That early 2000's feeling - Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex PS2

 

I've been a fan of Ghost in the Shell since the late '90s, thanks to the demo of that legendary PS1 GitS game (the one that had this awesome animated intro). Come the early 2000s, I become deeply enamored with this franchise, especially with the incredible Stand Alone Complex anime. Towards the end of the decade, despite 56K connections barely counting as having access to the Internet, I discovered the existence of this PS2 game. I couldn't find it anywhere though, no shop had it and at that time for a teenager without fast internet that was it. Until a friend of mine helped me buy a copy the game from eBay. Wizardry.

[it should be noted that since that day, I've bought many PS2 games from eBay. It just gives me a great, nostalgic kick]

Technically it's a mid-tier game: the graphics are pleasant, the music is fine and the story is good. Controls are a bit janky though, stealth mechanics are somewhat present but not much developed and some levels are not that inspired (like the first two). There are no real puzzles to solve and most of the time a handy indicator points to you where you need to go, albeit without telling you how to go there; you can even explore a little out of the track, finding collectibles or useful items in the meantime. There is some platforming to do (especially in one specific level), which may require a bit of patience to overcome. You can hack other cyborgs, a very core mechanic of the franchise but, while it is an interesting feature, it's seldom used and rarely even helpful at all. Overall, if I had to give this videogame a score, it would be a 7/10 (with the fan-factor, it's a 7,5/10). But that's not the point of this post: all things considered, I liked the game very much. Scores should never deter you from liking something.

What I like in this game are things that usually aren't considered in reviews, because they are mostly personal taste or didn't really matter for videogames at that time: aesthetics for example; the complexity and verisimilitude of the story; its faithfulness to the source material (mostly the SAC anime rather than the original manga or '95 movie) and most importantly, its feel. This videogame took itself as seriously as the original works it derives from, which is 90% dead serious and 10% camp funny.

The story is not difficult to understand, but it's narrated unlike most other media, as it doesn't hold your hands explaining day-to-day (in universe) things to you by hijacking conversations between characters; for that there is an handy "codex" in the pause menu where you can even listen again to the conversations, a feature that somehow modern gaming has incredibly lost. So this game doesn't waste any "on-screen" time to deliver obvious stuff to you, but if you are a newbie you can absolutely find all the informations you need. From the beginning it's like being in an episode of the anime, but this time you are in charge of the fighting and the going from point A to point B.

The themes of the overall franchise are present, but the usual "can machine be considered living beings?" is not prepondering. In this regard, we have an honest sci-fi thriller, with a bit of action and a bit of espionage. Not jokingly, this game is like a little brother to the (far) greater Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.

I'm replaying it currently, on an emulator (don't worry, my PS2 still works, I just wanted to pump its graphics a little bit). It's been like 10 years or even more since my last full playthrough, I still remember most of the story and levels but honestly I'm not here for the game alone. I'm here to bask in that atmosphere of the early 2000s when cyborgs, AIs, robots, micromachines and the like were still science fiction, but started feeling much more close to actual science rather than fiction. In the last 20 years these technologies have advanced very much, we still haven't reached the tech level of GitS but that seems the direction we are taking, for better or worse. To be fair, we are still 5/6 years behind the world of Ghost in the Shell, so we have plenty of time to catch up. Again, for better or worse. Because at that time we already knew the risks of technology, but there was a mostly positive outlook on the future. Today AI are used to steal, the Internet is abused by shady groups and governments to steer public opinion, war is at our doors again and many more fragile people are left to sink in the illusions of the Web, becoming less and less interested in the "outside world".

And so, some of the negative aspects that GitS "predicted" became true. Why is this franchise so much... predictive? Hell, to me it's more predictive than the Simpsons. Look, the comparison may have made you laugh (or cringe, I don't care), but it's not that out of place. Both are products of the end of the '80s (so, babies of the Cold War) and both analyze the human condition in a hyper-capitalist society. Are we an individual or a number? Do our lives matter if we are not of the rich people? Stuff like that. Don't believe me? One key point of this videogame's story is the existence of a special variety of engineered rice that could finally end global famine... but is locked up behind a copyright and so isn't used.

Look, I'm not saying that the developers (Cavia, of Drakengard and Nier fame) went fully philosophical on this game. This is an action 3rd person shooter licensed videogame of 2004, done reasonably well. It's what's attached to it that is special, not only as a personal memory but more as a generational memory. As I said before, the future in GitS is not totally grim: there is hope that we won't lose our humanity after all. Watching the anime I was moved by characters sticking to (or finding their) humanity; and I identified with Togusa, for he was the most "human" member of Section 9. At some point, I even felt that it was in fact Togusa, not Motoko or Batou, the hidden protagonist of the first Stand Alone Complex season.

This game simply does justice to the staples of the franchise and that has always been a rare thing in videogame adaptations. It could have just been an entry point to the series, but it also satisfied those die-hard fans who dared to go deeper than the surface level of "hacking and guns with a purple haired cyborg woman and a cyborg dude built like a wall of stone". It has a meaning, under the "mostly ok" gaming layer. And it reminds us of an age when we were less scared by technology, because technology's impact on our lives was less scarier. That's why it is worth to (re)discover, that's why the 7/10 score I gave it before is pretty meaningless.