A soldier can never truly leave the battlefield.
Metal Gear 2 shows us this through the rival, Gray Fox, the antagonist, Big Boss, and through our own protagonist. Solid Snake is dragged into another mission, this one confronting the very nature of what he does, and why he does it, setting up ideas that would carry over until the end of the series.
While Gray Fox's words lament war, Big Boss' relish in it, but the two still fight on the same side. The allure of the battlefield calls to those who have lived through it before, their minds never truly able to leave, and the same can be true of Snake himself. He swears a promise to Gray Fox not to become like him, but Big Boss' climactic speech leave the thread on a worrisome ending. There's an appeal to being somewhere that you are wanted, to be "useless dummies" back home, just typical outcasts is a dour end for the soldiers like Big Boss. The original Sean Connery portrait fits this idea well, Big Boss is portrayed as an old legendary agent, past his prime, but still with the burning desire to fight.
It's pitiful at the end of the day. The metaphor of the story is that of a well oiled machine, and the in universe world is in the midst of an energy crisis, paralleling Big Boss in the midst of a war crisis, simply because there is no war. He has to make his own nation, he has to use men who are traumatized and can't leave the battlefield, and he has to orchestrate this war all on his own, it's just the war version of the OILIX "main" plot.
This parallel even transfers over to Big Boss' ultimate demise, the "oils" of war consuming him... by having him be burned alive at the hands of a soldier he watched grow (and in later entries, a soldier he's partly responsible for creating entirely).
After alluding to some doubt about whether or not Snake would be able to leave the battlefield, the game ends on a scene where Campbell tries to recruit him, but Snake rejects. The game ends on a meta note, with Dr. Marv's cartridge, essential to saving the world from crisis, is an MSX2 cartridge, the cast even referring to it as a "game". On that note, Snake abandons both Campbell and Holly, leaving the battlefield.
But, from a thematic point of view, the OILIX was a parallel to Big Boss' war machine, and now Snake has handed the "game" to the world. Perhaps a sign of another battle for our protagonist, in spite of his promise? Or, maybe I'm looking at it too deeply.
Metal Gear 2 shows us this through the rival, Gray Fox, the antagonist, Big Boss, and through our own protagonist. Solid Snake is dragged into another mission, this one confronting the very nature of what he does, and why he does it, setting up ideas that would carry over until the end of the series.
While Gray Fox's words lament war, Big Boss' relish in it, but the two still fight on the same side. The allure of the battlefield calls to those who have lived through it before, their minds never truly able to leave, and the same can be true of Snake himself. He swears a promise to Gray Fox not to become like him, but Big Boss' climactic speech leave the thread on a worrisome ending. There's an appeal to being somewhere that you are wanted, to be "useless dummies" back home, just typical outcasts is a dour end for the soldiers like Big Boss. The original Sean Connery portrait fits this idea well, Big Boss is portrayed as an old legendary agent, past his prime, but still with the burning desire to fight.
It's pitiful at the end of the day. The metaphor of the story is that of a well oiled machine, and the in universe world is in the midst of an energy crisis, paralleling Big Boss in the midst of a war crisis, simply because there is no war. He has to make his own nation, he has to use men who are traumatized and can't leave the battlefield, and he has to orchestrate this war all on his own, it's just the war version of the OILIX "main" plot.
This parallel even transfers over to Big Boss' ultimate demise, the "oils" of war consuming him... by having him be burned alive at the hands of a soldier he watched grow (and in later entries, a soldier he's partly responsible for creating entirely).
After alluding to some doubt about whether or not Snake would be able to leave the battlefield, the game ends on a scene where Campbell tries to recruit him, but Snake rejects. The game ends on a meta note, with Dr. Marv's cartridge, essential to saving the world from crisis, is an MSX2 cartridge, the cast even referring to it as a "game". On that note, Snake abandons both Campbell and Holly, leaving the battlefield.
But, from a thematic point of view, the OILIX was a parallel to Big Boss' war machine, and now Snake has handed the "game" to the world. Perhaps a sign of another battle for our protagonist, in spite of his promise? Or, maybe I'm looking at it too deeply.