14:30 I beg to differ. Mgs4 was the first one I played having only seen my friend speedrun twin snakes a handful of times before. While I was a little lost I find they did a good enough job explaining things in a way that attentive players could still enjoy the ride.

“Lore podcast??”

I respectfully disagree around the 1 hour mark Mike. Now I agree you really shouldn't lie to people about your product that's absolutely true but this is the one time I feel this approach is congruent with its themes. Spoilers for MGS2. I personally believe having Raiden not be mentioned as the main character with the trailers before release, prominently showing Snake as the player character is exactly in line with one of the core themes of the game and not just solely of misinformation in the digital age just being part of the games narrative, but from the get go we all experienced exactly the developers intentions before even playing. Manipulating information and showing what people want you to see but not the full truth. It completely strengthens that core theme that Raiden isn't told anything truly about his mission and is even lied too repeatedly.. just like we were going into MGS2 with set expectations, so we can feel for Raiden more and have first hand experience what Kojima and Fukushima the writers are preaching. False information shown and deliberately misleading people for certain goals. They showed us the Tanker which is exactly the sequel fans were wanting but instead we got the rug pulled and our eyes opened to something that will stand the test of time more than a fanservice follow up but something we didn't know we needed and to look beyond what is just presented as truth and fact but use critical thinking to make up your own mind and if something feels too good to be true it usually is. There's so much more to MGS2 than this but unlike something like TLOU2 that feels twisted and manipulative in the wrong way with its lying in trailers just to surprise you with what I feel is thematically shallow themes of "revenge is bad, did you know everyone has feelings and their own ties, thoughts and relationships too?" Yes no kidding, now you're going to hit me over the head with that for 20 hours. In comparison MGS2 has a purpose for withholding it's cards and asks people to really think for themselves, even Kojima didn't fly as close to the sun after this game but I'm so happy we have this wonderful, experimental, borderline prophetic experience 🥲

Loved that intro! If that played during the game I wouldn't blink an eye lol

This intro is incredible!

Thanks for an hour and a half of solace on a day that isn't as great for me as it is for most. Your videos are so valuable to me.

On Metal Gear’s hyper realism vs supernaturalism: For me these two have helped provide strong characterizations for the Snakes (Solid in particular) as well as helped bond me to them. Snake and the regular enemies “play by the rules” for a vast majority of a game but that gets flipped on its head whenever there’s a boss battle. To me, the supernatural elements create a chaos in the game that elicit similar feelings to what we feel when something truly unexpected and challenging happens in our lives. Bosses are often tied thematically to an emotional/mental state. The supernatural elements also make it so that Snake is much closer to the power of the player than the enemy and that the only way to overcome these consistent overwhelming odds for both player and character is to use some combination of skill, perseverance, luck, and help from others. Ordinary people in the MGS universe call Snakes legends (Solid usually rejects the notion, Big Boss would eventually manipulate it) but a Snake NEVER has the upper hand in any encounter with the supernatural or the various Metal Gear models and yet they persist.

The crows are actually an homage to Stephen King's "The Dark Half" about a novelist who's stalked by a doppelganger. George A. Romero made a movie about it back in the 80s.

Technically, legally, the misleading stuff *was* in the game. Now I can't speak to the launch version, but the Subsistence and Vita versions I played have Big Shell sections with Snake. They're in the extra missions from the menu, up to and including investigating and fighting a building sized genome soldier that makes Godzilla noises. Snake spots him from the Big Shell as he swims in the bay.

Thank you for this!

Godlike! 😎

Casens eye patch moving in the cuts is hilarious

Soooo spot on. This is why I don’t converse about games on the internet almost at all, in spite of how much I like to listen to videos of other people doing so 😂.

S tier opening

do do do dododooo dooooooo do do do dododoooo doooooooo

Greatest intro and thumbnail

Great episode. Loved the discussion.

I really, REALLY hope we get to at least hear some discussion over the connection between MGS2 and the Gameboy one. Somewhat Canonically Raiden was trained on a Gameboy. What series could get away with that?

5:15 noctis’ japanese va confirmed that noctis and the boys were originally present during insomnia’s fall.

The reason for the deceptive marketing was to play to the theme of misinformation and "fake news" that the game was themed to in its story. It was deliberate deceptive marketing to illustrate a point that would only become apparent when playing the game itself. This idea that anything you're told or shown on the internet is true, you can argue that it doesn't make it okay, but that was the intent behind it, and I think given the games reputation it speaks for itself how ultimately successful it was.

2 minutes in I can already tell this is going to be a banger episode.

Snake Casen for prez

OMG that bit at the begining was awesomely funny!!!

Fantastic.

The best Christmas gift. Great podcast!

THIS IS PERFECT GUYS! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

maaaaan I cant wait for the next one

When Auron points at Sin, he is pointing his gourd, like a toast to a friend

The thing with Raiden isn't about him acting in a feminine way but he has that bishonen look. He is the Griffith to Snake's Guts.

Omg bro FFIV IX XII AND Chrono trigger is an insane poll. I don't know which one I would love first but maybe the classics IV Or my favorite game of all time Chrono

"Lore Podcast?" HAHAHAHAAH!!! Epic.

I was born in 1999, I wasn't even aware of the y2k bug until I was 12 and thats just because I'm a massive computer nerd. I reckon most people my age don't even know what y2k is.

Metal Gear Solid on the GBC is an alternate universe. The funny thing about that is that alternate universes became a thing in Metal Gear lore because of Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance. It becomes even more hilarious when you find out that the easter egg for 100%-ing Ghost Babel is finding out that the whole thing is one of the VR simulations Raiden went through. The cross-promo was wild. EDIT: You kind of touched on this, but the main appeal of Solid Snake is what he's able to accomplish with the limited tools of his basic training. Yes, he's often up against the supernatural or the finest death machines the world's militaries can create, but as long as he keeps a cool head, picks his shots, and stays on his toes, he can come out on top. One thing that made MGS2 so interesting was that we got to see how Snake's appeal works from the outside. And the one time Snake had to fight a boss without us being there in any capacity was the one time Snake was defeated. When I consider that now, given what has rubbed off on me from watching this channel for such a long time, in a sense, I get the feeling that Snake's appeal wasn't just in Snake himself, and that Snake's X-factor was in the spark of us operating through him. A huge part of the reason I don't like Twin Snakes as much is because it loses track of Snake's appeal. When you have Snake hopping off of missiles, it fails to portray Solid Snake. No military in the world teaches people to hop on missiles.

Metal Gear Solid 2 is a fantastic choice for an analysis. But please, for the love of god, do an analysis for Silent Hill 2 (2024), the original Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Final Fantasy XII, and the original Parasite Eve!

Regarding the music, I'd just like to point out that the great majority of the soundtrack (what plays during the gameplay) was actually composed by Norihiko Hibino. Harry Gregson-Williams' cinematic score for most of the major cutscenes adds up to less than an hour's worth of music.

That intro was GOATED! looking forward to this series

I was hoping for this intro skit and I got it. I can go to sleep happy and fulfilled tonight :'''->

THE OPENING OF THIS VID IS THE BEST THING IVE EVER SEEN, THIS IS WHY I LOVE YOU GUYS

from all i'm aware of i don't believe Raiden's inclusion was ever lied about, I don't recall any trailers showing Snake as the playaable character that were not set in the tanker. They absolutely hid the fact that the primary protagonist was Raiden, in the same vein that the Big Shell was also hidden as the primary location.

I was lucky enough to play this game when it came out and it ended up as my favorite game of all time due to the themes of (at the time a 17 year old me without internet could process as) looking beyond the text of the game and extrapolating value off it while embracing the good and the bad of the incoming digital age. Over the years the game has brought me great value and fortune in life and was influential in my career decision. A loooot of fans have given me hate for saying this but I keep insisting that this was indeed the final "real" MGS game as Kojima intended, evidenced by interviews and marketing at the time, such as "Only "2" is where MGS could end" whereas future games were born less out of the need for storytelling and more because the series had to continue thus Kojima commanded that ship long past when it already concluded it's voyage and I always see the later, Big Boss heavy games as a soft reboot, a sequel comic book to an arc already concluded. I've also been lucky enough that the series has brought me great joy-- I got to meet the reclusive composer Norihiko Hibino and the dude spoke fluent English and the nicest guy ever. He smiled in a sarcastic way when I lamented that his name should have been credited alongside Gregson Williams since he was the one that actually did the bulk of the music. In 2011 I got 8th place in Konami's MGS art contest. I also had my dumb music video I made in college noticed by Konami as they were looking for inspiration for the boss music for Metal Gear Rising, and my work served as a template to the musical vibe of that game and I had my friends who made the music for my video actually work on Rising's boss music. In 2015, Kojima out of nowhere retweeted one of my figurine painting and my brain exploded and finally just a few months ago, I tweeted to David Hayter as he was coming to my state for a con if he would accept one of my custom Snake statues as a gift, and he sent me a PM saying he'd "be honored" and not only did I got to give him my work, met him and his wife but once he got back to the states he showed me that my Snake statue is on display in his office.

I played the first game thanks to you guys covering it, and that led me to playing the second one not too long ago. Can't wait for more.

Mgs 2 was my first game of the series, that intro and first stage is burned in my memory forever

"some silly thing like Y2K" yeah, tell that to the billions of US$ companies spend to fix the problem. But more relevant to your point, it was infinitely amusing back then to make fun of the silly theories people came up with. I already assembled PCs then so I had an idea of the risks and costs of Y2K but some people refuse to believe the actual implications of the "bug". Media did not help either, of course.

Lol, I hope you guys are having fun with this podcast cause it's my absolute favorite. Loving the new things your doing !!!

Day 3 of asking for skies of arcadia.

Memetic theory was developed by rene girard. The main thesis is that memes are part of human nature, it is what separates us from other animals and definition of memesis is that human imitate one another in a meaningful way. Imitation matters to humans, which is what separates us from other animals.

You guys are dorks in the best possible way, Merry Christmas, I love you guys and the show!

Alright, this is the greatest ever intro to a KZbin video. We've peaked, let's pack up and go home.

MGS2 is my fav game of all time :)))

(spoiler for the second part of MGS2) I might be wrong about that one and have no particular proof or piece of interview to back that up but if I refer to the feeling I had during my first playthrough (I was reluctant playing Raiden during at least half of his section of the game). If I should guess, I'd say Kojima anticipated the fact that we might not like him even more if we were deceived. Also it would make an even greater pay off as the character developed, if done right. As the "pure and innocent good looking boy" would begin to share his not so righteous past through codec conversations and such, we would reflect on our quick judgment about his appearance. That and/or Raiden's 3D model was maybe not totally finished at this stage of developpement ? I don't fancy being lied to as an audience... except when it works, basically x)