The 20th anniversary of Metal Gear Solid 2 is commemorated

Metal Gear Solid 2, one of the titles that made the PS2 become the must-have platform of the sixth generation, was released 20 years ago. It’s been 20 years since we first met Raiden, the game’s unexpected major protagonist, who has gone from questionable beginnings to become one of the most well-known characters in the franchise, second only to Snake himself, in all his bizarre, perplexing variations.Hideo Kojima himself took to Twitter to express his surprise at the Metal Gear Solid 2 anniversary. “My God, it’s been 20 years?” he exclaims. We understand how you feel, Hideo.

Twenty years since the introduction of Raiden to the franchise.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty was released on November 13th, 2001, and was met with some seriously high praise, particularly in terms of its themes. Many critics considered it ahead of its time as it explored rather academic concepts such as existentialism, postmodernism, and freedom of thought. Pretty deep narratives for a videogame at the time, even games these days struggle to effectively tackle such subject matter. In the years since, all twenty of them, the game has gone down in history as a landmark entry in the franchise, one which successfully expanded on the original game’s mechanics, adding a cover system and improving the enemy’s AI, allowing them to take cover, attempt to flank, and call backup when getting overrun by the player.

The Metal Gear Solid 2 anniversary is also an opportunity to remember the first appearance of the character Raiden, some will remember this fondly, others with a twinge of pain and disappointment as Snake was expected to be the protagonist, but was only playable in the prologue chapter. A classic bait and switch which was met with some controversy as the pre-release marketing and footage showed only Snake, even in gameplay situations which happened to Raiden in the published game.

Twenty years is a long time, and we hope to see more Metal Gear Solid games continue to push the boundaries of storytelling and technical artistry, however, given the drama between Konami and Kojima, we’ll have to wait and see.

Of course, 20 years later Raiden is an almost globally recognized character to anyone familiar with videogame culture and has continued to appear in the franchise. He even gets a pretty kickass cyborg exoskeleton in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and returns as the main protagonist in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, where the normal Metal Gear Solid gameplay is eschewed in favor of a novel take on the hack and slash genre allowing the player to pick the exact angle of slices in slow-motion to cut the target into an amusingly varied number of shapes.

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• The 20th anniversary of Metal Gear Solid 2 is commemorated
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