Mr.Monitor
Member
Absolutely fantastic video. I find it amazing how MGS2's subtext just seems to get more relevant over time. It's a real masterpiece in my book.
Critical Analysis - MGS2
- Thread starter Revan
- Start date
It's definitely playable. Runs at a variable fps (30fps outdoors and during action-heavy moments, 60fps indoors). Visuals are sub-native, but they still hold up well enough.
The Vita-specific controls are hit or miss imo. Using the touch screen to select items works like a charm, but moving the back touch to lean and and stand on your toes never seems to work when I want it to.
The biggest issue I have is the sniping controls. Even with pentazemin, lying prone, and holding L to steady your aim, it still is extremely hard to hit targets compared to the PS3 version. I'm stuck at Snake's Sniper VR missions because of this.
Other than, that it's great. I enjoyed so much that I'm considering buying MGS3 HD as well, even though I own Snake Eater, Subsistence, and Snake Eater 3D.
Skull Leader
Banned
I want to apologize in advance for this next effort post everyone
MGS2 is saying that entertainment cannot substitute reality. I think that saying it's attacking or critiquing a portion of the fanbase strays closer to flamebait if anything.
It's difficult for me to fully accept "Raiden as the Player" for one key reason: As far as he is concerned, he's actually getting shot at during the events of MGS2, the player is merely controlling him, just the same as the player is merely controlling Snake. Theories have been thrown around that state "Maybe it was ALL VR AFTER ALL!" However, the existence of MGS4 and Revengeance stamps that theory into complete irrelevance. MGS2 did happen. Raiden DID train for the mission in VR, but ultimately, all of the VR in the world could not and did not prepare him for how crazy reality truly is, especially when you're trying to live up to an actual legend. Raiden only grew as a person (and as an enjoyable addition to the franchise) when he completely went off the rails of the conditioning set before him and became a cyborg ninja that gives no fucks (that is to say, he embraced the monster he'd been during his time as a child soldier, and recognized that he could not be Snake. He'll never stop being a fanboy though XD).
I don't think MGS2 is a critique on the mentality of the gamer who played MGS1 and 2 so much as it is a statement on the value of videogames as a whole as a tool to prepare people for reality, whether it is to fight wars or to interact with other human beings. Just as there are lots of kids out there who have 'heroes' from all sorts of media, and by consuming that media they become closer to it, there are lots of gamers out there who think that playing CoD or Battlefield or Need For Speed or Super Mario Bros, they are getting closer to the characters they love, the people they look up to, or the lifestyle they are clueless about but still think is awesome. Of course, nobody becomes a Navy SEAL just because they played that one mission in MW2 over and over and over. They become a Navy SEAL by undergoing a punishing fitness regimen of their own accord, and become comfortable with what it means to actually be a special forces warrior through the training and actual field deployments. They make actual sacrifices. They actually get hurt.
Like Raiden, a gamer might think they know shit when it comes to weapons and tactics and how to employ them in real combat, but they likely would not know what the hell they are doing with actual training, and even then that does not guarantee a perfectly obedient and brave soldier.
The idea that "simulating" an experience constantly would be "good enough" to make a soldier that can perfectly emulate Solid Snake is what the Patriots were trying to accomplish, but Raiden ultimately proves that it's not possible (because I guess nobody learned their lesson after Solidus, Liquid, and Solid proved that you can't artificially recreate a legend from a test tube). Solid Snake represents the ultimate ideal supersoldier in Metal Gear World. Lesser men would and do crack under significantly less suffering than Snake ever endures throughout his entire career. That endurance, that iron will, those are things that he uniquely possesses. Even his father ended up being ruined by the legend he became. Trying to force a broken child soldier to become exactly the same thing by merely playing a simulation was never going to be capable of guaranteeing the desired result.
A consistent theme of MGS is how there are many who tried to live up something they idolized, loved, or even hated. They do this in many ways:
Liquid wanted to surpass his lineage by "destroying" it through accomplishing everything they could not. His obsession with being the best soldier to ever soldier ended up ruining his mind, and it's clear that he never actually tried to understand what made his father or his brother great. Merely possessing the genes of a legendary soldier and being his clone means nothing. Whatever experiences Liquid went through, he was fated to never be the same as his father.
Big Boss and Zero wanted to live up to the ideal that The Boss represented. However, its clear that neither man actually understood a damn thing about the woman. What they did understand, however, was their own personal interpretation. Both men believed they were the ones who "correctly" interpreted the 'Will of The Boss', but in the end they only managed to almost bring the entire world to ruin.
Ocelot is more or less the Raiden of his time, with significantly less mindbreaking shit. He obsessed over Big Boss so much that after going through a hell caused by the man he grew to idolize and love (thanks MGS4 kiss of the year), he went though a hell of HIS OWN DESIGN in order to finally prove his value and loyalty to that man (by torturing his clone son into finally breaking a destructive cycle).
And there is of course Raiden.
Raiden proudly boasts how he's "done" so much to follow in the footsteps of a person he idolizes (all of it simulated, "realistic in everyway"), but when it actually comes time to do a mission and actually "be" the person he idolizes, he flounders at almost every opportunity. When you make your first kill with Raiden, the Codec call with Rose has him bitterly asking about whether or not she still values him now that she knows for certain that he IS a killer. He constantly states how 'unreal' reality is all around him. He asks if this is all a nightmare that he might eventually wake up from. Considering that the events in the Big Shell are roughly as bizarre as those that occurred in MGS1, I think it's safe to assume that whatever VR simulation Raiden experienced of Shadow Moses, it was a specially prepared scenario designed to help indoctrinate him. After all, if VR can be realistic in "every way", a proper simulation of Shadow Moses should have left him relatively non-plussed by the mission on the Big Shell. Clearly he wasn't properly prepared, or VR really isn't as good a tool for training as he tried to claim it was.
While it is amusing to assume that most of the players who didn't like Raiden are all manchildren who have some sort of fantasy about being a badass, it just comes off as being denigrating to those who don't see what you see in the character.
I want to stress again that I hope I'm not coming off as demeaning. The MGS series tends to touch off some pretty vicious debate. I do love me some Metal Gear and I just like talking about it a lot.
UncleSporky
Member
Let me preface this by saying I don't hate Raiden, never really did, didn't know the internet's opinion on him at the time so I wasn't influenced or anything...but this is dumb.
You might as well say people who hate Mario or Link are the same, when they might just honestly dislike the character.
abstract alien
Member
That video was really well done. MGS2 is still the best story told in the series, by far. It holds up well to interpretation(unlike stuff like SH2 that people just pull out of thin air), and has an awesome balance of batshit insanity with real material to sink your teeth into. Really great game on all fronts, and a technical marvel to boot.
EmCeeGramr
Member
I don't think that critiquing your own fanbase makes it flamebait. Plenty of fictional stories have critically examined the ideas of refusing to grow up and retreating into a fantasy world.
The existence of later games is irrelevant to what Kojima was trying to say in 2001. MGS4 in particular discounts or ignores many major points in MGS2 in an attempt to tell an earnest conspiracy action movie story. I didn't quite like Kojima turning Raiden into Gray Fox 2.0 (Portable Ops, though not a Kojima-written title, even retcons Gray Fox's backstory to be almost identical to Raiden's), which contradicted the message of MGS2. MGS4 Raiden was a whining baby in high heels who was obsessed with crying about his ex-girlfriend and trying to live up to an ideal, the polar opposite of the character at the end of 2.
I do, however, find Revengeance incredibly interesting in that Raiden never rejects the Ripper persona. The final fight with Armstrong even suggests that even in a sane frame of mind he's accepted his sadistic tendencies.
But that wasn't the ultimate goal of the simulation. It was the System for Societal Sanity, to see if humans would accept selectively chosen information (even if it was contradictory or illogical) as long as it conformed to their preexisting expectations. The Colonel is just named "Colonel" instead of ever being named "Campbell," and his very presence in the story prior to the AI reveal makes little sense given the real Campbell's career and personality. But he's the Authority Figure on 140.85, so whatever. Magazines and fans speculated on the New FOX-HOUND (Dead Cell), the New Ninja, the New Secret Base, the New Snake Clone (Solidus) and The New Metal Gear (shaped like a dinosaur and given a three letter name - RAY), accepting the strange parallels as video game sequelitis instead of wondering what else was going on. Receiving strange, tedious orders (defuse the bombs with freeze spray! escort Emma! avoid drowning), with a whine but then doing them anyway. Being told that killing is wrong, but then being given an arsenal of fun tools to kill with and making restraint from killing a more difficult endeavor. Serious cutscenes examining the nature of war, sandwiched between cartoonish guards who pee onto Raiden and ogle porno magazines. A perfectly hexagonal structure, sterile and plain, where the insides of lockers and fruit are rendered with careful detail and yet all around faceless guards walk in patterns. It's all contradictory and fragmented, a structured system to no clear logical end, yet the player and Raiden go along with it anyway.
Because Raiden is starting to disassociate. As Snake puts it, Raiden is suffering from a diminished sense of reality, either as a result of too much hyperrealistic VR, or his own traumatic experiences violently resurfacing while he attempts to suppress them. He's attempting to act the rookie, the fanboy, the naive game player, and the facade slowly starts crumbling around him as the events of the game get more and more surreal and illogical. Raiden starts out as a player analog, then slowly breaks away into something worse as his "real" personality begins to resurface just as "reality" begins to fall apart.
@skull
i mean you don't have to accept raiden as the player, but the video does a pretty good job of outlining that point of view I think. I agree w/ emcee that the later games don't really mess with mgs2 in a meaningful way, but raiden ending up in a hack and slash action game is kind of interesting (haven't played it, don't shoot me if that's not exactly what it is =p)
but I think the point you are making goes hand in hand with the video's point. Raiden, throughout the game, is definitely unprepared, or at least prepared oddly prior to entering Big Shell, the game makes a pretty big stink about it. What the video is trying to say, I think, is that the dissonance that occurs when "realistic" fakeness (games, virtual reality, whatever) comes into contact with ostensible reality (the video makes a point of comparing it to magical realism; the type of environment where things are really serious and modern but an unexplained vampire runs on water and pilots a jet, and the narrative moves on) is part of a decidedly post-modern project.
like mgs2 is not just saying that entertainment cannot substitute reality, but that the aforementioned feeling of "duh entertainment does not equal reality", in present (western?) society often comes into contact with it's practiced contradiction, of "realism" in video games, of spending a lot of your life in front of a screen, etc.
but i agree with you that it's hard to point at mgs2 as some sort of outlier where the player and the person the player controls aren't explicitly linked
what makes this relationship interesting in mgs2, as shown by the video, I think, is how decisively topical and historical it is. like a lot of ppl in this thread are all "mgs2 predicting dat future, sopa suck a d", but that's kinda like people saying "wow mgs4 all next level talking about pmcs" (never played mgs4). mgs2 didn't foresee neo-liberal globalization but was created within it; it knows it was created within it. for me, at least, the dissonance the raiden feels is explicitly tied to a sentiment that is of this time. I mean, obviously it's hard to have hindsight when you are trying to describe a time that you are still living out (though the trepidation linked to that lack of hindsight is also part of what mgs2 expresses I think), but I think mgs2 does a pretty good job for a video game
i mean you don't have to accept raiden as the player, but the video does a pretty good job of outlining that point of view I think. I agree w/ emcee that the later games don't really mess with mgs2 in a meaningful way, but raiden ending up in a hack and slash action game is kind of interesting (haven't played it, don't shoot me if that's not exactly what it is =p)
but I think the point you are making goes hand in hand with the video's point. Raiden, throughout the game, is definitely unprepared, or at least prepared oddly prior to entering Big Shell, the game makes a pretty big stink about it. What the video is trying to say, I think, is that the dissonance that occurs when "realistic" fakeness (games, virtual reality, whatever) comes into contact with ostensible reality (the video makes a point of comparing it to magical realism; the type of environment where things are really serious and modern but an unexplained vampire runs on water and pilots a jet, and the narrative moves on) is part of a decidedly post-modern project.
like mgs2 is not just saying that entertainment cannot substitute reality, but that the aforementioned feeling of "duh entertainment does not equal reality", in present (western?) society often comes into contact with it's practiced contradiction, of "realism" in video games, of spending a lot of your life in front of a screen, etc.
but i agree with you that it's hard to point at mgs2 as some sort of outlier where the player and the person the player controls aren't explicitly linked
what makes this relationship interesting in mgs2, as shown by the video, I think, is how decisively topical and historical it is. like a lot of ppl in this thread are all "mgs2 predicting dat future, sopa suck a d", but that's kinda like people saying "wow mgs4 all next level talking about pmcs" (never played mgs4). mgs2 didn't foresee neo-liberal globalization but was created within it; it knows it was created within it. for me, at least, the dissonance the raiden feels is explicitly tied to a sentiment that is of this time. I mean, obviously it's hard to have hindsight when you are trying to describe a time that you are still living out (though the trepidation linked to that lack of hindsight is also part of what mgs2 expresses I think), but I think mgs2 does a pretty good job for a video game
Skull Leader
Banned
I was referring more to posts in this thread where it was stated "If you hate Raiden, you hate yourself".
However, this does bring up an interesting idea: Did Kojima know that people were going to dislike Raiden so much? I imagine he knew old fans were going to be put off by the character, but I swear there was an interview that Raiden was created to help draw in folks who didn't like Solid Snake. I almost certain he did not think that people were going to be so put off by Raiden (or pretty much the entire second act of MGS2).
It might be irrelevant to what he was saying in 2001, but the existence of the games today can change perceptions of what was done in the past. The other problem here is I don't necessarily agree that Kojima was pre-emptively preparing a story that was going to attack the pre-concieved notions of Raiden-haters he did not know for certain existed. Up until the game was in the hands of reviewers and players, nobody was actually prepared for how big a role Raiden actually played. Hell, there were those E3 trailers that showed Solid Snake doing stuff that Raiden was supposed to be involved with (and then showed very little, if anything of Raiden). He was deliberately downplaying the character up to release.
I agree with you about Revengeance' portrayal of Raiden. I do feel like it's just an extension of where he started the game. In the car with the president, Raiden more or less states that he understands the idea that sometimes, you just gotta cut a muthafucka. However, he still also wants to follow the rules. He wants to do his job and go home to his family. He probably would genuinely prefer it if people got the hint and fucked off at the first sight of him when he's on the clock (and really it would take nanocyborg bullshit to get someone to stand in front of a dude who cuts giant robots in half and shout "STOP!" at them.)
It wasn't the ultimate goal of the exercise, but it definitely was meant to be seen as a desired result. If they can make some random dude into Snake with the right amount of prodding, it's an incredible proof of concept for controlling the minds of the masses. Given what we now know regarding the full extent of the Patriots control by MGS4, they were actually correct in regards to the masses. People accepted the existence of the war economy, PMCs, fleshy-legged Metal Gears (and giant robots in general).
What the AI's could not properly account for are those for whom the system doesn't actually work, or the results that they are aiming for in a particular instance are beyond the S3 program's capability. In this case, it was Solid Snake (which as we learn through MGS3, 4 and Peace Walker that it is not the first time that we have seen a failed attempt to recreate a legend come from that side of the whole mess).
That's why I can't necessarily discount the affect the later games of MGS have on my perception of MGS2, nor can I discount how MGS2 affected the later games, even after all of the retcons and NANOMACHINESexplanationsNANOMACHINESNANOMACHINES in MGS4. We learn that, aside from some loose ends that are being dealt with as MGS4 opens, the Bad Guys Won, sorta. While they can't recreate a legend that would also serve them without fail, they still showed that they could control greater society. Just according to keikaku, or some shit
By the end of MGS2, we learn that Raiden arguably has as much combat experience as Solid Snake, given his admitted history of being an infamously brutal child soldier. It makes his act of being a 'noob' caught on the battlefield much harder to take seriously, and further distances him from the player in my eyes. Now, all of that 'fanboy' stuff he does no longer appears to be a critique on the player, but it can all be explained away by the fact that Raiden Is Fucked Up, So No Wonder He Acts That Way. I'd argue that 99.9 percent of gamers who played MGS2 back in 2001 are not represented by a pretty-boy former child mass murderer.
Unless Kojima is saying the average gamer can be likened to actual surviving child soldiers. That would be rather dismissive of both the players or child soldiers.
@brian!
I do recommend you play Revengeance if you like action games at all. It's quite good. While it is a (demanding) hack and slash game without question, the plot is very...metal geary. I think Platinum managed some sort of small miracle when they got the game to work the way it does.
RelentlessRolento
Member
reads like my research I'm doing for my graduate study... huge thanks for this, it'll be useful in my thesis.
yeah try not to listen too much to people intent on player = raiden
thinking about player/raiden relationship is really fruitful though
like the child soldier reveal was good for making the player reinspect raiden, which might not have been something they had been doing:
it came late in the game, it is probably not something that the player can meaningfully relate to or imagine, etc.
like if a player was taking the tools that the game was giving them to create this raiden character, this revelation kind of undermined the tools given to a certain extent
thinking about player/raiden relationship is really fruitful though
like the child soldier reveal was good for making the player reinspect raiden, which might not have been something they had been doing:
it came late in the game, it is probably not something that the player can meaningfully relate to or imagine, etc.
like if a player was taking the tools that the game was giving them to create this raiden character, this revelation kind of undermined the tools given to a certain extent
Skull Leader
Banned
I think you nailed it on the head, brian.
The moment the reveal came that Raiden was, in fact, a former child soldier, I didn't believe it initially. It made everything about his character before that revel pointless to me.
One of the best bits of dialog Raiden has is I believe after the Harrier battle. The Colonel is droning on about the simulation and how Snake is still dead despite the obvious fact that he's alive and has been helping Raiden this whole time. It's at this point that Raiden shouts what I think is his best line of the game:
"We're out here, we bleed, we die!"
It's shouted as much to the Colonel as it is to the player. Raiden isn't interested in the 'simulation' or the 'factors' that aren't calculated into it, he just shot down a Harrier jet while running around an exploding bridge. From the perspective of the Colonel and to the Player, Raiden's experience is a series of artistically placed camera angles, a convenient radar that tells you where everyone is, an external view that shows you where Raiden is in physical relation to everything. As far as we (and the Colonel) are concerned, everything is under control and going according to a plan. The player might be flabbergasted by the plot, but as far as actually playing the game is concerned it's, well, just a game.
From Raiden's perspective, none of this is a game. It's not a simulation, it's obviously not at all like VR. He probably can't even fathom the sort of simulation required to have apparently predicted how everything in this mission was supposed to go. He's not just being a whiner here: he's pissed off, and he has every right to be. While he's not allowed by Kojima to take this moment of anger and turn it into a moment of proper comprehension, he does know that going "off-simulation" is probably not something to be concerned with if he wants to survive and complete the mission. At this point, I feel like Raiden "levels up", so to speak. He's obviously not Snake, but he IS Raiden, who is working with Solid Snake to get to the bottom of this bucket of bullshit.
Then we get the reveal that Raiden is really a victim that experienced something a hell of a lot worse than VR indoctrination, and that moment after the Harrier is completely wasted and pointless now.
Worse still, Kojima then writes Rose as someone who is basically CRITICIZING Raiden for his trauma and his difficulty at trying to move past it. Like holy shit, really? "WHY WONT YOU TALK TO ME ABOUT YOUR HORRIBLE PAST JACK?" "Because its horrible holy shit do we have to be talking about this right now?"
She's supposed to be the voice that is telling the player to stop trying to be what you're not and see the world and the people around you for what they really are. Yes Raiden, just get over the fact that you were forcefed food laced with gunpowder and forced to kill just to grab another bite to eat for days on end before you turned 10, if only you'd just talked to the planted spy about your FEELINGS then things would be BETTER FOR YOU but NO YOUR ROOM IS COLD AND EMPTY JUST LIKE YOUR HEART, JACK *sob*.
I feel as though Kojima wasn't even entirely sure what he wanted to DO with Raiden. He's fangirl bait by admission of the lead artist, he supposedly represents the player in some way, and he's supposed to put a face on a very real horror story that goes on in Africa to this day. I don't think he did any of these things very well.
The moment the reveal came that Raiden was, in fact, a former child soldier, I didn't believe it initially. It made everything about his character before that revel pointless to me.
One of the best bits of dialog Raiden has is I believe after the Harrier battle. The Colonel is droning on about the simulation and how Snake is still dead despite the obvious fact that he's alive and has been helping Raiden this whole time. It's at this point that Raiden shouts what I think is his best line of the game:
"We're out here, we bleed, we die!"
It's shouted as much to the Colonel as it is to the player. Raiden isn't interested in the 'simulation' or the 'factors' that aren't calculated into it, he just shot down a Harrier jet while running around an exploding bridge. From the perspective of the Colonel and to the Player, Raiden's experience is a series of artistically placed camera angles, a convenient radar that tells you where everyone is, an external view that shows you where Raiden is in physical relation to everything. As far as we (and the Colonel) are concerned, everything is under control and going according to a plan. The player might be flabbergasted by the plot, but as far as actually playing the game is concerned it's, well, just a game.
From Raiden's perspective, none of this is a game. It's not a simulation, it's obviously not at all like VR. He probably can't even fathom the sort of simulation required to have apparently predicted how everything in this mission was supposed to go. He's not just being a whiner here: he's pissed off, and he has every right to be. While he's not allowed by Kojima to take this moment of anger and turn it into a moment of proper comprehension, he does know that going "off-simulation" is probably not something to be concerned with if he wants to survive and complete the mission. At this point, I feel like Raiden "levels up", so to speak. He's obviously not Snake, but he IS Raiden, who is working with Solid Snake to get to the bottom of this bucket of bullshit.
Then we get the reveal that Raiden is really a victim that experienced something a hell of a lot worse than VR indoctrination, and that moment after the Harrier is completely wasted and pointless now.
Worse still, Kojima then writes Rose as someone who is basically CRITICIZING Raiden for his trauma and his difficulty at trying to move past it. Like holy shit, really? "WHY WONT YOU TALK TO ME ABOUT YOUR HORRIBLE PAST JACK?" "Because its horrible holy shit do we have to be talking about this right now?"
She's supposed to be the voice that is telling the player to stop trying to be what you're not and see the world and the people around you for what they really are. Yes Raiden, just get over the fact that you were forcefed food laced with gunpowder and forced to kill just to grab another bite to eat for days on end before you turned 10, if only you'd just talked to the planted spy about your FEELINGS then things would be BETTER FOR YOU but NO YOUR ROOM IS COLD AND EMPTY JUST LIKE YOUR HEART, JACK *sob*.
I feel as though Kojima wasn't even entirely sure what he wanted to DO with Raiden. He's fangirl bait by admission of the lead artist, he supposedly represents the player in some way, and he's supposed to put a face on a very real horror story that goes on in Africa to this day. I don't think he did any of these things very well.
plutoknight
Member
Y'know, playing MGS2 after experiencing Spec Ops (currently reading "Killing is Harmless") might be a pretty fun perspective shift.
I think the player = Raiden argument, however, is something that can't fully be understood, because the preconceptions we have as gamers today (the very ones that, say, Spec Ops relies on) were different in 2001. One could argue that Raiden is the personification of the modern-day American (well..minus the child-soldier bit, more on that later), one indoctrinated by his environment and the socio and political pressures being laid on top of him, where a world is constructed around him that caters to his dreams and fulfillments (he always idolized Snake, so it makes sense to build a training regimen around Snake's experiences for him. Looking at it this way canonizes MGS: VR Missions, as well, as either it's Raiden experiencing the VR missions (through you, the player, supporting the player = Raiden slant), or it becomes a part of Snake's legacy, of which Raiden would mimic to the best of his ability.))
Anyway, Raiden has crafted his own little bubble, partly with VR, partly with his life with Rose, eschewing all hint of his past, etc. etc. Now you connect that to the overarching theme of the game, the idea of robots and A.I.'s controlling information around the Net, of the virtual reality mimicking your own. You think you are constructing the reality, but in fact, it's an A.I., a machine, that is doing it for you.
In 2001, this machine was your PS2 (Remember the whole bit in Arsenal Gear? The bit people want to forget..with Naked Raiden!). In 2013, this is your smartphone, social networks, news sites, GAF(!), et al. Sure, videogames are an escapist medium, and you could read MGS2 as nothing more than a highlighting of that fact, but you'd miss a lot by not drawing these parallels between Raiden's perceived reality, and the overarching theme of the story itself.
On Child Soldiers: To a child, especially one indoctrinated to believe that murder is right/justified/what have you, doesn't something like killing become just as "harmless" as if you used VR? The connection between these two is what, I think, draws Raiden to hate that part of himself, and realize who he really is. It's a jump, to be sure, since it seems Kojima missed parts to explain this, if indeed that is what he wanted.
And now I've ranted ceaselessly. Thanks for reminding me why I love this game, GAF. Think I'll play through it tomorrow.
I think the player = Raiden argument, however, is something that can't fully be understood, because the preconceptions we have as gamers today (the very ones that, say, Spec Ops relies on) were different in 2001. One could argue that Raiden is the personification of the modern-day American (well..minus the child-soldier bit, more on that later), one indoctrinated by his environment and the socio and political pressures being laid on top of him, where a world is constructed around him that caters to his dreams and fulfillments (he always idolized Snake, so it makes sense to build a training regimen around Snake's experiences for him. Looking at it this way canonizes MGS: VR Missions, as well, as either it's Raiden experiencing the VR missions (through you, the player, supporting the player = Raiden slant), or it becomes a part of Snake's legacy, of which Raiden would mimic to the best of his ability.))
Anyway, Raiden has crafted his own little bubble, partly with VR, partly with his life with Rose, eschewing all hint of his past, etc. etc. Now you connect that to the overarching theme of the game, the idea of robots and A.I.'s controlling information around the Net, of the virtual reality mimicking your own. You think you are constructing the reality, but in fact, it's an A.I., a machine, that is doing it for you.
In 2001, this machine was your PS2 (Remember the whole bit in Arsenal Gear? The bit people want to forget..with Naked Raiden!). In 2013, this is your smartphone, social networks, news sites, GAF(!), et al. Sure, videogames are an escapist medium, and you could read MGS2 as nothing more than a highlighting of that fact, but you'd miss a lot by not drawing these parallels between Raiden's perceived reality, and the overarching theme of the story itself.
On Child Soldiers: To a child, especially one indoctrinated to believe that murder is right/justified/what have you, doesn't something like killing become just as "harmless" as if you used VR? The connection between these two is what, I think, draws Raiden to hate that part of himself, and realize who he really is. It's a jump, to be sure, since it seems Kojima missed parts to explain this, if indeed that is what he wanted.
And now I've ranted ceaselessly. Thanks for reminding me why I love this game, GAF. Think I'll play through it tomorrow.
Splash Wave
Member
Thank you for this (in both threads!).
Yup, I thought the same thing it's the only part of his critique I didn't agree with it. Most of the boss fights and encounters are a reversion of MGS1 scenes and often not fun or tense, this is intentional.
Here's a few including the ones you mentioned:
-When you start the game as Raiden you wait for an elevator to come down as two guards are knocked unconscious. A reversion of MGS1 where Snake has to wait for an elevator to come down while evading to live guards. The MGS2 scene divorces any tension from the scene.
-The Fatman fight is about disarming bombs while trying to hunt down an extremely mobile villain in a fatsuit. In MGS1 you plant bombs while trying to take down an extremely sluggish muscle bound enemy villain.
-With Fortune, Raiden has to dodge a sniper in a fight he cannot win but only survives through hiding, as opposed to the Sniper Wolf fight which is a straight up sniper battle.
-You fight a Harrier instead of a Hind, interesting considering Liquid destroyed two fighter jets with his Hind helicopter in MGS1.
-Rather than fight one Metal Gear you fight an army of them, yet the battle is not exactly challenging. It's an exercise in repetition and stamina, not skill as opposed to the Rex fight which is extremely challenging.
And this just goes on and on.