Hideo Kojima marked the 25th anniversary of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty earlier today with 6 black-and-white photos of himself taken shortly before the game came out. Konami released MGS2 for the PlayStation 2 in North America on November 13, 2001, and Kojima used the post to look back at how hard that launch was. Check out the official post down below:
What Kojima Said About The Launch
Writing in Japanese, Kojima says a lot about MGS2 was difficult at the time, and he names 2 things: the revisions the team made because of 9/11, and the game being the first in the series to launch in North America before Japan. He adds that during this period he stopped cutting his hair and shaving for good luck. The photos, he explains, were taken at "YGP" before the release. The post passed 7,000 likes within its first few hours.
The Changes Made After 9/11
MGS2's finale takes place in New York, and the team made significant changes to the ending late in development following the September 11 attacks. A sequence of Arsenal Gear knocking over the Statue of Liberty and crashing through half of Manhattan was cut. A short coda that was meant to play after the credits, a breaking newscast showing the Statue of Liberty's new resting place on Ellis Island, was removed as well.
Other deleted moments included Solidus slashing the New York Stock Exchange flag with his sword during Arsenal Gear's crash, with the same flag later falling over his body after his death. American flags planned for flagpoles across the game's New York were also taken out. Kojima's original design document, finished in January 1999, had planned to call the game Metal Gear Solid III as a reference to Manhattan's 3 tallest skyscrapers.
The story had already been rewritten once before that. In the documentary Metal Gear Saga Vol. 1, Kojima said the original plot was built around nuclear weapons inspections in Iraq and Iran, with Solid Snake stopping a Metal Gear on an aircraft carrier. About 6 months into the project, the team dropped that plot because of the political situation in the Middle East, and the Tanker chapter in the final game is based on it.
The First North America-First Metal Gear Solid
Unlike the original Metal Gear Solid, Sons of Liberty came out in North America first. The Japanese version followed on November 29, 2001, and the European release arrived on March 8, 2002.
That order changed how Konami handled the game's biggest secret. Raiden, the rookie agent who replaces Solid Snake as the main playable character after the Tanker prologue, was kept out of the marketing in the West, which presented Snake as the lead. Because Japan got the game later, Konami unveiled Raiden to Japanese players at a preview event at Zepp Tokyo on the day of the North American launch. The Japanese box art shows Raiden standing next to Snake, while the American cover shows only Snake.
The later regions also got extras. The Japanese and European versions added features such as Boss Survival and Casting Theater, and the European release introduced the European Extreme difficulty and came with a Making of Metal Gear Solid 2 DVD.
Sales And The Expanded Substance Release
MGS2 was developed over 4 years by a team of more than 100 people, with a score by Harry Gregson-Williams and Norihiko Hibino. It sold 400,000 copies on its first day in Japan, on top of 600,000 pre-orders, and 500,000 copies in its first 2 days in the United States. It was the top-selling game of November 2001 in the U.S.
The expanded Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance launched on the original Xbox in North America on November 5, 2002, before reaching PlayStation 2 and PC. As of 2004, the original release had sold 5.64 million copies and Substance 1.39 million, a combined 7.03 million that made it the best-selling game in the series at the time.
The game is now available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and Steam. That version launched on October 24, 2023, and is also part of Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1.
What Kojima Is Working On Now
Kojima now leads Kojima Productions, where his current projects include OD, a horror game made with Jordan Peele for Xbox. Everything revealed about it so far is gathered in OD Explained: Everything We Know About Kojima And Jordan Peele's Horror Game. The studio's Death Stranding series is covered in Death Stranding After 7 Years: How To Play Every Game In Order, From The Original To On The Beach.
Which of the scenes cut from Metal Gear Solid 2 after 9/11 do you wish had made it into the final game?
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