In Defense of Metal Gear Solid 2

Between the release of 2023’s Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, Konami has reinvigorated its Metal Gear legacy after years of dormancy. While this has particularly renewed the discourse and reappraisal of 2004’s Metal Gear Solid 3, it also brings to mind how long 2001’s Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty has been overlooked within the wider franchise. Sure, Metal Gear Solid 2 has been more positively re-evaluated since its initial release, but its legacy still remains diminished compared to its counterparts.

Certainly a commercial success and one of the most prominent PlayStation 2-exclusive titles in the console’s early days, Metal Gear Solid 2 has earned its fair share of fans since day one. But between controversy over the game’s story, particularly with its change-up in protagonists, and the higher level of acclaim enjoyed by its sequels, the full extent of creator Hideo Kojima’s salient vision for the game hasn’t been widely appreciated. Here’s why Metal Gear Solid 2 truly is one of the greatest games in the entire series and deserves to get the Delta treatment itself.

The Solid Snake Switcheroo

A lot of the immediate backlash surrounding Metal Gear Solid 2 was the decision to feature the franchise’s usual protagonist Solid Snake as a playable character only in the game’s prologue. After a disastrous mission on a tanker two years before the start of the main game, Snake is presumed dead and replaced by rookie black ops operative Raiden, working for Snake’s old commanding officer Colonel Roy Campbell. Throughout his mission on an ocean-based rig known as Big Shell, Raiden is assisted by a mysterious Navy SEAL named Iroquois Plissken, who is revealed to be Snake under a thinly veiled alias.

More than the abrupt change in protagonists, the controversy around this creative decision came from the fact that was kept tightly under wraps until the game’s release, with the marketing going as far as to swap Raiden for Snake from later sequences in the game for its trailers. Fans can get vocally upset when they feel like they’ve been deceived by movie trailers and this is equally true of gamers, many of whom cried foul feeling they had been on the receiving end of a bait-and-switch. This perceived slight dissipated over time, but never quite entirely, hanging over the game for much of its initial life cycle.

The game’s primary setting of Big Shell also received some criticism for being a bit less open and engaging to explore than the preceding game’s setting of Shadow Moses Island. While this is a more substantial and reasonable observation, Big Shell challenges even the most adept Metal Gear players in a unique way, from its outdoor combat drones to the way Raiden has to navigate pipes and cables precariously strewn over the ocean. Anyone expecting Metal Gear Solid 2 to be a retread of the first game, right down to its protagonist and setting, of course are going to be disappointed until they realize this is a completely fresh experience.

Raiden, the Underrated Hero

Even with the shock of the protagonist switch having long since subsided, reception of Raiden as a character overall remains mixed, particularly in contrast to Solid Snake. Snake is a gruff old-school spec ops commando in the tradition of the countless ‘80s action heroes that inspired Hideo Kojima. Comparatively, Raiden is depicted as more of a bishōnen figure, complete with a slimmer and more youthful appearance, as well flowing blonde hair.

This tonal whiplash, of course, is rather the point, especially when Raiden and Snake are working side-by-side in the closing moments of the game. The game practically winks at the player outright in how much they’ve made Raiden eye candy with a sequence where the character performs acrobatics while buck nude. Kojima went the complete opposite way with Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, turning him into a cyborg.

The inclusion of Raiden also presents a heightened unpredictability to the game and the fate of its protagonist. No Time to Die notwithstanding, we expect characters like James Bond or Spider-Man to walk away in one piece, even in the face of the most harrowing challenges. By presumably killing off Solid Snake in the prologue and thrusting the unfamiliar Raiden in players’ hands, Kojima signals that anything goes and no one is safe in Metal Gear Solid 2.

Teasing the Future Realpolitik

Finally, and this is something that Metal Gear Solid 2 has gotten recognized for a lot but still absolutely needs to be mentioned, but the game’s story is incredibly prescient for a title released in 2001. The game posits that the Information Age will eventually bombard the public with trivial and inaccurate information, slowing societal progress and make identifying the truth a harder proposition, something that eerily strikes close to home these days. This deconstruction of the truth and systemic mind control also involves political echo chambers, something Metal Gear Solid 2 alludes to years before the launch of Facebook and Twitter.

Other less politically minded themes include the game’s use of virtual reality, the unchecked rise of artificial intelligence, and continues the ideas of genetic engineering from the previous entry. Revisiting Metal Gear Solid 2, it feels like Kojima had a window 15-20 years into the future and built a salient story around his tactical espionage action saga.

At the end of the day, Metal Gear Solid 2 is a sequel that completely and consciously subverts expectations stemming from its predecessor while expanding the mythos and, presumably unintentionally, predicting the future. On top of his engrossing story, Hideo Kojima crafted a follow-up that is more accessible and introduces gameplay features players took for granted, including a more intuitive first-person aiming mechanic, that Metal Gear has implemented ever since. In short, Metal Gear Solid 2 kept fans on their toes while upping the ante of its techno-thriller stakes and pulse-pounding action in a sequel that deserves far more love than it gets.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is included in the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1, available for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

The post In Defense of Metal Gear Solid 2 appeared first on Den of Geek.