Warning. Long text. This is not a review. Many quotations.

Have you read the warning? Then let's begin.

To be honest, I wasn't going to write a review of this game. There are 3 main reasons.

The first is that I don't think I fully understood MGS2.
I can't say that I understood this difficult game myself, nor that I got the whole picture of MGS2 by thinking for myself. Besides, I thought I only needed to listen to Snake's solution/sermon at the end of MGS2. MGS2 is a fun game, even if it is difficult to understand. It's got a lot of gameplay finesse, cool visuals, and a lot of playful mind. I had no complaints at the time about being able to enjoy an evolution of the classic MGS. I didn't think for a minute that Snake had to be the protagonist. I liked the character Raiden. (I liked him even more in the later MGS4. I haven't played the Rising games, sorry.)
Story in games is certainly an important element.
The story of MGS is interesting, humorous and above all, always surprising. (I like to be surprised, not only in games.) But the great thing about Hideo Kojima, I felt, was that even if you put the story aside, the exploration, ingenuity and fun of the gameplay shone through. That's why, although I was baffled by the story of MGS2, especially at the end of the game, I thought that "the difficulty of the story is just a trivial matter" and that "it's a fun game and, above all, Snake gives the answers, so that's all that matters". At that time, I was not interested in the opinions of others on the internet, so that's all I could think about. As I write this, my opinion has not changed.

Secondly, My total love for the MGS series, including MGS2, is less than you Hideo Kojima(MGS) freaks in international.
I mentioned at the beginning that I was reluctant to write my opinion about MGS2. I'm reluctant to write or talk about this popular series. This is because, from my point of view, there seems to be more passion abroad than there is in Japan. I was even more convinced after the whole disturbance with MGS5. (Not just me, but all the MGS/Hideo Kojima fans in Japan were very surprised by the frankly angry attitude of you international fans towards Konami.)
I've played a lot of Hideo Kojima's work. I've played MGS2 to the point where I've completed dog tags on every difficulty level. But still, if you ask me if I like the MGS series as much as you, the international fans who write the reviews on this site, I can't say yes.

And finally, third reason, which is both the motivation and the purpose of this essay-like writing. In the past, there were enthusiastic Hideo Kojima fans in Japan.

A fervent Hideo Kojima fundamentalist, whom Hideo Kojima himself describes as "my alter ego, my disciple and my teacher". Yes, there were absolute Hideo Kojima freaks in Japan.

Itoh Keikaku/ItohProject.(Real name Itoh Satoshi/伊藤聡)

...At last I can get to the point.

He was a hardcore geek/otaku. He loved foreign films, novels, and was the biggest Kojima Hideo fan in Japan, having studied and reviewed every single one of his works, starting with Snatcher. Half the purpose of this article is to give you a glimpse of the astonishing analysis of MGS2 left behind by the enthusiastic Hideo Kojima fundamentalist, Itoh Keikaku.

The other half is to play a role. ...To be honest, it's hard to write this group of sentences. It's hard work. It doesn't bring in any money. So why am I writing this text? No, this isn't a text. This is a 'bridge'. Or a zip line, a rope, a ladder.
My role here is to act as a bridge between you, the rabid Hideo Kojima fans overseas, and the greatest/strongest Hideo Kojima fan that ever existed in Japan, Itoh Keikaku.
”I don't need a bridge!”
Some of you may say. Then don't bother reading this text, just read the Japanese text at the link below for yourself. (If you have an English translation of any of below sentences, please post a link in the comments section, as they are undoubtedly better than my poor English translations).

Fully translated into English. Bolded text is the part of the main topic that relates to MGS2.


"What is controlled reality?” Itoh Keikaku
When the aircraft crashed into the WTC, I was in hospital watching the footage.
I had just joined the ranks of the crippled at the time. I have just lost my right sciatic nerve and the major muscles in my right thigh, and said goodbye forever to all control and sensation below the knee. Below the knee became a darkman. There were many other issues that needed to be considered. The malignancy that led to this situation in the first place (in short, cancer) had such troublesome issues as metastasize problems and whether ABC and various other forms of hepatitis were latent in the transfused blood. If I metastasize, I don't know if my life will be saved next(or rather, almost no hope.), and if I have hepatitis C, I'll almost certainly develop liver cancer. Furthermore, furthermoree, if I look up the five-year survival rate of the sarcoma that bothered me on the internet, I'll find something like 50-70%.

Frankly, this situation was depressing. I would have been happy if I didn't know, but as soon as I heard the name of the disease, I connected my laptop to the hospital payphone and accessed the internet. I love Cronenberg(lol), and being the kind of person who wants to die knowing exactly what is happening to him, there was no stopping me from wanting to know. See, The Fly, there are? The protagonist is a scientist, so I understand all the grotesque festivities that happen to my body, such as the peeling of the nails and the dissolution of the skin, and I accept that "hmmm, this is what this is all about" and accept my path to becoming a fly man. I mean, what am I talking about(lol).

Nevertheless, once I knew the name of the disease, fear now came to me. Are my parents and doctors telling me the truth in the first place? I was struck by paranoia, almost like a Philip K. Dick's novel. Yeah, this is a bit amazing. After all, it makes me think that everyone involved with me is lying. This is exactly how I feel about Tokyo Total Recall, Rei Fukai being captured by the Jam Human and forced to eat chicken broth. REALLY. The slightest care from a nurse or the casual kindness of a parent would scare the hell out of meeee(lol). See, David Fincher's 'The Game', that Michael Douglas situation.

So I am still living in fear of death. I am certainly a little closer to death than most. I've managed to get out of the Philip K Dick state(I mean, there's no way for me to know if I've been deceived.), but there are many days when 'death' comes at me furiously in the middle of the night and I have to cry under the duvet.

Because I don't want to die at all yet.

I've been in hospital for about 10 days every month for the last year, with anti-cancer drugs in my system. Unlike in the past, recent anti-cancer drugs are not so hard, but the nausea is still strong and hair falls out. What's a bit interesting is that even though I'm dosed each time with an anticancer drug with almost the same ingredients, the hairs that fall out are in different places each time, really. The first time I lost hair, beard, armpit hair, breast hair(lol) and pubic hair, but the second time I lost no hair or beard at all, but instead a lot of nose hair. But at first I was happy. I thought, "I don't have to take care of my hair", but it turned out that this condition is fiercely vulnerable to dust. I can hardly stay in my room, which is the Lidley Scott room(in short, a dusty room), where I can see streaks of light from the window. Ugggghhh.

I have always had asthma and a sultanol inhaler was a must-have. Now I am injected with anti-cancer drugs and fighting the possibility of cancer in my body(maybeeee?). If it had been the beginning of this century without these drugs, I would be dead. It is the drugs produced by science and technology that sustain my existence.
Bodies maintained by science and technology. Bodies that would disappear without science and technology. What this means, in essence, is that I am a cyborg. Not only machine bodies with superpowers are not cyborgs. If not the word 'cyborg', then 'cyborg-like body'. 'cyborg feminism'(wow, I miss it) style thing. Not like Mitsubishi Genentech's 'Sarariman', which has embedded micro-processing equipment (lol). I maintain my body through chemical technology. Incidentally, do you know that the hospital code for anti-cancer drugs is 'chemo'? Chemotherapy, chemical, so chemo. My existence has been predicated on the existence of science and technology from an early age. (On another note, I was apparently born by caesarean section. I was a child who could not have been born without technology.) I was a child who would have disappeared without technology. And I still am.
I am one of the 'children of technology'. I am one of those people who have already demonstrated by their bodies that my lived reality has always been cyberpunk. Of course everyone's life is defined and limited by technology, but I have demonstrated this in my body almost from birth.

The body that is me. Needless to say, I have cancer, and this is a reality that never moves. It is nature itself, because nature is unpredictable and uncontrollable.
For survival, however, I have to anticipate, control and converge with its nature. It is to exclude nature, to construct the world as one in which nature does not exist from the outset. It is an impulse and an ideology rooted in human survival. (Survival is not an instinct, as humans are creatures capable of wishing for death. It is a desire.) Humans have extended their individual viability by assembling models, simulating, predicting, describing and controlling.

MGS2 is about a kind of paranoia. It's a Newtonian delusional pipe dream that says that everything in the world can be reduced to numbers, and therefore everything can be simulated, everything can be observed, everything can be predicted, everything can be controlled. Laplace's demon. The idea that, with infinitely precise data, we can perfectly predict the trajectory of a billiard ball. The delusion that the world is computable. Of course, this is impossible, not to mention quantum mechanics and chaos theory. But MGS2 shows that it is possible, albeit only in a social model.

I've seen some people say that MGS2 itself was just a VR experience for Raiden. That is, "Is this real? Or is it a dream?" It's a philosophical discussion about the definition of reality. I don't need to quote Mamoru Oshii, but I feel that this kind of theme has been depicted so many times in various works that it has already become obsolete. And Raiden does indeed come close to addressing such issues when he says that the Colonel doesn't exist. Another "common story" about people's sense of reality being diminished by virtual reality is told in Raiden's small story about VR training.

"It doesn't matter if this is a dream or not, what you think is real is real." Unfortunately, MGS2 doesn't jump to any of those "often" conclusions. and, nor does it let virtual reality encroach on reality. MGS2 ignores the concluding recipe of the "virtual reality" story. If you've ever said, or thought, that the whole "reality vs. dream" theme is a cliché, good job. If you thought I was saying that "the theme of reality or dreams is clichéd", well, good job, because MGS2 has a unbelievable conclusion that makes that point nullification. And good job to whoever said or thought that the theme of self-discovery was clichéd. Because MGS2 ends with a conclusion that invalidates itself.

With S3, the patriots have been able to control human society from an individual level. It's not about controlling the brain, it's about what kind of events can be accumulated to lead people to do what they want them to do. They have acquired such methods. The story of MGS2 was to test the effectiveness of this method and to establish a version of the protocol that could be used. Everything in human society can be reduced to numbers, and therefore everything can be simulated, everything can be observed, everything can be predicted, everything can be controlled.

Where then is the difference between reality and virtual reality?

Virtual reality does not come to reality. The possibility that this reality may be a virtual reality and that there may be another reality does not matter. MGS2 does not make the question of "what is reality?" a matter of ego perception. It doesn't make it a philosophical question. Because if everything is predictable and controllable, then it is a virtual reality. That this reality is at the same time a virtual reality.

That this reality can be defined as a virtual reality. To violently redefine it as a virtual reality. Such acrobatics are the substance of the idea of the S3.

When Neo realised that this world was a virtual reality, he was led by Morpheus to escape to another "reality". When Moroboshi Ataru realised that this world was only a dream, he returned to the real Tomobiki High School (even though it was also only a dream). But for Raiden and his friends, there is no other world to escape. Because, the "reality" they live in has become a virtual reality, and there is no "another world" to escape to. It is not even allowed to be a dream, no matter how far it goes, like the skin of an onion (which is what Avalon is). This is the story of April 30th, MGS2, the day when this only reality became a virtual reality.

"What is the world when everything can be counted, predicted and controlled?"

After pushing this assumption, MGS2 comes to this conclusion.

It's a virtual reality.

The perception that people already living in a virtual reality. A vision in which reality itself is virtual. This is not the same as some kind of escapism: "This world could be a dream (virtual reality)". It is not the same as the phrase that has been used a thousand times: "There is no such thing as reality."

It's about the fact that even though this world is a virtual reality, it's still real, it's still a unique reality with nowhere to run, and it's still a virtual reality. It is this despair that tints MGS2 to no end.

Shadow Moses Island, the setting of MGS1, was a hollowed-out facility on an isolated island. There was snow, rocks, trees, natural caves and permafrost. MGS2, on the other hand, is a man-made landscape in every way. It place in New York City, and a huge man-made structure floating off the coast. There is nothing in this place that does not involve human hands. At most, there are seagulls flying in the sky. Raiden's fight takes place in a thoroughly artificial environment. Unlike MGS1, which was about genetic determinism (and freedom from it) and was set in a harsh natural environment, MGS2 deals with the determinism of man, by man himself. It was inevitable that the place could only be so thoroughly man-made. There is no longer any need for the word "fate" to demand a god. There is no need for a cosmic mystery or a law of cause and effect. A world in which man predicts and controls himself. There, everything needs to be a product of human thought. Because nature is an unthinkable and therefore inherently uncontrollable and unpredictable factor. To live in a world where everything around you has been created by human hands. That is to say, to live in human thought. Elements that are unpredictable and difficult for humans to control are completely eliminated. There is no need to bring up virtual reality. Because this world is already a virtual reality.

Look around us, how much of it is natural? Is the grass, potted plants, roadside trees and weeds in the car park planted by man 'natural’? Is the river that runs through your neighbourhood a natural river? It is out of the question that some irrigation canals have been built recently, but in fact they may have been used for agriculture in the Showa, Meiji and even Edo periods.
We live surrounded by man-made things. We live surrounded by the environment that we have created by our thoughts. We live surrounded by the results of our thoughts. Why are we all surprised that 5,000 people die in a major earthquake, but not surprised at the huge number of deaths in road accidents per year? It is because nature is a "calamity that has come to pass", an unpredictable factor, whereas road accidents are merely a "socially predictable and acceptable by-product". Earthquakes are natural disasters, but road accidents are the preserve of human thought. That is, we live inside what the human brain has created. The roads, the buildings, the houses, the food, everything is just an artificial product.
Nature is not an entity created by the human brain. Nature is an inherently unpredictable and uncontrollable realm. It is not a symbol. The city is dyed with human thought to every extent. It's no coincidence that MGS2 is set in New York, a city within city.

It's the kind of writing that makes you feel crazy. I felt dizzy right after I read it for the first time. Hideo Kojima himself, who made MGS2, is crazy, but I think it's also crazy for Itoh Keikaku to grasp it so accurately.

Report on the talk show celebrating the publication of "The Chronicles of Itoh Keikaku : Phase 2"
The content of MGS2 was controversial among fans, and Kojima recalls, "I was worried about what Itoh-san would think". Fortunately, Itoh-san had praised MGS2 on his blog, but his blog under fire because he had written that "only I(Itoh Keikaku) could understand this".
Kojima expressed his gratitude and admiration, saying "It's not easy to find fans who continue to fight even in such a situation. The only people who understand what I'm trying to do are Itoh-san and Yano-san. (aka Nojima Hitori)

Since writing the above commentary, he has written commentaries in the limited edition booklets of MGS3 and other titles, and reviews of films, but in 2005 his cancer returned. In the midst of his battle with the disease, he dedicated the rest of his time to creating. This was Genocidal Organ, MGS4's nobelize, Harmony and his last work, The Empire of Corpses.

In an essay written around the same time as Harmony was released in December 2008, he wrote

"Human Story” Itoh Keikaku
https://itoh-archive.hatenablog.com/entry/2015/11/13/170413
"People die. But death is not defeat."
That's what Hemingway once said. What Hemingway meant by winning and losing, I do not know, but I understand what he meant. A man can dwell in another as a story. We can live in someone else's body as a story. It can be told in many ways and become part of a fiction that shapes many other human beings.

It is not only genes that people pass on. People procreate because they seek a familiar other to whom they can tell their own stories. A man begets a child in search of a listener, a most attentive and faithful listener. Listening, of course, is a metaphor, and there are many ways in which a person can tell his story to his children. The "way of life" is a synonym for fiction, and there are as many fictions as there are ways in which parents show their children their lives.

And I, as a writer, tell my own fiction as I write it here. I don't know whether this story will be remembered by you or not. But I'm writing this text because I'm betting on that possibility.

This is me.

This is the fiction that I am.

I want to live in your body.

I want to be passed on to others by your mouth.

About six months after writing this essay, he passed away.

This is a bit of a departure from MGS2, but when I was playing Death Stranding, I often thought about Itoh Keikaku. 'I wonder how he would have critiqued Death Stranding if he had lived longer'. It didn't take long for me to think: "...He'll laugh and do Thumbs up."

When Hideo Kojima looks at the deceased, there's no doubt in his mind that in the forefront is Itoh Keikaku.

He doesn't exist in the world now. But he is here nonetheless.

G.K. Chesterton, the great mystery novelist, wrote in his essay "Democracy of the Dead"
The argument can be summed up in one short sentence: "It is not only those who live now who will determine the country."

It makes sense to me to apply this to games as well. Rather, it seems to me to be far more adaptable than political systems. It's not just the gamers of today who are playing games. Don't the dead enjoy playing games and talking to each other as much as we do? Perhaps some of the reviews on this site have been written by dead people. When I look at the reviews of the MGS series I hear a voice laughing. The voice of Itoh keikaku. Bonkura, silly jokes, and the laughter of otaku laughing themselves silly. When you read his main book, you're pulled in by the surface image and you get the impression that he's all seriousness, but in reality he's a just otaku. Cinephile who loves Monty Python, Fight Club and The Dark Knight. His novels are masterpieces, but it's his geeky, silly short stories and film reviews that I love. Many of the subplots, especially in the Genocidal Organ text, are really ridiculous. The content of the game is really full of bonkurasness: 'Revolver Ocelot makes a cameo appearance', 'Initial D cars appear', and 'last boss mumbles Tokimeki Memorial’s song'. And, "セカイ、蛮族、ぼく。/World, Barbarians and Boku" is the best, and I still laugh out loud every time I read it again. I think, maybe he have written a review on this site.

Oh, I'm not.
I have substance. And, There is no alcohol in this substance.

小島秀夫 @Kojima_Hideo 2011年3月22日
From "The Second Phase of Itoh Keikaku's Chronicle".
”I don't feel comfortable with the word 'blessed'. I don't think there is a nether world, and as an idiom it is too meaningless. I don't think I've ever used the word "blessed" when someone died in all the years I've been writing my diary.
That's what I wrote about in the novelization of Metal Gear. When someone dies, what words should we use to mourn and remember them? I've always used these words.
Thank you very much.”

Thank you, Itoh-san.

From me too, thank you, Itoh-san.