Metal Gear Solid 2: Gaming’s Greatest Con Job

Hideo Kojima played us all for suckers… and it was pretty cool.

By: Jeremy Parish
December 10, 2011

It was one of the most striking moments in a series of intensely memorable trailers designed to build hype for Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. It lasted barely more than a split-second, but the potency of this single image struck fans with both promise and a desperate sense of mystery. Hero Solid Snake turned, weapon at the ready, and reacted with shock to the sight of a distinctive silhouette cast on the wall. The bulk and outline of the figure left no question in anyone’s mind: This was Snake’s defeated foe Vulcan Raven, come for revenge, or perhaps driven by less blatant motivations.

The mystery, of course, is how Raven could reappear at all. He hadn’t simply been defeated but killed outright. Metal Gear Solid had been a glorious comic book of a video game, all hyperbolic exclamations and costumed super-villains with silly names, which meant it adhered to the comic book tradition of death — namely, that a character isn’t truly dead until you see them die. Off-panel deaths never stick, which is why Liquid Snake had managed to eject from the fiery, low-altitude, yet decidedly offscreen wreck of his surplus Soviet helicopter to fight again.