Metal Gear/ Metal Gear Solid

I don;t think there any while MGS 2 was confrontational, it wasn't so much a middle finger at anyone as much as it was a commentary on the previous MGS.

i would say it was a middle finger to otaku and fans of the original MGS who took the wrong messages from that game.

After Kojima was brought back in and made to work on a sequel to MGS, he made a game about a sinister, shadowy overmind authority that saw the success of Solid Snake and went, "Mass-produce the f*ck out of that guy!" without the vision to understand that you can't just recreate the scenario, hit all the same notes, do all the same stuff, and poop out another masterpiece of a game soldier.

edited 13th Jun '16 3:32:10 PM by TobiasDrake

Wasn't that part of MGS 2 a red herring though?

IIRC Raiden (the player) was initially told that the S3 Plan was "Shadow Moses Simulation". But then it later turned out to be something else?

Selection for Societal Sanity - basically, it was the Patriot's plan to influence society and individual decision via data control. The Big Shell Incident was a test to measure their ability to carry out said plan.

Solid Snake Simulation was indeed a cover story fed to Ocelot to confuse the Shadow Moses recreation for the S3 Plan itself, when that was in reality just the specific scenario applied to Big Shell with Raiden as the selected test subject.

edited 13th Jun '16 4:37:24 PM by TheAirman

Dang, I used to know this stuff. Metal Gear Solid 2 was 2001. o_o

yeah it's kind of scary to think that the game is 15 years old isn't it?

And yet it feels much more relevant now than ever.

I just looked it up on the metal gear wiki and rewrote is all, so you're not alone.

I do need to replay SOL one of these days.

Considering how many similarities it has to a shit ton of stuff that has happened since its release - 9/11, the Patriot Act, SOPA & PIPA, and even (superficially) the BP oil spill, to name a few - it's honestly kind of unnerving.

edited 13th Jun '16 4:54:44 PM by TheAirman

Yes you do.

Technically, 9/11 predates its release. Which is infamously part of the reason the ending is so weird.

But it was almost entirely developed before the event, so the point stands.

Some amazing stuff happens in Metal Gear Online.

edited 14th Jun '16 4:13:34 PM by Soble

Still thinking about MGS 4, and my pros/cons for it. I wanted to think of how I'd fix it. Unfortunately, that would take too long. I instead settled on "if Kojima had stuck with the original Snake commits suicide ending rather than being bullied into the ending we got, would that have redeemed the game?"

I'm not sure but I still would have preferred it. How about you guys? How would you feel about MGS 4 and the series as a whole if it concluded with Snake killing himself?

Not really, to be honest- At the end of 4, he's already got a rapidly-approaching expiration date on his life from Clone Degeneration, and I kinda liked that Snake finally was allowed to be a man instead of a snake for those last days after all the shit he's been through.

I liked the ending. One that finally allowed him to live in peace.

Way too grim, and would run contrary to the themes of the previous games. Snake dying an unrecognized martyr would change the message from being one of a man ultimately succeeding in distancing himself from his supposed genetic and planned destiny, into one who gave up and chose to let others dictate his fate.

It's the one thing that Solid got right vs Big Boss, Venom, and Liquid; they couldn't let go of how war defined them, while Solid ultimately did - even if only for a few short months.

...he killed himself because he was a death trap for everyone around him and because he was tired. Those things only changed because of MAGIC BIG BOSS RETCON TO THE RESCUE.

No, actually, if you look closely, he's flinched at the last second. Big Boss appears just make his will to live to take hold over his willingness to die. Also, this is maybe just me, but Kojima seems to be... pro-life decision. Basically, the narratives tend to make anyone that fight for his ideal, wiiling to life for his ideal as strong as or stronger than his will to die for his ideal, tend to be rewarded in the end. Everyone who choose to die for his/ her ideal tend to get short end of stick, including The Boss. They who choose to life and fight and life tend to see their ideal prevail in the end, whether for better or worse.

Bingo.

Plus, Solid's generally been anti-establishment ever since the end of Metal Gear 2. And as of Sons of Liberty, he's completely in the conspiracy theory fringe territory. It'd be odd for him to suddenly give up on that and have an authority, who is very likely going to be executing him on shoddy grounds, carry out their plans. Plus by the time MGS 4 rolls around he's pretty much resigned into being vilified by the Patriots, and he knows that only a few people are even going to believe his side of the story by that point. So why would he have himself, and especially his best (and probably only friend) Otacon executed to appease some government?

Wrong ending. That ending requires things to happen in MGS 4 that didn't.

The ending I'm talking about is Snake blowing his brains out in the graveyard. The game was supposed to end that way but Kojima's staff raised a stink and so we got Big Boss coming back to monologue and then die again.

edited 16th Jun '16 6:06:49 AM by Nikkolas

Nah, Kojima originally wanted to have both Solid and Otacon turn himself over the authorities after some event and agree to face punishment, and ultimately execution. I'm glad they convinced him otherwise, that ending would've been pointless and ruined Snake's own principles. As for the exact details as to how it would've been scripted out, we'll never know, because it obviously was never written.

The Foxdie part though? Yeah, that should've been given to Naomi to tell Snake directly, or revealed through other means. Hell, her death is one thing I would've re-written: she gave up because she had cancer, and felt guilty about her past sins? That's about as sudden and dumb as it gets, there was no build-up to that moment at all. I would've had Solid give her a lecture about where at least she has a choice to continue living and should try to redeem herself by other means, whereas he was doomed to die no matter what because of the corrupted Foxdie virus. It would've fit perfectly with Solid's outlook on life, and showed at least the sense of what he is allowed him to change another person's mind for the better.

Well, at least Big Boss coming out of his coma to settle things with his son and finally die a death on his own terms worked. I loved that part, it finally allowed him a chance to make amends with both Zero and his son before it was too late, and also showed that he finally understood The Boss's message. Not sure who the hell programmed the Foxdie to attack BB though, that just totally flies against the logic of how "sacred" the Patriots believed his body and charisma to be. But hey, they're dumb A.I.s, and it's totally possible a paranoid govt agent could've had his DNA added to the list of targets, so the excuses there are many...

I like the ending, at least it gives Snake a few quiet last months to live and travel.

Hell according to some official sources, he died smiling, at peace at last.

Snake also saw Star Wars at some point.

I don't know why no one's made a fan comic of his reaction that.

"Nah, Kojima originally wanted to have both Solid and Otacon turn himself over the authorities after some event and agree to face punishment, and ultimately execution. I'm glad they convinced him otherwise, that ending would've been pointless and ruined Snake's own principles. As for the exact details as to how it would've been scripted out, we'll never know, because it obviously was never written."

There were two unused endings. Firstly, in some rough draft of MGS 4, was the one you described. In the actual game as we saw it, we had the second ending, where Snake went ahead with the suicide.

"I wanted to end it at every step along the way. In Guns of the Patriots [Snake] was supposed to die," Kojima admitted. "Everyone on the staff really wanted to keep him alive, so I caved a little."

There's also an E3 2006 interview on 1UP where he says he wanted Snake to die so he could move on from the series.

edited 16th Jun '16 1:09:00 PM by Nikkolas

• Solid Snake: Does it ever bother you that we never completed the set?
• Liquid Snake: Explain.
• Solid Snake: Like, there's you and then there's me, but where's Gas Snake? Or Vapor Snake? Or Air Snake?
• Liquid Snake: Come to think of it, there was Solidus, It might have made sense for him to be Gas Snake.
• Solid Snake: Maybe, but instead he had a weird riff on my name that never made sense.
• Plasma Snake: Actually, if you think about it, Big Boss is Gas Snake.
• Liquid Snake: Explain.
• Plasma Snake: Well, think about this for a second. In IV and V, we learned that the Big Boss Solid fought and killed was never Big Boss. That was Venom Snake.
• Liquid Snake: Another name that didn't follow the naming theme, but go on.
• Plasma Snake: Well, because Big Boss wasn't Big Boss, the true Big Boss was around us all the time. Everywhere we went, everything we did, his influence was felt in it all. We couldn't see him, could easily overlook his involvement, but he was always there. We were practically breathing him.
• Liquid Snake: That's creepy but I get what you mean. So, in a way, Big Boss was the true Gas Snake!
• Plasma Snake: It makes perfect sense.
• Solid Snake: Who the f*ck are you?

Aside from the fact that David actually did fight Big Boss in MG 2,

Nowhere in there is anything said about going through with the suicide.