00:00.00 Dave Hello everybody. My name is Dave Jackson and you're listening to tales from the backlog. This is a video games review podcast where each week I bring a game out of the backlog, bring on a guest and we talk and I'm going to restart that I forgot how to start my show. Hello everybody. My name is Dave Jackson and you're listening to tales from the backlog. This is a video games review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it and discuss. My guest today is a friend of the show host of gaming memories podcast and a tactical espionage enthusiast. The Profit, The Profit welcome hell yeah I yeah when I yeah when I put out the call a long time ago searching for a guest for a possible metal gear. Solid 2 episode you jumped on it. So happy to have you here. Man. 00:39.10 The Profit Um, I am ah I'm ready I'm ready I'm I'm so ready I Just let's go. 00:54.37 Dave Like I said today we are going to talk about metal gear. Solid 2 sons of Liberty which is a stealth game developed and published by Kanami for the ps 2 in 2001 now if people are listening. You haven't played metal gear solid 2. The spoiler policy for this episode is the same as every other episode. We're not going to spoil the story. This ah, this game has an extremely spoilable story. There's a lot going on so we're not going to spoil that we're going to save it until the spoiler section. Ah you can check down in the show notes for a timestamp for when those spoilers begin Kate and I have prepared some elevator pitches for metal gear. Solid too just to. Whet the appetite as it were I wrote down that metal gear solid to is Kojima's bait and switch and switch and switch and switch and switch to infinity The Profit. What would you say? 01:43.62 The Profit I would say kojima shows us either. He is a prophet or a time traveler. 01:50.27 Dave Exactly yeah, um I played this to get ready for the show. This was my first time playing it. I played it emulated on my steam deck because I wanted to have those codec conversations with Otacon laying in bed before I go to sleep at night just tucked me in real nice. Took me about 15 hours to beat and that includes I played a little bit of like the extra snake stories I didn't do all of them I kind of just tooled around in them a little bit but about 15 hours to beat does that sound right to you. 02:18.95 The Profit Yeah, yeah, yeah. 02:25.20 Dave Ah, right, fair enough. Ah so let's begin like we always do with our histories with the metal gear so series our histories with kojima as a creator and then of course this specific game metal gear solid too. So Kate I'll kick to you first. What's your history with metal gear? What's your history with kojima and specifically this game did you play it right? when it came out what was going on. Um. 02:45.22 The Profit Absolutely played it when I came out and the hype for this game was just fever pitched gaming society was yeah we can't talk about spoilers. So just when you talked about the switch and switch and switch. 03:00.10 Dave Ah, yeah, yeah, oh say whatever you want? yeah. 03:02.62 The Profit Ah, fact that kojima had can we swear and say stuff on this or is this like the could cheat the fact that kojima had theholas the fucking balls to do the switches that he did in this game when the pressure was so high and the hype was so high. Um I think it was. The first time that kojima showed us he was more than just a great game dev but he was different for better or worse depending on your opinions on kojima. But for me I like a lot of people. I was born 85 so a lot of people the first 2 metal gear 03:31.46 Dave Ah. 03:40.60 The Profit But it was called graphic 16 and I can't remember it was on a handful of consoles, relatively well- known least in the west. It's from my experience but metal gear solid one came and just blue brains like across just so we'd never seen anything. 03:56.41 The Profit 3 d that was attempted to be cinematic like that the coded conversations there wasn't a game to my knowledge that had that much voice acting voice acting was still a very rare thing during those times. Um, we could go on about that but metal gear solid one just seemingly came out of nowhere and took the world by storm. 04:03.89 Dave M. 04:16.22 The Profit And the hype for two was out of control I mean I was consuming every Egm Psm Game Pro Game Informer. There's right The the internet I don't even know if I had like regular access to the internet at that time 2001 so I would have been 17 So We I don't even know if we had internet by then maybe but it was like on a dial up at my dad's house like something I had a dream cast. But anyway I consumed everything I could possibly consume about that game and then the game came out Man. We'll get into it but the game came out. Ah. 04:40.44 Dave Nice. 04:56.40 Dave Yeah, we'll definitely get into that and like the fact that you're not playing a solid snake. The whole time it is common knowledge. At this point we can say that we say that but ah yeah, so we'll get into that for sure because I have a different perspective on that than you do for sure. 05:04.67 The Profit Spoilers. Ah. 05:13.45 The Profit Yeah I mean yeah yeah. 05:15.35 Dave Um, this is my first time playing metal gear solid too and um, as I said on the metal gear. Solid 1 episode which was last year it was episode 61 shoutout to Mick ArThe Profit the guest on that. I played metal gear solid one for the first time last year. Before that my history with metal gear was I played ghost babble on the game boy color when when I was a kid I played that yeah I had exact. Well it gets more random. Um. 05:41.20 The Profit Um, what a random super random entrance into the series. That's interesting. 05:49.10 Dave So I I never beat that I had no fucking idea what was going on in the story I was like 11 years old or something um and then after that I my first metal gear game after that was rising revengeance which is one of my favorite games ever. So. 06:04.10 The Profit Think interesting. 06:06.48 Dave Double random entries into this series metal gear risings episode 84 of tales from the backlog shoutout to Jacob Mccord for joining me on that one. Um I played that game several times now I love it also interesting because that's also ri in that was my introduction to Raiden was was that game. So um. 06:25.63 Dave My first time playing metal gear solid to and to just kind of set up some quick opening thoughts about it here at the top I really like how the gameplay was improved in metal gear. Solid 2 from the first metal gear. Solid big improvement. They're a lot more fun to play better as a stealth game. Um. The story took some time to get going but like you know how some stories are in whatever media games movies. Some stories are real slow and then they go 0 to 100 in a hurry metal gear. Solid 2 goes from 0 to like 100000 right in like the snap of a finger including like. 06:58.95 The Profit Yeah, yep. 07:03.57 Dave Just a wild philosophy and exposition dump 1 of the wildest longest ones I've ever encountered in a game. So like that kind of took me by surprise and we'll talk about that in the spoiler section. But I think when you stand back and think about what this game is doing, what Kojima is trying to say in this game. I think that number 1 this game is good ah number two. It doesn't deserve the bad rap. It gets as far as metal gear. Solid games. Go and number 3 I'm of the opinion that kojima thinks he's profound a lot of times but he's often not but I think a lot of stuff in this game is actually quite good. 07:41.19 The Profit I mean. 07:42.42 Dave Ah, from that perspective. What would you say is just some quick opening thoughts before we dive in. Yeah. 07:45.83 The Profit Okay, so we did talk about the writing things so we can talk about this. The fact that right so kojima when you're someone who's really outside of the box. Not every swing is going to be a home run, but the fact that you go for the swings. 07:58.13 Dave M. 08:02.64 The Profit I didn't think death stranding was a home run. I thought the art direction in the story was probably his best work. But I thought of the game. The idea that he wanted to like I'm going to make a walking simulator and like actually go for it and try to make it yes and a lot of and things is a lot of people did like a lot of. 08:14.12 Dave I'm the total opposite. That's that the walking was my favorite part of that game I fucking. Loved it. 08:22.19 The Profit That's one of the things about kojima is that even I'm a huge fan I mean right? I whole podcast I Joke about Kojima being a deity and he's like the son like in the gaming godhead like I'm a massive kojima fan doesn't mean I just like unbiased like look I didn't Deathtra didn't get me but you know what I did do on death trending. 08:31.84 Dave Yeah. 08:39.87 The Profit I watched the entire game and cut scenes on Youtube because it was fucking awesome I just didn't want to do the walking part right? But the fact that like he went for it, think about the pitch hey guys I just left Kanami in this big fiasco. Sony's like we'll bring you on whatever budget you want like we'll be your daddy all right. 08:59.30 Dave M. 08:59.16 The Profit I'm going to make a walking simulator like just the balls on that guy and goes back to metal gear solid two after metal gear solid one was this mega hit it solidified this playstation brand it skyrocketed playstation. It became one of the best selling games of Ps 1 of all time to this day one classic. Everyone wants to be solid snake. Dude comes out of the gate. It's like yeah, no, and then he has the ball is to tease you for the first because what you don't remember they put out a demo and I think I rented whatever game. It was that the demo came out and I rented the game for the demo not the game right? So you play the whole demo and you go through the tanker suite. 09:25.84 Dave Right. 09:37.24 The Profit Um, snake the graphics are better games plays everything's better I am so pumped for this then you get the game. I've already been here and then you finally get past the demo you're like yes I'm like into the new shit the real game and fucking rating pops out and you're like and you're so confused because the idea that someone would do this to you. 09:50.12 Dave Um, ah. 09:56.59 The Profit Is not even like it's never been done in gaming like it took me hours to realize like oh like this is who I'm gonna this isn't just like a cut scene, a story and offshoot like this is the game and I was like I mean anyway, that's my opening thoughts like just that. 09:57.00 Dave Right. 10:13.82 The Profit At the time you know I wanted to emphasize that for the people who maybe didn't they would play it like you in retrospect just to understand the context and the pressure and sort of how unheard of a bait and switch because people did bait and switches in games but Kojima Bait and switched us with the media. 10:17.73 Dave Yeah. 10:32.46 The Profit Like they put out a lot of hype they put out the trailers the demo right? He really liked that had net as far as I know that has not even come close to that. He did it again with pt which is like I think the greatest marketing move in all of gaming history. I'm into marketing so some part of me just Respects like. 10:33.26 Dave Right. 10:50.61 The Profit Fact that he would do these things and then people signed off on it. Sony had a sign off on this. Do you know what? I mean so it's like he had a go and I guarantee he had hell a pushback when he had to you know he had to make this thing happen. So anyway, um, opening thoughts is like this game. 10:53.13 Dave Yeah, yeah 11:08.30 The Profit Special not just because the game is special but in the context of gaming history and marketing and gaming just so many things were done for the first time with this game. 11:15.90 Dave Yeah, and it's interesting like we've talked about that bait and switch in a sequel to 1 of the most successful games ever and I think in the spoiler section We have some other stuff to talk about as this game's nature as a sequel. Ah, which is going to be interesting too. So we are going to listen to a little bit of metal gear solid to music and then when we come back, We're going to set up the story 12:50.63 Dave In metal gear solid 2 as we kind of set up in that opening section there you begin the game as series protagonist solid snake the game opens with a long cut scene of snake doing some tactical espionage shit like bungee jumping from the George Washington Bridge while he's invisible like. Going to infiltrate this tanker that's in the hudson river his mission is to find evidence of a new model of metal gear. Sorry metal gear that's on board and for those who don't know if you're new to the series. A metal gear is a mech capable of launching nuclear missiles. And that was the subject of all the previous games in the series is finding these metal gears now. We're going to yada yada yada through that because I don't want to say what happens in that part right now. We'll talk about that in the spoiler section but fairly soon like that opening section. Maybe an hour or so. It's not very long then ah yada yada yada yeah yeah. 13:48.43 The Profit Wait I want I gonna cut you off real quick I wanted to notate in that opening section. The scene when you get to the hangar where you see Ray for the first time metal gear Ray and you have all the soldiers lined up I just want to say because again kojima and metal gear games are also. 13:57.99 Dave Yeah. 14:07.95 The Profit Least with metal gear solid one developed a reputation of pushing the graphics and the hardware limits of whatever console we're on and when metal gear all 2 came out the graphics were already mind blowing and then when you get in that scene with the lighting and you see that many models on screen like. 14:23.83 The Profit Back then that doesn't look like anything special now. This is the PS 2 I remember going to that room and being like this can't be real. There's no way it's not a cutscene. I can actually all these guys and I remember I went through it like reloaded the game over and over again and went through and hit each soldier to like. 14:24.61 Dave Right? But this is the PS 2 14:33.39 Dave Ah. 14:42.84 The Profit Are these all actual Npcs or some of them like cutouts and they're not that you know they won't react. There's no ai and it was like every single soldier was like a functioning Npc Anyway I Just thought that was super cool. 14:44.93 Dave Right? right. 14:52.42 Dave Nice, Yeah, super cool Also Well we'll see how we feel about this. Ah, after this section on the Tanker with snake comes this bait and switch that we talked about so you. Have a new character who's swimming up to this new mission and the new characters kind of talking on the radio and stuff they take off their like diving mask and you see that it's not snake. It's raiden who again was the protagonist of metal gear rising revengeance but this is where raiden was introduced. Into the series. So We kind of touched on this before but since you played this back in the day and you were all on that hype train when this game came out I'm sure that this blindsided the shit out of you But how did you feel about it. 15:37.32 The Profit But as I mentioned a little bit earlier sorry for jumping ahead I knew this was gonna happen I Just got too excited. Um it like this. This is gonna sound maybe over dramatic. But I'm being genuine. 15:45.10 Dave It's all right. 15:54.15 The Profit It reminded me a little bit of the experiences I've had of death and this is not to trivialize death. But when I was a kid sometimes it took a while like I had a friend die get hit by a car ah grandparents whatever and it always took me like weeks or months for it to kind of settle in. 15:58.17 Dave Right. 16:12.72 The Profit Like realize that it's real. You're sort of in shock not to say again. I was young in life and didn't have life experience so to me I experienced a similar pattern where like it took a few hours for me to really digest like this is what happened. 16:12.89 Dave Um, right right. 16:30.78 The Profit Ah, you didn't get the game. You thought you were going to get like Homeboy you know I was kind of angry like I was because I fucking I didn't like him. He's not as cool as snake now in hindsight after the game had been out for a long long time I'm actually a massive fan of the game now. 16:31.44 Dave Right? so. 16:38.49 Dave Yeah. 16:48.20 The Profit And I think he did the right thing in the grand scheme of what kojima is trying to do but none of us really knew what kind of creator and how out there kojima was at the time we didn't understand like he wasn't kojima like he is now it was like you made 1 fucking awesome game. The guy seems awesome. 17:01.59 Dave Right. 17:07.37 The Profit He hadn't developed this reputation and this body of work and so I wasn't not a fan at first but the graphics were so good and the gameplay was cool and I was invested. I mean it wasn't like I had a hard time beating the game but it just. 17:19.84 Dave Right. 17:23.78 The Profit Took me basically to the end of the game to just sort of accept that. Ah you know he did. Yeah I can't get the spoilers so just accept the bait and switch. Yeah yeah, so. 17:31.11 Dave Right? Yeah yeah, I assume that anyone who played it back then without you know the benefit of playing it Twenty two years later like me could have been just totally taken aback and you know it would have taken like someone. Was able to like go into it like a really clear head to not be upset in some way. I feel like because snake is cool people want to play a snake and then you started the game playing a snake and then kind of like you said when you first meet raiden he's not snake. He's not cool. He's not he's not funny just 18:08.81 The Profit He's a whiner. Yeah. 18:09.50 Dave Kind of everything about him. He whines. He wants to quit all the time he's not portrayed as a very likable character at the beginning. Um, it's also weird in this section because you have a different handler over the radio. You have colonel and or is it Anderson is that is. 18:27.95 The Profit Campbell Campbell this Anderson is in mass effect and these are also the matrix Mr. Anderson 18:29.10 Dave Campbell Anderson's from Mass Effect I think. 18:36.67 Dave the the matrix yeah um 2001 ah so yeah, you have Colonel Campbell who's on the radio. He's your handler. Yeah same person as the first game and it's real weird at the beginning for some reason your kind of the helper over the radio is Raiden's girlfriend named Rose who's been brought into the mission for some fucking reason again like you learn why we know why? But when you start the game. You're like why is his girlfriend on the radio? Sometimes she'll call you on the radio when you're like stealthing around and she'll ask you like girlfriend questions. She'll be like. 18:58.81 The Profit We learn why later? Yes, but. 19:13.55 Dave Raiden do you remember the first night we met or like Rieden would you still love me if I got turned into a worm. She'll ask you shit like that and it's very weird. 19:18.60 The Profit Weird shit in yeah and I want to talk about that spoil alerts but a few I'm gonna adjust this because it's clipping one second that's why I adjusted it is that loud enough still. Okay, it's just clipping on. That's why I adjusted it. 19:25.50 Dave Yeah I can boost it later. Okay. 19:37.35 The Profit I saw the red I'm like yeah anyway, um there a couple of throwbacks to the original game that aren't spoilers right and enters through scuba diving takes his mask off so they're kind of like almost digging the hatchet in like remember the scene from the first game that you love and you wanted to play snake. Yeah now your play. 19:44.88 Dave Right. 19:54.30 Dave Ah, yeah. 19:56.40 The Profit Doing the same thing. It's we're doing the same shit but with the guy you don't like um and then the girlfriend she reminded me initially of Naomi in the first game like they're both kind of like Asian or half asian they're flirting but this and this one she's like not just flirting with you. She's like your girlfriend. 20:00.10 Dave Yep. 20:15.63 The Profit So there's like some parallels like that's 1 reason why I think obviously there's lower reasons and story reasons why she's there but I just kind of find it interesting like he is immediately creating parallels for the first game. 20:21.30 Dave Right? right. 20:29.00 Dave Yeah, um, kind of similar like you're on, like a recon Mission Rien is there to rescue the president. He's there to stealth around save some hostages again. There's a terrorist group. 20:33.19 The Profit And who. 20:42.85 Dave And you're this time. It's not in like a military-based setting. It is at this giant oil Spill cleanup facility called big shell and I think that is about as much as I want to say about like why you're there and what's going on because for a while you are just going through this mission To. Rescue hostages and find the president and you know find the metal gear and stuff like that and then the plot gets insane because this is a kojima game but we will save all of that for the spoiler section. Um I got to ask you because. 21:19.68 Dave I feel like I got to ask this every time I do a metal gear game on the show. Um, we have pretty much like this tone in here that is you know what? I would just call Kojima Bullshit Lovingly I would call it that um. You have this high stakes Spy Drama This political drama mixed with outright fantasy and stuff you have some weird side characters like Fortune who's the soldier can't die because Bullets just bend around her. You have a guy named Fat man who's a roller blading demolitions expert. Who doesn't give a shit about anything except for bombs. That's what he's About. He's about bombs and then you have a character who's an actual vampire. So I got to ask you, do you think that kojima thinks this is cool or is he in on the joke with me basically? 22:15.28 The Profit He's in on the joke. He likes that he thinks it's cool. That's why it's funny to him because like I will admit that when I first played it I was like dude fat man threw me out of the immersion. He was just too ridiculous. He's on fucking roller blades. 22:16.35 Dave He's in on the joke. Okay, yeah. 22:25.66 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 22:32.25 The Profit On around and it's just like what is and then the next scene you'd have the ninja who's like the at the time my favorite gray Fox is the epitome of what makes metal gear solid cool and then you switch over and like now this is fat rollerblading guy making like shitty jokes like and I'm playing is right in like there's. 22:36.47 Dave Right. 22:50.96 The Profit You could argue that those they no game is perfect and this game I'm not gonna claim is perfect. But I think kojima was fully aware of it like the um, he's kind of trolling us like that's what's crazy I think he's trolling us at this super high again you say it's like funny but he's at this. 23:02.98 Dave Yeah. 23:10.83 The Profit High stakes level millions of people are investing in him. He has all this pressure and he's still like yeah but I'm gonna fucking troll you. 23:15.86 Dave Yeah, I'm going to put a vampire. He's a real vampire in this game. Yeah, he's yeah, the boss fight with Vamp is great like stuff like that. 23:20.80 The Profit But at the same time Vamp is kind of cool and the fight scenes are cool. It's Great. So It's like yeah I think he knows like but the fly I would say is what he doesn't do very well. But I think my favorite thing about it is like the elder ring and dark souls games even though it is a completely different type of storytelling if you go to like for example, an elder ring. There's this village you go to and there's all these people in white cloth and they're dancing. They're all gone Crazy. Um. 23:46.53 Dave Right? right. 23:50.60 The Profit When you dive into the lore. There's a reason why and the character design and every they're not just arbitrary characters like we're gonna make them look cool for the sake of looking cool right? Everything is like they're designed a certain way because of what happened in the village and to reflect that and it's all cohesive I feel like Kojima doesn't. 23:56.66 Dave Right. 24:10.18 The Profit Jokes would have been pulled off better with fat man and vamp if he justified them and tied them into the story in the narrative and made them more important. But if he did that it also wouldn't be trolling you and be a joke. So like I don't and I really do think he honestly likes a part of me like he's. 24:29.11 Dave Right? yeah. 24:29.13 The Profit He's way into media like if you follow him at all I know I'm like spooging over kojima. But I love what the dude has done flaws and all and he's constantly also trying to throw Easter eggs in references and pay homage to media that he enjoys and so when you're trying to do all these things at once and put it all in like. 24:39.74 Dave M. 24:48.20 The Profit You're gonna have some rough edges and fat man is definitely a rough edge in my opinion but also hearing you talk about it. We start laughing right out in hindsight we're laughing about it. We're having a good time. We're having positive emotions so who's to say that wasn't a success even as ridiculous and as much I didn't as much as didn't like it when I first played it. 24:48.44 Dave Yeah. 25:05.28 Dave Right. 25:08.80 The Profit Thirty years later I'm talking about it nerding out about it laughing about it. Do you know what? I mean so it's like how do you measure that success. 25:11.67 Dave Yeah, yeah, you know this stuff I think that it's a combination of like you said number one kojima thinks that vampires are cool and so he is going to put a vampire in the game and he doesn't give a shit if it breaks any sense of. 25:25.49 The Profit Yes, ah. 25:31.44 Dave World buildingding or immersion to have a vampire or to have like your demolitions expert. You're going to have a boss fight against this guy like that's how that's how this works with these characters. You get introduced to these like outlandish characters. They're going to be your bosses throughout the game. This is how the metal your solid one worked. So. 25:44.46 The Profit So yes, yes. 25:51.50 Dave You have like you you could just play it straight and you could have like a regular boss fight against a regular dude planting bombs around the place or ah, you could put the guy on roller blades and turn it into a kind of comedy thing and animate him like doing roller Blade tricks and shit as he's like zooming around what during this fight. Like I think that that is good I like I think that metal gear wouldn't be the same without these outlandish characters like throughout it. You know. 26:15.69 The Profit I agree like I have a pension for more dark gritty. I don't think the game has to be realistic but I really like it when games follow their own rules and stay consistent with their own world building and lore. 26:34.15 Dave Right. 26:34.19 The Profit That's like my personal preference saying that metal gear wouldn't be metal gear without not doing that. Um I mean if you even think about metal gear one that Indian dude the shaman guy that fights you in a tank. 26:48.10 Dave Oh yeah, yeah. 26:52.19 The Profit I'm gonna get a big bald guy that looks like a nazi but I'm gonna make him like a native American shaman and then he's you have to fight him in a tank. I mean it's just it is just like he's like this scenario would be cool. Let's do it And yeah. 26:58.70 Dave Yeah. 27:04.40 Dave Yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's it's we have this scenario now. How are we going to make this memorable and interesting and instead of like you said instead of making like rich detailed backstories that fit in with the world building and stuff Kojima is like well what if I just made this. 27:10.52 The Profit Yes, yes. 27:23.00 Dave This person is a vampire and that's just like that's what we're doing. So yeah. 27:25.34 The Profit And then we work backwards from there and try to kind of splice some sort of logic of why he is what he is and but it's really not. It's just it's like retconning while you're making it. 27:29.94 Dave Right. 27:38.82 Dave Right? Starting with the cool part first and then just trying like kind of half trying to make it fit and if it doesn't fit who gives a shit because it's yeah and that I think that's his m o yeah um. 27:47.86 The Profit Yeah, because it's fucking cool. Ah yeah. 27:54.20 Dave I think that this game's like story and with all the twists that you learn I think is really entertaining throughout and I think I said at the top there is some genuinely thought provoking stuff that is brought up later in the game Philosophical stuff. Social Commentary. Um. More thought provoking than any other kojima game I've played and then we'll get into it in the spoiler section but I'll just say now the fact that he was writing these things in 2001 or even before 2001 because video games don't come out instantly as soon as the ideas come up. 28:22.74 The Profit Yeah, yep. 28:30.65 Dave Um, I think that that is really well done here and personally makes this like metal gear. Solid one was a fun story to just be on the ride for but metal gear. Solid 2 is an infinitely more interesting story to think about when you're done. 28:44.81 The Profit I would agree. I would say that when I played it at 16 or 17 Obviously we didn't know exactly what you're talking about and we're gonna talk about it's the same thing I said when Kojima was a prophet or a time traveler. It's weirdly how applicable some of the ideas he talks about are in 2023 28:51.81 Dave Right. 29:02.72 The Profit And realize this was made in 2001 and like you said developed even earlier which means he's probably writing it like right after metal gear solid one. He's probably writing this in like Ninety Eight Ninety nine or at least pre-production thinking about it. Um I don't know how far he had planned the metal gear universe we would call it ahead of time. Maybe he's been thinking about this. 29:09.81 Dave Right. 29:21.68 The Profit Since he was a kid I know like Pierre, the guy that made sea of stars and the messenger. He has been master planning his world since he was like a teenager. So maybe Kojima has a little bit more master planning than we think. But. 29:29.21 Dave Yeah, yeah. 29:38.13 The Profit Just some like specifically the very end of this game and how it ties into now as a kid I didn't understand I was just confused like I was so can it's interesting because again the juxtaposition when I played this game a second time as an adult third time as an adult and then watched more cut scenes for this and just kind of revisited stuff. 29:43.39 Dave Yeah. 29:57.63 The Profit Actually the last week I pretty much watched the whole game all the cutscenes I found a Youtube video of all the cutscenes because I couldn't get the master collection I wanted to mod it to like my liking but there's not enough mods yet to get the gameplay I want so it's like okay I'll just watch some some cut scenes I think. 30:01.50 Dave Yeah. 30:08.23 Dave Right. 30:14.98 The Profit I like the game more now just watching it like a movie in the last week as a 38 year old. Every time I revisit this game I'm more impressed by it. I guess what I'm trying to say. 30:25.20 Dave Yeah, and it's definitely like this story part has definitely aged better since I finished the game I finished this game about a month ago and then over the last month of thinking about it and watching some Youtube videos and stuff to just like. Really nail down what's going on because the next point I was going to bring up is that the pacing in this game is really fucking weird like it is a kind of buy the book story as as by the books as a story with fat man and vamp and all of them can be but it's pretty straight straight put for a while and then. 30:48.40 The Profit M. 31:03.29 Dave There is an eleventh hour like barrage of plot twists and philosophy dump and stuff like that all at once and so I think the pacing is pretty rough like they throw so much at you in this one section. That's really hard to do. 31:19.61 The Profit Yes, yes. 31:22.69 Dave To take it all in and like you know you if you throw 1 big idea at me or 2 big ideas at me in a cut scene I can internalize that and follow it. But this throws like 25 fucking things at me and there's a lot that's just not going to stick even though. 31:32.44 The Profit Yes. 31:41.71 Dave Again I think a lot of that content is quite good. It's just the pacing kind of sucks toward the end. It just a lot felt like at a certain point it was like I was playing metal gear solid playing metal gear solid oh shit Kojima is doing a ted talk right now and then. Metal gear solid is finished. 32:02.35 The Profit I would say that this is one of the points that I would agree is objectively a flaw with the game I think some of the things we talked about depends on your interpretation I may have not liked it as a seventeen year old I love it now who's to say what was right and wrong I think the pacing issue is objectively wrong? um. 32:06.48 Dave Yeah. 32:12.66 Dave Right. 32:20.34 The Profit Even as an adult with it like is still hard to follow I have to have the aid of Youtube videos like I probably watched some of the same videos over the years as yeah, this scene had a video come out like eight years ago called the most profound moment in gaming history and then people have like 2 Yeah, so. 32:26.19 Dave Yeah. 32:33.96 Dave Did I watch that video today god damn. 32:39.32 The Profit Video came out a while ago and it like was huge right? and then people have been revisiting that video and adding more commentary and reacting to that video for years and then there's been people who've been breaking down that video as their own video because that video breaks down the game and then people break down that video and there's like this. So ah. I think you said there's a lot of good meat on them. Bones. But they are all thrown at you at the end and especially at the time when video games weren't as ubiquitous as adults back in 2001 most the people playing that game or between the ages 12 to 21. 33:11.40 Dave Okay. 33:14.40 The Profit And you're just gonna dump all this shit on them. Good shit good shit at the eleventh hour like it went so far over my head that I couldn't even begin to appreciate it like now you could argue well, your audience is too like a comedian saying well I'm not funny because you guys don't get it. No. 33:16.80 Dave Yeah. 33:29.82 Dave Right? yeah. 33:32.82 The Profit You have to present it in a way that makes us laugh dumbass. So I would say that kojima again like when you try to do the things that he does you can ah some of the things are going to be rough around the edges I praise him for going for it for taking the swing and largely. It was a home run. The game is still super famous for a reason. It's a cult classic. Overall it was a success. 33:50.54 Dave M. 33:52.66 The Profit But this particular issue is like objectively a bad design flaw in the game. 33:58.55 Dave Yeah, and um I think that we can put a pin in the story for now until we get to the spoiler section where we are going to like you said there's a lot of meat on that bone so we want to get to it so we'll listen to ah a little bit more music and no um. 34:03.60 The Profit Yeah. 34:15.23 Dave Restart that so we will just kind of continue on with this like I guess tone and presentation that this game sets up and talk about how this game looks and ah the presentation of it all, um, graphically I played this on steam deck. So it. It didn't have the problem of playing. A PS 2 game on like ah a higher resolution screen or something like that perfect steam deck game I loved it for ah, you know there's a lot of um conversations that you listen to in these games in the codec so laying in bed listening to codec conversations that rules. But. Ah, looks pretty good and then just like the first metal gear. Solid game. Cinematic presentation is kind of like the name of the game here as far as, you know, graphics and the way everything is portrayed right. 35:03.35 The Profit Yeah, the art direction is amazing and still holds up today. I'm glad you got to play it on a like a modern screen at a modern resolution because as a side note but I got a bitch about it I'm like almost every video I put up. People are like the original game didn't look that bad I'm like that's because you didn't play it on a modern screen like I've had to make people just had this warped memory like I know you didn't play this game. Ah, originally, but if you try to play middle gear solid 2 right now on original ps 2 on like a new Lcd or o lead screen a fourcase screen like you're fucked. 35:28.17 Dave Right. 35:35.32 Dave Right? yeah. 35:39.87 The Profit It's going to look unintelligible. I mean some people love pixels that look good for pixel art games but not these types of games in my opinion. So I'm glad you had that experience. It does sound like a perfect steam deck game. I think the graphics and art direction are the way I sometimes test it. 35:47.29 Dave M. 35:58.67 The Profit If I take a game and I emulate it and I run it at 4 k or 5 k and it just natively out of the box still holds up well because sometimes when you upres something it can bring out flaws right? and then sometimes it looks even better and I think metal gear solid 2 looks amazing. 36:10.40 Dave Oh yeah. 36:16.36 Dave Yeah, yeah. 36:18.43 The Profit I Mean the graphics are awesome. The sound design is awesome. You could know the writing is wordy but like you talked with the voice acting especially for the time Solid um cutscenes again at the Mer Solid wanted to come out and a few games had started copying them. But at the time. 36:36.30 The Profit Nobody did cinematic cutscenes by Kojima; he was pretty much the only one. So yeah, it's and thirty years later I think again I have nostalgia for it. But I watched so I watched the video of someone playing the PS 5 master collection. Um, it is. 36:52.72 Dave Um. 36:54.74 The Profit I Mean this is not Kojima's fault. But this' a bare bones remaster I mean they suck they're like it's so bad. It makes me so angry but there'll be enough mods. But even the even just native with his bare bones and it's just so many issues I don't want to get into. We could go on. I could go on for hours about how bullshit that remester is. 36:56.21 Dave Yeah I've heard. 37:14.26 The Profit That taken all into context I'm watching these cutscenes and like you know what it still looks really good. It still looks really good. The presentation he's kojima's always had like again going back to what he thinks is cool. Kojima also thinks graphics are cool. 37:31.49 Dave Yeah, yeah. 37:34.70 The Profit He's not going to put a game out if it doesn't look cool. 37:38.32 Dave Yeah, this was a big step up I think, especially metal gear. Solid one was on the previous console but like you know characters have faces in this game and you know. 37:46.11 The Profit Yeah, so. 37:49.47 Dave So I played it emulated but I don't really fuck with emulator settings especially when I'm playing on Steam deck because it's a low resolution screen by comparison anyway. So it looked pretty good and yeah, everyone has a like snake has a face that you can see and like reckon like see what his snake hit what his face looks like right in. 37:54.30 The Profit Yeah. 38:07.95 Dave Looks similar to the write in that I know from much later in the timeline from metal gear rising. Um, that stuff looked pretty good. I thought you know when we talk about cutscenes. This game has 2 kinds of cut scenes. It has the codec conversations where it's just two character portraits and then you. You read and listen to what they say to 1 another but this game also has some kickass like you know, animated rendered cutscenes with the character models and stuff like that. There's a lot of cool shit again. I think that's what kojima wants you to take away. Ah you mentioned voice acting I want to shout out some um. Some voice actors here David Hader plays snake quinton flynn plays Raiden and then Patrick Zimmerman plays revolver ocelot who if you're not familiar with the character. His name is revolver ocelot he's a cowboy in this kind of oh this Futuristic military setting. He's just a fucking cowboy. He can bounce bullets off of walls and stuff but really iconic like voice acting for all of them and this plays into like this kind of tone. We talked about earlier where everything is really over the top. All these characters feel like they're 100 % bought into their characters. 39:21.86 The Profit The physical. 39:22.47 Dave No matter how ridiculous they are whether it's vamp or fat man or revolver ocelot and it surprised Jennifer Hale in this game too as ah, ah a girl named Emma. 39:35.15 The Profit I don't follow like ah I don't I mean I know who David Hater is he's like a legend now but I'm not super well versed who's Jennifer Hell what else does she do. 39:40.99 Dave Um, oh Jennifer Hale 1 of the top ah top voice actresses right now again. 2023 um but this was 2001 so I'm gonna look it up real quick. 39:49.13 The Profit Oh. 39:54.92 Dave Ah, so I don't fuck it up and confuse her with someone else Jennifer Hale ah 40:04.82 Dave Yeah, best best known for probably as playing shepherd the female shepard in mass effect um other credits like star wars knights of the old republic past episode on the show here. Balder's gate Bioshock infinite lot of stuff. Yeah. 40:20.64 The Profit Okay, so she's an allstar. She's a rockstar. Yeah, yeah, yeah, got her start not her start but it early career work Ba Yeah, the game I mean look it looks good. It sounds good. Um I would argue. 40:22.47 Dave Oh yeah, absolutely yeah, but yeah, this over twenty years ago yeah in metal gear solid too. 40:38.59 The Profit It still plays well again. I have a little bit of Nostalg of blinders and I'm used to that coming I mean you're playing ah your whole podcast built around the backlogs. So you're constantly playing older Games. So I think I would guess you have a fairly thick skin when it comes to maybe Archaic Gameplay mechanics. Did it feel clunky to you? 40:55.64 Dave Oh well. So I'm playing games ah from the backlog. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're old like I think the sweet spot for this podcast is like games that came out in 2017 or something like that. So I'm not a retro gaming podcast. 41:06.81 The Profit Oh okay, okay. 41:12.85 Dave I Do play you know some older stuff and I criticized the gameplay and metal gear Solid one for just being real simple. I didn't think it was very good as a stealth game. Um it basically turns into what that game turned into was you cannot get seen because if you get seen. 41:31.42 The Profit It is over. Yeah yeah. 41:32.40 Dave It's over for you in the first game. Um, so it just turned into like well I'm going to look at the radar that shows my position and the enemies and their vision cones and again quoting watch out for fireballs podcast. They called it. The world's worst game of pacman. And it kind of felt that way in the first game just kind of I'm not looking at snake I'm navigating just by the radar. It's a lot better in metal gear solid too like across the board improvements in how it feels to shoot the guns how it feels to do stealth takedowns like I'm not accidentally like. 41:59.92 The Profit Yeah, yeah. 42:09.78 Dave Cartwheel kicking people anymore when I'm trying to do stealth takedowns. Um. 42:15.55 The Profit Um, the menu system in that game I remember was very hard like using the triggers to open the menu then sliding back and forth even at the time like it was the menu system was like I get it. He wanted it to be quicker but it was just. 42:30.45 The Profit To this day I there's certain things about the control scheme and metal gear again. I love the game. Love kojima. But that's just it's clunky. I think even metal gear 2 and 3 are clunky. Even the guns of the patriot was a little better but I don't think in hell phantom pain. But there's even aspects of phantom pain where I'm like kojima stills like why does he gotta to be so stubborn like third person cameras and act like we've kind of standardized like why do you gotta make certain things just slightly different because I don't know. 42:57.87 Dave Right? yeah. 43:05.13 Dave Yeah I I played like I played like an hour of metal gear. Solid 5 and um, yeah, it looks like a game you're familiar with but it doesn't feel like a game. You're familiar with playing for sure. Um. 43:13.90 The Profit Yes, yes, yes. 43:20.90 Dave This ah, this game here I think it's like the biggest benefit to the gameplay in general is that when you enter a new place because the big shell that you're playing the game in has a lot of different rooms. A lot of different sections. There's multiple like. Hub areas and then these spokes and like offshoot areas. Ah when you enter 1 of those you don't get that radar right away. Ah you have to go download it from a computer or some shit. So when you enter a new place and you can go into that first person camera you don't have to have a gun to do it. Um, when you enter a new place. You really do feel like you're kind of sneaking in and not just like kind of speed running your way and just avoiding stuff on the radar. You do have to take it really slow and scope it out snake can get down on the ground and crawl like our ride in. Snake can do it too but right and um, so I think this is like a really small change to not give you that radar right away and then once you unlock it you can kind of go back to the old way of doing things. Um, but I think this was a big help to just spice up the gameplay. 44:32.10 The Profit Yeah I I play metal gear one and two and every time I replay my play him No radar I think I think they're better that way. They're much harder again. I like like I love Dark Souls I Love I Love like I Love Tedium if it's done right? Because it gives you the reward right. 44:50.42 Dave Ah, ah yeah. 44:51.84 The Profit Is a fine line I'm not going to say Kojiman nails it by any such as the means I'm also really familiar with these games when I go back and play them, especially like if I'm I played through the beginning of metal gear like the first 3 or 4 hours soon I have it memorized right? um. 44:56.37 Dave Right. 45:07.24 The Profit But I think when you play them with no radar. The games are designed in a way that they are still possible and I think if you're smart enough and careful enough even on a first playthrough with no radar you can navigate both games all the way through you just have to be patient and use the tool like. 45:18.27 Dave Oh yeah, absolutely yeah. 45:25.79 The Profit I almost wish they would have. I think you're right because it's the mini. I call it mini map fatigue. People criticize it in open world games a lot where you're looking at the mini map while you're driving instead of the game. Ah I'm like 1 of the things I always mod when it comes to emulators at pc games if I get the chance is I play the game with no ui if possible. 45:45.59 The Profit And then I think that one of the hallmarks of good game design is if you can play the game with no Ui and with enough trial and error and there are visual cues and there are things that make it possible. It's not just cheap with no Ui you're not wholly dependent on it. I think that's a hallmark of good game design. Um. 46:04.30 The Profit I think a great example would be like god of war 2018 and god of war ragnarok pretty minimal ui in the first place you turn that thing off there's visual cues you know, kind of where you're at with everything without the ui um metal gear two is not that good, but like you said. 46:22.44 The Profit Because they knew they were designing the game where each section you wouldn't have a radar I think they I don't know if they consciously had that in mind when they designed metal gear solid one I think you just memorized the game and it's more simple and the ai is more simple so you can kind of brute force it with no with no radar. 46:26.88 Dave Yeah, okay. 46:41.12 The Profit But I think metalgar all too. They're like this is a stealth game and you have to be able to actually sneak through use all your tools all your gadgets everything that kojima thinks is cool and actually be a spy and get through without the radar because we're gonna force you to have not have the radar on each section and I agree with you. That's like. Forcing people to actually understand the mechanics of the game. You're not saying get to play the whole game like this because maybe not everybody wants to go through that Tedium right? But you're gonna force him for a section like you're gonna understand how the game Works. You're gonna have to actually have a certain level of skill to get the reward of progressing. 47:07.59 Dave Right. 47:15.49 Dave Right? And it's interesting because you had a lot of tools I felt like in the first game for stealth and like ways that you can interact with the environment that you know. I wouldn't have expected from a stealth game that old and this game just kind of gives you a little bit more of that like you have the classic stuff like you can hide in a cardboard box and stuff like that. But you can also like it. For example, if you sneak up on an enemy. You can choke them out. Ah, choke them unconscious, you can snap their neck and kill them. You can pick up bodies and drag them or you can kind of just point your gun at an enemy and they'll put their hands up and then you can tranquilize them or you can choke them out. Or like in some cases you might need them to use a keypad for you or something like that and stuff like that really spices up the gameplay again. Totally possible to play metal gear solid one without just staring at that radar screen or radar like mini map the whole time but like. I feel like basically everyone defaults to doing that at some point and this game is yeah you can't help it. It's there. It's easy. It's more efficient so I'm going to do it and this game is like okay no, you're gonna play this like an actual stealth game and it's just you know. 48:24.50 The Profit Yep, if it's there you can't help it if it's there. You can't help it. Yeah. 48:39.24 Dave It's fun as a stealth game. 48:39.66 The Profit I agree I think that's a really good point I wouldn't have thought of that. But when you brought it up I remember because in big shell right? This is an oil Tanker We talked about a little bit but it's basically octagons like on piers that bridges between them. 48:52.60 Dave Yeah, there's either. There's like a central one and then there's either 6 or 8 like outer areas and then there's bridges connecting them all and then there's 2 of those sections. 48:58.70 The Profit The outer ones? yes. Yes, and each time you get to like across a bridge and you get to and not each time but generally speaking you cross a bridge you get to like a new building and there's no any So It's like you don't know the area. You don't have it memorized and you don't have the radar that you're used to. 49:12.39 Dave Um, yeah. 49:18.18 Dave And the layouts are different too like it's not like it's 8 identical buildings. 49:21.84 The Profit Yes, exactly and I think that was a really smart move by him where okay yeah, we're going to force you to get kind of get good but not constantly, especially at the end of the game when you're doing backtracking and for say trying to do collectibles like you're talking about holding people up. 49:31.61 Dave Yeah. 49:40.27 The Profit You can shake them down and get their dog tags. The dog tags are collectible and you get certain words for that. Um, and there is a fair amount of backtracking in the game and I think that if you never had their radar and it was never an option I think a lot of people would be like this is just too annoying. Yeah. 49:54.11 Dave Oh yeah, the radar is a reward. It's not. It's not a default. It's a reward for you kind of taking the time sometimes going into a more dangerous part of the level to get to that computer. It's a really smart choice. The other thing I think that makes this. 49:57.85 The Profit Yes, yes. 50:13.22 Dave Better as a stealth game is that once you get caught. It's not automatically over for you like it was in the first game like soldiers will still get on the radar and sound the alarm and a bunch of people will come but you have options now like you can hide in lockers. This is the first game where you could hide in a locker I think. 50:19.46 The Profit Yes. 50:32.99 Dave I don't remember doing that in the first game I just remember okay I just remember dying instantly when I got caught in the first game so you can run you can hide you can fight like if there's just like 1 guy you can kind of do like a 3 piece combo and knock him out and run and hide. 50:35.26 The Profit Nope The Twin Snakes remake you can, but not in the Ps. Yeah. 50:51.99 Dave Um, and then it has that alert system where you know you're you're waiting for the alertness bar to go down and then soldiers will patrol for a little while after that and then things go back down to normal I just felt like you had a lot of a lot more possibility once someone did see you in here. And that's kind of like I'm not the first person to say this but like stealth games are fun when you're stealthing around but they should also be fun after you get caught like having just a hard game over like metal gear. Solid one is just not. It's no good for the player. It just feels like okay we'll try that again. You get to improvise a little bit in this game. 51:30.59 The Profit So yep I agree I was really fun again. I'm coming from the perspective of when I first played it. It's an older game. Koji is known for pushing everything. So and I I was messing with every single npc in the tanker to see if they had Ai I was always constantly like. Playing the game not to play the game but like reloading is saved just to mess with the AI like push its limits like to see how dumb it is and how smart it is. It was really fun back then. For example, if you're in the locker and they walk close to you close enough and you're not ducking and you're looking through the slits. 52:06.87 Dave Yeah. 52:09.90 The Profit They'll see you. But if they're far enough away they can turn at you and look at you and they won't see you if they're closer enough. You have the duck and you can't look through the slits and so then it's even more nerve wracking So like is you gonna open it does he realize I'm here can I hear me. Yeah. 52:19.91 Dave Right? It's got that heartbeat sound effect too when you're hiding in a locker. Yeah. 52:26.16 The Profit And then it was like okay like how how you know the the red to the yellow to the green I do remember even in the beginning being impressed by the Ai but also being like okay so they know I'm here they can't find me and they all just go back to normal but it's like I'm not gone. They know. 52:42.75 Dave Right. 52:44.92 The Profit Kind of like breaking the immersion like this isn't quite human level. It's not even close to human level. But I was young and naive right? and just sorry I lost a little bit of immersion. But I think for what it was, it was way better than the first game. Um, at the end of the day. It's still basically the same system as metal gear solid 1 52:48.17 Dave Right. 53:02.31 Dave Yeah, it yeah, it's just refined and improved in just about every way I think the last thing I wanted to bring up is that shooting guns in metal gear. Solid 1 kind of sucked and it's pretty good like there's a point in this game where. 53:04.19 The Profit Just refined. Yeah. 53:16.44 The Profit Yep. 53:19.58 Dave It stops being a stealth game and it becomes an action game and it's still pretty fun even when it's an action game and I would have dreaded a section like that in metal gear. Solid 1 whereas this one like it was good and like the boss fights are really creative and fun just like the first game. So. You know it. It still feels dated. Obviously it should. It's that old but it was good from a gameplay perspective. I don't I didn't play this and think like you know any of these aspects of it really suck is good. 53:52.30 The Profit Yeah I'm trying to think of anything else. Gameplay wise besides just clunky mechanics and item switching. But the boss no like the game, so I'm trying to remember. There is like kind of a semi What would you call it like auto targeting with because you had the red dot and it kind of locks on to guys which metal gear solid 1 didn't have that stickiness. You had the first person view. You couldn't move in the first person view but you least have person. 54:16.40 Dave Yeah, yeah. 54:27.94 The Profit First person view I think in 3 you can move right? I'm trying to remember because I've also played these games modded on pc. There's an amazing pc mod for metal gear solid 2. By the way that changes the camera from the fixed angles in the top down to like a standard. 54:28.92 Dave I haven't played 3. I'm making my way through the series. 54:46.80 The Profit Third person like you said metal gear 5 looks familiar but doesn't feel familiar. There's a camera mod that makes metal gear solid 2 feel familiar like it. It's like a standard third person action game camera and the game is still really fun to play. I think it's actually better because because of that camera you can use the stealth. 54:52.86 Dave Okay. 54:59.50 Dave Nice. 55:05.95 The Profit But around a corner is like you could really play that game with no radar with anyway that's side tangent game plays haha The game plays solid Ah, not amazing, but solid. 55:17.55 Dave There you go well done? Yeah, um, just some other random stuff I was thinking of there as we're talking about improvements like you can flip over railings and like ah. 55:30.22 The Profit Oh yeah, yeah. 55:33.60 Dave What's the word for it? Just kind of like walking your way across a railing as you're hanging. That's useful like when people are looking for you or when you're trying to sneak past people you have all of your gadgets that you use in the first game. You've got all the different types of grenades Raiden can do like a. Running like flip that you can use to jump over gaps and stuff like that more acrobatic than snake. So just ah improvements across the board and the last thing I wrote in the notes for gameplay is in the main menu. There's a skateboarding mode for pedal gear. Solid too. 56:08.46 The Profit I was wondering if you're gonna bring that up about red like yeah, no, but he did it. 56:12.50 Dave Oh you bet your ass I saw that in the menu and I was like well this is going to be a disaster I have to try this. It's not good, but it ah it's funny and they take like the metal here. Solid music which we didn't talk about is it's It's good I Don't think it stands out. 56:26.56 The Profit Oh I should start to cut you off I should have brought that up. Thank you, You get about it, it sounds like you're about to say it's good. Doesn't stand out. 56:31.70 Dave It's all right. 56:36.65 Dave It's good. It doesn't really stand out to me but it's really entertaining. I like the sound of it and everything um the main Melody of course the du Duda they bring that back. Ah, they kind of remixed it a little bit but then I was going to say in that skateboarding mode. They kind of like. 56:46.11 The Profit Yeah, yeah. 56:53.45 The Profit So. 56:54.90 Dave Pop punkify all of those metal gear solid melodies and it's really cool. 56:57.87 The Profit Um, I'm going to argue. It's interesting because I haven't thought about modern music because I'm really into music like I'm a music head. Um the sound of mead this so metal gear solid 2 I'm trying to think about. Um, so nerdy about this like how do I back up and make it short and sweet. So Hans Zimmer did the soundtrack or not han zimmer. Henry Gregson Williams sorry he's another um, like movie. He's like a movie composer. That's what I'm trying to get at right? So there's a certain sound, right? movie soundtracks. There's like a style just like you have like house and rap right. 57:43.60 Dave Yeah. 57:53.75 The Profit There's like orchestras and there's like the movie soundtrack sound and again at the time it wasn't super common for someone to go all out on an orchestra now with remasters and stuff they'll remaster soundtracks and they'll give them those standards like movie orchestra sound. I had ah what those called a gx tv I don't know if you've ever seen the picture of those it was an old crt tv that had speakers that covered the front and the speakers would open up like a door or a window I'm go this Tv had a subwoofer on the back of it built in. So if you ever get curious Google an image of the gx tv. 58:14.45 Dave Nope. Okay. 58:29.40 The Profit I had one of those and I would play the opening cutscene and I would max out that Tv's volume and I would just sit in my room and I would just like watch the opening cutscene because the soundtrack was so epic. But again I will see now from a 2023 perspective like. 58:46.67 The Profit It is a standard run of the mill like the movie orchestra Timpani Violins. You know it's nothing special now. But at the time it was pretty special. 58:59.60 Dave I'm looking at that Tv right now and that is I'm imagining you turning that up to full blast and just like you're like the dude in that old commercial with like just being blown back by the sound of that opening cutscene. Yeah yeah, absolutely yeah. 59:10.30 The Profit The tiny little thirteen inch tv but it had this. It was more speaker than it was Tv. Ah. 59:16.58 Dave Um, yeah, like to be clear I wasn't trying to say that the music is unremarkable or anything like that like it's really good. It's just very similar to the first game and serves more of a cinematic purpose than a you know melody and um. 59:34.24 Dave Yeah, more than just a catchable Melody purpose but it's a good soundtrack for sure. Sorry if I misspoke about that earlier. Yeah yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. 59:39.18 The Profit No I was just saying like I can see what you're coming from now that opening melody like the theme hook like that's memorable I I can remember that but you are right in the sense of if you were to ask me to hum the melody or any of the other songs in the game I would come up with. 59:56.13 Dave Yeah, a lot of it is just kind of like this background. You know you're stealthing around the music really fades into the background and you just get like some percussion and you know a little light melody or something like that. So yeah. 59:57.43 The Profit Nothing. Yeah yeah. 01:00:12.23 Dave All right? Well let's wrap up this non-spoiler section and the way we always do this is to just ah answer the question The Profit who would you recommend metal gear solid to in the year Twenty Twenty four when this is going to come out. 01:00:28.35 The Profit That's a really hard question who would I recommend it to and I would say I know you said you're not a retro game podcast but I do think. You need to have a certain tolerance for archaic game design in general to enjoy this game. Yes, So I think if you're someone like I've been learning on my social media channels and podcast that like for example, racing game racing is bigger. 01:00:48.51 Dave Yeah, they don't make games like this anymore for sure. 01:01:03.88 The Profit Um, like a hardcore game a jrpg like I as nerdy as they get right? I didn't realize that well and now in 2024 gaming has gotten so big. Everybody's gaming. It was more of a cliche kind of niche counterculture. Not popular thing when I was coming up. So if you're like I play Madden. 01:01:04.57 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:01:23.26 The Profit And I play Forza or grand turismo and Nba 2 k and smash bros and and there's there's nothing wrong with being the casual gamer like game away I don't give a fuck songs. You're gaming more power to you but this is only for like if you're like a head I was I would say you're a gaming head. 01:01:34.32 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:01:41.68 The Profit Call that we use the term head in music right? There's people who like music and then there's heads people who are like actively digging for new tunes. So the day they die They love music right? You're a gaming head. That's why you do the pod like a hardcore head only hardcore heads are gonna do a podcast called tells from the backlog and play right? So I think if you're ahead like. 01:01:41.72 Dave Oh yeah, ah yeah. 01:02:01.31 The Profit If you're into gaming and for whatever reason because you're younger or whatever and you haven't played this game and you're ahead. You need to play this game like it's part of it's part of gaming history. It's like a landmark in gaming history if you're like a game like I played recently because of Chris from retro hangover shout out to Retro hangover. 01:02:18.90 Dave Oh yeah. 01:02:21.90 The Profit And Shane I love those guys Chris recommended to me spec ops the line and I don't like military shooters but the way you pitch it to me is like this is one of those games like if you're a gamer like a game gamer and into gaming history and like you need to play this game. It's a landmark game and he was right? Um, and I would say metal gears. 01:02:27.79 Dave Yep. 01:02:33.38 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:02:40.83 The Profit Solid 2 is like that for sure just be prepared to deal with it's an old game right? You're gonna deal some shit. 01:02:47.17 Dave Yeah, yeah, Chris ah Chris was actually the guest for the spec ops the line episode on this podcast so shout shout out to Chris yeah, that is the military shooter for people who don't like military shooters 100% um 01:02:53.15 The Profit Great. He's a perfect guest for that perfect guest. 01:03:02.00 The Profit Yep Yep! so. 01:03:04.23 Dave Another question for you before we go. Do you think people need to play metal gear solid one before they play this? Yeah I agree I think that a lot of what this came is doing would be lost like I think a lot of the stuff that we said is good and. 01:03:11.72 The Profit I'm going to say yes. So. 01:03:22.18 Dave Like profound at times would not be lost I think you'd still get that but a lot of the stuff that makes this cool as a sequel and with the characters of snake and Raiden and stuff. Um a lot of that would go right over your head if you didn't have familiarity with metal gear. Solid 1 01:03:38.65 The Profit You just look like I may piggyback off what I was saying. I agree 100% this you wouldn't get the full me gear solo to experience and if you're playing it because based on what we're talking about is hey if you're a gamer head. You need to play this game because it's a big part of gaming history. 01:03:40.45 Dave I agree. 01:03:57.66 The Profit It's really metal gear solid 1 and 2 kind of come together as a package. It's one experience I think metal gear solid 3 snake eater the whole metal gear series if you really want to get the full experience metal gear solid series. You got to play him an order one 2 3 4 or 5 like you. Yeah, but that's. 01:03:59.84 Dave Yeah. 01:04:14.93 Dave That's what I'm doing. 01:04:17.54 The Profit That's the way to truly like it if you want to appreciate this little blip in gaming history. I would argue an important blip you should play those games in order. Not to say you couldn't enjoy and have a good like you mentioned you can still enjoy metal Gear Solid 2 but if you're playing that game in 2024 for the first time. It's because you missed out right? for whatever reason. So if you're going to play for that reason I would recommend playing to them in order and you're going to get the the roughest game as far as gameplay goes done first because it's it's really hard to play metal gear like if you play metal gear solid 3 or 4 first and try to go. 01:04:36.94 Dave Yeah. 01:04:48.20 Dave Um, yeah. 01:04:56.15 The Profit Back to 1 You're kind of ruining your experience. Yeah. 01:05:00.41 Dave Ah, it would hurt. yeah yeah I wanted to ask that question because I think that the recommendation ah I like I want to recommend this game to a lot of people who enjoy it. You know people doing creative things with video games storytelling like I think anyone who appreciates that would appreciate what kojima did in this game with the caveat that in order to get the full experience exactly like you said I do think you should play the first game first and it's not a long game. And if you emulate it you can use cheats to get through some of the bullshit boss fights like I did just play it, get through it and then play this one. I think this is better than the first game in most ways, maybe the characters overall are not as like. So like there's no psycho mantis in this game you know like there's no thing that's going to transcend metal gear solid fans in this no character at least but as a game as a story as a creative effort I think this is better than the first game and I reiterate. The bad rap that started when they did the bait and switch with snake and Riin has persisted to this day where people will just say oh yeah, metal gear. Solid 3 is an all-time classic metal gear solid one changed gaming metal gear. Solid five is a great game. 01:06:22.81 Dave Metal Gear solid 2 Is you can skip that one and I just I completely disagree. Yeah yeah. 01:06:24.31 The Profit No hundred percent disagree, I would argue. Yes there's no psycho mantis. He might be the most I mean you are right, like liquid snake and psycho mantis are way cooler than solidus snake. And I mean ocelot's kind of in all of them and he ends up becoming a very prominent character and gray fox I always argue the ninjas the coolest in metal gear solid too like I wanted I wanted to play as him soap I wanted to be him so bad right? because I was still hurting from him being switched over to Raiden and then they had the. 01:06:58.67 Dave Right. 01:07:01.85 The Profit Well we can't get into this God Damn it Anyway, we got to take a break because I'm ready to go. 01:07:06.81 Dave Yeah, yeah, we will ah we'll get into that before we get into spoilers quick housekeeping here Kate talk about gaming memories talk about the creative stuff you're doing and let people know where they can find you. 01:07:13.41 The Profit Oh yes, my name is The Profit Call. I am the host of the gaming memories podcast in which I am the one true podcast restored to earth Miyamoto the father Kojima the son and carmack the holy ghost appeared to me. And prophetic vision and commanded me to make the 1 true gaming podcast and all I had to do was simply interview creative and interesting people about their creative about their gaming memories growing up so I would have someone on like yourself Dave and I would get to know you by you know, asking about what makes you interesting for you would be you run a podcast and then I would say. 01:07:40.45 Dave Yeah. 01:07:49.49 The Profit I always start my podcast like what were you? What were you sorry what year were you born Dave 88 your first console that's hard 88 is a leap year like it's right in between. Um. 01:07:52.42 Dave 88 01:08:05.80 Dave Ah, as those leap years they'll fuck you up. No no, it was game gear. 01:08:06.62 The Profit I'm still gonna go with the and nes still what was it who so you are an outlier you are a hardcore outlier in my experience. So this house starts my podcast. I'll ask something and what's the first thing that they got I'll try to guess what's the first game they remember seeing what are the games. 01:08:18.25 Dave Ah, right. 01:08:25.60 The Profit Shape them growing up and then I'd tie that into whatever makes them interesting. So if they're a podcast host. We'll talk about their podcast if they're a musician and talk about their music if they're an artist. We'll talk about their art. That's the podcast on social media I spent a lot of time tinkering with emulators and showing what I come up with man that's about it. 01:08:42.60 Dave And where can people find you on social media? 01:08:45.24 The Profit It should be standard but I did not master my brand in any way shape or form. It's either gaming memories or gaming dash or underscore memories underscore pod or gaming memories pod with no but depending on where you're At. And might be a couple of things but generally Speaking. It's gaming memories pod. 01:09:02.41 Dave Okay, I'll get those handles from you for the individual places I'll throw them down in the show notes. So people can find them easily and follow because you do quite the transformation with those emulator videos too. I follow on Instagram and I see those from time to time. It's ah it's crazy what those emulators can do. 01:09:19.52 The Profit If I love video games and I love pushing you know a lot of people will say like why don't you just play the game. It was design. Well I did like 20 times right? I'm like. 01:09:31.98 Dave Yeah, ah. 01:09:35.35 The Profit I just yeah I like trying new shit. But I still like the old shit. So like for this game. What I really wanted to do and and thanks for being patient with the time on this I knew the master collection was coming out and I was like okay I had a I had a suspicion that it was gonna be a bullshit remaster because Konami is Konami. 01:09:51.97 Dave Right? yeah. 01:09:55.14 The Profit And there was initial reporting like they said it was going to support for k then they said it was only going to be 10 dp and this it was only going to be ten seven twenty p on the switch but 60 fps on Pete like all sorts of weird messaging. So I'm like this is Gonna be the train wreck I was hoping for. The mod community has done a lot of stuff to fix these games already like you can still play it but I'm anyway I'm I'm waiting for a little bit more because one of my favorite things to do is take an old game that I love and breathe new life into it with mods I just it's what I spend all my time doing when it comes to games. 01:10:13.20 Dave M. 01:10:27.18 Dave Yeah. 01:10:30.45 The Profit I'll play through like a random game every once while that's new like I'm playing Star Ocean second story r which is funny because that's a remaster they just did such an amazing job. They did it as if what I would do if I could modify it the way I wanted. So if you like that type of content and you like seeing old games kind of you know some people would say bastardized. 01:10:37.12 Dave Right. 01:10:50.26 The Profit And ruined and I get a comma every video like you ruined it. Okay play it you can ah like you can go play it the way it was meant to be played. No one's stopping you. I've beat this game like 20 times already. So I want to try it with some new you know new visuals and I love seeing. 01:10:57.78 Dave Yeah. 01:11:07.78 The Profit But the community does and how you can push games. That's you know the more popular the game mario brothers you know anything Nintendo Zelda like there's so much cool shit out there. The last thing I know I'm rambling but the way I would pitch it is if you're into trying new shit you want to live a little bit. You're down to trying a new position. You're not stuck in the old ways. 01:11:15.50 Dave M. 01:11:27.72 The Profit Look up the legend of doom. It's the original zelda on and nes recreated at a 1 to 1 ratio in the doom engine and it's fucking. Awesome. 01:11:33.29 Dave Oh sick, Nice Hell yeah well you know I'll let people decide for themselves whether you're destroying games or breathing new life into them. Yeah. 01:11:42.80 The Profit Um, it's probably a little bit of both. It is what it is. Ah. 01:11:46.00 Dave Um, so yeah, again, check down in the show notes for gaming memories and check out the podcast too to hear people's stories of how they got into video games and stuff like that. Um, for oh I'd love to yeah, love to I think the game gear thing is not going to be the only outlier I bring to the ah conversation. 01:11:53.98 The Profit You should come on by the way. 01:12:05.30 The Profit Yes, in fact, you would probably be my memory's not perfect. I think you'd be the only person who said the game gear was their first console I've had game boys game boy advances. Um I haven't had a game I don't think I've ever had anyone I know shit I know we've got. 01:12:05.54 Dave As far as gaming history. 01:12:15.80 Dave Yep. 01:12:22.21 The Profit Did you go from game gear to a console or did you stay handheld. Oh and then n 64 and you're born 88 yep that is for my small sample size of I don't know hundred episodes. Whatever that's an outlier for sure. 01:12:25.33 Dave Ah, game gear to game boy and then in 64 yeah yep 01:12:39.30 Dave Okay, I'll I'll bring more of that outlier energy anytime man. Um, so for this podcast if people want to support. It's the normal calls to action that we do every time hop in the Discord server talk about metal gear solid two with us this week it's going to be a good conversation I hope. 01:12:57.12 Dave It's a game that I think no one's not a lot of people are really talking about these days. So I hope that this episode will bring it back up into the conversation at least in our circle. We have an awesome community in our Discord server so you'll find an invite link down in the show notes. Ah you can support the show by leaving a rating and review. When people search metal gear solid too. They'll find this episode. That's what we want and you can also support monetarily at patreon.com/realdavejackson a couple bucks a month will let you vote on what games I play and a bunch of other treats. There's a bunch of tears with a bunch of rewards at all of them. So again, if you'd like to support that way. It's always appreciated. I also have another podcast called a top 3 podcast and on that podcast. We just do the top 3 lists. We did an episode that was top 3 ps 2 games and I think that. I hadn't played metal gear solid 2 at the time. But I think if I had it would be a contender for the top 3 ps 2 games I do not remember final fantasy 10 was number one. That's one of my favorite games ever for sure. That's the only one I remember because. 01:13:53.78 The Profit What what? What did you say were your top PS 2 games 01:14:06.28 Dave Well I do podcasts and then I forget what I say. 01:14:07.16 The Profit We got to talk about final fantasy 10. I could do an hour on final fantasy 10 So come on. Let's talk about 10 01:14:11.70 Dave Oh there we we're in a weird in-between time where as we're recording final fantasy 10 comes out next week on tales from the backlog but you can't listen to it yet. But the people who are listening to this now. 01:14:25.41 The Profit Mean. 01:14:31.69 Dave Can go find that episode about final fantasy 10 Ah and that episode went 3 hours because like you we people have a lot of stuff to say about that game? yeah. 01:14:38.46 The Profit Oh I'm gonna have to give that a listen. 01:15:41.36 Dave Hell yeah, all right? So we are going to take a little music break here and then when we come back, It's going to be full spoiler time Finally for metal gear Solid 2 01:18:51.87 Dave The thing so all right? Okay, The Profit and I are back and we're talking about metal gear solid to full spoilers. If you don't want to be spoiled, go ahead and get out because we are going to walk semi chronologically through it. But I'm not going to like. Hold myself to it if I need to say something about what comes up later so again, get out if you don't want to be spoiled for metal gear solid to go play it. It's good like we talked about for the first hour plus of the podcast. So that tanker mission with snake we'll start there and then we'll get into favorite boss fights and stuff. That tanker mission with snake basically ends with snake losing which was a surprise like snake is caught out of over his head I'll say he's in over his head and revolver ocelot is there. He steals. Metal gear Ray that snake was there to find and then um snake supposedly dies in here. So I just wanted to ask you when you played this, you played the demo and then you had to wait for the game to come out. What was going through your head back then? ok all right. 01:20:06.31 The Profit I did not believe snake was dead for one second. I mean how could now in hindsight maybe I should have been a word because maybe Kojimi would have done that and he I wouldn't be surprised if he threw around the idea. Um. 01:20:12.20 Dave Yeah. 01:20:19.50 The Profit Did not think that at all and yeah, we were. We're talking about just the tanker so I don't remember if the demo went all the way to the end of the tanker I feel like it did but but I could be wrong and it's like you know my memory from playing it all the way back then kind of blurs the 2 01:20:28.89 Dave Okay, okay. 01:20:38.56 The Profit It's um, but I did not buy that snake was dead. We talked about the bait and switch. I thought the tanker was the perfect setup for a new metal gear solid 2 game where you play snake is the perfect setup because it felt like oh he dot quote dies then he comes back right. 01:20:52.11 Dave Yeah, ah. 01:20:57.78 The Profit He loses but he comes back and wins. What the Hero's journey right? I'm going to definitely be playing a snake because like just this just set up the intro snake failed I mean every mission impossible. They all have the same thing right? part where they fail kind of in the beginning. 01:21:01.50 Dave Right. 01:21:14.50 The Profit Have no hope and then they overcome. It's the classic Hero's journey even though I wasn't aware of that trope and sort of that narrative foundation that most stories follow I was subconsciously accustomed to it right? So I was just expecting okay sweet. This is a cool setup. 01:21:26.15 Dave Yeah. 01:21:32.41 The Profit To play as snake but. 01:21:33.57 Dave Right? but ah but instead um and we left this out of the non-spoiler section you play as ride in but snake comes back pretty quickly into right and section you meet another person on board who was not accounted for um, write in as a ah rookie. Basically this is like his first mission. He'd only done VR training and stuff like that and a snake is not part of the mission plan. He's there but he has this Alias Iroquois Pliskin which is. 01:21:52.43 The Profit The art. Yes, so. 01:22:04.62 The Profit Now I am young and dumb. It took me a while to realize Pliskin was snake. Did you realize immediately that's true? Yes. 01:22:09.81 Dave Ah, okay, oh yeah, because you can see his face right away like it's either a snake or because it's kojima. It's a a fucking clone or something like that. Yeah, exactly. So. 01:22:22.38 The Profit Like another like Le Enfant Terribles. Whatever it's called. Yeah yeah. 01:22:29.30 Dave Um, snake is supposed to have died and like Raiden this is one of your first hints I think that things are not what they seem but it's so early in the game that it like it's not a hint that you're going to really pick up on that Raiden kind of tells the kernel over the radio. He's like. Like I met snake or something like that or snakes here or something eventually. He tells him that and the Colonel's like no snake died in the ah in the tanker he died. It's not ah, not possible. Anyway, back to the training, back to the simulation, keep going on the mission. Um. 01:23:02.81 The Profit Yeah. 01:23:06.71 Dave You know a sign of things to come, but it's so early in the game that you know you? you're not going to notice Snake hat. 01:23:17.19 The Profit You could argue that like that's maybe a little heavy handed foreshadowing. But then it gets so batshit crazy. That's like you can't foreshadow that so no, ah. 01:23:24.49 Dave Yeah, right, The thing that they're foreshadowing is not something that you're just going to guess it's. It's really out there by the time you get there Snake had a really interesting quote though it's like a snake is like ah, an old. 01:23:29.64 The Profit No no. 01:23:39.38 Dave He is the ultimate soldier basically like the seasoned professional ridin's on his first mission and Raiden's talking about all the things that he went through in his Vr training and snake just kind of has like some comments about that about you know, Vr training as a. A way to train the ultimate soldier basically making war into a video game and stuff like that and this is back in 2001 back when people probably still thought that video games cause violence and Stuff. So I Just wrote that down as an interesting quote from snake and you know. Does tie into what happens later too. 01:24:14.98 The Profit Yeah I don't know if I can come out of that without skipping ahead so old. Yeah. 01:24:21.70 Dave Ah, you if you know all right? We don't have to like be too touchy about skipping ahead. But um, let's put a pin in that. Let's just ah, kind of open up with some some memorable boss fights I Guess we talked about fat man we talked about vamp. 01:24:34.38 The Profit 5 yes. 01:24:38.33 Dave I Thought both of those boss fights were fun, um creative unlike other stuff in a lot of other games. 01:24:43.46 The Profit Absolutely I think boss fights are one of the most important art forms of designing a game. Like you said you could tell kojima I would assume I don't know like I don't know for sure as we both speculated that kojima thinks of a. What he considers a cool scenario first and then works backwards from there and then puts it all together. Um I think that's partially because when you're designing a video game as opposed to writing a movie. You have to think of cool things to play and a boss fight is like let's be real if you really kind of. 01:25:03.70 Dave M. 01:25:21.80 The Profit Think about most games that have boss fights. You're really playing the game to get to the boss. The boss is the fun part of that so you remember um, they're the iconic parts there. They're the parts that you're unique and everything in between is like filler but it's consciously they know it's filler. You know you can only have so much filler. 01:25:28.87 Dave Yeah. 01:25:41.19 The Profit Have to pace the boss fights so you're not playing filler too long yada yada yada so I think it really excels. That being said, the most memorable boss fight for me would be vamp number 1 like by far which should. 01:25:51.30 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:25:57.57 The Profit You know it should be in theory that ending Boss fight should be the most memorable like design wise you could say you'd want that but the ending is memorable for the exposition dump I Do think the final fight with solidists with the Katana is kind of a cool ending. 01:26:13.19 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:26:15.88 The Profit Because you only had the Catana and I do think the fight with metal gear Ray is awesome because it's the throwback you fight Rex if you played 1 but vamp just there's something special again as cheesy is like let's just have a vampire because vampires. 01:26:28.52 Dave Yeah, and if it's if that's not cheesy enough the concept in the boss fight is you're in this room with like you're on these catwalks above this water and it's special water. They explain it as it's hyper oxygen. 01:26:38.73 The Profit With what you know. 01:26:48.37 Dave Oxygenated Ah so it buoyancy does not exist is the quote they say so they say if you fall in the water. You'll just sink straight down to the bottom like a rock and if Vamp knocks you into the water you die. 01:27:03.85 Dave And you are trying to knock him in and he goes in the water, his oxygen drains and you have to do enough damage to him that he'll just sink down in there forever. But he's hopping around on these catwalks and stuff. Yeah because he's a vampire like when we say vampire we don't mean he's a guy like. 01:27:15.36 The Profit Um, because Vamp is also immortal. He's immortal. He's a vampire. 01:27:23.58 Dave With vampire fangs who bites people. He's actually also immortal. You kill him like 3 times in this game. 01:27:29.95 The Profit There's a certain scene and I could be remembering it wrong because there's also a bunch of scenems with him in metal Gris Solid four with right in. Um, hey you haven't played for it anyway. So it's not so you if I'm trying to get these games mixed up but don't you hit. 01:27:34.96 Dave Okay, not yet. 01:27:45.32 The Profit Vampire with the sniper and he does like the classic like falls back and then levitates back up and there's A bullet in his forehead and. 01:27:48.19 Dave I think he does because there's a scene where you like you're fighting Fortune I think is what it was. You're fighting fortune and the bullet bends around her and hits vamp in like the middle like in his Forehead. And I think he does do the pose. Yeah. 01:28:05.62 The Profit Yes, yeah, he does the pose where he levitates back up and then the bullet pops out of his forehead or it heals or something like that like he can't die. Um, it's an interesting take on what I just watched. It's funny. You bring this up. I just watched interview with the vampire last night. Have you watched that? 01:28:10.24 Dave Yeah. 01:28:20.38 Dave I just watched it for the first time like two weeks ago. This is a really weird coincidence. 01:28:22.44 The Profit Be a little bit. Okay, it's a really weird coincidences in an interesting. It's the third time I've watched that movie and what I find interesting is that vampires have a certain loose set of rules. But then everybody has their own kind of unique twist on what the rules for a vampire are and. 01:28:35.99 Dave M. 01:28:41.80 The Profit For example, interview with a vampire they can look at crucifixes. It doesn't hurt them. Garlic doesn't hurt them stake in the heart doesn't hurt them. He says it's all hogwash but they can't, they do have to sleep in the coffin. They can't be in the light, they have to drink blood 01:29:00.31 The Profit Interesting. Kojima has a very unique take on a vampire. He's not like most classical vampires as far as art direction powers. All that stuff. 01:29:10.62 Dave Um, yeah, it's ah just an interesting character and he keeps coming back and then like we said that boss fight is pretty fun. Um I was planning on talking about this later but this is a good time to bring this up I think because. Um, when you were rattling off the boss fights I was thinking to myself huh that's better than the version of that fight in metal gear solid one so you have a fat man who's rolling around he is setting bombs and you have to freeze the bomb. So they don't explode and then you can shoot him. Um, kind of reminiscent of when you're fighting. I don't remember which fight it was but the one where you're in the freezer with all the cargo containers and metal gear. Solid 1 kind of reminiscent of that. Um, you fight a bunch of these colorful characters. Ah you fight a fighter jet. 01:29:58.22 The Profit Yep yep. 01:30:06.36 The Profit The helicopter fight. Yep so. 01:30:06.56 Dave Which reminded me of the helicopter fight in metal gear. Solid one. Ah you fight a metal gear just like in the first game you end up fighting a bunch of them at the end of this game I hated that fight that was terrible to me. Um, but I don't have 20 years of experience playing it and then at the end of this game. Like you said you fight the eventual villain Solidus Snake with a sword very similar to how you fist fight liquid snake at the end of the first game. So like they're really just playing the hits again and it's not a coincidence. Yeah. 01:30:34.27 The Profit Yep yep. Yeah, what I find interesting because now we're talking about spoilers is so I again I think Kojima works backwards. He's like I want to replay the hits and pay homage to the original game because it's a sequel but like we mentioned he's. He does to a certain extent try to tie it all together to the game lore and the narrative. I don't think he nails that all the time but I just so just to recap before we got on I rewatched some of that final codec conversation in the solid as snake fight. 01:31:11.58 The Profit And then the and the ending of the game just to make sure I was fresh and all of it like they hint that shadow Moses Metal Gear Solid One was also a training training exercise which is crazy to me because we're getting to the I know I might be jumping ahead. But right. 01:31:27.98 Dave Ah, we do? Yeah yeah. 01:31:28.90 The Profit The advent of Ai we had these large language models and they just need so much data to be trained so much data that they need like the whole internet for every piece of human creation. They try to quantify and then train these large language models that's where you get chat GPT all of these different Ais. They. 01:31:44.27 Dave M. 01:31:47.62 The Profit They don't just infer. They basically directly say that shadow Moses incident and metal gear solid. One was a training exercise to train the AI for various different things and so the fact that you have kind of the same motifs playing out you. 01:31:55.16 Dave Yeah. 01:32:04.60 The Profit Can say in a lure or a narrative standpoint makes sense because both of them are training exercises for this mastermind Ai the GW the arsenal. However, whatever you want to call it the the patriots were above the patriots it's like they. 01:32:14.33 Dave Right. 01:32:21.11 The Profit So it kind of makes sense like okay ah I want to rebuild the hits I want to kind of hit the same motifque the same archetypes. But also I have to justify it and so I thought that was kind of an interesting way like yeah, well the Ai would want to run a similar scenario with slight variables to kind of test itself. Can it handle this contingency? Can it control it, can it manipulate it? Um, so I thought that was really really cool. It's like because I know he's like saying I know I flipped the switch on you with right in you expecting snake but I'm gonna give you some of the same stuff that you might have wanted. 01:32:50.60 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, and yeah, and snake is there too like he's with you or in contact with you for most all the game basically. Um, so this. 01:32:58.73 The Profit Yes, yes. 01:33:07.23 Dave Kind of and this is what I meant when I said this is really interesting as a sequel because they eventually explain to you for a time they tell you that this whole thing this whole big shell mission and we're skipping like everything that happens in the big shell mission right now because it's like. 01:33:23.54 The Profit Because it doesn't really matter. Yeah. 01:33:26.85 Dave Yeah, it's it and it's there's no twist to it for a while like you play for like 8 hours and then you meet the president and the president tells you about the patriots and then it starts there like when he explains what the patriots are you're like oh ok, but. 01:33:39.83 The Profit Yes, yes. 01:33:46.73 Dave Before that it's just like you know oh we need to find this informant. He's in this shell and then you go there in the informants there and you talk to him. It's not really remarkable but what it is is that the whole thing is a simulation, a simulated event like the people that you're. 01:33:54.30 The Profit Yeah, yeah. 01:34:05.50 Dave Killing they're real but they're there. They're playing this part and they tell you it's because they're trying to recreate the events of shadow moses from the first game to try to create another snake and that's why this is so similar like you mentioned in the non-spoiler part callbacks like swimming up to the location. 01:34:20.73 The Profit Yeah. 01:34:24.24 Dave Um, there's a part in this game where you have to shoot a stinger missile to blow up an electrical panel something you did in the first game to and I want to credit a Youtuber Max Derrat that's the video I watched that today and I was like holy shit I didn't notice it. But it's. 01:34:37.33 The Profit That's the video. Yep yeah yeah. 01:34:42.75 Dave It's there. It's cool. Um, so I was thinking about that earlier with what they talked about. But then when we're running through those bosses I was like they're all ah a take on a boss from the first game in some way. 01:34:55.64 The Profit Yep yep for the most part I mean Fortune is sort of your sniper wolf. Um, who's this at the Hind D in the yeah the airplane how you there's more but you kind of threw me off. So you said that. 01:35:06.47 Dave Yeah. 01:35:12.95 The Profit And maybe we interpreted it differently but and again metal gear. Solid lore is like you can find your own bread and threads that dive in right? It's like I'm not saying I'm right? or you're wrong or you're wrong and I'm right? But you said that the whole thing was an Ai to train another snake which is what he thought was right. 01:35:19.38 Dave Yeah. 01:35:27.80 Dave That's what they sorry? That's what they said and then they plot twisted that like 10 minutes literally later in the same conversation. They were like oh that's actually not what was happening. It's one of the one of like the things where I wrote down in my notes I was like you you can't. 01:35:31.44 The Profit Okay, okay, okay, yeah, yeah, okay, and. 01:35:44.13 The Profit And then twist it again. Yeah. 01:35:44.27 Dave Throw me a plot twist. Let me like and then twist it before I even have a chance to internalize what that twist was like. That was one of the things where I was like this is too much like this is this is way too much all at once you know so but um, that so that plot like this. 01:35:49.87 The Profit Yes, yes. 01:36:03.88 Dave This whole mission with the um, the big Shell mission is fake. It's all staged basically and no, it's right they and they say that they are kind of. 01:36:11.90 The Profit Stage. It's not. It's not a simulation like a computer but it's a controlled environment. Yeah. 01:36:22.67 Dave Patching in to ride in the kernel you're talking to is the ai in it. The ai is controlled by the Patriots, something like that. Yeah. It's it's you know, writing in as nanomachines and shit so they're tapping into the nanomachines and. 01:36:30.37 The Profit Yes, yes, yes. 01:36:39.48 Dave All of that. It's how you explain anything in metal gear. Solid is just to be like that's the nano-machines. Yeah, um, but earlier in the game before you learn all this you figure out that things are really weird because there's just too many conversations with the kernel. Especially. 01:36:43.88 The Profit Nanomachines. Ah. 01:36:58.20 Dave That doesn't feel like the way that your mission leader would handle things . I think there's 2 ways to look at it. There's either something off or you're thinking back to the first game where the kernel. Is just jerking snake around the entire time and lying to him the entire time. So regardless of how you feel about it. There's a point way before they tell you what's actually going on where you should be thinking. Why is my girlfriend on the radio? Why is she part of this mission? Why is the colonel deflecting whenever anything contradicts the plan you know stuff like that I started to catch on. 01:37:44.37 The Profit Now did you? It's interesting because as a kid I was so just again, we didn't have the like a I wasn't it was a theme that was in movies like I saw Ai with Steven Spielberg but it was it was pure sci-fi and as a. 01:37:53.29 Dave Yeah, yeah, it was sci-fi yeah. 01:38:01.10 The Profit 16 or 17 year old just I knew what it was like the terminology I kind of get what I meant I knew what sky net wasn't terminator but it wasn't like today and it makes me wonder now you played it recently did you start to suspect that I was an Ai. 01:38:18.38 Dave Um, no I didn't suspect that it was an I I didn't suspect that. Um, yeah I didn't suspect any of that. It was just like something was off and then also you know. 01:38:18.71 The Profit Like did you pick up on that though that was still. Ah. 01:38:28.85 The Profit You just knew something was off for sure. 01:38:34.55 Dave Have the context from Metal Gear Solid one where the kernel never tells the truth to snake for the entire game. He basically all of that game's plot is basically like oh they were actually in on this. Oh they were actually in on this and yeah, the Kernel's just lying every step of the way. So. 01:38:39.29 The Profit Yes, yes. 01:38:48.36 The Profit So yeah, yeah. 01:38:54.19 Dave And also the fact that the kernel is there doesn't make any sense because they say that like the organization that he was working for in metal gear. Solid One was just like disbanded after that. But you just roll with it because hey maybe the guy got a new job I don't know. 01:39:03.21 The Profit Was disbanded. Yeah. 01:39:13.10 The Profit He's the current and at least playing the first game. It's weird like even though he lied to you the first game and you kind of realize it I still liked him like I still trusted him going into the second game which is batshit stupid. Admittedly because. 01:39:25.98 Dave Yeah, he's charismatic. Good voice actor. 01:39:30.25 The Profit He cares and he just has like the at least in the first game I'll say this I do think the 2 d pixel animations of the first game for the codex scenes are better than the 3 d models like I feel like it sells. It's almost like because of the Uncanny Valley the 3 d models obviously are. 01:39:50.50 The Profit Not convincing of a person but when you see like the 2 d sprite animation your brain kind of fills the gaps so I had like the kernel felt very real to me from the first game which made the twist of him turning out to be an AI even more confusing because I was convinced. It was the same kernel. From the first game but and it's like okay, why did the like out of all the people. The colonel could be I mean I guess we know why it was trying to recreate shadow moses. So it's like I'm gonna pretend to be the colonel. Ah. 01:40:21.10 Dave Yeah. 01:40:23.76 The Profit If you could bring a why don't just bring the kernel back and you die did he die at the end like what he got disbanded like who's where's the real kernel. 01:40:33.59 Dave Yeah I have I don't think they ever say. Um, um, but I never suspected it either because you're just inclined to just he's the the mission leader. maybe you think about it for a second and then the mission starts and you're just you're on your way. So. Um, let's see here. We talked about the patriots. So that's like the next big revelation that you get um and yeah. 01:40:55.12 The Profit Yes, so the way I understood it. So let me step back for anyone I mean most if you hear you either didn't play it but you don't care about spoilers which I do sometimes a lot so I don't judge you yeah or 2 you played it is so you already familiar. But for those who may be. 01:41:07.19 Dave Oh yeah, that's why I do the show this way. Yeah. 01:41:14.90 The Profit A didn't play it. You don't care about the spoilers and I want to see if you interpret it the same way that I interpreted it because um I interpreted it as the ai set up the big show to recreate shadow moses. For the three programs which they say is societal sanity, something protocol I forget what? what it was called um, but it's basically like okay we're gonna recreate shadow moses. But we're gonna see if we can throughnanomachines and influence. 01:41:36.22 Dave Yeah, right. 01:41:49.61 The Profit Get this guy right and basically manipulate him at our will. Yes. 01:41:50.96 Dave Yeah, to follow orders I think they said they want to see if he'll follow orders or they want to test how they can make people follow orders regardless of how questionable the person giving the orders is. 01:42:05.41 The Profit And how everything doesn't make sense but we'll still get you to do the thing that you want me to do because their end goal which let's just get into I mean we can get into it is yeah they see they foresee a problem which is so crazy me rewatching. 01:42:09.33 Dave Right. Get into the patriots. Yeah. 01:42:23.95 The Profit So I rewatched the video you brought up but that's actually an analysis of the original video that was made like eight years ago the Youtube channel that you mentioned Max Derrat. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do that. 01:42:29.89 Dave Ok, well hold up. Let's set up what the patriots are first for anyone who's following. Um, the patriots are basically like a secret society that runs everything which yeah. 01:42:41.19 The Profit The Illuminati essentially. 01:42:45.90 Dave Basically um, they are made up of 12 men and the patriots just kind of run everything the president tells you that american politics is basically a production. You know, elections, politics , lawmaking and all of those processes are just a production put on for the public. And that they don't um, you know those politicians don't actually have any power. Um, there's a villain that's introduced in the game solidus snake who is impersonating snake. He's actually a former president who was ousted by the patriots. Because of how fucked up shadow moses went um so he's here to kind of get revenge and he he lost his mind and stuff like that just a real quick note I thought it was funny. They said that solidis is a well-balanced masterpiece between solid and liquid snake. Ah. 01:43:23.55 The Profit Yes. 01:43:40.66 Dave And they explained it. I forget which one because they plot twisted this in the first game but 1 of them got all the dominant genes from big boss and one of them got all the recessive genes right? But then they plot twisted that so it was actually the other way around. 01:43:48.52 The Profit Um, and Liquid got all the recessive genes and that's why he resented? solid. Yes. 01:43:57.41 Dave Which is not how genetics work once again, but then I was like okay so Solidist got half of the recessive genes. He's perfectly in the middle. Um. 01:44:03.35 The Profit Yes I did even as a kid when I played this I felt that was a little cheesy. Oh there's a third twin you didn't tell me about because they made a big deal, especially the middle year solid one. You know how they would intermix like real footage like Fmb footage. 01:44:09.30 Dave Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:44:22.86 The Profit There's footage of twins, a metal or solid one and they specifically say it was only twins and show you twins and there's no like even subtle foreshadow that I'm aware of. Maybe he did a ahead of time master plan. I doubt it, like I said I think he's working backwards. Yeah, so. 01:44:33.97 Dave No, it's probably yeah, it's again, it's that thing he's like it would be cool if there was a secret third twin and we're gonna do a little bit of you know explanation. But the plot's moving. So. 01:44:43.92 The Profit Yeah, that's what I think happened and I remember feeling like even a seventeen year old like that was a cheap dude but still love the game. 01:44:53.33 Dave Um, yeah, um, yeah, so this part I think Kojima has a lot of stuff like that. There's a secret organization that runs the country and that you know the government as a production. I don't think this is that deep. It's one of those things that like if you played for the first time when you're like 13 you'll be like holy shit. That's probably how it is in real life and then you grow up and you're like that is kind of how it is in real life like a lot of that shit is just kind of staged and I think a lot of that is decided. 01:45:23.27 The Profit Yeah, I Think at this point it's like it doesn't matter where you sit on that political spectrum. I think people understand that corruption is a serious problem. Yeah. 01:45:36.20 Dave Yeah, absolutely So. This is some This is something that like he presents and it's a big revelation and I'm like okay here we go this again. Um, and a thing that I thought was interesting was that dead cell which is the terrorist group on there. Trying to destroy the patriots but the president who you talk to the President's being controlled by the Patriots. You would think that the president wants the puppet put the puppeteers to go away but he doesn't and he kind of makes this interesting point that if you remove all of this all at once. Then there will be this massive political vacuum and things will just get way worse than they are right now. 01:46:15.40 The Profit And I think that that's interesting that he brought that up again. We're going to start getting into where I think this is one of I agree with you. This is where Kojima has actually actually been profound and ahead of his time and it kind of blows my mind that he thought of some of these concepts in 2001 and I wonder what media I have some suspicions. 01:46:25.54 Dave Yeah. 01:46:34.37 The Profit Of what media he was getting inspired by because he's not the only one that foresaw some of this but the president says there's going to be a power base essentially going to be a power vacuum. Well the US since 2001 has gone to Yemen in Syria Afghanistan and we've toppled governments and left this power vacuum. 01:46:43.76 Dave Um, yeah. 01:46:53.45 The Profit Places end up becoming worse than we left them and that this idea that a power vacuum. You know you might be doing a good thing on paper by taking out something that you consider corrupt or bad. But if you just leave it things to just sort themselves out like. 01:46:56.40 Dave Yep. 01:47:03.75 Dave Yeah. 01:47:12.48 The Profit It can backfire and can actually end up being worse than the structure you took out and I obviously that that's something that I didn't recognize until is much older and I know I know I don't know how you I know politics are a touchy subject but I'm like I don't like war like I think. 01:47:16.67 Dave Right. 01:47:28.36 Dave But I don't think that's a touchy subject. I think we're safe there. Yeah. 01:47:32.42 The Profit It has been recently like depending on who I talked to. It's like I got someone mad at me for saying I'm someone I'm really close to and respect was like pushing back because I was like at the end of the day I'm antiwar. I think that should be an absolute last resort and I think kojima. 01:47:50.72 The Profit You know he's obviously older than we are and maybe he had been following politics but was recognizing that. Yeah, when you just like not only is the war bad but what you leave behind can become worse and I think he was touching on that and it'd be interesting to wonder. 01:48:02.90 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:48:08.55 The Profit As a Japanese person right? The center of the world, at least most of the media, is Hollywood like we Americans don't pay attention to other countries' politics as much but other countries pay attention to us a little bit and I think kojima. It's interesting to think about what we're Seeing. A Japanese man who at the time was our age in his 30 s trying to make sense of world events and then kind of reflect some of his feelings in his art. That's what I think we're seeing and that's one of the points is this idea of like dude if you took everything Away. It's going to end up being worse. 01:48:44.34 Dave Yeah, and I So yeah I Totally agree in that part where you know they introduced the patriots and then you're like okay well in your head as a. 01:48:46.54 The Profit You don't realize that. Yeah. 01:48:58.34 Dave Person playing a video game. You're like well let's go fucking kill the Patriots then and then the president's like slow your role there buddy like this is actually yeah, this is actually why it's going to be a bad idea to do that and I thought that that is like a little bit deeper than that surface level like oh there's a secret society controlling the government like we've never. 01:49:01.84 The Profit Yeah, um, kill the bad guys. Yeah. 01:49:16.48 The Profit Yeah, that's been around forever. That's a really good point now when you are right when I was younger because the internet was like the idea of a secret society controlling. Everything was definitely more novel. Um, and I understood that. But once you started getting into his next part. 01:49:17.41 Dave Seen a story with that before right. 01:49:35.57 The Profit Specifically the final code at conversation before you fight solidis where basically you just get that eleventh hour hey as the villain we're just gonna explain everything behind what we're doing because that's what we do as villains like trope is there. They. 01:49:43.47 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:49:52.44 The Profit I mean I don't know how you want to tackle this but we both watch the same video I wanted to pull up so we talked about the max Derrat video but Max Derrat is doing a retrospective on a video that came out thirteen years ago by logo Steve I found it on. Um. 01:50:03.46 Dave Okay. 01:50:08.20 The Profit There's 2 part videos, the most profound moment in gaming metal gear solid 2 Ai conversation part 1 of 2 and this came out thirteen years ago which means this gentleman logo Steve was also kind of 1 of the first people to recognize what Kojima was really getting at which is that like. 01:50:25.69 The Profit They say this they had this exposition dump and then the Ai says I'm actually doing this because Jack or Rayden or Jack I guess we haven't talked about his name is Jack um, yes. 01:50:35.44 Dave Yeah, former child soldier. Um, picked for the mission because he's a blank slate who refuses to acknowledge his past is what they say? yeah. 01:50:43.60 The Profit Yes, which was a child soldier and they kojima touches on that child soldier thing a lot in Phantom Pain and I haven't played it yet. But that's a big part of Phantom pain Anyway, Ah, they essentially say we foresee this problem where the internet and the digitized flow of information. I Thought this was so profound and I rewashed it today . We used to curate that they claim that throughout all of human History. We would curate what we passed down, we would filter out all the bullshit and then we would like crystallize the most important stories. Maybe we turn them into myths. 01:51:11.86 Dave Yeah. 01:51:19.10 The Profit Legends and we pass them down orally to our next generation. But we're not passing down every single joke in every single story because it's too much. We just curate and say the stuff that really matters we're going to pass down to the next generation in the forms of myths and stories and religion and art and so on and so forth. 01:51:20.32 Dave Right. 01:51:33.68 Dave Right? Whether that's a conscious thing that people decide to do or whether it's a natural thing because the things that are not important just naturally don't get passed on because no one gives a shit. 01:51:38.30 The Profit But will this go ahead? yes. 01:51:45.87 The Profit Yes, that is the pattern. No one gives the shit and that's the pattern but with the internet age. Yes. 01:51:51.48 Dave Or because it was or because it was wrong and that's another thing that you're about to bring up is because that stuff was incorrect or that it didn't suit the vision of whoever is passing on the history that stuff gets filtered out. 01:52:03.42 The Profit Yes, or they decide. Yeah, that's wrong or it's bad advice or it's a bad way of thinking. Is it bad perspective? I'm not going to pass that on to my children. Um. 01:52:09.30 Dave Right? right? Think about it? um think about vaccines basically like this is my podcast so I'm going to go ahead and make the bold claim that vaccines are good and save people's lives and. So back using the logic in this thing where um, things were curated and passed on with a purpose. Basically if someone had bad medical advice back then and a bunch of people died because of it that wouldn't get passed on because they would be like. That wouldn't be preserved to be passed on because people would be like obviously that's wrong people are going to fucking die if we pass this on to our children. We're going to leave that behind basically whereas in the digital age like we're getting to ah everything gets passed on. Every single piece of misinformation, every piece of good information and then every piece of extraneous trash like my Twitter posts all of that shit is preserved. Yeah. 01:53:10.80 The Profit And I think that's the most important like I wanted to focus on, is like you know that? What's like a vaccine is a pro or con well and then you put vaccines into 2 There's like Mrna vaccines the new one or the old and you get There's like all sorts of delineations of where people are sitting on that. But I think the part where people could agree On. It doesn't matter if you're pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine hardcore left or hardcore right? The internet is full of fucking shit like just like we are so inundated with just we are blasted with shit at and like you don't even have to go conspiracy Theory. You could just go to advertisers. 01:53:36.47 Dave Yes. 01:53:48.86 The Profit People who want our money like we are We are submersed in people trying to manipulate our thinking and they're in their and our emotions and. 01:53:57.97 Dave Um, yeah, our emotions and our thinking. 01:54:04.35 The Profit It blows my mind that kojima in 2001 would kind of seem like this is the direct. Obviously the internet existed but I grew up in the internet age and man I thought the internet was going to save the world I thought I was going to say I had this really naive I did not foresee social media. 01:54:09.23 Dave Yeah. 01:54:21.98 The Profit Did not foresee dating apps and all the content like I did not for obviously I'm a dumbass koji is obviously clearly a little bit smarter and he sort of saw in an eerily relevant way what we were going to end up with and that video that you're talked about from max durant when he's talking about doing the Ai colonel campbell ai Arsenal Gw whatever you want to call it is saying these lines that everything's going to get passed down including all the extraneous shit and that video is posting like pictures of memes and just like all the random shit we see everyday that is totally I mean it may be funny and that could argue. There's some value in laughter. I think there is value in that. 01:54:58.76 Dave Yeah. 01:55:00.73 The Profit But at the end of the day there's just too much information. It's all getting crystallized. It's all getting saved and somehow kojimas foresaw that that was gonna happen and watching those videos last week and then watching that video and that same video again today that you're talking about like an hour before this podcast made sure I was refreshed. I had this moment where I sat back and maybe I'm an old man because I have kids and I don't know but I was like were the patriots right? like like I've had this thought you know I I don't know again, you bought up you opened the door to politics with the vaccines right? So I'm hoping this is kosher. 01:55:34.52 Dave Yeah. 01:55:38.16 The Profit I Worry a lot about shit I have kids and I've had the thought ai scares me but I've also had the thought like if we really could create an unbiased AI to run the country. Maybe that would be better. Maybe yeah. 01:55:56.12 Dave That's yeah, yeah, that's that's the thing I was getting that is a just a giant concept to ah to think about right now. But yeah, like it is a really interesting thing to think about um and even on a smaller scale. 01:55:56.61 The Profit But it's also terrifying you know what I mean. 01:56:13.61 Dave Like you're right like when you said like we're just inundated with shit all the time every single day you know we spend all day on the computer or on our phones or you know. Playing video games or watching Tv or whatever and how much of that is actually valuable enough to be passed down and that's kind of what this is talking about. Um where all of that stuff gets preserved passed down and. They say the quote misinformation is saved just as often as important truths. So I don't think regardless of where you're at on the political spectrum. Everyone knows that the internet is just full of bad information in its ah and it's true like. Whether you seek it out if you spend any time on Twitter or any other social media you're going to see it. You're going to. Maybe if you search something on Google you're looking for a news article and you click something and they just have bad information depending on what you click. Um, there's. Like a lot of pressure on people to vet everything that they look at like I find myself like I want to share you know I saw a sports rumor or I saw something about video games. Well I better check and make sure it's real first before I share it in my discord server with people and. 01:57:38.67 The Profit That's a good point. 01:57:39.83 Dave All of that misinformation. That's what they're talking about here is just like and that's that's small scale unimportant shit The fact that I read a I read a rumor about Hollow Night silk song and it turns out to be fake like that doesn't fucking matter in the Grand scheme of things so you know the other point that they made. 01:57:46.42 The Profit Yeah, like a video game announcement. Yeah, ah what is that game going to come out God Damn it. 01:57:59.14 Dave Which I wanted to also bring up just as much as this um passing on of information is they also predict that because of this because of all of this misinformation and this just kind of nonstop flow of garbage that goes into our brains all the time. 01:58:14.55 The Profit But Echo chambers. 01:58:18.97 Dave Ah, is that everybody will then turn to their own small communities and just stay in there and no one wants. Yeah yeah, yeah, and that's what they're talking about. It's another thing that they're. 01:58:21.42 The Profit Um, yep, the term echo chambers has become like that term echo chambers did not exist in 2001 kojima foresaw this. 01:58:37.50 Dave Yeah. 01:58:37.30 The Profit It's one of the most eerie things when I watched out again this week and then today prepping for this I not I was just thinking like how did he foresee this. 01:58:46.58 Dave Yeah, and that part especially rang true because I'm very proud of my community that I've built in the discord server that I run but the Discord server is mostly a group of like-minded individuals. The. 01:59:04.60 The Profit Um, is your can I add is your Discord server paid only or is there. Can you get it for free? Okay. 01:59:07.95 Dave No, it's public. Anyone can join. Yeah, but it's you know it's one of those things where like if you're going to join the Discord server for my podcast or my other podcast or because you're my friend and you want to hang out in this space that I've created you are selecting a small space to hang out in. With like minded people and they talk about this in metal gear solid too as something that's going to happen where the greater forum where people are bouncing really conflicted beliefs off of each other will disappear and that's kind of what's happened like I don't seek out people. 01:59:41.31 The Profit That is what's happening is something will go ahead. Sorry, yes. 01:59:46.48 Dave To have political debates with like I just don't I don't want to do that and I don't think that like I don't think that that like reflects poorly on me, but it's just something I don't do and this game fucking. You know there were message boards in 2001 but that was about it as far as internet stuff goes like internet communities of people like this but they're right on the money with how people because you are just constantly barraged with all of this you self select a small community where people think mostly the same way. You know. 02:00:05.45 The Profit That was about it. Yes, yeah. 02:00:24.64 Dave People have differing viewpoints of course but it's not like people from all polar different ends of the spectrum altogether because that's not the communities we select for ourselves. 02:00:32.51 The Profit And what they in what they yes and what they accurately pin on is that well the one it's understandable. Why would a human do that because if you're inundated with people arguing you get burnt out and it's like hey like I don't. 02:00:45.97 Dave Yeah, absolutely yeah. 02:00:50.44 The Profit Like for example, me and Chris from Retro Hangover personally off-air talk about a lot of politics and we don't agree on everything but he's one of the few people that I know he argues in good faith and he's he's trying his best so I will mash out ideas with him because I actually find it beneficial and constructive. 02:01:00.78 Dave Right. 02:01:08.36 The Profit But 99.9 and and and nine percent of people including close friends and family I would never do that with because it's not constructive. It just turns into my team versus your team or my issue versus your issue because I don't even fall on a side of a team at least and I think a lot of people feel politically homeless like especially in America where you have. 02:01:13.28 Dave Right. 02:01:28.11 The Profit This binary left or right like how many people actually fit in full left or full right? The second in the majority Very few people do you might lean heavily one direction or another. I think people actually have more common ground than they're led to believe online but because we get so fatigued from online information. We just want to go somewhere. 02:01:31.50 Dave Right. 02:01:47.38 The Profit Where everyone kind of basically agrees on the same shit and we can just have a good time and not argue and then the problem with that is that the patriots in this sort of scenario recognize that if you can't have a discussion. There's only 2 options for human beings to resolve conflict. There's talking and there's killing if we can't talk about it and if we can't come to compromise and if we can't debate and if we can't come to some sort of middle ground. The only other option we have to solve a problem is to fucking kill each other and is super dangerous like if you. 02:02:20.50 Dave Yeah, there's that yeah. 02:02:25.20 The Profit So if you get rid of this like you mentioned instead of this kind of central square which sort of Twitter or x maybe was at some point or tried to be at some point. Um, if you don't have a place where people can bounce conflicting ideas and everyone just goes and silos themselves off. 02:02:41.18 Dave Yeah. 02:02:43.22 The Profit Then you start having parallel separate economies. That's where it's really scary. Now we have separate economies. You have rightwing worlds like say chick -fil-a for example notoriously a right-wing organization. A lot of right wing people support chick-fil-a. There's lots of leftwing organizations. Then you have people going out and in real life. Not even on the internet in the meat realm I'm only going to shop here I'm only going to shop there that I'm not going to interact with people you start splitting the economy splitting the money split eventually. You can't talk to each other. Well I mean we've seen it like I feel like American society is like. 1 inciting incidents away from more riots and more violence. 02:03:25.45 Dave It was not surprising to me that there was violence during the last election just because people are people are fucking on edge and like you said there's a lot of people that feel like whatever's happening doesn't work for them. Um, now I don't. 02:03:29.30 The Profit Yes, yes, yes. 02:03:42.49 Dave You know I don't support what happened on January Sixth which is what I'm referencing with violence during the election I don't support that at all and people who listen to this podcast probably already could figure that out but like the fact that the endpoint like you said is violence and the other endpoint that they talk about. That the patriots ai puts forth is the other end result here is regression as a society and as a species basically like yeah, it's all right. 02:04:09.70 The Profit And I would argue that violence is a symptom of that regression like we can't like we can't get past again I'm sorry to cut you off but like I'm like really legitimately anti were like I don't think we should be fucking killing each other. We've liked it. 02:04:24.23 Dave Yeah. 02:04:27.24 The Profit We can talk to anybody in the world, we can send dick mess Dick Pics across the world instantly like we should be able to talk about this stuff and I think that if you're resorting to violence. That's a regression that's a regression to the dark ages. That's a regression to hunter gatherer. That's a regression and that's why I know I said like the patriots right. 02:04:44.61 Dave And you know and even if it's not physical violence. There's a form of violence that happens when you go and post your opinion somewhere on social media like anyone with anyone that has a large social media account will tell you. 02:04:46.84 The Profit Are they right? right. 02:05:04.54 Dave That you you can't say what you want to say on social media because you will have people that just fucking can't act normal and will either take the opportunity like you. 02:05:13.47 The Profit Ah, so true you I have people start to cut you off again that people threatening violence on each other arguing over whether or not my emulation tips ruin a game or not like who the fuck cares. 02:05:23.60 Dave Exactly I was just going to say like yeah anyone with a large social media account will tell you that no matter what you say someone's going to disagree. Someone's going to take the opportunity to vehemently disagree with you. 02:05:29.59 The Profit Ah. 02:05:43.43 Dave Because they think that that's their right? And that's what they should do. That's what social media is all about and that's not even getting into people making death threats or doxxing or anything like that. That's regression as a society if you can't just. 02:05:51.25 The Profit Yes, a hundred percent 02:05:57.54 Dave You can't scroll through Twitter and see someone say oh I think metal gear solid two sucks and not react with like fucking anger about that. That's regression. 02:06:06.86 The Profit It's regression. It's blown my mind that so for a long time and I'm not a big like you said big social media I'm fucking nobody or nobody and on it and a super hardcore niche a niche in niche. There's video games then there's like. 02:06:15.55 Dave Right. 02:06:22.37 Dave Then there's retro video games then there's yeah yeah. 02:06:24.62 The Profit Shooters and things and there's retro and then I'm and you like I'm niched down all the way to the bottom of the barrel like this is permeated to the most like the tendrils of the capillaries right? The smallest veins like all the way to the capillaries in your nose and your ears the smallest veins in your body. Had this issue where people are on edge and they're like I had a guy I was arguing with today that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter like the point is, it's like I don't know how kojima extrapolated from the internet was a new thing and he understood enough about human nature. To somehow see this is where it was headed. 02:07:04.80 Dave Yeah, it must have just been you know exposure to early internet and noticing that there's you know there's a lot of trash compared to how it was because you and I were old at we grew up without internet. We grew up with early internet. 02:07:19.88 The Profit Yes, yes. 02:07:23.31 Dave And now we're living on the current internet. Kojima is older than us. He grew up for what he was in. He was well. Yeah, so like you said he's at least in his twenties when the internet or thirty is when the internet like fully explodes so he had plenty of time to. 02:07:25.58 The Profit Way older I think he's like fifty six fifty seven right 02:07:35.48 The Profit It hits. Yeah. 02:07:41.73 Dave See how the world was before. 02:09:08.12 Dave That's all right I restart that so I think like the takeaway here is that the reason Kojima was able to think about this and kind of forecast it like this is because he lived long enough with no internet whatsoever to see how. 02:09:22.55 The Profit M. 02:09:25.51 Dave The passage of information work before and then just picked up on some shit and I really this is something that even before I watched the Youtube videos I was like this is ah first of all correct prediction about how the future would go. And also I kind of rag on Kojima and I ragged on him earlier for having a lot of ideas that seem deep but actually aren't that deep. They're just kind of surface level like you know, ah like the Illuminati type stuff for the overarching theme that war is actually not good even though. These are games about soldiers and stuff like that. But this part here and the reason we've spent such a long time on it is that this is really fucking good stuff and it completely took me by you know I had heard that Rian was the protagonist and that people were mad that snake wasn't the main character of this game. 02:10:09.55 The Profit Yes, yes. 02:10:22.70 Dave I had not heard a peep about this in metal gear. Solid too. No one was fucking talking about it and it should be talked about. 02:10:23.88 The Profit Which is crazy to me. It's crazy to me . I'm kind of jealous honestly that you got to play this game at your age in 2023 and sort of realize how eerily accurate this final section and kind of. 02:10:33.53 Dave Yet. 02:10:41.77 The Profit Because this final exposition dump is basically what Kojimi was trying to say, as clumsy as the pacing is as clumsy as all this stuff is this is what he was trying to say he's trying to say this is what I see happening. Um I have a suspicion because again I'm like. 02:10:46.21 Dave Yeah. 02:10:58.42 The Profit I know the kojima is a movie in a book and a Matt manga and anime nerd. He's just a media creativity nerd. he's he's I think Kojima is basically the Japan's Quentin Tarantino because Quin Tarantino is super open about like he'll say hey I pulled this shot sequence from this classic movie. 02:11:18.30 The Profit And he's very open about where he's drawing his inspiration from and how much he loves but coach Quinten Tarantino is narrow when it comes to movies Kojima is like I love it all and I have a suspicion did you ever read the book Ender's game by chance. Okay, so do you remember that. 02:11:19.26 Dave In. 02:11:26.27 Dave Yeah I did. Yeah yeah. 02:11:35.25 The Profit Both in ender's game and in the sequels I don't know how much of that series you read, but ender's brother and sister create aliases online and they manipulate the the world's politics through forums and they didn't have the term podcasting but through audio logs like the the term podcast didn't exist in 85 02:11:55.29 The Profit Orson Scott Card wrote this book but basically he foresaw they didn't call it. I think they called it the net or something else. I forget the terminology right? This is 85 long before the internet existed but this family where all the kids are super geniuses Ender goes off and does his main story but on the side. 02:12:09.85 Dave M. 02:12:14.61 The Profit His brother and sister who were left at home create fake news mixed with truth and they play both sides of the political spectrum and they they ah like conspire with each other. 02:12:19.39 Dave M. 02:12:30.28 The Profit To manipulate the masses through the internet and through information and through a mix of fake news and real news and they split the population into 2 sides that hate each other but they're actually colluding under the scenes and orchestrating all of that. 02:12:41.89 Dave Moving. 02:12:45.37 The Profit It's like I wonder if and I don't think Orson Scott Card is the only person to have kind of I think a lot of people foresaw this as this idea I don't think Kojimi was the only one but I wonder if kojima was consuming some of this media some of this sci-fi and then sort of putting it through his own take that he's a japanese person observing. 02:13:04.93 The Profit Western Society from the outside and that's how we ended up with this. 02:13:07.29 Dave Um, it's it's an interesting thought I I didn't read far enough into the ender's game series I just read the first book in like half of the second one. So I didn't know that his siblings turned into a little like Rupert Murdoch's it's interesting. Ah. 02:13:24.59 The Profit It's so true. Yeah, the the Murdochs and I mean yeah, that and it's it's I just wonder like I watched that video again today and I thought okay this is so the game from 2001 commenting on some of the stuff that I'm most worried about in 2023 and that's why I was saying like he's either a profit or a time traveler right. 02:13:40.76 Dave Yeah in 2023 as we're talking right now. Yeah yeah, and this is like this has definitely bumped up kojima like in my. My books you know like I thought death stranding story was kind of a mess especially themes that he tried to introduce I thought that those were not executed well in that game metal gear solid one was just ah, a series of twists and turns um. But then this one there's like okay so I get why there are like I understood why there are like kojima super fans and then I played this and I hear through this scene and then I'm like well I can imagine someone playing this in 2001 and then thinking about it for 22 years 02:14:32.17 The Profit Yes, yes, yes. 02:14:34.50 Dave And then they're like okay this is like even if he's doing some weird shit Now it's it it it was there or it's still in there. You know it's interesting, really good. Yeah. 02:14:42.36 The Profit Yeah I would argue that this game and snake eater 3 are what made kojima I would you know maybe you would call him icon status like he's an icon in gaming. Yeah and I would say that. 02:14:54.24 Dave Yeah, absolutely yeah. 02:15:00.67 The Profit Like every icon or even athlete. It's like they're in their prime. You'll always say " oh Mike Tyson and his prime John Jones in his prime and I look as much as I love kojima. Maybe he's past this prime and maybe meta garallo 2 and 3 02:15:06.52 Dave Right. 02:15:19.10 The Profit Gonna look back even farther and be like that was prime kojima where he had the balance of weirdness and out there. But it was also because I agree like death stranding. We kind of disagree. I Loved the story and watching it but I'm also a sucker for anything dark like I love control and he's talking about life after death. 02:15:32.14 Dave Earth. 02:15:37.60 The Profit I'm sort of biased. I love those subjects and I love that I'm also easily swayed by art direction and I love death surroundings art directioning so much that I might just like you know, but maybe Metal Gear solid 2 might be historically in the long run. 02:15:42.84 Dave Yeah. 02:15:54.21 The Profit I could see a world where that's considered his best work. 02:15:58.88 Dave Yeah I can definitely see that and I'm looking forward to playing metal gear solid 3 sometime this year I'm looking forward to that. Um, because. 02:16:06.99 The Profit Um, I think 3 overall would probably be considered the best I guess. 02:16:10.68 Dave Yeah I was just going to say I'm looking forward to it number one because now I've played metal gear solid 2 which was better than one and then also people seem like almost unanimously people like 3 as their favorite. So yeah, really looking forward to that. Um, let's ah. 02:16:19.63 The Profit Yes, yes. 02:16:28.30 The Profit I Also want to just say playing is raiden naked running around doing cartwheels with a blur was pretty cool too. I mean I. 02:16:28.55 Dave Do a bit of music. 02:16:33.91 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, so let us skip over like the lead up to that thing because both of us were dying to get into that conversation there. But so what happens is ah at a certain point. 02:16:43.59 The Profit Yeah. 02:16:50.17 Dave There's a virus that gets introduced because you're trying to take down this ai and you don't know what the Ai really is when you inject the virus but ah sooner or later like things start to glitch out and colonel Campbell or Campbell again is it Campbell yeah Campbell yeah Colonel Campbell um 02:17:03.76 The Profit Is campbell. Yes. 02:17:08.65 Dave He starts sicking the child over the radio and I wrote down a bunch of the stuff that he says to you? Um, yeah, he keeps saying to stick to your role and to ignore everything else going on around you ah Raiden had previously been knocked out and captured. Ah, basically so that's why he's naked. The colonel has no knowledge or care that Raiden is currently naked. He has this funny animation. He's running around covering his crotch up through the station. Um, he just keeps telling Raiden to stick to his role like the simulation. Um, and then. He keeps calling you and he starts getting into some meta shit like he says you've been playing this game for too long turn the console off right now. Um, don't you have anything better to do than he starts to go for like a personal thing. He tells you that Rose is cheating on you um like and then. 02:17:52.16 The Profit Um, yes, are. 02:18:06.21 Dave Goes into absolute nonsense after that. Ah it actually has a part I thought was really cool where he says you have to infiltrate the fortress final heaven and destroy metal gear and it shows you screenshots or like a video of the first metal gear game which you like. 02:18:23.12 The Profit Yep. 02:18:24.69 Dave All of this is happening and like your head is kind of spinning and you're just kind of on this wild ride and then after that they lay all this philosophy on you. So like you've been knocked totally off guard from what you thought the game was then they throw all of this philosophy at you. There's other philosophy stuff I didn't bring up because it's too much I wanted to focus on the the stuff that I think the stuff that like when I texted you a long time ago and was like do you want to do metal gear solid to whatever lit up in your head that was like I got to talk about this. We wanted to talk about that stuff. 02:18:47.47 The Profit It's too much. 02:18:57.43 The Profit Yes, yes, just because you have kids by the way. Okay, so we're I Just and everyone's can be worried and everyone I think is stressed about I don't know maybe the cohesion of society and. 02:19:02.83 Dave I Don't know. 02:19:13.20 Dave Yeah. 02:19:16.10 The Profit I worry about my kids in what kind of society they're going to live in and what the patriots quote the bad guys are basically saying is because of the internet and because of all this information and because of the echo chambers and because of all this it's incumbent upon us. Ah. Campbell or the ai Arsenal Gw says to right and at the beginning of this exposition dump right? and says wait. So you just want to control everything with something on those. You just want to control everybody and and he said exactly because if we don't you guys are going to regress and it's going to be violence and it's going to be bad and. Sort of the AI makes its case to write in like this is why we're justified in doing what we're doing I mean this is why we're doing it. We're doing it not for our benefit. He specifically says don't you know right? and we're not doing this for our benefit. We're doing it for your benefit. 02:20:10.10 The Profit And I just remember thinking as a kid I didn't get it or I was confused and that goes back that echoes back to what you were saying is I think the delivery in the pace is flawed for sure is too much. Um. 02:20:21.58 Dave Yeah, it's just too much all at once but that's a good kind of villain right? there. It's the kind of villain where like you you can see and understand what they're trying to say and there's truth to what they're saying ah but also. 02:20:35.30 The Profit There's truth to it. Yes. 02:20:38.42 Dave A villain who's trying to fuck you over would tell you that it's for your benefit to get you on their side. So like you get both of those. That's why at least in this game I know the Patriots are a continuing thing but in this game The Patriots are really really interesting. Um, you know the antagonist. 02:20:41.32 The Profit Yes. 02:20:54.95 The Profit And solidus says his whole purpose is to free us from the patriots which you kind of understand where he's coming from. He's like these guys want to control everything and control your thoughts and they want to control they want to have their thumb on everything and essentially you know again. 02:21:00.81 Dave Yeah, right. 02:21:09.46 Dave Yeah. 02:21:13.71 The Profit So you brought up politics. You tell me where we can and can't go with it. But if you think about what Edward Smoden talked about there's also this new thing that came out about metadata that's being shared to world governments through our cell phones. I don't know if you've been following that but we all sort of subconsciously know we might not know the extent. 02:21:24.87 Dave M. 02:21:33.16 The Profit But everyone's spying on us and then trying to sell us shit. We know that right and solid as his whole pitch to so the Ai is telling right in this is why I I'm justified in why I'm correct and then the flip side solidist is saying this is why I'm justified fuck the patriots they want to control everything. 02:21:33.94 Dave Yeah, yeah. 02:21:51.28 The Profit I want freedom. That's what America was founded on and then ah eventually the patriots say write in your final orders to kill solidus. He's like why would I do what you say? Well we're gonna kill the girl and not Emma but well I forget what our name is um fortune yeah. 02:21:57.74 Dave Yeah, yeah. 02:22:06.41 Dave It's Fortune's daughter that they're holding. Yeah yeah. 02:22:09.64 The Profit And then also Rose and he's like is rose even real and this you better believe me but l I e and believe is capitalized so I have a suspicion that rose and I haven't gone down like I'm sure there's Reddit threads that talked about this and maybe I'm wrong I haven't like done a full on internet deep dive on metal gear solid 2. But I think it's basically saying Rose was never real. 02:22:30.80 Dave Well, there was the conversation where Rose basically admits that she's real but she was hired to basically spy on raiden. Yeah, so she's a real person but she was playing a role. Also. 02:22:37.76 The Profit Oh yes, true I Do forget about that. 02:22:46.64 The Profit Um, but there's also there's rose the real person and then there's rows to a I talking as roses which again it's It's a like. There's a lot of really good ideas and here the execution is so confusing and so rushed. 02:22:49.74 Dave Right? right. 02:23:03.54 The Profit Yeah, it takes 30 years of people making Youtube videos to unpack it all. 02:23:06.77 Dave Ah, yeah, there's ah, there's 2 more things I wanted to ask you about Um, there is that part that you said where the patriots kind of tell you that um your final order is to kill Solidus and you have the boss fight where you fight him with the sword. It's pretty good. Fight. Um. There's a read that I saw that is like meta commentary on video games and how you're set up like you. You said you have the patriots and you have solidus, both of them make good enough points right? The patriots make their point that they correctly predict the future. Solidist is saying well you can't have people controlling your thoughts and and stuff like that like obviously that's evil but the patriots kind of take over and say well you're going to do this and then that's what you do because it's a video game and I never quite know how to feel about when video games. Try to pull stuff like this off and basically say like you the player you don't have control over what you're doing because now you're going to go kill this guy whether you wanted to or not because that's what you have to do in the game. Um, and the reason I thought about this is because later on. It's like the very end. There's another thing that I think applies to video games as well and Snake talked about you know, video gaming and Vr earlier as a result as it relates to training up soldiers and stuff. So did you see where you got this read from? You know this. 02:24:34.41 Dave They're telling Raiden but also you the person playing the video game, to go kill them because you really don't have control. 02:24:38.87 The Profit I didn't and that's an that's a novel concept to me so I'm I'm reacting in real time I do think it's it's like like I said this is so dense and there's so many different interpretations I had not come across that read is if it's in the max durant video it I must. Missed it. But it is kind of true because and I'm stalling , trying to remember a game where there's a handful of games where even spec ops the line so back to what we were talking about Chris we were hanging on with spec up the lines. The game is telling you not to do it's basically saying. You shouldn't play war games while you're playing a war game but at the same time you can't beat the game without following the predestined sort of design and I maybe this is commenting on the same thing. Um and go ahead. 02:25:24.61 Dave Yeah. 02:25:31.13 Dave I Think so I think that I mean the games like Spec ops the line and undertail and stuff like that. Do it a bit more deftly than this game does because it's not like.. It's kind of if that's what this game is doing. It's It's kind of one of those things where you do the thing and then they scold you for it or they scold you before they make you do it whereas the other games kind of comment on what you're doing and make you reflect on what you're doing as it relates to playing video games and I think this is. Like an interesting thing. It's just not like perfect execution I Want to say because like you said you like it's not that deep to say that you don't have a choice you can either turn the game off or keep playing. It's not that deep for a game to tell that to you. 02:26:09.87 The Profit Um, yeah I. 02:26:23.73 Dave What do you do? What am I going to do to turn the game off because I don't want to kill the final boss like come on. Let's be realistic here. You know. 02:26:29.28 The Profit yeah yeah yeah I um yeah I think that's a fair critique that so sort of sometimes Kojima wraps up moderately deep ideas or maybe. Or maybe esoteric ideas right out of the box thinking but he wraps them up in like really pompous ah extended writing and cut scenes. I will admit that Kojima has a knack for that. But it's also. 02:26:56.94 Dave Yes. 02:27:04.70 The Profit I don't know what makes him kojima like I've over the years I've learned to think I've learned to enjoy the flaws in what he does because it's like what makes him unique and special and I think you could loop. 02:27:16.12 Dave Yeah, yeah. 02:27:19.74 The Profit That back to what this game is talking about is solidus is saying despite all of this Solidus is aware right? He's one of the third twins he knows what the patriots are doing. He's like he's not like you. He's aware. What's going on but he's come to the conclusion that despite everything they're saying that has merit. 02:27:28.62 Dave Yeah. 02:27:39.70 The Profit Still ultimately better to give us freedom words in all and maybe kojima himself isn't exactly sure what is right? And that's why it's so kind of messily executed. 02:27:40.71 Dave Yeah, cool. 02:27:55.40 Dave Yeah, Well I think that it's possible for a creator and I agree that where I ultimately Land is that kojima as a creator has a lot of Problems. We. This is the rare kojima game where I don't didn't bring up sexism at all because it's not really present in this game. Ah, but I know I've seen quiet in that game. Um, yeah, yeah, so like. 02:28:15.60 The Profit But wait till you play 5 Yeah, yeah, yeah, and her the justification for her which is so the whole media for yeah yeah, we'll get whatever. Yeah. 02:28:29.31 Dave With all of the warts involved with kojima or with other like auteur creators like Yoko Taro and you know we talked about nier automata before recording today. Um with all of them I'm ultimately positive on basically all of them with not all of them but most of them. 02:28:36.68 The Profit Yeah, yeah. 02:28:48.51 Dave Because they give you really interesting looks into their mind in a way that just thinks about if Ea made this game. You wouldn't have all of these weird edges to it. It would be you would it would it would be. 02:29:01.45 The Profit No. 02:29:07.60 Dave Don't want to say soulless but it wouldn't have all of this like super memorable shit in it. Okay, fair enough. Ah so that's kind of where I land on this and so like there are a lot of big swings. There's some misses along the way. There's some problematic stuff along the way but ultimately I like. 02:29:11.12 The Profit I'll say it. It would be soulless. Ah. 02:29:24.99 Dave These people make interesting art and that's why we're here. Um, and that kind of ties into the last thing and I think it can relate to what we're doing right now is um after this is all over and writing is questioning. What just happened questioning who he is and what his purpose is, his life has been completely ripped out from underneath him. He doesn't know what's real and what's fake anymore and he kind of questions who he is and what his purpose is and Snake gives him this pretty good like Monologue about how. Everything that he experienced is real and that only he can decide what it means to him and that he can start over and he can choose what his life is going to be from this day on. It's really cheesy, but David Hater does a great job of voice acting in this scene. I think that they have the freedom to choose their own path and thoughts. Ah, and even though at this point you didn't really learn what happened with the patriots. Um, it's an interesting thing as rieden sets out. He's basically saying like what you thought was happening was fake but everything that you experienced is real. 02:30:37.62 The Profit Yes, it's all your internal. So I thought you were going to bring this up and um, are you religious by chance. Okay I just wanted to ask because I grew up hyper religious I grew up mormon and I don't know how much you. 02:30:38.30 Dave Basically. 02:30:43.51 Dave No I'm not. 02:30:50.35 Dave Yeah I actually listened to a shout out to Retro Hangover Once again I listened to the growing up. Um the church a latter day saints episode you did I think so I thought I remembered you there? yeah. 02:30:59.81 The Profit Was I on that one I think so I don't know dude I've done so many my memory's terrible I think I was or I think they asked me about it. Ah or I was either on it or I talked to them about it I can't remember. 02:31:05.90 Dave Ah, yeah. 02:31:12.74 The Profit But the reason I bring that up is mormonism and again if there's any mormons listen to this I mean this with all due respect but mormonism is a croc shit like um and when you grow up in it like you literally just like ride in. 02:31:20.90 Dave Well, you have the authority to say that. 02:31:30.40 The Profit And again, this might be some of the reasons where I felt some we talked about final fantasy 10 earlier and final fantasy 10 is kind of critiquing religion right? and you know finds out that her right and I remember talking to Christopher Metro hangover that I think part of the reason why I didn't like 10 02:31:36.71 Dave Oh yeah. 02:31:46.53 The Profit It came out is it was giving me cognitive dissonance about being Mormon and I was growing up and kind of realizing that some things were adding up and I I didn't it didn't happen as much with me again because of the the flawed execution and the pacing I was just so confused by the end of the game. 02:32:02.60 Dave Yeah, yeah. 02:32:04.65 The Profit Didn't even know what to think but I did hindsight as I look back I think kojima he's at least touching on some stuff that I can resonate with because when you realize that mormonism isn't real and that the entire history and what they call the truth claims because mormonism claims that it's literally the one true church and everybody else is wrong. 02:32:22.54 Dave Of course. 02:32:24.39 The Profit And like you grew up thinking you grew up thinking that like Mormons have it all figured out and that god is talking to the prophet and the prophet talks to Jesus every day and that kind of all falls apart, you're left in this headspace. It's like shit like I don't I don't even know. I can't make sense of up and down the left and right because I grew up in this. This isn't my entire worldview. I thought it was literally real and that's what Raiden went through and so that's why I say every time I revisit this game in my life. The first time was super confusing. I revisited it twice. In my twenties and my early 30 s with emulation and I appreciated it more and then as I mentioned before this recent again I didn't play it but I watched almost all the cutscenes like 5 hours of cut scenes and then I watched these these ending and I know that I have kids. This is the first time I've gone through with kids and like I said. 02:33:10.30 Dave Yeah. 02:33:19.30 The Profit Game flaws in all continues to age like fine wine because I find more layers where I resonate with it and for me the most recent walk through was like I kind of I don't know what kojima grew up with I don't know what sort of gave him this idea that everything's a lie. What inspiration he got to write in. 02:33:25.80 Dave Yeah. 02:33:38.81 The Profit And I don't know if he had the same experience I did but he had an adjacent experience where coming out of mormonism like I could relate to write in that sense of like I did I didn't have a snake to give me advice right? I had a whole society that was like you're a piece of shit and you're going to hell. 02:33:50.18 Dave Even. 02:33:58.31 The Profit But I was like, "This isn't making sense, like this is all a lie and I could have used the snake to say hey it's not that everything you experienced is a lie, like you can still learn from all those experiences. There's still. It's It's just one of those that I actually got um I mean I don't know. I Got a little emotional watching stuff this week for this game. I Love this game already. But I just started thinking about my life coming out of Mormonism. My kids aren't being raised in Mormonism and I don't know how much people can relate. But when you're raised in essentially a cult. 02:34:21.29 Dave Um, yeah. 02:34:34.54 The Profit And then you realize your kids aren't going to come up in that and that you broke the cycle I like that final cutscene after you kill solidus and then it goes to like you know like the like the real pictures of like the city and there's the the monologue and it's like I've been there I I've been there like I know it right and went through. 02:34:45.11 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah. 02:34:54.33 The Profit And I don't know if it's just one of those. It's one of those things like Mike you mentioned, as flawed as kojima is and he's very flawed but that's why I like him because we're all flawed and he took the swigs and he missed. He's missed a lot of times. 02:35:05.46 Dave Yeah, yeah, um. 02:35:11.51 The Profit But he keeps taking the swings and I think metal gear solid 2. There's some definitely misses in this game. Ah, but overall I'm really happy that he went for it. 02:35:22.70 Dave Yeah, absolutely and so like I don't have that religious background like you talked like I grew up Christian but we stopped going to church early like everyone was kind of over it. So I don't have that kind of background like you talked about. But. There's a lot of ways that you could apply this to if you grew up. You know, extremely patriotic in a way that is like too much or something like that which you know as Americans we're surrounded by people who just really buy into all of that and so. 02:35:43.26 The Profit Yes, yes, hundred percent yes 02:35:56.67 The Profit Ah, yeah, yeah. 02:35:59.17 Dave That can be applied there to what I had written down. Ah, this could be applied to us breaking down a video game which is not a real thing. It's not real, but the conversations that we've had today. The subject material presented is real. You know Raiden's not a real person. But. 02:36:16.81 The Profit Yes, I've actually talked about that a lot when I talked to people trying to so I get reached out to by different people online because they can tell if you're Mormon you'll understand that. 02:36:17.20 Dave The 2 of us and the stuff we've talked about follows that same um that same logic here. 02:36:32.76 The Profit Everything about my podcast and my videos and my branding praising kojima behold like it's all Mormon references right? It's me dealing with that and um, people reach out to me and try to. 02:36:35.48 Dave M. Yeah, yeah. 02:36:59.50 The Profit So I've said people mormonism is not real like this concept of like video games aren't real, but the conversation we're having is real so you could argue the video games are real because we're real as far as I know maybe you can get into like simulation theory and. 02:37:08.44 Dave Yeah, yeah, that's probably in another metal gear. Solid game. Yeah. 02:37:17.64 The Profit Can go deep. Yes, yes, but the state of Utah exists because of Mormonism. Mormonism is not real, but the entire state of Utah and the government there and the rules and the laws if enough people believe something is real even if that thing is not real. It becomes real because it spills over into reality in the choices that they make right? So people listening to our podcast right now and maybe they resonate with what you're talking about and the vaccines and confusion or what I'm talking about with religion or whatever the game's not real. But people listen to this and have some sort of resonance, good or bad. Even the people that maybe hate it. They think oh Kate is a dumb ass or Dave is a dumbass that's all real. 02:38:03.88 Dave Yeah, and like we said, like the characters are fictional but the experience that you have taking all of this in that's real that can't be taken away from anybody and it's really similar to I think to what the snake is talking about right in here. 02:38:13.38 The Profit Yes. Snake says. Yeah. 02:38:23.65 Dave Um, so yeah, ah Raiden and rose have a reunion um and then after the credits they kind of brought up this thing about how Ai is able to and I mean I we this is a big thing about Ai that. Ah. 02:38:41.86 Dave Because Ai is starting to take people's jobs especially in artistic spaces. You know, video game publications recently have been caught using Ai to write their articles and stuff and there's something brought up earlier about how the ai that the patriots are running is very comprehensive and very advanced. 02:39:01.14 Dave But there are intangible things about humans that that it just can't do um and so in this last section snake kind of reflects on this and he says that going forward. He's going to work on passing on intangible things like culture and emotions and things like that. 02:39:04.29 The Profit Yes. 02:39:20.37 Dave Um, and then Snake's final word here is that despite preserving all of the bad along with all of the good, the digital age is good because history should be. You should see all of it. Basically I think this is what he's trying to say like we. Earlier we really went in on how just shitty everything is out there on the internet but when you reflect on that and when you view it through the lens of history I think it is important to see the messy things too. So like this just this ending cutscene all of these ending things here are. 02:39:52.44 The Profit Yes. 02:39:59.55 Dave Before we get to the classic metal gear. Solid Plot twist at the very end. These things are really good I think um and then Snake's quote is building the future and keeping the past alive are one and the same. So. 02:40:11.17 The Profit Yeah I agree again that my whole brand is sort of a subtle jab at Mormonism. So sorry if I harp on this but what I learned with mormonism is so snake says okay, So what I learned with mormonism was I was told certain things are wrong ideas don't look into what they call Anti-mormon So someone who's saying who's someone who criticizes the religion. 02:40:52.60 Dave The mess along with the good stuff. 02:40:59.46 Dave Yes. 02:41:07.38 The Profit They're all crazy. They're all sinners. They're all possessed by the devil, nothing to see their folks right? and that's kind of what the ai g w arsenal Colonel Campbell Rose that whole conglomerate of personalities is saying is like we're going to filter. 02:41:23.68 Dave Yeah, yep. 02:41:24.00 The Profit And decide what is worthwhile and whatnot because you guys are too inundated with information but I can also resonate with solidists because I had an organization telling me don't worry about all that stuff there that criticizes us. That's all but it turned out that no I should worry about that and so I got into a spot personally. 02:41:38.73 Dave M. 02:41:43.90 The Profit Like a course of the last like fifteen years where I looked into everything that was taboo like if some like I'll be the first to admit I went and listened to probably a hundred hours of flat earth documentaries because like as crazy as that sounds after coming out of mormonism I was like no no. no no 02:42:03.90 The Profit I'm going to decide if that's crazy I Trust myself now I didn't get convinced Needless to say I'm not a flat-earther I'm a glober Sorry if you're a flatearther I'm a glober but I wanted to decide for myself because I was told all growing up all these people to have negative things to say about again. 02:42:23.26 The Profit I'm coming from my authority growing up higher than aThe Profitmia higher than scientific consensus was Mormonism because it's God himself right? and so I had to challenge the consensus and I realized okay the authorities over me that told me essentially that I'm not infallible. Um. 02:42:30.17 Dave Right. 02:42:42.61 The Profit We're fallible and so then it throws me into this place where like well now I'm questioning everything like how do I know that the Cdc is telling me the truth or the Nasa is telling me the truth because I mean this like vulnerable spot and I think what solid is is trying to get at is like. 02:42:42.68 Dave Um, right? um. 02:42:59.27 The Profit He believes that humans can figure it out for themselves eventually and what you were what you were just saying is like part of me thinks. Ah you know the patriots were right? but the other part of me thinks I but but I would rather decide for myself if something's crazy or not. I don't want someone else telling me something's crazy or not. 02:43:14.58 Dave Right. 02:43:18.45 The Profit And it just walks that line like I don't know if kojima himself know at least at the time. Maybe now he does he has stronger opinions but maybe at the time he didn't know himself. 02:43:29.75 Dave Um, yeah, really possible that you know, especially with this because they do really present both sides to you and even as fantastical and. You know the patriots are obviously evil you know, controlling people's minds and stuff like that evil shit That's that's obvious but the way that it's presented where they're giving you ah again like seeing into the crystal ball at the way things are now the fact that they're giving that to you. 02:43:47.14 The Profit Yes. 02:44:01.12 Dave I think Kojima is just presenting this without really inserting his own opinion into it so much which is good I think. 02:44:03.37 The Profit Yes. 02:44:08.70 The Profit I mean because you could say pure like the solidest take pure freedom would be like I don't that can go south like did you ever watch the the series I didn't watch it but my wife watched it so much I've heard all about it. It's called the wife's though, Handmaid's tale excuse me. 02:44:26.90 Dave I've heard of it and never watched it. 02:44:28.28 The Profit So for my understanding it is like this if the extreme right? like completely took over religion like insane christian you know I'm sure you're aware of this because some of the stuff you've mentioned with January like you're probably aware of the intersection between christianity and conspiracy theory can get. 02:44:47.61 The Profit Pretty wild and like I said I like to dive in again I've had crazy I've had all sorts of stuff on my podcast I like to dive into the all the most taboo shit for fun and decide whether I think it's crazy or not and most of like i'mma come out of it like yeah that was crazy but it was fun but it's crazy. Um. 02:45:02.90 Dave Yeah. 02:45:06.90 The Profit I think Kojim is like the problem is I probably lean more on the side of we actually probably do need some sort of if we could come up like have you ever heard of the term that is not beneficial. But what's another word for beneficial where someone's good natured I'm having like ah a brain fart but essentially the benevolent excuse excuse me not beneficial the benevolent dictator theory a lot of people will say the benevolent dictators actually the ultimate form of government. But 02:45:29.21 Dave Okay. 02:45:40.53 The Profit You can never guarantee that a dictator is going to be benevolent. There's no, there's no systematic way to guarantee a successor to a dictator. Let's say you get lucky enough and you have a benevolent dictator. That's the best but that his son's probably going to be an asshole. That's just the way things go if you could have if you could systematize a way to have a banana. 02:45:41.90 Dave Right. 02:45:55.90 Dave Um, right. 02:46:00.30 The Profit Benevolent dictator that might be. I think there's an argument to be made that might be the best for society and maybe Ai could be a consistent benevolent dictator if it was truly unbiased. But if you've been following stuff about with chat ept or grock there's there's bias in the Ais. 02:46:17.20 Dave Oh yeah. 02:46:19.96 The Profit So I don't know I'm rambling at this point because I could talk about all these ideas forever. But I don't even remember how we sparked this last section but you were told you were talking at the very very very end of the game leading into the final plot twist which. 02:46:30.54 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, the final plot twist when ah um, the part of the mission was to get a list of the. 02:46:37.36 The Profit I will turn over to you because I've been rambling. 02:46:47.10 Dave The patriots, their names and um, they find the list but the final plot twist is that the patriots died a hundred years ago and so what is it? Yeah, they don't really explain like that's literally the end of the game. So I assume that means that it's just Ai running it like the yeah. 02:47:04.80 The Profit It's just a I yeah, that's how I interpreted it I have like again I haven't I haven't done like a deep dive into Reddit threads on metal gear lore or Youtube videos explaining the meta gear timeline which I should probably do after this but I interpreted it as like. 02:47:06.54 Dave So um. 02:47:21.46 The Profit Because you know the beginning of this conversation. He says something like the white house was the primordial soup in that we evolved layers upon layers not much unlike how life was formed a billion years ago so I think what he's hinting is saying is the patriots. 02:47:35.21 Dave Um. 02:47:39.50 The Profit Sort of created the groundwork in which the ai became conscious and ah aware and since then they have all died but the Ai is like the embodiment of the patriots in Ai form. Yeah. 02:47:44.12 Dave Yeah. 02:47:53.71 Dave Just carrying on. Yeah, it's an interesting proposition like you know if you were able to guarantee an unbiased Ai to do the filtering or make decisions or something like that like that would make people consider it. But. That is an infinitely scary and impossible idea to make reality. So as it is. We're just left thinking what the stuff that kojima and the rest of the team put into metal gear. Solid too. Um. 02:48:27.36 Dave The last thing about the game I wrote down I felt was kind of cool but kind of like ties in with the game is ah you get a code at the end which you could enter on a website back in the day. Did you do this? Okay, ah the website doesn't exist. 02:48:36.21 The Profit I did not because I didn't have the internet. 02:48:43.44 Dave Anymore. So I didn't do it either. But it's a code where you put in your combat data and stuff from the game just like what Raiden was doing doing a simulation to gather data and stuff like that. Ah. 02:48:54.71 The Profit Ah I did not know this what comes up did you look up like did you find out what comes up. 02:49:01.33 Dave So they give you a code they say go to like konami.com/entercodeor whatever but the website doesn't exist anymore. So. 02:49:07.18 The Profit Did you find any Youtube videos that documented or what happened? 02:49:13.17 Dave I did not but it is like ah it shows you you know player averages and stuff like that I think so um, yeah, exactly so just 1 final you know Kojima loves these meta things. So 1 final thing. 02:49:16.88 The Profit Okay, because ultimately you were in this kind of Meta you were in a simulation. Yeah yeah, yeah. 02:49:29.56 The Profit All I want to say is at the end before I know we're wrapping up and I've been labbing but I'm having such a good time. Thank you for bringing me on. I believe this bait and switch especially with the marketing again I'm looking back from like gaming history growing up with this. 02:49:30.73 Dave So I yeah did of course man. 02:49:48.80 The Profit What made kojima the icon he is now metal gear solid two was the first time for sure that he pulled like a major bait and switch both with marketing and gameplay and I think he perfected that with pt. 02:50:01.44 Dave Yeah, yeah. 02:50:05.30 The Profit And I think most people will be aware of what pt is and what they don't need to get into, but I almost feel Metal Gear Solid 2 was almost a test run for what PT would have been had it not got canceled. 02:50:06.95 Dave Right. 02:50:17.26 Dave Yeah, yeah, had it had it come out you know and 1 final thing. Um this could spin into a big conversation and I don't mean for it too. But I remember back on my metal gear. Solid 1 episode. My guest Mick was talking about. How Kojiman never wanted to make a sequel to metal gear solid and then he didn't want to make a sequel to metal gear solid 2 and then he didn't want to do metal gear solid four but it was so successful. He just kept getting roped into it and so thinking about it as basically like. They're going to force me to make a sequel. Well I'll show them a sequel. I'm going to do a bait and switch with the character we're going. We're going to take the mascot, we're going to relegate him to a side role. Ah, we're going to basically run through the same thing from the first game except it's a simulation. And then we're going to get into all of my philosophy and all of my predictions about the future and it's just very fun to think about it that way. 02:51:17.80 The Profit I did not know that um, where did you is that has where's that been published or where did that information come from and he didn't want to. 02:51:21.50 Dave Oh I am just saying that my guest Mick on the first episode is a giant metal gear. Solid fan and I just kind of took his word for it. So if it's wrong. It's wrong. 02:51:33.22 The Profit Okay, so somewhere out. No I believe him if you're I believe gamers especially um, if so obviously somewhere out there. Someone published that maybe Kojima he was hesitant didn't want to make and that goes the reason i. I buy into that as I mentioned at the beginning of the episode. I feel part of Kojima's motivation when you ask. Do you think coaching and master planned this or do you think? do you think it's cool and he's rat conning stuff or is he in on the joke or is he not in in the joke I think he's in on the joke and he's trolling us. 02:52:01.16 Dave Yeah. 02:52:06.80 The Profit And it actually makes more sense now that you bring it up if there's information out there that kojima didn't want to make the sequels and he had some resentment which would also be um, more evidence points to that direction with his fallout with Kanami in the resentment that he had with Kanami obviously there were some. 02:52:22.27 Dave Then. 02:52:25.80 The Profit Some issues with the executives of Konami and him and butting heads and friction is yeah I don't want to make these equals. You're gonna make me make them then okay fuck you I'm gonna troll everybody. 02:52:39.26 Dave Yeah, I'm going to do this and then like I think what mi said was like 1 of like 1 of them is ah a prequel so it's like just kind of defiant in a way where it's like you want me to keep making sequels well I'm not going to make a sql the way that you want a sql. It's going to be. 02:52:45.33 The Profit 5 yes. 02:52:52.41 The Profit And the way that everybody else wants. Yeah yeah, and that's probably ultimately why him and Kanami had the big fallout and pc fell apart and I could kind of so Kanami gets a really bad rap and they should by the way I'm not defending konami. 02:52:55.89 Dave Yeah, exactly. So. 02:53:08.40 Dave Yeah, deserve it? yeah. 02:53:12.39 The Profit But also they're putting out Suikoden 1 and 2 remasters. So I'm going to forgive them for all sorts of shit but I could kind of see why maybe Konami is like we've had enough with you because we've but I don't you know what? I'm taking that back in real time because yes. There's a troll element in a defined element to kojima but all of those games sold well and made Kotami Konami Kotami Konami a metric fuck ton of money. So at the end of the day I think koji may he's more justified. 02:53:38.46 Dave Yeah. 02:53:46.56 Dave yeah yeah I mean I'm certainly not mad and as you know someone who's not in the position to do so I respect the troll job both on the ah on the fans because fans can get really annoying and also on Konami because Konami shown their ass. 02:53:58.54 The Profit Yes, yes. 02:54:04.53 Dave So many times throughout history. So yeah, not to make that into a big thing I think it's time we wrap this up. We're almost at 3 hours The Profit this has been awesome man I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and talk about this with me. 02:54:16.44 The Profit Thank you. I'm always happy I mean metal gear too, baby. That's it's I'm going to say yeah I'm gonna say yes and I will definitely listen to more of your podcast I I was meaning to listen to a couple episodes. 02:54:23.15 Dave That's right, you told me to say anything more? yeah. 02:54:34.90 The Profit Do follow you on social media and I check out your posts all the time and I've obviously in Retro Hangover we've been on some of the King of games episodes together. So I'm very happy I'm honored that you would have me on. Thank you for knowing I'm not. I don't know how your normal guests are. 02:54:36.82 Dave Um, yeah I see that yeah I see you round? Yeah right. 02:54:53.19 The Profit I know I am my own unique personality. I get drunk and I'm loud. Whatever I appreciate your patience for that I appreciate you helping remind me where I'm at in the conversation I always go long every single episode of my podcast. So like I'm going to keep it on 2 hours 5 hours later we're still going. So yeah. 02:55:12.26 The Profit I get it. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for letting me ramble. Um I don't get a I don't get a blurred out all of my nerd passion very often in my real life I Only get to do it in podcasts. So I appreciate you first? yeah. 02:55:21.68 Dave Yeah, right. 02:55:29.60 The Profit For facilitating that. 02:55:29.71 Dave Yeah, of course man and I would not have asked you on this episode if I didn't think you would do a good job. So I appreciate it. This has been awesome. I appreciate everyone who's listened all the way to the end. We got another classic tales from the backlog 3 hour podcast going on here. So thank you to everybody. 02:55:36.59 The Profit Sweet. 02:55:49.29 Dave Who has listened again one more plug. Go check out gaming memories. Go check out. The Profit's stuff on social media join the discord server. Come talk about this game with us and that will be all the last thing you can do is tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog. And we're all done.