Metal Gear Rising: Revengance--Our future wars pt. 2

Raiden is the Robin to Solid Snake's Batman...okay he's more of a Nightwing--a Robin who grew up and came into his own acrobatic heroics.

"I am my own man--I AM!"

Raiden (it's a codename, his real name is Jack) made his first appearance in Metal Gear Solid 2 where he upstaged Solid Snake in the role of main protagonist.
Metal Gear Rising is an action game that takes a departure from the Metal Gear Solid series.  Stealth is possible, but it's way more fun to engage the enemy and chop them into tiny little robot chunks with your samurai sword.

Raiden's childhood was a traumatic one, raised as a child soldier in Liberia by the evil Solidus Snake (not to be mistaken for his fellow clone from the Les Enfants Terribles project, Solid Snake), Raiden was such a vicious fighter in his youth he earned nicknames like "The White Devil" and "Jack the Ripper."  Fortunately he was able to get away from his sinister adoptive father and move to the United States.

Raiden: Child soldier, PTSD victim, cyborg-ninja, and... African American

Growing up Jack could not escape from the horrors of his past, displaying symptoms of PTSD (on top of constantly suppressing his Jack the Ripper persona), he felt the only thing he could do was be a soldier so he enlisted in FOXHOUND--who he would eventually leave for a private military security organization known as Maverick, as the lovable crazy-ninja-cyborg he is today.

Four years after Metal Gear Solid 4, Metal Gear Rising is set in the year 2018.  Things have escalated since MGS4--anybody who's anybody on the battlefield has been fitted with cyborg enhancements.  It makes sense considering this is a world were armies have robots with advanced AI's and Metal Gears: bipedal tanks capable of launching nuclear missiles.

There are futurist who believe that as technology advances around us at exponential rates, the only way humans will be able to keep up with it will be by integrating the technology within ourselves.  This future moment is called The Singularity.   In a way the story of Rising can be seen as a very physical version of The Singularity as soldiers must upgrade their bodies to stay in step with battlefield technology, as well as their enemies.  In the introduction of the game Raiden takes a major thrashing from rival sword swinging cyborg, Jetstream Sam.  Upon losing the fight (and some body parts) Raiden's first realization is--he needs to upgrade.  It's a funny thought, someday in the distant future we might be upgrading ourselves like we do our cellphones. 

As far as implementation in warfare, robotics are starting on the outside.  Exoskeletons, like the HULC, meant to increase a soldier's strength and endurance are in development.

And what of the other technology that is so prevalent throughout the Metal Gear franchise?  What about "Nanomachines son?" 

The final boss in Metal Gear Rising, who happens to be a U.S. Senator and 2020 shoe-in for the presidency, Steven Armstrong, is loaded with nanomachines making him a nearly indestructible foe.   

The Nanotechnology Initiative defines the science on their website:  "Nanoscience and nanotechnology are the study and application of extremely small things and can be used across all the other science fields, such as chemistry, biology, physics, materials science, and engineering."

In the Metal Gear universe the abilities granted by nanomachines in the blood stream range from the practical: monitoring the body's vitals, releasing painkillers and other medications, and links to personal devices; to the freakish: telepathy between soldiers, telekinesis, enhanced strength and healing, and just about every move Raiden's archnemesis Vamp makes.

It's impossible to say what the limits of nanotechnology will be:  Will they be able to perform micro-surgery?  Can someday nanorobots be injected into a patient to attack cancer cells?  Most importantly, will they allow us to stick to walls like Spider-man?

We have to keep an open mind when it comes to science even if certain achievements seem impossible in the present.  As science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once said,"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Keep an open mind, or Arthur C. Clarke will return as a cyborg-ninja and kick your ass.
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