The Kojima Files #3 - Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990)
Metal Gear 2 feels like the start of the stealth genre and its belated western release reframes it as a lens for post cold war warfare.
In the 20 months between the release of Snatcher and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake the state of the world had shifted dramatically. With the fall of the Berlin Wall the Iron Curtain had fallen as well, making Europe whole for the first time in over 40 years. The Cold War had ended with revolutions demanding liberal democracy spreading throughout the Eastern Bloc and relations between Washington and Moscow the best they'd been since the second world war. In Japan, the economic bubble, that had seen the country begin to threaten the USA as the world's leading economy, had begun to burst. A harsh warning for the countries revolting of the risks that embracing capitalism, particularly unfettered, could bring.
Three months prior to the Japanese release of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Konami would develop and release their own sequel to Metal Gear exclusively for the North American and European markets titled "Snake's Revenge: Metal Gear 2" following the incredible overseas sales success the game had. Hideo Kojima, had no involvement in the creation of Snake's Revenge, in fact he had not been planning to even make a sequel to Metal Gear until a junior colleague who was working on Snake's Revenge encouraged him to create and pitch his own sequel. This version of Metal Gear 2 would not be seen in the west, in an official release anyway, until 2006 as part of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence; an expanded re-release of 2004's Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
This delayed release of the "real" Metal Gear 2 for western audiences makes the game a fascinating time capsule. It's 1999 setting, chosen to present a time close enough to be embroiled in Cold War tension but far enough away to allow for the light science fiction flavourings of the series, now position the game as recent alt-history. The 2006 western release, therefore, is recoloured by the Yugoslav and Gulf Wars, two wars that would start a year after the game's release and would eclipse Metal Gear 2's 1999 setting, and of course the ongoing Iraq War.
The Story
Metal Gear 2 takes place in Zanzibar Land a fictional country in Central Asia, on the borders of the USSR, Pakistan & China. Much like Metal Gear 1's Outer Heaven, Zanzibar Land is ostensibly just one big military base set up for our hero, Solid Snake, to infiltrate. This is fitting as Zanzibar Land gained independence from the USSR after an uprising of mercenary forces started what would become known as the "Mercenary War" in the years preceding the events of the game. Tapping into the unrest that would become commonplace across the former Soviet Union in the years following the game's release.
Snake's mission, much like in Metal Gear 1, is to rescue a scientist. This time it's the Czech Dr. Kio Marv, inventor of OILIX a petroleum like substance created from genetically modified microalgae that provides an incredible solution to the in game world's energy crisis. Dr. Marv has been kidnapped by the mercenaries of Zanzibar Land during a plane hijacking in an attempt to increase the country's global influence.
Snake is guided over the radio by Roy Cambell, the new commander of FOXHOUND who fills the role of Big Boss in the first game, providing tutorials and hints to the player. Snake also recieves help from American independent journalist Holly White who had infiltrated Zanzibar Land separately on behalf of the CIA a month prior to the game's events. Snake rescues Holly early into the game and she becomes somewhat of a love interest for the rest of the game, while also providing Snake with crucial intel via her CIA connections. This love is almost entirely unrequited by Snake however, who seems incapable of even thinking of love anymore. One of the game's many commentaries on the effects of war on soldiers.
Snake is also reacquainted with Dr. Pettrovich Madnar, the creator of the Metal Gear who has seemingly been captured once again to help a nation of mercenaries perfect a nuclear super weapon and also he rescues Gustava Heffner (previously Natasha Marcova in earlier releases) a member of the Czech secret service who was the bodyguard of Dr. Kio Marv at the time of the aforementioned plane hijacking. These four people, and particularly the latter 3, serve as the core group aiding Snake on his mission to save Dr. Kio Marv and put a stop to the the new and improved Metal Gear D they have access to.
It turns out Zanzibar Land is run by Big Boss, Metal Gear 1's main villain who is believed to have died following the events of the first game. Big Boss having started this country to find a home for those too damaged by wars to return to a normal life. On the surface a noble goal perhaps but one undercut by his scheme of collecting war orphans and grooming them into the life of a mercenary. After betrayal by Dr. Madnar that results in the death of both Dr. Kio Marv and Gustava, Snake is eventually able to destroy Metal Gear D, kill Big Boss for good (definitely for sure) and both he and Holly escape Zanzibar Land with the formula for OILIX.
The Cost of War
Narratively speaking, Metal Gear 2 is a clear attempt by Hideo Kojima to expand on the themes that the first game was barely able to touch on. Metal Gear 2 plays quite heavily with the themes of the human cost of war, in particular for those still alive in its wake. Big Boss' critiques of the treatment of soldiers and veterans is a theme that will come up a lot as I continue to explore Kojima's work. The idea that those who lead societies use war as a means to further their own goals with little consideration for the wellbeing of the people they send on their behalf. The people having often purposefully not been told the full reasons for what they are being told to do. And this service irrevocably harms the soldiers and their loved ones, through death and grief and PTSD.
Coming from Big Boss, however, these critiques ring hollow. By the events of Metal Gear 1, let alone Metal Gear 2, Big Boss has become so comedically evil and representative of the very issues he critiques, it is hard to see him positioned as anything more than a hypocrite. During the events of the "Zanzibar Land Disturbance" Big Boss is harboring child war orphans with the express purpose of turning them into soldiers as they grow up. Where Metal Gear 2 does capture these themes beautifully, however, is in the story of Gustava Heffner and Frank "Gray Fox" Jaeger, who serves as the game's secondary antagonist.
Gray Fox is one of the many soldiers Solid Snake helps rescue from Outer Heaven but it is revealed he is now on the side of Zanzibar Land due to his pre-existing allegiances to Big Boss as his right hand man. Fox was a child soldier himself and was saved by Big Boss during a prior war and taken to the west ultimately finding himself serving under Big Boss as a part of FOXHOUND by the events Metal Gear 1.
Gustava on the other hand was an Olympic Gold medalist figure skater who would fall in love with a man from the west called Frank Hunter at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics and would try to defect to the US to live with him. Her US citizenship was denied and now disgraced in her home country, was banned from competing and representing Czechoslovakia. Her only recourse was to take work as part of the Czech military, where she would find herself as a bodyguard for Dr. Kio Marv. She would never see Frank again.
After Dr. Madnar tips off Gray Fox to the location of Snake and Gustava, Fox cuts off their path to Dr. Kio Marv while piloting the new Metal Gear D. He destroys the single bridge forward and kills Gustava. If you haven't pieced it together, while Gray Fox's name is Frank Jaeger, when he moved to the West he went by Frank Hunter, he was Gustava's former lover.
The political tensions of war associated with the cold war held these two star-crossed lovers apart and pushed them both onto opposite sides of a conflict. Gray Fox's inability to recognise Gustava as he murdered her from within the Metal Gear speaks to the powerful process of dehumanisation in war. Both of your political enemies, to justify the harm caused, and of the self, to become capable of commiting such atrocity.
The Gameplay
From a gameplay persepective Metal Gear 2 is also a marked improvement on the attempted design goals of its predecessor, with clear steps taken to mitigate the limitations of the first game. Enemies now have much better ways of detecting the player. Most immediately noticeable is an improved field of vision, going from a straight line to a cone, which the game immediately conveys to the player on just the second screen of the game. The game also adds a variety of systems based around sound. The most prevalent being that a variety of surfaces make noise when being walked over, attracting any enemies on screen towards your location.
To counteract the buff to the enemies Snake also has a couple of new advantages too. Snake now has the ability to crawl, allowing you to silently move over the sound-making surfaces at the cost of some speed. Crawling also allows Snake to move and hide underneath things such as balconies and trucks to avoid detection. Alerting enemies is also now more forgiving, if Snake can find a hiding spot that while not in the direct line of sight of an enemy he can wait it out until the enemies stop searching for him.
These changes, along with limiting access to healing items, makes Metal Gear 2 a much more refined and fully realised experience than the original but it is still not without its flaws. The elevators that are at the core of Metal Gear 2's level design become easily exploitable avenues for removing alert status and Snake still feels too strong in the late game, becoming a super soldier like figure in a way that trivalises much of the tension the game so expertly builds up in its earlier sequences.
Despite this, Metal Gear 2 comes together in totality as a stronger manifestation of the initial vision of the Metal Gear games and feels like the basis of the modern stealth game, with design choices made in this game going on to be staples of the genre. It would not be until Metal Gear Solid 1 that these design choices would be seen outside of Japan and begin to truly shape the genre however.
I'll be discussing Metal Gear Solid soon but first I will be reviewing Policenauts(1994), Hideo Kojima's second take on the visual novel/adventure game genre that never saw an official international release, so stay tuned for that.
