Raiden (Metal Gear Solid 2) - Definition and Overview

For other meanings of the name Raiden, see Raiden (disambiguation).

Raiden (real name Jack) is a fictional character in the video game Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. He is one of the most controversial characters in the Metal Gear video game series.

Raiden is the main playable character in Metal Gear Solid 2's "Plant Chapter" portion (which comprised the majority of the game); the player is led to believe that Solid Snake died at the end of the "Tanker Chapter." Konami kept his presence in the game a well-guarded secret prior to its release, even to the point of editing pre-release footage of the game. Scenes that featured Raiden were reprogrammed to have Snake in his place. Although the game was leaked by pirates before its release, this secret was still unknown to the far majority of fans.

According to the series' creator, Hideo Kojima, the decision of using Raiden instead of Snake as the main playable character was done in order to develop Snake from a third-person perspective, as well as to avoid treating Snake like a rookie again (considering the fact that Snake was already acquainted with most of the gadgets and weapons introduced in the original Metal Gear Solid).

Although Raiden is quite unpopular in America because of his androgynous appearance (intentionally added in an attempt to give the character a unisexual appeal), he is very popular in Japan. His given name, Jack, was derived from Leonardo DiCaprio's character in the movie Titanic (early in Metal Gear Solid 2's development, Raiden's last name was Brannigan), and his love interest in the game (Rosemary) was named after Kate Winslet's character from the same film. He was voiced by Kenyu Horiuchi in the original Japanese version and by Quinton Flynn in the localized English versions. Many Metal Gear purists who played the original Japanese version and its English deratives believe that Flynn's performance may have ruined people's perceptions of Raiden in the West. Horiuchi gave the character a deeper and more serious voice similar to Akio Otsuka's potrayal of Snake (Kojima was reportedly disappointed with the perfomances featured in the English versions of MGS2).

Fictional Biography

Jack's childhood prior to his adoption by his godfather, Solidus Snake, is a complete mystery. He was given the name "Jack" by Solidus, who took the boy under his care after murdering his real parents. Jack became a child soldier for Solidus' "small boy platoon" during the first Liberian Civil War between 1989 and 1996. His reputation and high kill count earned him the nicknames "White Devil" and "Jack the Ripper."

When Jack became an adult, sometime after the civil war was over, he left Liberia and forgot about his past as time went by. He went to the United States, where he joined the Force XXI Corps, and trained through various VR simulations, including some which were based on the Shadow Moses and Tanker incidents that Solid Snake was a major participant in. He was also romantically involved with a data analyst named Rosemary.

In 2009, Jack joined what was apparently a reinstated FOX-HOUND unit, and was assigned the codename "Snake." He was recruited for a mission to rescue the President of the United States (James Johnson) from a terrorist group that has taken over the Big Shell, an off-shore clean-up facility located near Manhattan. The terrorist group called themselves the "Sons of Liberty" and consisted of the surviving members of Dead Cell (a former Navy counter-terrorist unit) and Olga Gurlukovich's private army. Because the Sons of Liberty's leader was claiming to be Solid Snake, Jack's codename was changed from "Snake" to "Raiden."

During the course of his mission, he teamed up with an apparent Navy SEALs specialist by the name of "Iroquois Pliskin." Pliskin later revealed himself to be the true Solid Snake after confronting the terrorist leader, Solidus Snake (who was impersonating Solid Snake at the time). Raiden was also assisted by a person in a ninja suit known as "Mr. X," who was actually Olga Gurlukovich working as a double agent between the Sons of Liberty and an organization known as the Patriots, which secretly ran the United States government.

When Raiden finally confronted President Johnson, he revealed that the Big Shell facility was nothing more than a front for a new type of Metal Gear known as Arsenal Gear, which the Patriots were secretly building with the purpose of controlling the flow of information through the Internet. After President Johnson was assassinated by Revolver Ocelot, Raiden went to rescue Arsenal Gear's AI designer, Emma Emmerich, who was also Hal Emmerich's stepsister. Although Emma later died from a wound inflicted from Vamp, one of Dead Cell's members, she managed to insert a virus into Arsenal Gear's computer terminal, which ended disrupting its AI system, GW.

The whole operation (including the reinstated FOX-HOUND unit) turned out to be nothing more than a simulation of the Shadow Moses incident by the Patriots in an effort to test out their S3 project. Raiden's commanding officer, the Colonel, was actually an AI generated by GW and modeled after the likeness of Roy Campbell, Solid Snake's former commander. At the end of his mission, Raiden was forced to kill Solidus Snake to help his girlfriend, Rosemary and Olga's child, who were both being held hostage by the Patriots. Raiden successfully killed Solidus and was shortly reunited with Rose, who was among the crowd that formed after Arsenal Gear crashed into Federal Hall.