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ok metal gear wiki. allow me to explain why this is wrong
while his specific age might not have been set in stone, it MUST have already been retconned by mgs2. which isn't too surprising, because a lot in the mgs1 biographies was retconned and probably of dubious canon in the first place.
why do I say this? because in mgs2 emma says she and otacon only knew each other for two years. and at numerous points, otacon and emma both refer to themselves as having been "kids." this makes the chance that otacon was intended to have been an adult at that time EXTREMELY slim
besides this, you have to just be ignoring blatant context clues in the story lol. the fact that emma's second stepfather attempted to assault her is clearly intended as a mirror to what happened with hal. otacon cries as he talks about how this happened to him
otacon says he didn't leave emma because of "the accident" (huey's suicide). he says he left because he was having an "affair" with her mother, essentially revealing (even if he doesn't realize it) that he was running away from being abused
yes, of course otacon felt guilt. he blames himself because you know... that's normal behavior for many sexual abuse victims... and it shouldn't be very surprising, it is honestly realistic, that a man sexually abused by a woman would not acknowledge it as abuse.
however, the fact that he says he didn't run away because of huey's suicide does suggest that his guilt wasn't the only motivating factor and we should understand this as an implication that he was running away from abuse.
abuse is a wider theme of mgs2 that this fits into. raiden was obviously abused by solidus. otacon was abused, and so was emma. the game ends with snake talking about having to do better by future generations. the characters in this game were failed by their own older generations
