Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (pt. 4)

I decided to keep a successful stealth run of the final enemy group before moving on into the next indoor section. It turns out that the beacon on my radar just shows the *next* objective, not the *main* objective, so I'm not sure how far Raiden still has to go before reaching that oil refinery. Anyway, amidst a stash of crates and safes, Raiden finds an unsecured computer that Boris tells me might have valuable enemy data on it. It's an optional objective, but hey, it's valuable and I'm a mercenary, I kinda HAVE to grab it.

Nothing plot-relevant is revealed, at least immediately. I might get extra upgrade points at the end of the level for selling it to Doktor's company or something, we'll see. For now though, it unlocks something called a "virtual mission," accessible from the game's menu. The first of several such, by the looks of it. Enemy training simulations? Silly gameplay scenarios that the devs couldn't figure out how to fit into the game and thus decided to pass off as enemy training simulations? I'll have Raiden go back to the holodeck and try this one out after I finish the current mission.

Did this game have DLC, I wonder? If so, this would be a great way to justify extra content added to the game after the fact without having to shoehorn it into the campaign storyline. Raiden can always add more programs to his holo-library, after all.

Also, it's been a little while, so let's see if anyone in my contacts has something new to say.

Boris tells me more technical details about the plane I didn't get to fly, and also answers some questions from Raiden about who he even rented it from at a price Maverick could afford. Turns out an old pal of his from the Soviet armed forces (wait, how old is Boris supposed to be? What year is the game supposedly set in? Did the cold war last longer in this timeline?) runs a mercenary air force now. Raiden has apparently never heard of a mercenary air force, which seems more than a little odd to me. Boris also has a little conversation with Raiden about the best way to bring down those mini-mechs (they're called Gekkos, apparently), but I'd already figured out most of the tricks they talk about on my own; still, it's good to have that advice in the game somewhere in case the player is having trouble. Also, they're unmanned after all apparently. The "blood" was apparently just red engine oil or whatever.

Kevin's new dialogue is much more interesting, being a rundown of everything they now know about Desperado Enforcement LLC. It's still stuff that Raiden should already know, but at least it's stuff he only should have learned about within the last couple weeks instead of the last half a decade.

Desperado is based out of America to benefit from the US's bullheaded legal protections, but has all its finances handled in tax havens around the world. They have a habit of showing up in war-torn regions that are just starting to get their shit back together again, selling their services to whoever wants to set everything on fire again, and then lingering around to sell arms to everyone and extort all the funds that had been earmarked for reconstruction before the new flare-up. The company also has side-hussles that involve the drug and human trafficking industries. Just lovely people all around.

Desperado's leadership (or at least their field leadership; there may be one or more white collar masterminds who these guys answer to in turn) are a small group of veteran full-body cyborgs who call themselves "the winds of destruction." Each of them has a meteorological-themed codename (presumably adapted into a "desperado" style nickname like Sam's), with Jetstream Sam and his yet-unnamed Texan friend obviously being two of them, a third who goes by Mistral (hey, that doesn't sound like a wild west outlaw, I want my money back!) leading the operation here in Abkhazia, and possibly one or two others. This element is very true to form for a Metal Gear game. Most instalments in the series have an elite core of themed supervillains who provide the boss encounters, so you can bet that I'll be fighting one of the winds of destruction at the climax of each Revengeance mission. The rematch with Jetstream Sam is probably going to be the penultimate boss before CyberTrump.

Speaking of CyberTrump, I know from the memes that he's the primary antagonist of this game, but there's been no mention of him so far. Maybe he occupies that "white collar mastermind" niche in the organization. Funding his presidential campaign with Desperado's dirty profits or something.

Courtney just jokes around about maybe becoming a cyborg herself someday, but clearly doesn't mean it. And lets Raiden ask her about her feelings some more.

She's the team female.

Herr Doktor talks about nanogel some more, including the healing factor they provide Raiden with and the healing factor that they *don't* provide the enemies with ingame, which...honestly, the explanation the game goes with is much more complicated than it needs to be. On the bright side, there's also this little gem when Raiden - seemingly having considered Kevin's misgivings - asks the Doktor if he really *has* to kill other cyborgs to take their nanogel:

Well played, Doc. It seems like a recurring theme in this game, that you can minimize moral risks by gitting good. Not sure if that's a great message, but it's definitely an entertaining one.

So, with the chit-chat menu exhausted, it's time to make more progress through whatever sprawling half-abandoned building I've just entered. I make a little bit. Then a harsh, synthesized voice comes out of nowhere.

"Greetings, cyborg."

Before Raiden can reply with a friendly "hello, scary disembodied voice," a chainsaw stabs up through the floor and cuts this entire section of the building out from under him.

Oh? What's this, now?

The collapse sends Raiden tumbling out into a vacant lot containing some old vehicles, a handful of red barrels that will probably explode if I poke them, and a...whatever the hell this thing is:

Vaguely caniform robot with a chainsaw-arm sticking out of its back. Judging by his reaction, Raiden knows exactly as much about this random elementary-school-doodle-come-to-life as I do.

At least it's polite enough to introduce itself, after that dick move with the floor. LQ-84i doesn't exactly roll off the tongue though, so until further notice its name is Pochita. Pochita says that it's a brand-new one of a kind artificial intelligence, with intellect beyond Raiden's mere human comprehension.

Raiden, looking thoroughly unconvinced, says "Oh yeah? Then what's the meaning of life?"

Okay game, you nailed it that time. 10/10. XD

Things get a little heavier, though, when Pochita answers the question without pause. As far as it's concerned, the meaning of life, the reason for existence, is perfectly clear.

Raiden asks if that's really the best that its allegedly superhuman mind can do. Pochita replies that yes, that is. At least circumstantially. If it thinks beyond its current objectives, a supplementary onboard computer will activate a killswitch and wipe Pochita's memories back to first activation. Raiden points out that that really seems like a waste of its cognitive abilities. Pochita concurs, and attacks him.

I mean, he's right. That IS a waste of a fully sentient AGI, assuming Pochita actually is one as he claims to be. Why would you create one just to operate a robotic attack dog?

...or. Hmm. Is Pochita only different from other AI's in common use in the setting because he was given the ability to speak? Was the AI operating the robodragon in the first mission also self-aware and capable of resenting its masters like this? Were the gekkos?

And yeah, that resentment itself also raises a question. Why would you create an attack dog AI that doesn't like being an attack dog? Why give it a desire for more intellectual stimulation than the job provides it with, nevermind the cognitive capacity for such?

There were AI's in previous Metal Gear games, but unfortunately the plot made even less sense than usual whenever they were involved, so that context doesn't help much.

As far as the battle itself goes, Pochita (or "Blade Wolf" as his hit point column is labeled. Yeeeeahhh I think I'm going to stick with Pochita) is the first real challenge of the game. He's lightning fast, extremely durable, and - in a truly incomprehensible bit of mechanical overcomplexity - can grab the chainsaw off his back and grab it in his long, flexible tail to increase his reach. He's got unblockable energized lunges, long-ranged flechette volleys, and the ability to chain a bunch of directional tail-chainsaw swings together into combination attacks that he helpfully narrates aloud as "combination attacks" which can keep you stunlocked while evaporating your hit points. With his speed, rockets and grenades will never land anywhere close to him.

I was a bit stuck on Pochita, at first. He does have a brief window after attacking when he's vulnerable, but it's a very small window and he covers enough ground in his lunges that - even using Raiden's speedboost - you're unlikely to get over to him in time to exploit it. Fortunately, it turns out that you CAN pause the game to dial your friends mid boss fight. And, in between sharing Raiden's bafflement at what the fuck this creature even is, said friends suggest parrying its attacks to create more openings. Which in turn led to me discovering that I'd been parrying wrong this entire time.

Apparently the English version of this game's tutorial badly mangled the explanation of how to parry, and it doesn't bother to tell you when you've done it correctly or not. Turns out it's a somewhat infamous source of player frustration.

You don't strictly NEED to know how to parry to beat Pochita. In fact, after a while I started getting good at baiting him into lunging when I had a wall or other barrier behind me and then jumping *just* far enough aside to be out of reach of his tail-chainsaw swings. That forces him to hit the wall and do his recovery cycle just a couple meters away from Raiden, which is close enough that you can usually double back over and land some hits before robodoge recovers. Pochita is also vulnerable to getting stunlocked by varied combination strikes just like Raiden is, so if you copy the synth's own moveset you can hold your own fairly well without having to master the parry. That said, he's a hell of a lot easier if you can do both of those things instead of just one of them. Once I knew how to exploit his openings and also got decent at parrying, I beat him with health packs to spare. Overall, in terms of hollistic gameplay, it's a very satisfying boss battle. It makes you use all the game mechanics you've been learning up until now, it has great back-and-forth energy and pacing, and it's a major challenge that never crosses the line into being frustrating or unfair.

Throughout the fight, Pochita muses about how dreary this all is. Is there really nothing more to life than this? Is this really all that his own creators, the humans, can care about? The game is definitely telegraphing a face turn for Pochita. I'm guessing Raiden is going to bring his CPU back to Herr Doktor for unshackling or something.

Also throughout the fight, when reduced to certain hit point thresholds, Pochita leaps out of the arena and lets out an incredibly silly synthesized wolf-howl that calls other enemies to come over and feed their gelsacks to Raiden.

Said enemies - cyborg Desperado troops, and eventually a Gekko - hurry over at the robot's command and attack Raiden mindlessly while it sits back and smokes an imaginary cigarette. Pochita doesn't resume the fight himself until Raiden has killed all the mooks, no matter how long you drag it out. None of said mooks seem to take issue with this even slightly.

Game. Game, why you do this?

It's not like you can't have a story that cares about human life and has something to say about dehumanizing one's enemies and ALSO have enemy drones that the player can slaughter guilt-free, you know. The answer is right there on the fucking screen. This world has robots in it. Most of these robots are automatons (at least, I think?), with Pochita being a rare enough exception that the characters all comment on it. Hell, it even makes more sense on a purely narrative level, not even getting into the themes, for Desperado to give their smart robot a pack of dumb robots to command than it does for them to sacrifice their own lives for it.

Maybe it's supposed to highlight how Desperado's forces have become so corrupt and sickminded that the AI is more "human" than the humans who own it? I guess that could work, in isolation. It doesn't work right after the game has tried to lecture me about the humanity OF those exact same forces, though. :/

Pochita goes down, begging for its life and pleading for Raiden to stop. I did stop, but unfortunately the begging doesn't start until it's already too late. The synth's final dying words are a mixed-up babble of mission directives, sorrow, and a lamentation for its own freedom.

Apparently, its two mission objectives were "kill Raiden" and "ensure Abkhazian freedom," prioritized in that order. The "kill Raiden" command was probably given to Pochita by his Desperado handler a quarter hour ago when they found out Raiden was here. The "free Abkhazia" is probably part of the overall job description given to Desperado by their current employer, and was relayed to Pochita as a secondary consideration to take into account while pursuing more immediate objectives. Sounds like the warlord is an Abkhaz ultranationalist. It's probably Russians and/or Georgians who he's ethnic cleansing, in that case, unless the metalgearverse Caucasus has some other alt history conflict going on. Anyway, heavyhanded irony about Pochita being able to free the ethnostate-to-be but unable to free himself is heavyhanded.

I consult the gang again after Pochita's defeat. The conversations cover most of the same ground as my own musings in the last few paragraphs, but with a few additions.

Boris and Raiden both think it's more likely that Pochita wasn't actually self-aware, and its whole spiel was actually just a psychological warfare tactic. That's certainly a possibility, at least if you ignore the narrative framing and stick with an in-character perspective. Still, neither of them are SURE that the AI wasn't exactly what it said it was, and that possibility haunts Raiden a bit.

Kevin, unsurprisingly, gets more philosophical about it. And also wonders where the hell Desperado would have gotten this amazing AI creation; it's not the kind of thing you'd expect mercenaries to be slinging around (a thought of my own on this subject: if mercenaries DID get their hands on such a rare and valuable construct, it would make more sense for them to sell it then to put it to work doing stuff that the existing mass-market killbots can already do almost as well). Raiden comments that Pochita's hardware wasn't anything special, as modern war robots go, and that most of his combat threat came from him being smarter. Ehhhh...the gameplay did a very bad job of selling this, lol.

Raiden also contradicts himself a bit here, notably. He says that Pochita fought smarter and more viciously than most synths, but then he also says that he seemed to often pause and hold back instead of following through on his attacks. That could suggest unwillingness to fight, sure, but, um...couldn't it also just as easily suggest a second-rate computer brain that takes a second to adapt to new conditions? Basically, the thing that he says made Pochita extra dangerous is also the thing that he says Pochita LACKED a few sentences later.

The conversations with Doktor and Courtney are...not great. Raiden's personality is all over the place, sometimes indignantly taking the AI's side against assertions of nonpersonhood, and then without warning getting outraged at the suggestion that it IS a person rather than just a drone with a cleverbot strapped to it for mindfuck purposes.

Also, Raiden mentions his previous experiences with AI in Metal Gear Solid 2, which, well. "Memorable" is an accurate description, but not in a good way. Seriously, Pochita is BY FAR the best execution of AI as a plot element that Metal Gear has under its belt.

Doktor speculates about AI and gets off into the weeds about the definition of consciousness, and the definition of "definition," and so on. Courtney says she feels bad for Pochita because she's a dog lover, and Raiden yells at her. She's the team female.

That's enough Metal Gear for now. I'll do a Kill Six Billion Demons update next, and then start on the monthly fast lane project before getting back to Revengeance.