Oddly enough, as a player who never even played a Metal Gear Solid game until about 2 months ago, I also lost the nuances of the scene. Not because I easily survived two button mashing torture sequences, but because modern gaming has conditioned me into thinking that this was a scene where the correct course of action was to give in.



There are plenty of games nowadays where this is a fight, scene or decision where the player cannot win and so I gave up after two torture sequences, thinking it would continue the story. As it turned out, it did and what I took from it was the game teaching me that war and conflict don't end up with the hero coming out on top, or saving those important to them. Things go south, stuff happens and people/characters live with those consequences.



I was only made aware that I got an alternate ending right at the end. My partner (who loves the Metal Gear series and was watching me play the entirety of MGS, along with the rest of the "Gear" series) was utterly confused about the ending I got, which was a bromance with Snake and Otacon. He said that when he played the game, Snake rode off into the sunset with Meryl and that he'd never seen this ending before. It was only then that I connected that the torture sequence could of been played out another way, but I just assumed from my experiences with gaming right now that this was the "correct" way to play.