Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

1001 Video Games

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Action figures

Just as for the original, a line of action figures has been released by McFarlane Toys. Most of the main characters are depicted and as an added bonus each individual figure comes with a part of the new Metal Gear. Collect them all and assemble the monster!

Development

The development budget for Metal Gear Solid 2 was somewhere in the region of 10 million US dollars.

Ending

Pretty soon as the game starts and you get used to controls, you are requested to enter your name, date of birth and such things (like in some typical Square RPG games). In the ending animation, when Snake asks Raiden about that dog tag he's wearing, Raiden looks at it, before he throws it away, and in that cinematic, on a dog tag, you see your name and info.

Intro

On the opening of the game, there's one piece that somehow does not fit the game without any explanation. First, we see some roman letters (numbers) etched on stone, then we see some Japanese ink writings on a paper, and then we see programming data and computer code. Hideo Kojimo commented how that was to show the advance of civilization from storaging data. First through stone, than using paper, and the least digital data which is the only that doesn't have its existing time period. And that is then connected to the game and especially Arsenal Gear as an AI with great capability to track, store and control data.

Making of

On the Making Of MGS2 documentary that comes on an extra DVD, Hideo Kojima said that idea for Metal Gear series originated from his playing 'hide and seek' with his son.

North American version

In comparison to the Japanese version, some extra gore was added to the North American version. In the Substance re-release this was revoked.

Raiden

In order to cover up the character Raiden, the promotional trailers for the game showed several scenes with Solid Snake in different scenes. In the final game, Raiden is involved in the same scenes, but in Snake's place. Hideo Kojima used computer tricks to cover up Raiden and no one knew of his existence until the game was released. However, the manual spoils the surprise on its very first pages.

References

• Just as in the original Metal Gear Solid, a poster for Hideo Kojima's previous game Policenauts can be found in the Computer Room in the Shell 1 Core.
• If you look quickly in the scene where Snake logs into the computer to send the pictures to Otacon, you can spot another reference to Policenauts.
• During the game, you will come into contact with a man named Pliskin who is actually former protagonist Solid Snake in disguise. The name is a direct reference to "Snake" Plissken, the main character played by Kurt Russell in John Carpenter's movies Escape from LA and Escape from New York.
• A crazy Bomber man, one of the bosses is named Fatman. That was also a name of one of the atomic bombs that fall onto Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• The names of the characters Jack and Rose were taken from the main characters of Titanic. This film also influenced the decision to set the first chapter of the game on a sinking tanker.
• emma's nickname (E.E.) and full name (Emma Emmerich-Danziger) are references to E.E. Danziger, a character in Jack Finney's novel Time and Again.
• In the flooded basement of Shell Core 2, you can find a rubber duck floating harmlessly in one of the air vents. While it's possible that it's just a humorous detail, it's most likely a reference to the original tech demo for the PlayStation 2 which featured a rubber duck floating in a tub.

Series

In a Gamespot interview done shortly after the finishing of the American release, Hideo Kojima has amended a former comment about MGS2 being the last installment, saying, "I really think that Metal Gear has to live on in some form. But as I said at the end of Metal Gear Solid, I really think it is time for me to hand the director role over to someone else. I might do the initial planning for the next game but not much more than that."

He goes on to mention that the future of a certain character who is disliked in some gaming circles is still uncertain.

Soundtrack

Due to the success of Metal Gear Solid, the development team had a higher budget for the sound of the game. However, they didn't know who they would hire to compose the score for the game. One day, executive producer Hideo Kojima and sound director Kazuki Muraoka went to see Replacement Killers at the cinema. They both liked the movie a lot, and the music from the movie seemed pretty good. So, they flew to US, and got Harry Gregson-Williams to make the score for Metal Gear Solid 2. They actually took his music from other movies, such as The Rock, Enemy of the State and some and put on one CD, and told him they'd like to make this video game with a Hollywood type of soundtrack. He also saw the interest in composing for something before he actually saw the picture, since when composing for movies, he always got inspiration from the pictures. And so the soundtrack for MGS2 was created.

Women

Looks like developers of Metal Gear Solid 2 had focused minds on some things while making a game. You open a locker, you see wrapped up posters of a women, you enter the dining hall, you see framed pictures of women in swimming suits. There is even a poster of the Charlie's Angels movie in one room.

Working Title

During development, the game was originally going to be called Metal Gear Solid III (MGS3 for short), which would have completely skipped over the second installment of MGS. This can be seen in the Metal Gear Solid 2 Grand Game Plan by Hideo Kojima.

Awards

• EGM
  • February 2006 (Issue #200) - #82 out of 200 of the "Greatest Games of Their Time" list
• GameSpy
  • 2001 – PS2 Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
  • 2001 – PS2 Action/Adventure Game of the Year
  • 2001 – Best In-Game Cinematics of the Year
  • 2001 – Best Force-Feedback of the Year

Information also contributed by Big John WV, FinalGMR, MegaMegaMan, Mejs, J. Michael Bottorff, Juan Pablo Bouquet, Macintrash, MAT, Ray Soderlund, xofdre and Zovni