Metal Gear Solid 2 plays out like this. Spoilers below but it came out in 2001 so whatever
The bad guy is a former President that knew his job was just as a figurehead, nothing more. He found out the hard way that even his orders came from a cutout.
He recruited “terrorists” to take the sitting President “hostage” so they could “force him” to detonate an EMP over the east coast. The plan is to dismantle the AI actually running the government/censoring public opinion and hopefully free the country
You play as the wide eyed idealistic special forces infiltrator, trained heavily through VR and sent to “rescue” the sitting President from the “terrorist leader” and learn that everything you know is wrong and you were given orders by the AI all along
This is tangential to the main point you are making, but:
… I also always interpreted Raiden as basically Kojima more or less openly mocking or taunting the western player base of… well, mostly white male, naive/emo/astoundingly insecure children.
I remember there being absolutely massive backlash when MGS2 came out with tons of ‘gamers’ just calling Raiden a ‘gay little effeminate f@ggot boy’ and shit like that.
… Which I found quite funny in a meta-ironic sense.
And then of course, if you…actually do play through the game… well, from Raiden’s POV, … it basically is a shonen, a coming of age arc, making mistakes, struggling, being confused… but ultimately getting his shit together just enough to … well maybe not " “save the day” ", but avert utter catastrophe…
… as well as Raiden develops maturity as a character, reveals that… he actually has a lot of extremely serious trauma in his past, and he genuienly becomes a hero as he comes to terms with, and overcomes much of it.
…
MGS2, where Hideo Kojima dared to ask: What if an action hero wasn’t an absolute badass with a gruff voice?
(took western culture almost 20 years to even come up with the phrase ‘subversion of expectations’…)
Spoilers below but it came out is 2001 so whatever
I had someone get mad at me b/c I described a plot from a book written 70 years ago. I declined to edit my post to hide the “spoilers”. I guess I am the asshole.
Metal Gear Solid 2 plays out like this. Spoilers below but it came out in 2001 so whatever
The bad guy is a former President that knew his job was just as a figurehead, nothing more. He found out the hard way that even his orders came from a cutout.
He recruited “terrorists” to take the sitting President “hostage” so they could “force him” to detonate an EMP over the east coast. The plan is to dismantle the AI actually running the government/censoring public opinion and hopefully free the country
You play as the wide eyed idealistic special forces infiltrator, trained heavily through VR and sent to “rescue” the sitting President from the “terrorist leader” and learn that everything you know is wrong and you were given orders by the AI all along
I beat that game once and this is the first time I had any idea what it was about, thanks for a solid explanation
This is tangential to the main point you are making, but:
… I also always interpreted Raiden as basically Kojima more or less openly mocking or taunting the western player base of… well, mostly white male, naive/emo/astoundingly insecure children.
I remember there being absolutely massive backlash when MGS2 came out with tons of ‘gamers’ just calling Raiden a ‘gay little effeminate f@ggot boy’ and shit like that.
… Which I found quite funny in a meta-ironic sense.
And then of course, if you…actually do play through the game… well, from Raiden’s POV, … it basically is a shonen, a coming of age arc, making mistakes, struggling, being confused… but ultimately getting his shit together just enough to … well maybe not " “save the day” ", but avert utter catastrophe…
… as well as Raiden develops maturity as a character, reveals that… he actually has a lot of extremely serious trauma in his past, and he genuienly becomes a hero as he comes to terms with, and overcomes much of it.
…
MGS2, where Hideo Kojima dared to ask: What if an action hero wasn’t an absolute badass with a gruff voice?
(took western culture almost 20 years to even come up with the phrase ‘subversion of expectations’…)
I had someone get mad at me b/c I described a plot from a book written 70 years ago. I declined to edit my post to hide the “spoilers”. I guess I am the asshole.
The most shocking revelation was that Jack didn’t have any posters in his room!