Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty was released in 2001. Released on PlayStation 2, it added the ability to aim weapons in first-person view, as well as additional support for melee-range combat. The graphics also improved significantly; the textures for faces were no longer only 8 pixels across. Finally, it also marked the onset of Continuity Creep, as this title and every title after focuses specifically on the fight against the franchise's Greater-Scope Villain.
Act 1 - Tanker Chapter
The first part of MGS2 takes place in 2007. In the intervening years, Ocelot has gone public with the Metal Gear REX plans, selling them to anyone who wants them, and by now many nations are armed with home-made REXes. It's unknown what President Sears thinks about this, because his term is over. Snake and Otacon are not happy about it; they've formed a non-government organization, Philanthropy, to combat the proliferation of Metal Gears. The USMC are not happy either; they've developed a counter-weapon, the amphibious Metal Gear RAY, and are ferrying it into the New York Harbor on an oil tanker, the USS Discovery. This particular development has put Philanthropy and the Marines at odds, and as the tanker passes under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, Snake jumps off the bridge and boards it. His objective is to get photographic evidence of RAY, and escape.Of course, things are more complicated than they seem. First off, the tanker is already being subjected to hostile action: a group of Russian mercenaries, led by Col. Sergei Gurlukovich and his pregnant daughter Olga, are boarding it. Second, as Marine commander Scott Dolph musters his remaining men beliwdecks, and makes a grand speech about the peacekeeping abilities of RAY, they are ambushed both by Gurlukovich and then by his associate — Revolver Ocelot. Ocelot becomes the Trope Namer for Chronic Backstabbing Disorder by betraying both Dolph and Gurlukovich, but is then backstabbed himself by, of all things, his arm, which was actually transplanted from the corpse of Liquid Snake. (Ocelot's lines during these moments of possession are performed by Liquid's voice actor.) Liquid Arm-celot destroys the tanker and makes off with RAY, leaving Snake adrift amidst the shipwreck.
Act 2 - Plant Chapter
It's 2009. The sinking of the Discovery in the New York Harbor has caused a major ecological crisis, and a clean-up facility, the "Big Shell," has been built on the water. It has been seized by a terrorist group, the eponymous Sons of Liberty, whose leader claims to be Solid Snake; they are aided by "Dead Cell," a group of American soldiers who pretended to be terrorists in order to test the security of military installations, and now have decided that Becoming the Mask is a good idea. The members of Dead Cell include Fatman, an corpulent explosives expert on roller skates; Vamp, a knife-fighting expert who can walk on water and has Resurrective Immortality, meaning that he can be shot (and is, several times over the course of the game) but doesn't stay killed; and their leader, Fortune, daughter of the late Scott Dolph, who (so far as anyone knows) can be killed but cannot be shot: her nom de guerre references the fact that bullets just kind of detour around her, denying her her sought-out death in battle. The Sons of Liberty have also employed Olga Gurlukovich, no longer pregnant (it has been two years), who leads the survivors of her father's mercenaries.Since Solid Snake is the Player Character, one would typically assume that he is not simultaneously the Big Bad... until one discovers that Solid Snake is not the Player Character. Instead, for the bulk of the game, players control the New Meat from FOXHOUND: a slender, almost effeminate man named Jack, operating under the code name "Raiden". He has never been in action before but has run a whole bunch of VR training, and he believes that this "experience" is enough to prove him on a genuine battlefield. Not to belabor the point, but Kotaku put it best: "Raiden thinks he's a badass
because he's played video games."
(Raiden was largely seen as The Scrappy.)
Supporting Raiden by CODEC are Col. Campbell and Rosemary (no last name), the data specialist who saves his game. She is also his girlfriend, and occasionally interrupts the mission to discuss their personal life, particularly Jack's spartan living quarters and daily Catapult Nightmares. Rose's Skewed Priorities also received a cool reception from the fanbase, but in total fairness Raiden's Henpecked Husband routine is not unearned: when questioned, he can't even remember when their anniversary is. (It's tomorrow, by the way.)
Raiden has, in theory, on-site support in the form of SEAL Team 10 (who aren't supposed to know he's there), but they are slain almost to a man by Vamp; the sole survivors are Peter Stillman, a bomb-disposal expert who mentored Fatman, and Iroquois Pliskin, a man who wears a SEAL uniform but has the same face as Solid Snake, the same voice actor as Solid Snake, and whose names are both references to snakesnote . Raiden also gets assistance from a mysterious Cyborg Ninja. With their help, Raiden is tasked with infiltrating the Big Shell and rescuing the hostages being kept there, which include James Johnson, 44th and current President of the United States.
The first threat to be dealt with is Fatman, who has littered the struts of the Big Shell with bombs. Raiden, Pliskin and Stillman mobilize to prevent them from going off. Raiden fights and defeats Fatman, but Stillman is lost to a trap. Pliskin then proposes the plan of evacuating a number of hostages using a helicopter. Raiden agrees, despite skepticism from Campbell. However, the helicopter is attacked by a Harrier jet flown by the man who claims to be Solid Snake. In the original Japanese dub, there's still some doubt going on, because this man is played by Akio Ōtsuka, who also does the voice for Solid Snake (in English, he is voice by John Cygan). Whatever the case, Pliskin solves the dilemma once and for all by emphatically declaring that "that is NOT Solid Snake!", and he and the pilot of the helicopter, Otacon, help Raiden shoot the Harrier down. However, it is rescued by the Metal Gear RAY which Ocelot stole two years ago, rendering the entire boss fight pointless.
Raiden, now with Otacon and Snake providing advice via CODEC, reaches President Johnson, who lives up to his name by performing a Crotch-Grab Sex Check. Flummoxed that a FOXHOUND operative is here to rescue him,Johnson reveals to Raiden that the Big Shell is actually a cover-up for a larger construction project: the next Metal Gear. A giant submarine called "Arsenal Gear," it houses an AI, "GW," which is intended to control the transmission of all digital information. He also reveals that he, his predecessor George Sears, and most presidents through the 70s have all been Puppet Kings, manipulated by an Omniscient Council of Vagueness called "The Patriots" who secretly control not just America but most of the world. They are so secretive that people under their control can't even say "The Patriots"; instead, their nanomachines force them to say "the La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." (This sounds, and is, a little silly — it's never explained what happens if a Patriot agent is also a fan of an American Football team, for instance — but due to the nuances of Japanese Ranguage, it is impossible to specify that the speaker should use the L consonant instead of an R. In this way, the Patriots—apologies, the La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo—have rendered their name not only unspeakable but unwriteable too.) Sears, the President explains, got fed up with the situation and decided to rebel, taking on the codename "Solidus Snake" and becoming the leader of the Sons of Liberty — the man flying the airplane Raiden just shot down. Solidus, in addition to being one of Les Enfants Terribles, is an unmodified clone of Big Boss, which is more than either Solid or Liquid could say. Having delivered this Info Dump, Johnson begs Raiden to kill him: the terrorists want him for his nuclear launch codes. Raiden, for the first time, tells someone that he won't help them. Instead, Ocelot shows up and blows him away. He then leaves Raiden alone.
Raiden is now directed to stop Arsenal Gear by any means possible. He travels deeper into Big Shell to reach its primary designer, E.E. — Emma Emmerich, step-sister of Otacon. They haven't spoken for a while, not since his father (her stepfather) committed suicide. She is also deathly afraid of both insects and water, which is bad because Raiden had to swim through bug-infested flooded corridors to get to her. Nonetheless, Raiden succeeds in bringing her to the outer area of the Big Shell ("Colonel, we've managed to avoid drowning!"), where she agrees to upload a virus into Arsenal Gear's mainframe. He protects her with a sniper rifle fire while she crosses to the main control center... only for Vamp to pop up and put a knife through her. She admits to Otacon that she kind of had a thing for him; Otacon then admits (to her corpse) that he was doing his stepmother, which is part of why his father killed himself. (The Emmerichs are a weird family.) In any case, Otacon uploads the virus, and then evacuates the remaining hostages on his chopper while Snake and Raiden prepare to invade Arsenal Gear. ...Only, the Cyborg Ninja, revealed to be Olga Gurlukovich, aids Snake in incapacitating Raiden and turning him over to the remaining triumvirate of villains—Solidus, Fortune and Ocelot.
This is about the time when the game starts really kicks up the Mind Screw.
Raiden wakes up in a torture chamber that is almost identical to the one Snake was in on Shadow Moses. His assailant is different, however. Solidus reveals that Raiden once served him as a Child Soldier during the Liberian Civil War, and condemns him as a pawn of the Patriots. After Solidus leaves, Olga springs Raiden from imprisonment. It turns out that her daughter was kidnapped by the Patriots when she was born—almost literally snatched out of Olga's arms—and they are threatening to kill the child if she (Olga) doesn't cooperate. The only problem is, Snake has all of Raiden's gear, meaning Raiden needs to sneak naked (literally — his character model had to be designed with Barbie Doll Anatomy in case anyone managed to get a look) through the bowels (literally — the level area is marked "duodenum," which is part of the large intestine) of Arsenal Gear to reach him. Even worse, Col. Campbell has started to go batshit crazy. Any useful orders he would give Raiden are instead replaced with spewing Word Salad Lyrics and insisting that Raiden turn off the PlayStation 2 so that he (Campbell) can take over and fix all of Raiden's mistakes. Otacon looks into this on Raiden's request, and discovers that it's not even Campbell: it's a construct created by GW, which is why Emma's virus is driving it ("Campbell") insane. Rosemary also reveals heretofore undetected treachery: she admits that she is an agent sent by the Patriots to seduce Raiden, but is now In Love with the Mark. She also, just before the connection shorts out, claims to be pregnant with his child. With all of this raining down on him, Raiden's Sanity Meter is at an all-time low by the time Snake gets to him.
Fortunately, Snake starts with an apology: his "betrayal" of Raiden was to use him as a Trojan Prisoner, allowing him and Olga infiltrate Arsenal Gear in the chaos. He returns Raiden's equipment to him, including a new gift: the high-frequency Vibroweapon which Olga has wielded hitherto. It is the culmination of Raiden's Character Development, which up until then has involved following — almost literally, in some cases — in Snake's footsteps, doing everything he does. Except that Raiden is always worse at it. Snake won every boss fight he's ever been in, but Raiden has only succeeded at killing (or tranquilizing) Fatman; Snake has already beaten one MGS game, while Raiden is still struggling through his; Snake saved Meryl (he explicitly draws attention to his Bottomless Magazines Bandanna Joke Item, awarded for getting Meryl's Good Ending, during this cutscene), whereas Raiden let Emma die. Raiden is a Moveset Clone of Snake, up to and including the vaunted ability to shoot a gun in first-person view, which was retconned into The Twin Snakesnote , but without any of the success. But Snake doesn't have a goddamn ninja sword, which he can swing using the right thumbstick and do Parrying Bullets with by holding L2. There is, for very the first time, something Raiden can do that Snake can't.
Suitably armed, the newly-minted Bash Brothers fight their way through Arsenal Gear side-by-side. This section reaffirms Raiden's Divergent Character Evolution: the lack of cover in the hallway, not to mention the fact that some of the opponents have the same Parrying Bullets swords Raiden does, encourages the player to abandon (Snake's) guns in favor of the sword. Raiden finally comes into his own, surpassing Snake by handling with ease a challenge which Snake's gameplay style has trouble coping with. He then furthers his own story by, while Snake tangles with Fortune, taking on an army of AI-controlled RAYs, destroying more Metal Gears in five minutes than Snake has in his whole life. Alas, it's all for naught; both are captured, and even worse, Olga is slain trying to defend them.
With two good guys against three Big Bads, the odds look grim... but almost immediately, Chronic Backstabbing Disorder sets in, and everyone starts squabbling. It starts when Solidus declares his intention to dig the identities of the Patriots out of GW; Fortune is to provide a distraction by using one of Arsenal's hydrogen bombs on Manhattan. Ocelot reveals that he can't allow that to happen, as he himself is an agent of the Patriots. The entire Big Shell Incident has been part of the S3, the "Solid Snake Simulation," and its almost grotesque level of Strictly Formula parallels to the first game — new and undocumented Metal Gear; the Cyborg Ninja; Moveset Clone; Player Character's familial relationship with the Big Bad; renegade Special Forces unit with supernatural powers; nuclear threat; the torture scene; the Codec team and their frequencies ("Plisken" used McDonnell Miller's number, Rose uses Mei Ling's, "Campbell" has the same one); the design of some of the boss fights; even the voice actors in some casesnote — were intentionally crafted to test the hypothesis that, if you force a soldier to Follow the Plotted Line through a Shadow Moses incident, he'll (either die or) come out of it a Super-Soldier on par with Solid Snake. The entire exercise has been, for all intents and purposes, a Murder Simulator played straight... and, because of the way Ocelot phrases all of this, it's impossible to tell whether the subject of the Solid Snake Simulation, the Ax-Crazy Blood Knight they were trying to create, was Raiden, the Player Character, or you, the player. This was intentional.
With this in mind, the fact that Raiden was so detested by the fanbase is put into sharp focus: he is an indictment of said fanbase. He is a weak, effeminate failure who acts out escapist fantasies of being a Super-Soldier by playing video games. He is the encapsulation of the series' Aesop: "Only an awful person would want to be an action hero." Raiden does; The Player does too; and that makes you both absolute monsters. You Suck.
In any case, Ocelot proves that the Patriots are in charge of everything by shooting the unshootable Fortune, having disabled the Applied Phlebotinum that kept her safe. He then jumps into the original RAY to launch RAY's armaments at Snake, Solidus and Raiden... who are, miraculously, protected by Fortune, using her powers (yes, despite the disabled Phlebotinum) one last time before she leaves to join her family. Immediately after this, Ocelot tries to blast away Snake, Raiden, and Solidus again...only for Liquid Snake to make his grand return in a twist that even the Patriots didn't see coming. After announcing himself to have been the one to have initially leaked information on Arsenal Gear two years prior, Liquid then departs with RAY to find the Patriots and "bury [them] for good"; Snake jumps into the ocean after him, leaving Solidus and Raiden alone atop Arsenal Gear. And, finally, the Metal Gear itself gets into the picture: with GW going insane, Arsenal Gear sets course for downtown Manhattan and careens into the city, dumping the two of them unceremoniously atop Federal Hall.
Solidus admits that Jack was orphaned because, during the Liberian Civil War, Solidus killed his parents. He wants to destroy the Patriots to return America (and the world) to true freedom, instead of one that is manipulated from behind the scenes. He then draws his katana and wakizashi and announces his intention to get the names of the Patriots from the nanomachines in Raiden's body, which will hold the information since he's been in contact with them. GW proves the point by contacting Raiden directly. It claims that Ocelot's description of the S3 plan was incorrect: it's actually the Selection for Societal Sanity, and its job is to filter out the useless content created by most of humanity, forcing mankind to confront uncomfortable truths instead of burying its head in the sand of comfortable lies and moving to, say, a post-fact reality. It orders Raiden to kill Solidus—Chevalier vs. Rogue, his ninja sword against Solidus' samurai swords—reminding him that the lives of Rosemary and Olga's unnamed offspring hang in the balance. It is also, thematically, Raiden's chance to solidify his Divergent Character Evolution — especially since, again, Snake and Solidus have the same seiyuu in the original Japanese dub. Raiden is not really sure that Rosemary is even real anymore—the Colonel wasn't—but since it's his life or Solidus's, he wins the Duel Boss battle, putting an end to the 43rd President on the roof of the building where the very first President was inaugurated.
Solidus' hopes were not in vain, though. Snake tells Raiden that he and Otacon intend to hunt down the identities of the Patriots—though Emma's virus was intended to censor their names, this must mean that it knows what to censor. Raiden offers to go with them, but Snake points out Rosemary, awaiting him in the crowd. It is the anniversary of the day Jack first met her. Raiden wants to know what the point of it all is, and Snake points out that while he cannot choose his own past, he can choose his future. Jack's choice is Rosemary, and the two decide to make a life together while Snake slips away.
The closing phone call is from Otacon: he tells Snake that he has pieced together the names of the 12 Patriots. The problem is that they've all been dead for over a hundred years.
For a more detailed explanation on the game's infamous ending, go here.
