The 4th Wall: Let's Look at Metal Gear Solid

For research, I recently "replayed" (IE watched a let's play) of Metal Gear Solid. Almost 20 years after the fact, there's a lot to still like about this game. Sure, we can laugh at the bobblehead like talking, dated clunkiness, the awkward delivery of some dialog -- and dear God the accents -- but this is a generation defining game, perhaps the most important game to come out on the Sony Playstation.

A lot of focus gets thrown at the 4th wall breaking in this game. What I want to do is differentiate which of these breaks are simple 4th wall breaking versus which cross into the territory of performatism.

Superficially, anything that is performative has to be somewhat 4th wall breaking. As I say in my introductory article, performative elements rely on the acceptance of the medium and in order to do this the narrative has to in some way comment or recognize this, creating a strange narrative fallacy. Ergo, when Shakespeare has a monolog delivered to the audience we can argue that is somewhat performative, it subverts the reality that is intended to be created by the theater -- the double frame then is the recognition that a character is acknowledging he is being watched.

But is this actually performatism? Not... really. Again, performatism still relies on a semblance of kayfabe, that there is a reconciliation between the fake reality and ours -- the fake universe is still self-contained but has an awareness of a hierarchy. Shakespeare never goes that far, the closest being the final lines of The Tempest ("We are all players..."). Shakespearian asides are simply that; side commentary. It is just as easily assumed that characters are clarifying internally to themselves and the audience is privy to their internal thoughts. So then what does Metal Gear Solid do?

At times, the fourth wall is nearly non-existent. Some moments we have to accept is partially due to laziness; when Campbell actively references "pressing the select button" we can assume that it's for the sake of tutorial clarity. But then there are more strange moments, a particularly funny one where the player is instructed to read the disk case for Meryl's codec. It's startling and funny because there's no explanation as to if or why Campbell is aware that he's in a game world, yet he uses gaming terminology (in this case referring to a game case). On the one hand, this could be seen as performative due to the fact that a character has crossed this invisible threshold and has an awareness of an outer frame (the medium of a video game). But, more likely, we can dismiss such analysis as Kojima's off-beat humor, a characteristic of the series, which makes the intent ambiguous. It then becomes hard to elevate these moments beyond the curiosities that they are.

However, this does not address the Psycho Mantis fight, which truly raises performative and metamodern questions. 

The duel with Psycho Mantis is perhaps the most celebrated moment of the game, maybe the franchise. In a matter of minutes, the fourth wall is absolutely obliterated. Mantis will first comment on your in-game performance. This is not especially arresting since he could reasonably know how good or badly you are playing depending on if you have spotted. Then Mantis proceeds to dig deeper and read your memory card. Now, suddenly, we have a character that is seemingly able to know about us, the player, and that Snake (in spite of his own independent agency as a character in a story) is a puppet of an omnipotent force -- us. This reframes his first observations: does Mantis know how many times we as a player have failed or how many times Snake the character has failed? Or he could be aware of the fact that Snake has lived and died many times while under our control.

This moment extends beyond a simple 4th wall break. The other moments cited are just nodding to the video game medium. Psycho Mantis, however, is an in-game character who can reasonably and justifiably have an awareness of a greater world beyond his own video game world. This is, after all, a powerful psychic character. In Psycho Mantis we have a reasonable suspension of disbelief that he, as a character in a fictional world, has the ability to be aware of the player's role and our reality. A revelation like this goes far beyond the teasing jokes that were previously mentioned.

Overall, there can be some disagreement as to whether this is all actually profound. But it certainly not debatable at how arresting these moments are, where the game seemingly becomes aware of its medium and then a character within the game world has a similar revelation. There is a reason that the Psycho Mantis reveal is among one of the most celebrated moments in gaming.