Snake Eater is an amazing game in every sense of the word, I'll start with that. Everything was handled brilliantly by Kojima and his team, from the tiniest details of the gameplay to the game's story as a whole. Stylistically the game differs itself from its predecessors by changing the aesthetic completely. The new survival aspects really put the “Tactical” into “Tactical Espionage Action”.

Snake’s relationship with The Boss, his mentor and almost mother-like figure, is the center of the game’s whole narrative. Snake Eater is a story about loyalty and patriotism and how these virtues can tear one apart. Big Boss is forced to kill The Boss, giving up his honor and soul for the sake of his country. This is the same country guilty of tarnishing The Boss’ legacy, someone who has also given everything and more to protect it. The game’s ending is a cynical one in which Snake sees that the country he’s given everything to protect is run by people who view people (and their sacrifices) as nothing more than pieces on a board. They praise and reward Big Boss for accomplishing his mission while forever condemning The Boss for doing the same, it doesn’t make any sense. This ending makes it easy to see why BB eventually leaves the US military and goes on to form Outer Heaven, a place where soldiers are not treated as weapons and expendable pieces but as people.

I think the game’s theme of what it means to be a soldier parallels Solid Snake’s and Raiden’s journey in the previous game(s) pretty nicely. Snake Eater was about “loyalty to the end” and following your country almost blindly, always putting the mission first. Ultimately, we saw how this “soldier” mindset affected Snake and The Boss. MGS 1 and 2’s main message is about choosing for yourself what you want to believe in and “being loyal to what matters” as Arthur Morgan would say.

"Building the future and keeping the past alive are one in the same thing."

(Some spoilers ahead)

Seeing how the game came out in 2001, I was expecting a lot of headaches from the gameplay but I thought it was great. The game genuinely felt good to play and the amount of attention to details for a game that came out 20+ years ago is just lunacy. Actual fights and shootouts do feel uncomfortable to play but it's a MGS game, the point is that you don't get seen.

Speaking of MGS 2 being ahead of its time, the story. Snake not being the protagonist was polarizing af when the game came out but Raiden was such a great character. Kojima did something very unique when it came to his relationship with the player. Raiden is a stand-in for the player in the game’s world, the fact that most of his training came from imitating Snake in virtual reality (like how our “training” came from the first game where we were also mimicking/playing as Snake) and how the Big Shell Incident is the Patriots forcing Raiden to play out what happened at Shadow Moses (which is why this game and the first one share so many similarities). His lack of experience makes it so he’s finding everything out along with us, making him more relatable.

Despite that, Raiden is also a character in a story. His arc is all about starting to live for himself instead of just following someone else's orders. This applies to the Patriots (who were manipulating him throughout the whole game) but on a more meta level, this also applies to us the players. In the end, we stop playing as Raiden because he no longer has to do what we tell him. He’s free

The final stretch of this game was so thought-provoking, Kojima is a brilliant writer I swear. The way it dives into AI and the “digital age” more than 20 YEARS AGO is just amazing. The ethical dilemma that the Patriots AI provokes in the player had me mesmerized. Is the AI wrong for trying to preserve only the information necessary for humanity’s development, filtering out the rest? Is Raiden wrong for thinking humanity deserves the right to decide what information is worth preserving or not, even if we are wrong? Is our advancement and prosperity as a species worth it at the expense of our freedom? Arghhhh this game

Phenomenal game all around. Everything from the gameplay to the narrative was handled with such care and attention. I think it’s never been more appropriate to say that something is “ahead of its time” than with this game. The themes that MGS 2 dives into are more relevant and poignant now than they were when it came out. Kojima made a game for people living in the 2010s and 2020s back when the world was still in 2001, that is what being ahead of his time means.