Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (pt. 16)

Sundowner stands on his platform, telling Raiden shit that he already knows about the VR program. But, like, in a sneering, taunting tone of voice. I guess this might work if Sundowner doesn't know that Raiden knows about the Sears Program (which in fairness, thinking about this a little more, he'd have no way of knowing that Raiden knows), so he thinks the revelation that it's the same thing he went through as a kid will be some kind of mind-breaking shock. Heh, well, too bad Sunny.

Apparently, the simulated version of the Sears Program has a couple of advantages over the meatspace original, though. For one, there's less chance of accidentally killing the trainee. For another, they can actually give them direct neurological conditioning to make them enjoy following orders and executing (in both senses of the word) their objectives.

The "jolt to your pleasure centers when you're obedient" part might make up for the significant flaw in George Sears' methods that ended up coming back to bite him in MGS2. Whether or not the blood magic itself will still work in VR, of course, remains to be seen.

Anyway, Raiden doesn't give him the reaction he was hoping for, but Sundowner presses on regardless. Once again, I'd really enjoy it if Raiden just pulled out his rocket launcher and blew the prattling twit off his catwalk midsentence as soon as it was clear he had nothing important to say.

For some reason, instead of feeding the tiresome punk a rocket and just getting the damned fight started already, Raiden tries reasoning with him. Raiden, what the hell is even the point of you rediscovering Jack the Ripper if you're not going to bring him out against Sundowner of all people? Seriously, Sundowner and ripper-Raiden would actually be able to speak each other's language, so it's weird that Raiden is back in his early game persona for this encounter. Also, Raiden starts going on about personal choice, even though we just had an entire arc about him giving up on that as a cornerstone of his worldview.

I'm pretty sure this scene was written before that one.

Predictably, Sundowner retorts that choice is irrelevant here. Kids are cruel, and encouraging that is easy. They're purer, in that sense. Unlike the dumb stupid adults who winge about stuff like international law and rules of warfare and other gay shit.

Get the kids before that, and you can mold them however you want.

Does Sundowner realize he just completely contradicted himself there? If kids are like that naturally, why would you need extensive VR brainwashing and neuro-pharmaceutical conditioning to bring it out? What "molding" would there be to do, if this was actually the state of nature?

I'm sure the writers intended him to be hypocritical and incoherent in this very way, but it's too bad they didn't have Raiden call him on it. If they were going to have Raiden try to reason with him in the first place.

He then opens one of the VR cells and...pulls out an orphan cyberbrain and starts fondling it in his hands.

Whatever happened to not interrupting the sim, eh Sunny?

Then he tosses Raiden a totally unnecessary bone and says that even if he defeats him and rescues all the brains without being interdicted, it's not going to matter, because in three hours The Plan will come to fruition. This plan is going to create a massive new demand for PMC's, just like in the GOOD OL' DAYS AFTER NAAAAAAAHN ELEVEN.

Heh, I'm kinda surprised 9/11 even happened in the Metal Gear universe, tbh. A lot of things would have been different by that point if I'm not mistaken.

Also, holy shit Sundowner all you had to do was not mention that and the entire final act of this game wouldn't happen lmao. When Raiden asks what the hell that's all about, Sundowner cackles about how wars don't happen because of secret plots and sweeping conspiracies. It's just part of human nature. It's who we are.

...he just contradicted himself again. Even more blatantly. And this time practically within the same sentence. If the same amount of war will happen no matter what on account of human nature, then why do you need a secret plot to start one in a few hours? Raiden, come on man, I know you're not the sharpest tool in the shed but even you have to see how dumb this is. Are you really not going to make fun of him for this? Come on, it would be funny!

Then again, Sundowner actually did just give Raiden good reason to continue not interrupting him. Let him keep monologuing, and he'll apparently give away Armstrong's entire plan bit by bit. Okay, I take back that criticism; good thinking, Raiden.

Next, Sundowner tries the most obvious bluff in the world and presses a button to expose all the several-hundred brain canisters in the room while cackling about how none of them even matter because the World Martial top brass aren't even in the building anymore and there are dozens more facilities like this all over the world.

Lol. Lmao.

If World Martial had multiple clandestine facilities capable of running these mass isolated brain VR programs, why would they risk bringing any of those brains to their publicly known and conspicuous Denver headquarters?

Does Sundowner actually think Raiden will buy this?

Sundowner finally turns around and retreats onto the rooftop, taunting Raiden to follow him. Putting the lie even harder to the earlier assertion that these brains don't matter to him; Raiden immediately points out to his Codec friends that Sundowner doesn't want to fight him down here because he's afraid of the brains getting damaged. Heh, thank god you saw through that one, Raiden. I'd have been really disappointed in you otherwise.

Anyway. Boris has nothing to contribute aside from wishing Raiden well; in addition to rescuing the orphans, this is their chance to get revenge on the literal exact same motherfucker who screwed up Maverick's gig in Africa. If Raiden is going to go full vigilante anyway, then he might as well do it in a way that lets Boris spite that guy, after all. Heh, I just realized that this makes Raiden's rampage and Maverick's secret continued support of him a pretty direct mirror of World Martial's sham with Desperado.

Raiden asks Kevin what could be about to happen in three hours, but unfortunately he's got nothing; Raiden will have to try to preserve Sundowner's brain for interrogation and hope they can make him talk. Kevin does have a bit of general background info on Sundowner, though. Alabama-born. Lower class family. So-so student. Did an ROTC to get through college, but then gave up on higher education entirely when he got his first taste of combat in Iraq. Was investigated multiple times for war crimes during his time in the US military, but never got convicted. He got investigated several more times after going private, with the same results. Cyber-conversion happened after a close encounter with an IED. The rest is history.

Pretty much what you'd expect, all things considered. I appreciate that the game isn't trying to force some kind of deep and tragic backstory where one really isn't needed. Sundowner works fine for the story's purposes just as he is. He's just what you'd expect the person who plays his role in the story to be like, and sometimes that's for the best.

Courtney is just shocked at the loud-and-proud psychopathy without even the veneer of philosophical justification or personal trauma. Raiden tells her that it's just as well; there will be zero reason for anyone to shed tears for this guy after what's about to happen to him.

Doktor says he's entering Denver airspace now. He thinks his chopper has the lift capacity to rescue all those brains, if Raiden and Pochita can move quick enough to load them all within a short window. However, the World Martial rooftop has some air units guarding it, and he can't get close until Raiden deals with those. Which he'll have to go through Sundowner to do. Noted.

Pochita says he's doing his best to seal the doors and collapse the stairs and elevators behind Raiden to prevent nonflying enemy reinforcements from flanking him. Much appreciated, Pochita!

So, with nothing left to be said or done, it's up onto the rooftop where Sundowner awaits, hammerhead choppers circling overhead. Sundowner actually looks much less intimidating when he has all his hardware deployed, as it turns out.

Music is surprisingly low key. The battle, well. I was having some real trouble with Sundowner at first, but then I realized my mouse was getting stuck. I cleaned it, and then promptly mopped the floor with him.

On one hand, it makes sense that the guy who's good at fighting would guard the front door while the guy who's bad at fighting hangs back and plays mission control until cornered. And, like I said before, if the boss difficulty kept escalating after Monsoon I don't know if I'd be able to beat this game. But still. Come on. Sundowner has had more screentime and more antagonistic characterization than almost any other baddy. He's the one the other Winds of Destruction answer to. He's at least arguably the guy who Raiden's really been hunting for most of the game. It's sort of a let down.

He has an interesting fight gimmick, to be fair. Those articulated plates attached to him are reactive armor panels. If you hit one, the reactive explosion does quite a bit of (undodgeable) damage to Raiden and throws him back off his feet. To get around this, you either need to attack him from a direction he's not holding them out in, stun him with an EMP grenade, or use bullet time mode to carefully slit the panels away from each other without setting them off while he's in total defence mode. He can also just plain hit you with them, which hurts too. It's a neat moveset, and it both uses MGRR's gameplay conventions to good effect and implements a real life armor technology in a creative scifi way that I don't think I've seen elsewhere.

He's just too slow. Too easy to dodge. Too easy to get behind while his panels are facing elsewhere. Too big of a hit box. Slitting the panels apart is trickier with mouse controls than it would be with a joystick, but there's little reason to even bother trying that when it's easier to just jump over him and slice his back up when he's doing the wall-defence. The respawning helicopters taking potshots at Raiden from the sides help a little bit, but not much.

I think if the fight had a way of forcing you to engage with Sundowner's reactive panels instead of letting you just go around them, it would hit the right balance. He still wouldn't be a hard boss, but he'd be an interesting and moderately challenging one.

The fight ends in a silly QTE sequence where he has a helicopter knock Raiden off the roof, only for Raiden to stick his sword into a slider and (somehow?) force it to fly him back up a shaft at him.

Did I ask for the game to let me use those wingsuits? Yes. Is this what I wanted? Not really, but I'll take it I guess.

As with the previous Winds of Destruction, the battle ends with a slow-mo midair clash where you have to buttonmash to make Raiden cut them to pieces now that their armor's failed. I make sure to stick to horizontal slashes to the torso, so that we can recover his head for interrogation like Raiden discussed with Kevin. But...Sundowner dies anyway. Maybe he had a suicide capsule in one of his teeth or something. All he says before dying is that in three hours, Operation Tecumseh will begin.

The "he" in this case is most likely Armstrong, though Sundowner won't say anything more. His last words are spoken in a phone call with Jetstream, which consists of Sundowner blaming him for getting him killed and Jetstream taking advantage of this opportunity to give Sundowner a cathartic "fuck you." Understandable. Like I said last time, I can't imagine Sundowner was all that fun to work with, especially in a subordinate position. Well, looks like Jetstream will get to have that rematch with Raiden that he's apparently been looking forward to after all.

Seriously, where the hell even is Jetstream though? He was in the building last that I knew. What happened between then and now?

While Doktor brings the helicopter in and Pochita catches up to the rooftop, Raiden has a conference call with the Maverick staff. What could be happening in three hours that Raiden doesn't have a hope of stopping? Sundowner's phrasing made it sound like the issue was getting to the place in time, rather than being able to stop it once he's present. Suggesting that it's somewhere in the Eastern hemisphere. It must be an unstable region, if one false flag stunt or whatever is expected to kick off a longrunning conflict, and it must antagonise a major power if it's going to create a profitable market for mercenaries.

Then, Raiden remembers a newscast he'd been listening to as he drove into Denver, about the US president being on his way to a frosty diplomatic meeting in Pakistan. Killing him and framing a local player for it would fit all the parameters just about perfectly. And um...apparently Maverick can't reach out to the US government with a warning that'll be heeded, because. um.

Official channels have been frozen since Mexico? It would make sense for that to have happened within the past 12 hours, after Raiden started his rampage through Denver and Maverik had to unconvincingly claim to have cut ties with him. Since Mexico though? Why?

Well, regardless.

Getting to Pakistan in two hours and change is a tall order. However, apparently we know someone who can manage that for us. A space development company called Solis, where an old friend of Raiden's is highly placed. I don't think I remember that name from any previous titles, but my exposure to their events is patchy, so I may have just missed that part. Anyway, they're based in Colorado not too far from the city, and a thermospheric rocket launch should be able to get Raiden from here to Pakistan in under thirty minutes. Still, that's not including prep and launch times, not to mention how long it'll take Raiden to get to the launch facility, so he'd better hurry the fuck up.

Okay then! Let's into space!

Doktor's helicopter arrives, and Raiden and Pochita hurry to start evacuating the brains with the plan to drop Raiden off at Solis before bringing the orphans to safety somewhere else.


So. That was a level. Almost certainly the most "gonzo" level of the game. Nearly plot-free, aside from the very beginning and the very end. I'm more sure than ever that this was originally conceived as the final level of one of the games that ended up being recycled into Revengeance.

This is probably a contributing factor to Sundowner's pushover battle feeling so off. The World Martial raid isn't especially hard for most of its playtime, but it's LONG, and it includes and encapsulates everything else before it. Like a last hoorah for a game. Then the boss rush as a second-to-last battle, serving the same purpose and also getting the player pumped up for the last, hardest challenge. And then...we fight a guy who's easier than Robo-Monsoon even without Robo-Mistral softening us up first. It just doesn't seem right.

Still, as an endgame gauntlet level, this was damned solid. It being out of place hurts it, but it's still fun. Definitely the level I'd be most likely to want to replay.

Time to level Raiden up some more. Along with the stat boosts, I spare the XP to buy Monsoon's sais and a special move for them - a magnetic tractor-beam effect, if I'm reading this correctly - that looks interesting to play with. Disappointingly, Boris' FTL engineering team are only able to reverse-engineer Sundowner's swords in the time it takes Raiden to bring the brains aboard the chopper, not the explosive armor panels.

I think I'll pass.

Too bad the FTL engineers can't just give Raiden a piggyback ride to Pakistan. I guess the air friction would kill him along with everything else in contact with earth's atmosphere.


Next level! Raiden, Pochita, and several hundred disembodied orphans are aboard Doktor's helicopter. This is actually the first time in the game that we see Raiden interacting with one of his (human) support staff members in person rather than remotely. It's a change that lends a surprising amount of coziness to this cinematic. Raiden and Doktor might rib each other a fair amount, but looking at them interact it's clear they're pretty tight.

Unfortunately, they aren't able to get out of Denver unscathed. As they fly away, a pair of heavy-duty UAV's come streaking through the rainstorm and begin firing. There's a silly dogfight that for some reason has the UAV's flying in close enough for Raiden to leap onto them and hit them with his sword.

It's a long, completely non-interactive cinematic. Not for the first time, I wonder if this game was meant to have a couple of flight-sim levels that got cut.

The long and short of this long, unplayable action sequence is that Raiden takes out the pursuers and lets the chopper escape, but in so doing is sent hurtling to the ground. From an altitude far greater than that of any of the skyscraper roofs.

The next level starts with the sun rising and Raiden standing in his own crater. With full hit points.

Game, why do you pretend that falls can kill Raiden sometimes?

Anyway, the ensuing level is pure padding. A short-ish gauntlet that consists largely of the exact same Denver streets that you fought through two levels ago, only moving in the other direction and with fewer setpieces. It's not very long, and it doesn't have any bosses or minibosses. It ends with Raiden stealing a motorcycle and driving away from Denver and toward the rocket launch place where he was heading anyway.

There are only two takeaways of this. One is that there's another civilian that needs saving, but with the large number of soldiers and a freaking GRAD menacing them I just wasn't able to manage it. I thought maybe an EMP grenade would do the trick, but no, too many snipers on faraway overlooks. Oh well. The other is that Pochita tells me he's going to be jumping off the chopper at some point and meeting up with Raiden on his way to the launch site. Thanks a bunch, brodoge.

Is that really reachable by motorbike in the time remaining? Eh, I guess so. Whatever. Padding level is padding.


Next time, we finally get a longterm pain in the ass taken care of.