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SPOILER: Metal Gear Solid V Spoiler Thread | Such a lust for conclusion, T-WHHOOOO
- Thread starter MMarston
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razzmahtazz
Member
Ok so that only means that BB was still operating as BB. Venom still serves his purpose. When somebody sees BB in the field, that can be attributed to Venom. BB can still meet Grey Fox in his goal to build OH. It's just unclear who's who when you lay out which of the known BB feats are BB or VS. That's fine.
The appearance and personality is not even an issue. BB warns VS about N313. He tells him to play the legend, so as a double, he does his part.
Big Boss' consent didn't matter. Venom Snake was already "complete" by the time he woke up. The plan was happening whether Big Boss accepted it or not, just like Les Enfants Terribles.
Everything in your second paragraph is part of the story's many problems. The references are quick and cheap offering nothing of any worth to the narrative. They're just there. Venom Snake has no "lust." He's not even bent on revenge unlike what the trailers promoted. He's a leaf blowing in the wind between vengeful Miller and indifferent Ocelot. The only thing he really does of his own volition is blowing Skullface's limbs off, and that was more just because Miller was right beside him and needed some karma.
The references are wafer-thin and devoid of substance. Just a few contrived conveniences lacking any meaning or purpose besides pretentious flash. Venom Snake is nothing like Ahab. If anything, he is the polar opposite.
It's not unclear, all of those instances were the real Big Boss. Otherwise it cheapens the narrative and the character, and introduces a metric fuck ton of unnecessary confusion. Either way, it's pathetic writing.
Of course they're an issue. They're a nonsensical contradiction perpetuated by lack of attention or care to established narrative. Venom Snake was already playing the double for 11 years. The tape only served to explain why he was unknowingly playing the double. That's it. It doesn't ask him to do anything differently, otherwise... he wouldn't have been playing the double. Even though he was never a good double to begin with because he's nothing like Big Boss as a person. Yet not a single person really notices at any point ever, except when it's convenient for the shitty story to make players wonder. But once it's served its purpose, it gets glossed over completely.
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Eh, the thing with Venom is that you have to remember he was another creation of Zero's, much like the three genetic Snakes. Unlike the genetic Snakes BB was actually ok with having a body double, presumably because he trusted V, but it wasn't his idea. Zero created Venom as BB's phantom to keep him safe (we know from XOF and Skull Face at the very least) but at the same time it's not that surprising that BB would go off and do his own dangerous things anyway, because that's the kind of guy he is. Venom's real purpose post Skull Face is to build the fortress of Outer Heaven while Big Boss worms his way back into the good graces of the USA and becomes commander of FOXHOUND.
BB is still the man, the myth, and the legend and does plenty of stuff (that we know of) after waking up in 1984, going across the world and meeting various people. V was created by Zero to keep him safe but BB seems more interested in using V to keep his mercenary force functioning while he gets to do his own thing, and then later using him to command Outer Heaven while he commands FOXHOUND.
BB is still the man, the myth, and the legend and does plenty of stuff (that we know of) after waking up in 1984, going across the world and meeting various people. V was created by Zero to keep him safe but BB seems more interested in using V to keep his mercenary force functioning while he gets to do his own thing, and then later using him to command Outer Heaven while he commands FOXHOUND.
The Cartographer
Member
The Phantom Pain is truly the Halo Reach of the Metal Gear series.
The story doesn't help itself by constantly bringing up how the "whole world" wants Big Boss dead but there's never any indication of such. Who actually does besides Skullface? Governments, PFs and NGOs are perfectly happy enlisting his services. The American and Russian governments were both customers of MSF, so who?
I actually like Halo Reach and ending unlike this game
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
This kind of bothered me too. You get that sense when everyone in the hospital is out to kill him (and everyone else to get to him) but not again. Makes me wonder if the game was indeed going to be longer during its conceptualization, there would be enemies besides XOF. I'm still more inclined to believe that the hospital escape was made before the rest of the game and that the rest of the game was made to retroactively fit that segment, and not all of the puzzle pieces fit perfectly.
Dick Justice
Banned
Ocelots do love to make up exaggerated bullshit.
For a skilled triple agent it's a very shitty lie because there's nothing to at least support it.
It was always obvious that it was XOF in the hospital sequence so not even the prologue gives any indication that anyone else wants him dead. Then we're supposed to accept that Venom Snake went another decade without a single attempt on his life from anyone he wasn't in actual conflict with. It's a totally pointless facet of the story... once again, because the body double twist was a complete and utter hack job which needed contrivance and contradiction to be implemented at all. That's how bad it is as a plot point.
Dick Justice
Banned
Considering the fact that he has to hypnotize himself to perform undercover, Ocelot's probably a really shitty agent in reality.
Oldest Snake
Member
Pay attention mate. Venom Snake was actually Solid Snake all along, having undergone parasite therapy to speed up his aging.
So I've been thinking about the horrible story of this game all morning and just can't figure out the logic behind it. It's like Assassin's Creed 3 and Mass Effect 3 crashing together to a form a horrible, overblow but utterly boring story that has most of the its content cut never gets an ending.. and what IS left in the game just pisses people off.
MGSV is the answer to the questions about MGS that nobody was asking.
Dick Justice
Banned
So Liquid was in fact Code Talker after undergoing nanomachine + parasite therapy, while the Foxhound Unit was actually the Cobra Unit reincarnated with Wolbachia?
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Ocelot comes off as a guy with really bad Dissociative Identity Disorder if you watch him across the five main games. Even from MGS1 - > MGS2, where he's mostly the same, he has Liquid possessing him. Guy is a mental trainwreck.
razzmahtazz
Member
Which characters are cheapened?
"He doesnt act like BB before he gets the tapes, But he acts like BB in MG1 after he finds out". Is what I was trying to say and from that I get that he plays the double. Plays meaning mimics.
Dick Justice
Banned
Eh, he's a fairly consistent (asshole) character between 1, 2 and 3. Then he's inexplicably given the story in 4 that he did it all for love (of Big Boss' Big Boss).
Venom was created as a response to Skull Face's attack on Big Boss. Zero didn't want to lose his friend, so he created a decoy for him. Big Boss trusted Venom, as he was one of his best soldiers of MSF, and agreed to it. He didn't want to risk another XOF incident.
But I guess friendship is lazy writing if you're cynical enough about it. :/
Venom Snake's role in the original games allows for big boss to have a more consistent narrative. If you compare the BB of MG1 and MG2, they are portrayed differently. In MG1 he's a much more generic villain, while in MG2 he was played as more being forced to deal with the situation.
By splitting the characters, it allows for the big boss of 3 and 4 to have a consistent personality and narrative throughout the games, instead of this moment where he died somehow after turning evil, then came back as a tragic figure only to die again and come back to die again. It was much sloppier before and a point of contention in having serious discussions on the narrative. It felt in conflict with itself. Zero and the Patriots also had poor characterization and no arc.
Suddenly your support team is the big bad evils of the world? Suddenly everyone is obsessed with Zero? These things are elements that MGS4 just threw out there fast and loose at the player and it ended up with a weightless graveyard scene that came out of nowhere. Now MGSV has given that entire sub-story of 4 some real weight and meaning. The characters are properly set up now.
(Additionally, it gives a nice context for why mantis's phantom would have followed liquid ocelot's will in 4. The ideas and mechanics are better set up now. It also alters sorrow's appearance to break off phantom mantis as having a slight place in the story. He's stepping in to allow snake to stop his son's madness.)
If you play PW and V between 3 and 4, you end up with a consistent character arc for all parties involved (as well as a natural evolution of the gameplay, since PW was a step back from 4 but an advancement from 3) V was important for the series as a whole, a series most people haven't really thought critically about in 7 years, to be honest, which is where alot of the wider dismissiveness in the gaming community right now probably comes from.
but no it's all lazy because ?????? (I really don't get the vitriol at all. I thought the game was awesome and everything it did to service the greater narrative was crucial and worthwhile)
But I guess friendship is lazy writing if you're cynical enough about it. :/
Venom Snake's role in the original games allows for big boss to have a more consistent narrative. If you compare the BB of MG1 and MG2, they are portrayed differently. In MG1 he's a much more generic villain, while in MG2 he was played as more being forced to deal with the situation.
By splitting the characters, it allows for the big boss of 3 and 4 to have a consistent personality and narrative throughout the games, instead of this moment where he died somehow after turning evil, then came back as a tragic figure only to die again and come back to die again. It was much sloppier before and a point of contention in having serious discussions on the narrative. It felt in conflict with itself. Zero and the Patriots also had poor characterization and no arc.
Suddenly your support team is the big bad evils of the world? Suddenly everyone is obsessed with Zero? These things are elements that MGS4 just threw out there fast and loose at the player and it ended up with a weightless graveyard scene that came out of nowhere. Now MGSV has given that entire sub-story of 4 some real weight and meaning. The characters are properly set up now.
(Additionally, it gives a nice context for why mantis's phantom would have followed liquid ocelot's will in 4. The ideas and mechanics are better set up now. It also alters sorrow's appearance to break off phantom mantis as having a slight place in the story. He's stepping in to allow snake to stop his son's madness.)
If you play PW and V between 3 and 4, you end up with a consistent character arc for all parties involved (as well as a natural evolution of the gameplay, since PW was a step back from 4 but an advancement from 3) V was important for the series as a whole, a series most people haven't really thought critically about in 7 years, to be honest, which is where alot of the wider dismissiveness in the gaming community right now probably comes from.
but no it's all lazy because ?????? (I really don't get the vitriol at all. I thought the game was awesome and everything it did to service the greater narrative was crucial and worthwhile)
Dick Justice
Banned
People generally understood that the story and characterization in MG1 was paper-thin, and was something that could easily be addressed with a remake or whatever. It's not something that needed to be fixed by bringing in Diet Boss.
And sorry, a lot of the dismissiveness comes from the plot being absolute dogshit. That's it.
His personality is just skewed in each game due to bad and inconsistent writing because Kojima fell in love with making him a good guy and not the shitty torturing scumbag backstabbing murderous traitor. Same situation as Big Boss. Kojima needed to neuter their personalities to avoid any meaningful development, because the entire series had already set them on a road to Hell. Kojima wanted to avoid that at any cost and show them up to be good guys albeit misguided. Even Zero gets his hands washed of any wrongdoing at all in this game, making Ocelot's anger at him particularly forced.
Solid Snake. Liquid Snake. Gray Fox. Sniper Wolf. Probably more. These characters are even bound together by their shared interactions with Big Boss. Once you imply that they were actually all talking to a completely different guy who is nothing like Big Boss, it makes their relationship with him completely meaningless. It's like being raised by someone you thought was your mother but then at the age of 40 being told that your real mother was actually someone who just happened to (not) look like her and have a completely different personality.
He doesn't do anything different in MG1 than TPP. Not a single thing.
They were customers that were gradually growing more and more worried about the influence MSF could have on the greater world at large after it got a nuke. The fallout of the Peace Walker incident is what lead to MSF gaining enemies all over the world. Listen to the tapes, mate. It's all there. The meaning behind the story has ALWAYS been in the codec. (except in 4, which tried putting the codec into the main game story, which kind of ruined the pacing of the narrative)
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Serious question: What's better, the ending twist of MGSV or this fan rendition of the ending of MG2?
This will truly gauge the level of disappointment with V's ending
MGS4's twist bothers me way more than the existence of Venom Snake because of this. Ocelot's plan would have made a billion times more sense if it was actually Liquid possessing him and being the angry extremist that he is. But no, it's Ocelot doing it for some asinine reason in a really stupid way.
This will truly gauge the level of disappointment with V's ending
I'll usually defend the writing in the MGS series, but Ocelot's character makes no sense after a while. He's usually at the center of the "twist" and since Kojima doesn't seem to hold his canon with as much sanctity as he does whatever story he wants to tell at the time, Ocelot usually comes off as having really twisted and overly complicated motives throughout the games. I'm pretty sure even Kojima struggled to come up with decent motivations for why he did the things he did and acted the way he did.
MGS4's twist bothers me way more than the existence of Venom Snake because of this. Ocelot's plan would have made a billion times more sense if it was actually Liquid possessing him and being the angry extremist that he is. But no, it's Ocelot doing it for some asinine reason in a really stupid way.
Dick Justice
Banned
That's the problem. It's all "tell, don't show" with this game. Relegating important plot points to these tapes that most players won't bother with.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
That's just being pedantic. A key point of every MG story is that there are always "wheels within wheels", factions within governments and security forces working to their own agenda, or as proxies for other powers and interests.
Both Skullface and Cipher(Zero) are notionally working for the US, but are actually both are aiming to usurp their paymasters.
Not to mention that every time BB and his organization intervenes they are taking action against somebody who may conceivably come after them for retribution.
Dick Justice
Banned
I've seen the point brought up a lot of times that the ending is Kojima's way of treating Venom as a player stand-in and that the player is the one that gets to "be" Big Boss, receiving the gratitude of the real one (as well as Kojima by proxy). I can see where people are coming from with that but the problem is... I don't really feel like that's a distinction I necessarily like. Big Boss was demonstrably a passive bystander in terms of story and everything he eventually built up to (and became) was something I didn't want to be congratulated for. This was the game that made it clear more than anything that I worked for a bunch of war hungry thugs, philanthropy isn't really a word that exists in the Outer Heaven dictionary. I didn't really accomplish any feat in MGSV that hasn't been proven to be any more major than past Metal Gear games (except Mission 45 fuck that), and a large majority what I did was fueled by arbitrary revenge or a desire to expand my base of bad guy operations.
The cutscene itself was actually somewhat poignant and beautifully directed I admit. It ends off with a fantastic bookend with the cassette tape setting the stage for Metal Gear 1 and Big Boss walking into a huge phantom shroud, which I felt was the signification of him turning into a villain. But it's only beautiful in the same way the changing-of-seasons sequence in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is beautiful, in that it's a scene that is stringed together well but just doesn't work in the context of everything the surrounding structure wants to paint. It doesn't deal with the hard hitting questions to create a satisfying conclusion of the journey the character itself has.
The whole "you're the shit" message isn't something I think can reasonably be justified through Big Boss as an avatar. I'm tempted to say that maybe part of Kojima regrets "ending" the series so early with MGS4 because Solid Snake is a much better avatar to use for it. It makes sense, since Metal Gear Solid is still Solid Snake's "story" as far as I'm concerned. In fact, Big Boss even admits to Snake in MGS4 that he'd proven himself to be the best "Snake" of all, not just in terms of skill but in terms of being a human. It's crazy for me to think that Kojima thinks of Big Boss as lesser than Snake when he spends so much of MGSV (and indeed just about every other MGS game after 3) trying to tell us that Big Boss is totally a cool guy who did all this great stuff.
I feel like Kojima is too afraid to kill his darlings, at least in a way that's convincing. I don't really feel like what I did in this game is something to be proud about. This eventual expression of gratitude the game built up to was woefully wasted on the type of game it really wanted to be, and should have been saved for a story that was far more consistent. Kojima might be a messy writer but I'd never claim that the mainline games didn't have a consistent theme running throughout that built up to a great message in it's conclusion. MGSV is the first time I feel like that never happened, and that he forgot who he was writing for here.
The cutscene itself was actually somewhat poignant and beautifully directed I admit. It ends off with a fantastic bookend with the cassette tape setting the stage for Metal Gear 1 and Big Boss walking into a huge phantom shroud, which I felt was the signification of him turning into a villain. But it's only beautiful in the same way the changing-of-seasons sequence in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is beautiful, in that it's a scene that is stringed together well but just doesn't work in the context of everything the surrounding structure wants to paint. It doesn't deal with the hard hitting questions to create a satisfying conclusion of the journey the character itself has.
The whole "you're the shit" message isn't something I think can reasonably be justified through Big Boss as an avatar. I'm tempted to say that maybe part of Kojima regrets "ending" the series so early with MGS4 because Solid Snake is a much better avatar to use for it. It makes sense, since Metal Gear Solid is still Solid Snake's "story" as far as I'm concerned. In fact, Big Boss even admits to Snake in MGS4 that he'd proven himself to be the best "Snake" of all, not just in terms of skill but in terms of being a human. It's crazy for me to think that Kojima thinks of Big Boss as lesser than Snake when he spends so much of MGSV (and indeed just about every other MGS game after 3) trying to tell us that Big Boss is totally a cool guy who did all this great stuff.
I feel like Kojima is too afraid to kill his darlings, at least in a way that's convincing. I don't really feel like what I did in this game is something to be proud about. This eventual expression of gratitude the game built up to was woefully wasted on the type of game it really wanted to be, and should have been saved for a story that was far more consistent. Kojima might be a messy writer but I'd never claim that the mainline games didn't have a consistent theme running throughout that built up to a great message in it's conclusion. MGSV is the first time I feel like that never happened, and that he forgot who he was writing for here.
I know what the tapes say. They're wholly irrelevant because none of what they mention is ever hinted at in "reality." There's a disconnect within the story that leads to apparent contradictions, even if it's sound on paper. You can't just mention something major and then go out of your way to not only avoid addressing it at any point to make the threat actually seem like a threat, but also going the complete opposite direction and having Venom Snake, as Big Boss, having another heroic adventure where he does nothing bad to even make players think "hey, maybe people are right to want him dead."
It's all bullshit.
None of these "wheels within wheels" are hinted at, so that point is moot.
Cipher is an independent force. It can't pull the strings by being subordinate to the puppet.
Nobody really comes after Big Boss though. Except XOF. Not even the Soviet Union shows any inclination to go against him until he's shitting on their boots.
You could say it's not something that needed to be remade either. (Remakes are more pointless to the industry than sequels, and less valuable.) Additionally, this doubles over one of the elements of mg1's narrative into something super interesting when the codec frequency for "big boss" changes. It also gives Frank Yaeger a more consistent narrative place as well. Now he's always loyal to big boss, and his encounter with venom snake and capture no longer feel like an inconsistency to MG2.
And again, it makes mgs4's big boss scene make more sense. Big Boss was never a villain, he was just trying to realise The Boss's vision in his own way, unfortunately the karma of his deeds in the role he ultimately play in MG1 become his downfall in MG2. See, now there's character depth added to these old games without having to "replace" them. Isn't that far less wasteful? (Additionally, it adds the question of whether it's Venom Snake in the grave next to The Boss in 4. Not only is that interesting for Solid Snake's narrative, but it's very interesting for Big Boss's, for him to place that much respect for this soldier that sacrificed everything for his sake in his eyes)
plot's not dogshit. it's great. love it. Sorry you don't like it.
Whatever dude. If you just want to jump through hoops to come up with ways to ignore the story that's your own perogative. Several major aspect of MGS1's big twist happen in codecs, same for MGS2, several major aspects of MGSV's big twists happen on tapes. Additionally, listening to the yellow tapes is crucial for triggering certain plots to show up in the narrative (unless I got that wrong) so there's the argument to be made that these are as essential as vital to story progression as blowing up Metal Gear. But you can just ignore it if you want. No skin off my back. I enjoy the full narrative and don't see the need to put arbitrary limiters on what "counts" and "why not".
Everything in the game counts. Every tape is part of the story. A cutscene isn't the only thing that matters. Everything involving skullface is informed by things involving zero and the real big boss, and even paz. Alot of this happens on tapes, alot of it is as important as anything else and just as interesting.
I was in that.
can i have your autograph?
Dick Justice
Banned
Except the codec frequency changes for other support characters in MG2, not just Big Boss.
Also, regarding him not being a villain:
And that isn't Venom's grave, considering it says the person died in 1999. Even if it was, it's a retcon that isn't needed. At all. It doesn't add anything interesting to Solid Snake's narrative because it was never a thing before this game, and was never acknowledged.
Plot's dogshit. It's terrible. Hate it. Sorry you like it.
That explains old snake...
Kenzodielocke
Banned
The twist is stupid. Should've been Big Boss doing bad stuff and realising it, when they figure out to remove his horn, then going full demon.
Could've been a smart twist, where you then play certain missions again, but this time you see what you've really done, killing innocent people and also realising, how Kaz has betrayed you because of his LUST FOR REVENGE.
Could've been a smart twist, where you then play certain missions again, but this time you see what you've really done, killing innocent people and also realising, how Kaz has betrayed you because of his LUST FOR REVENGE.
The plot is shamefully bad. The fact that people need to conjure up flimsy excuses to defend it is a testament to this. If it can't stand on its own merits, it's a bad story.
I agree that everything counts. The problem is when "everything" doesn't fit. Each component is sterile and separate. Everything either comes out of nowhere, or doesn't come out at all. I'm not ignoring the story. I'm acknowledging every little detail about it. It just so happens that those details are full of shit. A story particularly in video games is the sum of its parts, but each part is independent in this game to the point of seeming like it was thrown together at the last minute. There's nothing cohesive about it.
Gray Fox being captured in MG1 was never an inconsistency. It was a ruse to justify sending in a rookie to die in order to throw off NATO. Maybe Kojima threw in a retcon for that too, either way he wrote a bad story.
You can have more than my autograph 😉
The Giant Bomb twist of having the horn removed then all of the previous events in the game re-contextualized to portray Big Boss as more evil would have been better.
Kenzodielocke
Banned
Yeah, that's where I got my Idea from.
BotchPoppaPump
Member
Oh dude, I would argue that's the entire point. That BB's consent is the most important part. He could've rebelled against the idea, God knows he's not been a fan of going along with Ciphers schemes in the past. To me, he is the deciding factor. He helps Venom leave the hospital. If he hadn't been there, plan falls flat on it's face from the start. This is the most interesting issue, why does he help? Why does he go along with the plan?
Oh look, Venom doesn't bring the lust, no. I see him and Miller being two parts of a whole Ahab that the game is trying to present. Miller brings the hate, Venom is the instrument, the fiddle, if you will. For me, the canon death of Skull Face is you refusing to shoot and then Miller obv grabbing your arm and you doing it together.
But obv that comes later, and it gets fleshed out as much as any of Kojima's strands get fleshed out. But at the beginning of the game as Venom starts his journey, before we get to see how much of a leaf he is, you have the Call me Ishmael line, a knowing, almost dickish thing in the vein of, you know all that potentially scarring shit you are about to embark upon, good luck with that! I've just got a new leather jacket and I'm off on a road trip!
Except the codec frequency changes for other support characters in MG2, not just Big Boss.
Also, regarding him not being a villain:
And that isn't Venom's grave, considering it says the person died in 1999. Even if it was, it's a retcon that isn't needed. At all. It doesn't add anything interesting to Solid Snake's narrative because it was never a thing before this game, and was never acknowledged.
Plot's dogshit. It's terrible. Hate it. Sorry you like it.
Not an exception, it's an also. Retcon isn't inherently a bad thing. Nothing in the story of the entire series is needed except for the barebones elements of "Snake shoots a metal gear then fist fights a guy then escapes." Depth doesn't have to be needed in a story to be essential to it's value. That's what this is.
Big Boss caring for the child soldiers is a gray area element of his mg2 story. it doesn't cast him as a villain. It's not a black and white element. He was saving them from fighting and dying for nothing so that they could bond their lives to an organization that values them. This could likely be why the child soldier subplot in V is there in the first place, and why Kingdom of Flies would have been so valuable to the real boss establishing this ideal for how to save child soldiers. (As Kaz's methods were unsuccessful)
Your dismissal on how Venom Snake's existence can re-inform the narrative of MGS4 displays a lack of respect for what a retcon can offer to a story. It displays a total dismissing of the concept on your part. It is not a universal truth, only a personal bias.
I'm saying it could be venom's grave, with a falsified headstone, to maintain the legend.
Oh and that last line cynicism was kinda pointless. Don't really care as I'm not placing my value of the plot on how much someone does or does not respect my opinion on it. My views are mine and yours are yours. If you want an exchange of views, don't use it as an opportunity to kick dirt on the other person.
Caring for child soldiers? You must be being disingenuous, because you have a screenshot in-front of you with Big Boss talking about making war orphans and feeding them back into the next war, to make a perpetual battlefield. There is no gray area, he's a villain.
swearing-circle
Member
Sorry for the bad image.
I know it's just coincidence but I like to think that BB is referring to Venom as well as Ocelot here.
BB: Under certain conditions, someone can be made to play a specific role. Act like someone else.
It's not important at all because it's literally irrelevant. It was going to happen no matter what. Big Boss was nearly killed in the hospital too, the entire scheme would've worked even better if Venom Snake, looking like Big Boss, was killed and confirmed dead. Then Big Boss could've done the logical thing and changed his face to assume a new identity like he's supposed to do according to the ending. Venom Snake contributes nothing to the Big Boss name and legend anyway beyond what we see in this game, none of which is relevant to future events. It's a pebble that makes no splash.
Sorry for the bad image.
I know it's just coincidence but I like to think that BB is referring to Venom as well as Ocelot here.
BB: Under certain conditions, someone can be made to play a specific role. Act like someone else.
I love the cherry-picking needed for these excuses. In the very next line he mentions how The Patriots never managed to turn one person into another even with all their technology. That very thing happens in MGSV and Big Boss is fully aware of it. It's the same with the "but it's S3 beta!" nonsense that people grasp onto just because "Solid Snake Simulation" is the only thing they remember from MGS2's story. The S3 Plan had nothing to do with turning someone into someone else.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
XOF which is notionally a Cipher team, have free-run down to holding/interrogating/executing prisoners at a US blacksite!
Or did you just forget the events of GZ?
Ultimately, I think that fact that Kojima was more interested in using MGSV's plot to 'fix' continuity errors that arose from two pretty damn basic games from the 80/early 90s rather than actually tell a story based around the development of the lead character that linked meaningfully to those stories in a motivational / character based way tells us exactly where his priorities lie as a storyteller. He's more interested in detail and world-building than character development and narrative structure, more interested in intrigue and cheap twists over developing coherent relationships and character motivations and in MGSV it completely ruined the story. From this perspective, the fact that the twist undermines everything we learn about 'Big Boss' in V is irrelevant to Kojima - he's not really concerned about that anyway.
Same shit with parasites and nanomachines. We spend so much more time on those things that no one really cares about compared to getting actual character development. We spend roughly 10 times more listening to Code Talker drone on about Wolbachia than we do getting a sense of who Skull Face is before we fight him.
Basically, at this stage of his career Kojima has become a really terrible storyteller. Thank god the gameplay was on point or this thing would have gone down as a disaster.
EDIT: I agree with everything that News Bot has said. Great posts. Bots have obviously advanced a great deal in the last few years. Someone give this tech to Ashley Madison.
Same shit with parasites and nanomachines. We spend so much more time on those things that no one really cares about compared to getting actual character development. We spend roughly 10 times more listening to Code Talker drone on about Wolbachia than we do getting a sense of who Skull Face is before we fight him.
Basically, at this stage of his career Kojima has become a really terrible storyteller. Thank god the gameplay was on point or this thing would have gone down as a disaster.
EDIT: I agree with everything that News Bot has said. Great posts. Bots have obviously advanced a great deal in the last few years. Someone give this tech to Ashley Madison.
razzmahtazz
Member
But even those interactions are inconsistent. On one side BB is inspirational, on the other he is ruthless, on another he is apathetic, on another compassionate, on another a moustache twirling villain.
We're discussing the appearance and personality of VS. You just said that there is an inconsistency in his portrayal in TPP vs MG1. I say that he mimics BB after finding out he really isn't BB.
There's enough to suggest that Kojima was always a really terrible storyteller to begin with. The quality of the stories drops off as soon as he starts writing on his own (MGS4, Peace Walker) or also overseeing the writing of others (MGSV).
Those interactions aren't inconsistent. Big Boss was all of those things. That was the allure of his character, because that's how people actually are. The thing about humans is that we aren't black and white. The series went out of its way to show this before, but suddenly went to straightforward good vs. evil in this game because Kojima became obsessed with role-reversal. Solidus is a perfect example. His end goal of freedom is completely noble but he's a total bastard on the path to it. The same was originally true for Big Boss until this game.
Oh so he mimicked Big Boss perfectly but only for the few hours before he was killed? Come on.
Real talk, the child soldiers element is another reason as to why I expected more of a build up to Kaz breaking away from Big Boss. Kaz admits in one of the cassette tapes that he has a soft spot for kids and wanted to take proper care of them in order to get back at his own parents for not giving that much of a shit about him. But since Big Boss sees them as useful soldiers in the narrative proposed by MG2, that was a bit of a wasted opportunity to display their indifferences.
Man, I can't believe that the best excuse they have for Kaz breaking away from Diamond Dogs is "how could muh Big Boss play me like a fiddle"
Yeah, when I said 'at this stage of his career' I meant MGS4 onwards, although I felt that 4 actually achieved most of its goals, and would have been perfectly solid with an editor to cut down on the nanomachine stuff and the final scene with BB and Zero. Other than that, it was an awesome explosion of fan-service that brought the series to a close in an appropriately silly way. I really, really liked it.
I've never taken MGS very seriously. The general lack of humour in V is a big part of my problem with it.
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