Metal Gear Timing!

2. How is time represented in the game? Is there a separation of story and discourse time? How does the game’s use of time allow for interactivity?

In the article last week, it was mentioned that events represented cannot be past or prior, since players can influence them. A game constructs the story time as synchronous with narrative time and reading/viewing time: the story time is NOW. This is the case in metal gear solid. The word that I would use in MGS is not agency.. but rather.. urgency. You are on a tactical mission, infiltrate the base, seek and destroy metal gear, and eventually escape. The story unfolds in a very narrative way, yet there is a sense of urgency to complete the mission as soon as possible. So time here is immediate and agency is pretty much achieved...

or is it?

MGS is one cleverly designed game that somehow confuses discourse and story time. As mentioned earlier MGS used in-game graphics to every scene, be it in game play or cut scene. Though cut scenes are shown by the use of subtitles and familar cinema wide-screen usage. Sometimes the transition from gameplay to cutscene and to gameplay is seemless. (This however was not experienced in MGS 2: Sons of liberty as the cut scenes tend to go too long, losing the momentum)

So the game's use of time? Whatever that is more narrative in nature, such as the game character's past, or info about his mission, is put as an option to choose at the game start screen. The actual story time, though narrative in nature, blends in seemlessly with gameplay to create that interactive movie experience.