t know if you just didn’t pay attention while playing, or you just automatically assumed that anyone involved with Winds of Destruction was just a motivation-less villain and so ignored anything that contradicted that assumption, but your read on the entire group being “None of them believe in anything”, could not be farther from the truth for most of them, as it is explicitly only true for Sam. Outside of Bladewolf, every member of WoD that Raiden encounters, is a either a parallel, or an extreme version of one aspect of his ideology, or who he truly is, forcing him to either confront his mask, or his shadow self. Mistral fights because it allows her to revel in her shadow, to indulge the darkest parts of herself. She believes that as long as she is taking pleasure in an action, that it doesn’t matter who suffers as a result. This is a direct parallel to how Raiden truly feels, deep down. That deep down, he enjoys the slaughter. Monsoon is a redditor. He believes that nothing matters, he is the pinnacle of nihilism. He believes that the strongest among men will never die, as they will be the ones to have their ideology pass on, to live forever within the souls of men, even if their name has been forgotten. Survival of the fittest is all that matters, in the end. And Monsoon wants to prove himself the strongest, to have his ideology spread, either by convincing others, or by making the gene pool of ideas smaller. Monsoon is where Jack has to finally confront his past. Monsoon believing that ideas are the most important thing we pass down, strikes at the very core of Raiden’s past, his fear of only following in the footsteps of others. And so, Raiden accepts Monsoon’s ideals. Effectively deciding that he doesn’t need to hide from accepting the ideas of others, anymore. And so, with Monsoon’s ideology in hand, Raiden basically says “Strongest of the fittest, huh? Well, the weakest thing imaginable is someone who uses others as a meat shield. Like you.” Raiden learns to accept that not every idea can be your own, but that you can MAKE them your own, by putting a personal spin on it, which will be important later. Sundowner is a lot more obvious than the rest, as he outright explains his ideology. “War and fighting is just human nature. They’re a part of who we are.” Sundowner, having grown up on the battlefield, in a very similar situation to how Raiden grew up, represents what Raiden easily could have become, had he not had so many other people, giving him new ideas and motives as he went through life. Sundowner is proof to Raiden that not everything was in vain. That the ideals he’d received from others, that he felt so conflicted about, did in fact make him a better person, as Sundowner is what he’d have become without those ideals being given to him. Similarly, Sundowner’s ideology is what Armstrong’s could be mistaken for, if one doesn’t pay attention. Sam is also very simple. Sam is the one who actually doesn’t have a cause. He did at one point, but for Raiden’s story, he doesn’t. Sam is a reflection of Raiden at the start of the story. Just moving from fight to fight, reveling in the bloodshed that results, and never caring about the journey to get there. While Raiden does find himself doing this for the side of good at the start, that’s still what he’s doing, which is why Sam and Monsoon were able to break him as they did. Sam’s line, of Raiden’s blade being thirsty for blood, yet Raiden denies it, is very important. As it shows why Sam is so much stronger than Raiden at the start. They’re both the same, but Riaden lies to himself about why he fights. Sam is honest with himself, and so he doesn’t hold back. Raiden does hold back, and he does so to shield himself from having to face the truth. But in their second confrontation, Raiden has realized the truth about his nature, accepted it, and aimed it in a “good” direction. Sam sees this, and it’s why he says what he says in the recording Blade Wolf plays before giving Raiden Sam’s blade. “Blondey has me questioning the whole thing.” Sam saw Raiden accept his killer nature, and aim it in the direction of the throats of his enemies. Something that Sam had been unable to do. He was unsure if Raiden had come to the better conclusion of the two of them, or if he was just blowing smoke. So, he decides to see who’s correct in the only way he knows how. Combat. And Raiden proves himself correct. Raiden has a respect for Sam, even though he logically shouldn’t. But Raiden understands that Bladewolf wouldn’t side with Sam unless, deep down, he was a good man, just aimless, in the sam way he’d been. And of course, Armstrong is the final confrontation. The final test to see if Raiden has grown out of his old self. Like Raiden’s old self, Armstrong does evil things with the aims of defeating a greater evil. Raiden had justified his actions by saying “They knew what they signed up for”, and Armstrong justified his by saying “Can’t fret over every egg”. Armstrong is the extreme of who Raiden once was. And Raiden sees this, and that’s why he decides that Armstrong needs to die. Because he’s finally understood that this was what he once was. But he does accept that Armstrong’s goals were noble, and takes up his fight in the end. So yeah, TL;DR: All the villains do have ideals and motives, and like how the fights get harder with each boss, each boss is a tougher question that Raiden has to answer about himself or his past.
@@NeverSaySandwich1 I think she was doing a riff off solid snake who is male. So LARPing as a guy. But I have seen your comments and you are clearly pretty confused about how gender works so your confusion is to be expected
I love you’re work so much and I don’t know where else to share this so I’ll say it here, your mastery of voice has me more dysphoric than anything I’ve ever seen. I’m so happy for you, you have no idea. You’re insight into games and life in general did so much to help me. I hope I can watch again soon because your insights and takes are sooo amazing. I wish you the best! And your video will still get a like from me🙂
One thing I really loved about this game is just how meta it is on it's idea of violence, even more so than a lot of "actual" Metal Gear games. It actually rewards you for not killing any humans during combat sections and even more for beating an entire chapter that way (despite making things way harder on yourself and feeling so antithetical to the genre), but the game has such confidence in itself that at least on the first playthrough you just like Raiden will eventually give in to the pure violence and "let her rip". The game is like one massive devil on your shoulder that rubs it in your face that you totally could live up to that "protect the weak" ideal but you just choose not to. "Hey the strong always prey upon the weak, that's just nature" meanwhile the same cyborg soldier that later stabs you in the chest is on his hands and knees petting a cat in the rain... God I love this game and this series
Both you and Jacob Geller managed to whiff the point of the game hard. Raiden picks up Armstrong's war and continues it, and all of the characters have definite ideologies. Raiden is the closest to not having one, but he literally agrees with so much of what Armstrong has to say that it changes his path.
When I first played, I had almost the exact opposite reaction from both. I was wondering why Raiden killed Armstrong when he was making so much sense to me, having completely forgotten about all the batshit over the line stuff he did. Granted, I was nineteen at the time, and not even trying to hold my various frustrations back, but I do feel that people should probably look at a wide variety of other info sources before beginning to discuss this game. Starting with the old school definition of memes and all sections of the game’s TVTropes article just to be safe.
Just wanted to stop by and say I really appreciate your work, your insights and storytelling are spectacular. Watched the majority of your videos for three years and am still shocked by how each has an intricate and well-thought angle. Keep being you
While the concept of a meme might date back 100s of years (I’m not sure) I do know that the first person to define a meme in the way it is used in MGS was Biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene published in 1975.
This was a great and very smart and entertaining video indeed! I really liked seeing this interpretation of Raiden's character, and it certainly made enough sense to me at least! Also, you looked really good in that metal gear outfit. ^w^
All this explanation about ideologies vs violence in the game, and yes this is mainly about Raiden, and you only do a "btw Blade Wolf is there", which was also a pretty cool character in the way of mirroring Raiden's story and character but then still that comes to different perspectives
I think there's def a lot of weaknesses in this analysis, there's a lot Leadhead missed. Good video but there's so much she skipped. Best example are the other bosses who were all motivated to fight for different reasons
One of my favourite parts of MGR is that the character boss themes seem to be about who that boss is and where they are in life and from this you can learn a lot about them, but It Has To Be This Way seems to be about Raiden which makes it more interesting to me
fantastic video, i'm always impressed by the way you put things into words. hope this helps people with no other exposure to the series appreciate mgr from another angle :-)
Even apart from just Raiden, others like Sam, Wolf, and Armstrong had some really nice depth. And the use of music made side characters like Mistral a little less 2D.
that part where you talk about how people can be defined by the pain they felt even when that pain itself is gone really made me remember fire punch, such a hood classic
I am so happy that this game is getting all the more traction and coverage, in these times especially! The messages that it carries are so relevant in any part of the world and have only gotten more pertinent in the last 3 months, for better or for worse....
Sooo I don't want to be pedantic but the reason why sam's sword can pierce Armstrong's I believe is that it cuts at higher frequency and thus the nano machines can't keep up Also at the frame you are showing in 15:27 it even shows, Raiden hit Armstrong's upper chest which hardened, followed up by a stab to lower abdomen The nano machines can't be everywhere, as shown in Sam's dlc where he timed out how fast the nano machines move, allowing him to cut off Armstrong's arm in his dlc But that's just my 3 cents, great vid otherwise!
Interesting read of Raiden's character I did expect a mention of the soundtrack, because it gives greater insight into the different ideologies of the Winds of Destruction. Also all the winds relate in some way with Raiden. Sam is a drifter just looking for a greater challenge, he's lost himself in the bloodshed. In a similar vein Raiden at that point was also lost in the bloodlust. Sundowner is running a child soldier program, exactly the program that Raiden went through btw, and just seems to think that Violence and War are part of human nature, purely natural. Mistral and Monsoon have a similar vibe, both lost a lot during their respective childhoods due to war, one becoming a drifter with no place to belong, and the other looking at war and cruelty as memes, passed on through war and cruelty. And Raiden doesn't just kill them all because he hates them, and they have a profound effect on his ideology and how he views himself as time goes along. Eventually embracing Armstrongs goal.
I love this analysis. How the story can be enjoyed by almost anyone and how much depth there is to find. For someone casually playing the game, independent of Metal Gear, like me, they cann just enjoy the over the top action, gameplay, music and memes. I liked the story and I liked Raiden without knowing anything about Metal Gear. And this totally fits with Platinum Games' design philosophy. They try to design their gameplay so that someone who is just button mashing can do something flashy and still have fun with the game. But every Platinum Game has insane depth to its gameplay. You can spend many hours and playthroughs mastering some intricate mechanics and this runs parallel to the philosophy of the story. Where everyone can enjoy the game on any level. And you can always sink deeper and find more and new things to enjoy. I love this. This is good writing and good game development that tie the game into a great package.
This video has a really interesting take on what Raiden’s self-actualization at the end of the game actually means, and I think it’s cemented by looking at Sam’s tiny character arc from the DLC. Sam is intentionally set up as Raiden’s foil during the main game, a fellow swordsman who has learned to kill for violence’s own sake, but one who’s also capable of philosophy, and of killing for a reason if he chooses to (and thus, capable of doubting Armstrong, and passing his sword on to Raiden). During the DLC, however, we see that he was similar to Raiden at one point, killing viciously in the name of a sense of justice that helped few and accomplished little. Just like Raiden, Sam’s ideology was broken in the face of Desperado’s violence, but unlike Raiden, this didn’t permit Sam to self-actualize. He learned to kill indiscriminately and live in the moment, needing no faulty self-justifications to be comfortable with himself, but unlike Raiden, he lost his ability to carve his own path and follow his own will, instead getting wrapped up in Armstrong’s insanity. Like many great antagonistic foils, Sam is what it would look like if his counterpart protagonist, Raiden, failed to complete his character arc.
The purpose of satire is to articulate the absurdity of the now. That a game made almost ten years ago has survived the cartoonish self-parody that followed what it had originally meant to ridicule is a defence of both the insight of its criticism, and the fact that giant robots and ninja cyborgs are always cool.
I just realized that Raiden is a lot like Jetstream Sam. Both of them were killing because they wanted to defeat any idea. Both of them lost a battle and, while doing so, contemplated over their ideology. The moment Jetstream Sam heard Raiden say "tool of justice" he realized that Raiden was just a fool and wanted to make him realize that his ideals wouldn't work. The difference between them is Raiden eventually won the battle, and so he remains unchallenged by anyone until the next fool comes
Metal gear, makes a nuanced character with a deep backstory, then makes said nuanced character suplex a metal gear and have a giant sword fight another "metal gear"
you should do a video on operation flashpoint (now called arma cold war assault) its got one of the most important depictions of war in any media that I've ever seen. you survive every battle by the skin of your teeth, dying many times over, showing you how unlikely it is for you to actually survive.
This is a really interesting video, and the connection between memes and nanomachines was very astute. I do disagree with the ending, though. Armstrong's ideology is blatant fascism. He wants the powerful to subjugate the weak and 'make America great again,' conveniently not defining what makes someone strong. Considering his state-of-the-art nanomachines, though, we can infer money is at least part of it. What's interesting to me then is that his grand speech, which is much-memed and much-loved, is in-universe propaganda. He presents his ideology in contrast to the political 'elites' and mass media, making it sound less like 'the rich should kill whoever they want' and more 'we need to return to good ol' American individualism' (I say that it's 'in-universe propaganda' because it's styled as a political speach--this is Armstrong presenting his ideology on his own terms, and he uses common political talking points--compare his talk of 'elites' and the media to the other 'make America great again' politician's speeches). And by the ending, we see Raiden repeating a part the same speech. To me it seemed that he viewed himself, like Armstrong, as a soldier willing to fight his own wars, in a world of unthinking sheep. On one hand, it can be easy to read the ending as sorta conservative: 'maybe the fascist had a point,' Raiden all but says. On the other, there's something kind of disquieting about the ending. After a lengthy cutscene involving Sunny, I became intensely aware that, like, Raiden's a dad. And he seemed to have forsaken that role to be a wandering mercenary. And what's interesting is that it kind of feels like his character arc has finally come full circle [note: I haven't played MGS4 owing to the fact it's in PS3 limbo, so if this is covered in MGS4 then I guess I am Bobo the Fool]. He no longer resembles Solid Snake, as he once desperately tried to. He looks like Big Boss, cutting off all personal connections to find a place he can be a soldier. MGR kind of perfectly acts as an MGS6 because it brings the story into a perfect circle.
I don't think you understand what fascism is. It's not anything that you disagree with. Fascism is "strong state good". Armstrong is "state bad, strong man good". If anything, he's closer to anarchism. A proper, honest fascist would see him as a proper pain in the ass.
@@hagonistheman7880 Maybe, maybe not. The crux of the fascism is not simply a cult of power, but also a well-defined external enemy (foreign state/nationality/group), pride, strict rules and goals within own group, and often a cult of leader as the symbol of power. These things are markedly absent in all of Armstrong's speeches. In fact, he derides empty "American pride" and people blindly following the orders. It's just kinda disappointing when otherwise intelligent people see Armstrong as the Orange Man avatar and then just see red. It's a vastly different character, and he (along with real problems that we all can agree on) deserves a much closer look.
Armstrong's not a fascist, his ideas much more correctly coincide with nietzchian philosophy of the ubermenche, in part that's what the bait and switch of armstrong's motivations half way through the fight is about, and what the ending boss-battle theme song is about. Armstrong goes from seeing jack as just a tool driven by his rigid ideology to being an equal worthy of the truth. I.E. Armstrong views himself as the ubermenche and through the course of the fight he comes to see Raiden as one as well. In Nietzchian philosophy, the ubermenche were, among myriad other things, are the makers of new ideas. Nietzche's philosophies are hopelessly misquoted by the fascists, so there is some overlap, but it is quite different. The game of MGR is about different ideologies, and the idea that none of the various members of the Desperados have ideologies is flat wrong. They each represent their own type of ideology, each face and change each other. From Mystral's found purpose, to sundowner's almost solipsistic and very child-like outlook, monsoon's nihilism, and Sam's complete lack of commitment to anything. It all fits together to tell what is essentially a battle of opposing ideologies, which ones win out, and how an ideology much change for it to achieve victory. The main crux of Raiden's character development isn't losing his ideology, it's changing it to be something less ridged.
This is getting a lot of responses that take issue with me calling Armstrong a fascist, and I feel like I want to clarify two points. The first is, when I say he's a blatant fascist, I should specify that this is only to me. Armstrong's speech, despite being the longest speech in the game, is very open to interpretation in terms of what he actually want to, like, do. This feels like a bit of a cop-out to say ("it's just my opinion????"), but honestly, this is a feature of the entirety of the Metal Gear series, whose world operates more on shonen power levels than on reality. At time, this can make the games frustratingly slippery to analyze, but it's also probably an essential component in how the games have stayed in the critical conversation for so long. A new interpretation can dramatically alter the thematic messaging of the games, with entire monologues recast in a new light and delivering new meanings. This applies to MGR too, and I'm not going to try to say that my interpretation is the only way to see things I will elaborate on why I call him a fascist though. Armstrong's "I have a dream" speech starts out with some fairly basic conservative talking points--bureaucracy is bad, etc.-- and some fairly banal statements ("fuck the media" is a statement with basically universal appeal), before going off the deep end. I want to focus on the line "the weak will be purged, and the strongest will thrive," because the word "purged" is never really elaborated on. Does it mean that weak memes will be purged, or is he advocating for legalized murder? It's open to interpretation, but to me the fact he's standing on a metal gear crab with nanomachines that make him a perfect killing machine indicates the latter. A quick aside: it's possible to view Armstrong as an ancap ("fuck American pride" could indicate a distaste for America as a state), but the fact that he wants to (sigh) "make America great again" indicates to me at least that his distaste extends only to the American state in the moment, and that he still believes in America existing as a political state. The fact he's fishing for votes indicates as much. That to me dissuades against any anarchist reading of his character. Continuing, it's worth asking what state Armstrong wants. Now, in my initial comment, I made an allusion to Donald Trump, and I feel like I should indicate that I don't think Armstrong is at all a one-to-one analogue to Trump. I only brought him up because I feel like there are similarities in their rhetorical styles beyond the obvious line. Armstrong's stated political philosophy appears to be very simply that whoever can take power, should take power. There's total freedom of opportunity, he says, because if you don't like things, all you need to do is kill enough people and then you'll be able to enforce what you want. This comes with a mighty asterisk though: Armstrong has a metal gear crab and is virtually invincible. He is also the de facto leader of two PMCs. Plus, he spends MGR engineering a situation to put him in a powerful political position. After all, he does need capital. And votes. And let's not forget: the freedom of opportunity he values so much does not extend to the vagrant children whose brains he scooped out to power his gorillas. He is 100% canonically willing to compromise his values to give himself a further edge. So, I don't think it's a stretch to say that the world he envisions is one where a) he's on top b) no one else can possibly touch him. How will all of that shake out? Again, this is open to interpretation, but I don't think it's invalid to say that the new state of America will just straight up be a military dictatorship. An in-group is defined as those politically aligned with Armstrong; most likely, these will formally be members of World Marshal or Desperado, as he values the strong. The out-group would then be everyone else, as anyone who isn't explicitly aligned with him is a potential enemy combatant (or alternatively a juicy brain for the gorilla-industry complex). As for actual enemies, they're straightforwardly killed off, as we can see with Armstrong's approach to Raiden. Wouldn't want any eyewitness reports complicating the message. Now, I am not a political philosopher, so I'm using Wikipedia here, but it seems that if we define fascism using Umberto Eco's 14 points, then under this interpretation there's a fairly clear argument to be made for points 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13. That feels like cut-and-dry fascism. This isn't the only interpretation however, and I cannot stress that enough. There's a lot of ways to read his character, and that's because the Metal Gear series has always been one that opens itself to interpretation. I'm not here to start arguments. I'm here to boost this video within the algorithm through engagement.
Although you're wrong about him being a fascist as he despises the state, the interpretation of strong subjugating the weak isn't entirely correct either. Armstrong wanted people to fight for what they want, and carve their own path like Riaden did
Leadhead, You're kinda wrong, about the other villains I mean, They're not Ideology drained mercenaries who are doing that stuff For no proper reason, they have backstories, Told through their Dialogues And especially the songs and their lyrics AND how they're used in the game. I understand why you love Raiden But A huge part of that may or may not be that you don't understand the others.
12:37 not really, I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that Richard Dawkins is the first person to truly define a meme. Now did he invent the term? I have no idea. Btw this video was really good, while I think you missed the point of some segments like Armstrong's final message to Raiden, I like how you interpreted some segments. I think you're the first person to not only take the Jack the Ripper thing seriously but also make sense of it because people usually dismiss it as the worst plot point of the entire game. Bravo!
This is the only Metal Gear game I've ever played so I had no clue that there was that much extra plot about Raiden as a character, I was under the impression he was a side character before this game. I'm just not all that into stealth unless when mixed with some other genre, while I like spectacle fighters on their own so of course I played Revengeance.
Metal Gear is special, at least watch the cutscenes to the other games on TH-cam or something. Through the cheesy dialogue and wacky shit there’s genuinely amazing stories underneath, especially 2 and 3.
I only played mgs4 before this one (currently on mgs5) and when I saw Sunny for the first time I shed a tear of happiness seeing her grown up. Also was that meant to be a Meryl cosplay at the start? Nice!
Others have already talked about what the other Winds have going on (and, tbh, the analysis isn't very reliant on anyone except Raiden, Sam and Armstrong), but the idea of nanomachines as being analogous to memes is very fascinating & really helps explain the "not my sword" scene.
I really disagree with your conclusion about the ending. Before dying, Armstrong says that his memes will live on through Raiden, and Raiden later goes on to argue to Boris that PMCs are "fighting for reasons they don't understand, causes they don't believe in." That's Armstrong's foremost meme, stated word-for-word--Raiden _absolutely_ adopted it. The ending cutscene implies that Raiden's going rogue on a mission to hinder and dismantle the military-industrial complex through force, which is exactly what Armstrong wanted in the first place.
Yeah, it catches you around the bend if you're not lookin out for it sometimes. However, like many others have said, a few points are just wrong. The first being that all of the bosses have little to no ideology, which is just incorrect from the start. Mistral is the antithesis, which may seem boring but is important to understanding Raiden as well. Sundowner thrives on war and sees violence as the means and the end, his meme really being about human conditioning in the end. Bladewolf, one who aims to thrive on freedom and personal choice, very simple and straightforward as he breaks from in-game design. Jetstream Sam you may have been partially correct about, but still he has ideology whether he himself realises it or not, an ideology about complete simplification, to see the exact not the possible. Then Armstrong, the most obvious which you actually touched one, who's views may be slightly crazy, perhaps even batshit insane, but in the time still make a great deal of sense. However, the means are not quite right, even if the ends lay to be a noble cause. The only "boss" that technically follows this exact line of though would be the first one, the Metal Gear which is basically just the boss tutorial. Second, you speak as if Raiden had not taken in the memes of Armstrong, which he absolutely did. He did not ignore him, instead he accepted that dying breath and once more transformed his own thoughts to be more in line with the times, taking Armstrongs end goal and changing the means to include less wonton violence during the "active" part. This is easily shown by the hand grasp, the short nod, and then his actions afterwords, his personal shift in ideology becoming more clear. He hasn't stopped thinking about ideas, and he hasn't stopped changing after all this like you say, instead he knows what he wants and knows what waves to ride along, as he continuously changes his path.
Absolutely loved this video, never thought about this game like this and mgs is one of my favorite series also loved the irl clips, keep it up leadhead! Thanks for the awesome content looking forward to the next video!
Not your strongest piece. Even Sundowner has his own rather simple and violent ideology. And Armstrong has far more to say, half the things the Jack can't even disagree with - about the state of the country, the war economy, the importance of raw power no matter the cause, and of course the 24/7 spew of trivia and celebrity bullshit. It's the solutions where he's gone batshit insane. Armstrong *did* leave a worthy successor, the one seeing same problems and ready to solve them with his own power and methods. I know he's something of a rage boner-inducing Trump stand-in for some Americans (check out Jacob Geller), but if we're talking about how smart MGR is - he really needs a bit more analysis than a small portion of an already short 20 minute video.
The more time goes by, the more I'm convinced that Rising is a masterpiece if you've played the previous metal gear games, but a forgettable experience if you've not played any of them.
16:55 Just like Armstrong said.... *Strength and not Committee.* Maybe he was right in a way, maybe i'm getting something wrong... Or maybe, it doesn't mean anything at all. I also feel like the Japanese translated Armstrong speach is very interesting to read, it would've been cool if it was included but that's wishful thinking.
I disagree with your read of Senator Armstrong and Raiden’s reaction to him. I believe that Armstrong is genuinely a master stroke of genius, when it comes to character writing. Including the DLC’s, he only has like 30 minutes total of screen time, most of which is either Sam or Raiden fighting him without dialogue, but in his short screen time, he manages to be a character who is not only highly memorable and memeable, but one who is very much up to interpretation. It would’ve been easy to say that Armstrong is unambiguously evil, but that’s not the point the game makes. His own theme song suggests that Raiden actually views his perspective as a valid one, but because the senator “followed his wrath”, and paved a road with corpses to try to achieve some kind of justice, for his crimes, he has to die, no matter how theoretically noble his end goal might have been. The game even slightly comments on the very real possibility that people just won’t “get” him as a character, with the back and forth between him and Raiden. It’s obvious, if you pay attention to what Armstrong says, that when he says he wants to “purge the weak”, he’s referring to the limp-dick lawyers, and the chicken-sh*t bureaucrats of the world. But when Raiden presents him with the idea that “the weak”, to Raiden, mean those who grew up poor and hungry, Armstrong responds by stating that even from that perspective, Raiden is in no way weak right now. Raiden took back his life”, as he puts it. The fact that he rejects Raiden’s definition of “the weak”, means that in his view, this isn’t what *HE* means by it. If it was, he probably would have just agreed with Raiden. And that’s what I’m getting at: It’s very easy to interpret Armstrong incorrectly. I’ve seen many people argue that Armstrong is a clearly evil person, who just did what he did to try to spread some form of fascist bastardization of Nietzsche philosophy, where people will be free to kill whoever they want. The fact that he’s harvesting children to become war machines certainly doesn’t make this interpretation look wrong. But if you look at everything in the game, it becomes clear that from Armstrong’s perspective, all of these atrocities were inevitable, and, he’s probably right about that. From Armstrong’s perspective, the roots of corruption are too deep to fight in any way, other than uprooting and burning everything in sight. And given the fact that people like Sundowner are allowed to live and thrive, he’s probably correct. If evil is inevitable, why not try to at least use the outcome to create good? Armstrong wants people to be free to think, to not be swayed by anyone or anything but themselves. He’s the ultimate libertarian. He even has the trademark fivehead of one. TL;DR: There are many ways to interpret Armstrong, many of them less than charitable, but taking literally everything we know about him into context, as well as the fact that in the end, Raiden very unambiguously takes up his fight, given how he even quotes the dead senator at the end, it can be asserted that while he is a man who did great evil, it was in an attempt to end that kind of evil, forever. He’s a man who wants everyone to live freely, to live in a world free of any kind of thought control, that had dominated society under the patriots for the majority of his life. The fact that Armstrong comes to the conclusion that all of society needs to be retried, when he learns about what the Patriots have done, is not an unreasonable conclusion. But where he faltered, was in believing that the only way to fix those problems, was to personally burn it all down. He viewed the traditional power structures as being irreversibly tainted by the patriots, and felt they could never help him achieve his goals. Given all of these conclusions, as well as seeing countless young men die in wars they didn’t believe in, or even understand, it’s not wonder that he came to the conclusion “There will be only one more war. And I’ll use that war to tear this whole f*cking thing down.” In conclusion: Nano machines, son!
Wdym all these atrocities were inevitable? The whole thing happens because Armstrong ordered his death squad to kill a person who was in a process of stabilizing the region. I swear, people defending senator Armstrong jump through some huge hoops to do that.
@@Laxhoop I can offer you a real-world example: Vladimir Putin says that it’s western world that forced his hand to start a war in Ukraine. What senator Armstrong says are his justifications of whatever the fuck he wants to do.
@@lazygluttonous Believe it or not, I don’t think Putin and Armstrong have a lot in common. One is a football player who hides his true intentions of ending the war economy, so that the people who profit off of it won’t stop him, and the other is a fascist dictator.
Hello, Lead Head, just having an idea that you might try a game called Spiritfarer. Its a game about learning to say goodbye to your loved ones. The rest is history
I have a complete disagreement that Raiden ignores what Armstrong says. He fully embraces Armstrong ideology of fighting for what you want, not for what you're told you should want, which in the end credits he embraces with "his own war to fight." Raiden accepts that although Armstrongs methods were wrong, he wasn't completely wrong in how screwed and twisted America is. Hell the song it had to be this way, which is in the perspective of Raiden, not Armstrong, literally says that they are the same, but how they want to deal with their ideology is so different they must fight
Yeah a lot of people miss that raiden took a lot of Armstrongs ideology into himself, hence him crushing his heart and absorbing it like other electrolytes
His enemy in rising does have an ideology, whether they know it or not his enemies are working to uphold capitalism and its military industrial complex
Really good Interpretation, however to preach to the void, during the ending cutscene we see raiden's shift to Armstrong's ideals with his "own war to fight"
I completely disagree that Raiden didn't listen to what Armstrong had to say. In the post credits scene he quotes Armstrong to Boris and says he has his own war to fight. Literally what Armstrong said would happen, that Raiden would follow in his footsteps and try to end war as a business through whatever means he sees fit. Now those methods are different from Armstrong's and that is why he had to die, but the ideology is partly Armstrongs. It was synthesized from both raidens and his.
Raiden simply got that meme from Armstrong
And boy howdy was that the right choice on his part
It was the evolution of the meme
Yeah. I feel like it's too simplistic a reading to talk about sides having ideologies and memes without talking about how they intersect and what those ideologies actually were. "Cold blooded murder beats memes" is a weak take on the final fight failing to discuss the actual discussion at play between ideals of justice and individualism.
"Take the meaning behind words, and then decide"
That's what Solid Snake told him at the Big Shell.
He agrees with Armstrong that war for profit is bullshit, but notice at the end he dealt the biggest blow to the war economy: He made sure children won't be turned into child soldiers, and his action caused Cyborgs to branch out into more honest and less violent labor, he took Armstrong's ideology but turned it around where there's no need for senseless violence.
feels almost Hegelian when you put it that way
“Kids are cruel, Jack. And I LOVE minors!” - Sundowner, probably
He uses the verb "touch"
"Warcrime" this, "Can't eat the drywall" that... "Microwaving mice is wrong!" they say...
@@Sakhmeov microwaving frozen mice is what microwave ovens were made for. This is unironically true, look it up.
@@JasminUwU Jeezus, you're right. Still, it doesn't answer that all-important question;
Why do our politicians hog all the _good_ missiles?
How else is a man supposed to make his....IMPACT?
Revengeance is simultaneously the most biting satire and the most sincere embodiment of Metal Gear.
My favorite thing about MGR is that, on Paper the dialogue should be insanely cringe. But somehow they turn it into something entertaining, thought provoking and cool as all hell
When it comes to Metal Gear. I've only played MGR and a bit of The Phantom pain. Despite my lack of knowledge regarding Metal Gear I can't help but adore MGR. Its insanely fun and has delivered some of the most memorable (and memeable) characters in all of gaming. Despite it bordering on absurdity at times it still delivers a really interesting narrative, its a game that deserves the recent resurgence in popularity and its a game that I don't doubt will live on for years to come.
It IS cringe, but that’s what makes it FREE!
Post-cringe if you will
i find that the cringe dialogue adds to it a little bit, it's like shadow the hedgehog where it's just so edgy it's fun
I never liked the idea of "cringe" since I've mostly seen it being used on furries or people in general just being weird by doing things in public others would consider shameful.
That being said I know that MGR is cringe although I don't feel that way. What I think makes people look past this is that all of the hardcore edgelord dialouge is backed up by the most insane action I have ever seen. Not only this but the game presents all this cringe worthy stuff with full confidence and sincerity.
Think about it. Some 16 year old saying how they "hate all humans" or "has studied the blade" is really just trying to cope with their insecurites and isn't being sincere. We recognise this and feel cringe.
One day at the train station I saw a girl with a stick horse. She was gallopping with it across the platform doing her routines and what not. I stood the entire time in the smoking area watching her. I was amazed. Not a care in the world free, confident, using the time she's waiting on a train to pursue a passion.
tl;dr
Basically what the other replies here are saying but cringe lol
(see how I undermine the sincerity of my comment with this one line (we do live in a society))
This game went from gameplay and memes to some of the most deep characters and best writing in the game industry.
That is expected from a Metal Gear title, lol
How did jet stream sam know riden was going to take that one road to get to that one rocket to go to the secret basr that sam didnt even know riden knew about
Perhaps, if you played like 5 games.
It was always like that it just takes someone to show.
Kind of having a piece of hidden treasure hidden inside of a very brittle weak and useless rock
Lmao best writing? Not even close
Not wanting to get into “memes” when discussing this game, is like not wanting to get into “control schemes”, when discussing how to play a specific video game.
I disagree with something you said. That all the bosses in the game were just like Sam, people who don’t have ideologies but that’s ABSOLUTELY FUCKING WRONG. See sundowner for example, he thrives in the sadistic world uses the excuse of civilisation advancing a ton due to war and thus wants to restore the war economy (unique thing about him is that he isn’t subtle at all, he tells what he wants to do blatantly. Something fresh, ironically paired with the most difficult to understand lyrics). Mistral is sadly just an antithesis to raiden, about ideals. Monsoon is about nihilism (being born in pol pot’s era truly does shit, it showed monsoon the power of “memes”, that people would do unspeakable things in the name of their ideas). Bladewolf is about his freedom, this character focuses on his character and his unique version of freedom (also kinda anthesis to raiden, being a cog in the machine and being used. It’s probably why raiden brought him back), you’re correct about jet stream Sam ig. Also you should probably talk about the vocals on the songs. THEY GIVE MUCH NEEDED BACKSTORIES AND THEIR IDEOLOGIES WHILE BEING BANGERS. Also I interpret raiden being in silence to Armstrong was him getting passed ideals as that’s what was happening before. It’s not about the ideal of murder being able to beat ideals. He inherited and actually believed in his cause as true, he didn’t refute his points because he agrees with it hence the song lyrics and the ending cutscene showing his mimicking of Armstrong’s phrases. At the end of the day that’s my interpretation. Raiden embraced his past motives.
damn leadhead should've mentioned the songs, they're the best part of the game
even khamsin had an ideology, and he was literally a mindless soldier
I definitely agree with this. Sam is pretty much the only boss in MGRR that fights without a purpose, the lore is in the lyrics.
The voice progress is making me so happy
absolutely nailed the meaning of the pain inhibitors scene, hell yes. incredible video
hi wes
I appreciate Leadhead cosplaying behind some McDonalds for the bit.
Been a while since i checked the channel, and i got to say, Leadhead is looking Gorgeous!
Hey Ledhead, I just wanted to let you know that I would LOVE to see you cover the entire MGS series. I've been playing through a few of the games (and saving up for Twin Snakes) and would be super interested. :)
ur voice is always so calming and ur fit was on fleek slay girlll
I don’t know if you just didn’t pay attention while playing, or you just automatically assumed that anyone involved with Winds of Destruction was just a motivation-less villain and so ignored anything that contradicted that assumption, but your read on the entire group being “None of them believe in anything”, could not be farther from the truth for most of them, as it is explicitly only true for Sam.
Outside of Bladewolf, every member of WoD that Raiden encounters, is a either a parallel, or an extreme version of one aspect of his ideology, or who he truly is, forcing him to either confront his mask, or his shadow self.
Mistral fights because it allows her to revel in her shadow, to indulge the darkest parts of herself. She believes that as long as she is taking pleasure in an action, that it doesn’t matter who suffers as a result. This is a direct parallel to how Raiden truly feels, deep down. That deep down, he enjoys the slaughter.
Monsoon is a redditor. He believes that nothing matters, he is the pinnacle of nihilism. He believes that the strongest among men will never die, as they will be the ones to have their ideology pass on, to live forever within the souls of men, even if their name has been forgotten. Survival of the fittest is all that matters, in the end. And Monsoon wants to prove himself the strongest, to have his ideology spread, either by convincing others, or by making the gene pool of ideas smaller. Monsoon is where Jack has to finally confront his past. Monsoon believing that ideas are the most important thing we pass down, strikes at the very core of Raiden’s past, his fear of only following in the footsteps of others. And so, Raiden accepts Monsoon’s ideals. Effectively deciding that he doesn’t need to hide from accepting the ideas of others, anymore. And so, with Monsoon’s ideology in hand, Raiden basically says “Strongest of the fittest, huh? Well, the weakest thing imaginable is someone who uses others as a meat shield. Like you.” Raiden learns to accept that not every idea can be your own, but that you can MAKE them your own, by putting a personal spin on it, which will be important later.
Sundowner is a lot more obvious than the rest, as he outright explains his ideology. “War and fighting is just human nature. They’re a part of who we are.” Sundowner, having grown up on the battlefield, in a very similar situation to how Raiden grew up, represents what Raiden easily could have become, had he not had so many other people, giving him new ideas and motives as he went through life. Sundowner is proof to Raiden that not everything was in vain. That the ideals he’d received from others, that he felt so conflicted about, did in fact make him a better person, as Sundowner is what he’d have become without those ideals being given to him. Similarly, Sundowner’s ideology is what Armstrong’s could be mistaken for, if one doesn’t pay attention.
Sam is also very simple. Sam is the one who actually doesn’t have a cause. He did at one point, but for Raiden’s story, he doesn’t. Sam is a reflection of Raiden at the start of the story. Just moving from fight to fight, reveling in the bloodshed that results, and never caring about the journey to get there. While Raiden does find himself doing this for the side of good at the start, that’s still what he’s doing, which is why Sam and Monsoon were able to break him as they did. Sam’s line, of Raiden’s blade being thirsty for blood, yet Raiden denies it, is very important. As it shows why Sam is so much stronger than Raiden at the start. They’re both the same, but Riaden lies to himself about why he fights. Sam is honest with himself, and so he doesn’t hold back. Raiden does hold back, and he does so to shield himself from having to face the truth. But in their second confrontation, Raiden has realized the truth about his nature, accepted it, and aimed it in a “good” direction. Sam sees this, and it’s why he says what he says in the recording Blade Wolf plays before giving Raiden Sam’s blade. “Blondey has me questioning the whole thing.” Sam saw Raiden accept his killer nature, and aim it in the direction of the throats of his enemies. Something that Sam had been unable to do. He was unsure if Raiden had come to the better conclusion of the two of them, or if he was just blowing smoke. So, he decides to see who’s correct in the only way he knows how. Combat. And Raiden proves himself correct. Raiden has a respect for Sam, even though he logically shouldn’t. But Raiden understands that Bladewolf wouldn’t side with Sam unless, deep down, he was a good man, just aimless, in the sam way he’d been.
And of course, Armstrong is the final confrontation. The final test to see if Raiden has grown out of his old self. Like Raiden’s old self, Armstrong does evil things with the aims of defeating a greater evil. Raiden had justified his actions by saying “They knew what they signed up for”, and Armstrong justified his by saying “Can’t fret over every egg”. Armstrong is the extreme of who Raiden once was. And Raiden sees this, and that’s why he decides that Armstrong needs to die. Because he’s finally understood that this was what he once was. But he does accept that Armstrong’s goals were noble, and takes up his fight in the end.
So yeah, TL;DR: All the villains do have ideals and motives, and like how the fights get harder with each boss, each boss is a tougher question that Raiden has to answer about himself or his past.
I haven't gotten to that part of the video yet but I just wanted to say that was very detailed, nice take!
Absolutely KILLING IT in the outfit at the beginning!
Absolutely delusional stubble covered hons
You will never be women bro
@@hagonistheman7880 not everybody has the same interests or level of ignorance as you
LARPing as a woman, LOL
@@NeverSaySandwich1 I think she was doing a riff off solid snake who is male. So LARPing as a guy. But I have seen your comments and you are clearly pretty confused about how gender works so your confusion is to be expected
I love you’re work so much and I don’t know where else to share this so I’ll say it here, your mastery of voice has me more dysphoric than anything I’ve ever seen. I’m so happy for you, you have no idea. You’re insight into games and life in general did so much to help me. I hope I can watch again soon because your insights and takes are sooo amazing. I wish you the best! And your video will still get a like from me🙂
One thing I really loved about this game is just how meta it is on it's idea of violence, even more so than a lot of "actual" Metal Gear games. It actually rewards you for not killing any humans during combat sections and even more for beating an entire chapter that way (despite making things way harder on yourself and feeling so antithetical to the genre), but the game has such confidence in itself that at least on the first playthrough you just like Raiden will eventually give in to the pure violence and "let her rip". The game is like one massive devil on your shoulder that rubs it in your face that you totally could live up to that "protect the weak" ideal but you just choose not to. "Hey the strong always prey upon the weak, that's just nature" meanwhile the same cyborg soldier that later stabs you in the chest is on his hands and knees petting a cat in the rain... God I love this game and this series
You can pacifist mgr????
@@whotftookthuurs It's 100% doable even without the Wooden Sword. Bosses and UGs don't count to the 'No Kill' bonus
@@ellagage1256 THERES A WOODEN SWORD????
@@hagonistheman7880 Not so much that it's difficult, but it is easier when you don't have to hold back
Both you and Jacob Geller managed to whiff the point of the game hard. Raiden picks up Armstrong's war and continues it, and all of the characters have definite ideologies. Raiden is the closest to not having one, but he literally agrees with so much of what Armstrong has to say that it changes his path.
When I first played, I had almost the exact opposite reaction from both. I was wondering why Raiden killed Armstrong when he was making so much sense to me, having completely forgotten about all the batshit over the line stuff he did.
Granted, I was nineteen at the time, and not even trying to hold my various frustrations back, but I do feel that people should probably look at a wide variety of other info sources before beginning to discuss this game. Starting with the old school definition of memes and all sections of the game’s TVTropes article just to be safe.
@Kadd enjoyer And then absorbed them into his own
Wow you really had a glowup, good video like always!
Just wanted to stop by and say I really appreciate your work, your insights and storytelling are spectacular. Watched the majority of your videos for three years and am still shocked by how each has an intricate and well-thought angle. Keep being you
"Honey wake up, new Leadhead video dropped"
Doktor i gotta piss
Leadhead lookin’ like she’s getting ready to tell you the rules of fight club
>she
@@tsurugi5 thats what i said
@@wackojacko4580 >she
While the concept of a meme might date back 100s of years (I’m not sure) I do know that the first person to define a meme in the way it is used in MGS was Biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene published in 1975.
This was a great and very smart and entertaining video indeed! I really liked seeing this interpretation of Raiden's character, and it certainly made enough sense to me at least!
Also, you looked really good in that metal gear outfit. ^w^
All this explanation about ideologies vs violence in the game, and yes this is mainly about Raiden, and you only do a "btw Blade Wolf is there", which was also a pretty cool character in the way of mirroring Raiden's story and character but then still that comes to different perspectives
I think there's def a lot of weaknesses in this analysis, there's a lot Leadhead missed. Good video but there's so much she skipped. Best example are the other bosses who were all motivated to fight for different reasons
i am surprised you didn't mention the fact that each bosses ost effectively explains their backstory.
watched this video at a very crucial point in my life,thank you,Leadhead
One of my favourite parts of MGR is that the character boss themes seem to be about who that boss is and where they are in life and from this you can learn a lot about them, but It Has To Be This Way seems to be about Raiden which makes it more interesting to me
fantastic video, i'm always impressed by the way you put things into words. hope this helps people with no other exposure to the series appreciate mgr from another angle :-)
Even apart from just Raiden, others like Sam, Wolf, and Armstrong had some really nice depth. And the use of music made side characters like Mistral a little less 2D.
Fantastic video! Don't ever be afraid to be floaty. I'm more interested in this game now than I've ever been!
OHHH MYY GODDD. I NEVER EXPECTED YOU TO COVER RISING!!! YOURE ONE OF MY FAVOURITE TH-camRS NOW.
I am living for the essay analysis videos of metal gear rising, from all across TH-cam it's always great
that part where you talk about how people can be defined by the pain they felt even when that pain itself is gone really made me remember fire punch, such a hood classic
I am so happy that this game is getting all the more traction and coverage, in these times especially!
The messages that it carries are so relevant in any part of the world and have only gotten more pertinent in the last 3 months, for better or for worse....
Sooo
I don't want to be pedantic but the reason why sam's sword can pierce Armstrong's I believe is that it cuts at higher frequency and thus the nano machines can't keep up
Also at the frame you are showing in 15:27 it even shows, Raiden hit Armstrong's upper chest which hardened, followed up by a stab to lower abdomen
The nano machines can't be everywhere, as shown in Sam's dlc where he timed out how fast the nano machines move, allowing him to cut off Armstrong's arm in his dlc
But that's just my 3 cents, great vid otherwise!
Interesting read of Raiden's character
I did expect a mention of the soundtrack, because it gives greater insight into the different ideologies of the Winds of Destruction. Also all the winds relate in some way with Raiden.
Sam is a drifter just looking for a greater challenge, he's lost himself in the bloodshed. In a similar vein Raiden at that point was also lost in the bloodlust.
Sundowner is running a child soldier program, exactly the program that Raiden went through btw, and just seems to think that Violence and War are part of human nature, purely natural.
Mistral and Monsoon have a similar vibe, both lost a lot during their respective childhoods due to war, one becoming a drifter with no place to belong, and the other looking at war and cruelty as memes, passed on through war and cruelty.
And Raiden doesn't just kill them all because he hates them, and they have a profound effect on his ideology and how he views himself as time goes along. Eventually embracing Armstrongs goal.
awesome fit in the beginning. would kill with a puffer jacket?
Who saves the memes from the man who saves the memes?
I urge everyone that watches this and ends up buying the game to go in with an open mind because its themes as explained here is much to be desired
I love this analysis. How the story can be enjoyed by almost anyone and how much depth there is to find. For someone casually playing the game, independent of Metal Gear, like me, they cann just enjoy the over the top action, gameplay, music and memes. I liked the story and I liked Raiden without knowing anything about Metal Gear. And this totally fits with Platinum Games' design philosophy. They try to design their gameplay so that someone who is just button mashing can do something flashy and still have fun with the game. But every Platinum Game has insane depth to its gameplay. You can spend many hours and playthroughs mastering some intricate mechanics and this runs parallel to the philosophy of the story. Where everyone can enjoy the game on any level. And you can always sink deeper and find more and new things to enjoy. I love this. This is good writing and good game development that tie the game into a great package.
I love how on the recent searches you can see
"Where to get a cardboard box?"
This video has a really interesting take on what Raiden’s self-actualization at the end of the game actually means, and I think it’s cemented by looking at Sam’s tiny character arc from the DLC.
Sam is intentionally set up as Raiden’s foil during the main game, a fellow swordsman who has learned to kill for violence’s own sake, but one who’s also capable of philosophy, and of killing for a reason if he chooses to (and thus, capable of doubting Armstrong, and passing his sword on to Raiden). During the DLC, however, we see that he was similar to Raiden at one point, killing viciously in the name of a sense of justice that helped few and accomplished little.
Just like Raiden, Sam’s ideology was broken in the face of Desperado’s violence, but unlike Raiden, this didn’t permit Sam to self-actualize. He learned to kill indiscriminately and live in the moment, needing no faulty self-justifications to be comfortable with himself, but unlike Raiden, he lost his ability to carve his own path and follow his own will, instead getting wrapped up in Armstrong’s insanity. Like many great antagonistic foils, Sam is what it would look like if his counterpart protagonist, Raiden, failed to complete his character arc.
The purpose of satire is to articulate the absurdity of the now. That a game made almost ten years ago has survived the cartoonish self-parody that followed what it had originally meant to ridicule is a defence of both the insight of its criticism, and the fact that giant robots and ninja cyborgs are always cool.
love the box in the beginning
edit after watching the video: thoughtless violence can be so healing
I just realized that Raiden is a lot like Jetstream Sam. Both of them were killing because they wanted to defeat any idea. Both of them lost a battle and, while doing so, contemplated over their ideology.
The moment Jetstream Sam heard Raiden say "tool of justice" he realized that Raiden was just a fool and wanted to make him realize that his ideals wouldn't work.
The difference between them is Raiden eventually won the battle, and so he remains unchallenged by anyone until the next fool comes
Memes made me buy this game, and it was the most fun I ever had in a game. It's a true masterpiece for real. 10/10
I will watch the shit out of your Metal Gear Solid 20,000 word script.
I loved the video & btw you look gorgeous!
i love your outfit in this video tbh!!
Metal gear, makes a nuanced character with a deep backstory, then makes said nuanced character suplex a metal gear and have a giant sword fight another "metal gear"
you should do a video on operation flashpoint (now called arma cold war assault) its got one of the most important depictions of war in any media that I've ever seen. you survive every battle by the skin of your teeth, dying many times over, showing you how unlikely it is for you to actually survive.
LeadHead I love you and I just started playing this game and I love it too. This is the best timeline
I haven't finished the video but omg I need that video of the whole series
This is a really interesting video, and the connection between memes and nanomachines was very astute. I do disagree with the ending, though. Armstrong's ideology is blatant fascism. He wants the powerful to subjugate the weak and 'make America great again,' conveniently not defining what makes someone strong. Considering his state-of-the-art nanomachines, though, we can infer money is at least part of it. What's interesting to me then is that his grand speech, which is much-memed and much-loved, is in-universe propaganda. He presents his ideology in contrast to the political 'elites' and mass media, making it sound less like 'the rich should kill whoever they want' and more 'we need to return to good ol' American individualism' (I say that it's 'in-universe propaganda' because it's styled as a political speach--this is Armstrong presenting his ideology on his own terms, and he uses common political talking points--compare his talk of 'elites' and the media to the other 'make America great again' politician's speeches). And by the ending, we see Raiden repeating a part the same speech. To me it seemed that he viewed himself, like Armstrong, as a soldier willing to fight his own wars, in a world of unthinking sheep.
On one hand, it can be easy to read the ending as sorta conservative: 'maybe the fascist had a point,' Raiden all but says. On the other, there's something kind of disquieting about the ending. After a lengthy cutscene involving Sunny, I became intensely aware that, like, Raiden's a dad. And he seemed to have forsaken that role to be a wandering mercenary. And what's interesting is that it kind of feels like his character arc has finally come full circle [note: I haven't played MGS4 owing to the fact it's in PS3 limbo, so if this is covered in MGS4 then I guess I am Bobo the Fool]. He no longer resembles Solid Snake, as he once desperately tried to. He looks like Big Boss, cutting off all personal connections to find a place he can be a soldier. MGR kind of perfectly acts as an MGS6 because it brings the story into a perfect circle.
I don't think you understand what fascism is. It's not anything that you disagree with. Fascism is "strong state good". Armstrong is "state bad, strong man good". If anything, he's closer to anarchism. A proper, honest fascist would see him as a proper pain in the ass.
@@hagonistheman7880 Maybe, maybe not. The crux of the fascism is not simply a cult of power, but also a well-defined external enemy (foreign state/nationality/group), pride, strict rules and goals within own group, and often a cult of leader as the symbol of power. These things are markedly absent in all of Armstrong's speeches. In fact, he derides empty "American pride" and people blindly following the orders.
It's just kinda disappointing when otherwise intelligent people see Armstrong as the Orange Man avatar and then just see red. It's a vastly different character, and he (along with real problems that we all can agree on) deserves a much closer look.
Armstrong's not a fascist, his ideas much more correctly coincide with nietzchian philosophy of the ubermenche, in part that's what the bait and switch of armstrong's motivations half way through the fight is about, and what the ending boss-battle theme song is about. Armstrong goes from seeing jack as just a tool driven by his rigid ideology to being an equal worthy of the truth. I.E. Armstrong views himself as the ubermenche and through the course of the fight he comes to see Raiden as one as well. In Nietzchian philosophy, the ubermenche were, among myriad other things, are the makers of new ideas. Nietzche's philosophies are hopelessly misquoted by the fascists, so there is some overlap, but it is quite different.
The game of MGR is about different ideologies, and the idea that none of the various members of the Desperados have ideologies is flat wrong. They each represent their own type of ideology, each face and change each other. From Mystral's found purpose, to sundowner's almost solipsistic and very child-like outlook, monsoon's nihilism, and Sam's complete lack of commitment to anything. It all fits together to tell what is essentially a battle of opposing ideologies, which ones win out, and how an ideology much change for it to achieve victory. The main crux of Raiden's character development isn't losing his ideology, it's changing it to be something less ridged.
This is getting a lot of responses that take issue with me calling Armstrong a fascist, and I feel like I want to clarify two points. The first is, when I say he's a blatant fascist, I should specify that this is only to me. Armstrong's speech, despite being the longest speech in the game, is very open to interpretation in terms of what he actually want to, like, do. This feels like a bit of a cop-out to say ("it's just my opinion????"), but honestly, this is a feature of the entirety of the Metal Gear series, whose world operates more on shonen power levels than on reality. At time, this can make the games frustratingly slippery to analyze, but it's also probably an essential component in how the games have stayed in the critical conversation for so long. A new interpretation can dramatically alter the thematic messaging of the games, with entire monologues recast in a new light and delivering new meanings. This applies to MGR too, and I'm not going to try to say that my interpretation is the only way to see things
I will elaborate on why I call him a fascist though. Armstrong's "I have a dream" speech starts out with some fairly basic conservative talking points--bureaucracy is bad, etc.-- and some fairly banal statements ("fuck the media" is a statement with basically universal appeal), before going off the deep end. I want to focus on the line "the weak will be purged, and the strongest will thrive," because the word "purged" is never really elaborated on. Does it mean that weak memes will be purged, or is he advocating for legalized murder? It's open to interpretation, but to me the fact he's standing on a metal gear crab with nanomachines that make him a perfect killing machine indicates the latter.
A quick aside: it's possible to view Armstrong as an ancap ("fuck American pride" could indicate a distaste for America as a state), but the fact that he wants to (sigh) "make America great again" indicates to me at least that his distaste extends only to the American state in the moment, and that he still believes in America existing as a political state. The fact he's fishing for votes indicates as much. That to me dissuades against any anarchist reading of his character.
Continuing, it's worth asking what state Armstrong wants. Now, in my initial comment, I made an allusion to Donald Trump, and I feel like I should indicate that I don't think Armstrong is at all a one-to-one analogue to Trump. I only brought him up because I feel like there are similarities in their rhetorical styles beyond the obvious line. Armstrong's stated political philosophy appears to be very simply that whoever can take power, should take power. There's total freedom of opportunity, he says, because if you don't like things, all you need to do is kill enough people and then you'll be able to enforce what you want. This comes with a mighty asterisk though: Armstrong has a metal gear crab and is virtually invincible. He is also the de facto leader of two PMCs. Plus, he spends MGR engineering a situation to put him in a powerful political position. After all, he does need capital. And votes. And let's not forget: the freedom of opportunity he values so much does not extend to the vagrant children whose brains he scooped out to power his gorillas. He is 100% canonically willing to compromise his values to give himself a further edge. So, I don't think it's a stretch to say that the world he envisions is one where a) he's on top b) no one else can possibly touch him.
How will all of that shake out? Again, this is open to interpretation, but I don't think it's invalid to say that the new state of America will just straight up be a military dictatorship. An in-group is defined as those politically aligned with Armstrong; most likely, these will formally be members of World Marshal or Desperado, as he values the strong. The out-group would then be everyone else, as anyone who isn't explicitly aligned with him is a potential enemy combatant (or alternatively a juicy brain for the gorilla-industry complex). As for actual enemies, they're straightforwardly killed off, as we can see with Armstrong's approach to Raiden. Wouldn't want any eyewitness reports complicating the message. Now, I am not a political philosopher, so I'm using Wikipedia here, but it seems that if we define fascism using Umberto Eco's 14 points, then under this interpretation there's a fairly clear argument to be made for points 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13. That feels like cut-and-dry fascism. This isn't the only interpretation however, and I cannot stress that enough. There's a lot of ways to read his character, and that's because the Metal Gear series has always been one that opens itself to interpretation. I'm not here to start arguments. I'm here to boost this video within the algorithm through engagement.
Although you're wrong about him being a fascist as he despises the state, the interpretation of strong subjugating the weak isn't entirely correct either. Armstrong wanted people to fight for what they want, and carve their own path like Riaden did
Exceptional game footage in this. You're pretty good
I was literally like "I wonder if LeadHead was going to make a Metal Gear Rising video".
I just came from your celeste video and your voice is beautiful
"nuanced stealth mechanics" *shows clip of man swordfighting a mech witha building sized sword*
1:37 I love how Sam yelps in pain 😂
Leadhead, You're kinda wrong, about the other villains I mean, They're not Ideology drained mercenaries who are doing that stuff For no proper reason, they have backstories, Told through their Dialogues And especially the songs and their lyrics AND how they're used in the game. I understand why you love Raiden But A huge part of that may or may not be that you don't understand the others.
I like the opening how you hid in a box, that was funny to me
great video as always
Its very nice how Metal Gear rising is just now having a resurgence given how it was a semi flop when it came out
Nanomachines son!
12:37 not really, I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that Richard Dawkins is the first person to truly define a meme. Now did he invent the term? I have no idea. Btw this video was really good, while I think you missed the point of some segments like Armstrong's final message to Raiden, I like how you interpreted some segments. I think you're the first person to not only take the Jack the Ripper thing seriously but also make sense of it because people usually dismiss it as the worst plot point of the entire game. Bravo!
This is the only Metal Gear game I've ever played so I had no clue that there was that much extra plot about Raiden as a character, I was under the impression he was a side character before this game.
I'm just not all that into stealth unless when mixed with some other genre, while I like spectacle fighters on their own so of course I played Revengeance.
Metal Gear is special, at least watch the cutscenes to the other games on TH-cam or something. Through the cheesy dialogue and wacky shit there’s genuinely amazing stories underneath, especially 2 and 3.
My favorite girl, talking about my favorite game?? This is literally a dream come true
That's a man
@@tumeg8282 are you blind?
@@Freedomerider Yes… By the God’s light shining bright toward this realm He has given us to feed upon!
@@manydukk2773 Excuse me..?
@@Freedomerider It's a man
WHO WOULD WIN? ROBO TWINK RAIDEN VS HOBO COP TEQUILA SUNSET
I only played mgs4 before this one (currently on mgs5) and when I saw Sunny for the first time I shed a tear of happiness seeing her grown up.
Also was that meant to be a Meryl cosplay at the start? Nice!
Others have already talked about what the other Winds have going on (and, tbh, the analysis isn't very reliant on anyone except Raiden, Sam and Armstrong), but the idea of nanomachines as being analogous to memes is very fascinating & really helps explain the "not my sword" scene.
I really disagree with your conclusion about the ending. Before dying, Armstrong says that his memes will live on through Raiden, and Raiden later goes on to argue to Boris that PMCs are "fighting for reasons they don't understand, causes they don't believe in." That's Armstrong's foremost meme, stated word-for-word--Raiden _absolutely_ adopted it.
The ending cutscene implies that Raiden's going rogue on a mission to hinder and dismantle the military-industrial complex through force, which is exactly what Armstrong wanted in the first place.
Yeah, it catches you around the bend if you're not lookin out for it sometimes. However, like many others have said, a few points are just wrong. The first being that all of the bosses have little to no ideology, which is just incorrect from the start.
Mistral is the antithesis, which may seem boring but is important to understanding Raiden as well. Sundowner thrives on war and sees violence as the means and the end, his meme really being about human conditioning in the end. Bladewolf, one who aims to thrive on freedom and personal choice, very simple and straightforward as he breaks from in-game design. Jetstream Sam you may have been partially correct about, but still he has ideology whether he himself realises it or not, an ideology about complete simplification, to see the exact not the possible. Then Armstrong, the most obvious which you actually touched one, who's views may be slightly crazy, perhaps even batshit insane, but in the time still make a great deal of sense. However, the means are not quite right, even if the ends lay to be a noble cause. The only "boss" that technically follows this exact line of though would be the first one, the Metal Gear which is basically just the boss tutorial.
Second, you speak as if Raiden had not taken in the memes of Armstrong, which he absolutely did. He did not ignore him, instead he accepted that dying breath and once more transformed his own thoughts to be more in line with the times, taking Armstrongs end goal and changing the means to include less wonton violence during the "active" part. This is easily shown by the hand grasp, the short nod, and then his actions afterwords, his personal shift in ideology becoming more clear. He hasn't stopped thinking about ideas, and he hasn't stopped changing after all this like you say, instead he knows what he wants and knows what waves to ride along, as he continuously changes his path.
At this point, every two months there is an essay video about how great mgr is and I’m not tired of hearing them praising it
This is my first metal gear vid. You explained it very well👍
Love you for doing this game
Absolutely loved this video, never thought about this game like this and mgs is one of my favorite series also loved the irl clips, keep it up leadhead! Thanks for the awesome content looking forward to the next video!
"I may be cringe, but that makes me free!" - Raidon
Not your strongest piece. Even Sundowner has his own rather simple and violent ideology. And Armstrong has far more to say, half the things the Jack can't even disagree with - about the state of the country, the war economy, the importance of raw power no matter the cause, and of course the 24/7 spew of trivia and celebrity bullshit. It's the solutions where he's gone batshit insane.
Armstrong *did* leave a worthy successor, the one seeing same problems and ready to solve them with his own power and methods.
I know he's something of a rage boner-inducing Trump stand-in for some Americans (check out Jacob Geller), but if we're talking about how smart MGR is - he really needs a bit more analysis than a small portion of an already short 20 minute video.
Lets gooooo your vids always get me pumped cant wait to listen to it
The more time goes by, the more I'm convinced that Rising is a masterpiece if you've played the previous metal gear games, but a forgettable experience if you've not played any of them.
"Doktor turn off my cringe inhibitors" "but riden you'll lose subscribers"
in mgs2 everyone expects and wants raiden to be like snake and then by the end raiden breaks out of it and becomes grey fox instead lol
16:55 Just like Armstrong said....
*Strength and not Committee.*
Maybe he was right in a way, maybe i'm getting something wrong...
Or maybe, it doesn't mean anything at all.
I also feel like the Japanese translated Armstrong speach is very interesting to read, it would've been cool if it was included but that's wishful thinking.
I disagree with your read of Senator Armstrong and Raiden’s reaction to him. I believe that Armstrong is genuinely a master stroke of genius, when it comes to character writing.
Including the DLC’s, he only has like 30 minutes total of screen time, most of which is either Sam or Raiden fighting him without dialogue, but in his short screen time, he manages to be a character who is not only highly memorable and memeable, but one who is very much up to interpretation.
It would’ve been easy to say that Armstrong is unambiguously evil, but that’s not the point the game makes. His own theme song suggests that Raiden actually views his perspective as a valid one, but because the senator “followed his wrath”, and paved a road with corpses to try to achieve some kind of justice, for his crimes, he has to die, no matter how theoretically noble his end goal might have been.
The game even slightly comments on the very real possibility that people just won’t “get” him as a character, with the back and forth between him and Raiden. It’s obvious, if you pay attention to what Armstrong says, that when he says he wants to “purge the weak”, he’s referring to the limp-dick lawyers, and the chicken-sh*t bureaucrats of the world. But when Raiden presents him with the idea that “the weak”, to Raiden, mean those who grew up poor and hungry, Armstrong responds by stating that even from that perspective, Raiden is in no way weak right now. Raiden took back his life”, as he puts it. The fact that he rejects Raiden’s definition of “the weak”, means that in his view, this isn’t what *HE* means by it. If it was, he probably would have just agreed with Raiden.
And that’s what I’m getting at: It’s very easy to interpret Armstrong incorrectly. I’ve seen many people argue that Armstrong is a clearly evil person, who just did what he did to try to spread some form of fascist bastardization of Nietzsche philosophy, where people will be free to kill whoever they want. The fact that he’s harvesting children to become war machines certainly doesn’t make this interpretation look wrong.
But if you look at everything in the game, it becomes clear that from Armstrong’s perspective, all of these atrocities were inevitable, and, he’s probably right about that. From Armstrong’s perspective, the roots of corruption are too deep to fight in any way, other than uprooting and burning everything in sight. And given the fact that people like Sundowner are allowed to live and thrive, he’s probably correct.
If evil is inevitable, why not try to at least use the outcome to create good? Armstrong wants people to be free to think, to not be swayed by anyone or anything but themselves. He’s the ultimate libertarian. He even has the trademark fivehead of one.
TL;DR: There are many ways to interpret Armstrong, many of them less than charitable, but taking literally everything we know about him into context, as well as the fact that in the end, Raiden very unambiguously takes up his fight, given how he even quotes the dead senator at the end, it can be asserted that while he is a man who did great evil, it was in an attempt to end that kind of evil, forever. He’s a man who wants everyone to live freely, to live in a world free of any kind of thought control, that had dominated society under the patriots for the majority of his life.
The fact that Armstrong comes to the conclusion that all of society needs to be retried, when he learns about what the Patriots have done, is not an unreasonable conclusion.
But where he faltered, was in believing that the only way to fix those problems, was to personally burn it all down. He viewed the traditional power structures as being irreversibly tainted by the patriots, and felt they could never help him achieve his goals.
Given all of these conclusions, as well as seeing countless young men die in wars they didn’t believe in, or even understand, it’s not wonder that he came to the conclusion “There will be only one more war. And I’ll use that war to tear this whole f*cking thing down.”
In conclusion: Nano machines, son!
Lol I need a tldr for your tldr
Wdym all these atrocities were inevitable? The whole thing happens because Armstrong ordered his death squad to kill a person who was in a process of stabilizing the region. I swear, people defending senator Armstrong jump through some huge hoops to do that.
@@lazygluttonous
“America has wanted this war for years”, is the line that I think spells it out, that this would have happened no matter what.
@@Laxhoop I can offer you a real-world example: Vladimir Putin says that it’s western world that forced his hand to start a war in Ukraine. What senator Armstrong says are his justifications of whatever the fuck he wants to do.
@@lazygluttonous
Believe it or not, I don’t think Putin and Armstrong have a lot in common.
One is a football player who hides his true intentions of ending the war economy, so that the people who profit off of it won’t stop him, and the other is a fascist dictator.
I love the intro so much!
Hello, Lead Head, just having an idea that you might try a game called Spiritfarer. Its a game about learning to say goodbye to your loved ones. The rest is history
I have a complete disagreement that Raiden ignores what Armstrong says. He fully embraces Armstrong ideology of fighting for what you want, not for what you're told you should want, which in the end credits he embraces with "his own war to fight." Raiden accepts that although Armstrongs methods were wrong, he wasn't completely wrong in how screwed and twisted America is. Hell the song it had to be this way, which is in the perspective of Raiden, not Armstrong, literally says that they are the same, but how they want to deal with their ideology is so different they must fight
Yeah a lot of people miss that raiden took a lot of Armstrongs ideology into himself, hence him crushing his heart and absorbing it like other electrolytes
His enemy in rising does have an ideology, whether they know it or not his enemies are working to uphold capitalism and its military industrial complex
I always appreciate your videos! :) Have a great weekend!
BRAZILIAN MAN DOUBLE JUMP
Just finished this game for the first time about an hour ago and I’m genuinely blown away. I wish I had played it sooner 😭
That's an entrance I did not expect
you are very cute and smart thank you for your videos
-Joe Riden from Metal Gear Riden
genuinely though :)
I like to say that MG RIsing is a Deeeeeep Parody of the whole saga in one game containing all the themes of the other games
Trully a postmodern literary take on Metal Gear Rising.
Every time leadhead makes a video i KNOW it's going to be an absolute banger.
Really good Interpretation, however to preach to the void, during the ending cutscene we see raiden's shift to Armstrong's ideals with his "own war to fight"
I don't think this aspect changes much of your view if any at all I just think it's a semi important detail.
Lore of Metal Gear Rising is way Smarter Than I Expected momentum 100