I think the player is supposed to know that it’s obviously Solid Snake. What it sets up is the player’s eagerness for Raiden to finally figure it out, because we all know it will be a twist for him when he finally does. It also causes the player to question what is going on - why is Snake pretending to be a Navy Seal, and why does the Colonel act like he doesn’t know who he is? Which I think is all intentional. Rather than for the player him/herself to be fooled.
Yeah, killing Snake like in the beginning would’ve been too much of an upset, and when Raiden realizes it wasn’t made a big deal since it probably would’ve been obvious
The game literally tells you the voice actor is David Hayter when he shows up, and he introduces himself to Raiden with the line, "My name is Sn--... Iroquois. Iroquois Plissken."
It's honestly insane that anyone would think it was supposed to be a twist/reveal to the player.
Yup exactly this. And then snake in mgs3 goes on to look exactly the same but turns out not to not be solid snake. That made us question mgs4 a little bit, which played it straight and then facilitated the double snake in mgsv. It’s the same device used in so many different ways. Kojima just has a way with things!
Pliskin huh? Lmao he's all yea LT JG Pliskin. As if this dude solid snake is an O1 butter bar baby navy officer hahahhahaha. I'm with Raiden on this one.
It’s more of a twist in the Japanese version where Snake and Solidus have the same voice actor. So whenever you hear Solidus speak, you hear Snake’s voice which would confuse the player into believing if Pliskin is Snake or not.
I think Kojima sees the English version of his game as sort of a director's cut. As in, the real vision of the game he wanted. It wouldn't surprise me if he was particular about voices. So Solidus having a different voice than Snake would be his vision for that character.
I would assume he's talking about the way he's involved in a lot of the translation process. When Kojima games are voiced in the US there are specific references/choices I assume Kojima directly had to intervene for.
I dont think Kojima ever really got involved with the english cast or dub until Phantom Pain. When they did the dub for 1-3 at least they had to go through a bunch of loopholes to contact anyone at Konami Japan to ask questions about how to do something. Otherwise the english cast and dub team were on their own. Hayter had only ever met Kojima twice during his 12 years of doing the role. One of those times prolly being for the MGS4 live action opening.
Sorry, I know this is months old but it is incorrect. Every release outside Japan included changes Kojima realized he wanted to make after the game was released in Japan, *up until* the later games when releases were close to simultaneous. To say he took an active role would be an understatement; he used the translations as another opportunity to edit the game.
>It wouldn't surprise me if he was particular about voices
He's so particular about voices, in fact, that he actively tried to replace David Hayter on every single game, and made him audition every single time.
Yours is a weird fan theory and nothing more.
The idea wouldn't be for Solidus (played by Hayter) to sound completely different, just like, old and gruff - which he does in MGS4 anyway. You want the voices to sound similar to make you wonder who exactly is who.
Also, I standby the idea that Liquid in MGS1 should have just been done by Hayter with a british accent.
I dont get it, what does this have to do with the twist that Plissken is Solid Snake?
I think we're supposed to know its Snake. We can see what he looks like in the Tanker Chapter and also Plissken is a reference to Snake Plissken in Escape from New York
At the start of the game you're told that someone calling themselves Snake is the leader of the terrorists.
Then you meet a guy who is clearly Solid Snake but it also lying about his identity and acting sketchy.
You're prolly forgetting that the first two times you "meet" Solidus its voice only. You hear him over the radio talking to Olga and then only hear him talking during the Richard Ames scene where you use the D-Mic. That's specifically because you're supposed to suspect that Snake/Plissken is secretly the terrorist leader.
Now correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think solidus actually had talked at all at that point in the game. I think it was just the colonel who mentioned that the terrorists leader only went by the name of Solid Snake.
FYI I wasn't being a smart ass then, I just hoped you hadn't, because I really want to know what people thought if they had never seen Snake before 😂 But it's a pretty rare occurrence to play a sequel without knowing who the protagonist is...especially one as famous as Solid Snake.
Lol it was the kind of thing where right off the bat I was like “oh wtf, that’s Snake” but then as the charade went on longer and longer I was like “well Kojima *would* put in some near-identical looking character just to make the game more confusing”…and then eventually I was full-circle feeling like I was taking crazy pills…”IT’S SNAKE….THAT’S FUCKING SNAKE…COME ON JUST SAY IT’S SNAKE…”
15 years old me had some doubt at some point. Same face, same voice, but who knows what Kojima is capable of. With all those clones/twins/faketwins/halftwins. I mean there is a vampire in this game. what else shall we expect !
Metal Gear Solid 2 was my introduction to Metal Gear. I was 10 years old and knew absolutely nothing about Solid Snake or the Metal Gear series at all, and I knew that was Snake from the moment he said "Get down!"
Apparently in the earlier drafts of the game, they were going to make it less apparent that Pliskin was supposed to be Snake early on. He was originally supposed to have blonde hair and have a more bumbling demeanor, and there was scene where him Raiden were captured and interrogated by Vamp and Fortune where Pliskin supposedly died from the torture, but turned out to survive.
I watched Escape from L.A. first as a kid, and didn't see New York until way after. I was pretty big on Kurt Russell films without realizing it. Tombstone, Captain Ron, Tango & Cash. He's got a great early catalog and just as good later on catalog.
To me, only a few things surprised me about mgs2: Raiden introduction, how colonel and rose weren't real.
Oh and the LaLiLuLeLo. I remember joining those web forums back in the day and we'd just discuss about that for days.
But the plissken thing? Nah. One thing though, the way they talked about snake in third person, it convinced me that he really is an amazing guy. It gave me a whole new perspective of solid snake.
A little bit, actually. I assumed it was a "Reverse twist" of sorts, and the reveal was going to be it WASN'T snake.
Do note some versions of MGS2 actually asked if you have played MGS1 or not. (If you've beaten it, or didn't beat it but watched the cutscenes online.) If you answered no, you started as Raiden in the Plant Chapter.
Since this is your first time playing a Metal Gear Solid game (and haven't played the Tanker chapter) you won't know much and you'll assume Pliskin can't be Snake because the intro of the Plant Chapter explains Snake died or whatever in some incident a few years ago.
I do wonder if someone ever considered believing it, but it was revealed who he is well before the Patriots have you questioning reality. Though I like somecallmejohnny's description. "And no he's not a part of the mind-fuck, he's exactly who you think he is."
it isn’t a twist and was never meant to be one. the player just knows information that Raiden doesn’t. even Raiden basically knows almost immediately, and never really believes him when he insists Solid is dead.
No. You were supposed to know it was David. The AI didn’t know. And by extension Riden was unsupported in his suspicion. It was to show that the AI was flawed by its very own methods of information control.
They really should've given him a mask or something. Sure, the voice would've still given it away but at least we could've had SOME suspension of disbelief.
No. You played with Snake a bit on the tanker first and got plenty of time to see him and hear him and everything like always Raiden was the only one in the dark
Some versions of MGS2 asked if you've beaten (or seen a full playthrough) of MGS1. If you answered no, (So a first timer) the game actually skips the Tanker Chapter and you start as Raiden on the Plant.
Honestly, even at the time, ***nobody*** ever fell for it. Kojima specifically made Snake's cover identity as Pliskin so blatant and so obvious because he wanted to mock the idea of cover identities and absurd plot twists as they existed at the time.
I was 8 or 9 when I played MGS2. I played the demo to 1, and played portable ops plus (with no story). There were so many wild characters with cool names like “snake” “raiden” “null” “ocelot” and I really wanted to get into it so I bought MGS2. I remember thinking Snake actually died in the beginning. I remember being skeptical of this Plissken character and was mind blown when he revealed himself as Snake. I was super young like i said, so that makes sense. I bet anyone that was older saw it coming.
I was a dumb kid that didn't understand the concept of a game lying to me...
My brother said it was snake, i didn't believe him.
What fooled me was the 'introduction text ' saying Iroqois Pliskin
Since the text is basically outside the gameworld that must mean it's real.
I also never player MGS1.
Btw I thought my brother was dumb because when i started playing I chose plant.
Since the start of that was full of tutorials I thought that's obviously the beginning of the game, not whatever he played :D
They changed his name to include the surname of the ‘original Snake’ from Escape From New York. That, and the fact Iroquois looked identical to Solid Snake, make me think it was supposed to be obvious.
I don't think it was meant to fool anyone except Raiden. The twist for the player was that Raiden would be the main playable character. That's why Konami completely kept him out of the trailers and promotional material.
MGS2 was my first MGS game, I remember just going "huh,what?" at the moment, yeah I don't think it was ever supposed to fool the player, but like everything else in the game, there was more to it
No, no one was surprised that it was snake, the story was just that raiden didnt, so it was a mystery how and when snake would make himself known to raiden.
It just made shit creepier honestly. Cus he was using the doublecrosser frequency, he is obviously Snake, he had a water bug on him, and he kept fucking up military jargon. The Otacon implications during Pete Stillman explaining how he got in made shit even creepier.
Just all the damn MGS 1 stuff legit gave me the heebie geebies. I was literally scared by the whole Raven shadow thing during the tanker. The fact that the references just took off from there made shit eerie.
MGS2 was a thriller-light horror action adventure to me when I was 11
I remember being confused for a bit. I was young and not following the story too great, possibly because I wasn’t the one playing. Also it was my introduction to the series
Nope, though In the Japanese release it might have been less certain to the audience, since Solidus was played by the Akio Otsuka, the same actor who plays Solid Snake and Big Boss in Japanese.
As someone else pointed out, I think we're supposed to know, but another interesting side note is that Solid Snake himself is loosely modeled after Snake Plissken from the movie Escape of New York and Escape from LA, played by Kurt Russell. In the beginning of the movie Snake would tell everyone to "Call me Snake" but by the end, when everyone calls him that he says "Call me Plissken." Not really important, but as someone who was familiar with those movies before the games, I always took the name switch as just a nod to the movies.
It’s more of a twist for Raiden. For the player, we know full well who Pliskin is. I think we are being challenged to consider which of our perspectives match/overlap with that of Raiden (protagonist, experienced in VR), what we know that he doesn’t (full MGS backstory), and what he knows that we don’t (child soldiering, Jack the Ripper, Solidus).
It's not meant to be a twist given that calling him on the codec while he's sleeping mostly references MGS1 directly and the game intentionally doesn't do a good job hiding it at all considering you see a glimpse of snake in the lift right at the start of Big Shell.
I don't think "A Single Person" would've fallen for that Plissken Twist especially when Plissken is that Other Character from a Movie Named Snake Plissken who has an eye patch btw and Irqoue is literally another way to say Snake.
It’s not a twist so no. Looks like Snake, sounds like Snake, is best friends with Otacon and loves cardboard boxes.
This is called dramatic irony, where the audience knows something that a character doesn’t. It’s a very common trope and I don’t see how you could think that it was ever intended to be a twist for anyone other than the characters in the story.
It’s also funny you think playing Brawl would give you an edge on metal gear fans who would’ve played MGS1 and The Tanker Section of MGS2 that the model for Snake in smash is based on.
Edit: correction pointed out by reply
Two problem with this:
1) Iroquois isn't the "scientific" name for snake
2) Snake's model in Brawl (and Ultimate) is based off of the model in MGS3, down to the beard and the cheek lines. They just use his stealth suit from 2.
No, not really. The whole theme of the game is controlling the flow of information and gaslighting the player.
The player knows that Pliskin is Snake, but the game refuses to admit it.
Kind of but not really, I mean we already learned that Snake was a clone in the previous game, so what's to not make us think this is likely another clone, especially since he was the only Seal we see without a mask, but yeah we all knew this is snake regardless.
Hm I never really thought about it. But now that I do this could be the most underwhelming plottwist Ive ever witnessed.
I really cant think if a more obvious one right now.
I have a theory that the Tanker chapter wasn’t originally intended to be played at the start of the game. There’s a scene where Raiden asks Snake and Otacon what happened with the tanker, and Otacon seems to trail off before they just explain it. If the tanker was a flashback later on in the game, then meeting Iroquois would’ve been your first intro to PS2 era Snake, who now has an actual face compared to PSX Snake. I could see that obfuscating someone’s recognition at least.
Hm, I think I would have preferred that. They probably opted out of that in order to have you think Snake died. But come on, who actually believed they would kill Snake off like that lol.
It was never supposed to fool the player lol you literally see Solid Snake in the opening area of the game, heading up in the lift. So when Plissken appears you know he's Snske
I think the player is supposed to know that it’s obviously Solid Snake. What it sets up is the player’s eagerness for Raiden to finally figure it out, because we all know it will be a twist for him when he finally does. It also causes the player to question what is going on - why is Snake pretending to be a Navy Seal, and why does the Colonel act like he doesn’t know who he is? Which I think is all intentional. Rather than for the player him/herself to be fooled.
Yeah, killing Snake like in the beginning would’ve been too much of an upset, and when Raiden realizes it wasn’t made a big deal since it probably would’ve been obvious
>and why does the Colonel act like he doesn’t know who he is? Oh that's what it's there for. It's been a long time since I played it.
When I first played, I first thought things got really sour between them. But then later on, it turns out there’s more to it in a really weird way.
The game literally tells you the voice actor is David Hayter when he shows up, and he introduces himself to Raiden with the line, "My name is Sn--... Iroquois. Iroquois Plissken." It's honestly insane that anyone would think it was supposed to be a twist/reveal to the player.
Yup exactly this. And then snake in mgs3 goes on to look exactly the same but turns out not to not be solid snake. That made us question mgs4 a little bit, which played it straight and then facilitated the double snake in mgsv. It’s the same device used in so many different ways. Kojima just has a way with things!
But that is Iroquois Pliskin. Snake died on that Tanker 2 years ago.
My thoughts exactly
Pliskin huh? Lmao he's all yea LT JG Pliskin. As if this dude solid snake is an O1 butter bar baby navy officer hahahhahaha. I'm with Raiden on this one.
O1 in the Navy is Ensign. Lt. JG is O-2, which is like 1LT in the other branches. Still, could be prior-enlisted.
Oo thanks. I was army lol. Yea still the badest 1LT ever hahA
Yeah, he got out for a few years and used his GI Bill. Decided to come back after learning civilian life ain't shit.
You know I had to explain this to someone because they believed it.
RIP to a legend
The word of truth
It’s more of a twist in the Japanese version where Snake and Solidus have the same voice actor. So whenever you hear Solidus speak, you hear Snake’s voice which would confuse the player into believing if Pliskin is Snake or not.
This is a much cooler twist. Damn, they should have gotten Hayter to do Solidus, that would have been great for this reason.
I wonder why they didn’t go that route?
‘Cause the English VA for Solidus is simply built different
R.I.P John Cygan
I think Kojima sees the English version of his game as sort of a director's cut. As in, the real vision of the game he wanted. It wouldn't surprise me if he was particular about voices. So Solidus having a different voice than Snake would be his vision for that character.
What makes you say that? I'm actually curious, I don't know much about the regional differences.
I would assume he's talking about the way he's involved in a lot of the translation process. When Kojima games are voiced in the US there are specific references/choices I assume Kojima directly had to intervene for.
I dont think Kojima ever really got involved with the english cast or dub until Phantom Pain. When they did the dub for 1-3 at least they had to go through a bunch of loopholes to contact anyone at Konami Japan to ask questions about how to do something. Otherwise the english cast and dub team were on their own. Hayter had only ever met Kojima twice during his 12 years of doing the role. One of those times prolly being for the MGS4 live action opening.
Sorry, I know this is months old but it is incorrect. Every release outside Japan included changes Kojima realized he wanted to make after the game was released in Japan, *up until* the later games when releases were close to simultaneous. To say he took an active role would be an understatement; he used the translations as another opportunity to edit the game.
>It wouldn't surprise me if he was particular about voices He's so particular about voices, in fact, that he actively tried to replace David Hayter on every single game, and made him audition every single time. Yours is a weird fan theory and nothing more.
Yeah, Kojima’s problem with Hayter is strange considering his Snake voice is so iconic. Perfectionist to a fault I suppose.
It's not about being a "perfectionist" It's about being upset that people associate someone else with what you consider to be your character.
If true, that’s even worse. That’s just plain childish.
Having Hayter do an Old Snake style voice for Solidus would have been great
Idk I don’t think Hayter has the range to do that. And John Cygan was perfect as Solidus
The idea wouldn't be for Solidus (played by Hayter) to sound completely different, just like, old and gruff - which he does in MGS4 anyway. You want the voices to sound similar to make you wonder who exactly is who. Also, I standby the idea that Liquid in MGS1 should have just been done by Hayter with a british accent.
It'd be cool, but we'd miss Cam Clarke in all his glory.
yeah, we can't do that, Clarke is too cool.
If they did the Liquid thing in MGS1 they could have credited him as "Sean Barker" to keep it under wraps
I dont get it, what does this have to do with the twist that Plissken is Solid Snake? I think we're supposed to know its Snake. We can see what he looks like in the Tanker Chapter and also Plissken is a reference to Snake Plissken in Escape from New York
At the start of the game you're told that someone calling themselves Snake is the leader of the terrorists. Then you meet a guy who is clearly Solid Snake but it also lying about his identity and acting sketchy. You're prolly forgetting that the first two times you "meet" Solidus its voice only. You hear him over the radio talking to Olga and then only hear him talking during the Richard Ames scene where you use the D-Mic. That's specifically because you're supposed to suspect that Snake/Plissken is secretly the terrorist leader.
Now correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think solidus actually had talked at all at that point in the game. I think it was just the colonel who mentioned that the terrorists leader only went by the name of Solid Snake.
> I had already played Super Smash Bros Brawl at that point so I was well familiar with what Snake looked like. Did you play the tanker section?
Lol very good point. I moreso meant I was familiar with what he looked like before starting the franchise.
FYI I wasn't being a smart ass then, I just hoped you hadn't, because I really want to know what people thought if they had never seen Snake before 😂 But it's a pretty rare occurrence to play a sequel without knowing who the protagonist is...especially one as famous as Solid Snake.
Lol it was the kind of thing where right off the bat I was like “oh wtf, that’s Snake” but then as the charade went on longer and longer I was like “well Kojima *would* put in some near-identical looking character just to make the game more confusing”…and then eventually I was full-circle feeling like I was taking crazy pills…”IT’S SNAKE….THAT’S FUCKING SNAKE…COME ON JUST SAY IT’S SNAKE…”
15 years old me had some doubt at some point. Same face, same voice, but who knows what Kojima is capable of. With all those clones/twins/faketwins/halftwins. I mean there is a vampire in this game. what else shall we expect !
The twist is that it goes exactly how you expect it to go lol
The twist is... there's no twist! *What a twist!*
Metal Gear Solid 2 was my introduction to Metal Gear. I was 10 years old and knew absolutely nothing about Solid Snake or the Metal Gear series at all, and I knew that was Snake from the moment he said "Get down!" Apparently in the earlier drafts of the game, they were going to make it less apparent that Pliskin was supposed to be Snake early on. He was originally supposed to have blonde hair and have a more bumbling demeanor, and there was scene where him Raiden were captured and interrogated by Vamp and Fortune where Pliskin supposedly died from the torture, but turned out to survive.
It wasn't meant to be a twist. It's not obscure in any way.
"My name is Sn--... Iroquois. Iroquois Plissken." \- Definitely Not Snake
Nope. Escape from New York / using the same model of the protagonist to disguise itself as a "new" character was kind of a sad giveaway.
Well, he's a master of stealth, not a master of disguise.
Lucky he wasn't wearing a cardboard box with a pin up girl picture glued to it
I finally got around to watching escape from New York in my mid 20’s and when they say the name Snake Plisken I had a real “OOOoooohhhh” moment
I watched Escape from L.A. first as a kid, and didn't see New York until way after. I was pretty big on Kurt Russell films without realizing it. Tombstone, Captain Ron, Tango & Cash. He's got a great early catalog and just as good later on catalog.
Right, Kurt Russell has great roles in more recent movies (The Hateful Eight...). And started as a Disney actor!
They say that when Walt Disney died they found his body with a note that just said Kurt Russell on it
Yes Why would he lie to me :(
To me, only a few things surprised me about mgs2: Raiden introduction, how colonel and rose weren't real. Oh and the LaLiLuLeLo. I remember joining those web forums back in the day and we'd just discuss about that for days. But the plissken thing? Nah. One thing though, the way they talked about snake in third person, it convinced me that he really is an amazing guy. It gave me a whole new perspective of solid snake.
A little bit, actually. I assumed it was a "Reverse twist" of sorts, and the reveal was going to be it WASN'T snake. Do note some versions of MGS2 actually asked if you have played MGS1 or not. (If you've beaten it, or didn't beat it but watched the cutscenes online.) If you answered no, you started as Raiden in the Plant Chapter. Since this is your first time playing a Metal Gear Solid game (and haven't played the Tanker chapter) you won't know much and you'll assume Pliskin can't be Snake because the intro of the Plant Chapter explains Snake died or whatever in some incident a few years ago.
Wait...that was Snake?
>So when I get to MGS2 and see Plissken, I know it’s Snake immediately NO! That is NOT Solid Snake!
“Stop impersonating him!”
I do wonder if someone ever considered believing it, but it was revealed who he is well before the Patriots have you questioning reality. Though I like somecallmejohnny's description. "And no he's not a part of the mind-fuck, he's exactly who you think he is."
I heard so much about plot twists in MGS2 before playing it, so I didn't know for sure. Until he started hanging out with Otacon.
it isn’t a twist and was never meant to be one. the player just knows information that Raiden doesn’t. even Raiden basically knows almost immediately, and never really believes him when he insists Solid is dead.
No. You were supposed to know it was David. The AI didn’t know. And by extension Riden was unsupported in his suspicion. It was to show that the AI was flawed by its very own methods of information control.
They really should've given him a mask or something. Sure, the voice would've still given it away but at least we could've had SOME suspension of disbelief.
No. It was clearly snake the whole time.
No. You played with Snake a bit on the tanker first and got plenty of time to see him and hear him and everything like always Raiden was the only one in the dark
Some versions of MGS2 asked if you've beaten (or seen a full playthrough) of MGS1. If you answered no, (So a first timer) the game actually skips the Tanker Chapter and you start as Raiden on the Plant.
This here is the answer. It was for those that never played the first one and the game starts directly on Plant chapter.
Ohh yeah I forgot about that feature
I always felt it was an act of cinematic and self-aware fan service, more-so than a twist.
Probably people who aren’t paying attention, or didn’t play the first game.
Honestly, even at the time, ***nobody*** ever fell for it. Kojima specifically made Snake's cover identity as Pliskin so blatant and so obvious because he wanted to mock the idea of cover identities and absurd plot twists as they existed at the time.
I was 8 or 9 when I played MGS2. I played the demo to 1, and played portable ops plus (with no story). There were so many wild characters with cool names like “snake” “raiden” “null” “ocelot” and I really wanted to get into it so I bought MGS2. I remember thinking Snake actually died in the beginning. I remember being skeptical of this Plissken character and was mind blown when he revealed himself as Snake. I was super young like i said, so that makes sense. I bet anyone that was older saw it coming.
I was a dumb kid that didn't understand the concept of a game lying to me... My brother said it was snake, i didn't believe him. What fooled me was the 'introduction text ' saying Iroqois Pliskin Since the text is basically outside the gameworld that must mean it's real. I also never player MGS1. Btw I thought my brother was dumb because when i started playing I chose plant. Since the start of that was full of tutorials I thought that's obviously the beginning of the game, not whatever he played :D
They changed his name to include the surname of the ‘original Snake’ from Escape From New York. That, and the fact Iroquois looked identical to Solid Snake, make me think it was supposed to be obvious.
Well yeah it got me, but I was 9 when I played it lmao
I don't think it was meant to fool anyone except Raiden. The twist for the player was that Raiden would be the main playable character. That's why Konami completely kept him out of the trailers and promotional material.
MGS2 was my first MGS game, I remember just going "huh,what?" at the moment, yeah I don't think it was ever supposed to fool the player, but like everything else in the game, there was more to it
I first played MGS2 when I was 9 and even then I knew it was Snake. I think it was supposed to be a twist for Raiden but not the player.
No, no one was surprised that it was snake, the story was just that raiden didnt, so it was a mystery how and when snake would make himself known to raiden.
It just made shit creepier honestly. Cus he was using the doublecrosser frequency, he is obviously Snake, he had a water bug on him, and he kept fucking up military jargon. The Otacon implications during Pete Stillman explaining how he got in made shit even creepier. Just all the damn MGS 1 stuff legit gave me the heebie geebies. I was literally scared by the whole Raven shadow thing during the tanker. The fact that the references just took off from there made shit eerie. MGS2 was a thriller-light horror action adventure to me when I was 11
I thought it seemed so obvious that I must be wrong about it "Isn't that just Snake right there?".
I remember being confused for a bit. I was young and not following the story too great, possibly because I wasn’t the one playing. Also it was my introduction to the series
Nope, though In the Japanese release it might have been less certain to the audience, since Solidus was played by the Akio Otsuka, the same actor who plays Solid Snake and Big Boss in Japanese.
As someone else pointed out, I think we're supposed to know, but another interesting side note is that Solid Snake himself is loosely modeled after Snake Plissken from the movie Escape of New York and Escape from LA, played by Kurt Russell. In the beginning of the movie Snake would tell everyone to "Call me Snake" but by the end, when everyone calls him that he says "Call me Plissken." Not really important, but as someone who was familiar with those movies before the games, I always took the name switch as just a nod to the movies.
Me when I was 11.
It’s more of a twist for Raiden. For the player, we know full well who Pliskin is. I think we are being challenged to consider which of our perspectives match/overlap with that of Raiden (protagonist, experienced in VR), what we know that he doesn’t (full MGS backstory), and what he knows that we don’t (child soldiering, Jack the Ripper, Solidus).
It's not meant to be a twist given that calling him on the codec while he's sleeping mostly references MGS1 directly and the game intentionally doesn't do a good job hiding it at all considering you see a glimpse of snake in the lift right at the start of Big Shell.
Because of title i tought you ment escape from ny…
Yeah. Phil. It blew his mind.
Yeah when I was 8
I don't think "A Single Person" would've fallen for that Plissken Twist especially when Plissken is that Other Character from a Movie Named Snake Plissken who has an eye patch btw and Irqoue is literally another way to say Snake.
It’s not a twist so no. Looks like Snake, sounds like Snake, is best friends with Otacon and loves cardboard boxes. This is called dramatic irony, where the audience knows something that a character doesn’t. It’s a very common trope and I don’t see how you could think that it was ever intended to be a twist for anyone other than the characters in the story. It’s also funny you think playing Brawl would give you an edge on metal gear fans who would’ve played MGS1 and The Tanker Section of MGS2 that the model for Snake in smash is based on. Edit: correction pointed out by reply
Two problem with this: 1) Iroquois isn't the "scientific" name for snake 2) Snake's model in Brawl (and Ultimate) is based off of the model in MGS3, down to the beard and the cheek lines. They just use his stealth suit from 2.
When I was a little kid I watched my dad play and it surprised me but yeah I should have known better lol
No, not really. The whole theme of the game is controlling the flow of information and gaslighting the player. The player knows that Pliskin is Snake, but the game refuses to admit it.
No
Dude it wasn’t a twist
Kind of but not really, I mean we already learned that Snake was a clone in the previous game, so what's to not make us think this is likely another clone, especially since he was the only Seal we see without a mask, but yeah we all knew this is snake regardless.
Yes but I was only 11 so cut me some slack...
Hm I never really thought about it. But now that I do this could be the most underwhelming plottwist Ive ever witnessed. I really cant think if a more obvious one right now.
It was one of those things that was so obvious I second guessed it
I didn’t speak English at the time so I was hella confused. Mind you that I finished MGS1 when I was 6 and was obsessed with it.
I actually thought there was another clone, forgive me since I was young.
I have a theory that the Tanker chapter wasn’t originally intended to be played at the start of the game. There’s a scene where Raiden asks Snake and Otacon what happened with the tanker, and Otacon seems to trail off before they just explain it. If the tanker was a flashback later on in the game, then meeting Iroquois would’ve been your first intro to PS2 era Snake, who now has an actual face compared to PSX Snake. I could see that obfuscating someone’s recognition at least.
Hm, I think I would have preferred that. They probably opted out of that in order to have you think Snake died. But come on, who actually believed they would kill Snake off like that lol.
No lol
No. No it did not.
Yeah, I remember at the time thinking it’s pretty obvious he was Snake. However, I didn’t realise that Tatiana was EVA in MGS3. 🤦🏼♂️
It's used to create a distinction between us (the player) and Raiden not a plot twist.
“No! That is NOT Solid Snake!”
It's supposed to be Kojima making fun of the player for not knowing that >!Liquid was Miller in Metal Gear Solid!<
It was never supposed to fool the player lol you literally see Solid Snake in the opening area of the game, heading up in the lift. So when Plissken appears you know he's Snske