Last thought for tonight. Very fried brain here.
In MGS4, Liquid* is constantly on about the system and how he needs** Big Boss’s Bones*** to get into it.
*not really Liquid, it’s Ocelot tricking himself that he’s being controlled by his forearm
**does he need them considering it isn’t really him in there?
***it turns out to not even really be Big Boss (and not even really the guy the game tells us it is instead!)
And this completely doesn’t matter in any real way but something I seem to have mysteriously fixated on is just exactly what accessing the system means in this context. Like this just raises a huge list of trivial questions which if answered would make me think less of the game (not everything needs an answer!). Yet, I am plagued with wondering:
1) How, in literal terms, does Liquid access this system?
- He uses his nanomachines, but what is the user interface like? Does he have a username and password? Does he just think “I’m in” and get mindjacked into a senseless void where he somehow mentally accesses huge amounts of information? How does he navigate it?
2) What, in literal terms, is this system?
- In the basement of Outer Haven I guess we see it’s housed in (or at least accessible via) a server monolith, surrounded by little baby servers made up to look like graves. But is that it? Is this where the AI network always has been? For that matter, who made Outer Haven? Did Liquid/Ocelot overtake it or did he build it? It has that Mt. Snakemore display which seems very Liquid. The Patriots built it ; Ocelot works for the Patriots ; the Patriots orchestrated the events of the whole game ; but the Patriots are dead!
3) When Liquid gets Big Boss’s remains, what does he do with them?
- What about Big Boss’s body permits someone (and can it be just anyone? or does only Liquid know how?) to access the system? Does it open up when it verifies Big Boss’s vitals (why he’s being kept in stasis)? A DNA sample? Is some physiological component of his body converted into numeric data and used as an access key?
Again, NONE of these questions matter, I don’t really want the game to have answered them, but this is what I THINK ABOUT whenever I play this game. I’m frankly due for a replay (been a few years) so maybe I’ve forgotten some information in the above but I’m sure my fundamental question re: how Ocelot uses the computer is not in any way made clear. He just points his fingers in the air and says “bang.”
Syzygy, grant me wisdom