20 Mind-Blowing Things You Didn't Know About Metal Gear Solid 2
Did you know that Vamp is hidden in the game's final cutscene?
Get ready to feel old - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty just turned 20 years of age.
Hideo Kojima's sequel to his massively successful, hugely innovative 1998 stealth-action masterpiece was one of the most anticipated games of its era, and while some aspects of its story remain divisive today, it's largely held up as one of the greatest games of all time.
Few games have aged as well - both in terms of their graphics and ideas - as Metal Gear Solid 2, a work of such ambition and artistry that it's still being analysed by fans, critics, and academics alike two decades on.
As with basically any Kojima, production development was far from smooth, yet the writer-director has been all too keen to discuss the process through which the game finally ended up in players' hands.
From mind-blowing metrics to cut characters, and some of Kojima's more frankly insane discarded ideas, there's so much that went into the game's creation, and so much that you still may not be aware of 20 years later.
And so, as we all raise our glasses to a game that's truly ageing like a fine wine, here are 20 vital facts you need to know about Metal Gear Solid 2...
20. The Script Was Over 800 Pages Long
It's no secret that basically every game in the Metal Gear Solid franchise has an absolutely colossal script, given Hideo Kojima's penchant for hilariously verbose, often exposition-riddled dialogue.
Incredibly, though, the second game's expanded scope from its predecessor resulted in a script totalling a whopping 800 pages.
To put this into perspective, that's around seven times the average Hollywood movie script, and so one can easily picture Kojima needing to carry this thing around in a briefcase.
These 800 pages obviously account for not just the base dialogue and story for players sticking to the critical path, but also every possible codec conversation they can have throughout the game.