Metal Gear Solid was a meditation on man's place in the universe masquerading as an action-adventure video game. [Note: If you have not read my discussion of Metal Gear Solid it can be found here. The sequel, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, continues to both question the structure of video games as well as to discuss the sense of alienation that comes with self-awareness.

In Metal Gear Solid 2 -or MGS2- players once again assume the role of Solid Snake, the grizzled, philosophical, wise but ultimately still clueless secret agent. Still alive in spite of the poison he was injected with at the beginning of MGS, Snake is now fighting not for a particular country but in order to make the world itself a safer place. Snake always seemed aware of the paradox of using violence to bring about peace but now he is benevolent enough to bring a dart gun on his missions so he can sedate instead of slaughter his opponents. Most action games require you to kill your opponents or anyone who happens to get in your way without any thought to the blood-letting you are causing but MGS2 may be one of the first action games that you can complete without killing a single opponent.

The gulf between MGS2 and other action games further widens when the scope of what a player can do is discovered. Stunned guards can be put inside lockers -there seems to be no shortage of lockers in the world of MGS2- posters of women can be ogled or even kissed by Snake, and the obligatory cardboard box that Snake can hide in are all present. MGS2 is so obsessed with details that every bottle in a liquor cabinet can be interacted with, water drips off and pools around Snake after he comes in out of the rain, and now not only can Snake hit targets with deadly precision but anything he hits will undoubtedly have a reaction. Players are encouraged to explore the game environment in order to find all the items in the game that do nothing to advance the story but are simply included in the game because the programmers found them amusing. Between encouraging foolish, distracting exploration and the return of the long-winded CODEC conversations MGS2 almost immediately marginalizes the plot which should be the driving motivation that the player focuses on.

At the point where the player begins to feel comfortable with the game and has once again begun to identify with Solid Snake the setting abruptly changes and the player is forced to take control of a character named Raiden. Raiden is presented as a slight, fair-haired, almost pretty looking rookie who seems easily rattled; the very opposite of the shaggy, grit smoking, even-headed expert Solid Snake. Nothing about the pre-release information or the advertising for MGS2 gave players any indication that not only was Raiden in MGS2 but that players would have to control him for a majority of the game.

When asked about this unusual turn of events Hideo Kojima, the creator and director of the Metal Gear games, insisted that while players control Raiden for a majority of the game Solid Snake is still the protagonist. Kojima said that Raiden was created as a foil for Snake so the player could more fully appreciate the heroism of Snake because of the distance created by not being able to play as him. While this could be merely an attempt at spin control -a number of people who bought the game without knowing about Raiden felt like they had mislead and were very vocal about their displeasure- it is very possible Kojima is being honest. As the player makes Raiden progress through the game Snake not only shows up to offer advice and the occasional bit of direction, he becomes more and more of an active participant in the story until fully half of the action in the game is taking place outside the player's control.

One of the main drawing points of a video game is the sense of immersion. Not only are you guiding a character through various dangers you, in a sense, are engaged in the adventure as well. It's a particular sense of vicarious living that a person does not get from other forms of entertainment. Because the entire game is designed for you to navigate through your character inevitably becomes the most important factor in the game. MGS2 changes all this by forcing the player to play through the game as someone other than the main character. No matter how hard you work or how well you do in the game your character is still there to make Snake look good. The result is that the player feels distanced and alienated from well over two thirds of the game. There has never been another game that has attempted to force players to be anything other than the protagonist before MGS2 and with good reason. The further one gets in the game the more the player begins to realize that the sense of disconnection that comes with Raiden is an intentional and integral part of the MGS2 experience.

Everything about Raiden is stacked against him. The frustration he expresses about the difficulties in his mission comes across more like childish whining than constructive complaints. Revelations about Raiden's past that come up in the game not only seem inconsistent with the previous information about the character but due to the untrustworthy nature of the plot -which I will discuss later- the "true" story of Raiden that surfaces seems dubious, leaving the player as uncertain about the character at the end of the game as they were when he was first introduced. Not only does Raiden spend a large amount of his time during the mission bickering with his shrill and equally unbearable girlfriend via CODEC conversations it is revealed -in a loathsome bit of character development- that he has been physically abusive to her in the past. When the two end up together at the end of the game it's uncertain whether it's because true love won out in the end or they simply deserved each other. In order to have him contrast with Snake's heroism Raiden ends up coming across as an unappealing character.

The alienation continues with the plot of the game itself. What starts out simply(?) enough as a terrorist attack by a group of rogue American and Russian agents that is being lead by the former President of the United States [who not only is another clone from the line that produced Solid Snake but is wearing an armored suit that let's him fly around] then turns out to be an elaborate sociological test designed to recreate the experiences of the first MGS game and was orchestrated by a collective intelligence -known as "The Patriots"- that secretly runs the world and lives in the basement of the White House. Or something like that. The plot twists come with such frequency that new wrinkles in the story are being introduced even after the ending credits in the game have rolled. The final line in the game is an exasperated Snake muttering "What the hell?" when trying to fathom the latest shift in the story. It's an understandable sentiment. The sense of pointlessness that ran through MGS is intentionally re-introduced and heightened by being an intentional recreation. Now are you not only fighting and killing people for none of the reasons you believed at the beginning of the game but you are doing it as part of an absurdist recreation. In the final battle when Raiden has to face down the President -the awkwardly named Solidus Snake- he knows he is fulfilling the wishes of the program by re-creating the ending to the first MGS by eliminating someone who was trying to rebel against the control of the Patriots and but he nevertheless fights and kills Solidus. The ending of MGS2 takes the existential feeling of the original MGS and amplifies it to the point that the player is so uncertain what to feel at the end of MGS2 that they are simply numb.

Everything in MGS2 is an exaggeration of MGS. Not only do the characters occasionally make side comments that reveal they know they are in a video game the plot now deals with them as unwilling pawns in a recreation of a previous video game. Not only are ties to patriotism, loyalty and friendship discussed but the very nature of what makes society and the individuals in it is probed. The theme of perverse family relationships has often been a topic of the Metal Gear games. In MGS2 the relationships between both Raiden with his mentor Solidus and Otacon and his history with his half-sister E.M. and her family come across as distorted reflections of the problems Snake had when dealing with both his "father" and his nefarious siblings in previous Metal Gear games. MGS2 continues this trend by being the odd offspring of MGS. By questioning and forcing an examination of what it is that makes a video game as well as what it is that makes a person MGS2 continues the groundwork laid by MGS. It is not, however, as smooth a balancing act as its predecessor. By so openly drawing attention to the themes it is discussing MGS2 becomes a meditation on various philosophical thoughts instead of a cohesive exploration of them. MGS2 is a series of good ideas that never gel into a good game.

I would have liked to discuss the long-standing connection between Solid Snake and Kurt Russell but there's enough fodder there for an entirely different article. It seems there's no end to the discussion that the Metal Gear games can generate. Questions, comments, and codec messages can be sent to gleep9@hotmail.com. If you are done here slip on your cardboard box and sneak on back to either the Pop Culture or Main page.