This game is awesome. The story is great an excellent fusion between normal story telling and gameplay. I recommend you play this blind if you can. Anyways now I'm going to poorly summarize this game so I can read it before playing the next entry and MGS 4.


The game starts with you the player playing as the hero of Shadow Moses, Solid Snake. You'll spend the first 2 hours or so infiltrating an oil tanker containing the new metal gear, Metal Gear Ray. Snake's mission is to take pictures of the new metal gear and leak it to the press. You slowly immerse yourself into playing as Snake, the game lets you shoot in 1st person. An innovation on the previous games shooting and stealth mechanics while also helping the player immerse themselves into the role of being Solid Snake. Russian mercenaries take over the marine corps ship. Snake's only weapon being a tranquilizer gun only being able to knock the mercs unconscious you may be yearning for a bit more fire power, especially once you hit a hallway where the only way forward is to shoot a few switches to deactivate some semtex bombs. Snake at a loss just makes his way up to the front of the ship where he runs into Olga Gurlukovich. She's important keep her in mind. We find out Olga's pregnant and then she and Snake duke it out. Once Snake knocks her, he's able to secure her gun and finally have enough fire power to destroy those switches. After this you track down a dim hallway where eventually you're forced into a shoot out with a few enemies. You have to play on the defensive here, hiding behind crates between every shot. After you take the enemies out. You sneak into a Marine Corps conference and have around 6-7 minutes to take pictures of Metal Gear before they notice you. Once you successfully take pictures of Metal Gear Ray and send them to Otacon, the Russians crash the conference and our good pal Ocelot shows up. From a scene from earlier of Ocelot shooting some random Russian soldier we know he's about to double cross his good old Russian buddies. He shoots and kills the Russian mercenaries leader, which happens to be Olga's father. He also kills the marine corps commandant, the commandant becomes important later. Liquid somehow takes control of Ocelot through his arm transplant just to say hello to his brother Solid Snake. Liquid Ocelot blows up the tanker and escapes with Metal Gear Ray. We can assume the character we've been playing up until now and the main character of the last game, Solid Snake is dead.


We skip to 2 years later, we see someone called Snake infiltrating an environmental cleaning plant named the Big Shell. Built after that oil tanker blew up 2 years ago. Once inside the Oil Tanker thought the CO of the mission, which just so happens to be Roy Campbell from the last game. He changes Snake’s codename to Raiden and here we learn that the character we saw infiltrate the Big Shell wasn’t THE Solid Snake but instead just a random trainee with seemingly no field experience named Jack. Jack or Raiden also has a girlfriend named Rosemary or Rose for short. Raiden’s mission here is to rescue the president, James Johnson from Russian mercenaries. The same group who had taken over the tanker now under the control of Olga Gurlukovich. After walking into the next room over we spot a man who’s already infiltrated the big shell before us took out the guards. Raiden catches a glimpse of him riding the elevator up to the top floor and he seems incredibly similar to Solid Snake. Raiden then logs into a node where the game then asks you to put in some personal information about yourself. This is where the game is beginning to ask you to immerse yourself into the role as playing as Raiden instead of Solid Snake, I’ll touch up on this a bit later. Anyhow Raiden waits for the elevator to drop down while avoiding the guards who have recently waken up from the mysterious intruder’s beat down and start searching the area for him. It’s recommended to not hide their unconscious bodies in a locker or something because the game punishes you by making you have to wait for the elevator longer. After boarding the elevator Raiden takes off the goofy ass mask he’s wearing and the game has finally officially begun and your journey playing as Raiden has started.


We learn that the guy behind this terrorist plot is a man named Solid Snake and that he also was behind blowing the tanker up. Now we the player know something is up. The last time we fully saw Snake he was part of an anti-metal gear organization name Philanthropist so him jumping to mass terrorism doesn’t sound like it adds up, he also didn’t bomb the tanker. I should mention that a navy seal team also infiltrated the Big Shell but are unaware of Raiden. After exploring the Big Shell for a bit we’ll bump into someone who looks eerily like Snake and a Vampire named Vamp. After this Snake guy deals with Vamp for now he gives us his name, Iroquis Pliskin which both mean Snake, Pliskin being Snake isn’t exactly a twist to the player because anyone with eyes or ears will realize that’s Snake. Raiden however hasn’t ever seen Snake so he’s still in the dark. Raiden explains to Pliskin that the only training he’s allegedly had is just VR training, “War as a video game” as Pliskin puts it. Pliskin receives news of the president’s position being compromised in some way. After Pliskin tells Raiden to stop being a bitch or whatever he hands him a gun and Raiden goes on his way. Pretty sure Campbell tells Raiden to forget about Pliskin for now as he wasn’t part of the simulation and to focus on the President.. Raiden sees the president get captured by a women who seems to not be able to be shot by any bullets soon after this. Raiden then learns he needs to go meet up with a bomb specialist to start defusing the bombs hidden around the Big Shell. Also should mention Raiden met his girlfriend over an argument over what building was in King Kong, it’s not important as of right now though. After meeting up with the bomb specialist named Peter Stillman, Pliskin shows up and Peter tells us how to defuse some c4. Peter actually trained the man behind this bombing incident, His name is Fatman and Peter saw a son in him and taught him everything he knew about bombs. Peter realized after teaching Fatman that there are certain things you have to pass on, you just need to know the rights to pass on. That’s one of the themes of the game! After defusing a few c4 Stillman notes that if Fatman wanted to destroy the place he would’ve picked better locations for them. Something is up and after defusing a few more bombs, Pliskin finds what’s up. There’s even more explosives planted at points that would sink the entire shell in one fell swoop. Stillman gives us his backstory at this point iirc. He failed to defuse a bomb in a church and a lot of people died so he pretended to be a cripple because he feels bad. Basically he’s ashamed of his past and wanted to repress it. Moving on, Stillman finds that the big bomb hasn’t detonated yet and suspects that it’ll go live once all the red herring bombs are defused. Right as he realized this, Snake defuses the last bomb and Stillman sadly passes away. Or not sadly he kinda pretended to be a cripple to not deal with his mistakes. After this Raiden makes a mad dash to defuse the parallel bomb at the bottom of Shell 1 because if both Shell 1 and 2 go down the entire Big Shell goes with it. After Raiden defuses the bomb he runs into Lady Fortune before he makes it back to the elevator. As seen earlier when she kidnapped the President, Fortune can’t get hit by anything Raiden can throw at her so the only thing he can do is wait for the elevator to come down and then book it. After a few minutes Vamp shows back up, chats with Fortune for a bit and they both leave. Fatman wants to fight Raiden on top of a heliport and Raiden has no choice but to comply. The Fatman mirrors the Raven fight from MGS 1. The arena is similar and are both against the bulkiest of the group. Fatman is a complete mirror of Raven, instead of being muscular he’s fat, instead of a giant machine, he carries a small pistol, and lastly instead of just slowly walking around the arena Fatman roller-skates around it. Trust me this is important later. I should mention the group Fatman, Fortune, and Vamp are from a group named Dead Cell founded by George Sears. Sears was the president of the US before he got impeached. After the Fatman fight, Fatman taunts Raiden before dying, or falling unconscious if you used the tranquilizer against him. A ninja who looks like Grayfox shows up and tells us a lead on where the President is being held and gives Raiden some gear to help him out. Turns out Raiden has to disguise himself as a Russian soldier and infiltrate the Shell 1 core to find a man named Agent Ames.


After finding the AK-47 in a storeroom Raiden proceeds down to the Shell 1 core and locates Agent Ames via a directional microphone that was conveniently located in the Shell 1 core. Ames gives us a run down of what’s going on with the President, He’s being held in the Shell 2 core and, basically in order to fire the nuke/metal gear they need the President’s authorization. You can’t threaten him to give access he has to activate it of his own free will. Which means the President has betrayed us and sided with the terrorists. The camera pans to a man watching Raiden having this convo Ames. After the conversation is done the man goes to talk to our good pal Ocelot. They say they’re going to kill the President after he gives the final ok on launching the nuclear weapon. Ocelot then walks out, notices a disguised Raiden and then searches him. Raiden’s cover is blown. Luckily for him the ninja from earlier pops up again to give him a chance to book it and so he does. Raiden then heads to the Shell 1 and 2 connecting bridge. He has to deactivate the Semtex in order to cross, once he does so fortunately for him our pal Pliskin shows up in a chopper that can rescue the hostages, unfortunately the man who was spying on Raiden shows up, Turns out it’s George Sears the last president, now known as Solidus Snake. A perfect replica of my man Big Boss. The bridge Raiden oh so carefully defused gets blown up anyways and Solidus falls off the bridge lands on a jet fighter Vamp is piloting and plans on finishing Pliskin; who is revealed to be Snake (shocker), and Raiden off. Snake tosses Raiden a stinger missile launcher and we gotta shoot the jet fighter down just like how Snake did to Liquid during the Chopper fight in mgs 1. After a heated battle the bridge is pretty much destroyed. And a metal gear rescues Solidus and Vamp. Raiden hops down onto a pipe to head to Strut L of Shell 2.


Let’s take some time to reflect here and compare Snake and Raiden. Snake is a legendary war hero, he’s already a legend by the time you even start MGS 1, not to mention MGS 2. When Snake defeated Raven or Psycho Mantis they had given him some level of respect. Also when you shoot Liquid down from the chopper fight, Snake and the player are rewarded the satisfaction under presumably killing Liquid. Snake also seemed more confidant in his skills than Raiden did. We barely even know much about Raiden other than the fact he has a girlfriend and doesn’t have anything in his room other than a bed. The 2 bosses outside of the Jet fighter that Raiden has fought have only belittled him. Fortune for not being able to hit her, and Fatman because he’s a dick. Instead of feeling satisfaction for taking down Solidus, the game lets you and Raiden know that they got away in a way that sucks any satisfaction away from you. Raiden is just kinda mild mannered, seemingly a worse Snake. Multiple people who played MGS 2 back in the day wished they could just play as Snake instead. Hell Raiden wishes he was like Snake, as part of VR training he had played through Shadow Moses, he, like the player had played MGS 1 and loved it. But from here on I feel as though Raiden slowly begins to change into someone much more respectable.


After Raiden gets pissed on, he heads to the President’s location. After a segment similar to one in MGS 1 to turn off an electrified hallway, Raiden comes face to face with President Johnson. After the President gropes him, He gives Raiden a run down on his motivations. The President wanted more power so he decided to join the terrorists, you see there’s some sort of shadow government that controls the actual government called the Patriots. The Patriots control basically everything about the US, they control the economy, the media, and of course politics. They even choose the President, the election is just one big drama for the public. They’ve controlled the US via controlling the flow of information for years. The President wanted to join the Patriots, he intended to use Metal Gear as a bargaining chip to convince them to let him join, but Solidus wants to take it a step further, he wants to take the Patriots down. Sadly, the Patriots are a necessary evil, if they’re taken down a massive political vacuum will occur and any power monger worth their salt will try to fill, causing an unregulated power struggle. Also the Big Shell was just a massive cover up for the new metal gear, Arsenal. Anyhow after the President gives a lore dump about the Patriots, Ocelot kills him. Before the President bites the dust (breakdown breakdown!) he gives Raiden a disc and tells him to find Otacon’s sister, Emma Emmerich. Basically the disc will be able to give Arsenal a virus that will stop it in its tracks.



Emma is in the shell 2 basement, Unfortunately it’s been flooded due to the bomb that killed Stillman. Even more unfortunate is that according to Otacon, Emma is deathly afraid of water due to how she almost drowned as a kid. Seems like Raiden will have to help her deal with it so they can get out of the core. But before that, Vamp shows up and fights Raiden. The Vamp fight has a similar arena to the Ocelot fight to mgs 1, and like the Psycho Mantis fight you have to do something unique in order to hit him. With Psycho Mantis you have to switch controller ports, and here you can’t hit Vamp unless you shoot in 3rd person. Much like the Psycho Mantis there are also ways to bypass this gimmick, destroy the statues with Psycho mantis’ face on them, and here you can actually hit Vamp in 1st person if you aim really carefully. After Raiden knocks Vamp out, we can finally proceed. We find Emma hiding in a locker, and Raiden comes up with a plan to get her out of there. She just needs to hold onto Raiden and keep her eyes shut while he swam them out of there. After this Raiden needs to escort her to the Shell 1 core basement in order for her to give Arsenal mega aids. Around this point Emma gives you the rundown on Arsenal. Turns out it contains an optic program called GW. GW will let the Patriots regain total control over all digital information, and basically preform mass digital censorship. You see due to internet innovations, it had become very difficult for the Patriots to control the stream of information, Some information would leak out from time to time. The Patriots answer to that is of course GW. They had Arsenal built to store GW, Arsenal was basically the best physical and digital storeroom they could keep it in. Being guarded with top notch cyber security, and it physically being defended by multiple dozens of Metal Gear Ray, it would be incredibly hard to take down GW once it activated. Moving on however we come to a part where Emma has to cross a few bridges while Raiden and Snake provide her with assistance via sniper rifle, after a while Vamp shows up again and fatally stabs Emma, before Raiden shoots his ass AGAIN. Vamp doesn’t even die from this exchange he just leaves. Snake rushes Emma to the shell one core with Raiden close behind. Before Emma passes away she does successfully install the virus. We also get Otacon’s backstory, he left Emma as a kid because he was sexually abused by his mother. Which is fucked up. We can dwell on this later however because Snake gasses Otacon up in a scene that would make you wish you had friendships like theirs and tells him to go rescue the hostages. After Otacon leaves, the ninja who is revealed to be Olga Gurlokovich and knocks the fuck out of Raiden.



Snake and Olga had to use Raiden as bait to sneak onto Metal Gear Arsenal. Raiden is being held hostage in a place similar to the MGS 1 torture room. Ocelot even remarks on it. Anyhow here we finally get Raiden’s backstory. He was a child soldier in the Liberian Civil war. He was so good at what he did he became known as Jack the Ripper. Jack had suppressed most of it due to being ashamed of his past, however he still has PTSD. Solidus was the one who trained Raiden, he even killed Jack’s parents. After that family reunion, Olga busts Jack outta there and tells him Snake has his shit. Turns out the Colonel was an AI the whole time and starts spewing Metal Gear quotes at Jack while he sneaks through Arsenal butt naked. Also turns out Rose was a Patriot spy used to spy on Jack, them meeting up was staged. Even their relationship was faked until Rose actually fell in love with him. Everything Jack liked about Rose was fake to cater to him, her eye color and hair color changed to match his tastes. After actually falling in love with him Rose had wanted Jack to see her for what she actually was, but Jack refused to see the truth. Eventually meeting up with Snake, he gives Jack his shit back and tells him Olga left him a sword, his preferred weapon as a child. Throughout the game the player had been trying to have Jack be like Snake, Jack had been being like Solid Snake but with this sword he casts that away. With this one weapon Jack he had thrown away any resemblance he was trying to have with Snake, he had finally started being himself. He even throws away the player’s control over him in a sense, instead of 1st person weapon that had let the player immerse themselves into Jack’s role, the sword was best used in 3rd person slashing away any player immersion with it. After this segment we have a part that resembles Snake’s fight in the hallway at the beginning of the game, the difference here is that instead of playing defense,Jack goes on the offensive slashing anyone in his way to shreds while Snake backs him up.


Eventually Jack has to fight like 10 metal gears. He eventually gives up, and Solidus kills them all. Here we learn that the entire events of the Big Shell was actually a recreation of the Shadow Moses incident, to see if Jack would become another Solid Snake. It’s called the S3 plan. Ocelot gets taken over by Liquid because Liquid would never pass up the chance to say hi to Snake, Liquid escapes in a metal gear and Snake chases after him. Arsenal crashes into Manhattan, and Jack has to sword fight his dad on top of federal hall. But first it’s time for Ai Campbell to exposition dump on Jack’s goofy little ass. The S3 plan wasn’t actually meant to be a plan for the Patriots to control human memory, history, and culture. If they were able to control those things they would be able to control what gets passed on to later generations, In the digital age so much junk data is preserved in an unfiltered state. The Patriots think that all of this trivial information being preserved will slow down human progress. They think their plan of censorship is not to control content but create context. Digital Society selectively rewards believing in half-truths. The right of freedom has only resulted in people believing what they want to believe, never facing the actual truth, always looking for someone to blame for your problems. No one is wrong, but no one is right. The Patriots believe unnecessary information must be filtered out. This is why Jack was actually selected for the S3 program, he was there for the Patriots to see if they could actually control human will. Jack had denied his past as a child soldier, fell in love with Rose for someone she wasn’t, believed her lies despite her blatantly wanting to be caught, He never even tried to reach out to Rose until she forced him to, he even prefers his fake codename Raiden over his actual one. He would rather believe the fictional truths he was given than the actual truth. All Jack did was follow orders. Despite Jack having enough of the Patriot’s bullshit and orders he has no choice except to listen to their final order and kill Solidus. After he does that, He hops down to the street below and has a chat with Snake, Snake talks about what to pass down to the next generation, Snake’s going to pass down what he had faith in, what he had found worthy to fight for. Passing down his emotions, his anger, sorrow and joy. Passing down human history no matter how messy it’s gotten. Jack notices he’s wearing a dog tag, one that has the Player’s name on it, he throws it away, finally being done following orders from anyone.



Anyways there’s it for my summary of MGS 2. I’m not sure if it was good or not but it was really fun to write and think about this game’s story since it was really interesting. To whoever read the whole thing I hope you have a good day!