According to Hideo Kojima in the documentary
Metal Gear Saga Vol. 1, the original plot of the game revolved around nuclear weapon inspections in
Iraq and
Iran and had Solid Snake trying to stop the Metal Gear while it was located on an aircraft carrier, in a certain time limit, while trying to stop Liquid Snake and his group. However, about six months into the project the Middle East began to heat up again and they decided that they couldn't make a game with such a plot. The tanker in the released game is based on this original plot.
Significant changes to the game's ending were made late in development following the
September 11 attacks in New York, where the finale occurs. A sequence depicting Arsenal Gear's displacement of the
Statue of Liberty and crashing through half of
Manhattan was removed, as was a short coda to appear after the credits, a breaking newscast showing the Statue of Liberty's new resting place,
Ellis Island. At the point where Solidus dies, Raiden was supposed to have cut the rope on Federal Hall's flagpole, causing an American flag to fall over Solidus' body, and American flags which were supposed to be on all the flagpoles in New York were removed from the title.
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MGS2 was also intended to reference the novel
City of Glass, notably in the naming of its characters.
[65] Raiden's support team originally featured a field commander named Daniel Quinn (simply referred as the "Colonel" in-game); Maxine "Max" Work, an Asian woman who saves game data and quotes
Shakespeare, and William "Doc" Wilson, the creator of GW. All take their names from key characters in the book, and all three would have turned out to be
artificial intelligences. None of these characters survived to the final edition, their roles being absorbed by other characters, namely the "Colonel Campbell" simulation, Rose, and Emma Emmerich. Peter Stillman, however, takes his name from another
City of Glass character.
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