There's a pattern to the location of the nodes in #MetalGearSolid 2.

(thread)

At first, MGS2 calls attention to the nodes. When you start the Plant chapter, you're forced to activate the first node. There's no way around it.

In Strut A proper, a cutscene shows you where the node is.

In Strut B, the game backs off a bit. It doesn't directly point out the node, but it does place you right next to it as you come out of the cutscene, and you'll likely find it pretty easily.

Once the bomb disposal starts, the game begins to steer you away from the nodes. They're no longer directly on the path to your objective, are often tucked away in corners or ensconced in rooms you may never even go in.

Theyre not close to the bombs. Following your C4 sensor won't lead you to them or by them. Depending on how to tackle the rest of the struts on Shell 1, you may not come across some of them. Same w/ the core. Not hard to find by any means, but tucked away, out of the way, guarded

Once you get to Shell 2, the placement of the nodes slowly realigns with the path to your objective. First in the air purification facility, then when you go down to the flooded filtration chamber, and again when you get to the room where Emma is.

Arsenal Gear's node is alone in a room you're forced through — you don't have to activate it, but there's no way you'll miss it — finally realigning the nodes with your path.

When you activate a node in MGS2, you see something that shouldn't exist within the game's (for the time and in some ways still) hyperreal world: an options menu.

Because in MGS2, nodes are just that: nodes. Vertices. Points...

...of contact that call attention to the connections they forge between two spaces, two worlds.

But in the context of a game like MGS2, they're also a break, an interruption, a reminder of what's really happening and what you're really doing. So it makes sense that they sort of fade into the background and then come back into the limelight at the end.

Slowly you immerse yourself in the world of the game. Maybe you even forget that you're playing a game

But by the end, the simulated nature of this space and everything you do within comes back into clear focus just as it does in the game's narrative. You can't ignore it anymore