Three Souls, Entwined
Metal Gear Solid 2 is an experience.
It’s March 2001. You’re at Target to pick up a copy of Konami’s seminal mecha game:
“Zone of the Enders.”
You read all about it in Gamepro. You’re not one hundred percent sure it’s gonna be for you, but it doesn’t matter. You’re really just getting it for the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo. When you get home you pay your respects to ZoE for an hour or so, then you pop in that second disc. It’s all there. Snake, Otacon, the tanker, the glass bottles that break when you shoot them, the ice cubes that totally melt in real time. It’s the best demo you’ve ever played. You only need to wait until November to play the full game. You read articles on it for months. It’s going to be the greatest game of all time.
November comes. You get out of school. You’re a senior this year, but you’re still figuring out your long-term plans. You know what you’ll be doing tonight though. You once again find yourself at Target looking to purchase today’s new hotness. The day has come. On your way home you stop by the Taco Bell drive thru and grab dinner. Mom and Dad are going bowling tonight so you have to fend for yourself.
Burritos and shopping bag in hand, you make your way through the living room and into your fortress of solitude. You inhale those delicious burritos, chug what’s left of your Pepsi, and proceed to spend the next 6 hours playing your game of the year.
But…is it?
Once you make it past the tanker area something seems off. Snake seems to just…not be in the game anymore? Instead you’re playing as this blonde guy….
Oh, there’s Snake. Soon you’ll be playing as him again.
Wait…no you’re playing as the blonde dude again.
Oh no…Do you play as him for the rest of the game???
It’s now June 2002. You graduated top of your class. Your parents are proud because for most of your life you didn’t focus on school. You just sat in your room eating takeout and playing videogames. Second semester came around and you started pulling your weight academically. The reason?
Metal Gear Solid 2 stole your joy.
You had nothing left to do other than burying your nose in a textbook. The scholarships and grants your earned can’t mend the hole that MGS2 burrowed deep within your soul. That blonde man. He taunts you in your dreams. You had to play as him without clothes. Colonel started saying weird stuff about worms and scissors. Rose kept bugging you when you tried to save. The Metal Gear Ray fight nearly caused you to break your controller in half. What was it all for? What is any of this for?
The following year you find yourself back at your parent’s place for summer break. To make a bit of scratch you take a box of games over to Electronic Boutique to trade in. In the box lies MGS2. You look down upon the case and think to yourself:
“Maybe it wasn’t that bad…”
You pop the case open to make sure it’s all there, and you spend the next few minutes debating on whether or not you should trade it in. After a bit of back and forth with yourself you chuck it back in the box. You decide that MGS2 was in fact not that bad, but you want to see it off in hopes that someone somewhere down the line picks it up for themself and gives it a go.
The voyage begins.
Metal Gear Solid 2 is an experience.
It’s August 2010. You get home from school. You’re a junior this year, and by the looks of it you’ll actually be able to graduate, so long as you focus on your studies instead of playing videogames all day. You want to go to nursing school, mostly because it pays well and it would be nice to help others.
You turn on the TV in the living room. Mom and Dad are still at work so you take this opportunity to try out some new games you got this week. You picked up Metal Gear Solid 2 for $10 and Unlimited SaGa for $5. You played MGS3 a couple years back, but you didn’t quite get it. You watched a friend play MGS1 but the old 32bit graphics looked wonky. Why doesn’t anyone have eyes? It’s weird. You read a synopsis on Wikipedia the day before, so you consider yourself informed enough. You can play MGS2. You’re allowed.
You slide a finger across the dusty old PlayStation 2. It’s seen better days. You can tell the laser is going to give out soon because you’re having trouble reading blue discs. You pop MGS2 in and hope for the best. As you make your way to the couch your thumb gently strokes the faded stickers on the game case. Layers of price tags bulge off of the plastic. EB Games, Gamestop, GameCrazy, and more. It’s the brotherhood of the traveling PS2 game.
You take a glance at the manual. You notice a peculiar stain on the back pages.
.
.
.
.
…Refried beans?
After resetting your console a few times, the game finally loads. You remember your friend complaining about how Snake is only playable in the tanker portion, but you don’t give it much thought. Maybe this Raiden guy isn’t so bad? I mean he looks cool in MGS4, I’m sure people are overreacting.
Over the course of the next few days you play a little here and there, and like your childhood dog your PS2 decides to meet God.
Two years pass. You managed to graduate by the skin of your teeth. College life isn’t so bad, but you had to take on a part-time gig at the grocery store to keep up with tuition. You manage to scrounge up a few dollars here and there selling your old games. You still consider entertainment a necessary expense, and this month’s choice is the MGS HD Collection. It’s a great deal. You get Metal Gear Solid 2, 3, and Peace walker for $40. It would be unwise not to buy it.
Maintaining a work/school/life balance is taxing, but you manage to allot a couple hours each week for extracurricular activities. You pop the disc containing MGS2&3 into your new PS3. You think about how you didn’t even want this console, but your cousin thought about what was best for you when it came to graduation gifts. The console beeps, and after a few seconds that heavenly orchestra fills the room.
You finished MGS3 all those years ago, but you know now that you may have been a little too young to understand and appreciate Hideo Kojima’s nuanced take on the Cold War. Then there’s MGS2, a game that you only played for a couple hours, and dropped because your PS2 decided to kick the bucket. After a few minutes of deliberation you made your choice.
Two hours later you manage to catch up with your old PS2 save. You progress a bit further and decide to call it a night. Your next month or so is dedicated to Raiden’s venture throughout Big Shell. Once you finally hit credits you sit back and sigh to yourself.
“Man.”
Nothing will ever top this moment.
Metal Gear Solid 2 is an experience.
It’s 2026. You get off work. You have no future prospects. Your main goal in life is to survive, and to enjoy what you have.
What you have are books, films, and videogames.
You live in a big city with things to do and people to see, but for the most part you stay home where you relax and enjoy yourself. Every so often you meet with some close friends at the bar downtown to catch up on things. One friend is getting married, and another won’t stop talking about her son and daughter’s Christmas gifts. You sit in silence while the world moves around you, sipping your drink whilst nodding along to whatever topics come up. The conversation almost never comes to hobbies, but thankfully one friend notices you being left out and attempts to reset the room.
“So my sister has been playing Metal Gear Solid 2.”
Your eyes light up a bit.
For the next 9 minutes you all gush about videogames. That’s how you met after all. In high-school you went to your crush’s house to play Resident Evil 4. That’s where you met her brother and his friends. Your crew, as it were. In college you would visit your friend’s dorm room and watch him play Bayonetta. After graduating and entering the workforce you all promised to meet up in Final Fantasy XIV. It didn’t last long, but you had a good time.
Hours pass.
When you walk up the stairs to your apartment, gentle flashes of the night’s events fade in and out of your head. You feel whole again after spending time with your mates. Your key scratches the front of the doorknob as you fumble to get your door open. Once you finally make your way inside you begin your sobering up routine. An electrolyte packet, 200mg of acetaminophen, and a delivery order for some Chinese. You slowly walk up to the radiator to warm your hands.
Once you finally have your meal, you saunter over to the couch to enjoy the fruits of your labor. It’s been a rough week at the office. You deserve the best. That night while in bed, your dreams replay your night out, except Solid Snake and Raiden are in the booth with you. They’re eerily silent, mostly because you don’t know what they say in the game. That’s because…
You’ve never actually played MGS2.
You gotta get in on that. I mean you just turned 35 for Christ’s sake, and you’ve never played Hideo Kojima’s best work? What do you mean you’ve never read “dreaming in an empty room?”
The next morning you take a bus down to one of the last brick and mortar shops in the area. A small game store with a slew of copyright-infringed art on the windows. A poorly drawn Mario serves as a beacon for any would be shoppers who want to purchase a Sega Dreamcast for $300. When you enter the establishment the scent of plastic holds still in your nostrils. The abundance of items overloads your senses, but you’re on a mission from the gaming gods. A PlayStation 2 with a new laser, a memory card, and a copy of MGS2.
You sidle through the tight aisles. You can tell that the owner behind the counter wants to relocate to somewhere more accommodating to his inventory, but the powers that be would rather the empty building downtown be a parking lot than a business. Once you make it to the PS2 games you slide your finger along the shelf, hitting every game until you make your way to the Ms.
“…Medal of Honor…Men in Black….Metal Arms….Bingo.”
The store has three copies of Metal Gear Solid 2.
Copy number one doesn’t have the manual, but it’s the Substance edition, so it has all the special features and modes.
Copy number two doesn’t have a case, but it’s $10 cheaper because of this.
Copy The Third has both the case and manual, but the cover has seen better days. Sun damage, stickers from various stores, and a mysterious stain in the manual’s back pages. The manual itself is barely hanging by half a staple. This copy is fighting for it’s life.
This copy has a story to tell.
You choose copy number three.
Two weeks pass. You rang in the new year with your friends. Now that the holidays are over and done with you finally have time to start playing MGS2. You even went the extra mile and purchased a CRT television on Ebay for the full experience. You dedicate an afternoon off to Solid Snake’s trek through the tanker.
It’s good. real good. You forget the last time you played a PS2 game that ran at 60FPS. The controller’s pressure sensitive buttons are nothing more than a cheap gimmick, but it’s fun all the same.
You’re now at the chemical plant. This is where you’ll be at throughout most of the game. You notice early on that you find yourself constantly going in circles looking for bombs to diffuse. Maybe it’s a commentary on the repetitiveness of games at the time? In MGS1 backtracking felt like a rough way to pad the game out a bit. In MGS2 the backtracking is more than just deliberate, it’s sewn into the gameplay. The map is literally two circles.
You’re watching a lot of cutscenes in this game. You started playing with a full bag of Twizzlers, but by the halfway point you’re down to your last four Twizzlers. You gotta conserve your Twizzlers.
You’re not buying another bag of Twizzlers.
You think to yourself:
“Ah, so MGS2 is about how we consume media. It’s not scary because it came true, it’s scary because it’s always been like this. That’s why you put your name in the game at the beginning of the plant section! Because Raiden *is* the player! He’s us!”
You feel like you’ve discovered El Dorado. The reality is that these theories have been in the zeitgeist for years.
By the final cutscene it all makes sense. MGS2 is about leaving a legacy, not necessarily through our genes, but through our actions. Delivering your soul throughout time.
It’s about content.
It’s about the significance of said content. It’s about stories passed through for generations. MGS2 isn’t just content, it’s a work of love.
Epilogue
Seventeen years pass.
You’ve got a week left before school starts. Your parents keep going on about how formative senior year is. While rummaging through your dad’s old videogame collection you come across an old, dusty copy of Metal Gear Solid 2. Your dad’s PS2 still works thanks to his tenacity — he buys a new laser every few years from specialty shops that sell reproduced parts. Maybe you should talk to him about playing the game.
You ask your dad to borrow the console, and a single tear rolls down his eye. He starts acting weirder than usual.
For the next seven days, you devote your time to one of the greatest stories ever told. By the end you understand that Metal Gear Solid 2 isn’t just a game…
…Metal Gear Solid 2 is an experience.
-PA
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