Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is one of the coolest games I have ever fucking played.
Very few games really take the full opportunity they have to be obscenely cool just for the sake of being cool. Metal Gear Rising does.
I have never played a video game with more unbelievably badass segments just perfectly packed into it.
However, Metal Gear Rising is not simply pure rule of cool. It is also the most explicitly political video game I have ever played, with easily the strongest message of any game I've played, and one of the strongest messages of any piece of art I've experienced. I suppose this is expected from a game in the Metal Gear franchise, but as someone unfamiliar with the series, even knowing how political it can get couldn't prepare me for how unapologetically uncompromisingly anarchist and anti-fascist and anti-capitalist this game is. It is genuinely incredible.
The game is not without its flaws. There are a lot of things in it that could definitely have been improved upon. But I cannot bring myself to care. Not only am I still thinking about it nearly a year after I played it, but in general it consistently makes me cackle like a madwoman and shout "HOLY SHIT!!!" when something absolutely fucking ridiculous happens. I almost don't know how to review this in text form, I can't imagine not showing off some of these sequences. They are unbelievable.
This review will contain full spoilers. I couldn't help myself.
Let's start off with the background. You play as Raiden, the slightly fruity cyborg ninja from MGS2, a game which I have not played. Working for a private military company called Maverick, he confronts a rival PMC called Desperado and uncovers a vast and absurd conspiracy set out by them. He is assisted by a very Russian man named Boris (voiced by JB Blanc, aka Blisk from Titanfall and that doctor in Breaking Bad), a very American guy named Kevin Washington (voiced by Phil LaMarr, aka Samurai Jack and the guy who John Travolta explodes in the car in Pulp Fiction), Woman Courtney Collins, and the most hilariously german man ever created simply called Doktor. Desperado is filled with a rogue's gallery of cyborg supervillains called the Winds of Destruction, who are each so fun that they deserve their own segments.
The game opens in Unnamed Country In Africa #32, with Raiden and his team providing security for the country's prime minister. Their convoy is attacked by one lone swordsman: The first Wind of Destruction introduced, Jetstream Sam. He is a suave Brazilian man in some sort of power suit type thing, with one metal arm, and a glowing red katana. He stands alone in the road, and the man operating a turret on the front car shouts at him to get out of the way. He does not. Immediately, Sam begins sprinting towards the car, deflecting every single bullet fired at him, before jumping up and SPLITTING THE MAN IN HALF.
Also, this is the actual face he makes at the camera when he first appears.
Raiden takes the prime minister out of the car to get him to safety, but is interrupted by the next of our villains: Sundowner. A hulking man wearing a massive trenchcoat, Sundowner can be described in two parts. He is loud, and he fucking loves war. Upon capturing the prime minister, he tells Raiden that "Africa was just getting a little too peaceful." He is the ultimate military fascist. He has some more positively insane lines later on. His weapon of choice is two giant machetes, either dual wielding them or attaching one to his arm and using them like giant fuck off murder scissors. We see him clean cut a man's head off with this.
Before talking about the truly insane, game-defining moment of this first level, let's get into how Metal Gear Rising actually plays, because it's fantastic.
Heavily deviating from the stealth traditions of the Metal Gear series, MGR:R is a hack and slash. Think Devil May Cry, or Bayonetta (which was developed by the same team). You have a sword, and you smack guys with that sword. When another guy goes to smack you, you can smack into him at the same time to perform a parry. The parry button is the attack button. The result of this is that the flow of combat is just to never stop attacking. You are constantly throwing out a barrage of attacks, only stopping when everything in your vicinity is dead. There are combos, but similarly to Bayonetta (even more so, to be honest) you can go through the whole game never knowing a single one and still have a complete blast.
Metal Gear Rising has one more trick up it's sleeve: blade mode, the major selling point of the game. When one of your energy bars is full, you can activate a slow motion mode where you have complete control over your cuts. When an enemy is close to death, flashing blue, you can actually hack them to bits, and if you hit the right spot, perform my favorite move in the entire game: the Zandatsu.
Zandatsu (xx - "cut and take")
The zandatsu functions as MGR's equivalent to DOOM's glory kills, being your primary method of healing in combat. When successfully executing this move, Raiden shouts a line like "DEAD ON!" or "BULLSEYE!" and reaches into the enemy's chest, rips out their fucking spine, and crushes it in his hand, bringing him to full health. You can even do this to multiple enemies all in one if you line them up properly, causing Raiden to grab each spine and then crush them all at once. There is one animation for this kill. It never gets old.
The fact that this doesn't just heal you, but maxes out your health, means that combat gets to be so much more precarious than it would otherwise. Enemies can absolutely wreck your shit with the knowledge that the moment you get the jump on one of them you'll be able to completely recover. The fights in this game are absolutely exhilarating, constantly feeling like you're on a knife's edge between life and death and making Raiden truly feel like a skilled fighter when you get things right.
Now, back to that first level.
Raiden prepares to chase down Sundowner, but before he can, the ground begins to shake. The water rumbles(?), and out from beneath the waves, a massive form jumps into the air and lands on the ground below.
METAL.
GEAR.
FUCKING.
RAY.
ONE OF THE NAMESAKES OF THE ENTIRE SERIES.
THE NON-HUMAN ANTAGONIST OF METAL GEAR SOLID 2.
METAL GEAR RAY IS FUCKING HERE, NOW. AND YOU'VE ONLY FOUGHT FIVE ENEMIES.
Raiden continues running after Sundowner, but the building sized mech currently slicing the city in half is not content to let him get away. It jumps in front of Raiden and lets out a mechanical roar. The only way out is through.
The metal gear initially feels almost impossible. It dwarfs you with ease, and your only way to attack it is by slashing its legs. In any other game, this would be the fight you are scripted to lose. Not here. Not Metal Gear Rising. Your fight is scored by a badass electronic metal track. As you damage its legs, you are given opportunities to destroy turrets mounted on it. You are going to win this.
Eventually, the Metal Gear pulls out its proper fuck you attack, raising an arm up to slam it down on you, and this is where everything kicks into full gear. The blade raises into the sky, and Boris shouts "RAIDEN! STOP THAT BLADE!" and you think, "no, that can't be what's about to happen, right?"
No, my friend. It's even better.
I mean, just, holy fuck. This is the moment. This is THE moment, where this game goes from pretty cool to fucking perfection. I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I say this is my favorite scene in any video game I have ever played ever. How do you even fucking top this. This is the FIRST MISSION. This is the TUTORIAL BOSS. Fuck.
After you powerscale yourself up to the top of the entire franchise by making a metal gear look like a joke, you continue chasing down Sundowner and end up confronting him and Jetstream Sam, who duels Raiden and beats him to an absolute pulp.
He also reveals that the holster of his katana is a fucking GUN and when he pulls the trigger it fires the katana out allowing him to cut with a force that would be otherwise impossible.
Jesus christ I love this game.
At this point I will try to refrain from just describing every single thing that happens in this game and instead focus on each of the Winds of Destruction as they appear throughout.
001 - Bladewolf
He is a wolf. He has blades. He's Bladewolf.
Bladewolf, technically, isn't really officially a wind of destruction. He is a tool, a machine. However, he is a machine with near perfect human intellect, and before his fight with Raiden ends up in a discussion with him about the concept of self and free will. He also has a chainsaw for a tail and throws knives. He's awesome.
While he initially presents as another opponent, you (and Raiden) can tell from the start that there's something... more to Bladewolf. That maybe this isn't what he wants. "Bladewolf" isn't even his name until later, he only identifies himself with a serial number. He tells Raiden that if he were to disobey orders, his memory would be wiped, but even still you get the feeling that he just desperately wants to try.
Bladewolf not technically being a Wind of Destruction and not being counted on the list of bosses in mission select means nothing to me, though. Because Bladewolf rules, and his theme song is incredible.
Like Rules of Nature, Bladewolf's theme, I'm My Own Master Now, starts out as instrumental and then has vocals kick in during the second phase. Also like Rules of Nature, they instantly elevate everything to maximum hype level, even when there's not much changing in gameplay here. No awesome mech parry, but you do get some of the most powerfully sung vocals in any game I've played. Give the song a listen. Actually give the whole soundtrack a listen. It's a masterpiece.
You end up recruiting Bladewolf to your team after defeating him, saving his central processing brain or whatever and getting him a new body to join you on missions with. For some reason he doesn't have the chainsaw tail anymore, though? Give my man his chainsaw tail back. Also this entirely happens off screen and is only mentioned in a codec call that requires first listening to Doktor talk for 10 minutes about how cyborgs work, which is a weird choice to me. On my first playthrough I just thought there was a second robot dog.
Bladewolf gets his own short DLC, too! It's cool as hell and it contains the best song in the entire game.
002 - Mistral
Woman alert!
Mistral, the cold wind of France, is a bad bitch with a lot of arms. I would say something about how one of the only female characters fights in heels but actually I think every single human character has heels. Raiden has heels. Fucking Sundowner has heels. I love Platinum. Anyway
As you go through the level leading up to Mistral's fight, you keep getting attacked by these weird little robots that are orbs with two human-shaped arms. They're not difficult at all, they're quite small and weak, they're just a bit strange.
It starts to make sense when you meet Mistral and she starts ripping the arms off of them and attaching them to her own cyborg body. She even turns a bunch of them into a polearm.
While she probably has the least interesting stuff to her, at least for me, Mistral is still one hell of a fun character. She has a mentality that is completely apathetic to almost everything, seeming to only fight because it's what she's trained to do, and because of... someone. A mystery figure that she refuses to name, but one who clearly gave her a much needed change of perspective.
We'll meet him later.
003 - Monsoon
Monsoon, Redditor Supreme, Twitter user Extraordinaire, Extremely Online Piece of Shit. Bladewolf and Mistral dabbled in a little bit of philosophy talk before their fights, but they just kinda wanted to kick your ass mostly. Monsoon is not like that. He will not fucking stop talking.
In the level leading up to his fight, you are taunted by Jetstream Sam yet again, speaking to you through billboard screens on the sides of buildings and trying to throw Raiden off his game by posing a genuine moral dillema: is it really morally okay that he's killing all these people? Raiden has always justified his killings by saying that they chose this life, chose to be soldiers and mercenaries and cops. Sam, however, shows that things aren't so black and white. Somehow, he taps Raiden into being able to hear the true thoughts of the people he fights, buried beneath layers of pain suppresants and emotional inhibitors. They did not choose this life. Not fairly. They are here because they had no other choice, they needed money, or they were tricked into it, and they are scared. They are so scared.
This breaks Raiden. He completely loses his will to fight, questioning almost everything he has ever done.
And that's when Monsoon's smarmy ass jumps down from a building.
Cyborg enhancements in this game have gotten progressively weirder. Raiden is just a guy, Sundowner has an attachment that can turn his blades into a big ass pair of scissors, and Mistral, the previous peak of weirdness, had like one thousand arms. Monsoon is about to take that to another level. He is magnets. I really don't know else to say it. He is a man made of magnets. As he jumps down from the building, his segmented body splits apart and extends, elongating him like a slinky, and then slides back into place when he lands.
After having a collection of goons kick Raiden while he's down, Monsoon begins monologuing.
He tells Raiden that there is no use trying to resist. Killing is simply his nature. "Wind blows, rain falls, and the strong prey upon the weak," he says, in a way that sounds suspiciously like a poetic version of the Scout from Team Fortress 2's ridiculous line "Grass grows, birds fly, and buddy? I hurt people." Monsoon believes that we can't fight our nature, we must simply let it run its course.
And then, to his utter shock, Raiden fucking agrees with him.
All of a sudden, we see a side of Raiden never truly unleashed before now. He cackles maniacally. Of course, we can't fight our nature, he seems to think. My nature is killing. So I'm going to fucking kill you.
For just a moment, Monsoon's entire facade completely falls. Where he has had a sadistic smile on his face the whole time before, he now looks fucking scared. His entire game backfired in a way he could never have anticipated, and he has created an enemy without a limit. He goes back to his usual cocky self moments later, but now you know it's all fake.
His boss fight might be my favorite. If Bladewolf didn't teach you how to parry, Monsoon will force you to. He is unrelenting, and in compliment with another sick ass track it makes for a phenomenally adrenaline fueled fight.
004 - Sundowner
Sundowner fucking loves war.
Not fighting, not killing, not the thrill of battle or whatever, although those too I'm sure. Sundowner just fucking loves war in its entirety.
He never sugarcoats it, never tries to hide it. He is completely, perfectly blunt. In that opening section of the game, after Raiden beats Metal Gear Ray, he catches up to Sundowner and Sam on the back of a train, where Sundowner is holding the prime minister of African Country. After some back and forth "why are you doing this" dialogue, Sundowner shouts "All we're saying is, GIVE WAR A CHANCE!" and stabs the prime minister through the torso.
That's fucking John Lennon. That's a John Lennon line perverted into the opposite meaning. What the fuck.
Sundowner goes into more of his politics the second time him and Raiden meet. While Monsoon believes that we are defined by our environments and cannot fight our nature, Sundowner takes it a step further. War, specifically war, is human nature. You can't stop it. There will always be war. Might as well revel in it. He speaks cryptically of something that will happen in three hours, something that will cause PMC demand to skyrocket. He compares what is about to come to, and I kid you not he actually says this:
"The good ol' days after 9/11!"
If it was not already clear, Metal Gear Rising does not water its politics down at all. Its commentary is in your face, its messages made as clear as possible. Sundowner, who already goes way further than most games would ever dare, isn't even scratching the surface.
His boss fight isn't that great. It has one of the best songs in the entire game, but the gimmick is really uninteresting and he doesn't provide too much of a challenge. When you get him to his second phase its easily possible to kill him literally in 30 seconds.
But man, Red Sun is a fucking awesome boss theme.
005 - Jetstream Sam
Finally, back to Sam. A suave Brazilian cowboy-samurai, feeling almost like a character Toshiro Mifune would play in a Kurosawa film. If you fused Sanjuro and Kikuchiyo into one guy, you'd get Jetstream Sam. He is fucking awesome. Most importantly, though, he feels... different from the rest of the Winds of Destruction. For one thing, his name doesn't entirely match. Mistral, Monsoon, Sundowner, all weather patterns, each matching their countries of origin. Mistral, France. Monsoon, Cambodia. Sundowner, the USA. While a jetstream is a wind pattern, its not region specific, and then the inclusion of his actual name continues to create a distinction from the others. Once Raiden meets him for a final showdown, these differences become even clearer. He doesn't seem politically motivated, not to the extent of the previous Winds at least. He treats Raiden not as a threat to be terminated, but as a worthy adversary. He's respectful, and his respect comes from a genuine place.
Raiden meets Sam on a highway across a desert, blocking his path. He cut Raiden's arm off at the start of the game. He weakened him before his battle with Monsoon. A final confrontation has been building for hours and now, he's just... there. No theatrics like the others. There's no bullshit with Sam. He's not even in any kind of battle stance. He's kneeling down next to Bladewolf, seemingly just finishing a conversation. They have history together with Desperado, and they still respect each other. Getting back to Raiden, Bladewolf says that even after analyzing Sam's speech and facial patterns, he has no idea what is motivating him. Sam remains an enigma.
Jetstream Sam's whole vibe is a perfect fusion of cowboy and samurai, and his boss fight takes this even further. He stands across from Raiden, endless badlands in every direction. The two each make a point to make this a fair fight. Their hands linger above their holsters like two gunslingers at high noon, and quickly they draw their swords, but do not attack yet. No joke, a tumbleweed rolls by.
"It ends here," says Raiden.
"Okay," Sam responds. "Let's dance!"
Jetstream Sam's arsenal is definitely my favorite of all the bosses. His sword, the Murasama, is a long, blood red katana, apparently passed down through generations in his family, which he then turned into a high frequency blade to match the current tech in weapons. The name, Murasama, is a misspelling of Muramasa, a real world Japanese swordsmith from somewhere around the 15th century. Presumably, it was misspelled somewhere down the line in Sam's family since, as previously mentioned, he is Brazilian. The sword reverberates with energy, pulsing with pure badass strength. It might be my favorite sword ever.
And, of course, as previously mentioned, the holster is also a gun.
The fight ends with one swift stab from Raiden. Whereas every other boss gets hacked into pieces at the end, Sam gets the absolute minimum of sword hits. Another mark of respect. As he falls to the ground, Raiden notices something else. Sam was not a cyborg. Well, not exactly, he had one robotic arm, but every other opponent Raiden has fought, as well as Raiden himself, has had almost entirely cybernetic bodies, or at least ones that are enhanced. Sam didn't. Just a suit.
He was actually just that fucking strong.
Bladewolf laments that this didn't need to happen. They didn't need to kill each other. To preserve his memory, he takes the Murasama. They notice that it has a lock preventing it from being used by anyone other than Sam, but at this point its not really about the sword, more what it represents. A man willing to fight to the death for a cause, and one who did so with honor.
Now get ready for motherfucker supreme.
006 - SENATOR ARMSTRONG
THAT'S RIGHT, BABY.
THE MASTERMIND BEHIND THIS ALL WAS A FUCKING REPUBLICAN SENATOR FROM COLORADO.
I LOVE THIS FUCKING VIDEO GAME.
Senator Steven Armstrong is introduced about halfway through the game, in security footage Raiden hacks into to learn more about the grand conspiracy of Desperado. In this footage, he is shown talking to Sundowner, and it seems like he's just the man in the background pulling the strings. Nothing more than a figurehead and a source of funding.
Then he shows up in Pakistan piloting a metal gear.
If you haven't played this game yet and have any desire to, I suggest you turn back now. I know I said I would try not to just explain the events of the game but I NEED to for this.
The cutscenes in which he explains his whole plan to Raiden are some of the longest in the game, but they are also some of the most packed with absurdities and political messages and commentary. It also contains the lines "Checked the internet lately?" and "Making the mother of all omelettes here, Jack!" Both of these are genuinely vitally important to that political commentary.
Armstrong lays out his plan clearer than anyone else, and almost horrifyingly relevant. Raiden had just gone on a rampage through an American airbase to get here, and Armstrong reveals to Raiden that he leaked photos of it to the press, convincing the world that this was instead a Pakistani terror attack. This is where that silly "checked the internet lately?" line comes in. Honest to god, Raiden looks at posts on the internet where people are calling for blood against Pakistan for this supposed attack. Raiden points out that the violence was Americans fighting other Americans, and that the President was saved (oh yeah also Armstrong was gonna attack the fucking President in his metal gear when Air Force One landed in Pakistan. Probably relevant information), but Armstrong counters with the simple fact that American blood was spilled at all.
"That's just the spark, son," he says. "The excuse we've been waiting for. America's wanted this war for years."
Something about that is so chilling to me. All it takes is an excuse. Doesn't even have to be a good one. Wars don't happen because they need to. They happen because someone wanted a war, and because a decent enough reason for violence was found. This is easily the most politically relevant any game I've played has ever felt, and it's honestly even up there with media in general.
"It's a war on terror," he continues later. "We're not out to kill civilians. Extremists. Lawless gangs. Madmen. Of course, that would have to include you. Wouldn't want any eyewitness reports complicating the message."
And now, welcome to the glorious final boss: METAL GEAR EXCELSUS. Even bigger than Ray. Even badder. Technically not actually a metal gear but shhh we don't talk about that. It's so big that the whole thing can't even fit in frame at once. It lays everything it's got into you, and you lay everything you've got right back into it. By the end, you manage to cut off one of it's giant blade arms, and then PICK IT UP AND START SWINGING IT TO BLOCK ITS OTHER ARM, AND THEN YOU FUCKING CUT IT TO PIECES WITH ITS OWN ARM. THIS SHOULDN'T EVEN BE POSSIBLE.
Raiden stands on the back of the defeated colossus, and Armstrong walks out of the smoke filled cockpit. He's mad. But... he doesn't look defeated. He doesn't even look like you've ruined his plans, just like you inconvenienced him. "I don't have time for this."
And then he stomps one foot on the ground, wires come out of the machine and start snaking towards him, and he starts GLOWING GREEN AND POWERING UP. Raiden is confused as to what the hell is happening here, but before he can express this, the senator SPRINTS towards him and rams into him like a football player, knocking Raiden back several feet. He then fucking GRIPS Raiden's head.
"Played college ball, you know!"
"At some... cushy ivy league school!"
Armstrong headbutts Raiden, then tears his face shield off and punches him with the force of a semi truck.
"Try University of Texas! Coulda gone pro if I hadn't joined the Navy! I'm not one of those beltway pansies. I could break the president in two with my bare hands!
He chucks Raiden into the air so hard that he starts spinning like a ball. There's a slow mo close up shot of Raiden in the air screaming.
"DON'T FUCK WITH THIS SENATOR!"
Before Raiden lands, Armstrong kicks him into a wall. Upon impact, a crowd cheering sound effect plays. I am not kidding.
Now the true final boss begins. Raiden starts at low health, but he can make it through this. You start swinging, and... you barely make a dent. Huh. You keep fighting and- a cutscene starts where Armstrong splits Raiden's blade in two.
But Raiden is perfectly content using fists.
"Jump start the economy?" Raiden scoffs. "Bullshit! All you care about is lining your own pockets." All of a sudden, Raiden seems like the one in control in the fight. "That, and your approval ratings! You've got no principles, just like all the rest. If America's gone to shit, you're just another maggot crawling in the pile."
Something changes in Armstrong as he hears this. The facade of a politician shatters. No more lies, no more promises that won't be kept. The truth. The whole, unobfuscated truth, no bullshit and nothing watered down.
This whole speech needs to be transcribed.
"I have a dream," Armstrong announces, inexplicably referencing Martin Luther King Jr. "That one day, every person in this nation will control their own destiny. A nation of the truly free, dammit. A nation of action, not words, ruled by strength, not committee! Where the law changes to suit the individual, not the other way around. Where power and justice are back where they belong: in the hands of the people! Where every man is free to think - to act - for himself! Fuck all these limp-dick lawyers and chickenshit bureaucrats. Fuck this 24-hour internet spew of trivia and celebrity bullshit! Fuck American pride! Fuck the media! FUCK ALL OF IT! America is diseased. Rotten to the core. There's no saving it - we need to pull it out by the roots. Wipe the slate clean. BURN IT DOWN! And from the ashes, a new America will be born. Evolved, but untamed! The weak will be purged and the strongest will thrive - free to live as they see fit! They'll make America GREAT again! In my new America, people will die and kill for what they BELIEVE! Not for money. Not for oil. Not for what they're told is right. Every man will be free to fight his OWN wars!"
What really makes this monologue special is that it's not entirely just evil. I agree that action is greater than words. I agree that things should be put more in the hands of the people than in the hands of a small group of government officials. I agree that the "24-hour internet spew of trivia and celebrity bullshit" fucking sucks.
But then there are the weird parts. The parts that, if you get caught up in his supremely motivating demeanor, one could likely gloss over. Yet, they're unmistakable. "Ruled by strength." "The weak will be purged." The most instantly recognizable these days is of course "They'll make America great again," a sentence that immediately calls to mind Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and makes you go "hold on, when did this game release?"
Of course, this isn't the game magically predicting future events. MAGA was originally most notably used not by Trump but by Ronald Reagan, although he had also said "Let's" rather than just wording it like a command. In any case, Reagan is not exactly the kind of man that it's good for anyone to be compared to.
After finishing talking, and also beating the fuck out of Raiden has he does, Armstrong stands still for a moment, before lighting a cigar. Incredulously, he then asks Raiden, "So... what do you think?" As if they had been having a polite discussion. "You should try fighting for what you believe in sometime, Jack."
Raiden slowly gets up. "Maybe I was wrong about you..." he says. Armstrong turns around in surprise. He wasn't expecting to actually win this killing machine of a man over through words. He rushes over to Raiden and helps him up, brushing dust off of him. "I'll rid this world of pointless wars, Jack!"
The Senator holds out his hand.
"I was wrong," says Raiden, standing up fully. "You're not greedy."
Raiden takes Armstrong's hand. The camera pans around the two, but when it gets back to Raiden's face...
"...YOU'RE BATSHIT INSANE!"
The average gamer might not pick on those sinister implications of Armstrong's speech (partially because the average gamer is an idiot). But Raiden did. Specifically he calls out the line "purging the weak." What does he know about "the weak"? Who decides the weak vs the strong?
Truth is, Raiden is fighting for what he believes in. He gave up on trying to work within the system long ago. He is fueled by valiant justice, a desire to do what's right by any means necessary, and a refusal to back down.
And right now, what he needs to do is kill this son of a bitch.
There is so much more awesome shit in this fight, including the line "NANOMACHINES, SON!" and Bladewolf's best moment in the entire game, but I will leave my descriptions of the events here. I want to examine Armstrong's politics and character more, because he is incredibly interesting to think about, especially a decade after he was written.
Senator Armstrong is essentially written as a caricature of an American republican. He is loud, charismatic, he is constantly making these grand statements of his goals and promises that you can imagine probably would not go anywhere in reality, and while he claims to be doing things "for the people," deep down he is really just a fucking fascist.
Of course, what in 2013 was caricature feels in 2023 less fictional and more like a reality only very slightly exaggerated. In a post-Trump America, it's hard to look at a character like Senator Armstrong and not see a striking similarity. Every quality listed of Armstrong in the last paragraph can also be used to describe Trump, along with similar republican politicians following in his footsteps like Ron DeSantis.
Senator Armstrong is different in a few particular aspects, though. For one, he is smart. He doesn't just has an idiotic view of how the world works. Armstrong is calculated, he is intelligent. He's just fucking evil. His worldview isn't uneducated, it's just completely fucking twisted. Not only that, but he genuinely believes in his cause. Sure, he's partially in it for the capital and the votes, as he tells Raiden, but only as a means to work towards his goals that he is fully committed to achieving.
For these reasons, thinking of Armstrong as simply a cartoonishly evil villain, a pure menace, is doing his character a disservice. He is still an awful person by far, he has done some absolutely HORRIFIC things, but he is an evil that needs to be examined.
"We're... kindred spirits, you and I..." he says to Raiden as he takes his final breath. The two have more in common than Raiden, or maybe even the player, would like to admit. The lyrics to his theme, It Has To Be This Way, one of the best final boss themes ever written, also contribute heavily to this.
Raiden and Armstrong are both people shaped by their ideals, people who are determined to make the world a better place, and people who will fight to the death to make that happen. They refuse to let anything get in their way. In another life, the two could easily have worked together beautifully, achieved wonders fighting side by side.
But in the end, it has to be this way.
Somehow, even with all this, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface in talking about this game. I left out some things intentionally, I left out other things just because I didn't have the room to talk about them, and there is so much nuance and commentary that I haven't even begun to fully analyze. I didn't even talk about the point in the game where Raiden starts fucking killing cops.
I just love Metal Gear Rising so much.
It is a game that could never be made today, for all the right reasons, and I am so glad it exists.