Critical Close Up - Metal Gear Solid 2 (MUST WATCH)

Aldro

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Aldro on 26 July 2013

brendude13 said:

Aldro said:

brendude13 said:
It would be good if somebody extracted the good points out of his video and explained them a little more. I'm interested to find out why Kojima switched Raiden in as the playable character and made him intentionally unlikable. The last 3 hours of the game still make absolutely no sense to me either.

Because Raiden reflects the player in the sense that Raiden has been on VR Missions and us, the player, have played as a hero (Solid Snake).
But we are not Snake, we're just bystanders/rookies/raiden ourselves.

Raiden has been trained to kill as a child and so have we in that most of us have played a lot of games as a kid where we take lives. Atleast played MGS1.

We are playing the game on MGS2 just because we want to see what happens next and a lot of it, is really MGS1 copy pasted in some regards.

Infact, the whole game is meant to be unlikable. The beginning of the tanker with Solid Snake like the video says is the ideal sequel. Everything works amazingly. You have a lot of choice, Snake is there, the tech is amazing, gameplay is solid, they have adressed the issue of too many interupptions during gameplay etc. Then the game does a 180 turn and starts to deliberately go back to MGS1. Raiden enters just like Snake does in MGS1. We always see Snake a bit ahead of us and "better" then us.

The thematic of MGS2 is confirmed to be MEME also. Described as =>
"deals with how identity can be affected by the philosophies of one's society (a 'meme') and the effects of censorship on society""
We were censored in that regard that we didn't even know who Raiden was before playing the game ourselves. It was false marketing to show Snake instead. And ours and Raidens identity is brought into question during the game as a result. Kojima really broke the fourth wall with this one.

Raiden has a dog tag on him that you write the name of yourself. Say I named mine "Aldro". At the end, Raiden tosses it which shows that he "walks away" from us. Raiden is no longer us and we are no longer him. We take what we learned and grow from it.

Snake puts it best at the end of MGS2 =>

"Listen dont obsess over words so much. Find the meaning over the words and then decide, you can find your own name, and your own future. And whatever you choose will be you. I know you didn't have much in terms of choices this time around but everything you felt and thought about is yours and what you decide to do with them is your choice."

It's like a way to criticize sequels in general and games in general. Hell anything post modern really. When you play the game, you play the role of someone. The colonel also says it when he's tripping balls because of GW going berserk after Emma uploads the virus.

"This is a roleplaying game."

Theres MUCH more to it and a lot of better explanations in the video(s). Im just trying to make sense of it all myself. But I can see the "meaning" of it and I really really love it :P.

@ bolded parts. I don't see any link here whatsoever.

Where is it confirmed that the theme of MGS2 is "MEME"? Even if it was, how was that single word interpreted to mean that Kojima intentionally censored advertisements of the game and intentionally made the Raiden section of the game bad (LOL) to prove some ridiculously deep point?

Also, nothing in Snake's monologue seems to be criticising sequels nor video games at all.

I agree with the rest though.

If you cannot see the censorship fans got going into MGS2 in contrast to the censorship that is being brought up in MGS2 itself, then I don't know what to say.

Here is Kojima confirming the different themes of his games, including MEME for MGS2 =>

http://www.konami.jp/mgs4/uk/interview/03.html

"and in MGS2 you have memes, or the information that isn't encoded into our genes.
Originally that was going to be the entire scope of the theme"

MGS2 was actually an imitation of MGS1, just with the player rather then Solid Snake which ultimately leads to a very different experience where you are also brought into question several times. All the Rose calls where she is asking you to remember 30th of April or all the times when she shouts "Why arent you talking about yourself!!" only shows that further.

See this on Memes:
"Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain."

Now if you want further info that is actually rather solid and lengthy as fuck, go here and follow this entire breakdown of the whole game and MGS1. Its rather crazy like some mentioned here on how much effort the guy put into this. Im only like halfway into Part 3 (each part has like 5 pages with text and videos) but I sure can see the point of it all (somewhat, especially when put into context like it is there) :P

http://metagearsolid.org/2012/04/mgs2-review-chapter-1/

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Muffin31190 on 26 July 2013

Aldro said:

Nice man, im right there with you. MGS4>MGS2>MGS3 imo xD But its like comparing greatness to greatness.

I only prefer 2 and 4 mostly due to the meta-narrative being more interesting and overall story.

MGS3s was rather simple yet beautiful whereas MGS2 and MGS4 are like convoluted in ways and i actually love that xD Hell I even prefer the focus of Genes on MGS1 over the Scene on MGS3. Nobody quite does it like Kojima in that regard. And I think a part of me prefers the OLD gameplay of MGS. Not sure why. It feels more unique since nobody does that anymore atleast even if its outdated kind of.

MGS1 definitely had a very unique and interesting style of gameplay, although i really actually like how the series evolved in terms of gameplay meaning the style of it and how it grew.
but seriously with you there man on with MGS4>MGS2>MGS3
BRO FIVE