Metal Gear Rising Teaser Site – What Does it All Mean?
A few days ago, a mysterious teaser site has gone up for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. What can we learn from the information that can be found? This article aims at taking all the vague fragments of information and try to piece them together.
The most important part of the site are the two live action videos that you can watch, sharing the title ‘Make it Right’. They are seen from Raiden’s point of view, and it looks like he’s receiving cybernetic implants and brainwashing. The first video is a teaser for the site itself, the second and third are the more extensive ones.
In the videos, we can hear Quinton Flynn as Raiden and John Cygan as Solidus Snake, the one who trained him for his army of child soldiers. A map of Liberia (the country Raiden originally comes from, and where he fought as a child soldier) can briefly be seen.
It also looks like they are using videos of violence to brainwash Raiden, which is being mentioned in Metal Gear Solid 2 as part of Raiden’s training by Solidus: ‘Keep your eyes on the screen, Jack’. Here is a quote aid by Raiden, from Metal Gear Solid 2:
We were shown Hollywood action films every day. The kind with macho guys and big guns. They call it image training. They — they built us from the ground up, into killing machines…
In the videos it seems to alternate between Raiden as a child and Raiden as he is now. Konami’s description of the video is:
Subject’s personal memories may have become entangled due to trauma.
The doctors seem to be transforming Raiden into his cyborg form (the arm, the eye with HUD), and into his ‘alter ego’ Jack the Ripper.
The site seems to suggest the ‘intel’ is being extracted from Raiden’s arm: wires are running from its veins to the screens.
Another things that’s interesting is that one of the doctors is ‘repatching replacement memory units into your nervous system’. It could mean that one could access Raiden’s memories and trigger them, changing him into his ‘Jack the Ripper’ form. On the teaser site you can also find a picture of a ‘blueprint’ of Raiden’s cybernetic vertebrae, which is part of the nervous system, together with the brain.
Notice the drawing in the upper right corner: a hand holding a detached spine. Now, compare it to this screen:
Raiden ‘harvests’ the spine of an enemy. Maybe he will somehow need it to keep his own mind in check?
On the other hand, it could even imply that Raiden’s childhood as is explained in MGS2 is fake, and is a ‘replacement memory’ inserted into Raiden’s mind to make him into a great killing machine. This seems farfetched, but it’s still a possibility and one the teaser video could hint at.
A second art work shows a blueprint of Raiden’s kidneys and spleen.
One this that can be said about the kidneys, is that these are probably the same kind as in Metal Gear Solid 4, the ones that need dialysis with a machine and synthetic white blood (notice the white veins).
Yet another art work shows the blueprint of a cybernetically enhanced heart.
On the teaser site, one more thing can be found.
A piece of paper with what looks like a child’s drawing, possibly made by Raiden as kid. What’s interesting is that you can see Raiden’s ‘Red Eye’, the same one that can be seen on his cyborg form in Revengeance:
The site also gives you the option to type a command in the box in the lower left corner. Typing in certain words unlocks art works. So far two have been discovered, both showing enemies from the game. Typing in ‘mastiff’ will unlock this artwork:
While typing in ‘RAY’ will unlock this one:
Typing in KA-120 gives you:
While entering FORCE XXI gives you:
Force 21 is the name of a VR Unit Campbell talks about in the briefing of MGS1, when talking about the Next Generation Special Forces.
After that they were merged with our own VR unit, Force 21, and re-trained.
It’s not certain this is the same ‘Force 21’, but it seems plausible.
The latest blueprint can be viewed by typing in ‘FOXALIVE’:
Of course, Fox Alive is the name of the virus Sunny and Naomi created to wipe out the Patriot system and free mankind. It meant the dawn of a new world, in which Rising takes place. Also, the figure on the blueprint strongly resembles Crying Wolf.
Entering the command ‘Big Shell’ gives you another picture of RAY:
Whether there are more inputs to be found is yet to be discovered.
There is also a status bar on the upper left, showing a percentage. The amount will increase by giving ‘likes’ to this post on the official Metal Gear Solid Facebook. When it reaches 100%, a new video will be released.
Update: The final live action teaser video for Metal Gear Rising has been revealed. This one is called ‘Sword’.
In this video, Solidus (or at least the narrator, who has his voice) explains the ‘beauty’ of using a blade as opposed to a fire arm. At the end Raiden receives his katana, and you can see his cybernetic arm from a first person perspective grabbing the weapon.
The binary code at the end stands for ‘E3’, where the game will be playable.
Update: a new video (or rather audio) file has been released, along with a separate website called WarOnOurShores.com.
In conclusion, here’s what the videos seem to point out: Raiden has memories of his child soldier past in Liberia, when he was trained and brainwashed by Solidus Snake into a killing machine. As an adult, he is being transformed into a cyborg, using memory units inserted into his spine to manipulate his memories one way or another, and unleash his alter ego, Jack the Ripper.
For more wild theories about Rising’s story, you can visit this page.
