Metal Gear

[Drummer_19]

The name of the song is in the trailer.

I'm a tad slow this morning.

 

[pantskyle]

Looks damn good.

Anyone know the timeline?

 

[The Big Sauce]

Rockets right next to GTAV as my most anticipated.

Kojima knows how to nail a trailer!

 

[Drummer_19]

Looks damn good.

Anyone know the timeline?

From http://www.computerandvideogames.co...e-secrets-of-metal-gear-solid-ground-zeroes/#

The key giveaway is the Militaires Sans Frontières (soldiers without borders) yellow / black logo on his shoulder, the organisation led by Big Boss in PSP's MGS Peace Walker (set in 1974).

Big Boss's gun looks like a variant of the FN FNC (Fabrique Nationale Carabine, a 5.56mm assault rifle) first commissioned in 1976 - again, hinting at a '70s setting, following the events of Peace Walker.

UPDATE: The logo is more likely to be the FOX logo, representing the CIA-affiliated Cold War unit led by Major Zero in the 1960s, whose key operative was Big Boss. The FOX unit act as your superiors in PS2's MGS3, but command is assumed by Gene (Viper) in 1970 and the group goes rogue, leading to the events of PSP's MGS Portable Ops. Although FOX was officially disbanded in the early 70s, the MSF continue to sports its logo on their outfit with the FOX logo on the right shoulder, in addition to the MSF logo on the left shoulder. Konami are releasing a special MGS HD PAX bundle with a Snake figure from Peace Walker which corroborates this.

 

[wce_dyl]

Looks damn good.

Anyone know the timeline?

I think it's after Mgs 3 playing as a middle aged Big Boss, maybe early 80's when was the walkman invented? , also it's worth noting Ground Zero's is the prequel to a Metal Gear Solid 5.

Really excited for this friken game now grrrrr...

 

[The Big Sauce]

Have nothing but faith in Kojima. So we expecting late 2013?

 

[Drummer_19]

Have nothing but faith in Kojima. So we expecting late 2013?

Seems that way. Could see this as the PS3's swan song and have MGS5 as a launch title for the PS4

 

[The Big Sauce]

No way MGS5 launches PS4. It will be at least 4 years away given this announcement

 

[Premiers04]

Now i have this sudden urge to play through all the MGS games.

Ground Zeroes looks brilliant, not yet sold on the whole chopper and jeep use though, hopefully they dont mess with the stealth formula too much.

 

[Jabso]

This game looks awesome. I think they will mess with stealth formula but it will be better for it. At the end of Peace Walker Big Boss sets up Miliatiares Sans Frontiers and a big part of the gameplay is recruiting soldiers for a massive army. It would be a bit disappointing to keep Big Boss as just an agent on a mission, he has resources, he needs to use them.

At the end of Peace Walker, Naked Snake finally accepted the name Big Boss so that's strange going back to snake (probably just used as a code name). Peace walker was set in 1974, Big Boss was 39 at the end of Peace Walker and looking much like a regular snake. Chico, the child soldier kid in the jail cell was apparently 12 in 1974. He doesn't look that much older in this trailer so I would suspect it's 5 years or so after Peace Walker. Big Boss may just have gone grey.

EDIT: Chico isn't the child soldier but he is mentioned along with Paz. All youngish Peacewalker characters. It could be the 80s and the kid could be Raiden (although I think Raiden might be too young to be the kid). Late 80s is when Big Boss set up Outer Heaven so it would make sense for the story line from this to MGS5 to be about that period leading up to Metal Gear.

There are probably even more clues in the Metal gear lore to indicate the time period.

 

[Drummer_19]

The kid is using a cassette player which wasn't around until 1979 so it should be at least after 1979 unless they just chose to avoid that.

 

[pantskyle]

Isn't the kid in the cell the same that was a playable character on some gameplay footage of this game?

 

[Eastern Rangers]

In the words of Daniel Bryan regarding the movie.......no! no! no! no! no! no! no! no! no! no! no!. There is no way in hell a movie will live up to how good of series this game is and how it touched people with it's story and game play. It will be the equivalent to what the Tomb Raider movies were compared to the games.

Everything else mentioned in that video I'm very happy to hear about, thanks for posting that HBK

Doesn't work as a live action film because it's so hard to retain the art direction.

 

[Eastern Rangers]

No way MGS5 launches PS4. It will be at least 4 years away given this announcement

Depends on when the PS4 launches. From whats been said the engine will last a long while.

Games like this should be kick in the arse for Sony, i won't be buying this for PS3.

 

[The Big Sauce]

Depends on when the PS4 launches. From whats been said the engine will last a long while.

Games like this should be kick in the arse for Sony, i won't be buying this for PS3.

MGS5 will be on PS4 but it won't launch the console. MGS games are a timely process, most importantly they aren't rushed. PS4 launches no later than 2014. With MGS Ground Zeroes launching in 2013 (presumably) there isn't enough time to develop in time for launch.

 

[Marlowe]

It makes me mad that this [Ground Zeroes] wasn't the MGS announced two years, instead of Rerevenganceence. Bah!

I can only hope I do not die of boredom waiting for this.

 

[The Big Sauce]

This is an old article on MGS2 but I find it really interesting

Rain pours down across a bridge bustling with traffic. A man comes into view wearing a poncho that billows in the heavy winds as credits slowly appear across the screen before evaporating. All that can be seen of his face is a semi-bearded chin, a long nose, and the ember of a cigarette that he pulls from his lips as he takes one last drag before flicking it into the grey of the raging storm around him. He suddenly takes off running, leaps from the bridge, and activates a stealth camouflage that makes him nearly invisible. A hidden bungee cord slows his dissent, and despite disabling his camouflage, the stranger safely lands on the deck of a ship that was passing below. He stands, his malfunctioning sneaking suit revealing his identity- the legendary Solid Snake. The title fades in across the ship and sky above him. This was Sons of Liberty.
The opening cinematic to Sons of Liberty was everything a Metal Gear fan had come to anticipate and expect from the sequel. Showy, dynamic, and perfectly dramatic, the cinematic influences prevalent throughout the first Metal Gear Solid were front and center. As Snake leapt from that rain-soaked bridge, it was immediately evident that the legendary soldier of old was still the East-meets-West badass, equal parts Kurosawa Samurai and John Carpenter anti-hero, which everyone fondly remembered from the original MGS. Considering the opening is easily matched, if not eclipsed by the submarine propelled intrusion of the first MGS's beginnings, most would never argue it to be one of the greatest opening sequences in the history of gaming. Despite this, there remains no other opening cinematic that remains so perfectly ingrained in the farthest most verdant reaches of my mind's eye. All because of the playable demo it was attached to that released alongside Konami'sZone of the Enders.

When Zone of the Enders released on March 1, 2001, the PlayStation 2, despite releasing some six months prior, was still limping along and lacked any true AAA titles to convince the masses who had so fervently anticipated its release that their excitement hadn't been in vain. With the Dreamcast on the cusp of abandonment and the GameCube and Xbox still question marks on the distant horizon, many still felt like the "next-generation" of hardware, games, or the interactive medium as a whole had truly arrived, not to mention were justifiably feeling a little sore over .
In an article published January 17, 2001, the LA Times reported, "Slow PlayStation 2 launch crimps video game sales," saying "Many blamed lower sales on the dearth of PlayStation 2 consoles, which debuted in October at half the volume Sony had initially promised." Overall revenue for the industry had fallen between 1999 to 2000, and at the beginning of 2001, considering that the system's only releases for the holiday and post-holiday periods were highlighted singly by the inspired yet flawedDark Cloud, it was obvious that the system and the promised "next-generation" of gaming still hadn't come into its own. So with the release of the niche mech brawler Zone of the Enders, the PlayStation 2 saw a much needed high-quality addition to its non-existent library. But more importantly, it gave players a glimpse at the true future of gaming -- that wild and unique next generation they had so voraciously anticipated. That first introduction came not with a blockbuster release that everyone so badly wanted or the system so desperately needed, but in possibly the most unassuming forms: a playable demo.
In what was undoubtedly a move to bolster sales for a risky release for Konami, the company included the demo to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and subsequently ushered in the true beginning of the medium's sixth generation.

While most will remember Sons of Liberty for being impossibly preachy, long-winded, and contrived in its complex, socially concerned narrative, what is most often ignored is just how revolutionary the dedicated gameplay was. The demo to the title, which could be finished in under an hour by a skilled player, contained a staggering amount of play. Where the first Metal Gear Solid set a new standard for narrative density within the interactive medium, the game was still limited by the technological architecture in which it was constructed. Playing the demo to Sons of Liberty was a revelation. Not just because the visuals were such a vast upgrade from the titles that preceded it, but because overnight it seemed that console gaming as a whole had evolved from rigid 32 and 64-bit experiences bogged down by still primitive technologies into something organic, malleable, and wildly varied. Shooting a guard and visibly seeing the projectiles within said target, or watching as fruit and objects within the environment exploded in the midst of a firefight, not to mention the ability to decrease visibility for guards by shooting out lights, exemplifying that A.I. showed an uncanny rationality and paralleled our own world so realistically, was incredible. The smallest details became the grandest marvels. In an interview before the game's release with CVG, Kojima explained, "We want the 3D environment to be as interfere-able as possible. We want the players to be able to destroy things the way they want to destroy it, not the way we program it to be destroyed."
The idea that the environment be conquerable in as many ways as possible gave the player options. Where Metal Gear Solid could be stripped to a core that was little more than one-way street, bookended by Snake's entrance and exit of Shadow Moses, the tanker was an openly-explorable and wildly connected series of differing pathways. Rather than strictly orientating the player with a single destination in moving from Area A, to B, to C (which is in fact what is happening, as is always the case), the player is positively influenced to be sidetracked by what could only be described as exacted minutiae of the stealth-game design ideology. They're encouraged to take alternate routes, and get lost in one of the first truly immersive and interactive environments in the medium.
While the demo could be finished in a relatively short amount of time, just how open-ended gameplay was, and how revelatory something as silly as taking pictures of guards with dozens of tranquilizer darts sticking out of their mouths, eyes, and noses, made playing the demo over and over again for a total of 20, 30, possibly 40 hours a reality for myself. In most every sense, Sons of Liberty was a game designed with gameplay in mind. The game intended to take advantage of the still-new PlayStation 2's increased processing power, and the title was meant to be visually captivating, but more so to make the enhanced visuals relevant to gameplay and create a heightened level of atmosphere. Everything Kojima and the development team so heavily focused on was showcased most prominently not just within the Tanker portion of the title, but within the game's demo. Talking about the title during his 2009 GDC keynote, every facet of the title's design was highlighted and showcased from portions of the demo alone.

Showing the first playable moments of the game Kojima said, "So here's the game screen [Snakes looks in first person up and around the ship]...as you can see the rain and the rain hitting on the lens. That created not just a pretty looking screen, but created the atmosphere that you feel like you're in that world. For instance as you come in here [Snake enters the first hold of the ship], the lens fogs up and you kind of feel the temperature, or you can see the shadow. Not just that you could get spotted, but that you could see the enemy with shadows."
A slide from that same GDC address highlighting what elements proved the creative catalysts for Sons of Liberty's production outlined a simple set of rules that prove the foundation for the overall complexity and expansion that gameplay within the title received. 60 FPS to enhance movements and expand Snake's abilities, location based damage detection to give combat realistic nuances that dynamically change depending on play style, and the ability to shoot in first person. In many ways the demo proved the entire title condensed and distilled to its purest form and of course, the celebratory introduction and foundation to a game that would dupe one of the most cynical industries after releasing.
As is notoriously known today, most of the title was actually played as what most regard secondary benchwarmer and then rookie FOXHOUND initiate, Raiden. The demo served primarily as foundation for Kojima to pull the rug from the unassuming public as barely a third of the way into the true title, players found themselves playing as the perfect foil to Solid Snake's growling testosterone. But even this dissection of the internet age coming into its own and the very hyper-saturation of digital information that was the basis of Sons of Liberty's narrative proved part of the celebratory raucous. The demo showcased a generational balance between delivering hardware powerful enough to render digital worlds more visually and narratively dense than previously possible, and development costs that hadn't reached the impossible heights they stand at today. Nothing is more telling of the general ease of access and low cost for developers than the vast and massively niche PS2 library of which some of its best titles remain art-house successes like Okami, ICO, and a near limitless number of niche JRPG's. But where most PS2 games delivered singular experiences, utilizing niche archetypes to side-step the greater and more complex burgeoning digital infrastructure and landscape, both 128-bit Metal Gear Solid titles flourished in complexity.

Sons of Liberty, and later Snake Eater, were both focused attempts to deliver the most finely-tuned gameplay experiences. It's true that they both pushed the boundaries of visual design at the time, and included what most regard as an excessive amount of cutscenes, but each defined their specific genre of gameplay in the most exacted manner, first with Sons of Liberty's vast capabilities to augment the environment around oneself, and later in Snake Eater's use of various camouflages to improve one's ability to blend in with their dense surroundings. In essence, Kojima productions brought some of the first "next-next" generation design ideologies (and budget) to the medium while development costs, as well as investment risk, were low enough for the development house to focus their energies around so intimately defining play. Kojima said of the cut-scenes,"We did motion capture for the first time. So that's why we created more cutscenes." They were introducing to game design now common Hollywood practices like motion capture for the first time, embellishing the cinematic influences and all-around polish that made Metal Gear Solid such a seminal work. And while many have decried the long winded cinematics, in hindsight they have aged more gracefully considering it marked a turning point for the medium. They were such a heavy focus because technology was finally capable of delivering such an experience, evidence of an artist losing sight of limitation at the excitement of the fresh possibilities of a new canvas.
Today much of the same acute detail goes into Kojima Productions' games, and is necessary for any and all games across the digital spectrum to succeed. But with complex hardware infrastructure so catered towards visuals and an impossible level of graphical detail and the difficulty/cost to develop said graphics, the experiences themselves have de-evolved in a way to more mimic the narrow corridor of Metal Gear Solid's A to B to C gameplay. Kojima himself has commented on the high cost and complexity of modern game development. His frustrations in trying to produce MGS4are well documented as they caused the title to be the first Metal Gear game in history to be delayed. For proof one need only to consider that one quarter of MGS4's entire experience involves Snake in disguise, stripped almost totally of his most classic abilities in which he must walk around a Baroque cityscape, inconspicuously avoiding guards in indirect ways. While it did mix up the classic Metal Gear formula, seemed to be an easy scapegoat as interactivity with the environment was reduced to zero.
Snake Eater provided a far more organic, diverse experience on the whole, and features possibly the most dedicated gameplay of any Metal Gear title. Beyond this it's impressive to consider the vagaries of how organic an environment and the near infinite possibilities that simply the Tanker portion and singly the demo of Sons of Liberty represent. Compared to the whole of Guns of the Patriots where open landscapes and less defined encounters convey a glossier but less robust experience, the demo contains far more opportunity to experiment. One could easily argue that while the landscapes are more diverse and much larger in scale, interactivity within them was greatly reduced, and thus that element of infinite play overflowing within Sons of Liberty's hour of play was lost.

Sons of Liberty's demo marked the convergence of two movements for the medium -- the technological evolution of console hardware finally powerful enough to deliver more complex experiences, and Kojima Productions' bringing the then unique approach of big budget "Hollywood" game design to the development process. Developing games in similar fashion has become in vogue, but carries the weight of financial success in the face of a ravenous and fickle consumer base that effectively sinks developers in the wake of a non-success. Despite that most focus on the bloated cinematics, it is MGS2's dedicated gameplay that proved a revolution then and remains more focused and nuanced than most titles on the market today, and it was the title's gameplay that benefited from such a focused design ideology and process.
Kojima has continually denied that video games are, can be or could be art. In an interview with IGN, Kojima stated, "If you ask me again, if videogames are art or not, no, I do not think it is art. It's rather an entertainment for a broad audience or the mass people...for instance, if an artist has drawn an apple, the artist has the liberty to maybe draw a pineapple or even a banana, and still say, 'I expressed an apple.' But in games, that is not possible." But with the demo to Metal Gear Solid 2, that's exactly what Kojima did. He let the world have a taste at an apple that would never be as players learned not even halfway through the actual game they'd be playing as Raiden, aka, the world's biggest pineapple. It seems appropriate that what should be one of gaming's most storied franchises' more subdued moments, the simple release of a gameplay demo, actually be such a momentous occasion in hindsight.

http://www.1up.com/features/metal-gear-solid-2-generation

 

[The Big Sauce]

This one as well was from late last year

http://www.1up.com/features/metal-gear-solid-2-gamings-greatest-con-job

Metal Gear Solid 2: Gaming's Greatest Con Job

Hideo Kojima played us all for suckers... and it was pretty cool.

By: Jeremy Parish​

December 10, 2011​

It was one of the most striking moments in a series of intensely memorable trailers designed to build hype for Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. It lasted barely more than a split-second, but the potency of this single image struck fans with both promise and a desperate sense of mystery. Hero Solid Snake turned, weapon at the ready, and reacted with shock to the sight of a distinctive silhouette cast on the wall. The bulk and outline of the figure left no question in anyone's mind: This was Snake's defeated foe Vulcan Raven, come for revenge, or perhaps driven by less blatant motivations.
The mystery, of course, is how Raven could reappear at all. He hadn't simply been defeated but killed outright. Metal Gear Solid had been a glorious comic book of a video game, all hyperbolic exclamations and costumed super-villains with silly names, which meant it adhered to the comic book tradition of death -- namely, that a character isn't truly dead until you see them die. Off-panel deaths never stick, which is why Liquid Snake had managed to eject from the fiery, low-altitude, yet decidedly offscreen wreck of his surplus Soviet helicopter to fight again.
Raven, however, had died a definitive death. Upon his defeat and obligatory soliloquy, his body had been completely consumed by a murder of crows as Snake strode away. The entire affair had been framed clearly in the background with just enough distance to keep it from being gruesome yet just enough detail to be straightforward in its finality. The return of Vulcan Raven, therefore, hinted at esoteric plot twists and shocking revelations to come. Would the entire Fox Hound unit somehow find a way to return? Maybe they would be rebuilt as cyborgs, like the ninja Grey Fox. Or perhaps the shamanic Raven was special due to his devotion to the mystical. Fans were intrigued, and that brief hint of a popular villain's resurrection remained a matter of heated debate for months.

More than a year later, the game arrived. As players crept through a hijacked military tanker, seeking to avoid combat, they too were startled when they turned a corner and saw that same silhouette splashed across the wall. Many players froze, waiting patiently to get a read on Raven's movements and the danger he represented. After a few seconds, they realized he wasn't moving. Eventually, they ventured forward to see what was happening. It was then that the truth was revealed: "Raven" was simply a tiny action figure, placed just so in front of a spotlight that cast his shadow on the wall -- an impressive demonstration of PlayStation 2's ability to handle real-time lighting effects, but absolutely not what fans had been led to expect.

Ocelot: I regret to inform you that I have no intention of selling Metal Gear. As I said, I came to take it back. Yes, returned. To the Patriots!
Dolph: The La-li-lu-le-lo! How's that possible!?
Gurlukovich: Ocelot, you...! Have you sold us out?
Ocelot: I was never in your employ, Gurlukovich...​

The Vulcan Raven figure episode embodies Metal Gear Solid 2 in a nutshell, and a player's response to that particular fake-out almost invariably parallels their reaction to the game as a whole. Did they seethe in fury as the toy stood there, mutely firing tiny pellets in silent mockery? Or did they grin ruefully at a great fakeout, chuckling at the sight of the previous game's most imposing foe reduced to a 1/6 scale miniature with a motorized vulcan cannon feature? The answer almost certainly reflects their feelings on the game as a whole.
Metal Gear producer Hideo Kojima is the standard go-to when discussing game creators who practice a film-like auteur approach to game design, and ten years after its launch MGS2 remains his most decidedly auteurist turn. Few games have ever commanded as high a profile or represented so much for the future and direction of an entire platform as MGS2. But even within that rarified company, Kojima's PlayStation 2 blockbuster remains unique. Never before or since has a game producer seized on his visibility and clout to so radically transform a tentpole production into an elaborate soapbox statement.

More than a statement; MGS feels almost like an elaborate troll. It's a game that seems to dare you to like it. At every turn, it practically mocks the player. Every inch of the game revels in deceiving its audience, from the basic premise of the story to the interlocking Celtic knot that is its plot to the marketing that surrounded the game from its debut. The MGS2 narrative consists of 10 hours of ruses, double-crosses, shocking revelations, and subversions. It was sold to audiences on very nearly false pretexts.
And that's the entire point of MGS2. It inveigles the player as a means to make a statement, one that seems remarkably prescient a decade later. Ultimately, MGS2 isn't about saving the President or preventing the proliferation of super-weapons; it's a missive about the mutability of information in the digital age. When all forms of communication are digital, everything exists as data, and data can be altered. Text can be edited; video can be manipulated; audio can be masked and sampled. Digital information is unreliable, and as a video game MGS2 consists entirely of digital information. It is inherently untrustworthy, and its producer played up this fact by weaving falsehood throughout and around the game.

Pliskin: You don't get injured in VR, do you? Every year, a few soldiers die in field exercises.
Raiden: There's pain sensation in VR, and even a sense of reality and urgency. The only difference is that it isn't actually happening.
Pliskin: That's the way they want you to think, to remove you from the fear that goes with battle situations. War as a video game -- what better way to raise the ultimate soldier?
Raiden: So you're saying VR training is some kind of mind control?​

It's easy to take all of this for granted today, in 2011. But a decade ago, the Internet was still finding its legs. The basic touchstones of the modern Internet -- YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, even digital distribution -- didn't exist. Only a minority had access to broadband web access. The role of online communication was still taking shape in the lives of most people. For better or for worse, Kojima was determined to confront this revolution head-on and transform it into the crux of a game that was ostensibly about military confrontation.
It was a fitting ambition, given the series' history. Metal Gear was born in the latter days of the Cold War -- 1987 -- when the tenets of "duck and cover" were still posted on the walls of many American classrooms. The original MSX/NES game used the premise of a mobile, undetectable nuclear launch platform as a pretext for a military action game that de-emphasized action. Its sequel explored the industrialized world's dependency on oil. Nearly a decade later, Metal Gear Solid tackled the issue of rogue nukes in the post-Soviet era. MGS2 simply shifted the series' focus to the next frontier of warfare (or what seemed like it until the World Trade Center was destroyed in a guerrilla action by a foreign terrorist faction): Information.

Metal Gear Solid 2 is a game built on misinformation. Its plot is initiated by false intel, as hero Solid Snake and his companion Otacon are lured into a trap by what appears to be a message from Otacon's estranged sister. They infiltrate an incognito military tanker advancing down the Hudson River, pawns in someone else's game. That "someone" turns out to be Shalashaska, the Russian codename for Revolver Ocelot, who was the sole surviving member of Fox Hound after the Shadow Moses incident detailed in Metal Gear Solid.
As at Shadow Moses, Ocelot is manipulating the situation to his own advantage: In this case, his goal is to steal the U.S. Marines' new Metal Gear system, Ray. To this end, he partners with Russian allies to provide firepower, though he quickly betrays them and murders their leader (and his long-time comrade) Colonel Gurlukovich once he gets his hands on Ray. As for Snake, Ocelot had lured him to the tanker as a decoy, to die: Snake is meant to be seen in the Ray hijacking and subsequent sinking of the tanker. Ocelot's ruse works, and Snake seemingly drowns in the chaos. His apaprent remains are uncovered, and he's posthumously labeled a terrorist by the government.
The story resumes two years later as an agent named Snake moves to infiltrate a clean-up facility constructed on the site of the tanker's demise. Even though his mission contact is Colonel Campbell, this "Snake" isn't Solid Snake (although for a moment the player is meant to think he is). He's much younger and, in an open attempt to appeal to the tastes of Japanese gamers, quite feminine. Once the sneaking begins, the Colonel reassigns this Snake a new code-name: Raiden. No longer the hero, Solid Snake is holding the American President hostage; Raiden's task is to rescue him.

Colonel: The name of their leader is Solid Snake.
Raiden: The hero of Shadow Moses!? So that's why you changed my code name.
Colonel: Right. But it can't be the Solid Snake. He died two years ago, on that tanker, after he blew it sky-high.
Raiden: Could he have survived?
Colonel: Not a chance...​

It's here that the game begins to reveal Kojima's real-life web of deception. At no point in the lead-up to MGS2 was Raiden ever mentioned, shown, or even hinted at. Yet after the opening hour of the game -- the tanker chapter -- players control Raiden, not Solid Snake. Rather, Snake is dead, or possibly alive and evil, and the player's mission is to take him down with this new silver-haired stand-in.
There's a certain disingenuousness in the division of the game into two chapters. The Big Shell chapter -- in which Raiden stars -- is by far the larger portion of the game. It's radically different in structure and feel from Snake's tanker chapter. Where the tanker had a fairly intricate layout with multiple paths and a realistic design for a large boat, the Big Shell is a constrictive, prefab structure, a series of mostly identical hexagonal chambers ("struts") connected by narrow walkways. The almost claustrophobic artificiality of the facility is deepened by the linearity of Raiden's tasks and the limits of his strategic options. At no point beyond the tanker does MGS2 ever offer the relative openness of many of its predecessor's environments.

As it turns out, this is by design, both developmentally on the part of the game's creators and narratively on the part of the shadowy forces behind Raiden's mission, a hint at the artifice surrounding his objectives and the very nature of the Big Shell. The disconnect between the tanker and Big Shell has nevertheless fomented a certain resentment in many players, intent notwithstanding. The first half of the tanker chapter served as MGS2's demo -- a free extra that sold countless copies of the game it accompanied, Zone of the Enders -- and led eager fans to expect a very different experience than what they received in the bulk of the final game. They anticipated a game featuring Snake in rich, detailed, interactive environments; they received instead an interloper dashing through sterile metal tubes.
The bait-and-switch relationship of the demo and the actual product was reflected in the game's story. In MGS2, nothing is on the level, and everyone Raiden encounters in the course of his mission has his or her own dark secret. So does Raiden, for that matter.

Raiden: You'll never make it. With that bad leg of yours, they'll spot you for sure.
Stillman: That won't happen. I... I can walk just fine. I can even run... That bomb, five years ago. I messed up. Even with all my experience, I lost it. And a church was lost in the explosion. All those kids playing nearby, too... These past five years, I've lived a lie.
Raiden: Lied?
Stillman: Yes, lied. I didn't lose my leg in the explosion. So many dead -- all because of my mistake. All I could think about was hiding from the crime, shielding myself from the public outcry. I wanted people to be sorry for me, for my weakness... I faked being a victim myself because I couldn't bear to face the families of the real victims.​

Peter Stillman, the bomb expert hired to help counter the terrorist's explosives specialist, merely pretends to be disabled. Solid Snake is said to be dead, but the body the government recovered from the tanker site was actually that of his identical twin/clone Liquid Snake. Solid Snake is said to be a terrorist, but the real perpetrator of the Big Shell incident is his other identical twin/clone, Solidus Snake. The cyborg ninja masquerading under the name "Mr. X"? Actually a woman. The captive American President? Really the president, but in truth a hollow political puppet hoping in vain to manipulate his abduction for gain. And so it goes.

As for the real Snake? Early in his mission, Raiden meets a mysterious commando who looks, acts, and sounds just like Solid Snake. He even gives his code name as "Iroquois Pliskin," which combines a Native American word for "snake" with the last name of the Kurt Russell character who served as Kojima's inspiration for Snake in the first place: Escape from New York's Snake Plissken. Amidst the web of fake-outs that is MGS2's plot, this dead ringer for Solid Snake is so blatantly telegraphed as the real thing that he seems a blatant red herring... but no. He's actually Solid Snake, even if his old ally -- Raiden's mission commander Colonel Campbell -- doesn't recognize or acknowledge him.

Raiden: Colonel, you were monitoring the Codec calls. That man was the real Snake, all along...
Colonel: Maybe.
Raiden: Maybe?
Colonel: Don't let your guard down with him.
Raiden: Why do you say that?
Colonel: Because they were never a part of the simulation. They're an unknown factor.​

That's because, in the end, even the Colonel is fake. Raiden's orders come not from Snake's trusted adviser and former Foxhound commander Roy Campbell but rather from a computerized recreation of the man. The Big Shell is simply the final step in the protagonist's extensive VR training: A simulation of the Shadow Moses incident, staged and manipulated as a real-life exercise to recreate a "new" Solid Snake. Everything from the presence of a cyborg ninja to the fact that the incident itself is instigated when one of Snake's genetic twins takes a high-level political figure hostage is designed as a crucible in which to forge Raiden into a recreation of the ultimate soldier, Solid Snake. Raiden's long-time girlfriend is a government agent who reshaped herself into his dream woman in order to help control and manipulate him. Even Raiden himself is hardly the VR-trained greenhorn he appears to be. A former child soldier in war-torn Africa, he was killing people at an age when most children are learning to ride bikes.

Raiden is the fulcrum of MGS2's story. Everything that happens on the Big Shell isn't staged for his benefit, precisely, but it certainly revolves around him. The abduction, the threats, the deployment of Dead Cell and the involvement of Solidus Snake are all elements of the shadowy Patriots organization's Raiden-centric conspiracy called the S3 Plan. Initially, Raiden (and the player) are led to believe S3 stands for "Solid Snake Simulation," designed to turn Raiden into a perfect replica of his legendary predecessor. Eventually, however, the truth comes out: The plan's true name is "Simulation for Societal Sanity," a scheme to prove that Raiden is the archetypal dupe, a sucker who can be deceived and misled through the manipulation of digital media -- and so, by extension, can the rest of the world.

Colonel: Raiden, take out Solidus and his men. You must recover Arsenal intact.
Raiden: Colonel, are you under orders from the Patriots?
Colonel: Your role -- that is, mission -- is to infiltrate the structure and disarm the terrorists --
Raiden: My role? Why do you keep saying that?
Colonel: Why not? This is a type of role-playing game. The point is that you play out your part -- and I expect you to turn in a perfect performance!
Raiden: Colonel, I just remembered something.
Colonel: What?
Raiden: That I've never met you in person. Not once.​

Kojima used the pre-launch hype for MGS2 to prove the efficacy of the Patriots' fictional plan in real life. The infamous Raven action figure incident was only the tip of the iceberg. At no point in the build-up to MGS2's launch was Raiden's role in the game even hinted at. Somehow, Kojima managed to keep secret the playable lead of one of the most eagerly anticipated games of all time. When MGS2 arrived in American stores at the end of 2001, practically no one suspected that Snake would be sharing the spotlight -- let alone that he'd spend 85% of the game sidelined.
Kojima didn't accomplish this feat through omission alone. Although much of the pre-release footage for MGS2 released by Konami focused around the familiar tanker scenario, a good amount of Big Shell material was demonstrated as well. And in many cases, events that would ultimately prove to star Raiden were manipulated and even re-rendered to appear to feature Snake as the active hero instead.

And why not? That was the entire point of MGS2: Digital media is inherently mutable. MGS2 was produced on computers for a computer-based game system, promoted through videos and screenshots rendered by computers for display on computers around the world. In those more innocent Internet days, in an era before the word "bullshot" had been coined, consumers inherently trusted content providers. No one had the slightest reason to assume Kojima Productions would alter their trailers and screenshots. The truth about Raiden caught gamers off-guard.

Raiden: Why did they have to bring the football along? To a decontamination plant, of all places.
Mr. X: But they did have to. Because, after all, the Big Shell is the farthest thing from a cleanup plant there is. Dead Cell didn't have to bring a nuke along with them. It was right here to begin with. Nothing in this affair is what it seems.
Raiden: A cover-up -- but why? For what?
Mr. X: For Metal Gear, that is housed here.​

The general response to MGS2 was overwhelmingly negative. Many fans felt cheated, and they weren't shy about voicing their opinions; they had been led to expect an adventure starring the cool, confident Snake, not a sulky substitute. But the greater issue may have been that MGS2 was simply too avant-garde -- too clever -- for its own good. The plot was a spaghetti bowl of indecipherable ambitions and double-crosses; in the end, practically everyone was revealed to be manipulating every other character. Basic motives and allegiances were painfully convoluted, and many plot elements proved to be so opaque that fully half of Metal Gear Solid 4 was given over to whitewashing and retconning the majority of its story.
But dense and even terrible narratives aren't necessarily game-breakers. On the contrary, most games have fairly awful plots and writing. MGS2 was inscrutable at times, but it was competent. Unfortunately, it revolved around almost completely unlikable characters. Raiden was destined to face an uphill battle from the beginning simply for not being Solid Snake, but the tide of public opinion was cemented against his favor when he revealed himself to be an insufferable, passive-aggressive jerk. The game does such an effective job at making him the Patriots' patsy that he comes off as completely witless and incompetent. To make matters worse, his mission adviser is his nagging, obnoxious girlfriend, whose incessant pestering quickly causes players to develop a Pavlovian aversion to the Codec alert tone.

MGS2 often drifts too far into the realm of the fantastic as well. While its predecessor never shied away from the mystical and bizarre -- from an emaciated psychic in a gas mask to the revelation that Snake was a genetically modified clone of legendary soldier "Big Boss" -- the sequel pushes suspension of disbelief beyond the breaking point. Ocelot is a psychic slave of Liquid Snake's grafted-on hand? Otacon's half-sister hates him because he cheated on his dad with his step-mother! Fortune is "more than friends" with her dead father's immortal bisexual vampire lover, and she thinks she's bullet-proof but isn't really -- except that ultimately she actually is!? The further MGS2 goes, the less its story makes sense. In the end, the delirious fever-dream sequence in which the Patriots' A.I. begins breaking down and bombarding Raiden with surreal taunts and intricate lectures on the nature of digital information almost comes as a relief: At least here the story isn'tsupposed to make sense.

Colonel: Ha, ha, ha...exactly right. So you see, you're a perfect representative of the masses we need to protect. This is why we chose you. You accepted the fiction we've provided, obeyed our orders and did everything you were told to. The exercise is a resounding success.​

The game's finale is a fascinating mind-screw. In terms of game play, it's quite poor: What little interactivity it offers is extremely linear and weighed down by a tedious battle against as many as two dozen Metal Gears (depending on the difficulty level). But the wild swerve the story takes -- seemingly on the cusp of providing answers at last -- makes for one of the most memorable game endings of all time.
Even so, it often falls flat. When the artifice is stripped away and the truth revealed, why does Raiden have to fight Solidus? In the end, the final battle feels like a matter of design obligation rather than a logical conclusion: Games have to have final bosses, so Raiden kills his adoptive father. For all that MGS2 flouts convention, it adheres to form and type on many levels. Even the ending is a lie, of sorts. After a baffling conclusion followed by a bizarre stinger, Kojima had cheerfully painted the plotline into a corner with no intention of following it up himself. No, he initially stepped back from both sequels in order to let his subordinates clean up his mess, only stepping in when their efforts weren't up to par.

And yet, despite these flaws and complaints, MGS2 is far from a failure. It's a bold, commendable experiment in blending narrative and production. It's not a complete success, but it's a praiseworthy effort that's as unpredictable as it is brazen. The game, its characters, and its story deliberately alienated gamers to make a point; would that more big-budget releases in this day and age take such daring risks rather than falling back on safe conservatism.
Perhaps it's fitting that Snake -- whose role in the entire affair is to be the fly in the Patriots' ointment -- serves as Hideo Kojima's mouthpiece to everyone who complained about Raiden, the story, and all those prerelease shenanigans:

Raiden: Why didn't you tell me...?
Snake: You never asked.
Raiden: ...
Snake: Not happy about that? Get over it.​

Images courtesy of LP Archive.

 

[The Big Sauce]

Started downloading MGS4's big update released months ago. Going to finally get some Trophies for this bitch.

Just hoping it finishes downloading soon

 

[Cruyff14]

MGS1 is and always will be one of my favourite games of all time. I was 10 when it came out and constantly played it over and over until I got my PS2. Absolutely amazing game. Baffles me as to why they would not release that in HD.

 

[HBK619]

MGS1 is and always will be one of my favourite games of all time. I was 10 when it came out and constantly played it over and over until I got my PS2. Absolutely amazing game. Baffles me as to why they would not release that in HD.

Because PS1 era games in HD would be absolutely dreadful.

It would literally ruin every single ounce of nostalgic memory you have for that game. LET. IT. BE.

Trust me. Konami did right.

 

[The Big Sauce]

HBK is right. It's available on PSN if you are really keen.

There is an argument that they could've included The Twin Snakes as well. Which is a really nice if odd game.

 

[Cruyff14]

I know it's on PSN, but **** me, that game in HD would be magnificent.

 

[The Big Sauce]

I know it's on PSN, but **** me, that game in HD would be magnificent.

Search out The Twin Snakes. It was a remake of the PSone original with the MGS2 engine for Gamecube

 

[Cruyff14]

Search out The Twin Snakes. It was a remake of the PSone original with the MGS2 engine for Gamecube

Is it only on GC?