The Biggest Unsolved Mystery from Metal Gear? 

This is the greatest Metal Gear Solid 2 rectal examination ever made

When I was a kid, Snake having the infinite bandana was confirmation was that Meryl didn't die and he didn't surrender during torture

On the idea of the Tanker section we play being one of Raiden's VR simulations, I believe its the other way around. The footage we see of Snake using a FAMAS and running from the sea water that we never got to play was Raiden's VR simulation, while what we the player went through was the real thing. Since if the playable Tanker section was the VR, Raiden would know things he isn't meant to in the Plant chapter: - Raiden would know that the official story of Snake sinking the tanker is a lie and that Ocelot sank it. - Raiden would know that the official story of the Big Shell cleaning up an oil spill is a lie if he saw that the sunken tanker was actually carrying Metal Gear RAY. - Raiden would already be aware of Metal Gear RAY's existence. He would not mistake it for the new Metal Gear model Ames mentioned being built in the Big Shell if he knew RAY became active two years ago.

The infinite ammo line went over my head the first time and i thought it was just snake saying his intelligence is more than enough ammunition for him

My most intriguing doubt is how did The Patriots get to cover up the Arsenal Gear crash on Manhattan, why nobody in the streets react to it, what did Solidus say before dying and what are the consequences that the Arsenal crash had from there on that would change the world into what we see in 4.

I'm surprised so many people get hung up on the infinite ammo bandana thing with either not understanding it or reading too much into it. It's just a fourth wall breaking joke. Like how they joke about swapping discs or memory cards in MGS4. People tend to read way too much into everything Kojima does. Sometimes he does have really intricate and cryptic stuff. But often, he's just making a joke. He could tweet that he likes to put a teaspoon of ginger dressing in his ramen, and people would find a way to say it entirely explains Nicolas Cage's character in Death Stranding 2.

I always imagined Arsernal was partially in submarine mode, with the area Raiden is on above water and the Rays standing on the rest of the roof, it later raises entirely which is how Ocelot and Snake dived into water

I think Arsenal Gear is big enough that any part you see in the game is believable. The Rays boss fight arena is lit up only at the floor, and the roof is so high that light does not reach it. The arena is surrounded by shallow water and houses most of the Rays.

When I first played MGS2 and Snake said "infinate ammo", I thought he was pointing at his head (not the bandana). In other words, I thought he meant using your brain and strategize with it is also an advantage and it is infinate 😅

I think the arena being a copy of the photography missions could also be because Raiden has done VR training, and experienced those missions. The nanomachines are now creating an arena he's familiar with by hallucinating his past experience in that VR mission.

I always assumed that Arsenal Gear went partially over the water and Raiden was actually on the outside and the rest of the Arsenal Gear had it's roof open for the Metal Gear Rays to come on top in order for the Rays boss fight to be initiated. So Raiden was basically fighting the Rays on the back end of Arsenal Gear hence why it's labelled Rectum. But that's me talking

As a developer, there's nothing more efficient you can do than purposely leave loose ends and things unexplained in your game. This appeals to people's popular imagination and makes them even more interested in your game, creating and inventing crazy theories to explain these gaps in a way that you alone could never manage. And if they ask you something about it, just give a vague answer to stoke their imagination even more.

I've completed 300 missions in VR! I feel like some kind of legendary mercenary.

I came to theorize myself that the cluster worm GW was affected, not only affected the AI system, but also Raiden himself. Solidus after Arsenal Gear crashes and gives his final speech before the sword duel, he tells Raiden he has traces of The Patriots inside his cerebral cortex, so if Raiden's brain is pretty much a part of The Patriot's network going haywire, it would also mean that the cerebral implants and the censorship, which are his old memories when he was a child soldier, are also affected, so much so that his reality is completely messed up. I mean, even the big shootout with Snake as your partner is simply a representation of when Raiden was back in the killing fields on the civil war.

Other mysteries: Why is Psycho Mantis so much stronger as a child? Why is Ocelot's personality so different in MGSV?

I remember reading somewhere that the RAY boss arena was originally going to be an endless MG RAY hanger space inside Arsenal Gear. No matter where you went, you'd discover more open hanger and *no* walls marking the edge of Arsenal Gear.

Another big mystery of Metal Gear 2 is.... why Vamp watches Raiden hand his Dog Tags to Snake during the credits.

The whole Arsenal Gear section is not supposed to be a problem that can be solved with in-world logic. One of the biggest influences to MGS2 was the novel "The New York Trilogy" by Paul Auster which are three short novellas pastiching detective fiction through a postmodern lens. Specifically it's the story "City of Glass" that serves as the biggest influence to the game (and where Peter Stillman got his name from) and concerns a crime fiction author who decides to become a private eye and starts descending into madness as reality itself starts falling apart. It's a story in which the Paul Auster himself is a character and one who's purported author is a different character, like many other pieces of postmodern fiction the line between reality and fiction itself is blurry and muddled. This all goes back to MGS2, just like in City of Glass Raiden not only starts questioning reality itself but also his very own identity and by the time you reach Arsenal Gear reality itself is falling apart and the artificiality of the game itself is laid bare. Arsenal Gear looks like an unfinished level with computer code flying around, the big boss fight happens on an arena reused from a bonus section in MGS:VR Missions, Snake breaks the fourth wall and references the infinity bandana from MGS1 etc. These games all exist in a sort of meta-game world where the characters are simultaneously aware of the fact that they're in a game (when you wanna use the codec push the select button etc) but still take the events in question seriously. You are not meant to relate these events to any form of logic in the MGS world, it is a deliberately supposed to be weird, to feel like the illusion of the games world is breaking down.

Ok I'm going on a limb, my theory is that the VR arena was used during development to play test having that many Rays on screen simultaneously. The design was minimalist enough that developers could save resources not rendering a more complicated scene. As development continued and their deadline was getting closer they didn't get around to change it. At that point Kojima must have decided using the VR arena for such a pivotal battle fit thematically with what the game was going for, so it stayed that way.

I am still wondering about the mystery as to why President Johnson groped Raiden

The weirdest thing about MGS2 for me is a personal Mandela Effect experience I had with it. I always remember seeing Arsenal Gear crash into Manhattan. Whenever I play the game now, I'm always thrown off because I'm ecpecting the cutscene, but then it just cuts to them flying off Arsenal Gear after it came to a stop. I would mention the cutscene to friends, and they'd just be bewildered. The first time I owned MGS2 was the Xbox version, and to this day I swear I remember Arsenal Gear losing control, running aground, and plowing through the city and destroying buildings.

TBH, really like your take that the bandanna is Snake's version of the various boss's supernatural abilities. Effectively, "I don't run out of bullets when I wear this, because I believe I don't."

I made a little research in the Document of MGS 2 about Rectum, and think I found a little bit of cool info... So long story short... The hangar filler with Rays that we see right after escaping the torture chamber was meant to be seen much later. Yes the rectum is also a hangar. I'll just show you the script: AG hangar "Raiden goes through a door and finds himself in a giant hangar that houses RAY. It is too dark to see ahead, and the ceiling and the walls of the huge room are lost in the gloom. The space is looped so that users cannot reach a wall no matter how far they walk.Solidus' voice, amplified by a megaphone, booms out after Raiden enters the hangar." So yeah... Rectum is actually a remain from gigantic hangar storing Rays. Thank for reading anyways😅

In the real world I always thought it was a launch pad for the Rays, like some kind of magnetic catapult and a kind of torpedo launcher that filled with water combination but you could never see the walls of the chamber because it was so huge. But, in the narrative it’s a weird boss-fight Evangelion arena. It might just be the boss-fight room where there’s nowhere else to go, everything has fallen apart and Metal Gear Solid has been melted down to good guy fight the robot. Maybe Kojima saying “this is what you expect from a game, yes?”. I think anything with the hexagon motifs; Big Shell is made out of hexagons, the pattern under-foot in Arsenal Gear is made from green hexagons and the VR Photography Missions have that pattern too.

Nanomachines Son

I always thought MGS 2 was the most Evangelion-Like MGS-Experience. What struck me curious is, there have always been many EVA's references in MGS (like Gray Fox asa Ninja has lot's of similiarities to EVA Unit 00 also his behaviour after he kinda malfunctions and he bangs his head against the ground is a scene very similar to Evangelion) but Kojima never once personally mentioned it? Arsenal Gear at the end of MGS 2 really reminds me of what happens in the last 2 episodes of Evangelion. Everything happens in Shinji Ikaris mind while the real battle is shown in the movie End of Evangelion. The whole ending of MGS 2 is so surreal and bizarre, it would be hard to think that most of the stuff is not going on purely in Raidens mind. Lot's of people say that the story of MGS 2 is the most bonkers story of the MGS universe. This might be true, but there is way more to it. And I've learned here a lot of things I never thought about before. Making the story of MGS 2 timeless, especially with the whole AI twist. Kojima always loves to play with layers of realities. I never made a secret out of it that the story of MGS V is, in contrast to MGS 2, completely bonkers to me. But you will find fantastic stuff there to. The whole substory with Paz and the revelation of this plot was pure brillance. The same, on a smaller scae, could be said about the mission where you have to find Volgin. These are the brillant moments Kojima is playing with the person holding the controller. Nothing is as it seems.

MGS and other Kojima games take place in some kind of Game-Reality, where its implied to be a full and tealized world, but with the implication that some or all of the characters understand that they are game characters, have some lack of control due to that fact, or other reasons. Snake in MGS2 seems to feel comfortable with that but Raiden has a hard time telling video games from reality, and HIS reality, much like how a player obsessed with the war aspect of the MGS games doesnt realize that war is Hell.

Maybe MGS2 is a Simulation “based on a true story” in which the player assumes the role of Raiden and somebody not the Patriots after the events of Revengeance is trying to change the player into a mental copy of Raiden who is the closest thing to a successor of Solid Snake.

This game came out 23 years ago and we’re still making theories about it; Amazing. MGS2 changed my way of thinking forever and I was a child when I first beat it.

I always assumed Snake was being snarky about the headband as a cute callback, not really being literal about it giving him infinite ammo.

I think the reality of MGS 2 was left up in the air as it changed during production, there was a lot of cut content from the ending. I assumed the "Rectum" was a storage area near the lower levels where all the Rays are stored (even though Raiden goes up a ladder). Since the Rays are amphibious, they could launch like submarines from under water, and thus, would be stored at the bottom. The added detail of the shallow water is no different than damp, bowels of a classic wooden ship in fantasy fiction. I assumed that platform you were on was the bottom of a type of elevator shaft, and thats the platform resting at the bottom, with a small layer of water. It being all VR explains a lot of the oddities, such as everyone in new york acting indifferent to Snake and Raiden casually standing around after a devastating terrorist attack and battle to the death atop federal hall. The city was more akin to the Matrix film simulations of a city, as opposed to reality. Again, could just be gamey stuff that wasn't really thought of, or it could be part of Kojima's original plan for it all being a VR simulation. Pretty sure Ocelots matter-of-fact explanation of the entire conspiracy is what it just is - a real world test to see if the VR training works, the AI was testing out its subjects in a real world scenario, solid snake wasn't part of it (or WAS he ?!)

The VR theory is wrong. The level of simulation The Patriots represent is an incomprehensible level of control that lets them make reality into a simulation in a sense. When Raiden is having a crisis of self. It’s being represented by using the imagery of Metal Gear Solid VR to draw parallel to the real life players who probably have that burned into their psyche. This relates to Metal Gear Solid Ghost Babel being revealed as Raidens VR training. The game is being played by “Jack” in the post credits title reveal.

Raiden has played MGS1, which is the VR mission he had played 300 times. And if you save Otocon you get stealth, if you save Meryl you get the bandana. In the opening of the Tanker mission Snake has stealth, so the implication is that Snake saved Otocon and Meryl is dead. But later Snake also has the bandana, which implies that MGS1 as we know it was a VR simulation, where the creators concluded that snake had to either save Otocon or Meryl, but that Snake did the impossible and saved both of them. This is confirmed in MGS4 where they are both alive. It's a way to say "everything you did in the first game isn't canon." And that the real Solid Snake did it better than you did it, even if you got the best rating on the highest difficulty. Solid Snake really is better than that even. Plant is a real world simulation of the VR simulation. It is a real life abstraction of Shadow Moses to see if the conditions can create the ultimate soldier. As in that you can hook a soldier up to a VR reality, and make the perfect soldier. But in Metal Gear Solid 2 it goes wrong. The actors in the simulation try to break free. And the real Solid Snake shows up. Metal Gear Arsenal Rectum is also an abstraction. It's a test arena, it's where Raiden will face not only one Metal Gear but tons of them. It's obvious that it is inside the Metal Gear Arsenal, it's also where Raiden is supposed to fight Solidus like how Snake fought Big Boss. Here is also where the VR thing comes in. Because Metal Gear 1 and 2 are also VR simulations. If you have played through them, you will see that a lot of what snake says when he refers to Outer Heaven didn't happen in the games. Again Kojima is saying that not everything that happened in the games are Canon, he has changed the story a little bit, and the explanation is that this is because the games were flawed VR simulations of real events in that fictional universe. It's a way to fix plot holes and make changes to the story which were forced on the players by the developers. Like Big Boss never says that he is Snake's father in the first games. How does the VR simulation and it's creators deal with seemingly impossible events. They conclude that the supernarural has to be real. Yet Snake and Big Boss went beyond what was possible according to the simulation. The game we are playing is the VR simulation, we are being made into perfect soldiers. And when you think about it, the game wishes to influence people towards non-violence and to be anti-nuclear weapons. But you the player can chose not to co-operate and take whatever you want out of the game. Though you unlike the bigger than the game character Snake will surpass whatever you do, so he is the ideal. Is it a simulation? Yes, the version you are playing is the simulation. Did the events actually happen in the game world? Yes, they did. The tanker is the opposite, there we get to learn the truth, while Raiden has played a different version where Snake was a terrorist. Because they wanted to cover up the existence of the Metal Gear Ray prototype.

The first time I saw it I thought that the hexagon pattern that made up the floor in the arena just moved out of the way to unveil an elevator and the Rays were standing on submerged parts of the Arsenal Gear. Raiden just does his dramatic "standing up while riding an elevator" like in the opening cutscene and it closed up.

It also makes you think the hallucinations with psychomantis and all the other tricks were not caused by nanomachines anyway. just because naomy says they aren't doesnt mean she isn't lying.

The thing about the infinite bandana is, I find that more reasonable than saying a gun has infinite ammo because its mag is shaped like the infinity symbol (MGS3.)

So the answer is “ nanomachines, son.”

The footage featuring things we didn’t actually see in the Tanker chapter was also e3 footage when MGS2 was early in development. The sections involving flooding were going to be in the game but were cut due to the limitations of the PS2. FAMAS was also going to be in the game and was in there at some point but apparently that gun wasn’t commonly used anymore at that point in time and was never a common gun in the US so all the gun nuts working on MGS2 begged Kojima to remove it from the game. Therefore I don’t think those scenes were intended to imply anything, I think they just used footage they already had to represent the Tanker chapter and didn’t realize or care it had things they already cut.

A few weeks ago, at the age of 45, I had my first colonoscopy. Not only did the doctors not find anything wrong, it was spotless. No polyps, no irritation or infection, no sign of disease or cancer. It was a textbook perfect colon. I have the colon of a 30 year old man in the prime of his life. How do you explain such a thing??? Hmmm?!?!? 🤔 I await your explanation.

i always thought that the arsenal gear fight was inside of some sort of simulation room akin to the danger room from the x-men

I got chills from the "I've completed 300 missions in VR" line, considering how long I spent playing VR missions and replaying the MGS2 demo in anticipation of MGS2's release. It me. Me am Raiden.

MSGV in no way brings the series to a full-circle conclusion. There are only more questions than answers after playing V.

My idea is that it was supposed to be a simulation. That's all. Logic didn't need consistency once the cat was out of the bag. When Solidus and Raiden fall from the top of Arsenal, to the top of the federal house, they cover and exaggerated fall(easy to notice with the freecam mode of subsistence). Nobody could have survived that. Reason that makes me think even more that it's a VR simulation. A fake world. And Kojima by making Raiden toss the dogtags with our names was a way to say "stop to believe to this reality, this is not real, not your thing, leave and choose your reality". Then people sent him death treats and so he made MGS2 story a reality in MGS world, and the product of that was MGS4, which has to explain most of the inconsistencies with deus ex makina stuff like the nanomachines. And I hate it.

I buy that Raiden's perceptions were being altered by the nanomachines so the visual aspects of the rectum are explained. To add something else which is interesting and amusing; Arsenal Gear's areas are specifically named after anatomy. What do many animals do when they feel threatened? They empty their bowels as a defence. What is the purpose for Metal Gear Rays? To defend Arsenal Gear. So the rectum is literally that, a storage area for Metal Gear Rays so they can be immediately ejected from the anus to defend Arsenal Gear when it comes under attack. During the Ray fight you can see countless other Rays in the background. It could also explain why the water is present but the level is low. When we're terrified and we empty our bowel it becomes liquid so Arsenal Gear does the same. In the case of an external defence scenario the rectum fills with water so the Rays can "swim'" out more freely. The serious and the silly combined in true Kojima fashion.

After seeing a detailed hint on Dr Clark in Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain end credits, it had me thinking. If Cyborg Ninja truly did killed Dr Clark, why was it confirmed to be he instead of she? Either Para Medic had a plastic surgery for gender change, or it was her husband or colleague that was killed in her place. Or if she was “killed”, here is an interesting theory I had read and compiled from the communities back then. Dr Madner, whom was saved by Solid in MG1 only to return as Big Boss ally in MG2. He survived via nanomachines and cyborg technology. It will be years until he helped Raiden when he became a cyborg during his captivity from the Patriots. I brought Dr Madner’s name solely because he has a biggest rival: Dr Clark. Since she betrayed Big Boss, Dr Madner was Big Boss’s trusted person for technology. Dr Clark fascination for movies made her fascinated for cyborg technology and throughout the two were rivals. Dr Clark also became a cyborg herself and had developed the technology for the Cyborg Ninja along the suits for Solidus, Olga, and even future outfits such as The Frogs. She also had developed a similar technology during the 80’s, to which Skull Face had stolen for the Parasite units. Raiden had saved baby Sunny thanks to Big Mama, but he was captured when he was buying time for their escape. In between MGS2 and MGS4, Raiden became a cyborg. Dr Clark was Raiden’s main antagonist, and later on he had defeated her in combat.

I mean, arsenal is massive. Its meant to contain a small fleet of rays. So to me, most likely is youre in a sort of hanger for them. Theres water because the area is meant to be filled before deploying the rays so arsenal doesnt have to deal with a sudden shift in mass from just opening a door and letting water flood in. Which i imagine for a submarine (even one as big as arsenal) would be a huge problem. And it has the name it does because its the staging area for releasing them.

the funny thing is. that MGS 2 is a simulation game. because every game is a simulation. but. the funny thing is. that the metta commentary about social media kojima did. was BEFORE social media was even big. and he told us that social media will be controlled. kinda like. because ppl want to consum specific content. and therefore will be in a controlled bubble. which is basically what we have with google/youtube algoritm (btw sorry for bad english) good video as always

I like this explanation a lot because I always tripped out on that part too, of Raiden climbing the ladder and just out of nowhere ending up in this giant arena. The break of reality due to the nanomachines makes a lot of sense.

If the Tanker Mission were just an VR Training, than Raiden would have known that Snake did not destroy an Oil Tanker in the Hudson River. The Tanker VR Mission that Raiden see, must have been an altered Version.

I don't understand the confusion. They are atop arsenal gear in the ocean. Ocelot later pilots the RAY to jump into the ocean.

Trust me, as a fellow Metal Gear fanatic, the minor things can often lead to the major things. One for me? In The Twin Snakes, the hallway where Gray Fox wipes out the soldiers. I always love finding little things, or nods. The Heavy Armor Troopers have a gold tag on their vest. On it? Outer Heaven. A few ways to look at it, Liquid was able to get surplus equipment from Outer Heaven. Vulcan Raven was a merc for Outer Heaven, and Ocelot would easily be able to acquire it. Or... Liquid says, "From today, you can call this place... Outer Heaven." So this was him already putting that into effect. Hope your day is going well today!

To me, the biggest unsolved mystery, especially if we consider MGSV unfinished content as non-canon, is what happened to Eli and Metal Gear that he stole, why he didn't seem to use it to do anything, and why he needed Rex in MGS1.

You need a synthesis of these ideas. Raiden is actually hooked up to a sort of VR streaming device inside Arsenal Gear. The Raiden we control is a robotic cyborg body, as suggested by the Skull suit. Raiden is controlling a drone of himself from within Arsenal. So this explains why Snake and Olga betray him. And why she used electricity to KO him. At that point, Otacon uploads a hack to Raiden from his body. Then, when Raiden wakes up on the torture rack, we are seeing inside the AI system. That is where the *real* VR kicks in. Before this point, everything is real but still "VR" via Raiden's remote perspective. Then after, the world itself becomes fully digitized and unreal. This is when the AI freaks out. The vector for the hack on Arsenal is Raiden, and Otacon's programming takes the form of Solid Snake while inside the system. Raiden *does* summon Snake by speaking him into existence. Raiden is basically just a program at this point, controlled by his brain hooked up to some coffin like device. (That's a WHOLE other ball of wax, but I could explain it.) So the RAY fight really is in VR, if you ask me. The Solidus fight at the end is the real part. Raiden is still controlling a robot body, though, after the system "crash" and waking back up. That's how parts of the very end have some elements of unreality. The Patriots are altering what Raiden is seeing, like the seemingly ignorant passersby, but Snake is real once again, and can appear as himself now that the System has been hacked and Solid Snake has become an indelible part of the scenario. The crazy part here is that The Patriots (Hideo Kojima) basically created a VR simulation, then built the facility for that simulation in reality, and ran a planned scenario in it. So it's real, and it's VR, and all the VR comes from real characters. The even crazier part is that we see Solidus, Ocelot, Fortune, and Raiden all have access to this System. I can also explain a lot more about all that if you're curious!

I love this simple explanation. His nanomachines acting up is almost certainly a side effect of the worm destroying GW, and whether that's enough to cause hallucinations on its own, I think that + the psychological stress of the entire mission so far, Raiden having his own reality break, his PTSD condition from being a child soldier and seeing his father figure, Solidus, AND factoring in his countless VR missions (including simulated tanker mission and potentially simulated shadow moses) , it makes sense that in the most stressful situation of his life single handedly fighting multiple metal gears, the world around him might fade away and to survive, the entirety of his attention must be dedicated to running around and shooting down metal gear ray units. He might as well be on the digital floor of a VR simulation for all he cared at that moment. It makes perfect sense.

Honestly, this solution to where the Ray Battle Arena is is very Satisfying to me. Kojima does love Subtext. after all these 18+ something years. Characters talk about how their nanomachines are influencing them in ways all the time in MGS to the point of being a meme, but here it makes alot of psychological sense given a lot of things already established, and how Raiden transitions out of the Ray fight in cutscenes to end up back on the roof of Arsenal Gear.

The water being shallow doesn't mean it's not the exterior of Arsenal Gear. Arsenal Gear can just be partially submerged at the time and the Rays are walking on the back of it towards a raised platform that is jutting out of the water.

"When you know that your time is close at hand Maybe then you'll begin to understand Life down here is just a strange illusion" Iron Maiden

My theory is that Raiden is inside an arena inside of Arsenal Gear. The hexagonal platform he is running on is the stage and the front where the RAYs are is somewhat similar to the Las Vegas Sphere concert hall. Like a huge LED screen or something that projects the image outside?

I believe that the original intent was to have the battles with the Metal Gears on top of Arsenal Gear on the Hudson River in New York. They had to strip all that out at the last minute because of the Twin Towers tragedy. So they literally just stripped away the backgrounds and added a modified VR Mission floor and quickly reworked how you got there by just cutting content after the ladder climb (explaining a missing entrance to the room in their haste). There was probably a cutscene on top of Arsenal Gear at the Brooklyn Bridge that got cut.

In MGRising, the concept of "augmented reality" was introduced, and as always, it was implied it was already something (since the original MGS, nanomachine codec communications could be taken as a form of augmented reality). It was always a possibility that the patriot's AI could use everyone's nanomachines to introduce some digitally-generated information to manipulate their perception of reality.

I just always assumed Arsenal was still partially submerged with the RAYs walking on the deck still covered in a few feet of water. After the fight, Olga, Fortune, Snake, etc. arrive on the scene, Raiden gets choked out and we're all on top of Arsenal. I doubt Raiden was out for a long time while everyone relocated. You can also see some of the octagonal paneling on the deck, similar to what lights up under your feet when you move on the lit platform during the fight. Maybe it's like a helipad or an elevator for RAYs that allow the Arsenal to remain submerged, but deploy units from within it. The lights making it easy to see in the dark.

It is important to note, that in the first version (Not substance) on PS2, you had to select if you watched MGS1 or played it. If you dont, you start with Raiden. If you do, you start with Snake on Tanker, and then Raiden comments on how he completed over 300 missions in VR. This could be also refference to VR missions, but this means that the videogame Metal Gear Solid, might also be a simulation in the MGS universe. I think that this important detail changes a lot, since you point out the changes in dialogue if you played Tanker. But Tanker is playable if you experienced the MGS1.

I just assumed they wer estanding on top of a partially submerged Arsenal. Although those Ray units in the distance seem to be quite far away.

The scene that you cut to which supposedly shows Snake running from a flooding tanker is actually a series of (C4?) explosions on the tanker, presumably the very same passageway he used to escape.

About the infinity bandana Solid uses, we have to remember that The Boss had a weapon with unlimited ammo back in 1964, just because the megazine looks like an infinity symbol by BB's words. I know the MGS world is interesting and has a lot of real themes and real life problems in its story, but lets remember that "silly" things are always common in these games by desing, like The Pain controling bees just because.

The Tanker mission as we play it can't be VR because Raiden would know of Otacon, Olga and Ocelot. But during the Plant chapter he acts like he first meets them.

There is also the option that what there is in the game is a semplification from the original plan of having the fight on top arsenal. They had to completely cut and paste the finale for the release

they're obviously on top of arsenal at the end. the cutscene shows ocelot's ray dive into water and then you crash into federal hall, revealing that Raiden was on top of arsenal, outside.

I always just imagined he climbed up onto the roof and that holographic hexagon is just some kind of force field entry like in sci-fi spaceship cargo bays. You can go in one way but not the out the other, to prevent water breaching, since it’s a submarine.

Wish Konami stuck with the Raiden prequel instead of the one we got in Revengeance, it would've neatly tied up loose ends cause as someone who've played MGS2 and seeing Raiden suddenly turned in to Cyborg in MGS-IV. Knowing that we never got to see his awesome story line in action just leaves me wanting more.

Any mysteries about MGS2 can be summed up as “The 911 Cut” where the devs quickly changed a bunch of stuff right before launch

The footage of Snake using the Famas during the tanker were part of the early trailers from the game. Also using gs codes both the Famas and Socom can be hacked into the early tanker demo that came with Z.O.E

I remmebered another place i saw that hexagon. Its from MGS4 where Liquid-Ocelot talks about how he procured G.W. after it was destroyed. The cutscene has him talling about how the work only managed to cut G.W. into little pieces they were able to reconstruct. In that scene, the same hexagon is shown. It could be that thats G.W's brain theyre fighting on top of, and that its trying to keep the facade going. As we see all the rays in the background, and never see them actually get closer. It could be that we entered the control room of G.W., but because of the worm, its especially having trouble keeping the illusion together, only keeping the environment feeling the same, but the floor not so much

I first played MGS 2 when I was 8 or 9, so obviously a lot of the meta stuff flew over my head at that age, but it took an extraordinary amount of time for me to really think about the arena with any degree of depth. I've played MGS 2 more than any game, but it's only been in the last couple years that I started to really wonder about the arena. Your theory is better than anything I could come up with. This is part of what I love about the world of Metal Gear, the slippery reality it's based in lends itself to almost infinite speculation.

Didn't you noticed? The rectum was the base and Raiden climbed to the top of the roof of this base, and because of Raiden having a glitch visuals or thinking that Raiden is thinking he is in a vr training

I always saw it as Raiden utilising his VR training to face his hardest challenge yet. In order to fight off the 12 MG-RAYs he has to treat it like a VR mission, but then to defeat Solidus he has to accept himself and reality and STOP being what he was trained to be in those missions.

I always thought it was just a case of the platform Raiden was on was fully out’ve the water while the rest of it was still somewhat under the water.

I mean, it could technically just be an elevated platform on the back of arsenal with the rest of it under water and the rays walking on its slightly submerged back.

What if, the Big Shell stuff happened in real life but the Arsenal Gear stuff happened in VR? If I recall correctly, Raiden enters Arsenal Gear after Olga knocks him unconscious. She was aware of and participating in the S3 program. It's not that big of a stretch. That would leave the question of Snake's participation. He could have been a VR construct or the actual Snake at any point from then on. (If Olga was helping Snake, she may have been able to help him access the VR simulation). As for the Ray fight platform, I never realized the similarity to photo mode. For my part, I thought it akin to an omnidirectional shooting range (complete with range markers). VR would also explain why there isn't Ray debris everywhere considering you destroy a bunch of them.

This makes perfect sense. The "Fission Mailed" incident tells us that, around this time, Raiden's senses can't be fully trusted, but the one thing that remains consistent and natural to him, is the thing he's been doing since he was a wee lad, killing.

Honestly, there is a very simple answer to that... according to the "Documents of MGS2" it was supposed to be a large hangar inside Arsenal Gear. Very large, as you can see the RAYS being stored in the background. The ceiling would have to be quite high too, and they don't want the player to be able to walk the whole area. Possibly there was even some issues, rendering the wall and lights in the distance. So to save time, they thought it was cool to use a VR stage instead. No bigger meaning behind it.

The biggest mistory of the series is why are still metal gear games produced After the ending of metal gear solid 4

I’m pretty sure the Rays can stand on top of water surface, it does it in the beginning when it swims out of the cargo ship and then stands on top of the water surface to look at snake

It both happened and was a VR mission. The events of MGS2 happened off screen and Raiden replayed the whole mission as VR.

Isn't it possible that's it's just a room with Augmented Reality, or some kind of VR room? The hallucinations make sense though, the game starts to "glitch" in that area and you get things like the Fission Mailed screen.

I always assumed it was a VR powered hanger bay near the top of Arsenal's hull, very similar to the hull shell of Outer Haven that housed the railgun and the launch bays. It's never implied, but the platform is where technically you, Ocelot, Solidus, Fortune, and Snake all end up at. Also technically, the RAY units can walk on water due to their feet which act as propulsion units. We actually saw this during the Harrier battle conclusion.

It's either the rear exit of the sub, or a nightmare Raiden is having, it definitely doesn't seem to be real, because the whole fight takes place in an endless void.

I always think the location for Ray fight was Raiden's distortion perception of reality, except it was not due to the GW virus. I think when Raiden was fighting the most adverse battle he had ever faced, he put himself in a zen mode. Either through nanomachine or his will alone, Raiden concentrated his mind and transformed the battle arena (the top of Arsenal Gear) into something he was familiar with: a VR training environment. This way he could focus only on the elements that were important and performed the impossible. Also this explains why he was "teleported" to the top of Arsenal Gear smoothly at the end of the fight.

Totally agree, this is exactly how I explain it but I don't articulate it as well as you. Thanks for making this video, also it was great seeing a clip of myself pop up in the video. Hope to see you at MGSCON2!

As a kid I for real just thought we were really up high and it was foggy from the ocean

People always call the bandana line a 4th wall break, but I don’t entirely agree. The bandana is featured in 3+ games, so if anything I think the line cements that’s its a cannon plot item that somehow gives snake the ability to carry an essentially infinite amount of ammo.

I never considered that the glitching ai system was affecting what Raiden saw. I always thought he was outside standing on the dorsal structure of arsenal

I'm glad people are finally catching onto this theory. This was my interpretation as well. Raiden is wired to have his experience controlled by the Patriots, then a worm cluster spreads through the AI Raiden is linked to. Hence, everything Raiden experiences between that point and GW shutting down is him wildly hallucinating with elements from his training (VR missions and meta gameplay elements) creeping into reality. You can see this by how the VR overlays inside Arsenal increase up until the point there's ONLY the VR overlay. Then, when Solidus confirms GW has shut down, the VR overlay is gone and they are simply on top of Arsenal.

i always thought that arena was just a room in the arsenal gear, with a simulated background which explains why its both shallow infinite and devoid of anything save for a platform, like a big globe, big enough to fit multiple rays, and after raiden got knocked the fuck out he was taken atop the arsenal, that was my first thought anyway

I think as adults, we tend to overthink things. As a young teen, I always assumed it was the roof. And my teen brain explained everything with "Oh it just looks cool"

I think snake pointing to the bandana could also be him pointing to his head. Maybe it’s just a way of him saying he’s excellent in hand to hand combat or something along those lines.

I have the real explination , the rectum's location is a boss arena with no defined location on arsenal gear simply to save processing power to render the army of metal gear rays at an acceptable frame rate and they textured the floor rectum for cohesion's sake because kojima has ocd levels of attention to detail and explaining virtually everything

The showing of the missions in the tanker you did not carry out, drove me mad as a kid, I thought it was a secret for years that I was missing a part of the game.

Personally always thought that at some point during the mission, probably right after raiden uploads the virus and olga knocks him out, raiden gets put into vr which is why the hallways had digital relics, like when you walked the floor shimmered. And the big arena is just a big v4 stage, like a place where the raiden was put to experience the vr with enough room for him to move and when he went up the ladder that was just him leaving the vr. Snake was everyone was real except the tengu. I think the Arena itself is just the inside of arsenal gear, it was so advanced that the entire inside was virtual.

I love your Analysis style videos on MGS & Silent Hill, funnily enough I actually found your channel through your MGS2 most profound moment in gaming history video years ago, great to see people still diving into MGS2, it’s actually my favourite MGS as well, a lot of people always give the love to snake eater which I still think is an amazing game, but there’s just something about sons of liberty I can’t quite put my finger on that makes it above all the rest for me ! Keep up the amazing work Max