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Comment on "You Were Supposed to Feel Lost": Metal Gear Solid 2 and the Shock of Playing as Raiden

In middle school, in homeroom, I sat behind a guy who could not contain his excitement for MGS2. It was the first week or so of school. Every day it was a countdown to when he could play the game. “One more day, man. One more day until Metal Gear Solid 2.” So the next day, I asked him, “So how is it?” He was shellshocked. “Snake died, man.” Excitement was gone. His day at school was ruined. I didn’t check in with him later, but presumably, a 7th grader couldn’t make heads or tails of the ending of that game, if he made it that far. I didn’t play it myself until a few years later, and it was one of the most talked-about endings in all of video games, because it was so barely comprehensible, at best.

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Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

So the next day, I asked him, “So how is it?” He was shellshocked. “Snake died, man.” Excitement was gone. His day at school was ruined. I didn’t check in with him later, but presumably, a 7th grader couldn’t make heads or tails of the ending of that game, if he made it that far.

Sounds like you asked him right after he finished the Tanker chapter but before “Iroquois Pliskin” showed up.

I didn’t play it myself until a few years later, and it was one of the most talked-about endings in all of video games, because it was so barely comprehensible, at best.

The ending was mangled due to 9/11 happening right before the game’s release and them rushing to sanitize the scenes involving huge swaths of Manhattan being leveled by a ship ramming into it. Presumably the original cut was more coherent, but I’m guessing nothing could have lessened the mindfuck of “every leader of the Patriots has been dead for over a century”.

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- ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  
  Sounds like you asked him right after he finished the Tanker chapter but before “Iroquois Pliskin” showed up on the Big Shell.
  
  100%
  
  As for the ending, it was already getting pretty postmodern, so I doubt it would have been substantially different otherwise.
  
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AstralPath@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Yet so prescient. It’s wild how well the themes blend in with our current society.

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- ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  And then in 2019 would make a game about a guy delivering Amazon packages to people hunkered down and social distancing amidst the imminent threat of death.
  
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