The Metal Gear franchise has been with us since 1987 making it almost as old as The Mario Bros. series. It wasn't until 1998 when it added the tag Solid (in reference to going 3D and to the main protagonist Solid Snake) to the title that it gained the popularity it still enjoys today.
The creator of the series Hideo Kojima, is credited for inventing the stealth genre of video games (and has the Guinness World Record to prove it) where instead of constantly engaging in combat, the character must remain hidden from patrolling enemies. While he has made many sequels and prequels to the Metal Gear Solid franchise, it is the concept of war machines in Metal Gear Solid 4 :Guns of the Patriots (2008), and continued in Metal Gear Rising: Revengance (2013) that feels almost prophetic as technology marches forward.
In the opening of MGS 4 Solid Snake gives this now classic quote: "War has changed. It's no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity. It's an endless series of proxy battles fought by mercenaries and machines. War - and its consumption of life - has become a well-oiled machine. War has changed. ID-tagged soldiers carry ID-tagged weapons, use ID-tagged gear. Nanomachines inside their bodies enhance and regulate their abilities." Set in the year 2014, how far off are we from the world Solid Snake describes?
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| "The ants go marching one by one hurrah, hurr....oh god please don't step on us! |
The idea seems far fetched at first, scientifically enhanced soldiers fighting on the battlefield along with killer war machines. Proxy battles being fought by machines?! Kojima does the science fiction well but maybe he should dial back a little on the fiction and......
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| Oh...oh wait...those guys. |
PBS.org recently published an article titled Empathy for military robots could affect outcomes on the battlefield. Soldiers have grown used to having robots in war zones, and are even empathizing with them.
Drones of course are still controlled by humans unlike the robotic units, like the Gekkos, seen in MGS. X-47B--the first autonomous strike plane--intends to change that. As described in an article by Bernie Lopez in the Philippine Daily Inquirer: "In the past, US drones launched in the Middle East were mainly controlled via satellite thousands of kilometers away at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. But recently, for the first time, the United States showcased the new carrier-based superdrone X-47B. That it has a longer range than existing drones and that it is based on mobile carriers mean it can achieve deep penetration of enemy territories." |
| X-47B--like the movie Stealth only people will actually want to see it. |
How will robots reshape the battlefield in terms of ethics? On December 1st 2012 a policy review was written by professors Matthew Waxman and Kenneth Anderson titled Law and Ethics of Robot Soldiers. Here's the money quote in regards to our future, shiny, robot soldiers: "As lethal systems are initially deployed, they may include humans in the decision-making loop, at least as a fail-safe — but as both the decision-making power of machines and the tempo of operations potentially increase, that human role will likely slowly diminish."
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| "Ethics schmethics, I nailed it down to three rules." |
MGS4 serves as Solid Snake's swan song. The result of a cloning experiment in the 1970's known as Les Enfants Terribles, his body is breaking down prematurely and he is old beyond his years. As an old school soldier he appears a bit outclassed next to the robotically enhanced enemies he faces (though I'm sure he's grown accustomed to that by now). Snake's protégé Raiden however is all about getting jiggy with the cyborg enhancements. Next week I'll discuss Raiden and his spin off game Metal Gear Rising and what happens when we do more than fight along the robots--we become them.
to be continued.....
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