Since the game is a bit too high IQ for me and thus would require from me to put an effort in writing an actual write-up, ill just throw in some incoherent ramblings I had on discord since recent chainsaw man chapter got me in good old hotline miami mood

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Hotline Miami blurs the line between human and inhuman, whether 'humans are still animals or not' idea is just an excuse, is their humanity a pretense or is it their animalistic behaviour thats a pretense?

anyway you can see Hotline Miami 2 cast as different type of characters that could have been protagonists of the sequel and I think after coming up for so many backstories, writer had an idea to make meta commentary and the subversion on the concept of sequels

difference in level design in contrast to the first installment makes it rather obvious that not a single individual from the ensemble cast is really up to being 'Jacket' that is an idea. On top of them having their individual type of gameplay to reflect their psyche, they all are also a bit too methodical and calculating to their approach to murder and are not as much into delirium when compared to Jacket who was merely seeing things in coma a lot of times and hence his dreamscape being a bit less realistic.

you see Jacket and how his behaviour influences different type of deranged people with their own masks and animals to live with and not only they can never live up to the standards of how Jacket is being idolized and immortalized, but they also never really grasp that whatever they take out from it is not the reality. reality is more fucked up but they get reality check, memento mori and reminded of their mortality

oh the game also has 'recorded' type of presentation when you are supposed to 'eject' the game for it to end, as if it was some cassete shit
it can be interpreted as scattered records to understand the truth on your own (sorta like Higurashi)
but its also usually used to visualize sociopathy (like in Kane and Lynch 2, where 'camera' is basically behaving like a camera man constantly following the main character behind)
there are a lot of interpretable shit

the monster The Son fought in the end was basically him killing The Fans but he was tripping, thinking he was entering valhalla but merely killed himself, he achieved catharsis only in his delusions while just randomly killed himself in reality. fan trip is also probably a result of him projecting jacket into the fans. they are inspired by jacket and were comrades to him in the war (son doesnt know this but its still relevant to the fans' character) and them wearing masks and then targeting the russian stronghold in the finale probably influenced sons mind in that regard

in hotline, we see jackets daily life and how he behaves extensively. his home is mostly empty. we do not see him interact with anyone up until he saves the girl kidnapped by the russians. there doesnt seem to him having anything whatsoever that doesnt make his life completely barren. we dont even see him doing his actual job and his life outside of his apartment and hits on the mafia. these all build up for his sociopathy, making it seem as if he is unable to connect with anyone or be able to complete anything outside of his violent missions. him being mute may just a trope. regarding the events of the games, beard and jacket served together in hawaii and jackets life is then saved by beard. later both of them are discharged and are assumed to have maintained contact with each other. however, towards the end of the war, russians nuke san fransisco, where beard is located. jacket is devastated by beards death, as he sees him in his dreams in the hospital, indicating that he formed a close friendship. this however may be interpreted in a different manner. it may be that due to jackets completely barren life and his unresponsive character, he simply may have exacerbated beards connection and attitude towards him, which build up his sociopathy and social ineptitude even more. after the nuking of sanfran, russia and america governments form a coalition to put a stop to future conflict, and america is humiliated. huge waves of russian immigrants flood america. this flooding is implied by the fact that bolshevik russia was an economical shithole while america was prosperous in the 80s. russians taking advantage of this as well as the indiscriminate bombings and humiliations in the war heightens tensions between the russian immigrants and american citizens. the russian mafia expanding in various parts of the country complicates this even further. the general from beard missions founds 50 blessings organization with other individuals who are disillusioned

with the american governments handling of the things. they attract others into their organization by putting up a patriotic front, but the exact motivations and mannerisms of the higher ups is left to different interpretations with the janitors and the generals behaviour. going back to jacket, as 50 blessings starts recruiting or forcing others to hit russian locales to further their so called patriotic front, jacket is also recruited. jacket accepts everything that is thrown at him. he doesnt ask questions. he doesnt wonder why he is doing what he is doing. he simply seems to not care. he brutalizes russians and their american associates (politicians, fat black enemies in levels, 3rd party drug dealers) without a hint of emotion. the major interpretation is that jacket despises russians because of them killing beard. whether jackets relationship with beard was genuinely mutual or it was his sociopathy and delusions manifesting as early as the hawaiian conflict is up to your interpretation. but in the very first level, despite not showing a single hint of character and personality when killing the russians, he beats a homeless man because of him being a witness to his operation and kills him. and then he pukes. jacket is so far removed psychologically that he feels genuine remorse and/or shock for killing any other guy, but his behaviour is twisted with the russians. he does not have any relationships, and is a complete recluse. he is unable to connect with anyone but then finds the girl tortured, raped and drugged in one of the russians dens and starts an intimate relationship with her. because of her presence, he starts to clean his apartment and seems to correct his errors more often. they eventually are implied to even have sex. the girl may be way over his head because of the trauma she recieved, and such situations cause people to haywire in the head, ie create feelings for people who rescued them instinctually. but jacket does not give a fuck.

he simply relishes in the girls affection for him and either tries to genuinely correct himself or deludes himself due to his erratic psychology. again, this double interpretation is due to jackets sociopathic nature already established with his treatment of the russians regardless of which way you wanna pull it, and so you can either view a lot of stuff he does as genuine or irrational. the latter part i have mostly not seen being said in any hotline community, but i dont interact with them anyways. yet all of that we see is unreliable anyway, because richter shot jacket and jacket was in the hospital dreaming of all the events that transpired before him waking up. this part concludes jackets sociopathy which the video talks about. his ignorance is his other major side of his character. not once does jacket question the authority that tells him to bomb this and kill that. he doesnt give the slightest fuck about why he is doing any of the things he is doing. he never even tries to pick up the pieces together even when there are major hints right in front of him. richter, jake, the original tiger mask guy and plenty of others can be found throughout the levels tortured or murdered by the russians or locked up. they were doing the exact same thing as jacket did, but he never even cared, he didnt even make an effort to notice. richter pleads uselessly to jacket but when he does he also alludes to 50 blessings and how they are connected to everything. instead jacket refuses to listen, and thinks that it was the russians all along. since he doesnt give a shit, he makes up his mind on how the events transpired and concludes that there were rivaling russian factions that wanted to destroy the other ones, and that jacket was simply used by one of them against the other. he stands on trial and gives that statement to the judge. that is his ignorance. instead of trying to get a grip and focus on what is really happening, he just pleases himself with violating russians.

this ignorance and cowardice is also represented in other characters like biker, fans, son and evan. like i have said before, it mocks those who are capable of dealing with the issues at hand but choose to satisfy their base desires instead, and so the generals deranged speech is the clearest statement of what is going on in the minds of those characters. the meta comes into play here. just like how the characters dont give a shit and refuse to reason, to think, to understand, the players themselves also do not care for hotlines story, and the devs criticize them for that, as they think the story and what its saying is important. most hotline fans couldnt give a fuck about anything other than the ultra violence you can perform in the games, and so they complain about all these nitpicky issues about games length, level designs and gameplay issues, which are valid, but neglect the heart of hotlines story and do not want to bother with what the devs are trying to say. so to them what happened is just delirious meme-y bullshit that they couldnt take seriously. and the devs clearly give a huge fuck about the story because look at how intricately woven it is inside the various events of the chapters and how it stretches and interconnects between the perspectives of the various characters between the games. and so richard berates jacket and the others for their inability and cowardice. not because he thought they truly had any power to stop any of what happened, but because they chose to remain lowly while neglecting everything. this is what richard is. an omen that tells people about their impending doom and criticizes them in a completely humane manner, like any other sane person looking at what the people of hotline were doing.

jake was so loyal to the cause and just showed genuine support for the faction and was ready to go berserk but they killed him canonically actually, executed by 50 blessings, it builds generals jadedness and how he doesnt give a fuck about nationalism or patriotism actually

general being coerced to force his soldiers to perform suicide ops because of goverment pressure and patriotic rhetoric being flipped in current hotline era by how he tricks losers by nationalist rhetoric and sends them on suicide missions themselves to unravel russian political dominance

pardo is a mentally stunted attention whore. his personality can be regarded as an aspect of masculinity(though its not exclusive to masculinity). the desire to be on top and be recognized by all. having all the lights shine on his ass and get all the fame. jacket is publicized and his murders are all over everywhere. everyone talks about it and discusses why this mf did what he did. he also has anger issues. we see him suicidally charging into drug dens and cartel bases killing everyone. thats his way of cooling off. and he also has done some pretty fucked up stuff that would cost his job and evan knows this, hence why evan forces him to give info, saying that pardo owes him big time. being pissed about jackets rise, pardo then starts his own murder spree. at first he doesnt know or understand what would get hot on the press, as he didnt murder people meticulously but just gunned down criminals. so he just slits someones throat and thinks its all good. then the cops arrive at the scene and he keeps telling both them and evan that this miami mutilator case is much more sophisticated, subconsciously trying to exert his presence and overtake that of jackets. there is an instance where lightning flashes and we see camera crew filming pardo and the scene. both are more hints to figure out his craving for attention. later, the fans become famous and that makes the jacket case and the situation with the masked murderers across miami even more hot. this pisses off pardo so he tries to get more violent with his methods. disembowels his second victim. then goes berserk and charges into colombuian ship. in his latest murder he slips and leaves evidence for police to find him. the scene is also much more gruesome as this time he flayed the skin of the victim when he was alive, then ripped open his chest. both him slipping and being more grotesque can be interpreted as his subconscious giving way for his apprehension, as that is the quickest way to fame, to stand on trial

like jacket is on trial right now. afterwards he realizes he left his gun at the crime scene and encounters his other criminally insane self, which is a very basic bitch scene. he then dreams of how his apprehension would play out. him being all regretful and telling he had no choice but to do it, killing all the officers trying to take him out, etc. which is even more emphasis on his attention craving fantasy as that is even more newsline worthy material. just like what jacket did to confront richter in the police precinct, gunning down all the cops there. then he wakes up and gets a call thinking his fellow lawmen are gonna bust his ass. he gets paranoid and barricades himself and drinks. but in reality it was them calling him because the russians were gonna nuke the place and his help was needed. and then he dies in his manic state, getting nuked into oblivion like evan, jacket and richter. pardo is the sideman who got delusional into thinking that he needs to be at the center of everything and destroys his life to do so. but in the end it doesnt even matter. no one had the opportunity to figure him out and he died like all the rest.

beards relationship with jacket is also kind of fascinating in regards to how jacket percieves it. he wanted revenge for Beard but probably also thought he was as cool as Beard

Him seeing beard dead next to Richter was already a hint to him slowly ‘remembering’ and blaming it all to Richter, but there is more to it

beard missions portray jacket and beard as comrades but they arent shown as close friends, beard is just a good guy that did what he thought best, the photo scene can be just jacket doing at least some sort of action to establish human contact, but his perception of beard in his dreams and how little interaction there is between the two in reality gives way to jacket being delusional cunt exacerbating his relationship and finding reason to commit mass slaughter without a good excuse

beard and jacket relationship is open to two interpretations. jacket being emotional because of beard death simply because they were friends. You could also say that the other aspect fits more in character with jacket is jacket deluding himself with beards perception and reception of him and then exacerbating it

the idea that someone could do all that shit to Russians was probably plausible since The Beard was just that good so nonchalantly, unlike literally anyone else who holds malice in heart, and all of it got catalyzed by something that was not done in malice at all, hence the cover of the game where Beard is looking into atomic explosion that came out of nowhere to him, he was just doing army gigs after all but somehow it kickstarted environmental destruction on which he had zero awareness and control over. Sort of like ‘death of the author’

i doubt Jacket genuinely cares about beard in a way that would be considered genuine or emotionally healthy and he is using beard as an excuse for his own bullshit desire to go berserk and massacre russians, but he still has gripes as the only time he didnt kill russians and others that werent adverseries made him puke his guts out, like he doesnt question what he is doing with shaking the russian mafia even once during the events of the game, he just goes along with everything 50B is telling him to do, he is senseless and doesnt care, he just likes hurting other people

and thats why richard reprimands and scolds him. because its too late and he never even tried to understand what was happening around him. did you notice what he was saying in his testimony in trial chapter - he was saying how rival russian factions manipulated him to take each other out - fucking dumbfuck.

he would not care about Beard, he was just nervously smoking shit in army and was not talking to anyone

in stories like Apocalypse Now and stuff influenced by it, we always only get stuff about army and how it turns people psychotic and full of PTSD but they always leave the rest up to interpretation. in HM, Apocalypse Now shit is moreso an army backstory, while consequences of such an experience are shown and taken to the extreme

Richter man just lives in shit and has to take care of a mother thats pretty much dying with natural causes instead of violence or anything and he can't really fight it in any shape or form. It's a conflict that can even be associated with Superman

richter in actually is a normal dude who cares about his loved ones and is forced into take action by others threatening to take that away from him, but jacket just sees him as basic villain and richter is also apologetic and sympathetic towards him when he gets confronted in prison, he also makes richter responsible for all the stuff happened so that builds into him deluding himself into thinking russians were just doing their own shit and take each other out, he also makes richter evil by him saying diabolical shit and shooting his woman

i dont even know if richter was the one who shot jackets woman

Its also cool how HM2 menu is nuclear blast and they basically bomb the idea that HM3 could ever exist, pretty much a final nail to the so-called ‘sequel’ coffinn

Don’t remember if I mentioned it above but theres also a cool detail in the game that you can’t actually hurt women in the game and you get punished for even attempting it.

Oh yeah music and level design also fucks in this game idc