Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance/Fridge

• Fridge Horror: In one of the many endings of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Rose made damn sure Raiden quit being a Heroic Sociopath by showing her relationship with Campbell was a lie to hide Raiden's son from the Patriots. If Raiden hasn't quit being a mercenary at this point, and probably not being a role model for his son, he's either snapped as they were killed off or Raiden's gone full PTSD and waved buh-bye to reality. Either way, this change of pace does not bode well for Metal Gear's message, as Raiden may have become a Villain Protagonist.
  • Alternately, he's run smack-dab into the other part of why War Is Hell; a soldier cannot exist without battles to fight, and the longer one has fought, the more difficult he finds it to build a new life. Raiden is a Child Soldier - so, like Big Boss, Grey Fox and all three Snakes, the best he could do was fight for what he believed in. A Bittersweet Ending at best, but one could find nobility in it.

"One sword keeps another in the sheath. Sometimes the threat of violence alone is a deterrent. Sometimes by taking a life, others can be preserved. It's the code the Samurai lived by."

• • I don't see why a man can't be both a warrior and a family man. Soldiers have families too, try telling the millions of service members right now that they can't fight a war and come back home and love their families. Sure if Raiden really has lost his family due to his warrior lifestyle then it would be an effective illustration of war being hell, but you can't make assumptions like that without knowing more about the story.
  • Except there are Real Life examples of Shell Shocked Veterans who are so irreversibly fucked up that they are psychologically incapable of returning to civilian life - one memorable case is a vet who filed assault charges against himself, as he nearly killed a family member who was moving around the house at night. Considering Raiden has been killing people since he was able to walk, it's possible that this applies to him - being loaded with cybernetics would at least give him an off switch.
  • The subtitle of this game being Revengeance doesn't really help much either--who, exactly, is Raiden getting "vengeful revenge" for?
  • The E3 trailer narration also implies that the route that Sunny took when finishing up FOXALIVE actually resulted in things being even worse without the Patriots in power than when the Patriots were in power. Let that sink in for a moment.
    • Which was foreshadowed by Drebin during the end of MGS4. Not to mention that things were already shitty before the Patriots, which means that its really more of same.