Hey, you know this MGS2 screen? You might, if you were playing Sons of Liberty on your European PS2 in 2002, but probably not! It only existed in the PAL version of Sons of Liberty and it also doesn't exist in Substance, so it doesn't exist in any of the rereleases (including the HD versions.)
It's a screen where you pick your difficulty and whether you start on the Tanker or Plant, but that's not really important. What is important is that this obscure screen has voice acting (at 7:43 in the video linked below). While you're on these menus, a monotone, robotic female voice explains them to you before introducing the game, saying "Action level selected. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty will now begin."
Who's the voice actress for that screen? It's Lara Cody... AKA Rosemary. And in the context of MGS2 at the time, that has has so many implications for the ambiguous nature of Rosemary's existence outside of GW, and the way that she seems to become increasingly mechanical and computerlike as the virus destroys GW. Even her voice as she claims that she's been taken hostage and is pregnant breaks down and distorts like corrupted digital audio.
And that isn't even the half of the implications. First time players of the PAL version would hear Rosemary's voice here before they actually meet her, and that first impression is of Rosemary's VA describing the menu selection for the difficulty before announcing "Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty will now begin." It sets the tone for the game, before it even starts, as a work of fiction, a performance. Everything in MGS2 is about Raiden being led and manipulated down the game's script, a theatrical recreation of MGS1, until he learns the architects of the script - and who are they represented by? The Colonel and Rosemary.
And that furthers the implication that not just Rosemary, but everything, in MGS2 is a simulation. So much of the game raises that ambiguity, that question of "where does the simulation end and reality begin?"... the Rosemary VA introducing it suggests even the game itself is a simulation within its own universe. And it being Rosemary also works to reinforce the ways that the relationship between Rosemary and Raiden reflect the relationship between the game and its player, the ways in which the relationship that Rosemary describes having with Raiden are paralleled to the relationship the player as Raiden has to Raiden's own world.
Even this obscure niche screen from one version of the game has so many striking metanarrative implications. Metal Gear Solid 2 is brilliant. It's legitimately art.