Metal Gear Solid 2

Dog Tags Basics

The Dog Tags in Metal Gear Solid 2 are the metallic recognition markers called Dog Tags every Soldier has around his neck (especially in the USA, but in MGS2 the Russians also use this) to be recognised in case he should be killed in battle and in case he gets hurt you know his bloodtype for transfusions.
In Metal Gear Solid 2 almost every soldier you run into has a Dog Tag around his neck. You can take this Dog Tag away from him and collect these. How you take the Dog Tag from a guard is explained a bit down on this page.
When you collect more Dogtags you get better Bonus Items!

Bonus Items

The more Dogtags you collect the the better are the Bonus Items you receive on your next playthrough. Next playthrough in this case means exactly the following: You have to complete the playthrough you are on completely first, you have to have seen the ending credits and have to have saved the completion and collected dogtags of that playthrough. When loading this saved game and starting a new game on this file you can chose from the unlocked Bonus Items.

Furthermore consider that the Dogtags collected within a chapter only account for that chapter. This means, when you collect 25 Dogtag on the Tanker Level and 32 Dogtag on the Big Shell level then these are no way 56 Dogtags (but 57...), but only the number of Dogtags collected in each level account for that level, not the combined amount.

The following chart shows the number of Dogtags needed in the Tanker Level to unlock the listed Bonusitems.

46 Dogtags	Bandana	infinite ammo
78 Dogtags	Stealth	invisible to enemies

The following chart shows the number of Dogtags needed in the Big Shell Level to unlock the listed Bonusitems.

73 Dogtags	Brown Wig	infinite ammo
121 Dogtags	Stealth	invisible to enemies
170 Dogtags	Orange Wig B	infinite Grip
218 Dogtags	Blue Wig A	infinite Oxygene under water

Getting Dogtags

The get a Dogtag from one of the guards you only need a weapon and sneaking skills. It is a good choice to first equip the M9 as this gun only tranquillizes the guard in case things get serious.
Now watch the soldier you want the Dogtag from first, know the path this guy always takes. Once you know the path sneak up to the guy from behind, once you are a step behind him switch to FPV (

) and draw your gun (with

). Snake and Raiden say FREEZE! and the guard freezes.
Now the guard stays still and lifts his arms and you can walk around him. From the front aim at him again. If this soldier still has his Dogtag you can see it sparkle around his neck or on his upper chest. So when you are now just waving around with your gun this does nothing. The guard is more impressed when you aim for his head or his crotch.
Depending on what the guard says (see next Chapter - Soldier sentences) you will find out if he is a tough guy or a wimp.

The wimps start shaking and hand out their Dogtag pretty fast. Now you can tranquillize the wimp or shoot him and then pick up the desired Dogtag.

If you are facing one of the toughguy soldiers you are facing a problem. He is not that easily convinced to hand out his Dogtag but has a cool saying on the lips (see next chapter).
Now you need better arguments, so draw the SOCOM or the USP and shoot his arm or leg and after that aim for his head again. Look at that, now he hands out his Dogtag.
When you aim at him with the Stinger or a similar heavy artillery you just have to aim and don't have to shoot him with this gun first, this is very convincing, even for the toughest toughguys!

And there are even more things to consider when you want to make this happen flawless and without further problems:

You can't stop 2 guards at the same time, when you want to take away the Dogtag from one guard while there are two guards on patrol in the area you have to get rid of one of them.
The best way to do this is to distract the second guard with a book or tranquillize one of them (but this is annoying, the book is the better choice) or wait some more, maybe one of them just walks away.

Coming from the front is not a good idea, you better sneak up to your victim from behind his back. Most guards stay in their position for some time before turning around and going back on their path.

You can bluff with an empty gun when you ran out of Ammo, but when you put away the gun and accidentaly shoot while doing so the guards hear the click of the empty gun and attack you at once.

They also attack you when you are just doing nothing for too long while holding them up or when you aim to somewhere next to them and not on a bodypart.

If you did stop a soldier in front of a wall and thus can't get in front of him, put away your gun and grab the guard and drag him away from the wall.

When you are doing stupid things with the USP or the SOCOM and shoot a guard this Dogtag is gone. You can't revive the dead and you also can't get a Dogtag from the dead. So you better use the M9 to stop soldiers and shoot them after you got the Dogtag.

If you tranquillized a guard without getting his Dogtag there are still ways to get the Dogtag.

- Just wait until he wakes up again, at the beginning you see 3 Z symbols above the guard's head while he is sound asleep, after some time there are only 2 Zs, then only 1 until they are all gone and he wakes up again. But this takes very long.

- Sometimes it is just enough to leave the area in which you knocked out the guard and come back. But this doesn't work every time.

- When you drag and place a guard on some stairs he wakes up faster.

- Spray him with Coolant Spray right in the face and refresh him.

- If nothing else works you can lure another guard near the unconscious guard by knocking or acting all suspicious. This guy will kick his colleague and wake him up.

Use the Scope to zoom in on a guard and find out if he still has a Dogtag.
The Thermal Goggles work similar, when you look at a guard with this technogadget you can see a white spot at the guards neck when he still has his Dogtag because the metal of the Dogtag is cold.

When you view a soldier through the scope or one of the cams and press

you can see his name above his head when you already collected his Dogtag.

Sodier Sentences

As mentioned in the previous chapter there are different kinds of guards, there are the toughguys that don't give up their Dogtag so easy and there are the wimps that almost throw their Dogtag in your face.

Each one of these characters has his own repertoire of sentences he can say.

The wimps like to say:

hehehe
please, don't!
don't shoot!
don't kill me!

while the toughguys say something like this:

If you're going to shoot, then shoot!
Are you going to shoot me?
What are you...?
Would you shoot a prisoner?
Just try to pull the trigger!