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:
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 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.
I liked it, but this was also the first Metal Gear game in ever played so I wasn’t as invested in Snake.
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 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.
