Metal Gear Solid 2 - Raiden's effect on game quality? **SPOILERS**

[Maguamaru]

**POTENTIAL AND ACTUAL SPOILERS BELOW AND IN THE REST OF THE THREAD. IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED MGS2 OR DO NOT WANT TO SEE SPOILERS FOR IT, THEN TURN BACK NOW.**

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Ok, that's out of the way. ^^; Anyway, most of us bought MGS2 soon after it's release... and 90% of us were probably EXTREMELY shocked to find that barely an hour into the game, Snake was replaced by another operative named Raiden.
I'd heard rumours of Snake's 'death', but I was still shocked - I'd heard the name 'Raiden' mentioned before in whispers, but I didn't think he'd be the MAIN character.
So there I was, suddenly infiltrating this 'Big Shell' place, controlling someone who wasn't even my hero. Did I mind? Not really... Konami as a whole had been very successful in keeping the IMPACT of the surprise, even for an audience such as the UK who got it whole months after our American buddies, and I could see why Kojima had opted to cover up Raiden's involvement.
"Ok..." I thought. "Snake was cool, but I trust Hideo Kojima. The man is a GENIUS - it'll be ok."
And I was right, ooh, I was. It was just like old times - sneaking around expertly designed areas, working my way through moment after moment of heart-pounding action and nail-biting tenseness, unable to set the controller to rest, playing in vigorous anticipation of the next plot twist. This was MGS, all over again, just bigger and better, and with a few extra spoonfulls of genius.

Now, the big issue... Raiden's primary involvement didn't put me off the game at all, or lead me to believe that it was of lesser quality than it's predecessor. Despite the lack of unshaven, mulleted action, it was still distinctly Metal Gear, there was no denying that. And also, I actually liked the way that Snake wasn't controllable after the tanker... as Kojima said, it gave a new way of looking at Snake, an new perspective, it gave us an insight into his character that we just couldn't have gotten with him in the main role. And also, I doubt Snake'll be absent for MGS3 - as anyone who's seen the ending knows, Raiden'll probably be too busy to be doing much tactical espionage action from now on.

So there you have it. I don't feel 'betrayed' or 'cheated' by Konami or Kojima, I don't feel hatred for Raiden or that 'it's just NOT Metal Gear'. I've played all the 'main' Metal Gear installments thus far (Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2), and completed them all but MG2, and as digilant as I am with Metal Gear games having similar (yet evolved) 'feels', I welcomed the breather.

How about you?

[Erik]

I personally didn't mind Raiden at all.When he was first introduced,I didn't know what was going on really,as of course I had known nothing about him prior to playing MGS2,so it caught me a little off guard and all,but not once did I think "Wait!Where's Snake!?This Raiden guy ruins it!" In all honesty,the thought didn't really occur to me at all,until after I beat the game,and realized how little I had played with Snake,but I hadn't really realized that actually until I hear other people complaining.Given that,I obviously didn't mind Raiden one bit...as you said,it was sort of a breather,you got to see Snake in a new perspective through the game,and on top of that,you got cool new moves.There are a few odd things in the game though,such as,how is it that someone who is supposedly not quite or just as strong as Snake,can take down 6 Metal Gear Ray units with the same difficulty of taking down one Rex? But honestly,I liked him,he was a very cool character,I don't see why people had such a problem with using him.

[DarkCode]

I was shocked, especially since I had to skip the last two cinemas after the tanker because I had to record something. I really liked how it worked out, I was really freaked though. I agree with Hideo Kojima about the perspective thing, MGS2 rocked!!!!

[Maguamaru]

**ENDING/LATE GAME SPOILERS**

Originally posted by Erik
There are a few odd things in the game though,such as,how is it that someone who is supposedly not quite or just as strong as Snake,can take down 6 Metal Gear Ray units with the same difficulty of taking down one Rex?

Hmm... that's a good question. The way I figure it... Raiden took many VR training missions, including an exact replication of the Shadow Moses incident before the start of the game, right? And he'd grown up doing nothing but fighting since his early childhood... and he handles just like Snake in-game. Basically, I think what the game's trying to tell us is that Snake and Raiden's abilities are evenly matched, but Snake has a lot more 'real life' experience than Raiden, whose sense of reality is a bit screwed up from all the VR training. (Fission Mailed, anyone?)
So then, the big decider - surely if Snake could take down 6 RAYs, then Raiden could too? However, we don't know if Snake COULD take down 6 of them, I think it depends on their difficulty in comparison to REX, as you said... personally, while RAY was a lot more agile and it had an open shot at you wherever you were standing, I do think it wasn't quite as tough as REX in the defense department. So really, taking down 6 RAYs is probably equivalent to... 2 REXs in terms of how much damage you have to do? And if I remember rightly, Snake beat 2 whole life bars of REX in the original MGS... thus, I think they were right in making it possible for Raiden to beat 6 RAYs.

And yeah, the ending was damn freaky... what I loved the most is that you just didn't know who the bad guys were anymore. Snake, Raiden, the Patriots, GW, Dead Cell, Solidus and even Rose were all fighting for a mixture of 'moral' and 'immoral' motives, nomatter WHOSE perception of right or wrong you look at it from, simply because their motives were such a good mixture. I mean, during the final HF blade fight with Solidus, I just didn't know what I wanted to happen anymore, especially after all that business with the consciousness of the government itself that embodied itself into GW.
But then Snake summed it up best of all while talking to Raiden in the ending, telling him that it didn't matter if everything was 'real' or not because it gave him a purpose, something to fight for. I don't know if you guys in the US got the 'Making of MGS2' DVD, but on that disc, Kojima stated that Snake was basically acting as a vehicle for his own views and directions that he gave to his team (embodied by Raiden) during the Metal Gear series' production. So basically... even though whose motives would help the world most were unclear at the end, we ended up believing in Snake, Otacon and Raiden anyway - and I don't know about you guys, but I sure as hell cried in both the ending AND Snake and Otacon's hug. ^^;


Edit: Oh, just as a side note... those of you who finished the original MGS might find this amusing.

http://www.toastyfrog.com/jump/thumbnail/mgs_01.shtml

[MrBS]

Spoilers naturally

I heard a lot about a major change involving the main character shortly into the game, I just figured it was snake's death after MGS and this 'raiden' was going to going to be impersernating him and then be caught in that act early in the game. Fortunately that didn't happen, on the whole I really didn't see what all the fuss was but I'm very glad that somehow I didn't have the secret revealed (fully anyway) until I played the game.

My only little gripe is why a pretty boy? AGH! Despite the delightful spoof of the original MGS elevator scene the way they revealed the new character with multiple angles, replays, lens flare, sea gulls in the distance etc set the vomit factor to maximum. Anyway that didn't bother me too long either, after all I am a FF fan.

As for being bitter, if the game was from Snake's perspective we would have never got that great reference to the first game when Raiden asks Snake about whether he has enough ammo:

'Abosolutey (taps bandanna), infinite ammo'

[Maguamaru]

Originally posted by MrBS
Spoilers naturally

I heard a lot about a major change involving the main character shortly into the game, I just figured it was snake's death after MGS and this 'raiden' was going to going to be impersernating him and then be caught in that act early in the game. Fortunately that didn't happen, on the whole I really didn't see what all the fuss was but I'm very glad that somehow I didn't have the secret revealed (fully anyway) until I played the game.

My only little gripe is why a pretty boy? AGH! Despite the delightful spoof of the original MGS elevator scene the way they revealed the new character with multiple angles, replays, lens flare, sea gulls in the distance etc set the vomit factor to maximum. Anyway that didn't bother me too long either, after all I am a FF fan.

As for being bitter, if the game was from Snake's perspective we would have never got that great reference to the first game when Raiden asks Snake about whether he has enough ammo:

'Abosolutey (taps bandanna), infinite ammo'

It's true that Raiden was a bit too 'pretty' for his own good, but he was still kinda cool in my opinion... to tell you the truth, he's exactly like I imagine Snake as being in the Outer Heaven incident. Four huge, spoiler-y missions really shaped him into a man of experience, and I think he sees in Raiden a template for becoming himself. Which makes it even less surprising that Raiden was chosen for the S3 program...

[Antioch-X]

Originally posted by MrBS
'Abosolutey (taps bandanna), infinite ammo'

I f*cking love that!

But yes I also agree, Raiden was far too bishie for me to really get into his character. Also, what was up with Rose? I couldn't help but thinking how much I was hearing the Japanese stereotype of a weak woman. Case in point:

Raiden: "Wow, I guess women really are strong after all."
Rose: "It's not women who are strong, just me."

[Maguamaru]

Originally posted by Antioch-X

I f*cking love that!

But yes I also agree, Raiden was far too bishie for me to really get into his character. Also, what was up with Rose? I couldn't help but thinking how much I was hearing the Japanese stereotype of a weak woman. Case in point:

Raiden: "Wow, I guess women really are strong after all."
Rose: "It's not women who are strong, just me."

I couldn't disagree more. The way I interpreted that was Rose saying "There is no difference between men and women, so women are no stronger than men. But some people are stronger than others, and I am one of those."

Sexism in Metal Gear? Puh-leese. Some of the hardest characters are women, and not sex objects whatsoever - look at OLGA, for Christ's sake. The woman has armpit hair... that is NOT fanboy-luring material.

[Antioch-X]

Oh I have no disagreements about Olga, she was a tough cookie, but Rose just seemed to grate on my nerves, I still think she was portrayed as overly weak (the real Rose that is, not the AI one near the end of the game).

[Maguamaru]

Originally posted by Antioch-X
Oh I have no disagreements about Olga, she was a tough cookie, but Rose just seemed to grate on my nerves, I still think she was portrayed as overly weak (the real Rose that is, not the AI one near the end of the game).

I don't think she was 'weak' as such... maybe just a little too prying and naggy for her own good. I mean, hell... the fact that she had the courage to face Jack after the truth about her came out, and that she told him in the first place, proved to me that she was strong.
It seems that 'weak' people don't live too long in Metal Gear games anyway... ^^; And by that, hah, no, I don't mean Emma. Hell, Emma might have had just about every phobia on the planet, and she might have been taken down by Vamp with a single stab, but she had the strength to keep on going all those years in Hal's absence. She possessed an inner strength, though as Kojima said, "She is portrayed as a victim of violence".
Hmm... I'd say the weakest character in MGS2 would be Fortune. She only managed to live at all because of the Patriots' electromagnetic field armour... I mean, just because a few people who were the most important to her were killed, she wanted to follow them in death. Her troubles were nothing compared to Snake's - created as nothing more than a puppet, betrayed by 90% of his friends and family, forced to watch the one girl he ever felt bonded to die before his eyes, and STILL having to be the shoulder that Otacon cried on when Emma died. Yet Snake chose to carry on living, to be strong - and that was what mattered, that was what made Snake one of the strongest people in the saga.
I don't think gender had anything to do with it, really... it just so happened that some of the characters were strong, and some were weak. Or rather, that's the way Kojima chose to play it... judging by the roles he's given his characters, I'd say he's no sexist.

Edit: I could sit and debate Metal Gear all day, heh. We should have a Metal Gear forum. Hell, it's technically anime-ish.

[DarkCode]

I don't think there are any truly weak characters in MGS2, but I know the guards are!

[Maguamaru]

Originally posted by DarkCode
I don't think there are any truly weak characters in MGS2, but I know the guards are!

Amen.

Guard: "Are you going to shoot me? Huh? ARE YOU?"
*Snake shoots guard in the leg*
Guard: "OUCH! Uuh... have my dog tag. Will you spare me now? I promise I won't alert the others. "
*Snake shoots guard in the head*

[7thKeeper]

Originally posted by Maguamaru


Amen.

Guard: "Are you going to shoot me? Huh? ARE YOU?"
*Snake shoots guard in the leg*
Guard: "OUCH! Uuh... have my dog tag. Will you spare me now? I promise I won't alert the others. "
*Snake shoots guard in the head*

You shot them in the head? I always killed them by a crotch shot..the whimpy bastards didn't deserve to be shot in the head...

And yes Raiden was quite of a pretty boy. But hey I don't mind that he was. He did get groped by the president thanks to that.

[Maguamaru]

It got better... try shooting them in both arms, and then getting them to keep their hands up.
Or even better than that... put it on Extreme, or even European Extreme for us euro-folk... and then shoot them in all four limbs. They don't die. ^^

[DarkCode]

Originally posted by Maguamaru
It got better... try shooting them in both arms, and then getting them to keep their hands up.
Or even better than that... put it on Extreme, or even European Extreme for us euro-folk... and then shoot them in all four limbs. They don't die. ^^

try doing that then kicking him off the ledge for double the fun!