MGS2深度分析文章【汇总】

0479

我将在本帖顶楼列出 个人认为对深入理解MGS2有帮助的分析文章（由玩家撰写）
也欢迎大家在回帖中提供其他此类分析文章，我会择优加入顶楼，谢谢


Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
首发于2001.11.14


A级文章

Metal Gear Solid 2 Ending analysis
作者：Artemio Urbina
首发于2002.03.15

（中译版）基因、进化与信息：关于MGS2结局的分析
翻译：Whindson & 隐形人

说明：解释了“爱国者”到底是什么，并且第一个指出了MGS2的主题是弥母（meme）。
～～～

Driving Off the Map - A Formal Analysis of Metal Gear Solid 2
作者：James Clinton Howell
首发于2007.07

（中译版）版图之外——《潜龙谍影2》形式分析
翻译：0479

说明：从MGS2的结构和形式上展开深度分析，揭示了部分MGS2的奇怪设定背后的真意。
～～～


Dreaming in an empty room - A defense of Metal Gear Solid 2
作者：Tim Rogers
首发于2002.07.22

（中译版）空房子里的梦境——为《合金装备2》正名
翻译：0479

说明：作者指出MGS2是一款后现代主义的电子游戏。


B级文章

The Snake is a Lie
作者：Ludwig Kietzmann
首发于2008.05.31

（中译版）斯内克是个谎
翻译：0479

说明：“《自由之子》提出了一个有趣的问题：你想从续作中得到什么？”
～～～

I Sic Brecht on Arsenal Gear
作者：Iroquois Pliskin
首发于2008.09.01

说明：作者谈论了“布莱希特戏剧体系”和MGS2的类似之处。MGS2故意让你知道：你正在玩游戏。
~ ~ ~

MGS2真正结局复原计划
作者：0479

说明：借助MGS2企划案和数字漫画，为您还原因911而被阉割的MGS2之真正结局。

蝙蝠侠

这帖相当于精华索引帖了，海纳百川，有容乃大。

一个人的冬夜

看来我是在这方面最需要恶补的人了
我对灯发誓一定要压缩时间提前把工作干完挤出时间来把他们完整地看一遍

先谢谢04了！

0479

顶楼只有最有含金量的文章才能收录
回帖发几个值得一读的

Metal Gear Solid 2 - "Special Options" essay
by: Mad Jackyl
http://www.metalgearconfidential ... rintpage;topic=11.0

谈的是mgs2“前情回顾”里的几篇文章和mgs2主题的关系，有点牵强

～～～
MGS2 - The VR Theory
by Terry Wolfe
http://metagearsolid.org/reports_vr_theory_1.html

作者认为整个mgs2都只是一个vr，虽然不同意他的观点，但是他有很多有趣的发现值得我们深思

0479

本文中，作者认为mgs2实际讨论的是电子游戏和其文化对我们的影响

Recontextualising Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty

by Spoiler Duck on Sat Dec 06, 2008 2:02 am
Forewarning: This is a more academic look (nothing essay grade, so hopefully you won't fall asleep) at the game than comparative reviews I see in this forum. I have no idea how you guys will react to this or if you even want this form of critique here. But hey, as a first post I suppose it is as good as any. If you let me know whether to do more of these or never do one again that'd be swell.

This will be spoiler heavy. If you just want a 'yay' or 'nay' verdict on the game, the answer is a reserved 'yay'. Does require a taste for Kojima's personal stylings, and a lot of patience for poor writing and atrocious pacing, so play the much tighter original first.

This is also, in retrospect, a mess of an article and probably full of typos and grammatical errors, but I wanted to get something written, so here it is. Enjoy!

Kojima is crazy

The plot developments introduced to the Metal Gear franchise with MGS2 can be described at best as oddball and more accurately as absurd. Vampires, fortune as an actual force and an underwater fortress guarding little more than a web server. By itself, the plot is a bad joke hampered by a poor delivery (the excruciatingly bad writing) and an unfortunate stutter (the archaic, even for the time, controls). However, when taken as part of a larger package, what the players of MGS2 experience is a rather poignant parallel to our own modern lives.

Kojima is a dick

Most gamers 'in the know' (and cool, no doubt!) are aware of the massive bait-and-switch pulled by Kojima in the run up to The Most Anticipated PS2 Game. We were to play Snake again! All the trailers had no-one but Snake in them. Even the blurb on the back of the box said it was a job for Solid Snake. Assuming you didn't read reviews, have the internet or living in Japan (where Raiden was promoted as the reason to get the game if you didn't like Americans or were a girl), you received quite the shock. Much has been made about how it was all a large social experiment toying with player's expectations of what a sequel is meant to be, so I won't re-tread dead ground. In actuality, the reason for not revealing Raiden as the new protagonist was probably a more sales-concious decision, as hyping him to buggery was in Japan. Metal Gear Solid players were the gruff, manly types. Gruff, manly types don't play as the trans-gendered!*

Though my cynical take on one of the largest shockers in gaming might seem to cheapen the game, in all actuality it strengthens its thematic standing. Metal Gear Solid 2 isn't just a game. It's a game about games. It's a game that shows you who you really are and then tells you life is shit. Life is nothing but numbers, information and career paths. As Janet Murray puts far more eloquently than I can at 1am:
'In a post-modern world, however, every experience has come to seem increasingly game-like, and we are aware of the constructed nature of all our narratives. The ordinary categories of experience, such as parent, child, lover, employer, or friend, have come to be described as "roles" and are readily deconstructed into their culturally invented components.'

A cheap tactic by an adored game designer plays right into the narrative of the game itself, breaking the fourth wall in more subtle ways than the breakdown of GW after the install of the virus. Before we've even inserted the disc, Kojima's clever construction has begun and we are unknowing participants.

Kojima is actually quite awesome

With its heavy handed exposition towards the climax, the game (by this point a thinly veiled mouthpiece for Kojima's drunken philosophising) tells you through the AI that the internet is ruining things. Anyone and everyone can have a voice, an effect and change things. And not for the better. Life is practically digital these days that mass censorship needs to be put into place. The awful truth is that in many ways the AI, GW, is correct. This is played against the two antagonists, Snake and Solidus, as both represent freedom and constraint in different ways.

Throughout the entire game the player, and Raiden, wants to be Solid Snake. He is the reason anyone is here in the first place and we are constantly reminded we are failing where he succeeds. Solid gets to the Big Shell before us - we see him ascend the elevator into the complex, having taken out the guards with ease. Long before we've finished disarming our half of the bombs set around the rig by Fatman, Snake informs us that he's already done his half. When we first fight Solidus in a battle that is a mirror image of Solid's fight again Liquid, we fail to take out the harrier jet, instead having to be saved by Snake as his rocket launcher. At the end of the game's second act, Solid seemingly betrays us and hands us over to the enemy.

And all the while we are so constrained by Snake's shadow, he remains the perfect image of freedom. This is a man who lives in Alaska, who gave up normal life to live that of a pariah and save the world, who knows the dangers of smoking but does it anyway because it makes him 37% cooler. Everything that represents freedom about Snake represents failure for us. As literally consumed by Arsenal Gear (Kojima designed the new Metal Gear to feel like a living creature), all that is Snake is stripped from us, from gameplay mechanics to personality. We are presented with a sword, and in that moment Raiden is truly born. The gameplay changes and we realise that we don't have to be Snake anymore - we have won our own liberty.

Solidus, on the other hand, is a man constrained. Despite being the boss character, he two is nothing but a pawn in the Patriot's experiment (only Solid Snake exists outside of their plans). So hard is he trying to fight the system that ties him down, so much does he want to leave a legacy behind for others to remember him by that in a way he represents what we should aspire to - not Solid Snake, but an ordinary person. He is a sum of contradictions: the terrorist who is truly the only patriotic soul amongst the entire cast of characters, the man who destroys life but champions humanity's own will to choose its fate. Just before the final confrontation with him, he is, in essence, revealed to be the true good guy, the hero of the game.

And we're forced to kill him, without being entirely sure why. Is it survival? Kill or be killed? Then surely we are just slave to another system - genetics - happily explored in the original MGS title? Is it because GW, the voice of control, says we must? Or is it simply because he's a boss in a videogame and that's what we have to do to complete it?

Perhaps the message behind it all is that we play far too many videogames.

Kojima just gave me a seizure and then made two more sequels in an attempt to tie things up but failed miserably and I'm left feeling depressed but MGS3: Substance is actually my favourite in the series
（04：同意划线部分）

Indeed, there is a certain ironic liberty the game aspires to if we choose to imagine it is suggesting we shouldn't be playing games and absorbing ourselves in the culture that comes with (bulletin boards, chat rooms etc.) Played against the American motifs running throughout - America has always carried with it the spirit and will of freedom and enlightenment, despite its inability to produce a track record worthy of those grand aspirations - we are presented with a very difficult question to answer: is the very nature of the modern, free world actually keeping us from attaining true freedom? Have we in our constant quest for the newer, better and easier just created constrictions for ourself that we accept without ever realising there is a problem? Essentially, we have created the perfect video game - modern life - but so concerned are we with improving our stats that we don't have time to think about exactly how we are living. Most frightening of all, the true prison lies in our slowly waning grip on what reality really is as 'net culture becomes the mainstream.

"Try not to think about it," Snake calmly reassures, bringing us back into our comfort zone, telling us to ignore all these issues that have just been raised over the past hour in a non-stop cutscene. Don't worry, Snake; we didn't. I can only presume that's the reason why Kojima lost his own grip on reality and made MGS4.

Conclusion: MGS2 is simultaneously a really bad game and the best game ever. Which makes it 'interesting but flawed' on my scale. Will be remembered as the beginning of something good, rather than a part of it.

*Accurate representation of the mindset of most Western gamers at the time. Sadly, to a large extent it still is. Minus the JRPG fans, of course. They're the only group not getting tired by all the lazy and generic androgyny-as-character-design currently choking the creativity out of the Japanese gaming industry.

0479

非常棒的文章，推荐！
作者从《版图之外》和Dreaming in an empty room 谈到了mgs2与《纽约三部曲》的关系

Metal Gear Solid 2: Pomo as All Get-Out
http://www.wurb.com/stack/archives/169#footnote-1-169

Metal Gear Solid 2: Pomo as All Get-Out

Posted August 6, 2007
An essay on Metal Gear Solid 2 by James Clinton Howell has come to my attention. It’s an interesting read, but if you don’t like reading, here’s an executive summary: Many parts of MGS2 — particular characters, situations, boss battles, and so forth — are close imitations of scenes in MGS1, but altered in ways that subvert them. The hero Snake is wrenched from the player’s control and replaced with a mere Snake wannabe. Scenes from MGS1 that provided a catharsis or a sense of accomplishment are replaced with superficially similar scenes that deny these things, and confrontations that the player anticipates either never occur or are made irrelevant. Even the real climax of the game takes place offscreen while Raiden is left to fill his “role” in what he already knows to be a phony battle. All this is deliberate: the overall theme of the work concerns “the futility of culturally remembered solutions to formally similar problems”, including the player’s memory of MGS1. Not only do Hideo Kojima’s detractors miss this, but most of his defenders do as well when they fail to read the work at anything other than a literal level.


Howell makes a compelling case, and it all makes me think it would have been a good idea to replay MGS1 before starting MGS2. 1 My memories of the first game are so distant by now that I caught only two clear echoes of scenes in the first game: Raiden’s aquatic approach to the plant at the beginning of his chapter, and the part where he’s captured and interrogated. But even if it were fresh in my mind, I doubt I’d have read the connections the way Howell does. It comes down to how much faith you have in the author. As another essay on the game says: “[T]here’s an all-important question. A negative answer could prove me both wrong and stupid. That question is this: Did Kojima intend to make the game this way?” Howell trusts the author almost completely, and is willing to believe that formal elements of the game are at the service of the author trying to make a point. Me, I’m a little more cynical about how big-budget game development works. If something happens that disrupts the expected experience, I don’t assume that it was done on purpose. If there are formal similarities, I tend to believe it’s because the designers didn’t want to stray too far from what worked last time, just like most videogame sequels. But even worse: my trust in the game was already pretty much gone before I even started playing. Its reputation preceded it. Even as I picked it up, I was waiting for it to fall apart in my hands.

One thing combines with Howell’s essay to restore my faith in the author somewhat: Peter Stillman, the sly reference to Paul Auster’s postmodern-noir New York Trilogy. (Wikipedia claims that there were once plans to include other character names from Auster. Putting highbrow literary allusions in a videogame may seem odd, but in fact it’s just Japanese.) When I first encountered Stillman, I wondered what the deal was, and thought that it might be connected to Auster’s reuse of names for different characters, as well as multiple names for the same character, as part of a general confusion of identity. For example, in the first story of the trilogy, City of Glass, Peter Stillman hires a detective to watch his father, also named Peter Stillman, and whenever the name is mentioned, there’s some ambiguity about which Peter Stillman is meant. Metaphorically, they can be seen as aspects of the same person. When the detective sees Peter Stillman Sr. for the first time, he actually sees two men who could be him and isn’t sure which one to follow — and has an eerie inking that either choice would turn out to be correct. Also, the detective isn’t really a detective, but rather an author of detective fiction brought into the situation by mistake, and the detective he’s mistaken for is named Paul Auster, just like the real author of the work of detective fiction he’s in. And so on. Similarly, when we first see Raiden, he’s addressed as Snake by Solid Snake’s former commanding officer and wearing a face-concealing mask, creating real confusion about who it is you’re controlling. Later, we’re told that the leader of the enemy is Solid Snake, but then find the real Solid Snake, using a pseudonym, fighting against him. But ultimately the game doesn’t do a lot with characters taking each others’ names, even though it does do a lot with characters taking on each others’ roles — a fact that actually enters the plot when the S3 project is explained.

But now, I think the Auster influence has less to do with identity confusion and more to do with the metafictional stuff, the blurring of layers. All three of the stories in the New York Trilogy are, in different ways, about fictional characters becoming aware of the stories they’re in. This is more or less what happens over the course of MGS2. Raiden never acknowledges his literal fictionality, even when Colonel Campbell throws it in his face, but he does know by the end that he’s been playing a scripted role. The player, though, gets a bigger dose of confrontation with fictionality: when the Colonel says to turn off the console, he’s not talking to Raiden, he’s talking to you. The “Fission Mailed” screen isn’t even part of gameworld, but it seems to be created by the virus infecting the Arsenal Gear mainframe all the same. The implication is that the S3 program extends outside the fiction. Raiden isn’t the one being manipulated into following a script: it’s you. If you play the game to completion, you have been successfully controlled — if not by some mysterious AI, then at least by the the author.

Anyway, at this point I’m thinking that MGS2 has one of those stories that’s more enjoyable to think about after the fact than it is to actually experience as a story. City of Glass struck me the same way.

0479

推荐下文的前半部分
作者从《版图之外》谈到了玻璃之城 漫画版
作者还提到了mgs2是在戏讽mgs1

Abhay Reminds You That Feline AIDS is the #1 Killer of Domestic Cats
by:   Abhay  
http://savagecritic.com/2007/12/ ... line-aids-is-1.html

0479

Dreaming in an empty room作者Tim Rogers的《mother2》分析文章
提到了mgs2和小岛

"the literature of the moment"
a critique of mother 2

by tim rogers

http://www.largeprimenumbers.com/article.php?sid=mother2

0479

推荐
作者谈论了“布莱希特戏剧体系”和mgs2

I Sic Brecht on Arsenal Gear
by：Iroquois Pliskin
http://versusclucluland.blogspot ... n-arsenal-gear.html

0479

顶楼加入两篇非常棒的文章（列为b级）
并为所有文章写了一句话介绍

0479

Information Control
http://www.byzantinereality.com/?p=81

还没看，做个标记先
并非要推荐，只是留个记号

这个是属于剧情层面的，主要讨论的是
not to control content, but to create context

0479

帖三段文字

1.我终于明白了ee名字和ps2图形引擎的联系（以前知道，但不知道为什么）
以下为对应关系

雷电——玩家（很明显，狗牌、VR等）
Arsenal Gear——PS2（被病毒入侵）
EE（Emma Emmerich）——EE（Emotion Engine）（一个是AG的AI“GW”的设计者，一个是PS2的CPU）

2.对mgs2的非常精辟的概括（非剧情）
Metal Gear Solid 2, among all of the things it tried, attempted to be a fully postmodern savaging of video games, sequels, and video game players. Attacking the consumers went over exactly as well as you'd expect.
“MGS2是对电子游戏、游戏续作和游戏玩家的一种后现代的无情批驳”

3.另一段值得思考的评论
Sons Of Liberty is still a solid game and a continuation of Kojima finding really cool ways of manipulating the medium. And he goes beyond the controller-swapping, mind-reading antics of the original Metal Gear Solid by having MGS2 stand as a sort of analysis of videogame structure. Even if he had to incur the wrath of a thousand billion fans for its (roughly) third-hour surprise, it's unique highlighting and (sometimes) subversion of videogame structure is one of MGS2's more impressive traits. Of course it wasn't readly apparent at its release because very few thought of videogame in terms of structure then.

0479

较少有人谈到的 关于
mgs2中雷电伪装敌兵，被左轮发现后的倒计时 的分析
in MGS2 where Raiden is in the basement of the Shell 1 Core, Ocelot is walking towards him, and there’s a ten second counter in the corner. The point was that you weren’t supposed to move for ten seconds. What those people are misunderstanding is that that was another of the game’s player-loathing inversions, one which Kojima might’ve found hilarious.

全文（mgs3 review）
http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=414

Kissdreams

What those people are misunderstanding is that that was another of the games player-loathing inversions, one which Kojima mightve found hilarious.

0479

这些人并不明白：这只不过是本游戏另一处 让玩家不爽的 对电子游戏套路的一种颠覆，小岛也许会为这一设计窃笑不已

Kissdreams

愣是没明白那里怎么颠覆了？

憨包猪

呜呜呜……不懂鸟语的泪奔……

Kissingrose

[quote=Kissdreams;522812]愣是没明白那里怎么颠覆了？[/quote]

也许是这里如果因为不看剧情动画就不知道该做什么这一点吧...在对话的时候Ames提醒Raiden要"ick up your AK",如果直接跳过去就...


P.S:楼上惊现元老级潜艇.

蝙蝠侠

[quote=Kissingrose;523455]也许是这里如果因为不看剧情动画就不知道该做什么这一点吧...在对话的时候Ames提醒Raiden要"ick up your AK",如果直接跳过去就...


P.S:楼上惊现元老级潜艇.[/quote]
可能是说这一段其实完全可以交给过场动画来完成，但游戏里还是需要玩家自己去动作，重新装备上AK74U，这个问题比较让人费解。

024

进来支持下，尽管自己对剧情只是大概有个了解……
MGS2是我最喜欢的一作……

0479

[quote=Kissdreams;522812]愣是没明白那里怎么颠覆了？[/quote]
我的理解是
剧情动画结束，进入倒计时，按传统或套路 肯定应该做些什么
但是正确答案居然是原地不动，到处乱跑反而会game over

（但是似乎需要玩家装备ak啊）

0479

[quote=024;523579]进来支持下，尽管自己对剧情只是大概有个了解……
MGS2是我最喜欢的一作……[/quote]
这里的大多数文章讲的不是剧情 是结构

Kissdreams

[quote=0479;523806]我的理解是
剧情动画结束，进入倒计时，按传统或套路 肯定应该做些什么
但是正确答案居然是原地不动，到处乱跑反而会game over

（但是似乎需要玩家装备ak啊）[/quote]

这就是我不解他究竟想表达什么的意思....

0479

[quote=Kissdreams;523812]这就是我不解他究竟想表达什么的意思....[/quote]
如果你说的“不解”指的是：既然有装备ak这个动作，就不能算是颠覆
那么我的解释是：倒计时的时间很长，在倒计时之前Ames只说了“He's coming! Pick up your AK!”
玩家在装备ak之后，看到还有时间，很可能觉得是不是应该逃跑或者反击什么的
结果游戏却是要求玩家装备之后，原地不动，是为颠覆

（但是，这里确实可能作者忘记了要装备ak一事，才做出了那样的评论）

Kissdreams

[quote=0479;523885]
玩家在装备ak之后，看到还有时间，很可能觉得是不是应该逃跑或者反击什么的
[/quote]
装备AK后最多延迟两秒然后就剧情了 不会倒计时完的不是么？