Metal Gear Solid 2: What Went Wrong?

Any movie buff will tell you that the result of a highly successful, open ended film will be a sequel built on a rudimentary foundation that sometimes just barely irks by a plot, other times it comes off as a total disaster that is usually just ignored by the fan base. But ultimately the studio got what it wanted - a cash cow based on the exploitation of the name of the original, with shoddy work that helped fuel the bottom line. However when it comes to the game industry, the constant demand for "more and better" usually keeps game developers in line, and sequels are usually everything that their originals were and more.

For example, TIE Fighter, the critically acclaimed sequel to X-Wing, was among the greatest games to ever hit the PC, and every new installment of the Total War Series is an arguable improvement over the last.

Therefore, fans unwittingly waltzed into the purchase of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty with the absolute blind faith of a group of fans who predicted director-creator Hideo Kojima could do no wrong. There was a very simple formula that was necessary for success: create an interesting plot involving the loose ends left off in the first one whereby lead character Solid Snake infiltrates, uses stealth, and ultimately saves the day. An Empire Strikes Back route could have been taken also, where Snake doesn't actually save the day, and surviving character Revolver Ocelot kills someone close to Snake, and hatches a successful plot.

What fans got was Raiden, an androgynous young boy who is dangled on the end of a chain and even called Snake to maintain the deception that players would just pick up where they left off. The game came out to a less than honest marketing campaign, and even six years later in the Metal Gear Solid Essential Collection, the back of the box is not entirely forthcoming about the true nature of the game, when it promises, "it's up to Solid Snake to infiltrate the enemy and keep a weapon of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands!"

All advertising up to the point of release had showcased Snake, and had hidden the identity of Raiden (otherwise known as Jack - remember this name for later if you want a good guffaw). What's worse, was that the prologue to the game, as the back of the box had promised, involved a highly enjoyable first level played as Solid Snake, once again voiced by David Hayter. Then, as Revolver Ocelot, one of two villains from the first game, descends upon everything you've achieved so far, something goes terribly terribly wrong.

Cut to a figure swimming through the ocean, and then coming up onto an oil rig, very similar to the opening of the original Metal Gear Solid, where Snake swam through freezing Alaskan waters to reach the Shadow Moses Facility. Now one becomes mildly excited as they hear Colonel Campbell, your chief aid from the original, call you Snake. But then, with your voice strangely feminine and high pitched, it occurs to you that you are no Snake. In fact, within moments, they change your code name to Raiden, in perhaps the ultimate example of a punch to the gut in gaming history.

The rest, as they say, is history. But where did it all go wrong? What happened?

It's not easy to pick a single problem with Metal Gear Solid 2, because it doesn't meet any of the stereotypical problems that comes inherent with a bad video game. The designers devoted a great deal of time to this title, therefore you are not assailed with idiotic bugs, there are no invisible walls, you do not fall through the world, the enemy A.I. remains remarkable, the combat system is incredibly solid, gameplay is smooth, graphics are great - by means, everything was going like another hit was there.

But for one of the few times in gaming history, this all meant largely nothing, because the player was assailed with poor design decisions, an incredibly bad story, increasingly absurd bosses, characters you feel largely dispassionate about, and did I mention poor design decisions? When one says poor design decision, the first thing that usually comes to mind is Assassin's Creed's bizarre absence of assassinations, but there is something more sinister afoot in Metal Gear Solid 2. Indeed, there is no "absence" of something that makes this game poor, in fact, there are many things you downright wish were absent. In many ways, the game simply refuses to take itself seriously.

This is a rapid departure from the original Metal Gear Solid, which was happy to joke about itself in many formats, but ultimately carried with it a very serious undertone. Hideo Kojima enjoyed intertwining intense conspiracy theory into his plots, invoking ideas that the Gulf War Syndrome, for example, was a secret military cover up to create "Genome Super Soldiers", and other such wild ideas. Despite the fact that many things were meant to be downright silly - hence the inclusion of an anime fanatic code named Otacon - the game never tried to branch out of the fact that Solid Snake was dealing with a very serious issue.

Enter Rose, Raiden's girlfriend. No, you are not reading this incorrectly, Jack's girlfriend is indeed named Rose - and apparently she has physically forced herself onto an analyst position so that she can try to patch up her relationship with her boyfriend during the mission. If you don't believe me, consider that after calling her to save your game, she informs you that she went into your room, where she saw that it was empty, empty like your heart. She will also occasionally call you on the Codec - the little nano machine put into Raiden's ear so that he can communicate silently with his superiors - so that she can inquire if you remember that tomorrow is your anniversary.

Such a thing simply has no place in the realm of a tactical, stealth, action game that is trying to act as a successor to the original masterpiece. But dialog remains a constant problem throughout the game - ultimately culminating in absurd, idiotic plot twists that Ron Paul's most die hard fan (or Alex Jones) could concoct.

Understand this if you can: according to the end of the game, with the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a "spirit of America" was formed that later possessed the White House, and now acts as a secret Illuminati known as The Patriots, who actually covertly run the country. The "spirit of America" is a transient being who takes no material form, but now exist as a computer A.I., almost a digital virus, and they manipulate every aspect of American life, down to the Presidential election, whom they secretly choose.

Meanwhile, your obsessive girlfriend is alluded to not only being a Patriot spy, but also may be a figment of your imagination, a physical representation of something that you enjoy, thanks to a form of mind control introduced by the Patriots, as was the case with what you thought was Colonel Campbell until he degenerated into a seeming LSD induced hallucination. Amazingly, this is no exaggeration on my part, as you run through an entire portion of the game naked, holding your groin doing back flips as soldiers fly through the air chasing you with swords, and the Colonel calls you on your Codec to tell you that he likes to take walks at night, and he saw a strange orange glow one night while he was driving home.

Oh and if that's not enough - he also tells you to shut off your game console.

The game only continues to descend into indistinguishable madness as the ultimate story cop out is extolled when you find out that the entire mission was all a controlled situation put on by the Patriots, and there was no real risk of a terrorist attack. It was all a ploy, ultimately, it was the infamous "it was all a dream" sequence, none of it really mattered.

But that's okay, because the alternative was that, before 9/11 Sensitivity issues, the Patriots were going to hijack the Statue of Liberty and fly around New York destroying buildings with it.

So maybe we got off lucky?

Ultimately though, there is no point that we can safely assert was the "falling point" of the entire game. All gamers who have actually tried the title can safely say that what quality is there enters into a sharp decline as soon as you shoot down a Harrier with a stinger while protecting a helicopter, only to go on to fighting the bisexual, water walking, blood drinking Vamp (and Vamp is a reference to his bisexuality, according to Solid Snake, not his super human powers and taste for blood).

The game that was set to continue a masterpiece was largely a clunky, disconnected, burdensome plot that some praise for the "philosophical issues it raises" - however if you are not a fan of Infowars.com, it is unlikely that you will find any kind of moral or philosophical clarity out of this game, as it is mostly a jumbled mess of conspiracy theories and over the top characters.

And somewhere, everything just went so incredibly wrong.