It was one of the most striking moments in a series of intensely memorable trailers designed to build hype for Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. It lasted barely more than a split-second, but the potency of this single image struck fans with both promise and a desperate sense of mystery. Hero Solid Snake turned, weapon at the ready, and reacted with shock to the sight of a distinctive silhouette cast on the wall. The bulk and outline of the figure left no question in anyone's mind: This was Snake's defeated foe Vulcan Raven, come for revenge, or perhaps driven by less blatant motivations.
The mystery, of course, is how Raven could reappear at all. He hadn't simply been defeated but killed outright. Metal Gear Solid had been a glorious comic book of a video game, all hyperbolic exclamations and costumed super-villains with silly names, which meant it adhered to the comic book tradition of death -- namely, that a character isn't truly dead until you see them die. Off-panel deaths never stick, which is why Liquid Snake had managed to eject from the fiery, low-altitude, yet decidedly offscreen wreck of his surplus Soviet helicopter to fight again.
Raven, however, had died a definitive death. Upon his defeat and obligatory soliloquy, his body had been completely consumed by a murder of crows as Snake strode away. The entire affair had been framed clearly in the background with just enough distance to keep it from being gruesome yet just enough detail to be straightforward in its finality. The return of Vulcan Raven, therefore, hinted at esoteric plot twists and shocking revelations to come. Would the entire Fox Hound unit somehow find a way to return? Maybe they would be rebuilt as cyborgs, like the ninja Grey Fox. Or perhaps the shamanic Raven was special due to his devotion to the mystical. Fans were intrigued, and that brief hint of a popular villain's resurrection remained a matter of heated debate for months.
More than a year later, the game arrived. As players crept through a hijacked military tanker, seeking to avoid combat, they too were startled when they turned a corner and saw that same silhouette splashed across the wall. Many players froze, waiting patiently to get a read on Raven's movements and the danger he represented. After a few seconds, they realized he wasn't moving. Eventually, they ventured forward to see what was happening. It was then that the truth was revealed: "Raven" was simply a tiny action figure, placed just so in front of a spotlight that cast his shadow on the wall -- an impressive demonstration of PlayStation 2's ability to handle real-time lighting effects, but absolutely not what fans had been led to expect.
Ocelot: I regret to inform you that I have no intention of selling Metal Gear. As I said, I came to take it back. Yes, returned. To the Patriots!
Dolph: The La-li-lu-le-lo! How's that possible!?
Gurlukovich: Ocelot, you...! Have you sold us out?
Ocelot: I was never in your employ, Gurlukovich...
The Vulcan Raven figure episode embodies Metal Gear Solid 2 in a nutshell, and a player's response to that particular fake-out almost invariably parallels their reaction to the game as a whole. Did they seethe in fury as the toy stood there, mutely firing tiny pellets in silent mockery? Or did they grin ruefully at a great fakeout, chuckling at the sight of the previous game's most imposing foe reduced to a 1/6 scale miniature with a motorized vulcan cannon feature? The answer almost certainly reflects their feelings on the game as a whole.
Metal Gear producer Hideo Kojima is the standard go-to when discussing game creators who practice a film-like auteur approach to game design, and ten years after its launch MGS2 remains his most decidedly auteurist turn. Few games have ever commanded as high a profile or represented so much for the future and direction of an entire platform as MGS2. But even within that rarified company, Kojima's PlayStation 2 blockbuster remains unique. Never before or since has a game producer seized on his visibility and clout to so radically transform a tentpole production into an elaborate soapbox statement.
More than a statement; MGS feels almost like an elaborate troll. It's a game that seems to dare you to like it. At every turn, it practically mocks the player. Every inch of the game revels in deceiving its audience, from the basic premise of the story to the interlocking Celtic knot that is its plot to the marketing that surrounded the game from its debut. The MGS2 narrative consists of 10 hours of ruses, double-crosses, shocking revelations, and subversions. It was sold to audiences on very nearly false pretexts.
And that's the entire point of MGS2. It inveigles the player as a means to make a statement, one that seems remarkably prescient a decade later. Ultimately, MGS2 isn't about saving the President or preventing the proliferation of super-weapons; it's a missive about the mutability of information in the digital age. When all forms of communication are digital, everything exists as data, and data can be altered. Text can be edited; video can be manipulated; audio can be masked and sampled. Digital information is unreliable, and as a video game MGS2 consists entirely of digital information. It is inherently untrustworthy, and its producer played up this fact by weaving falsehood throughout and around the game.
Pliskin: You don't get injured in VR, do you? Every year, a few soldiers die in field exercises.
Raiden: There's pain sensation in VR, and even a sense of reality and urgency. The only difference is that it isn't actually happening.
Pliskin: That's the way they want you to think, to remove you from the fear that goes with battle situations. War as a video game -- what better way to raise the ultimate soldier?
Raiden: So you're saying VR training is some kind of mind control?
It's easy to take all of this for granted today, in 2011. But a decade ago, the Internet was still finding its legs. The basic touchstones of the modern Internet -- YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, even digital distribution -- didn't exist. Only a minority had access to broadband web access. The role of online communication was still taking shape in the lives of most people. For better or for worse, Kojima was determined to confront this revolution head-on and transform it into the crux of a game that was ostensibly about military confrontation.
It was a fitting ambition, given the series' history. Metal Gear was born in the latter days of the Cold War -- 1987 -- when the tenets of "duck and cover" were still posted on the walls of many American classrooms. The original MSX/NES game used the premise of a mobile, undetectable nuclear launch platform as a pretext for a military action game that de-emphasized action. Its sequel explored the industrialized world's dependency on oil. Nearly a decade later, Metal Gear Solid tackled the issue of rogue nukes in the post-Soviet era. MGS2 simply shifted the series' focus to the next frontier of warfare (or what seemed like it until the World Trade Center was destroyed in a guerrilla action by a foreign terrorist faction): Information.
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