peruvian-puff-penis

[marraletta]

I SAW RIN THE HECKERS POST ON LIFESTEAL TMA AND I AM HAVING SO MANY THOUGHTS!!!!

[bare1ythere]

Tape Recorders and the Broken Camera - A Theory

This came to me yesterday and I then spent ~2 hours writing this out. It’s Incredibly self indulgent and probably a bit ramble-y but sometimes you need to let yourself say and much as you want about your hyperfixation.. as a treat.

Word count is 1.5k, let me know what you think!!

TLDR: The Tape Recorders were able to manifest within Upton House as both they and the broken camera are artifacts of the Extinction. (Reasoning under the cut!)

As a start, I think it’s important to think about how Smirke’s 14 as a categorization system is more or less useless, but only about as useless as the categorization of things in real life. As much as a lot of folks’d like it to be (me included), nothing is really clearcut. In the context of TMA, consider the fear that your life, or life in general, is insignificant. Would this belong to The Vast (Insignificance and being small in the grand scheme of things) or The End (The inevitable end of your life, and the end of your impact in the universe)? Both? I think the answer to that depends on who you ask, honestly. Not only that, but there’s plenty of statements that don’t have a clear entity attached to them. Binary, Thrown Away, and Confession are a few examples of these.

The truth is that Smirke’s list of 14 isn’t as clear cut as we’d like to think. Trying to put things into clear cut boxes is something humans have been doing for forever, and Robert Smirke’s attempts at understanding The Fears are no different. The Fears are really just one amorphous thing, a spectrum (“colours except if colours hated [us]” (MAG111)) that doesn’t really fit any one definition without exceptions.

I think remembering this is important when thinking about how Jon, Martin, and co are going to try to reverse The Change. Using the Web or the Eye or some other plot-important power to reverse the apocalypse doesn’t seem likely to me since these fears don’t Really exist, and are just the names we call aspects of the one amorphous Entity that feeds on fear.

(“the Fears[…] can never be truly separated from each other. When does the fear of sudden violence transition into the fear of hunted prey? When does the mask of the Stranger become the deception of the Spiral?” (MAG160))

This is also relevant now considering how the tape recorders were still able to manifest in Salesa’s oasis, outside of the influence of both the Eye AND the Web.

So how was this possible? For the entire podcast it seemed that Jon’s tape recorders were Eye aligned. I mean, they’re an Eye avatar’s tape recorders for a reason. However, they aren’t a staple of an Archivist’s abilities; there were archivists before tape recorders existed (MAG53), and notably, Gertrude never used them when reading statements for herself (MAG111):

ARCHIVIST: Did [Gertrude] read statements?

GERARD: Sometimes. If she was getting shaky. They perked her up, I think. Feeding the Eye, you know? I’d sometimes hear her through the wall, just reading into the air, feeling it all.

ARCHIVIST: She… she didn’t use a tape recorder?

GERARD: Not when I was with her. She travelled light. Left things behind.

That means the tape recorders are unique to Jon rather than The Archivist as a role.

I’ve seen a lot of theories about the tape recorders being manifestations of the Web instead, but despite how cool these are, I don’t think thats true. For one, how do randomly-manifesting tape recorders listening in on what is happening to you feed the fear of being manipulated or losing control? The recorders themselves are passive; they almost never impact the actions of the characters themselves. In fact, most of the time they’re completely ignored - especially in S5. Though it’s true that Web-touched artifacts like Jon’s lighter often get swept past and left unconsidered to benefit the Web’s plan, that isn’t really what’s happening here. They’re very aware that these tape recorders aren’t normal (MAG161):

MARTIN: Hey – Hey, when did you start recording?

ARCHIVIST: (confusion) I – didn’t. I only brought one, and I’ve been using it to play the tapes.

MARTIN: Oh. (sigh) That’s not a great sign.

ARCHIVIST: No. No, it’s not.

And again in MAG181:

SALESA: Now tell me, do you know why there’s a tape recorder here? I noticed it just now, but I don’t believe I actually own one.

ARCHIVIST: Uh… Not really.

MARTIN: They sort of just… follow us round.

This doesn’t really sound like something that would fit the Web. You could argue that the recorders are the Web’s way of getting information on what’s going on with Jon and Martin, but they already use spiders for that. Also, the recorders were still able to manifest within Upton House (!!!) where supposedly no power could get through. But it’s not like there’s some Other eldritch entity unrelated to the Fears that the recorders could be related to, so how was the recorder able to manifest?

I think it has to do with how Salesa’s broken camera is related to the Fears. It was unclear which fear it was aligned to in this episode, only that it feeds on “the quiet worries that come from living in hiding” (MAG181). That’s why I started this whole thing talking about Smirke’s list. I don’t really know which of the fears that would apply to. Honestly, of the main 14, it could apply to a combination: The Dark (fear of not knowing what’s out there beyond your sanctuary), the Lonely (fear of hiding alone for the rest of your life), and the End (Fear of the inevitable collapse of your safe haven and your death.) I really don’t think it could be any one of these fears alone, only a combination could explain the camera’s existence.

The weird thing, though, is that we’ve never really seen an artifact this complicated before. Most artifacts had a pretty basic, non-nuanced relationship to the fears. Never as vague as this camera.

Unless!

THE BROKEN CAMERA IS AN ARTIFACT OF THE EXTINCTION!

If you think about it, all of the aspects I mentioned above for the fear of being in hiding can be connected to the extinction.

The Dark: The Fear of not knowing what’s out there beyond your sanctuary The Extinction: The fear of what’s beyond your safe haven, what’s changed without you being there

The Lonely: The Fear of hiding alone for the rest of your life The Extinction: The fear of being the last person alive, forced to reckon with the changed world/whatever you’re hiding from alone

The End: The Fear of the inevitable collapse of your safe haven and your death The Extinction: The fear of being the last of what’s left of humanity, with the end of your life being the end of all of us

Not only that, but the camera itself is a manmade device (with the extinction having heavy technological themes). It’s also prime real estate to feed on the fears of those with bunkers/doomsday preppers, and Salesa’s acquisition of it was DIRECTLY related to wanting to survive a potential apocalypse. Even if it weren’t inherently extinction related from the beginning, its current use means that the fear it’s absorbing IS extinction related, whether or not that was the reason for its original manifestation.

So with the broken camera being an artifact related to the extinction, what does that mean for the tape recorders?

What if the reason the tape recorders can manifest within the Upton House is because they share an entity with the camera? And they can exacerbate the fear of being in hiding without removing the hiding aspect that makes it work? (after all, the tape recorders did first manifest again after the change when Jon and Martin were in hiding at the safehouse.)

Same with the creature of the Crawling Rot that paid Salesa a visit, the tape recorders can serve to remind the user of the camera that their bunker is not impenetrable. The reason it’s different from the corruption creature is that the tape recorder was Able to manifest within Upton House rather than just wander in. If it’s not related to feeding the same fear as the camera, why would the camera let it in at a risk of ruining its purpose?

The tape recorders’ connection with the broken camera seems to point to them being extinction-aligned, but they also serve as a form of record of How the World Changed and What is Left Without Us. This concept was a huge aspect of S5’s extinction statement (MAG175) as well.

This raises a lot of questions about why the tape recorders manifest for Jon specifically. Is he an extinction-aligned eye avatar? Are they not Really his, but manifest around him as they recognize his importance in the story of the apocalypse (which would make sense, since tapes have manifested for Just martin throughout S4 and S5)?  What does this mean for the extinction and how the Change can be reversed? I’m not really sure to be honest!! I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Starting at the beginning of S5, though, I thought that the podcast had to end with Jon’s death, as the tape recorders, a part of Jon, are the way we hear what actually happens in the podcast. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case anymore. The recorders, as manifestations of the extinction, wanted to drink in the fear of an incoming/ongoing disaster. It’s extremely likely they wouldn’t care to hear the relief of a saved world.

[jmsebastian]

Completely Covert: Sniper Wolf and Meaningful Boss Fights

For a game about avoiding combat, Metal Gear Solid has a lot of boss fights. I suppose it can’t really be helped. The bosses are designed to employ skills that the player doesn’t use as often during regular gameplay, and they have even more significance to the telling of the game’s story.  Without boss fights, there would be less room for Kojima’s cinematic touches to exist in. Because the bosses require Snake to actually fight back, the limitations of the game’s design start to show. Firing your gun is actually a pretty clunky process, for instance, since Snake’s aim is absolutely terrible. Bosses like Revolver Ocelot and Psycho Mantis move a bit too quickly to give you confidence about whether you’ll be able to shoot them in time, often leaving you open to attacks that you can’t react to quickly enough. Cyborg Ninja requires the use of unarmed combat, which is a mixed bag of overly large hit boxes and stiff combo animations. The first fight against Vulcan Raven requires getting up close and personal with a tank, which plays out more as a physical comedy gag than a tense action sequence. Snake can survive being run over multiple times, and destroying the tank is a matter of running under the main gun and chucking grenades into the hatch, which keeps opening because the people driving the tank are idiots.

I have a surprising amount of health left after having my head run over.

As a general rule, a lot of trial and error is required to figure out the movement and attack patterns of the bosses. You will get relevant information via calls on the Codec, cluing you in on the general tactics of the fight. The particulars are still left up to you, and there’s a wide margin for error. Thankfully, the punishment for these bosses is minimal. Your death sequence takes a little while to play through, but once the game reloads, you’ll generally be right outside the arena. Any cutscenes you’ve already seen can be skipped (most of them anyway) to get you right back into the action. Due to Snake’s very low health in the beginning of the game, you’ll likely die quickly in the first encounter or two for each boss before coming to grips with the best methods of cheesing your way to victory. Despite the frustrations, the boss fights don’t often feel too at odds with the stealth mechanics required during the regular levels.

The high point of these encounters comes during the showdowns with Sniper Wolf. The lone assassin introduces herself by shooting Meryl (a character whose inclusion in the game makes less and less sense to me over time) as she and Snake make their way to the communications tower. With Meryl down and out in the open, she becomes bait to lure Snake to his death. Before you can actually take on Sniper Wolf, you’re  tasked with retrieving a weapon capable of putting Snake on a level playing field with his enemy. This introduces the first prolonged backtracking sequence. While it seems counter-intuitive to leave Meryl lying out on cold concrete to die, the relatively quiet trek back to the armory gives the player time to reflect on what’s happened. If they, like Snake, started to become attached to Meryl, the feeling of revenge might play an important role in motivating the player for the upcoming fight. It’s a nice piece of quiet time to allow the suspense to build. Getting the PSG-1 sniper rifle is fairly mindless since Snake is more powerful, the player is more familiar with the area, and there are few guards that can be encountered along the way. It can almost feel like playing the game on autopilot while being preoccupied with looming dread.

Sniper Wolf and her not completely covert cleavage.

The seed of dread, of course, is fear, and that fear is completely justified. For every other boss fight up until this point, you’ve been able to see your opponent in a fairly confined space. They share the arena with you and, despite a few tricks up their sleeves, are pretty straight forward encounters. Facing Sniper Wolf is a completely different situation. The first challenge is getting used to firing a gun in the first person perspective. First person could be used previously to check out your surroundings, either just by looking around using the Triangle button or using the Scope, but combat was strictly a third person affair. FPS games were certainly not uncommon, even on the Playstation, but in a game that is essentially played from a top down perspective for the vast majority of play time, it’s a significant challenge to suddenly use a weapon in the alternate perspective.

It doesn’t help when this is all you can see through the scope.

Not being able to constantly see the location of your target is the other huge hurdle. Sniper Wolf can easily shoot Snake if he carelessly wanders out from behind cover, so the first task is to figure out exactly how to engage her. This, like with all MSG boss fights, is the most frustrating part of the ordeal. Part of the problem with fighting Sniper Wolf is that her tells on when to  safely equip the PSG-1 are misleading. With your back against the wall, you can see when Wolf has her gunned aimed by the red laser that tracks along the passageway’s concrete surfaces. One would think when she’s looking down the scope of her rifle, that would be the most dangerous time to engage. Sometimes, this is true. When the laser is fixed on a position, odds are coming out of cover will mean getting shot. It would make sense, then, that when there is no sign of the rifle, you’d be safe to set up. This is also true, but only sometimes. Without knowing her exact location, coming out from behind a wall when you don’t see her scope laser will pretty much guarantee getting shot.

Right through the heart.

Ducking in and out of cover makes for an incredibly frustrating experience. It seems like there just isn’t enough time to take aim. Either the scope’s view is on the wall when you equip the PSG-1 and you get shot before you can find Sniper Wolf with your scope, or you get blasted before you even get the chance to equip the gun in the first place. Adding insult to injury, if you get shot while looking through the scope, your aim will be completely thrown off to the point where trying to re-calibrate via the scope is a fool’s errand. It’s a helpless feeling. That helplessness leads to the sense that Snake has finally come up against insurmountable odds. The accuracy and unpredictability of Sniper Wolf’s attacks combined with the clunkiness of the PSG-1’s first person controls and Snake’s nerve addled aim make this fight the most tonally appropriate in the entire game. Defeating your opponent requires the same mental approach that the stealth sections of the game established from the very first level with the exception that you can’t sneak your way out of it this time.

It turns out Sniper Wolf’s movements can actually be tracked. Although the low resolution of the Playstation means it doesn’t work out as well as was probably intended, you can see her as she runs between shooting points. It is during these transitions that you have a safe window to move out into the open and take aim. To combat Snake’s nerve, you can also take (if you find any) Diazepam, a drug that temporarily stops involuntary trembling, resulting in your aim remaining still when not actively being manipulated with the controller. The effect doesn’t last particularly long, however, so maximizing the time in which you have the steady aim is paramount to success. Really, what the fight comes down to is choosing the right moment to set up, and making sure you land your shots so as not to be forced back into cover. Reestablishing your attacking position can mean getting stuck in a loop of taking repeated damage, and potentially waste your Diazepam and bullets in the process.

Finding Sniper Wolf feels more like playing Where’s Waldo? than Metal Gear Solid. I promise she’s in the screenshot.

This is a fight that can become much easier with practice, but the learning curve is steep. Even completing the fight several different times, it can still feel like a bit of a crapshoot as to how successful you are. In one attempt, Sniper Wolf might take quite a while to get a clear shot at you once you’re in position. Other times she’ll hit a bull’s eye before you can even find her in the scope. What’s nice about the difficulty is that it further reinforces the emotional stakes of the situation. I remember carefully monitoring the number of rations, pills, and bullets I had left, with my level of anxiety increasing as each resource dwindled away. Bullets will respawn in the arena to prevent players from being unable to complete the fight, but if you run out while you’ve got Sniper Wolf on the run, you have to give up your advantage and retreat back behind cover. Health and Diazepam are finite. Defeating Sniper Wolf is monumentally more challenging without a good amount of both. Overall, the boss fight makes good on just about every aspect it set out to. It effectively instills the fear one might actually feel if being hunted down in this manner. The payoff, then, is extremely satisfying once your final shot drains the last of her health bar.

It’s a good thing this boss fight is so good, because shortly after your victory, you end up captured by Sniper Wolf and some nameless soldiers. The relationship established in the scene between Snake and Wolf builds up the inevitable second encounter, which takes on a starkly different tone. It begins much the way the first encounter did, only instead of Meryl being picked off, it’s Snake who takes a direct shot after wandering too far out into a snow field. The mechanics of the fight are exactly the same as the previous, only this one is quite a bit easier since you can maneuver Snake into a position where he can hit Sniper Wolf, but she can’t really hit back. Once the position is established, it’s just a matter of watching Wolf run back and forth between trees and shooting once she tries to aim. If you manage to restock on Diazepam it becomes almost trivial. Without it, you’ll have to fight a bit with the intermittent shaking of the scope as your real enemy.

Without Diazepam.

Despite its relative ease compared to the first fight, it plays out quite nicely. It feels good to have the tables turned in your favor. With Meryl no longer the focal point of the engagement, there’s an undercurrent of control that Snake seems to have, even though he’s placed in the same predicament as before. It’s hard to know if the fight was designed specifically to produce this feeling in players, but the more forgiving terrain and the ability to attack while stiller in cover (accidental oversight or not) turns Sniper Wolf into the prey. The reversal is not exactly groundbreaking, but it is satisfying, and completing her story arc after she suffers the final shot is one of the turning points in the game for both Snake and his scientific companion, Otacon. Yeah, he loves her apparently, which feels more than a little forced.

It’s strange that Sniper Wolf plays such a prominent role in moving the story forward despite not having a prominent role outside of the fights. She isn’t introduced before she shoots Meryl, and she doesn’t really do much until she tries to finish Snake off. She isn’t the only character to get short shrift, as Vulcan Raven gets even less screen time and backstory, but her role as the catalyst for both Snake and Otacon makes her one of Metal Gear Solid’s most important characters. She’s arguably more important than the big bad, Liquid Snake. It’s fitting, then, that her boss fights are so emotionally fulfilling. They stand out among a series of boss encounters that are interesting mechanically if shallow in every other regard. No matter how many times I face her, my anxiety still goes through the roof. I still can’t help but feel like all the odds are stacked against me.