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[Drencrom]

As EmCeeGramr pointed out you're Big Boss until the credits inform you that you were actually a distinctly different character, 'Phantom Big Boss', who died during the events of MG1.

They were never both Big Boss. There was the real Big Boss and his sub-boss Big Boss, you, the player.

They are separate people in the canon, and that steps over the metaphorical aspect in the mirror scene of 'there is no distinguishing between me and you, the player'. That's what I mean by a good concept mangled in execution.

It's kinda ironic if Kojima really wanted to make us "feel like" and "be" Big Boss by letting us play as the half-assed avatar phantom instead of the real Big Boss.

That in itself made me feel less like I am Big Boss and just makes the overall Venom character in MGSV look like a duped hack without really providing any new insight else...

Why wouldn't you want to be the Big Boss that actually schemes all this and builds Outer Heaven after coming out of his coma and gets on his motorcycle? After the phantom reveal I thought we would be able to actually play as the real Big Boss at the end or something. Instead we're left being the duped, jabroni phantom that fucked around in afghan and africa without any consequences in the MGS saga. Plus, the real Big Boss doesn't have a stupid horn.

 

[rtcn63]

I figured she either wanted to be captured, or had become reckless due to the emotional distress of leaving Venom. At that point, the two were practically unspoken lovers, BFFs at the least.

 

[Jintor]

She was written to have an attempted rape scene in her story.

I think that's the extent of it.

Well yeah, but I think the in-universe explanation is pretty clearly the water based on the camera focus.

 

[News Bot]

MSF soldiers would need to be trained to act as their own medics out on solo infiltrations. He could have functioned in multiple roles throughout his time under BB. And the fact that he was described as the best suggests he would have had an high aptitude in many areas. S ranks across the board etc.

Venom Snake wasn't just his own medic (all soldiers would need to be), he was a dedicated medic for the organization. How many roles do you expect him to have carried in less than a year? Him having high aptitude is a given. But it's next to impossible for him to be equal to Big Boss while also just so happening to look like him and sound like him. They might as well have just come out and said he was his long lost twin brother. There is no actual writing involved in reconciling Venom Snake's existence. He just does. He's just there and he fits every single box he needs to fit in order to accommodate a shock twist.

the key term is artificial, which is what my core argument was. Many of what could be said is artificial about Venom could be applied to many other characters in the series, such as Meryl.

All writing is artificial. You're talking in circles.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

Your example does not display a lack of creativity and boldness.

MGS2's twist is directly woven into what the entire game is built around, even the game's marketing. Themes about information control and expectations.

What does becoming Big Boss's fake who is actually kinda nice until he's... maybe not? have to do with race, or revenge, or language, or becoming a demon, or... anything? "The real Big Boss... is all of us! But for real, your fake Big Boss is just a phantom who died, the real one did the important stuff." That's not a narrative element, that's a participation trophy.

 

[Emperor_Uriel]

You know, I think Quiet's character becomes a million times more tolerable if you view her as an empowered exhibitionist that really, REALLY wants Big Boss.

I don't think I've seen any sites look at her from this angle. What if every moment that she's showing off her body is a conscious choice on her part? She does initiate all of their more playful, flirtatious or (in the case of the shower scene) downright intimate interactions. Maybe she's just horny as fuck.

It at least gives her some sexual agency instead of being fuel for a Koji-boner.

 

[Emedan]

It would've been pretty standard to have a medic on standby for any mission. The medic isn't special in any such sense.


Problem is that we're just supposed to know these things rather than being shown them. If the medic was supposed to be BBs best and most loyal soldier we should've been shown this before hand, but we weren't. There's no excuse for it, it's simply bad writing

 

[JackelZXA]

You can play the mission during day time. She fumbles and stumbles the entire time being tortured because she's suffocating under wearing too much clothing. She can naturally still breathe through the exposed skin on her face but that's not enough.

Yes, her body needs water. But the biggest thing that was holding her back was the fact that she didn't have the ability to breathe. It was a combination of both things that didn't kick back until the pants came off.

At night, then she wouldn't be able to breath sunlight with her pants off any better. They didn't lock the mission to a time of day, and i played it at night, like most of my missions. She couldn't draw energy through her legs if there was no sunlight. The only thing that makes sense to me is that she dried out in the desert after she ran away.

She was written to have an attempted rape scene in her story.

I think that's the extent of it.

Actually, I'd say that's a reduction of it. without the attempted rape, the events still play out the same, (just that she'd probably have stabbed them in different places...)

 

[Hystzen]

But Venoms stats are only A++ he no where near the best solider I had in Peace Walker or MGSV

 

[Jintor]

At night, then she wouldn't be able to breath sunlight with her pants off any better. They didn't lock the mission to a time of day, and i played it at night, like most of my missions. She couldn't draw energy through her legs if there was no sunlight. The only thing that makes sense to me is that she dried out in the desert after she ran away.

They do say she hunts mainly on the edges of the desert around the powerplant, I think. I know she has a unique animation if it rains on a mission, does she have anything during a sandstorm?

 

[News Bot]

But Venoms stats are only A++ he no where near the best solider I had in Peace Walker or MGSV

The stats are all completely meaningless anyway and serve only as gameplay mechanics.

 

[SomTervo]

As EmCeeGramr pointed out you're Big Boss until the credits inform you that you were actually a distinctly different character, 'Phantom Big Boss', who died during the events of MG1.

They were never both Big Boss. There was the real Big Boss and his sub-boss Big Boss, you, the player.

They are separate people in the canon, and that steps over the metaphorical aspect in the mirror scene of 'there is no distinguishing between me and you, the player'. That's what I mean by a good concept mangled in execution.

Slightly confused by your last paragraph - 'steps over'? I loved that scene and I thought it worked.

By 'separate people in the canon' are you talking about Phantom Boss/Venom Snake being the Doctor from the GZ helicopter, who was an established person on Mother Base who happened to be in the chopper with Boss when it went down?

Imo that's answered in the tapes where they explain the 9 following years. Cipher spend 9 years hypnostising that Doctor character - indeed, a separate person - to have all of the Boss's experiences and memories (and probably his voice, too) - so that in the end, the pre-GZ Doctor character is basically non-existent. The whole world thinks he's dead, and his personality has been all but erased. For 9 years he is gone while Zero/Ocelot transform him into a second Boss. And if the definition of a person is just a human's thoughts and experiences - he might as well be the Boss. He has all his memories and thoughts and talents. (This is ridiculous, of course, but no more ridiculous than stuff which happens in MGS' 1-4.)

So basically pre-GZ Doctor has been turned into Big Boss, and literally is Big Boss (a second one who naturally isn't a flawless facsimile). What the player-as-character contrivance does is allows the pre-GZ Doctor to be us. So that by playing The Phantom Pain we are physically enacting ourselves becoming Big Boss, and in the story it's justified so that we are given all of his memories/experiences.

I guess the execution was sort of convoluted, but I can't imagine how they could have done it much better. How would you improve it? (Without changing anything story-wise. Just as a fun exercise ))

I also just noticed that the whole 'being flawed facsimile of Big Boss' is basically our entire experience in MGS1, 2 and 4. Solid Snake is just as much a phantom of Big Boss as Phantom Boss/Venom Snake is. That's a nice parallel, in my opinion.

My view on her character is that nakedness wasn't the problem, the camera was. Nudity doesn't have to be sexual. (They don't allow sex on nude beaches, obviously.) If they'd played Quiet's scenes with the sense of respect that she gets from the other characters, the rain scene could have been one of the most interesting parts of the game, but they kind of donked it.

Very well said. Agreed on all counts.

It was verily donked.

 

[JackelZXA]

Venom Snake wasn't just his own medic (all soldiers would need to be), he was a dedicated medic for the organization. How many roles do you expect him to have carried in less than a year? Him having high aptitude is a given. But it's next to impossible for him to be equal to Big Boss while also just so happening to look like him and sound like him. They might as well have just come out and said he was his long lost twin brother. There is no actual writing involved in reconciling Venom Snake's existence. He just does. He's just there and he fits every single box he needs to fit in order to accommodate a shock twist.



All writing is artificial. You're talking in circles.

You're taking soldiers from existing militaries. the Medic would have already had the needed military history in both medical and infantry by the time he joined MSF. (Also, I don't know I mean by the time I was done with peace walker, Snake was one of my mid-tier soldiers. I had like 20 dudes that outranked him in every stat)

 

[News Bot]

(This is ridiculous, of course, but no more ridiculous than stuff which happens in MGS' 1-4.)

No, it's much more ridiculous than anything in any of those games by virtue of the mental gymnastics needed alone.

 

[Alienous]

Actually, I'd say that's a reduction of it. without the attempted rape, the events still play out the same, (just that she'd probably have stabbed them in different places...)

I'm not talking about the attempted rape itself, I'm talking about the reasoning behind making Quiet (a character who is portrayed as extremely capable throughout the game, even in the Prologue) into a vulnerable character. It doesn't serve to strengthen the relationship between Big Boss and Quiet, because you don't rescue her. She's just made weak so that a soldier can attempt a rape and she can massacre the bad guys, like ticking a box on a checklist. It's really transparent.

 

[Jintor]

I guess the execution was sort of convoluted, but I can't imagine how they could have done it much better. How would you improve it? (Without changing anything story-wise. Just as a fun exercise ))

I would throw clones at the problem until it went away.

(I think it's out based on the timeline, but I would really have loved to realise oops you've been Solidus the whole time.

The other joke thing I saw thrown out there was you were Chico the whole time which I thought was hilarious)

 

[Chakra_Khan]

Let me honestly ask you guys something. Up until this entry in the series, did anybody really give a single fuck about how an 8bit character survived the first go round in outer heaven back in 1987? Of all the thoughts I've had about the complexities and minutia of the greater story as a whole, the msx events,ESPECIALLY THE FIRST ONE, ain't one of them.

Given all this fruitless conjecture now regarding who was venom and who was big boss, I imagine that the retort people who buy into this twist will have regarding the argument one would make about big boss' statement in mgs 4 about being "erased twice before" would be "well you see he was talking about himself AND his phantom."

To me, the bigger twist in this game, THE ONE THAT AINT BEING DISCUSSED AT ALL, is zero's hospital visit to snake in 1977. In this situation, we clearly see what zero's disposition towards snake really was, as evidenced by his scheme of creating a double to protect him.....ugh. "Wake up old friend. Time is running out" followed by 60 seconds of silence and then the tape ends. In those 60 seconds I was dumbstruck at the notion that this instance recontextualized the ending of mgs 4 wherein big boss says " did zero really hate me? Or did he fear me? It's too late to ask him now." Think about that for a moment. That to me is the penultimate twist of the phantom pain. That we, the audience, know that which these two men do not in the wake of all this vengful bloodshed.

 

[Lunar15]

I just love the idea of Miller going along with all this despite having absolutely no reason to. Miller's life revolves around Big Boss. Him just deciding to never contact him for his "Safety" or something just makes no sense and is kind of funny. Even funnier is that Big Boss himself goes along with this and never contacts Miller at all. What a dick. If Miller and the Medic are supposed to be his best and closest friends, he sure dumps both of them quick.

Also hilarious is the conversation between ocelot and miller where they just have a conversation about exactly how their lives are going to be played out.

"Hey man, we're partners now, but one day this is all going to fall apart and I'm going to go join the team that I've pledged my entire life to get revenge on and you're going to go join the other team and follow some random kid that we're not even sure exists and then you'll go kill me."

"Yeah, sounds like a plan."

 

[Drencrom]

MGS2's twist is directly woven into what the entire game is built around, even the game's marketing. Themes about information control and expectations.

What does becoming Big Boss's fake who is actually kinda nice until he's... maybe not? have to do with race, or revenge, or language, or becoming a demon, or... anything? "The real Big Boss... is all of us! But for real, your fake Big Boss is just a phantom who died, the real one did the important stuff." That's not a narrative element, that's a participation trophy.

I'm glad there are posters that are better than me when it comes to articulating how horrid and disappointing this whole "Phantom boss" thing and how Kojima squandered the game's themes.

 

[SomTervo]

MGS2's twist is directly woven into what the entire game is built around, even the game's marketing. Themes about information control and expectations.

What does becoming Big Boss's fake who is actually kinda nice until he's... maybe not? have to do with race, or revenge, or language, or becoming a demon, or... anything? "The real Big Boss... is all of us! But for real, your fake Big Boss is just a phantom who died, the real one did the important stuff." That's not a narrative element, that's a participation trophy.

MGS2's twist is woven into the lore's theories and underlying concepts

MGSV's twist is woven into videogaming theories and underlying concepts

MGSV's twist is certainly contrived from a narrative standpoint, but I thought that was fine because the point of the twist isn't its story ramifications. The point of the twist is that, as players, we have followed Snake on his journey over all these games and we enact him, we make him real through ourselves.

Could you explain to me what the exploration of player-as-character really is? To me the gist of it was the tape from Big Boss to Venom at the end, which I remember mainly as "You're not a fake, you're real, we're both real, we created this legend together, we're both Big Boss", or as I interpreted it, player! controlling Snake in all games allowed this game series to exist, be a reality, allowed the legend to grow. Is that your understanding?

Yeah, basically. Also see what I said immediately above. It was just like Kojima's final message to his players - thanking them for playing Snake all this time and pointing out that there's a thin membrane between the player and the player-character.

 

[RK9039]

To me, the bigger twist in this game, THE ONE THAT AINT BEING DISCUSSED AT ALL, is zero's hospital visit to snake in 1977. In this situation, we clearly see what zero's disposition towards snake really was, as evidenced by his scheme of creating a double to protect him.....ugh. "Wake up old friend. Time is running out" followed by 60 seconds of silence and then the tape ends. In those 60 seconds I was dumbstruck at the notion that this instance recontextualized the ending of mgs 4 wherein big boss says " did zero really hate me? Or did he fear me? It's too late to ask him now." Think about that for a moment. That to me is the penultimate twist of the phantom pain. That we, the audience, know that which these two men do not in the wake of all this vengful bloodshed.

Yeah that entire thing was so stupid.

 

[NotLiquid]

At night, then she wouldn't be able to breath sunlight with her pants off any better. They didn't lock the mission to a time of day, and i played it at night, like most of my missions. She couldn't draw energy through her legs if there was no sunlight. The only thing that makes sense to me is that she dried out in the desert after she ran away.

This completely ignores the fact that Quiet operates perfectly fine during just about every night time mission so the way you're denying the game's own explanation of her bodily function sets up a contradiction.

Well yeah, but I think the in-universe explanation is pretty clearly the water based on the camera focus.

It's a classic cinematic effect to depict it as a more gruesome sequence. Focus on the face during a segment like that since it's the most emotive part, Kojima is a sucker for cinematic effect. Plus it probably would have been more controversial if they chose to focus on the lower area.

 

[Dick Justice]

MGS2's twist is woven into the lore's theories and underlying concepts

MGSV's twist is woven into videogaming theories and underlying concepts

MGSV's twist is certainly contrived from a narrative standpoint, but I thought that was fine because the point of the twist isn't its story ramifications. The point of the twist is that, as players, we have followed Snake on his journey over all these games and we enact him, we make him real through ourselves.

And then we get murdered by Solid Snake in 1995.

 

[Imm0rt4l]

It would've been pretty standard to have a medic on standby for any mission. The medic isn't special in any such sense.


Problem is that we're just supposed to know these things rather than being shown them. If the medic was supposed to be BBs best and most loyal soldier we should've been shown this before hand, but we weren't. There's no excuse for it, it's simply bad writing

That would defeat the purpose of the meta narrative. You, the player, are the medic. He doesn't need a background story. Could you argue that this is dumb and that they should've inserted an actual character? Sure.

 

[Lunar15]

On the game being about how the player becomes Big Boss: We already had that game, it was called Metal Gear Solid 3, and you, the player, built up the legend of Big Boss by sneaking around without a shirt while wearing a crocodile hat on your head and spinning a man around in a menu until he barfed.

That's some deep shit, way deeper than V.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

MGS2's twist is woven into the lore's theories and underlying concepts

MGSV's twist is woven into videogaming theories and underlying concepts

MGSV's twist is certainly contrived from a narrative standpoint, but I thought that was fine because the point of the twist isn't its story ramifications. The point of the twist is that, as players, we have followed Snake on his journey over all these games and we enact him, we make him real through ourselves.

And I was hoping for something more substantial and meaningful than "fictional video game characters are real within our hearts," like a glorified version of an 8-bit game's credits that end with "and starring... YOU!!"

 

[SJRB]

I just rewatched the entire Skull Face jeep ride cutscene for the first time since I saw it in my own playthrough.

I just don't understand how you can fuck something so simple up this bad. First, the huge exposition dump is excellent and remarkably Metal Gear Solid-esque. The first and only time in the entire game where you get that much information [outside of tapes of course, where you pretty much have to piece everything together yourself through snippets of plot]. James Horan is a god-tier voice actor, his delivery is perfect. Also, I noticed that the lip sync for Skull Face is incredible.

That excruciatingly slow walk from the heli platform to the cars is already Assassin's Creed-levels of bad with weird scripting/animations. But good lord, the awkwardness in the Jeep is just... sheesh. The car ride to the mountain base is obviously longer than the script has content, so they slap in the theme to fill the gap. So here you have this bizarre scene of Big Boss just having heard an insane story to destroy the world, looking around if he spots any Golden Crescent or a fucking mountain goat. Skull Face doing bizarre idle animations where he waves his hands or gets into Big Boss' face. He's probably wondering if Big Boss is still comatose or braindead since he didn't even flinch after hearing his crazy plot to destroy the English language.

This should've been a chopper ride so the travel time was much shorter. I think that of all the missteps in this game, this one annoys me the most. It makes everyone involved look like an idiot, it totally misuses the amazing Sins of the Father, makes the player feel awkward.


FUCK. I could probably write a 100-page essay on things that went wrong in this game.

 

[SomTervo]

And then we get murdered by Solid Snake in 1995.

And the weirdest thing is, we are also Solid Snake!

The ultimate twist: the player is everyone, there are no characters.

 

[Jintor]

MGSV's twist is certainly contrived from a narrative standpoint, but I thought that was fine because the point of the twist isn't its story ramifications. The point of the twist is that, as players, we have followed Snake on his journey over all these games and we enact him, we make him real through ourselves.

it's kind of funny that the point of the twist is supposed to be "Yeah you did it! You played the game and you're Snake too and you make the legend real!" but all I did was feel like I had wasted 80 hours on a side story

 

[JackelZXA]

I'm not talking about the attempted rape itself, I'm talking about the reasoning behind making Quiet (a character who is portrayed as extremely capable throughout the game, even in the Prologue) into a vulnerable character. It doesn't serve to strengthen the relationship between Big Boss and Quiet, because you don't rescue her. She's just made weak so that a soldier can attempt a rape and she can massacre the bad guys, like ticking a box on a checklist. It's really transparent.

Rape has never been a box to be ticked in MGS games. It's just a low point in her character. Rape is just the end result of ugly, horrible men that have free access to a woman's body.

She messed up and got caught, and unfortunately this is something that is a threat to women who become imprisoned by men. It's fucked up and ugly and one of the worst aspects of our species.

Thankfully, the scene is one of the only scenes involving quiet that wasn't depicted as a sexual fantasy, and I'm glad that they played it with a proper sense of reserve. It was a scene where she overcomes her own captivity, without needing Boss's help in the first place.

It was kind of super-empowering in that regard. How often do you see a story where a woman actually overpowers her captors and escapse that kind of situation to break herself free?

 

[News Bot]

MGS2's twist is woven into the lore's theories and underlying concepts

MGSV's twist is woven into videogaming theories and underlying concepts

MGSV's twist is certainly contrived from a narrative standpoint, but I thought that was fine because the point of the twist isn't its story ramifications. The point of the twist is that, as players, we have followed Snake on his journey over all these games and we enact him, we make him real through ourselves.

A twist unconcerned with its story ramifications is not a good twist. It makes the entire experience more jarring than anything. People don't pursue fiction to have the rug sweeped out from under them for no reason other than to say "haha got you!"

MGS2 handled its twist masterfully because it was embedded into the lore and crafted in such a way that it would make sense in that world with every aspect written and then tweaked and refined to make sense within the context of the story. None of this happened for MGSV, the twist is just there for the sake of a twist and a half-assed attempt at addressing the player that goes completely over most player's heads.

 

[Lunar15]

On Quiet:

I'm not sure I would have been as upset if this wasn't the second time they used rape to make us go: "oh no, not the female character, we've got to help her!".

 

[Jintor]

To me, the bigger twist in this game, THE ONE THAT AINT BEING DISCUSSED AT ALL, is zero's hospital visit to snake in 1977. In this situation, we clearly see what zero's disposition towards snake really was, as evidenced by his scheme of creating a double to protect him.....ugh. "Wake up old friend. Time is running out" followed by 60 seconds of silence and then the tape ends. In those 60 seconds I was dumbstruck at the notion that this instance recontextualized the ending of mgs 4 wherein big boss says " did zero really hate me? Or did he fear me? It's too late to ask him now." Think about that for a moment. That to me is the penultimate twist of the phantom pain. That we, the audience, know that which these two men do not in the wake of all this vengful bloodshed.

the light the game sheds on zero is really something, especially considering he'd been considered the root of all evil in MGS4.

I wish the game had been more about finding out about Zero and that kind of stuff really.

 

[Ran rp]

Shower With Your Fake Dad Simulator 2015?

WRONG DAD ELI

 

[Alienous]

Slightly confused by your last paragraph - 'steps over'? I loved that scene and I thought it worked.

By 'separate people in the canon' are you talking about Phantom Boss/Venom Snake being the Doctor from the GZ helicopter, who was an established person on Mother Base who happened to be in the chopper with Boss when it went down?

The canon invalidates the idea that we were Big Boss. There was a real Big Boss and a fake Big Boss, and we play the fake in The Phantom Pain. Thus the element of "Big Boss is both of us, together", the meta idea that he is the character and the player playing him, is weakened by being clumsily woven into the canon.

The credits confirm that we were playing as Big Boss' 'phantom', not Big Boss.

Imo that's answered in the tapes where they explain the 9 following years. Cipher spend 9 years hypnostising that Doctor character - indeed, a separate person - to have all of the Boss's experiences and memories (and probably his voice, too) - so that in the end, the pre-GZ Doctor character is basically non-existent. The whole world thinks he's dead, and his personality has been all but erased. For 9 years he is gone while Zero/Ocelot transform him into a second Boss. And if the definition of a person is just a human's thoughts and experiences - he might as well be the Boss. He has all his memories and thoughts and talents. (This is ridiculous, of course, but no more ridiculous than stuff which happens in MGS' 1-4.)

So basically pre-GZ Doctor has been turned into Big Boss, and literally is Big Boss (a second one who naturally isn't a flawless facsimile). What the player-as-character contrivance does is allows the pre-GZ Doctor to be us. So that by playing The Phantom Pain we are physically enacting ourselves becoming Big Boss, and in the story it's justified so that we are given all of his memories/experiences.

Which makes Medic Boss an interesting character, but that says nothing about our experience as a player. The most it musters is "Oh, I thought I was playing Big Boss", which would be similar to the Medic's "Oh, I thought I was Big Boss". But it ends there. Nothing is being said, there's no point, beyond that.

I guess the execution was sort of convoluted, but I can't imagine how they could have done it much better. How would you improve it? (Without changing anything story-wise. Just as a fun exercise ))

I also just noticed that the whole 'being flawed facsimile of Big Boss' is basically our entire experience in MGS1, 2 and 4. Solid Snake is just as much a phantom of Big Boss as Phantom Boss/Venom Snake is. That's a nice parallel, in my opinion.

As I said before you can address the fact that the player is a participant in Big Boss' downfall. We wonder why Big Boss becomes the villain, but construct a game where following through to its completion makes you a willing participant in seeing him become the person we know he does. Have us, through gameplay, build Big Boss into the person who is reviled in MG1 and MG2, and address that is what happened.

 

[razzmahtazz]

MGS2's twist is directly woven into what the entire game is built around, even the game's marketing. Themes about information control and expectations.

What does becoming Big Boss's fake who is actually kinda nice until he's... maybe not? have to do with race, or revenge, or language, or becoming a demon, or... anything? "The real Big Boss... is all of us! But for real, your fake Big Boss is just a phantom who died, the real one did the important stuff." That's not a narrative element, that's a participation trophy.

It's bold that he was able to do what he did and creative in the way he delivers it, albeit flawed in the end.

Venom Snake wasn't just his own medic (all soldiers would need to be), he was a dedicated medic for the organization. How many roles do you expect him to have carried in less than a year? Him having high aptitude is a given. But it's next to impossible for him to be equal to Big Boss while also just so happening to look like him and sound like him. They might as well have just come out and said he was his long lost twin brother. There is no actual writing involved in reconciling Venom Snake's existence. He just does. He's just there and he fits every single box he needs to fit in order to accommodate a shock twist.

Gameplay kinda bridges his skill gap from BB. Army support and buddies.

 

[News Bot]

the light the game sheds on zero is really something, especially considering he'd been considered the root of all evil in MGS4.

I wish the game had been more about finding out about Zero and that kind of stuff really.

Kojima had to whitewash everyone. After MGS3 he became utterly terrified of letting anyone do bad things without some hammy contradictory reasoning.

Gameplay kinda bridges his skill gap from BB. Army support and buddies.

You can play as the lowest ranked member in the combat unit and still do the same things. Means nothing because there's a natural disconnect between gameplay and narrative.

 

[Rogue Agent]

Has this actually been brought up again in the thread? Remember the gametrailers interview that gif is from:

"Given your reputation, the trailers that you've been showing off so far, do you think it's fair for fans to be sceptical of what they've been seeing, like should they believe everything that you're saying? Or are you doing a little bit of misdirection?"

Kojima's reply:

 

[JackelZXA]

This completely ignores the fact that Quiet operates perfectly fine during just about every night time mission so the way you're denying the game's own explanation of her bodily function sets up a contradiction.

She's not birdman, she doesn't instantly expel all of her energy. The read I got on the mission is that enough time had passed that quiet had completely dried out and was running on empty for the first time in the game. It fits with the explanation of her body just fine, because she draws from multiple sources. If you play it at day, it could be argued that she gained energy through her legs absorbing sunlight, but if you play it at night then the explanation is that she gained energy from drinking water through her face. This is a multiple solutions type situation we got here.

 

[SomTervo]

And I was hoping for something more substantial and meaningful than "fictional video game characters are real within our hearts," like a glorified version of an 8-bit game's credits that end with "and starring... YOU!!"

I felt it was lent some meaning due to how long the series was and how much time player's have spent with the guy.

Also I still felt the entire actual plot of the series was woven together in the last few tapes. Zero was given some development, we got to hear True Big Boss's voice again and hear him weighing in on stuff, we got more development of Ocelot (even though he's been retconned into mincemeat) and Kaz. They tied together how stuff from MGS3 ultimately linked in with MGS1 and the other games.

TL;DR: I thought the tapes made the plot ending satisfying, and I felt the played character-twist made the study of players-as-characters satisfying. I got the best of both worlds out of it.

It was pretty clear that they fudged the link between MGSV and MG1/2: SS a little bit, but even Kojima said during development that they had to make concessions. It's a 30 year series, after all.

 

[Jintor]

Kojima had to whitewash everyone. After MGS3 he became utterly terrified of letting anyone do bad things without some hammy contradictory reasoning.

tbh i don't mind that zero isn't the ultimate evil since i never really bought that he became it from 3 anyway, and the idea of building an organisation so large you lose control of its tendrils is pretty believable especially within the mil-fic stuff of organisations within organisations where everyone has their own latitude to act (especially once you bring the patriot AI into the mix).

I just... it's all just dumped on you at the end of a mission you enter from a mission menu with no narrative contrivance for getting the tapes or anything so that's kind of irritating.

we got to hear True Big Boss's voice again and hear him weighing in on stuff

funny... if they'd gotten hayter to voice actual bb that'd probably count for something in my book.

 

[Lunar15]

The funny thing is that I'm not even really "mad" at this game's story, or even that upset. It's just dumb, like most MGS games. Even 2. The only difference is that they either didn't try or they were signficantly held back from being able to do more. It's not complete enough of a vision for me to even truly break down from a writing standpoint. I can poke fun at it, but it's not like they had this full story there with all of their intentions laid out.

It's just like, "ok, lol." That's my reaction. These games are always dumb. This one's just dumb and incomplete.

 

[rtcn63]

I think when Kojima and friends wrote the story for the game, it made more or less perfect sense in their heads. It's a narrative based on ideas instead of coherency, a first draft that really needed to be looked at by an experienced editor, given feedback, and rewritten another few dozen times. People in the thread have already given examples as to how they could've improved the individual facets, from little things to big, which would've affected the whole for the better. We can all see (for the most part) what the story was trying to be, we're just also aware that it didn't execute well.

 

[News Bot]

Has this actually been brought up again in the thread? Remember the gametrailers interview that gif is from:

"Given your reputation, the trailers that you've been showing off so far, do you think it's fair for fans to be sceptical of what they've been seeing, like should they believe everything that you're saying? Or are you doing a little bit of misdirection?"

Kojima's reply:

 

[BotchPoppaPump]

Venom Snake wasn't just his own medic (all soldiers would need to be), he was a dedicated medic for the organization. How many roles do you expect him to have carried in less than a year? Him having high aptitude is a given. But it's next to impossible for him to be equal to Big Boss while also just so happening to look like him and sound like him. They might as well have just come out and said he was his long lost twin brother. There is no actual writing involved in reconciling Venom Snake's existence. He just does. He's just there and he fits every single box he needs to fit in order to accommodate a shock twist.

Well, he could've started out in the kitchens, in a early form of what would become Miller's burger-centric R&D division in DD. Then having shown an aptitude for herbs and spices, he could've been promoted to ZEKE's designated washer and waxer out on Dispatch missions. Having kept ZEKE spotless for a couple weeks, he could've been moved onto the odd solo infiltration, a stint in the department of Zadornov escape reporting and then finally, a promotion to medic with the sole remit of accompanying BB on his personal missions.

Ignore his model in GZ, the facial shiz is taken care of with plastic surgery. The same voice? No idea, haven't heard any explanation / justification for that.

 

[JackelZXA]

tbh i don't mind that zero isn't the ultimate evil since i never really bought that he became it from 3 anyway, and the idea of building an organisation so large you lose control of its tendrils is pretty believable especially within the mil-fic stuff of organisations within organisations where everyone has their own latitude to act (especially once you bring the patriot AI into the mix).

I just... it's all just dumped on you at the end of a mission you enter from a mission menu with no narrative contrivance for getting the tapes or anything so that's kind of irritating.

The tapes don't exist within snake's narrative, it's more like cutting away to ocelot's calls with "Mr President" after the credits. It was something for the player to establish a character in a way that serves the ending of MGS4 (and really, it's key to why I think the series is best enjoyed in that weird "watch the prequel star wars movies after empire but then end on jedi" sort of logic. 1 2 3 PW V 4. It keeps the buildup working while making the ending satisfying. Additionally, this specific order creates a steady gameplay evolution between the games)

Well, he could've started out in the kitchens, in a early form of what would become Miller's burger-centric R&D division in DD. Then having shown an aptitude for herbs and spices, he could've been promoted to ZEKE's designated washer and waxer out on Dispatch missions. Having kept ZEKE spotless for a couple weeks, he could've been moved onto the odd solo infiltration, a stint in the department of Zadornov escape reporting and then finally, a promotion to medic with the sole remit of accompanying BB on his personal missions.

Ignore his model in GZ, the facial shiz is taken care of with plastic surgery. The same voice? No idea, haven't heard any explanation / justification for that.

What I think is interesting is that I didnt pick up on their voices when I first played GZ, and I remember it being kind of a big tinfoil hat thing when people first started figuring it out. If the voice could have been altered enough that players didn't pick up on it for a while, then the explanation that they trained venom's voice to sound more like big boss's (in the way you can train someone to speak with an accent) could be seen as reasonable. (plenty of people have the pitch to do accurate impersonations of others)

 

[News Bot]

Well, he could've started out in the kitchens, in a early form of what would become Miller's burger-centric R&D division in DD. Then having shown an aptitude for herbs and spices, he could've been promoted to ZEKE's designated washer and waxer out on Dispatch missions. Having kept ZEKE spotless for a couple weeks, he could've been moved onto the odd solo infiltration, a stint in the department of Zadornov escape reporting and then finally, a promotion to medic with the sole remit of accompanying BB on his personal missions.

Ignore his model in GZ, the facial shiz is taken care of with plastic surgery. The same voice? No idea, haven't heard any explanation / justification for that.

It's not "taken care of with plastic surgery." It's magic. Nothing more and nothing less. There's no conceivable way that surgery would produce that result. Why does Decoy Octopus even need to exist if his unique talent can be done by literally anyone?

 

[RK9039]

Has this actually been brought up again in the thread? Remember the gametrailers interview that gif is from:

"Given your reputation, the trailers that you've been showing off so far, do you think it's fair for fans to be sceptical of what they've been seeing, like should they believe everything that you're saying? Or are you doing a little bit of misdirection?"

Kojima's reply:

From FOX three phantoms were born.

 

[Jintor]

The tapes don't exist within snake's narrative, it's more like cutting away to ocelot's calls with "Mr President" after the credits. It was something for the player to establish a character in a way that serves the ending of MGS4 (and really, it's key to why I think the series is best enjoyed in that weird "watch the prequel star wars movies after empire but then end on jedi" sort of logic. 1 2 3 PW V 4. It keeps the buildup working while making the ending satisfying. Additionally, this specific order creates a steady gameplay evolution between the games)

yeah i know, but like the paz tapes it drives me crazy because it's not consistent - the game attempts to establish them as really existing by calling them "Secret Recordings of Blah blah blah meets blah blah blah", but then the way you get them is completely unexplained and the fact of listening to them also makes no sense if V only learns about the whole ruse in '95... I hate inconsistency.

 

[JackelZXA]

It's not "taken care of with plastic surgery." It's magic. Nothing more and nothing less. There's no conceivable way that surgery would produce that result. Why does Decoy Octopus even need to exist if his unique talent can be done by literally anyone?

Simple explanation: Decoy Octopus gained his skill from the same research Cipher put into recreating Big Boss as Venom Snake. (He even changed his voice, somehow)

yeah i know, but like the paz tapes it drives me crazy because it's not consistent - the game attempts to establish them as really existing by calling them "Secret Recordings of Blah blah blah meets blah blah blah", but then the way you get them is completely unexplained and the fact of listening to them also makes no sense if V only learns about the whole ruse in '95... I hate inconsistency.

Well yeah but I mean, this is also a series where you're constantly told to press the action button or look on the back of the CD Case. Hell there's some major 4th wall breaks in 4 when Otacon asks you to swap out the disc for disc 2 in shadow moses, and when Colonel Campbell gets upset that swapping the controller ports doesn't work in MGS4 anymore. (Do you really think Solid Snake likes to play Castlevania? Now THAT'S a completely unbelievable plot hole.) ;P