Uploaded October 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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VIDEO TITLE: Metal Gear Solid's MOST OVERLOOKED Protagonist. (Raiden Character Analysis/Appreciation)



After a small hiatus of some lack of motivation and general uncertainty of how to approach this video, I present to you a video going over my favorite protagonist of (probably) all time.

Link to LongplayArchive: youtube.com/c/Longplayarchive

Chapters:
0:00 - Introduction
1:21 - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
9:26 - Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
15:22 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
25:51 - My Thoughts
31:10 - Credits

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Script:

To learn about why he is my favorite protagonist, it is of course important to learn about his story. Starting from the beginning, Jack, which is Raiden’s real name, is a former child soldier from Liberia who was raised as a killer by Solidus Snake. He was one of the best performers on the battlefield, and earned the nickname of “Jack the Ripper” for his outstanding kill record. Of all the children who were forced to fight, he is the one who tried to ignore it the most. This is shown all throughout the Big Shell Incident, which we will get to in a moment. Jack, once grown up, gets his training from Virtual Reality missions that simulate real life scenarios such as the Tanker incident involving Solid Snake that deemed him as a terrorist.

To summarize the Big Shell mission without making this into an 11 hour analysis and documentary of MGS2 alone, it is a scenario created by the Patriots as an attempt to replicate the best soldier in human history, Solid Snake. The events that occur replicate the events of the Shadow Moses incident almost to a T. Raiden is chosen for this because of how hard he denies his past. All of the other child soldiers that fought alongside Raiden had grown up to resent and regret their lives, but he denied it and tried to live normally. The Patriots figured he would be easy enough to control, and with his combat prowess he was deemed a perfect candidate.

Raiden isn’t like Snake, who is confident and has a lot of his ideals and motivations very clear and understandable. Oftentimes he doesn’t know what he wants to fight for or why to fight for it, other than the fact that it’s the thing he’s been best at since a child. This is why it was so easy to have him come around and be the subject. Throughout the game his ambitions aren’t as rock solid as Snake’s (no pun intended), and it kind of seems that he doesn’t have a whole lot going for him in comparison to Snake.

I feel like an interesting way to demonstrate the differences in Snake and Raiden is simply through their alert themes. Snake’s theme gives a sense of urgency, but it’s methodical in how it’s composed. There aren’t any irregularities in the way it’s delivered and has a serious and somewhat dark tone that pretty much says “alright, you spotted me, no problem you are probably f**ked, let's go.” It showcases how experienced Snake is.

Raiden’s theme is essentially the opposite where the composition is very irregular and essentially says “OH MY GOD I HAVE BEEN SPOTTED SH*T WHAT THE FUU-” It’s an upbeat tune that reflects how green Raiden is on the battlefield in comparison to Snake. It makes you feel kind of lost and confused rather than the determined and resolved feel that Snake’s alert theme gives.

The Big Shell mission, as said before, essentially recreates a lot of events that are almost identical to that of Shadow Moses. The main thing that throws everything off is Snake, or wait hold on… yeah sorry, Iroquois Pliskin’s appearance. He throws things off and pretty much helps Raiden throughout the whole thing ever so slightly.

Raiden is constantly clueless as to what’s happening, which I suppose isn’t too unreasonable considering just how odd everything about this whole mission is. I mean, his girlfriend is randomly assigned to the mission, there’s an immortal, flamboyant, bisexual, knife wielding psycho on the loose, a woman who deflects any firepower in her way, and a myriad of different things. It’s just that his responses to these situations are obviously different from that of Snake in Metal Gear Solid 1 when faced with similarly odd characters such as Psycho Mantis, but that’s also an interesting plot point cause it’s like imagining if Snake’s first big mission was that of Shadow Moses.

Raiden, once he discovers Plisken’s real identity, which in case you had not pinned it down yet, is Snake...

(If you want access to the written version of the script, feel free to ask in the comments or my socials.)

#Raiden #metalgearsolid #analysis