FloodOne said:
The problem is the theme is never at the forefront of the story, its buried in ridiculous metaphor. When you have to link me to an external source to help me understand your story, it seems to have become too convoluted and bloated for it's own good.
I get your point. Anyway, the biggest masterpieces of literature and cinema also suffer from this. I'm not comparing MGS to them, I'm just saying that's something that happens. The more depth a work of art has, the more difficult it is for an average reader/viewer/gamer to understand it fully. That's why analysis are made anyway. There is a whole spectrum of appeal and "understandability". At one extreme point, a story can be totally straightforward, with no deep meanings, no metaphors and complete general appeal. At the other extreme point, a story can be almost fully composed of metaphors, obscure cultural references and even references to things only the author himself understands. In between the two extremes, there are works that vary on understandability and appeal.
The thing is: the more cultured you are, the more you can enjoy deeper works and the less you're able to enjoy straightforward ones. It's a matter of appeal.
That being said, the guy who wrote the whole analysis had a lot more enjoyment with the game than you, or even me, probably. That's because he was on par with the author cultural experience, so that made him able to capture most of what the author was expressing. The point of reading analysis is achieving that level of cultural knowledge. Then things on the game that didn't made a lot of sense in the beginning start to make a lot more sense after you read it.
For MGS2, even if I didn't capture ALL of the essence, I could get glimpses of it and realize what Kojima was doing. It was an amazing experience for me. After that, I read analysis and improved my knowledge on the game even further.
Another example of this is the game Braid (stop reading if you haven't played). It was the work of a genius, but I was confused as hell when it finished. I did feel the emotion that the game passed to me, but I for one couldn't figure the whole atom bomb thing by myself when I finished. When I read about it, everything made sense. It's not something people make up: it was always there. Hidden. It makes sense after you know. If people figured it out, I could've done it too. And after you read about it, you begin to play the game again and see everything with other eyes.
I didn't get angry with the game because I didn't fully understand it after I finished it. It was not the game's fault, it was mine. I didn't pay attention enough to the details. But it doesn't matter, because after I read the analysis, I came to appreciate the game even more. Art can't constrain itself just so the masses can understand it. If at least ten people are able to understand it, and if the level of enjoyment those ten people have by understanding it is greater than normal, than the work is valid.
That may sound a little bit elitist, but It's not. I myself don't have the cultural luggage I wanted to have, but I keep on reading, watching and playing, so I can improve it AND enjoy good art while I'm at it. Some years ago, I couldn't even get started with a James Joyce book, but now I understand it and enjoy it so much more. That's how things go.
