Just a little retrospective I wrote.
It is super interesting to me that there was a time when you could have a giant twist like this: a hugely successful prior game setting the stage for Solid Snake being a main character, then the ‘rug pull’ of making the following sequel feature someone else.
As I’ve read elsewhere in some comments, this kind of twist couldn’t really work today, with the immediacy of social media covering every facet of everything.
From the typical action star Snake to the over-confident Raiden, the shift was a big one for Metal Gear Solid 2.
But good lord was that leap in graphics a giant one for just a few short years!
I just wrote up a little look back at how/why it was done, and since I’ve got a terrible cold/sore throat, it was an effort. If you’ve got some nostalgia for MGS2, you might enjoy this one. And my question to you here, is were you there for this? Playing the intro on the tanker as Snake, settling in to what you thought would be a Snake-filled game, then finding out Raiden was the focus? Was it a shock?
Anyway, as ever:
I stayed up half the night playing it when it came out and my brain couldn’t figure out if it was the game glitching or me going crazy from sleep deprivation when Raiden takes over.
That shit was amazing back in the day. Twists like that just don’t happen anymore.
You’re lucky you weren’t at the late game when that happened. I was sleep deprived when I got to the “shut the console off NOW” and “I need scissors! 61!” Codec calls. i was genuinely questioning my sanity a bit.
Fission Mailed
EMIT
In middle school, in homeroom, I sat behind a guy who could not contain his excitement for MGS2. It was the first week or so of school. Every day it was a countdown to when he could play the game. “One more day, man. One more day until Metal Gear Solid 2.” So the next day, I asked him, “So how is it?” He was shellshocked. “Snake died, man.” Excitement was gone. His day at school was ruined. I didn’t check in with him later, but presumably, a 7th grader couldn’t make heads or tails of the ending of that game, if he made it that far. I didn’t play it myself until a few years later, and it was one of the most talked-about endings in all of video games, because it was so barely comprehensible, at best.
So the next day, I asked him, “So how is it?” He was shellshocked. “Snake died, man.” Excitement was gone. His day at school was ruined. I didn’t check in with him later, but presumably, a 7th grader couldn’t make heads or tails of the ending of that game, if he made it that far.
Sounds like you asked him right after he finished the Tanker chapter but before “Iroquois Pliskin” showed up on the Big Shell.
I didn’t play it myself until a few years later, and it was one of the most talked-about endings in all of video games, because it was so barely comprehensible, at best.
The ending was mangled due to 9/11 happening right before the game’s release and them rushing to recut and sanitize the finale, which had huge swaths of Manhattan being leveled by Metal Gear Arsenal ramming through it.
Presumably the original cut was more coherent, but I’m guessing nothing could have lessened the final mindfuck of “every leader of the Patriots has been dead for over a century”.
Sounds like you asked him right after he finished the Tanker chapter but before “Iroquois Pliskin” showed up on the Big Shell.
100%
As for the ending, it was already getting pretty postmodern, so I doubt it would have been substantially different otherwise.
Yet so prescient. It’s wild how well the themes blend in with our current society.
And then in 2019 Kojima would make a game about a guy delivering Amazon packages to people hunkered down and social distancing amidst the imminent threat of death.
Just to add some context here:
This rug pull was practically universally disliked by almost everyone that played MGS2 when it released. People that played MGS2 and liked that this happened are like, a super turbo minority of the people that played the game at the time. Only in recent years have people said they liked it.
The negative reception was so strong that Hideo Kojima himself in interviews would go on to say that the rug pull of Raiden was his biggest mistake with MGS2, and that he would never do something like that again.
I liked it, but this was also the first Metal Gear game in ever played so I wasn’t as invested in Snake.
I played through the mgs2 demo like 20 times, I knew every detail of that boat. The swap to Raiden was jarring and he just generally wasn’t quite as likeable or cool as snake. Game was still cool as heck and fun though.
adding context
Very on brand
But then kinda does it again in MGSV.
I’m trying to force myself to forget about this game.
For me MGS ended with number 4. The prologue from MGSV was good but the rest of the game is just bad, without any deep and interesting story…
The ultimate crime of MGSV is that they cut the ending mission that directly tied it to Metal Gear Solid. Without it the game’s more a prequel to Metal Gear than the Solid series.
That and cutting Ground Zeroes out into its own game when it was originally supposed to be a chapter in V. It should have been retroactively included.
How the hell would it have connected to MGS and not just Metal Gear? 🤨
And Ground Zeroes was always planned as a separate game to MGS5. They were supposed to release at the same time, but 5’s development got delayed.
Sort of, I’d argue it’s better accomplished. I don’t hate venom, he’s basically the same character. In mgs2 people signed up for more solid snake, which was even blatantly communicated as what you were getting in the demo of the game and all marketing materials. It’s a question of expectation. Even aside from the character, the tanker chapter is leagues in quality above the rest of the game.
It’s not the I hate mgs2, I think it’s actually really neat and interesting, but when you’re doing a rug pull off that nature it’s easy for people to be disappointed.
But you still play as Snake. Sure, Venom Snake, not Solid Snake. But Raiden isnt Snake, hes just Raiden.
Perhaps Raiden is the reason that the MGSV protagonist is called Venom Snake and not something else.
There were a few MGS games that released between MGS2 and MGSV, and all of them IIRC had Snake as the protagonist.
Yeah, I mean MGS3 technically isn’t “Solid Snake”.
Cloning aside I’d like for major series like that to be okay with having more protagonists. It’s been one of Ace Attorney’s major issues; even when a new kid came around, he got show-stolen so much by Phoenix.
Having to switch to Raiden really ruined the game for me. And I even bought the demo disc from eBay before release and played the hell out of it. 100% the original on PSX too. I knew that tanker top to bottom.
Suddenly I’m playing as this girly looking rookie. I learned to enjoy his story arc through the rest of the series, but Hideo Kojima really swung and missed in my opinion.
Never mind that the story got batshit bonkers at the end of the game. Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metal Gear Solid 4 are at the top of the heap for me. MGS2 was a let down.
I will never forget this rug-pull. Especially after spending HOURS playing the MGS2 demo once it came out. I hated the change at the time, but have come to appreciate it as time has passed. If for no other reason than it’s “Terence and Philip: Not Without My Anus” levels of trolling on Kojima’s part.
I’m more impressed by his ability to get players to like Raiden later on. He’s still a massive cringy dork in MGS4, but now he’s an edgy Gray Fox expy and that was apparently enough to change player’s minds about him. He’s gone from the most hated to one of the most popular characters in the entire series.
Kpjima later did something similar with Otacon using a completely different approach. Otacon was introduced as a coward and a naïve fool, and though he improved with every game, many players didn’t like him due to that poor first impression.
The prequels featured Otacon’s father, who all we knew about beforehand was that he committed suicide years before MGS1 because he found out Otacon was sleeping with his stepmother, and managed to make him a more hateable character than most of the actual villains. He has the exact same voice and appearance along with all the same personality flaws as his son, but those flaws were all turned up to eleven and he lacked any of Otacon’s virtues to counter them.
And his character spiraled downwards from there - it was basically Kojima rubbing into your face how much worse Otacon could have been and shining a spotlight on the importance of character development.
It’s weird seeing a breakdown of the character that I got my username from.
He really came into his own. I feel like it’s a shame people slept on Revengence, where he really shines. (And it’s fun!)
I would do terrible things for a remaster of Revengeance that adds in all the features they had to cut during development to get it to run on only 256 MB each of RAM and VRAM. The sword slicing in the released version is impressive, but the original prototype was nuts.
In defense of Raiden in MGS2, though, I submit to you: But that backflip he does when you hang off of railings.
Probably the best videogame in history.
100% agree. The ending made zero sense to me as a kid, but playing it again last year and seeing how borderline prophetic some of its themes have begun was absolutely mindblowing.
