The moment that inspired this question:
A long time ago I was playing an MMO called Voyage of the Century Online. A major part of the game was sailing around on a galleon ship and having naval battles in the 1600s.
The game basically allowed you to sail around all of the oceans of the 1600s world and explore. The game was populated with a lot of NPC ships that you could raid and pick up its cargo for loot.
One time, I was sailing around the western coast of Africa and I came across some slavers. This was shocking to me at the time, and I was like “oh, I’m gonna fuck these racist slavers up!”
I proceed to engage the slave ship in battle and win. As I approach the wreckage, I’m bummed out because there wasn’t any loot. Like every ship up until this point had at least some spare cannon balls or treasure, but this one had nothing.
… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.
I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.
To me it’s at the end of MGS snake eater, when the boss explains the purpose of a soldier, and their disposable nature, and how war is nothing but one big crime against humanity that everyone waves away as necessary to complete a selfish goal.
Also that scene in MGS 2 where the A.I psychologically tortures Raiden and essentially predicts where we’re at now in 2023 with a.i, the internet, social media, war and propaganda fueled divisions.
For how over the top MGRR is, it’s actually quite prophetic how relevant the dialog stays so many years later.
Still makes me sad that we never got an MGS2 release that took Snake’s perspective. Obviously not the intention of the game, but still.