Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5085906-20130627191357/@comment-1672596-20150803135432

Terminator-HIX wrote: IIRC there was barely anything in MGS2's pre-release material to suggest Raiden was in the game at all, let alone that you spend the majority of the game playing as him.

By contrast, people were able to glean that Naked Snake = young Big Boss and a basic understanding of MGS3's plot from its pre-release stuff. Then again, MGS3 was a saving throw of sorts for Kojima after MGS2 polarised the fanbase. I wouldn't be too certain if there was that much of a basic understanding of Snake Eater's plot prior to pre-release stuff: The trailers did make it seem as though The Boss would have been as much of a monster as Colonel Volgin in the game, nearly killing her protégé and shooting Snake's eye out, enough to give Snake a nightmare. Also like Raiden, Volgin was shown only once in the trailer with little indication of what role he would play. In the final game, it was Volgin who was the main villain (The Boss, if anything, was just the main antagonist, not even a villain, let alone a monster, or at least the story doesn't treat her as such), the worst The Boss does with a gun is simply threaten Snake with it, she doesn't actually shoot him with it (not during cutscenes anyway), and she's not even responsible for Snake's loss of his eye at all, Ocelot was, and that bit was a total accident on his part (he was aiming for Tatyana, Snake got in the way). And Snake waking up from a nightmare was from the aftermath of a minigame that wasn't even related to The Boss or even any of the events of the game other than possibly saving the game while in a cell, but rather to an easter egg.