Raiden question from Metal Gear.

I am wondering something about Raiden. I have just finished MGS2 and I'm trying to figure out what game came next for his story. I'm really just trying to see when he got the crazy suit and what not or if that just happens and isn't explained.

It just kind of happens between the end of MGS2 and MGS4. They don't explain it too well.

Revengeance was originally supposed to fill in that gap instead of being set post-MGS4.

Metal Gear Rising was meant to be set between MGS2 and MGS4 but ultimately they couldn't get the gameplay to work so they gave it to Platinum and the setting was also changed to be post-MGS4. Apparently they did explain how he became a cyborg, and it's pretty fucked up. You can read up about post-Big Shell here.

Yeah, I imagine Kojima will visit that part of his story at some point. If it means we could get another Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, I'd be happy.

It happens in the period between MGS 2 and MGS 4. He kinda just shows up in MGS 4 because hey the game needs a cyborg ninja right? He goes into it a little bit but that's about all.

Long story short, he was in a bad way from his memories of being a child soldier and some (pretty understandable) trust issues with Rose, started drinking, got into some bar fights and they split up. Raiden was told that she had a miscarriage and then married Colonel Campbell, so with nothing left to live for he decided it was time to go all-in on the whole "Fighting the Patriots with Snake and Friends" bandwagon. Some weird Alaskan training later, he was ready to go on some off-screen missions.

Suffice to say some of those missions went better than others. One in particular had him get captured and he was experimented on by the Patriots, who took the top-half of his skull and spine out of his own body and implanted it into a cyborg body. He eventually managed to escape, but now has even less to live for than he did before, and that's about where MGS4 has him at.

Like people are saying, MGS4 and Metal Gear Rising are the other two games you'd want to play (in that order) that feature Raiden, and what he gets up to following MGS2. But yeah, they don't explain a TON, he just kinda becomes a badass cyborg ninja.

Between 2 and becoming a cyborg, he just spends his time asking people if they said "nerd". After alienating everybody he came in contact with, he decided to become a cyborg. One of the undocumented features of being a cyborg is always being able to tell when somebody says "nerd". Then MGS4 and Revengeance happened.

Source: My uncle works for FOXHOUND.