Metal Gear Scanlon: 2 - Part 13

I feel like I understand less of what's going on in MGS2 now than I did 14 years ago when I played it. Maybe back then I just let certain things wash over me and didn't even try to keep up with who was working for who and why. Where's this flow chart Dan keeps talking about?

Dan laughing and looking at Drew for a reaction is getting a little annoying.

Metal Gear Scanlon 3 - Part 1

I'm guessing Drew isn't a fighting game guy from how often he kept mashing attack at Solidus' block!

Great series this, Dan and Drew!

Yeah that was bonkers.

im glad that you are under the delusion that what you consider bad is a factual bad thing

Ugh. I fell off of watching this series but I really wanted to see it all before MGS5 comes out. Seeing as it's Sunday and the game releases Tuesday, I guess that's not happening at this point lol. I've never played an MGS game (other than Ground Zeroes) and wanted to get ready for the new one, since it looks great. Even after watching this series so far, I still don't really know what's going on, though, so maybe it's not a big deal. After watching the last couple of episodes, I don't know why the hell I stopped watching. Kinda want to play these games now... here's to hoping for a PS4 Metal Gear collection.

What I love is how I ordered the PS4 MGSV LE Console and the delivery service have lost it, so now I'm having to wait for a refund...

Arsenal Gear: Rectum?

This was the most Evangelion of the MGS series... down to the "Make your yourself" monologue at the end.

Wow. I'd heard the tales, I'd read the plot summaries, and somehow it still wasn't quite enough to prepare me for exactly how much platinum-calibre Hot Nonsense rears its head before the credits roll on Metal Gear Solid 2.

And you know what? Aside from all the hokey psychobabble, which I could have done without, especially coming from Snake, I mean that in the best possible way. This story really grew on me, and I quite enjoyed all the different aspects of the story coming together, even the Rosemary/Raiden stuff. On to Snake Eater!

Am I in "Reboot"...haha, read my mind, Scanlon and Ryckert you are magnicifent

LA-LI-LU-LE-LOVED EVERY MINUTE!

Happy April 30th! Be sure to visit FEDERAL HALL HAHAHA!

Killing Olga in cold blood kind of forfeits Solidus' good guy status.

Edit: Also, child soldiers.

Watching this and Drew's reactions reminded me of my first time playing through the game... I was probably 17 years old, and played it one summer day.

Finished it, and my brain just couldn't process what was going on. I turned off my PS2, left me house, and walked around town for like 3 hours, just trying to figure things out. This game turned my brain to mush, and watching it all again was such a great experience.

MGS1 is still the best in the series. I love MGS2 but it is just too weird. It blew my 16 year old mind but In the 15 years since I still don't understand this game.

You know what, this game doesn't make sense if you don't think about it.

Somewhere in those optional Colonel codec convos is the plot to Death Stranding...

I've heard people talking about how crazy the Metal Gear series has been for all the years I've been visiting Giant Bomb at least. Finally I'm getting it. I mean, MGS was a bit mad but this is another level of bonkers.

Drew's "Sure" response to the meme/gene/scene themes of MGS 1 to 3 sounds about right.

Kojima's ideas actually feel pretty relevant today versus in 2001, but the execution of the story is just too over the top to be serious. Needless to say, this was wonderful to watch.

Watching this entire playthrough only confirmed that this game is as terrible as I thought it was 15+ years ago when I first played it. What a terrible ending. What a drastic change we got from 2 to 3.

Great fun to watch Drew play though.

That was an absolute roller coaster. Crazy stories like this are why I love MGS so much. Story-wise I think this one is the best with all of its twists and turns but I haven't played 4 in awhile so I forget a lot of that. Can't wait till I get a refresher in MGScanlon 4

@capncrunch: If it's any consolation, rewatching this playthrough reaffirmed my belief that Metal Gear Solid 2 might be the finest video game ever made.

Somehow all this talk covers the modern political climate in the world today, or am i just hearing what i want to hear?

As a staunch defender of MGS2 as a teen...yeah, this story does not hold up as an adult. MGS1 had a great balance between logic, over-the-top characters, and respectable storytelling for a 1998 video game. The voice acting and the general plot are good. This game basically said f*** all that and doubled-down in the worst aspects of anime characterization and tropes with a bewildering amount of exposition for it all. There are people who have a higher level of tolerance for stuff like this and something like Kingdom Hearts, and more power to you if you can tolerate random absurdity (Colonel aside - I LOVE this twist with him), but it just doesn't connect with me anymore. Kojima needed a filter for this game.

I still love Snake's speech at the end, though. Many good ideas and philosophies in MGS2 wrapped around dumb shit like mopey Fortune, Rose/Raiden's petty drama, and Ocelot's magical arm that changed his vocal cords somehow that would go on to be retconned later on.

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-KtjNFns/2/19c69825/O/i-KtjNFns.jpg

It's amazing looking back on The Patriots final speech, which must have been written in 1999/2000, and seeing how incredibly relevant it is to the landscape of the internet / digital information 20 years later.

Their goal of filtering digital information of "garbage" and "lies" while cultivating the information that they deem as critical to the survival of humanity is an extremely prescient thought to have in 2000.

It's also interesting the think that Google now does what the Patriots were talking about, assigning weight to searches to return information that they have deemed the most relevant and filtering out the "garbage".

I think Kojima's predictions of the future work just like Nostradamus's do: say a hundred crazy things in a vague and general manner, then people latch on to the three things that were accurate instead of the ninety-seven that weren't. One of the themes practically reduces to "people can say whatever they want to on the Internet", which wasn't a groundbreaking theory even back then.

That said, just once I'd like to see Kojima produce something straightforward, because revisiting this series really emphasizes that his games are clearly more than the sum of their parts. But all the extra wacky stuff that makes it a more exciting ride also prevents you from reaching the thematic core of his work—if there even is one. To this day, we still don't know whether Kojima is an onion or an artichoke.

I'm finally checking out this video series now, after having played MGS 1 and 2 a half dozen times apiece in high school. Never played 3, but I'm going to buy the HD collection to play through it before watching the next part of MG Scanlon. I know Dan and Drew aren't at GB anymore, but thanks so much for this series! It rekindled my adoration of MGS, and helped me think more critically about it as a whole, including its less successful elements.

Great show