You know it's hard to identify sarcasm in written text, especially on the internet. So I'm going to have to ask you if that was sarcasm or not. :V

Sorry, I was not being sarcastic. I agree with your points in your post. I find 2 to be interesting in theory but in the larger fiction it is the weakest link easily and as I say, many of the characters that came out of it or were involved in it, I feel, needed to be salvaged afterwards by 4. I know we had a bit of this discussion in the MG Scanlon comments, but when people are fitting how bad the characters, bosses, location, plot points are into the overall commentary a game is supposed to make... well I don't buy that as quality. I think it could all be accomplished without those weaknesses. And I'm not sure how much of it is even working towards any meaning and how much of it is just bad.

I feel like how Kojima treated a lot of 2 stuff afterwards (explaining it away or outright mocking it) says a lot. Not that there isn't any value in that game and it's uniqueness, but fitting into the overall story it's quite poor.

What is there actually to defend about Raiden as a character? If you want to talk about him as a symbol or element to create a message in 2, okay. But otherwise he is lifeless and mopey and whiny as a character, exactly what he was after except he also just became a cyborg ninja so he at least filled a different role in the action (and followed in the footsteps of Grey Fox). I really am puzzled by this complaint. I don't buy so many of the flaws I see in 2 as being intentional, but one I think absolutely is intentional is Raiden being a whiny, shallow character with little in the way of experiences or charactersitcs to bring any life to him.

Kojima himself even mocked Raiden in 3 and then felt the need to change him in 4 to make him interesting.

For me the biggest one is Solidus. Ugh.

Always weirded me out that Solidus aged more than Snake. There must be some reasoning behind that. Unless they decide in V that he was Big Boss' super-duper-proper son.

Haha, oh my god, I completely forgot how utterly fucked up that was. All things considered he may actually have gotten the worst of it.

Thanks for responding! I can't say I agree with either of your points though. :P

I think the issue I have is that I view MGS2 as almost completely self-contained. Vamp worked perfectly in MGS2. He's less a "character" and more a "device." All the weirdness in the game added to the overall feeling that it wasn't strictly real, and acted to frame Raiden's journey towards achieving self-awareness within a less-than-real setting.

I think one of the major reasons a lot of MGS4 felt off to me is that they tried to continue the story from MGS2 when it wasn't a narrative that was ever supposed to be iterated on. It makes sense within itself, and to its purpose, which was wildly different than its predecessors and successors.

Also, I'm really not sure how MGS2 could have possibly ruined Ocelot's character. Prior to two he was a boss that liked his handgun a little too much and got his rocks off torturing people. Also twist! he was a double agent. He didn't really have too much depth to begin with.

Shit catchphrase, though. Also, they never retconned Fortune saving everyone from Ray. "Luck? Magnets, girl ..."

Then she goes Super Saiyan and uses her MIND MAGNETS! No post-editing to imply it was actually nanomachines or anything.

@berserker976: I did say if you want to argue he was ruined.

Liquid's arc was neatly contained inside MGS1. He didn't need anything more than that. Meanwhile Ocelot is what you could call the connective tissue of the MGS series.

The Metal Gear series didn't turn out to be about Solid and Liquid Snake. It became the story of Big Boss and his legacy. Ocelot is a far more important character in that story. Possibly the most important character aside from Big Boss and Solid Snake themselves. He's the real star antagonist of the series, not Liquid Snake.

I agree with you that MGS2 is not an easy game to follow up on, but it was still clearly designed to be followed up on. MGS4 tries to bring everything together and tie a neat ribbon on the entire series, albeit sometimes not in the most elegant manner. You can both appreciate it for trying and criticise it for not being entirely successful at it. These are some of the reasons I place 2 and 4 on equal footing but also at the bottom of my list of main MGS games.

very clearly:

Well, 4 established that Snake has advanced aging due to being a clone, and the Patriots wanting him to have a shortened lifespan. I've just assumed that Solidus had a more extreme version of that, or perhaps was (retcon-ed-ly) cloned several years before Solid and Liquid, and thus they didn't have as refined a process.

But I dunno.

So far as Otacon goes, I think you're reading into some of this stuff too far, original poster. I mean, Kojima is infamous for ret-conning, and the temptation to keep upping the tech, even in prequels, is a hard temptation to beat. And in the case of this series, that resulted in olde timey 70s mechs in Peace Walker that appear to be more advanced in a fair number of ways than Rex.

But those mechs didn't have that stealth nuke launcher thingy!

@hassun: The difficulty of following up MGS2's plot is irrelevant because MGS2's plot is irrelevant. If you're judging it by the same metrics as the other games then yes, it falls short. But it's not trying to achieve the same goals. Like I said, it's primarily a self-contained postmodern art piece. You're taking characters and ideas that were never supposed to exist in a normal, coherent narrative and shoehorning them into one.

The disruption of Metal Gear canon is a major theme in MGS2. Of course things are going to get stupid when you try to adapt that directly into Metal Gear canon. That was the point.

How are you saying this when all the events from 2 fit into the larger Metal Gear storyline directly? They don't disregard what has happened before that game but merely completely subvert your expectations to make a point.

And the story continues on with all the events from 2. Kojima made these games and he did exactly what you're saying he didn't do. I get the reading of the game that way but it absolutely is not stand alone. I posted one earlier and there are hooks all throughout it to continue the story.

MGS2 was never meant to be followed up. Every single question that the game asks was written without an answer. No one wanted to do MGS4, no one even knew where to begin. Kojima only took the project because of the death threats he received from fans and he was depressed during development.

They tried to answer the questions as best as they could, but the big questions that kept fans on the edge of their seat were just too large to come up with. Everything was supposed to be mysterious and confusing and not suddenly clear and apparent. There was never supposed to be a big revelation.

This was further evident from the sequel going back in time, distancing itself from MGS2.

New phenomena I'm coming to grips with now since I'm discussing Metal Gear with people online: They know what Kojima wanted to do despite everything he did or showed in his games.

I know he's had an odd relationship with the series at times and all ("this is my last Metal Gear! REALLY!") , but how can you see the games and not think he loves what he was doing? That he put tons of thought into the way everything connects and works and how massive the whole story is? The threads were there even in the MGS1. Clearly there was some retconning and adjusting but nonetheless it all fits well enough.

I think it's clear, and people should accept, that he made MGS2 a crazy game with some weird and cool themes and ultimately it went in directions that he didn't continue with instead of trying to use it to invalidate everything else the man did with the series. That logic seems to not add up at all to me. There are a bunch of parts and aspects to MGS2 that tie it to the past of the series and also aspects that clearly set up a larger world to continue in a sequel. The post credit sequence I posted above in this thread is a clear example.

@artisanbreads: MGS2 "fits" into the larger storyline in the same way a round peg "fits" in a square hole if you hammer it enough. Let's take your post credits stinger from MGS2 for instance. If that was meant to lead somewhere specific, why is it hand-waved away in MGS4 as just some unbelievable bullshit? I think it's because, as @n7put it: those questions were designed without answers.

@berserker976: In what way is it unbelievable bullshit? It just is speaking to the transition of the Wisemen's Committee to The Philosphers to The Patriots. This is covered in 3 and 4. In my opinion the stinger sets up the series going back into the past to explain these origins.

I'm sorry but I don't agree with the logic leaps being made to tell us how Kojima designed his narrative or why. I am just going to use what's in the games and MGS2 isn't stand alone in the way you are portraying it. I am aware of Kojima's relationship to the series but extrapolating that to this degree doesn't add up and there are multiple follow ups to the game so that's just how it is. It can still have the messages and themes that are often attributed to it in and fit into Metal Gear as a whole.

he had that sick bird

@artisanbreads: The "bullshit" thing was in reference to a line in MGS4 about how the information they got about the Patriots (the MGS2 after credits stinger) was nonsense. I'm not saying it's unbelievable bullshit, Kojima's characters are.

Also, instead of making the effort to thoroughly explain why I think MGS2 is so different, I'm just going to link this video. If you're at all interested in some of the more complex themes in MGS2 it's worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-2YuPGYabw

@berserker976: @n7: It's true that Kojima has been saying that this will be his last MGS since MGS2 but it's hard to accurately estimate just how much merit there is to those remarks and if he truly never wanted to make more MGS games. As with his writing in general, I do not believe he himself is all that prescient or visionary as some claim him to be. And even Kojima stopping wouldn't necessarily mean the series was ending, just that he wouldn't be the one directing any future games.
I am sceptical about Kojima only helming MGS4 because death threats from 'fans' as well. It might have played a role, but I sincerely doubt that was the sole reason.

I do agree that MGS2 is very different and tries to convey a very specific message but it is definitely not a standalone or irrelevant story, completely disconnected from the previous Metal Gear games. It just isn't.

Imagine if MGS2 did not have the twist with the commentary on the players. Do you really think that, if that aspect hadn't been there, MGS4 would not have a bunch of retcons? Those happen throughout the series and are in no way just a thing caused by the so called incompatible story of MGS2.

I think a good comparison here would be a TV series which has an episode where the 4th wall is broken at some point. Having this happening does not disqualify anything else in that episode from mattering to the overall plot of the series.

P.S. I've watched the Super Bunnyhop analyses of the MG games (and other games) before. I don't agree with him on anything and I think he sometimes assumes too much or reads into things but I like his perspectives on games and his ability to convey them. (It's worth noting that someone like him is not advocating for the removal of MGS2 from the overall Metal Gear story either.)

@hassun: I think something got jumbled up here. I'm not advocating for the removal of MGS2's plot from the Metal Gear canon, I'm just saying that its uniqueness makes its inclusion problematic. I love Metal Gear lore, I love trying to figure things out about it. But I think MGS2 is sometimes unfairly judged by standards it's not trying to meet.

Imagine if MGS2 did not have the twist with the commentary on the players. Do you really think that, if that aspect hadn't been there, MGS4 would not have a bunch of retcons?

This is exactly what I'm talking about. If MGS2 didn't have the meta commentary aspect, it would have been an entirely different game. It's useless to theorize about it because you're separating MGS2 from what it inherently is.

@berserker976: The point is you should not be mad at the other games (especially MGS4) for trying to tie it all together. You want to view MGS2 as self-contained, but it isn't. MGS2 is part of the series, not a standalone game. It never will be. Turning Vamp into a more logical (and I use that term loosely) character was the right thing to do. I mean I still think he is a terrible character but I don't think changing the source of his powers really changes him for the worse either. Same goes for the revelation that Oceliquid is actually just Ocelot.
(It may be worth noting that I completely agree with you that MGS4 ruined Raiden.)

But how was ruined? Isn't this just part of his character TC?

Liquid Ocelot makes a lot more sense when you consider he's spent the best part of 60 years at this point lying through his teeth.

The reason Naomi looked still in her 30's is because of her nano machines.

I agree with Naomi and Mei Ling, but i rather like they added some sort of psuedo science to explain vamp and Ocelot. And raiden was kind of a tool in MGS2 anime cyber ninja is an upgrade IMO, at least he went from whining to brooding.

All of the series' problems stem from the narrative shitshow that was MGS2 - this includes the weird, uneven development of Otacon among a litany of the game's other problems.

I feel MGS 1 and 3 are better for being the most distant from all of 2's baggage, and 4 unfortunately had to pick up the pieces and suffers as a result. Otacon's inconsistency is just one sign of this... though it certainly doesn't help that he basically stole the plans of the one thing he's known for

@zabant: I feel like everyone forgets there were Metal Gears before Solid. REX was never the first Metal Gear.

@zabant said:

Looks like Hal really puts the con in Otacon. Hiyoooooooooooo

But really, a lot of the points about his engineering don't seem that absurd. We don't know if Granin's Metal Gear designs had advanced too far beyond conceptual design work, and Otacon's accomplishments in the REX project might have been in translating those concepts into a functional design through his own engineering and invention. The model of REX on Granin's desk I'll just chalk up to "I'm not going to make a whole new model for a Soviet-era Metal Gear design when we already have the one for REX sitting around." OctoCamo was probably similar; sure, he might not have created the technology itself, but the functional design of Snake's sneaking suit and the incorporation of the muscle suit to support his geezer-frame were probably his work. I don't have much to say about the Peace Walker stuff, because that just seems to me like Kojima had gone fully insane by then and just wanted to do what seemed fun to him at the time.

I won't argue that his characterization wasn't blown to pieces by MGS4, though. Dude's pretty lame.

lol, i'm going to find your fob ingame and brutally/insanely murder all of your guys with rockets and grenade launchers, op

Maybe you aren't suppossed to like Otacon. He is a bumbling idiot when it comes to anything not robot related. He can only connect via robots, he was always clingy and prone to being deceived.

@chu52: I'd go with this interpretation. He wasn't super helpful in pretty much any games. The support he did give basically consisted of a lot of things that were extremely obvious. And then you factor in how he does relationships with women and there isn't much left to think but poorly of him.

Tragic, really.