Video Games and the 4th Wall

Again this is not a book review on some made up prequel to the amazing book the 5^th wave, (you should really read it though) this is us talking about the 4^th wall. If you haven’t read the last blog, or are just joining us I would really recommend going back and reading the last blog because I am not really going to be doing any explaining of what the 4^th wall is. This blog is mainly going to be about how video games are able to use the idea of breaking the 4^th wall.

Last time we talked exclusively about Deadpool, the mercenary with a mouth whose superpower is being able to break the 4^th wall, and use it to his advantage, which is why he is my favorite comic book hero, but so many other forms of literature do the same thing. Let’s start off with one of my other favorite forms of 4^th wall breaks video games.

Video games do this kind of stuff all of the time, whether it is giving you tutorials on how to play the game, to one or two side comment’s to the player about the game. But the granddaddy of 4^th wall breaks in video games has to come from Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid on the PS1. This boss basically reads your memory card and tells you what games you have been playing recently and makes fun of you for playing them. If that isn’t crazy enough when the boss fight starts the game reads your button inputs then tells the boss to move out of the way from being hit. The only way to beat this boss was to get up off of your couch, walk over to you game console, unplug you control from control port one then plug it back into control port 2. I thankfully did not play this game as a kid but I do have a lot of friends who did, and this boss fight, was so creepy and mind shattering that a video game character was able to basically read everything you did.

So yes video games are kind of like the like the idea of Deadpool, which is the reason why a lot of people like it is because it does something completely different. The next and final blog of this series will actually talk about all of the other forms of literature that use the idea of breaking the 4^th wall.