Commonly considered a story-writing genius in the field of video games, Hideo Kojima has captured the hearts and minds of many with his games, specifically Metal Gear. The Metal Gear saga is an epic tale of legendary soldiers and the life or death stealth missions on which they are sent. The game series takes inspiration from classic spy movies like the Bond films, as well as cerebral allegorical literature such as Lord of The Flies.
The most important aspect of the series, however, is the exploration of exploitation of the soldier by governments and the transformation of human beings into people built for war. This topic had been addressed since the first Metal Gear games and is brought into the forefront of the plot by one of the main character's dreams, known as Outer Heaven.
Big Boss, the main character in question, has to kill his mentor and mother figure in order to prevent a nuclear war. He soon realizes that she had given her life for her country, posing as a Soviet Union defector and becoming an assassination target for Big Boss in order to prevent an international conflict. After realizing this, Big Boss strictly opposes the idea of nations using soldiers to solve conflicts, but the problem becomes complicated.
After experiencing years of battle, soldiers had become fundamentally different from civilians. Some, like himself, had trained for much of their lives to become machines, resolving conflicts through violence. Once a soldier, always a soldier. What life is there for a warrior besides to continuously serve his country, when the other option is to be forced back into a civilian life to which he could no longer belong?
Big Boss' dream starts out simple: to create a world where soldiers serve no nation, and can live their lives doing what they do best. Big Boss dreams about creating a force of soldiers without a homeland or a creed, fighting eternally for the sake of fighting. He rescues many of his men from the field of battle and takes in wandering soldiers from all over to achieve his dream.
To make a long story short, while Big Boss is at times the protagonist of the Metal Gear series, he ultimately transitions to villain status. By the end of the series' timeline, similar mercenary groups to the ones he had started a long time ago cover the world. A war economy springs up, and soldiers continue to wage war eternally.
The Outer Heaven dream illustrates the separation of the soldier from the civilian in war. War changes people forever in Metal Gear, which many soldiers will tell you happens in real life as well. The circumstances from which the idea arose show the twisted nature of states that command and force people into situations that break them down or cost them their lives. The manifestations of Big Boss's Outer Heaven, however, are also horrible in their own way.
The ultimate purpose of the dream in Metal Gear's storyline is really to illustrate this: as long as war exists, the soldier suffers.
