Metal Gear/ Metal Gear Solid

...we're going back a couple of pages now. :p

I don't necessarily disagree, but did we factor The Twin Snakes into Solid vs Big Boss? Snake does some crazy stuff in there.

I don't agree. As said, every one from that generation got a happy ending in some sense, and Metal Gear has trend towards happier endings. Snake finding a new lease on life in Solid, Raiden doing the same in 2. 3 ends bitterly where 4 ends with Snake, the guy most likely to bite it, outliving most of his enemies and having a support system.

Raiden succumbing feels like it was meant as a Sequel Hook that we sadly never got.

There is also the fact that Big Boss was really past his prime when he fought Snake in Zanzibar. I'd like to think Snake would most likely kill Big Boss through assassination but MGS 4 really shows how much he sucks at assassinating people.

Personally I like to pretend Raiden at least has a good relationship with his wife and son post revengeance. I'm not really fond of how he relapsed in MGR, and since we aren't getting a sequel, we can pretend Raiden got some sort of happy ending.

Edited by RedHunter543 on May 2nd 2021 at 9:01:22 AM

The way I always saw the difference between Revengeance and every other thing is that Snake is always the underdog in every game. Pitted 1 against many, usually equally or superiorly trained, better-armed soldiers with next-generations weapons while Snake is usually picking up what he can. Enemies with better genetics and massive tanks while Snake has a few voices in his ear. Snake is descended from a legendary soldier, but those genes are Blessed with Suck right down to Snake's final appearance.

Raiden is the inverse; Raiden has the best gear, has a deeper background in death and murder than anyone, superior training and next-generation technology. We reach a point in the game where his foes are just picking up on how twisted and dangerous he is. Raiden destroys tanks early on and duels with giant robots. He's genealogically tied to the President of the United Freaking States, but none of that really affects him going forward and actually made him a better assassin.

Snake does, in fact, suck at assassination. Raiden is pretty great at it.

Edited by FOFD on May 2nd 2021 at 10:09:13 AM

I'm not sure if either Snake or Big Boss would bother with a hand-to-hand fight scene. Hell, the whole point of the fighter between Snake and Sean Connery in Metal Gear 2 was showing Snake's ingenuity, hiding until he could make something to fight back.

And Raiden runs on just the craziness of Platinum by the time we reach Revengence.

Edited by Beatman1 on May 2nd 2021 at 10:31:42 AM

On Snake and assassination, I assume it's because Snake himself isn't the type to enjoy assassinating people because wasn't there some reluctance when Campbell asked him to go after "Liquid" (Ocelot) in Solid 4?

Well Snake was already retired by Metal Gear 2 because he'd been forced to kill Gray Fox and the situation in Zanzibar land was far more morally gray than originally he might have thought. Plus, the discovery that he was a clone of Big Boss that happened offscreen. Part of the running theme of Metal Gear Solid as a whole is that Snake is aware he's a pawn of the governments and already done with this shit, so to speak.

By Metal Gear 4, he's also operating at, being charitable, a fraction of his physical strength and only his super stealth skills are keeping him alive let alone combat capable.

But yes, part of the Metal Gear "theme" is that Snake doesn't like killing people. It's what separates him from Big Boss (who used to be the same way) and Liquid.

I'll have to agree to disagree because I feel like the endings of Metal Gear 4's protagonists were pretty sad for the protagonist. Snake dies after completing his mission with just a few months to live after a lifetime of sorrow, Otacon (though I fully Embrace the he and Snake romance) loses his girlfriend then his best friend/boyfriend, Naomi dies horribly in Otacon's arms—continuing the argument that you should never date him, and Meryl marries Johnny.

Raiden got a happy ending but, honestly, his ending in Revengeance feels more apropos given what happened to Snake. You cannot escape your past, just cope with it.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on May 5th 2021 at 12:08:09 PM

Fraction nothing. Snake's pretty much on death's door throughout the game, and he's only able to function thanks to nanomachine injections.

By the end of the game he has less than six months left to live, during that time his health will no doubt get worse and worse. It's very bittersweet; he finally gets to stop fighting, but he barely has any time left to live.

Raiden by comparison has the happier ending in Revenge and that's him deciding to dedicate his life to waging his own war against evil. He even sent his robot dog away to live a peaceful life rather than stick with him and be snarky with each other.

I just don't understand. He HAD a happy ending in 2001. Then a game over a decade later changed literally everything and said this is your new ending and the new ending is only "happy" in the context of everything Revengenace made up.

It's like saying Ripley's best ending was Alien 3 because she finally died and escaped the horror of her life. Only...she escaped the horror at the end of Alien and again at the end of Aliens. But then 3 killed Newt and probably Jonesy too and as a response to what Alien 3 did, Ripley dying was the best thing for her.

I think my argument regarding Raiden is that Revengeance may be a Happy Ending Override but it's a better story. The character of Raiden and his struggle with his Jack the Ripper persona is fleshed out better in his game as is the fact that he's struggling with violence. The fact Love Cannot Overcome is the ending may not be a better ending in terms of his personal happiness but it feels more "authentic" or narrativly powerful.

Pretty much this. The problem with 2's ending is that yes it's hopeful but Raiden has a lot of problems that he's just internalized and ignored for most of his life, went through a traumatic experience to break him out of it, and now has to rebuild his life while avoiding the Patriots and trying to rescue Sunny. That he become an alcoholic and got into fights prior to Rose's fake miscarriage and then threw himself completely into his Raiden persona is a natural progression of his character arc in 2; he's a man whose response to trauma and the things that are bothering him is to bury it, bottle it up and deny it until he's forced to confront it.

To paraphrase something Neil Gaiman once wrote, you can only get a happy ending if you stop writing, because if the story goes on long enough then it will always end in death. The happy endings in 2 and 4 are happy because they end immediately after Raiden decides he wants to try and improve, and leave out how difficult a task that really is. Revengeance at least had Jack in a better place at the start of it then he was at the end of 4.

I think we're all going to have to agree to disagree on what is considered more narratively powerful if we're quoting other writers at this point. This topic's reached a level of passive-aggressiveness that's inevitably going to reach personal attacks on our definition of narrative strength with no one having an objectively correct answer.

Suffice to say we all like Raiden's character at different points in his existence, and preferred different conclusions for his character development. And everybody is screwed by Konami choosing to abandon the franchise because there was definitely further to go with the character.

As an aside and suggestion for future disagreement, Rosemary is still the worst character in Metal Gear history right next to Akiba.

Edited by FOFD on May 9th 2021 at 9:39:29 AM

What? Rosemary that bad? Honestly, I've sort of appreciated her as I got older. She's the living meta message of keeping contact with your real life loved ones.

No matter how annoying they can be.

Her MGS 4 incarnation sours her. Sigint and Para-Medic were funny. EVA and the various CO's offer semi-relevant game information, and Natasha offered at least what sounds like real-world perspective on the crazy sci-fi.

But I can't think of a single reason to actually call Rosemary in 4 except to pick up "hints" about her scandalous marriage to Roy Campbell, for at least one comedic scene, and to make her breasts jiggle if you have a SIXAXIS controller. It's not even a good Gainaxing, blink and you'll miss it.

She's not even in Revengeance.

In 2 the most memorable thing about her I can say is that she blocks your SAVE option - which is funny in a cosmic sense because it screws over the player, but Dude, Not Funny! in a Watsonian sense because she is denying her services pertinent to the infiltration mission she was assigned to the operative she is charged with assisting because of a personal grudge.

I mean, I guess it's the equivalent of a teleprompter refusing to do their job, but still.

Her love story with Jack is cute and all, but the plot twist with her and The Colonel being AI could have been easily accomplished with just the Colonel. Her turning up right at the tail end of the game right in front of city hall after a giant freaking mech crashed there was always a little weird to me. Yeah, Snake showing up was weird, but Snake does 100,000 steps per mission anyway, and probably had Otacon nearby with a getaway car.

Edited by FOFD on May 9th 2021 at 9:55:18 AM

There's a reason I like the theory that the only time you see the real Rosemary in 2 is when she shows up in person at the very end.

Okay, so moving on from arguing over characters,

Anyone remember all the crazy fan theories over MGS 2? I still think the one that holds up the most is the VR theory.

MGS 2 is my favorite game in the franchise because it really does go amazingly off the rails. It also does a lot of what Ken Levine wanted to do with discussing video game narratives in Bioshock (on the rails storytelling, narrative heroism, and so on) as well as Spec Ops: The Line but does so in a way that's not necessarily insulting.

Raiden wants to be badass, wants to be Solid Snake, but improves as a person by learning to distrust the narratives fed him to make a larger commentary about society in general.

And yes, Rose is the Damsel Scrappy.

The whole conversation before the final boss fight of 2 is probably something I'd have skipped when I was younger, but nowadays I want to skip the fight and go back to talking.

There's a lot in Sons of Liberty I skipped as a child that means a lot to me as an adult. I'm surprised at just how endearing its content really was.

I have always loved the talk with JFK/The Patriots. It's pure art. According to the official script, the US National Anthem is supposed to play during some of it but that was cut because of 9/11.

Raiden: I’ll decide for myself what to believe and what to pass on!

Colonel: But is that even your own idea?

Rose: Or something Snake told you?

(Such a brutal own.)

But this is probably my favorite bit of the convo:

Edited by Nikkolas on May 9th 2021 at 7:25:57 AM

The funny thing is that this is really Raiden's own insecurities and doubts made manifest and calling him out. Remember that "GW" according to Otacon is based on Raiden's own past experiences thanks to the AI messing with Raiden's nanomachines.

And as MG:R shows, he's still struggling with "GW" in a way despite making a lot of progress.

Edited by M84 on May 9th 2021 at 11:06:51 PM

MGS 2 and Raiden have aged like fine wine. Like a while back, I saw this newcomer complaining about having to play as Raiden and the comments were all “ You’ll learn”

Edited by RedHunter543 on May 9th 2021 at 1:36:40 PM

Speaking as a great advocate for free speech at the time, I always felt the Patriots plots to censor the internet was terrible.

Now?

Now in the age of fake news, propaganda, and hate speech—well, it comes off a bit differently. They even state that's what they're worried about.

Maybe but the solution that the Patriots suggest is unnatural and even worse.

Especially since their "solution" was the war economy.