Midway through Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, director Hideo Kojima forces players to confront a harsh reality. Big Mama explains that her troops are child soldiers, orphans raised in war zones who turned to the arms industry and combat to support their families and seek revenge. This moment, capped by the chilling line, “Nowadays, anyone with a computer can get combat training,” is more relevant than ever.
A Timeless Masterpiece
Eighteen years after its release, Metal Gear Solid 4 is now old enough to buy cigarettes and enlist in the military. The recent re-release on PC and modern consoles as part of Metal Gear Solid Master Collection: Vol. 2, alongside Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, is a significant moment for game preservation, especially given the closure of the PS3 store. However, it also serves as a stark reminder that we’re unlikely to see another game quite like Metal Gear Solid 4 ever again.
Set five years after Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Guns of the Patriots is a 15-hour anxiety spiral. The world has descended into chaos, with mech warriors roaming the Middle East and senseless wars raging globally. Solid Snake, nearing death from accelerated aging, embarks on a final mission to expose a global conspiracy, destroy the AI powering it, and end the age of war.
Despite being hailed as Kojima’s magnum opus in 2008, Metal Gear Solid 4 was polarizing. Its lengthy cutscenes (including a record-setting 70-minute finale!) drew criticism from players who felt Kojima prioritized filmmaking over gameplay. While the re-release won’t change many opinions, it arrives at a time when cinematic storytelling is increasingly prevalent in games. It remains largely a hands-off experience focused on tying up every loose thread in the series, a testament to Kojima’s meticulous attention to detail.
Perhaps what has changed most with age is that the cutscenes now offer a welcome respite from the gameplay. Metal Gear Solid 4 is challenging to play through in 2026, and Master Collection: Vol. 2 doesn’t attempt to rewrite history. Every flaw is preserved in a faithful remaster (aside from a new voice line to account for the need to switch discs midway through). This includes agonizing boss fights, tedious tailing missions, and clunky third-person shooting. Aside from its strong opening chapter, where Snake navigates an unnamed Middle Eastern city like a deadly maze, Metal Gear Solid 4 is the series’ messiest game in retrospect.
However, what truly sets Metal Gear Solid 4 apart isn’t just its aged gameplay, but its direct and unflinching commentary on political issues. Developed during the War on Terror, it serves as an indictment of the military-industrial complex. “The age of difference has become the age of control, all in the name of averting catastrophe from weapons of mass destruction,” Snake declares in a pointed opening monologue.
In 2008, this commentary had a clear target: the waning years of George W. Bush’s presidency and the Iraq War. Kojima’s series became inextricably linked to American politics, especially after Metal Gear Solid 2, set largely in New York City just two months after September 11.
The game’s message is laid out early on when Snake meets Drebin, a weapon-dealing merchant (and soda-drinking monkey owner). He serves as the game’s Greek chorus, explaining how the world depends on war and the war economy. “Can you imagine what would happen if war just disappeared overnight?” Otacon asks in a codex call after first meeting Drebin.
What once felt like timely commentary now feels distressingly predictive. In 2026, Metal Gear Solid 4 is a commentary on the Russia-Ukraine conflict or Israel’s war on Gaza. Billions of dollars have been pumped into these conflicts, with American companies directly profiting from them. The Wall Street Journal reported that revenue at Lockheed Martin’s missile division “rose 13% last year to $12.7 billion.”
The game even plays with this dynamic in its gameplay: the more you shoot at enemies, the more expensive guns become at Drebin’s shop, reflecting how increased conflict drives demand.
As you play, you feel the industry’s regression and struggle to imagine a game like this being made today. This is especially true considering the rapid proliferation of LLM technology, which makes Big Mama’s line about anyone with a computer getting combat training even more relevant.
The United States Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently revealed plans to accelerate the military’s use of AI, aiming to become an “AI-first” warfighting force. It seems the United States has been working towards building the world Solid Snake was so determined to destroy.
What’s striking is how timely Metal Gear Solid 4’s critique feels compared to new games developed in the shadow of current events. This is damning for an industry that has fought to be considered “mature.” For all its wordy scripts and hyperrealistic visuals, big-budget video games have become increasingly hesitant to tackle real-world issues in confrontational terms. How many times have Ubisoft executives insisted that series like Far Cry and Watch Dogs are not “political,” despite being clearly inspired by recent events?
While some games dabble in anti-capitalist ideology or allude to climate change, it’s becoming rarer to see a searing takedown of the war machine at a AAA level, like Spec-Ops: The Line. This isn’t surprising given how much the video game industry has become entangled with the very things Kojima took aim at in 2008. Video games are proudly used as recruitment tools for the United States military, and Call of Duty has even fueled training experiments within the Marine Corps.
At its highest levels, the industry is becoming increasingly hostile to those who dare to work through real-world issues in their games. Can we expect an Xbox-published game to say much about the arms business when Microsoft is entangled with the Gaza War? What creative latitude will developers at EA have now that the company is owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Affinity Partners, an investment firm run by Jared Kushner?
Metal Gear Solid Master Collection: Vol. 2 is the most necessary game release of the year. It’s a rebuttal to the myth that video games have become more outwardly progressive in recent years; its long admonishments about countries that profit off of war are fiercer than anything you’ll find in a big-budget game this year. As deeply imperfect as Metal Gear Solid 4 is today, it’s a reminder of how much ground video game publishers have ceded to the war machine. It’s an anti-war protest marching into captured territory.
Metal Gear Solid Master Collection: Vol. 2 will be released August 27 on Switch, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on a Steam Machine using a prerelease download code provided by Konami. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
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