Prerelease:Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

This page details prerelease information and/or media for Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.

This page is rather stubbly and could use some expansion. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue this article?

Original Design Document

To do: Find the original document in Japanese.

In 2006, Jesse Johnson & Marc Laidlaw from the MetalGearSolid.org community, shared and translated the original MGS2 Design Document that was written by Kojima / Konami as a guide to develop the final project. In this document (that you can download in here as a backup copy), there is a lot of interesting information about removed scenes, unused gameplay elements and other stuff that was not revealed directly in the game. Here are some of the most interesting parts.

• MGS2 was meant to be called Metal Gear Solid III; Instead of proceeding on to MGS2, as one might expect, we are making MGS3. The question in peoples’ minds, ‘Why is it 3 and not 2?’

• In the previous game, only 4 to 5 enemies could be shown on-screen at a time. Now, we will be able to display a maximum of around 300 enemies on-screen at a time."

• We will create ways for the player to be able to control the brightness of their environment, making ‘light’ another strategy element that can be used in the game. All rooms have light switches that can be turned on and off. If you destroy a light, the area around it goes dark. If you equip the cigarette item while in the dark, it will emit a faint light.

• After an injured soldier has received treatment (lasting a set period of time) in a medical room, they will return to the game field. The area of the body where they were injured will be covered in a bandage texture. If you attack a medical facility, you can prevent this from happening again.

• After Arsenal becomes active, the area with the hostages is cut loose. The bodies of the hostages (50 to 60) can be seen floating in the water, crimson from all the blood, and have attracted sharks. Raiden and Snake must proceed through the area.

• A battle that takes place on Wall Street (at Federal Hall) – Snake versus Ocelot (controlled by Liquid’s right arm), and Raiden versus Solidus. Surrounding them are spectators and police officers, including mounted police.

• It will be possible to deliver a type of attack with the hands while crouching or crawling whereby you grab an enemy’s legs and knock them over

• In certain parts of the game, the game screen will be split up either horizontally or vertically, with one side of the screen showing a normal cut-scene. The other side will be the player’s game screen, so they will be able to continue playing while being able to see what is going on in the other screen. By doing this, we can display simultaneous sequences in real-time, showing what else is happening while a particular event is occurring. Split-screen scenes: The bomb disposal scenes where Raiden, Snake and the bomb disposal consultant are all working together. Emma’s rescue (the sniping scene)

• A type of hidden mode. By equipping an item called ‘Mantis’s Mask’, obtainable in the main game, you will be able to read peoples’ (enemies’) minds. [This was somehow used as an easter egg if you press the R1 or R2 button while Snake or Raiden is listening to someone, you can hear their thoughts]

• This will be a mode for split-screen two player battles in certain areas from the game. It will be compatible with system link-up as well. Players can either fight each other or play a hide-and-seek type game.

• In addition, the player will be able to virtually explore the ocean floor through a remote-controlled minisub, and can also save pictures taken with its camera.

Bosses

• Member of Dead Cell - A soldier over 100 years old. A legendary hero from the Second World War, he taught Big Boss and the world’s mercenaries everything they know about combat. As a Nazi, he was feared as the ‘Old Boy’, or the ‘devil’. He fights with weapons and equipment used during the war, such as the Panzerfaust. The concept was later reused in Metal Gear Solid 3 for the idea of "The End".

• Chinaman - A swimmer with control over sealife. His fight was to feature great white sharks (which were also going to be featured in the underwater scene prior to his fight in the Filtration area, where the bodies of the hostages floating in the water would had attract sharks. His scenes were replaced with Vamp instead.)

• The President’s security team.

Plot

In the documentary Metal Gear Saga Vol. 1, Kojima mentions the original plot of the game revolved around nuclear weapon inspections in Iraq and Iran and had Solid Snake trying to stop the Metal Gear while it was located on an aircraft carrier, in a certain time limit, while trying to stop Liquid Snake and his group. However, about six months into the project, political tensions started to rise in the Middle East and they decided that they couldn’t make a game with such a plot. The tanker in the released game is based on this original plot.

More recently, Kojima revealed that the name "Raiden" was spelled in kanji rather than katakana due to the latter form of the name resembling "Bin Laden" in Japanese.

Visuals

Some pictures of Snake in an early prototype for MGS2, showed a cell shaded graphical style. It originally was going to have a radically different art style, more on tune with the style of the concept art. This may have been from the proposed idea of the Middle East storyline.

City Of Glass

MGS2 was also intended to reference the novel City of Glass, notably in the naming of its characters. Raiden's support team originally featured a different field commander named Colonel Daniel Quinn; Maxine "Max" Work, an Asian woman who saves game data and quotes Shakespeare, and William "Doc" Wilson, the creator of GW. All take their names from key characters in the book, and all three would have turned out to be artificial intelligences. None of these characters survived to the final edition, as their roles were given to other characters, namely the "Colonel Campbell" simulation, Rose, and Emma Emmerich. Peter Stillman, however, takes his name from another City of Glass character. Kojima has also cited another novel, Koubou Abe's Kangaroo Notebook, as an influence on the game.

Ending Changes

Significant changes to the game’s ending were made late in development following the September 11 attacks in New York, where the finale occurs. A sequence depicting Arsenal Gear’s displacement of the Statue of Liberty and devastating Lower Manhattan was removed, as was a short coda to appear after the credits, a breaking newscast showing the Statue of Liberty’s new resting place, Ellis Island. Remnants of the crash scene include a polygon demo in Document of Metal Gear Solid 2 and additional screenshots of the original sequence in promotional book, Metal Gear Solid 2 The Making.

At the point where Solidus dies, Raiden was supposed to have cut the rope on Federal Hall’s flagpole, causing an American flag to fall over Solidus’ body, and American flags which were supposed to be on all the flagpoles in New York were removed from the title.