Aug 7th 1-2-3: The Misunderstood Prophet — Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Greetings, and welcome back to the Compendium!
To keep today’s intro short and sweet. I’m going to quickly lay this out for you.
I adore Hideo Kojima and all his works, as I’m sure I’ve already mentioned a number of times.
As of late I’ve been playing through his latest title Death Stranding 2, and along my time in this new journey I’ve been in a mood of reminiscing his past works.
So far I’ve briefly covered his childhood and upbringing as a creative, and in my last entry I basically gave an exposé on the whole Metal Gear into Metal Gear Solid story, today I’ll continue that research right into MGS’s sequel.
So without further ado, what’s the story behind Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty ?
1: The Misunderstood Prophet ( 5 minute read )
It’s 1999, just one year after the critical release of Metal Gear Solid in Japan, and now MGS is coming to Europe.
Initially Hideo felt immense pressure to even attempt following up MGS. He wanted to hang up his directing coat end on a high note, ‘pass the torch’ on to some younger director, and step back into a producer's role.
He was fatigued mentally as well as creatively.
“I wanted to move on. After the first Metal Gear Solid, I thought that was it for me.”
But then he was shown the PS2. His creative juices couldn’t help but begin to flow once again, and so that young child deep within his soul who wanted to be a film director came alive!
“The possibilities the PS2 presented made me feel like a director being handed a new camera for the first time.”
He felt personally compelled, creatively inspired, and more philosophically driven to take the lead on this next project.
Months after the MGS release in Europe, Kojima and his team are hard at work developing the first concepts of MGS2.
Brick by brick the team lays the groundwork for the approach they will take in developing this sequel.
They even layout some of the first seedlings of the philosophies they want to cover with this title.
From “freedom vs control”, ‘post-truth’, to ‘digital information’ all the way to the concept of ‘memes over genes’, the team is throwing seemingly everything at the wall just to see what sticks.
With Hideo heading this project, he begins to realize that the idea that interests him most is to question how information is passed on, and so he begins to peel back the many layers of this very deep idea.
He begins to simultaneously realize and explore how we as humans are fed information that slowly begins to shape the very ideas we choose to believe.
He and the team began to shape MGS2 around questions like:
“How do we decide what’s true?”
“What happens when the flow of information is controlled?”
“Can games deliver subversive messages, like literature or cinema?”
By 2000 the team has plenty to run with, so production for MGS2 begins.
Early into the dev cycle it was decided that MGS2 would be a PS2 exclusive, for the sake of taking advantage of the capabilities that arose from the consoles immense power (like real-time physics, dynamic lighting, and AI).
Kojima specifically approached this title with the goal of further blurring the lines between cinema and interactive media.
By March of 2000 development of an entirely new game engine begins, with the goal to create an engine that can fully take advantage and utilize the full power of the PS2.
By the Summer of 2000 the first test builds of MGS2 were completed.
These builds were to test the new features that could be simulated with the PS2 including features like water droplets on surfaces, ice melting, bottles breaking realistically, etc.
Two Snakes, One Tanker
By the fourth quarter of 2000, Kojima and the team are in full active development.
Kojima is now explaining in interviews how this sequel is much more philosophical with a ‘major twist’.
During the games official unveiling at Tokyo Game Show 2000, the game is finally revealed with a teaser trailer showing Solid Snake on the tanker.
However, unknown to any, this tanker mission was but an elaborate ruse played on every player eagerly awaiting this sequel.
In many ways this marketing ploy was the embodiment of MGS2’s entire philosophy playing out before everyone's eyes in real life.
Kojima kept all marketing in line with its initial reveal, or in other words, he maintained his ‘smokescreen’.
His trojan horse had been successfully sent into the public conscience, and unknown to anyone at that time, this ‘tanker’ mission was but only the first maybe 30 minutes of the full game.
“The tanker was a decoy. It was a calculated lie.”
Locked behind the full release was the Plant chapter of the game, or essentially, the rest of the game.
In this Plant Chapter of the game the player takes control of a new snake, a snake that is later revealed to be a ‘new recruit’ named Raiden.
You see, this was all to Hideo’s plan.
He had planned to play on what the player believes to be true, he planned to play on the very information that the player is consuming to show how easily the ‘truth’ can be mishandled, or even abused.
Kojima deliberately designed the Tanker Chapter with Snake as the lead to deceive the player, and Raiden was created as a proxy to turn the player into the experiment—to force players to confront their assumptions.
Kojima’s team was against the bait-and-switch, fearing backlash, but he persisted:
“The whole game is a commentary on control — including how I control the player.”
Internally, he admitted to enjoying the manipulation of expectation — using the marketing as part of the art, but as the release neared, Kojima began to fear how people would react to the twist:
“I didn’t think everyone would get it. But that’s okay. It wasn’t meant to please everyone.”
The Shocking Release
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, was first released in the U.S. on November 13th, 2001, and later released across Europe and Japan from November 2001 - March 2002.
As players began to work through MGS2, the uproar slowly began to surface.
Tons of players were very shocked at the switch to Raiden after the tanker mission, and many were downright angry at this revelation.
But Kojima was prepared for the backlash, and was ready to stand by his art along with its message.
He wasn’t trying to provide the player with a game you could simply control with predictable outcomes, built to give you an ideal hero who you could look up to and worship.
In fact, those aspects were the exact things he was critiquing.
MGS2 released with immense backlash, a series all time low for a lot of players to this day.
However, though it may not be what anyone expected, especially considering the marketing, it’s unabashedly exactly what Kojima set out to create.
He sought to trick the players expectations with marketing that “didn’t lie” but also “just never told the full truth”, and it worked exactly to that purpose.
He wanted to create something that had real substance, something that really provoked thought on the part of the player, something that would break all the expected norms that had been solidified within the medium of Video Games.
Quite frankly, agree or disagree, I believe he succeeded in every aspect.
Along with this highly controversial piece of art came an authenticity that rings through time, and has aged like a very, very fine wine.
Or maybe it was his authenticity that made the art controversial?
That’s what I believe personally.
You see, when you make a piece of art that is 100% authentic to what YOU want to see made, it’s likely to be marginalized, or ‘controversial’ to some audience, though at lot of times it just takes a bit more time to FIND its audience.
And, that’s exactly what happened with MGS2.
Over the years MGS2 had been played and replayed a ton, and with that comes newfound understanding of what Kojima was expressing with this title.
Plenty of players who really disliked this game on release, later came back to realize its message, and even Hideo himself has noticed this.
Though he was struck with the feeling that MGS2 had missed it’s mark, at least in public reception, he later went on to realize that it’s a piece of work that will age well.
He believes that MGS2’s ideas aged well, specifically its insights on :
Digital surveillance
The erosion of objective truth
Memes vs. genes
Kojima has even called MGS2 the most “misunderstood but prophetic” game he has made.
Always ahead of his time and never without controversy, it simply seems Kojima has been plagued with the burden of being able to see where the future is headed.
If you want to see a uncomfortably accurate prediction of what we are living through today, boot up Metal Gear Solid 2.
Then you may begin to see through the lies in today's truths.
2: Creative Prompts From Us (ex. Write a short story, a poem, a song, or draw a quick illustration of these! Let your imagination run free.)
I. What matters more to you as a creative: creating works that are appreciated by many, or creating works that are appreciated for a long time?
II. Much like how Hideo Kojima uses his love for films as inspiration and influence for his works, what art outside of your medium could you use in a similar fashion?
3: Inspirational Quotes From Hideo Kojima
I. "Metal Gear Solid 2 was not about war. It was about how information is controlled, and how people accept lies as truth. I think we’re living in that future now."
II. “Find something to believe in, and find it for yourself. And when you do - pass it on to the future.”
III. “Humanity needs more than merely information. We express original ideas, humor, and our personal wills. We express passions and emotions. A person’s point of view conveys all of these aspects of identity.”
Thank you so much for reading!