No Metal Gear Solid Theme in MGS4: What Gives?

One of the most celebrated films in all of dork-dom is this little space opera called Star Wars. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Arguably the most infectious part of the entire movie was the music composed by maestro John Williams, punctuated by a series of themes that still resonate throughout society a generation later. While maybe not as widely-known as Star Wars’s intro, there are few video gamers who haven’t heard the Metal Gear Solid theme, which was present in all of the series’ PlayStation and PS2 iterations. So gamers were understandably surprised when the theme was absent from the fourth game in the series, Guns of the Patriots. While composer Harry Gregson-William’s score met—maybe even surpassed, in my opinion—the standards of the previous games, the main theme’s truancy left many gamers befuddled.

Well, befuddle no more, fair readers, as the answer has emerged from its cardboard box hiding place: accusations of plagiarism!

According to Joystiq, the news broke during an Electronic Gaming Monthly interview with series composer Norihiko Hibino, who said unnamed Russian composers had accused Konami of “stealing their music.” As you can see in this video (along with a very stylish Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear franchise), the MGS theme sounds very similar to the classical piece “Pushkin’s Garland,” which was written in 1979 by Russian composer Georgy Sviridov. The MGS theme was first composed by Tappi “TAPPY” Iwase in 1998 (listen to that version here), and the theme has since been remixed by Gregson-Williams for MGS3 and 4. Notice any similarities between these and Sviridov’s work?

Hibino went on to say that the theme had not been stolen, but that “Konami was too sensitive about the situation and just decided not to use that music in [MGS4].” Whether or not you think the similarities are too close to be a coincidence (and I think the differences are large enough for Konami to defend their rights to use the theme), I think this truthfully worked out in Kojima’s favor. While the MGS theme will always be a high-water mark for video game compositions, I think it would have been too triumphant to fit in with MGS4’s themes. The game shows Snake as a broken, defeated soldier, and I think Gregson-William’s “Old Snake Theme” captures these ideas and emotions perfectly.

Is John Williams actually... Conducting Snake?!

But I think this brings up another interesting point of discussion: at what point does a piece become “plagiarism,” anyway? Several years ago, I heard that John Williams had actually stolen the main Star Wars theme from another musician, and this comparison definitely shows some similarities with the first few notes. Does that count as plagiarism? I seriously doubt it. There are only so many musical tones out there, after all, so I’m sure that almost any composition shares a few similar phrases with another from some point in history. Let’s use another medium as an example: movies. Would we punish a director if one of his shots was very similar to one found in an Alfred Hitchcock film? Of course not, as those instances are called “homages.” So why should we focus on finding potential plagiarisms when we could all actually enjoy an excellent (if slightly unoriginal) piece of art?