In closing, let us praise the one certifiably great thing about Metal Gear Solid 4, and the one shining beacon that fills us with faith in Kojima’s future productions: the flow of the dialogue. It’s occasionally hilarious how well Kojima is able to write rhythmic dialogue. It clips and breezes along; the most portentous sentences become urgent poetic moments that transcend the base stupidity of the plot. Of course, you’d never know this if you played the game in English — the script appears to have been translated by the Elephant Man banging his head on a keyboard. There’s a line where Naomi says “If you want to change your fate, you’ll have to meet your destiny”. What the shit? In Japanese, she uses the same word for “fate” (unmei) twice, one instance of which being the first word of the sentence. This is to lend the sentence some kind of parallel structure. Even given the flipping idiocy of the moment, it makes for a neat little verbal-ironic turnaround: “The only way to change your fate is to go forth and meet it.” In other words, the only way Snake can possibly outlive his terrible fate (death) is by running straight at it, instead of letting it crash into him while he sits there doing nothing. This is a nice little sentence that no doubt has already inspired several dozen fanfiction-writing Japanese fourteen-year-olds. In English, it’s a dud; the translator must have majored in newspaper journalism, had a professor tell him to never use the same word — even (ESPECIALLY) “the” — twice in one sentence. However, this isn’t reporting — this isn’t regurgitation of earthquake statistics. It’s “art” (term used loosely). The moral of the story is that there’s no concept of the word “it” in Japanese, which is why so many sentences resort to (eventually poetic) repetition. We mustn’t forget this — this is perhaps one of the keys of Kojima’s artistic conscience, here, seriously (okay, not so seriously). Popping in needless synonyms is not what the games industry needs in order to gain artistic reputation — soon enough, everyone will be substituting 3s and 4s in their tax forms because they’re getting tired of writing 2s, and by then, we’re all literally and figuratively fucked, so help us Shigeru Miyamoto.