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The game becomes more understandable if you ignore the anti-war aesop and consider it to only be anti-war videogames. The Mantel soldiers are the hordes of immature 18-34 young men who gobble up an endless flood of games where they mow down faceless hordes, Mantel itself represents the corporations who release games glorifying conflict and death, and Merino and his forces - the sketchily-drawn Excuse Plot bad guys? Well, no metaphor's perfect. This grossly oversimplifies things (for example, a large part of Halo's supposedly simple-minded plot is concerned with how the enemy of your enemy is not your friend), but that's roughly what you'd expect.
Merino could represent Indie companies that use innovation to gain market share before stagnating in the sequels. The rebels following him could be hipster gamers that still want to murder some dudes, but won't buy a title unless it discusses existentialism ad neauseum in the narrative. A good example would be the decline of the Painkiller series: rough round the edges but fun in the first game, declining rapidly into tedium with sequels and leading into Bulletstorm that is almost inseperable from the space marine shooters it attempts to parody.
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