Tempy wrote:

Because they have a connection. A lot of that game is about humanity transcending simulation/being reduced to information

I'm going on the fact his relationship with her was a total manipulation in order to facilitate even more sophisticated manipulation further on in his life.

Or bit

And then the jumper wearing bimbo breaks up with him anyway for a guy he only knows through simulations telling him about hara-kari rock.

GET RELEVANT BITCHES

He's the MGS character with most reason to moan about life.

Tempy wrote:

That's part of the surface, but it goes way deeper -

Spoiler:

I still have no idea if any of it is real or if it's all a Simulation, or if the sim is live action. I mean the whole 'OMG Raiden is the Player!' Thing is true to a point, but then he's revealed to be Jack the Ripper, a violent child soldier with an incredible talent for killing. So he's not the tabula rasa you're led to believe, and he's never really been just a player analogue. By that point though, layers are being pulled back and I dunno if it's really possible to plot what's real and what's not. Fortune makes a lot of that very suss too.

Couldn't the Jack the Ripper reveal be adding more weight to what I said, though? Vidoegames train us to be violent, efficient killers within a virtual space from a young age. Maybe Kojima is saying that that's us.

I found the stuff about player agency really interesting. Why do tasks because a computer tells us to, just like Raiden is when the colonel glitches out? It's odd if you think about it. Adding the parallel of likening gamers to a soldier carrying out tasks that involve mindless killing without question is awesome too. Layers, man, like you said. MGS 2 is the best.

If blonde kid in V trailers is Raiden I wonder if we'l get to seeing a young Solidus.

The Jack the Ripper stuff is definitely part of that idea yes, but I still think it fleshes out Raiden into an actual person who has actual trauma and pathos rather than just a total wet character/cypher for the nerds playing the game. The parallel between training child soldiers and raising kids on violent videogames is there though, but also child soldiers are a thing and he isn't the first one in the series either.

I mean I'm not unaware of the stuff you said, I've read tons on MGS2 and had lots of conversations and playthroughs of it myself thinking about the various facets*, I don't think there's much left for me to see of it, but it still doesn't ever tie up neatly, which is part of its strength. As I get further along I think the most interesting part is the holistic stuff around the game rather than the actual player agency stuff that people frequently go on about. The prescience of the plots attitude to information, the internet, the way the world neatly followed Kojima's abstract predictions about the importance of filtering information, I find all that way more interesting than the matryoshka like layers of meaning around hte core narrative. That's not a dismissal either, I just think Koj has had a really good through-line of thought throughout the series, even through his Gene/Meme/Scene bullshit, he's still mainly been talking about perception.

*shit that reads really uppity and smug, not intentional - I just meant to say that I hadn't posted my snippet about the Colonel difference from MGS1/2 whilst being unaware of the whole "The Player is Raiden is The Player" thing

HOW DO WE PERCEIVE THE WORLD AROUND US

HOW DO WE PERCEIVE HISTORY

HOW DO WE PERCEIVE OURSELVES

HOW DO WE PERCEIVE GOOD AND BAD

ffs koj sit down

What was the diff between Solidus's and Ocelot's goals again? If any?

Actually considering doing 1 on PS1. What games on the memory card trigger a Psycho Mantis response? There's Pro Evo and?

Sweet. Got that one

Don't have that one

i cold have sword he mentions track and field....

I'm another that despised Twin Snakes, mainly because the soundtrack was changed which I absolutely loved in the original. Also the OTT cutscenes were cringe.