00:00 .
00:01 This video is sponsored by NordVPN
00:04 The '90s were a great time
00:08 to be depressed.
00:09 Oh my what a great start!
00:12 But really, I don't know what happened in Japan in the '90s
00:14 but suddenly there were all these stories
00:17 about people broken to pieces that also
00:19 questioned the ideas of their own
00:21 genres. You had Cloud in Final Fantasy 7
00:24 breaking the idea of the protagonist
00:26 as a though guy. There was Takeshi Kitano making films
00:30 about Yakuzas that were fed up with life and there was
00:32 Evangelion telling about how even
00:34 during the end of the world humankind
00:36 was still so confused that it would keep
00:38 hurting itself. In middle of all this
00:40 turmoil Metal Gear Solid arrived.
00:43 A videogame inspired in spy and
00:45 action films that gave the formula a spin to
00:47 tell a story about the
00:49 human cost of war and that touched
00:51 topics of the real word in a way that
00:54 had barely been seen in videogames.
00:56 Metal Gear Solid felt different for the
00:58 mainstream audience. People looked at it and
01:00 said "you beauty, you're art". It was directed
01:04 like a movie, it played with our
01:06 expectations and broke the fourth wall.
01:08 Its sequel Metal Gear Solid 2
01:10 was probably the most awaited game
01:12 of that era, and it's said that the PS2
01:14 had such a successful start thanks to this game.
01:16 Today it is a game well remebered
01:18 for its boldness in toppling down the
01:21 fourth wall and because it predicted
01:23 many thing from the future.
01:24 .
01:28 But we don't remember everything. Metal Gear
01:31 Solid is an anti-war game but
01:33 we remember it for the action and many
01:36 remember its sequel as a game about
01:38 the post-truth, but it is much more than that.
01:41 Spoilers incoming about 19 years ago game,
01:44 because it is important to know the
01:46 story of Metal Gear Solid 2 in order to
01:48 undestand how it is a videogame about the
01:51 death of meaning and the death of
01:53 videogames.
01:55 .
01:58 It's already been 19 years... why am I old
02:04 Let's start with the basics: what is Metal
02:07 Gear Solid 2 about? Well, it is a sequel to
02:10 Metal Gear Solid, so what is Metal Gear
02:13 Solid about... Well, it all starts
02:16 with the terrorists. You have to find
02:18 Meryl, so you have to go searching with
02:20 each one of the soliders because
02:22 Meryl has a nice ass and she moves in
02:24 such a sexy way ... Psychomantis and he
02:28 reads your Memory Card and tells you
02:30 that you like Castlevania, right?
02:32 Well, it just goes about an agent called Solid Snake that
02:34 infiltrates a base called Shadow Moses
02:35 in order to stop the definitive weapon called
02:37 Metal Gear that happens to be solid and can drop
02:40 nuclear bombs.
02:42 For Metal Gear Solid 2 Snake has
02:45 decidided to work on its own and travels
02:47 to a tanker in which Ray is being developed.
02:49 That is the new model of Metal Gear and oh God the game
02:53 if packed with innovations. As Snake moved
02:56 very slowly now he can
02:58 roll to avoid enemies and
03:00 he can hide bodies in cabinets and
03:02 aim in first person to shoot people
03:05 in the face and so many ways to
03:07 deal with corpses. The graphics are
03:10 very detailed, Snake's bandana
03:12 waves in the wind and your steps leave
03:15 a trail. Objects create shadows and the
03:18 soundtrack is composed by Harry
03:20 Gregson-Williams, also known for his
03:23 work on prestigious films like
03:25 Flushed Away or Birdget Jones: The Edge of Reason.
03:29 .
03:33 It is quite good, and people were
03:37 very excited in a kind of "Oh boy here I go killing again" way.
03:42 But as you advance, you start to see some
03:45 details and perhaps not everything is alright.
03:48 You see, in the first Metal Gear Solid
03:50 Snake met Meryl, a woman with no
03:53 experience in the battlefield
03:55 that wanted to fight to better understand
03:57 her father, that also was a soldier.
03:59 There is a well known scene where Snake
04:02 says that Meryl is a rookie because she
04:04 is not aiming well, and she can't get herself
04:06 to shoot. Now in the tanke Snake meets
04:09 Olga, a woman that also wants to be a
04:11 soldier to tighten her relation with her
04:13 father, but she has received advanced
04:15 training and when Snake points his gun
04:17 to her, it is him that can get himself to
04:20 shoot, because Olga perhaps could take him down.
04:23 Meryl has to be rescued, but Olga is
04:25 the first boss of the game. Before if
04:28 you had to save your game you called Mei
04:30 Ling, an analyst that quoted proverbs
04:32 and Shakespeare to give advice and to
04:34 encourage Snake, but now she's not there.
04:37 To save your game you call Otakon,
04:39 a friend of Snake that tries to fill the hole
04:41 reading a proverbs book but
04:43 he can't get even half of it.
04:57 .
05:00 They are trying to keep the state of affairs
05:04 but there's just no normality to return to.
05:06 We are in a new enviornment
05:09 in a new console, and we go against
05:11 a new type of Metal Gear. But we are not
05:14 having a bad time either, there's
05:16 even one time when we basically
05:18 play Pokemon Snap taking pictures of
05:20 Ray and Otakon plays Professor Oak.
05:23 Oh, this games makes me laugh. And then
05:26 the villain appears and steals Metal Gear Ray,
05:28 sinks the tanker and Snake dies... but
05:31 what the...
05:40 The plot advances two years and something
05:43 weird is going on, they have sent another
05:46 agent called Snake to Big Shell, an
05:49 oil facility, in order to rescue
05:51 the President taken by a terrorist group called Sons of
05:54 Liberty... but those details keep coming.
05:57 Shadow Moses and the tanker were blue, but
05:59 Big Shell is orange, its
06:01 complementary color, and while Snake
06:03 at frist had to avoid several
06:05 guards
06:07 here we are welcomed by some cockroaches
06:10 and perhaps this is not our Snake,
06:13 he has a different voice, a different body and
06:16 suit and...
06:20 .
06:24 Nope, this defintively is not Solid Snake
06:29 Ladies, gentlemen and NB people
06:32 I present you your new protagonist
06:34 Raiden. This is such a twist, in
06:38 no place at all it was stated that Raiden would be
06:40 the protagonist, he doesn't show up in the box art,
06:42 nor in the start screen, he's not anywhere
06:44 in ad campaingn and it's not only that,
06:47 the trailers show fake pictures and
06:50 manipulate the cinematics to make you
06:52 think that you will be playing as
06:53 Snake. Some people thought this part was
06:56 a dream or some kind of joke or something like that,
06:59 but no.
07:00 Raiden is the true protagonist of
07:02 Metal Gear Solid 2, and the tanker was
07:05 just the prologue. A lot of people were
07:09 not happy about this, and well also
07:12 Raiden is a very different character.
07:14 Snake was a though guy, inspired by the
07:17 action icons of the '80s and '90s. A macho.
07:19 But Raiden is a twink.
07:23 His features are way more fragile, he makes
07:26 lateral rolls like a cheerleader and
07:27 when he shows up
07:31 it looks as if they introduced him through
07:33 the back door.
07:34 There's seagulls flying around and you can...
07:38 Oh symbolism, it's you! And if you feel
07:40 frustration don't worry, nobody likes
07:43 Milhaus... well that's a joke,
07:46 but instead of Milhaus it goes with Raiden,
07:49 nevertheless Milhaus is also a bit of an
07:51 idiot. The whole game is a smear campaign
07:54 to make Raiden look insignificant.
07:56 It's not only that in the first
07:58 Metal Gear you start avoiding soldiers,
08:00 here there are soldiers, but they are knocked out. Somebody
08:04 has done your homework. The room is
08:05 smaller and they give you a lot of time to hide
08:08 as if you were in Kindergarten.
08:09 While Snake have a team of trained
08:12 soldiers assisting him through
08:14 thel codec, Raiden is assisted by
08:16 his Colonel, and his girlfriend Rose.
08:19 You have to call Rose to save, and
08:21 time to time these conversations start
08:23 about how they met each other
08:26 and if he remembers what day is tomorrow. April the
08:28 30th, that why he doesn't sleep with her and
08:31 Raiden is hands full focusing
08:33 in the mission, in the middle of a shooting
08:35 while I am murdering...
08:37 And perhaps this is not the best time to talk
08:39 about us, but well it isn't either that we're
08:41 prepared for the mission. Snake was already a
08:44 veteran when he arrived in Shadow Moses,
08:46 but this is the first time for Raiden, he
08:49 has been educated with VR simulations.
08:50 The Colonel is telling him the whole time
08:52 the he has to adhere to a very
08:54 concrete plan, and he constanstly gets
08:57 overwhelmed and we feel it. Something
09:01 very characteristic of Metal Gear Solid is
09:03 the minimap, it tells you what the room
09:05 is like and where the enemies are, what
09:08 is the are they can see, and if they are investigating
09:10 something or are hostiles. As there are
09:13 always part of the map that you can't see, the minimap
09:15 is a very useful tool.
09:17 Raiden doesn't have that luxury, if he wants a
09:19 minimap he must first synchronize with the
09:21 terminal, but until
09:23 he finds it, he is completely blind.
09:26 But this is very curious, why is this
09:28 node asking us to fill
09:29 our data, but wouldn't Raiden already
09:31 give his data, this is a little weird.
09:33 Snake had a tranquilizer
09:35 gun with muffler, but
09:37 Raiden doesn't have shit. (sic "has no dick")
09:39 We are unarmed, disoriented, we just
09:41 started.
09:42 And we also play in disadvantage because...
09:45 Holy fuck! And if this was not enough
09:47 everybody is rubbing salt in the wound
09:50 remembering you are not Solid Snake,
09:52 even Raiden would love to be Snake, the
09:56 legendary soldier, the hero of Shadow
09:59 Moses. Raiden is the embodiment of disappointment.
10:02 Everybody tells him his code name is
10:04 very weird, they undervalue him and his
10:06 enemies get disappointed when they see him.
10:12 The poor guy can't get a break, they
10:14 haven't even told him what is going on
10:16 and it is clear that Raiden has not
10:19 the slightest idea what he is into.
10:21 Metal Gear Solid was a spy thriller,
10:23 there were twists, but Snake knew what
10:27 he was into at the beginning of the game, the twists
10:29 and misdirection were so for everybody,
10:31 but here Raiden is being called an idiot
10:33 in his own face because, well,
10:35 it turns out that Snake is still alive.
10:37 Raiden meets a guy called Iroquois
10:39 Pliskin and of course it is
10:43 Snake, but Raiden bites the hook, lind and sinker and everybody
10:47 lies to him... he just believes it, and that's
10:49 already knowin even less than the player, and how much
10:52 of an idiot can somebody be. But well, all
10:55 of this doesn't really matter because they will
10:56 blow the whole place, I
11:00 present you the Elite Unit Sons
11:03 of Liberty. They were an antiterrorist
11:05 group with powers, but now
11:07 they are just terrorists with powers.
11:09 Oh well, there's also Fatman. He sets bombs, and you have
11:14 to deactivate them. And you may be thinking
11:16 well I will have to go to one given place,
11:19 and it will not be that hard to find the bomb.
11:22 Well, this is how this works. They give you a sensor, but it can only
11:27 detect the general area where the
11:30 bomb is.
11:31 You have to go searching around, and then
11:33 you hear a beep, and that means you ar close and
11:35 bombs are always hidden in
11:37 elaborate places, and of course there are
11:40 enemies patrolling.
11:42 But well, you go to do your thing
11:43 and then there's this brige, it seems
11:46 there's nobody here
11:47 .
11:49 There's another bridge further on that's
11:51 packed with explosives and
11:53 you have to deactivate them using a
11:54 sniper rifle that you don't have so
11:57 you have to backtrack to the storage room
11:59 and look around in the different rroms
12:00 and you get the PSG1, and well you just
12:04 to go back, don't let them catch you,
12:06 beware of the
12:07 .
12:09 Now you can shoot the fuses,
12:11 but oh well they are all hidden and you
12:14 have to look around the whole are, but
12:17 I believe I got them all-
12:26 Aren't you kind of tired? Nobody tells us
12:31 anything, everything is hard and the game is
12:34 breaking its own rules. After
12:37 deactivating the last bomb we
12:39 fight Fortune, another member of
12:41 dead cell
12:43 ...they are laughing at us.
12:45 She has a tiny life bar, with just one bullet
12:48 you would kill her but
12:50 it is impossible because bullets don't touch her
12:52 But don't worry, she just has a cannon that
12:55 destroys any cover and hurts
12:57 you a lot. And isn't it frustrating!
13:00 Perhaps Snake could take her down, but Raiden can't.
13:02 We can't. We are just rookies, this
13:06 is above us and the game mechanics are
13:10 letting us know this.  But well, we beat Fortune
13:12 we go on, we beat Fatman
13:14 we advance through the facility and finally we find
13:16 the President. It is something.
13:22 Once we overcome this awkward moment the
13:25 the plot continues and it turns out that
13:27 the situation is way worse than
13:30 we imagined.
13:32 The terrorist are not asking for a ransom,
13:35 and the President is just a marionette
13:38 of a greater force. Enter the scene
13:41 the Patriots. An organization
13:43 that leads the world from within the shadows.
13:45 Their plan is to control history
13:47 by curating information.
13:59 .
14:13 This is also a reference to 1984
14:20 and its newspeak. Erasing some words, and binding
14:23 some others together to give them new
14:25 meanings, and making it impossible for anybody
14:27 to even think outside of the planned. The code name
14:29 of the Partiots is LA LI LU LE LO. This is
14:32 just an extension of this idea.
14:35 The 'L' phoneme does not exist in Japanese,
14:38 the Patriots is an unpronounceable name for an
14:40 invisible organization.
14:42 Nobody can find them because nobody
14:44 even knows they can search for them.
14:47 Even the whole idea that we were in an
14:48 oil facility comes down.
14:50 It turns out that Big Shell is a
14:53 facade to hide Arsenal Gear, a
14:56 a building that harbors tens of
14:58 Metal Gear Rays, and from which the
15:00 Patriots can launch their plan
15:02 using an artificial intelligence called GW.
15:03 The twists continue because
15:08 it turns out that Pliskin is Snake!
15:12 And he has another brother called Solidus
15:16 and he was the previous USA President
15:19 and they kill the current USA President
15:23 and Raiden is knocked out and
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17:01 .
17:03 .
17:12 .
17:14 .
17:19 Reality comes down and everything that
17:23 we took for granted is broken. Raiden was
17:26 a kid soldier, the most violent of his
17:29 unit, and if he is so repressed it is
17:32 because the nightmares from his traumatic
17:34 past terrorize him. But it is worse
17:37 because the Colonel that has been leading him
17:39 during the whole operation doesn't even exist,
17:43 is is an artificial intelligence,
17:44 part of GW, and the facade breaks, the
17:48 game interface stops making sense,
17:50 the minimap becomes a recording of
17:53 a girl in her house,
17:55 the codec calls that before gave you
17:57 useful information are now nonsense
17:59 that break the fourth wall.
18:08 Metal Gear Solid 2 is showing you its
18:11 seams, you can't ignore anymore that this
18:14 is a program, just software playing back
18:16 in your console. The idea of
18:18 rescuing the President is ludicrous.
18:21 It is just the cheapest excuse you can
18:23 come up with to make an action videogame
18:25 and Metal Gear Solid 2 has been using
18:27 it to mislead you from its
18:29 true objective. The plan S3.
18:35 .
18:42 .
18:46 .
18:48 And it is here when it all gets
18:52 interesting. From the beginning Metal
18:58 Gear Solid 2 has fooled around with the idea of
19:00 killing Snake. The story begins with
19:03 Snake walking on a bridge with a
19:05 coat. It is a shot intentionally prepared
19:07 so that we can't know if it is really him.
19:08 When he jumps and takes the coat off, he
19:11 becomes invisible and the shot confuses us. Is it him?
19:14 Are we in the right game? When
19:16 we start with Raiden, when they call him Snake
19:18 he uses a voice tone more similar
19:20 to his own.
19:26 Raiden admires Snake, but
19:29 he is just a rookie and we are
19:31 trapped with him, because of this Iroquois
19:34 Pliskin is so relevant. His name comes
19:36 from Snake Plissken, the protagonist of
19:38 1997's Escape from New York, and he is in turn
19:41 the referent for Snake. Referent and
19:44 references are confused and we see Snake
19:46 from outside, as this fusion of ideas
19:50 but also as a provocation,
19:52 just like told by Dylan Holmes with
19:54 Pliskin's appearance Metal Gear
19:56 Solid 2 simultaneously undermines and
19:58 justifies its own framework. In any other game
20:00 this would be a failed plot twist.
20:02 But this in intentional, Metal Gear
20:04 Solid 2 separates the player's knowledge
20:06 from the protagonist's. This creates
20:09 a space for examination.
20:11 Snake's presence constantly reminds us
20:12 of the pleasure he has been
20:14 denied. And this desire to be
20:16 Solid Snake is the chief element
20:19 linking the player and Raiden. But the
20:22 Plan S3 breaks this desire. We like Snake
20:25 because he is the hero of Shadow Moses, he is
20:27 the protagonist of Metal Gear Solid and
20:30 now the sequel is discussing that
20:32 anybody could have done that without us
20:35 realizing it. Metal Gear Solid 2
20:37 was repeating the events of Shadow
20:39 Moses and Raiden could have been the
20:41 hero with the same ease as Snake.
20:44 Snake is nothing but a marionette, and anybody could be
20:47 that. In the tanker your first
20:50 shooting with lethal ammunition is in a
20:52 hall where enemies appear and
20:55 wait for you to shoot them.
20:57 It almost looks like a section from an on-rails
20:59 shooter, as if you were playing
21:00 Time Crises. The game is speaking to you: "I suppose
21:04 this is what being the legendary hero
21:06 Solid Snake is". When Raiden wakes up he is
21:09 naked, exposed, vulnerable. But he is also
21:13 a blank sheet, he can be
21:15 anything now.
21:16 His first step to a new identity comes with
21:19 the katana, it is the only close quarters weapon
21:22 in the game, you can bounce bullets with it
21:24 and it is controlled with the
21:26 right analog stick, it is the only time
21:29 the game uses it. The objects
21:31 works with buttons, the camera is always
21:33 fixed, and to control the first person view
21:35 you use the left analog stick. We are now
21:38 playing with phonemes that do not exist, outside
21:41 the framework that they imposed to us. We fight
21:43 side by side with Snake, but the game tries to stops us.
21:46 These Game Over screens are fakes.
21:48 We are still here but they insist
21:51 that we are over. We are
21:53 disobeying the orders, existing
21:56 outside of what they impose us, and what
21:58 they are imposing us... are memes.
22:01 .
22:05 .
22:07 .
22:08 Memes are something more than just that
22:10 new pack of stickers you have on telegram.
22:12 Richard Dawkins created this term in 1976
22:15 to define the social equivalent to
22:17 genes. If genes transmit
22:20 genetic information, memes
22:22 transmit cultural information. They
22:24 are called like this, in part due to the word
22:26 mimesis, they reproduce by imitation. Something
22:29 as little as saying Jesus after
22:32 coughing is a meme, but also
22:34 something like money could be understood
22:37 as a meme. He who controls the memes
22:39 controls the world. At the end of the game
22:42 before the final fight, you receive a
22:44 last codec call.  This is one of the most
22:47 well known speeches in the
22:49 history of videogames.
23:01 .
23:06 .
23:11 .
23:17 .
23:27 .
23:42 .
23:53 When the Internet arrived there was this hope
23:56 that we would live in a society of
23:58 information distinguished and developed, but
24:01 already in 2001 Metal Gear Solid 2 predicted
24:04 that this same information could
24:05 be manipulated to drown any
24:07 discourse, and how the world would become entrenched
24:10 in bubbles of
24:11 partial ideas. But wait a moment,
24:13 the ones saying this are the villains of the
24:16 game, literally the supreme evil of
24:19 Metal Gear Solid 2. How can it be
24:21 the final message of this story? What
24:24 happens here is that the last one and a half hour
24:26 of Metal Gear Solid 2 is very dense, so it is
24:29 normal that people end up remembering only up to this
24:30 iconic speech, but the truth is
24:33 that after you beat the final boss
24:35 Snake gives yet another speech.
24:45 .
24:48 .
24:50 .
24:51 .
24:57 .
25:16 .
25:17 .
25:22 .
25:23 .
25:26 April 30th is not only the anniversary of
25:29 Raiden and Rose, it is also the
25:31 anniversary of designation of George
25:33 Washington as the first President of the
25:36 United States. Metal Gear Solid 2 ends in
25:39 the same date in which a group of people
25:41 decided to find a new
25:43 maeaning for the world and to transmit it
25:46 to the coming generations. And well
25:48 it went really great. It is a very open ending
25:52 with many questions with no answers and
25:54 untied ends, but this is intentional.
25:58 Don't grapple to words, don't try to write
26:00 a line of events summarizing the plot,
26:03 what's important is the meaning of these
26:05 events for you, and how will you transmit them to
26:08 the world. You didn't know but all along
26:11 Metal Gear Solid 2 was postmodern
26:13 propaganda, and now it is too late
26:15 escape it. But yes, this game is
26:18 postmodern, it is a discussion opossite to
26:21 tradition that breaks bssically
26:22 any etiquette. But after that
26:25 rupture, we can create something new.
26:28 No to rebuild, but build anew something
26:31 with meaning for us.
26:32 Search beyond the words and
26:34 and find something good in which you can believe and
26:37 transmit this to those who will come after you, that
26:40 is what matters, and that is how this game ends.
26:43 Mother of mine! The final fight was hard,
26:47 bloody fight, but I have succeeded
26:50 and then Kojima says... (I won!)
26:54 (just as planned /s)
27:00 There's just another meaning behind the S3.
27:03 You remember all this thing about having to
27:05 deactvate bombs, and Fatman and so?
27:08 This seems to be disconnected from the rest of the
27:10 story, but then the end of
27:12 the game arrives and you're told that Fatman
27:14 was there only to put
27:17 Raiden to the test and the bombs are
27:20 the most damning part of the game and they always
27:22 get your where you less expect them, but
27:24 all of them are accessible, Fatman hides the
27:28 explosives behind that flag, but he could
27:30 have put them under the bridge, and then
27:32 you would have never found them, but perhaps in some
27:34 other videogame you would have been able to.
27:36 Splinter Cell is a stealth videogames
27:38 franchise that was created in
27:40 response to Metal Gear Solid 2 y its
27:43 gameplay is much more centered
27:45 in disappearing in the shadows and using
27:47 the architecture to your advantage. In Hitman you
27:50 hide in plain sight disguising you with
27:52 different suits to impersonate some
27:54 other people. There's one time when you
27:56 have to disguise yourself in Metal Gear Solid 2,
27:58 the solution here is not to kill a guard
28:00 and wear his clothes, but to
28:03 go to a specific room and find a specific
28:06 weapon, because the suits has already
28:07 been given to you. Videogames cannot be
28:10 everything, e.g. something as simple as
28:12 making Raiden able to disguise himself, well
28:15 it is a system that needs to be developed and
28:16 what will then be the model for the naked soldiers, and
28:19 how will they detect you if you are disguised, and
28:21 if you disguise as a soldier what does this give you
28:23 access to, and the support diguise, and the oof.. and
28:26 as it gets so complex, games are usually oriented
28:28 to be played in a specific way, so that
28:31 you think in a specific way, this is the directed
28:35 libertad dirigida. Due to the simple fact of
28:37 playing a videogame, they are already taking
28:40 phonemes from you and hiding information
28:42 so that you think how the developers
28:44 want. Some time ago there was an article
28:47 about how Riot, the developer of
28:50 League of Legends said
28:51 that it was convenient to have a story, some
28:54 moment of your experience as a player that
28:56 defined your passion and in which memorable
28:59 story you took out from that. But no,
29:02 I'm sorry, you didn't beat Naxxramas after an
29:04 epic duel with your adventurer freinds.
29:07 You were just pushing keys in your keyboard,
29:10 and moving your mouse to win agains an
29:12 artificial intelligence that was
29:13 programmed to lose. Nothing happens in a
29:17 videogame without the consent of the
29:18 developer. If you have even beaten the
29:20 hardest difficulty, that is because they wanted
29:23 you to beat it. They were manipulating you.
29:25 Just like they were manipulating Raiden. The Colonel does not exist.
29:29 It is a creation of GW, born of Raiden's
29:32 necessity of having somebody
29:34 giving him orders at the other side of
29:35 the codec. Playing videogames makes you
29:38 an expert at following orders, that's what
29:41 you need to beat them, to overcome
29:43 their challenge, to believe youself an efficient
29:46 soldier, a warrior that overcomes
29:48 any challenge, or the legendary
29:50 soldier Solid Snake. What is a videogame?!
29:54 A miserable handful of secrets!
29:58 I will not break this mug, not even one
30:01 so digusting.
30:02 A videogame is just a set of excuses to
30:04 interact with a system. At the end of
30:06 the story they are telling you this in your
30:08 face.
30:09 Olga, turns out, was working for
30:11 the Patriots, because otherwise they would kill her
30:13 baby, and when everything is revealed it turns out that
30:16 Rose was also an agent of the
30:18 Patriots. Now they have her
30:20 kidnapped, and she is pregnant.
30:22 The final fight is against Solidus, but it
30:25 doesn't matter who wins. Solidus wants to take Raiden
30:28 out of the way, and the Patriots
30:30 force him to act. If he doesn't fight,
30:32 they will kill Rose and Olga's baby. But is
30:35 that ture? Or are thos excuses they
30:38 came up with so that we fight
30:39 against our father in a very tight suit and
30:40 so that he chokes us with his long
30:41 tentacles?
30:42 .
30:50 After you beat solidus, the world
30:52 literally starts working again. New
30:55 York, that was literally empty like
30:57 two seconds ago is like a Matrix
31:00 simulation. And in the middle of all this
31:03 something appears in Raiden like by an act of magic.
31:05 This dog tag has the data that we
31:08 introduced in order to synchronize with
31:10 the Big Shell terminals. We were not
31:12 introducing Raiden's data, but ours.
31:14 And if the dog tag had not
31:17 appeared before, it is because Raiden wasn't
31:19 capable of seeing it. Now that he has broken apart
31:21 from all of it, he can see those chains, he sees us and
31:24 he chooses to discard us, in the end of the
31:27 story Raiden frees himself and seeks his
31:30 own destiny, his own identity.
31:33 It doesn't matter how real Rose is. The future
31:35 belongs to them and to nobody else.
31:40 The protagonists in a videogame
31:42 can be mainly two things:
31:44 strong heroes with their own
31:46 identity and desires, or mannequins that
31:49 exist only to be carried on however the
31:51 player wantes, and the more freedom we have
31:53 the less personality the chracter
31:55 has. Raiden exists inside this
31:58 tension, we control him but relucantly
32:00 He has no desire to be here,
32:03 he feels lost, he is not does not trust anything
32:06 he is told, and even though he is indecisive
32:09 in the cinematics nobody can stop him in the
32:11 gameplay. But it's not only him, eveything
32:14 around him talks about this tension.
32:16 Rose is not just an agent of the
32:18 Patriots. She herself is an invention, her
32:21 hair, the way she behaves, everything has been
32:23 adapted to be liked by Riden and by us.
32:26 It is a fakeness we can't hold onto.
32:29 It does not exist inside the videogame.
32:31 But it also doesn't exist outside it.
32:34 Because it is no more than a handful of
32:36 pixels interpreted by an actress.
32:38 The whole ending of Metal Gear Solid 2 is
32:41 made to break with the forms of the
32:42 videogame and extend a hand to the
32:44 true protagonist of this
32:46 story: the player. The same as us
32:50 Raiden has been trained with VR
32:51 and knows the incident of Shadow
32:54 Moses through a simulation.
32:55 Same as us, he admires Snake and he
32:59 wants to be Snake. Metal Gear Solid 2 is a
33:01 response to the first Metal Gear Solid and
33:04 to videogames. Don't let nostalgia
33:06 blind you. Be critic with the history and
33:09 history (plural). Solid Snake is not
33:12 a role to follow
33:13 Enjoy the videogame, but don't
33:15 drown in it. Above everything what matters
33:18 is you. Don't let yourself be manipulated, seek the
33:22 meaning that reality has for
33:24 you and, well it's like all these good
33:26 intentions went to crap very
33:28 fast. Let's not get confused, Metal Gear
33:30 Solid 2 was very successful, it is one of
33:32 the best sold exclusives for the PS2,
33:34 and to be honest it had a very
33:36 good reception by the critics,
33:38 in the other hand the public.
33:41 Well, th eplot of Metal Gear Soid 2
33:43 is still very copmlex even today, but in
33:45 2001 that was demential. It ended and we
33:47 hadn't the slightest idea of what happened, but
33:49 anyway there's a lot of people that
33:51 weren't too happy that a
33:53 game so awaited would be so critic with
33:55 the previous entry, and the idea of playing
33:57 with a protagonist that was not the one
33:59 announced, and the was so different to the the
34:01 expected roles of the genre, and also playing
34:03 with the idea of the death of the
34:04 original protagonist, and wait a moment
34:06 why is the last of us 2 showing up?
34:08 It turns out that there are many
34:10 paralelisms between these 2 titles. Kojima,
34:12 for exampe, wanted each soldier to
34:14 be unique, with a unique name, and that we
34:16 would be able to get their dog tag and with this
34:19 see how many people
34:19 we had murdered along the
34:21 story... and does that ring a bell? and also it
34:24 saddens me because theres many people that
34:27 sees Kojima as this frustrated filmmaker,
34:29 and well he is, but what he wanted was
34:32 to make a videogame that spoke like a
34:34 videogame. Please take a look at the
34:36 design document, there Kojima talks
34:38 about stuff like graphics, he wanted it to
34:40 strenghten the mechanics. And well, yes,
34:43 you can go in cinematics 15 or 20 minutes without
34:45 even touching the controls, but then
34:47 you touch the controls and the mechanics
34:48 are telling you stuff that later
34:50 develops the story, but well Metal
34:52 Gear Solid 2 is a wonderful game, it is
34:55 one of my favorite games of
34:56 all time, and if made you get a little curious and
34:58 want to play the game, then please
35:00 enjoy it. The new versions even have
35:02 a mode with skateboard, so you
35:04 can imagine. But well, this is my legacy
35:07 for you, and I leave it to you so that
35:09 it moves into the future and so that you learn
35:11 the most important lesson:
35:14 make good memes. You could save the world!
35:18 And with this the year is ending, I hope
35:22 that you liked it, I mean the video not the year,
35:24 we all know how 2020 went. Thanks to you.
35:26 And to my patrons that decorate the credits now
35:28 and help me pay all this stuff,
35:31 specially thanks to my main benefactors:
35:33 .
35:35 .
35:39 .
35:40 .
35:44 .
35:47 .
35:51 .
35:54 You could also be part of this catalog
35:56 by contributing 5 euros or more
35:58 in Patreon and also tomorrow the new month begins
36:01 so you can also participate in the
36:03 vote to select the topic for a new video
36:05 and I hope you have a happy
36:07 end of year and a good start of 2021. I
36:10 will take some days off
36:11 but then I come back on full with "the legend
36:14 of videogame", "majora's mask" and "ocarna of time"
36:16 and well, "cyber punk 2077" of
36:19 course.
36:19 I am working on that, and well we will
36:22 see each other next time, thanks again to
36:24 NordVPN, remember to buy
36:26 "Protagonista" my comic already available to
36:29 buy.