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SPOILER: Metal Gear Solid V Spoiler Thread | Such a lust for conclusion, T-WHHOOOO

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Mothefucker.. I just read if I had put the butterfly emblem before mission 41 she wouldn't have left

This... Is stupid.

I don't think I'll get over this. Great game but what the fucking fuck? This is huge to me.

I really hope I'm being trolled and there's some way to get her back. :(

Huh? Theirs a way to keep Quiet?
 
Just got the birthday cutscene yesterday. I quite enjoyed it. But then it made me sad because my birthday wasn't anywhere that cool :(
 
So I've been wondering if we didn't really fall from grace in TPP.

Like, Skull Face is pure cartoon villain. He's not really sympathetic even with his tragic youth. He's a monster. But he acts as a distraction from the more subtle actions Venom is taking. Mechanically, when you're fultoning soldiers, you likely only picked the ones with the best states. Anyone else is expendable. You're only letting some live because they have worth to you.

You don't use the child soldiers as soldiers, but you still use them for other jobs around Mother Base. "You're not as bad as the other guys" is a pretty poor excuse. You take contract jobs to kill a bunch of Soviets (who if you listen to, fucking hate being there) to assist a group of people that turn into the Taliban and al Qaeda. Then you turn around and fight for the Eastern Bloc in Africa.

Sure you're trying to prevent Skull Face from unleashed hell on earth, but the means you get to that point are often not related to that goal. Solid Snake never did wetwork to support Philanthropy.

I think you're absolutely right. The 'sins of the father' are all there in the gameplay and not exclusive to Venom Snake, you could argue this of Peace Walker as well. Having a small merc force like on the beach at the beginning of that game is much less morally troubling than the huge nuke-equipped militia they become later on. I mean MSF becomes a military superpower who've made a business of war. But we the players go along with it all because it's fun building a base and because we're the 'good guys'. The civilised world wouldn't stand for what MSF/DD represents, even if the existence of Cipher makes a mockery of democracy and that 'civilised world'.

And as you say, Solid Snake and Otacon wouldn't have done anything like this, being of course the true heroes of the lore.

Every single character in MGSV is a bad guy to some degree, or at the very least morally grey, most of them driven by revenge or with deep hypocracy to their actions. I also think the lyrics to Sins of the Father are about Diamond Dogs, the main characters. The sins never die, can't wash this blood of our hands; let the world fear us all, it's just means to end. etc. Probably the most telling line is 'a thirst that can only be quenched by hypocracy'. They believe they're the righteous ones, but they're basically a ruthless gang of revenge-fulled war-mongerers.

Huey points all this out to them. "You built a NUKE!" But he's the same, telling himself that he's righteous because he doesn't physically fight, when he's just as bad. This game's kind of like God of War in the sense that everyone is an asshole, just different degrees of asshole.
 
"I've said it many times, but I understand why people feel Snake is cool and admire him," Kojima told IGN. "In realty, though, Snake is and always has been nothing more than an extension of the player. He's your alter ego. Therefore, I made a very conscious effort this time to bring Snake closer to the player's perspective. As much as possible, Snake will act based on the player rather than doing things like making spontaneous comments or flirting with women."

I don't give a shit if he's the author of the series. This is 100% bullshit and goes against what Metal Gear has been for almost 30 years. Snake was never an extension of the player. He was his own character. MGS2's meta-narrative even plays with this, straight telling the player that he is NOT Snake.

But suddenly Kojima hits brake and backtracks on 3 decades of lore. "It was always you! You are Snake!"

BULL
CRAP.

Snake was always the fantasy of what the player wanted to be. Which is why people had such a bad reaction to playing as Raiden in 2. And he's obviously talking around the twist which is that the character you play in Phantom Pain is literally you.
 
Huey points all this out to them. "You built a NUKE!" But he's the same, telling himself that he's righteous because he doesn't physically fight, when he's just as bad. This game's kind of like God of War in the sense that everyone is an asshole, just different degrees of asshole.

Huey's probably the worst out of all of them. In TPP he's straight up a villain except that he never admits it. His actions directly result in the death of tons of people. Unlike Otacon who starts out as being very naïve (and grows out of it), Huey knows what he's doing and what effects his creations will have but just plugs his ears and goes "lalalalala" when it comes to facing the consequences. He even killed Strangelove ffs. And used his son in his experiments.
 
Snake was always the fantasy of what the player wanted to be. Which is why people had such a bad reaction to playing as Raiden in 2.

But he wasn't. Snake, ESPECIALLY Big Boss, was a fully formed character. Not some empty shell any player could project themselves into.

People didn't have a bad reaction to playing Raiden because some empty shell of a silent protagonist got taken away, they were mad because a character they grew to love was absent.
 
Exactly.

Big Boss is a badass if only for what he pulled off in MGS3. I do think the idea that he wasn't really ever all that could have been tackled, but The Phantom Pain doesn't do a good job of doing that.

Big Boss had a lot of help, even during Operation Snake Eater. The Boss, EVA, his support team. He never did it alone, and would have died a hundred times without the help he had. You don't need XOF to explain why Big Boss' legend is a myth, mostly because it doesn't really work. Yeah, Skull Face might have aided Big Boss, but so did at least half a dozen other people.

If Kojima wanted to present the legend as a lie The Phantom Pain should have been built around that concept. Just a man, a really good soldier, not being able to live up the expectations surrounding him. Show that he isn't a legendary soldier, but a wounded, betrayed man who makes some bad decisions that lead to his downfall.

They do that

Big boss is a coward and used a body double and threw that body double into a fire.

The theme of mgs1 and 2 also do that
 
The legend is lie. Or at the very least a gross exaggeration. That's one of the game's points. Even GotP started in on that one.

A haven for soldiers was a concept he aped from Gene along with the money.
Miller was the actual brains and pusher behind MSF and later Diamond Dogs.
He ended up using both of those things to help brand Outer Heaven later on.
Venom has apparently been doing a significant chunk of his relevant shit up until '95.
Hell, he even had XOF cleaning up after and aiding him doing Virtuous and Snake Eater

What exactly has he done? Master at abduction by balloons? Eating shrooms? That's about it. Unless you count the comas as well, then he's good at taking naps I guess too. Good donor for the real Snakes though, can't deny that.

Kinda funny how Big Boss was literally a weapon to deploy for most of his life to further the goals of others. Goals he just happened to believe in. What a tool.
 
Anyone else really dismayed by how much little conversations there are to listen to in this game? Was it really Kiefer that forced them not to have the traditional codec convos? How hard would it have been to have them just discussing shit while running around from generic sideOP to generic sideOP? Instead you get so little cassette tapes that I've resorted to literally listening to old codec calls/tapes from previous metal gears while fucking around in the sandbox.

sigh. So much missing shit that could have turned this game from good to amazing.
 
Huey's probably the worst out of all of them. In TPP he's straight up a villain excepts that he never admits it. His actions directly result in the death of tons of people. Unlike Otacon who starts out as being very naïve (and grows out of it), Huey knows what he's doing and what effects his creations will have but just plugs his ears and goes "lalalalala" when it comes to facing the consequences. He even killed Strangelove ffs. And used his son in his experiments.

Yeah, he's a piece of shit. Surprised Kojima went that way with him. I spent the entire game not wanting to believe it, mainly because you tend to superimpose Otacon onto him and Christopher Randolph does such a great job with the conviction in his voice. I think this might be my favourite turn from him since MGS1.
 
Did we ever figure out if there was any significance to the visual digital interference stuff that appeared on screen every time something technological was going on?
 
Did we ever figure out if there was any significance to the visual digital interference stuff that appeared on screen every time something technological was going on?

It's a cool camera effect. I don't think there's any significance to it. Just like how every blade in the game shines like a star that just supernovad
 
"I've said it many times, but I understand why people feel Snake is cool and admire him," Kojima told IGN. "In realty, though, Snake is and always has been nothing more than an extension of the player. He's your alter ego. Therefore, I made a very conscious effort this time to bring Snake closer to the player's perspective. As much as possible, Snake will act based on the player rather than doing things like making spontaneous comments or flirting with women."

Lolwut.

meiling.jpg
 
Did we ever figure out if there was any significance to the visual digital interference stuff that appeared on screen every time something technological was going on?

I hope later kojima comes out and says it's an effect he put in during parts that were drastically altered by konami suits.
 
They do that

Big boss is a coward and used a body double and threw that body double into a fire.

The theme of mgs1 and 2 also do that

But, simultaneously, they also explain that the real Big Boss is too special to be lost. It's a weird mixed message.

"We need to create someone who can fulfil the exact role Big Boss does, so that we don't lose Big Boss". It's like halfway there. Big Boss can be anyone, except nobody is quite as special as Big Boss, so we need to protect him.
 
The lack of a digital camera item is a bit weird for an MGS game. But I guess with modern share features on consoles and PC, it isn't necessary. But still, a photography mission would have been great. Like snapping evidence of a shady nuke deal going down. Even Ground Zeroes had a similar style mission with Deja Vu.

God... I really hope we get DLC for this game. It is literally the perfect game to get DLC for.
 
So, I completed the game, all missions S ranked, all side ops completed. I think I won't bother on doing all bonus objectives, catching animals and this stuff, it's not fun and only time wasting.
Anyway, I really liked the game, but it's not my GOTY, sadly, and it's hard to admit this, since I'm waiting for this game literally from years and I'm a longer terms MG fan.

What I didn't like:

-open world is pretty much useless and empty
-side ops are VERY repetitive
-some main missions are TOTALLY useless, they feel like fillers
-there's no plot. It's like the game tries to follow an episodic formula, but it faisl on delivering a "global" picture. The fact they cut Episode 51 is also a shame, I just watched the video on Youtube and it was very very interesting, those artworks are amazing.

The revelation was pretty much useless too, basically I spotted the twist years ago, so when it came...no suprise at all.

I liked the Quiet ending and mission 45 a LOT, but the fact mission 46 is literally the prologue with command prompts too was...depressive. Really, I didn't like the prologue the first time, and the game forces you to play it again just to see ten seconds of cutscene in the end. They could manage to do that differently.

Anyway, a very good game, just not a very good Metal Gear too.
 
The thing that prevents me from being more critical of the series' narrative and the way the story went in TPP is that Kojima is just making it all up as he goes along.

This isn't a series where he's sat down and planned it all out from the beginning. He's spent his whole career writing and making sequels and prequels for games that he never intended to make. I know that we all know this and many would argue that he could've made better decisions along the way, but I can cut him some slack for it.

Every game has a narrative theme. Every game is chock full of information and background stuff that is rooted in real life science, politics, society and culture. Look at how much detail is provided in the TPP tapes. You can say that a lot of Kojima's narrative twists and explanations might not work but you can't deny the sheer effort, attention to detail and research that he puts into his games.

And then there's the fact that every main MGS game is a different game. MGS games are never just more of the same. There's always something new to revolutionise the formula. Whether it's first-person view, hold-ups and the Raiden twist in MGS2, the 1960s jungle setting and camo index system in MGS3, the act structure and 'hiding in a battlefield' setting of MGS4 and then the individual mission structure and base building format of PW and TPP. Every game is different and unique in its own way and yet is still unmistakably Metal Gear.

You could argue that the open world setting in TPP isn't the best we've ever seen and that it doesn't really suit the Metal Gear narrative focus that we've all grown to love over the decades, but I think that as a game, TPP is still a triumph. I'm not blown away by the story in this game and, yeah, I was expecting more than what we got and I'm disappointed by that, but I can still say that this is an excellent game that shows what a talented bunch of people Kojima Productions were.

I can't help but think what these people could've done if they had the chance to create something new. A brand new concept with a narrative that they could plan free from any sequel baggage from twenty year-old games and with fresh ideas and new themes to explore.

I really hope we get to see Kojima sink his teeth into something new now.

This is the sentiment I've always had. It's a shame that your post is gets washed up in a sea of complaints against a story people ultimately do and do not give a fuck about. The guy was chained to the franchise with no way out. V was his way out.
 
Did we ever figure out if there was any significance to the visual digital interference stuff that appeared on screen every time something technological was going on?

I'm pretty sure Kojima said in an IGN video interview that those orange lines where from a JPOP music video as well as being inspired by JJ Abrams. He thought it looked cool and wanted to put it in the game somehow. It doesn't explain why those lines only show up when the iDroid scans things/other technological things being introduced, but there's just a lot of unexplained shit in this game that makes me think it's nothing really. It's a shame because I thought there must be a cool reasoning behind it.
 
Anyone else really dismayed by how much little conversations there are to listen to in this game? Was it really Kiefer that forced them not to have the traditional codec convos? How hard would it have been to have them just discussing shit while running around from generic sideOP to generic sideOP? Instead you get so little cassette tapes that I've resorted to literally listening to old codec calls/tapes from previous metal gears while fucking around in the sandbox.

sigh. So much missing shit that could have turned this game from good to amazing.

No, it wasn't. They did tapes for PW and Kiefer wasn't a VA for that game. And PW had even more tapes than TPP (this part is probably more to do with TPP being unfinished as evidenced by the Kaz hamburger tapes, the game was just starting to use tapes for funny shit like they did in PW).

The codec started to go downhill in MGS4, surely you noticed (their main codec writer for the previous games left before MGS4). And plus, forced codec conversations interrupted gameplay quite often in MGS1-3 (when you had so little gameplay to begin with). And while optional codecs were definitely cool and all, you couldn't move around while they played. With tapes it makes more logical sense for you to be able to move around and a classic codec system simply wouldn't work -- you'd sit in the open world, in place, listening to codecs for however long you wanted. And tweaking the codec to work similarly to the tapes... well... then you might as well have tapes? Other than the fact the codec covered all sorts of items and information the player could ask about for the respective people who knew about it.

In addition, the Intel Radio in TPP is supposed to replace the informational optional codecs in previous games but from what I've found of it... it doesn't really work -- at least the implementation compared to GZ isn't the same. Where in GZ it actually worked as a replacement for the codec optional information calls OK here it doesn't seem to work at all as that and instead as just a general "tutorial" radio (I haven't tried to use it like GZ much but anytime I did I would get info about the mission objective rather than what I was looking at to get more intel on). Maybe it works better in Free Roam? I dunno.

A shame but it is what it is. It's not Kiefer's fault, some people are just pinning the blame on him because they don't like him.
 
So yeah. Just got that Paz scene. I think I would have been pretty confused if I didn't see that after finishing the story. Or maybe not. I probably would have thought that half the shit in the hospital was a hallucination or something.

Anyway. I think the other major Story point in the game I need to see is Quiet. I'm keeping her around as long as possible for the side ops/S ranks possibly.
 
I have not listened to Not Your Kind Of People in a long time and it showed up in shuffle on my commute home.

Holy crap Kojima was beating us over the head with that trailer.
"We are not your kind of people, you seem kind of phony, everything's a lie
We are not your kind of people, something in your makeup, don't see eye to eye"

There are a few more lines that directly correlate like speaking every language and not being cast as demons.

Didn't know if it had been discussed yet, but it blew my mind on the way home.
 
I have not listened to Not Your Kind Of People in a long time and it showed up in shuffle on my commute home.

Holy crap Kojima was beating us over the head with that trailer.
"We are not your kind of people, you seem kind of phony, everything's a lie
We are not your kind of people, something in your makeup, don't see eye to eye"

There are a few more lines that directly correlate like speaking every language and not being cast as demons.

Didn't know if it had been discussed yet, but it blew my mind on the way home.
Yeah it did and then everyone got depressed because the trailers hyped so much while showing us almost every cutscene there is.
 
But, simultaneously, they also explain that the real Big Boss is too special to be lost. It's a weird mixed message.

"We need to create someone who can fulfil the exact role Big Boss does, so that we don't lose Big Boss". It's like halfway there. Big Boss can be anyone, except nobody is quite as special as Big Boss, so we need to protect him.

I agree with this, it makes the whole thing so dumb and without focus. I'm sure this has been mentioned quite a lot already, but it's also ridiculous how, in a series that started about cloning and which went on to talk about shaping people via information control, no one ever managed to make identical copies of another person. The Les Enfants Terribles were never exactly like Big Boss, nor was Raiden just like Solid Snake despite The Patriots' attempts to shape him in his image. Even in the king of retcons, MGS4, Big Boss straight up says that despite The Patriot's advances in genetic and information control, they "never managed to control people at will, let alone turn one person totally into another".

...

"Except, you know, that one time when they actually turned someone into an exact replica of me, 30 years ago!"

So, yeah. I have an extremely difficult time believing that Kojima ever came up with Venom Snake as a means to explain how "anyone can become Big Boss". It literally goes against everything that the series has been saying until now.

To me, MGSV's plot twist is a gratuitous fourth wall breaker with no consideration whatsoever for its implications within the narrative of the series at large, and also a weak ass attempt at replicating the plot twist that got most people to see Kojima as a masterful troll, that is, Raiden's twist in MGS2. Except that, as others have already said throughout the thread, this plot twist has nothing of the genius of MGS2's.
 
Mothefucker.. I just read if I had put the butterfly emblem before mission 41 she wouldn't have left

This... Is stupid.

I don't think I'll get over this. Great game but what the fucking fuck? This is huge to me.

I really hope I'm being trolled and there's some way to get her back. :(

I'm never touching the game again until there's some sort of DLC or something to bring her back.
 
I agree with this, it makes the whole thing so dumb and without focus. I'm sure this has been mentioned quite a lot already, but it's also ridiculous how, in a series that started about cloning and which went on to talk about shaping people via information control, no one ever managed to make identical copies of another person. The Les Enfants Terribles were never exactly like Big Boss, nor was Raiden just like Solid Snake despite The Patriots' attempts to shape him in his image. Even in the king of retcons, MGS4, Big Boss straight up says that despite The Patriot's advances in genetic and information control, they "never managed to control people at will, let alone turn one person totally into another".

...

"Except, you know, that one time when they actually turned someone into an exact replica of me, 30 years ago!"

So, yeah. I have an extremely difficult time believing that Kojima ever came up with Venom Snake as a means to explain how "anyone can become Big Boss". It literally goes against everything that the series has been saying until now.

To me, MGSV's plot twist is a gratuitous fourth wall breaker with no consideration whatsoever for its implications within the narrative of the series at large, and also a weak ass attempt at replicating the plot twist that got most people to see Kojima as a masterful troll, that is, Raiden's twist in MGS2. Except that, as others have already said throughout the thread, this plot twist has nothing of the genius of MGS2's.

Well said.
 
You pn PC? It's very easy to bring her back there.

Sadly not, PS4.
While I appreciate what Kojima was trying to do, I invested so much into her equipment and my play style was all about her support. It's like taking Sonic's spin dash away half way through a game.
 

I don't necessarily disagree with anything you said, though Kojima's bad writing doesn't seem exclusive from this actually being a thing (and I was partially being coy). I saw it as a sort of mildly traced bullet point rather than some grand theme or plot twist. There's not that much left of the already muddled timeline at this point anyway so I'm just writing it all off since I should have stopped caring after Snake Eater like any sane person should. The best that could be added is another side-story of middling significance.

That was the impression I got from the game as the player, that I'm meant to play a part in this jerry-rigged messianic soldier figure hype (and yes, it's terribly done).

It's like that day a kid beats his dad at basketball for the first time. He isn't as good as they thought he was and it turns out he was cheating half the time for their benefit.
 
No, it wasn't. They did tapes for PW and Kiefer wasn't a VA for that game. And PW had even more tapes than TPP (this part is probably more to do with TPP being unfinished as evidenced by the Kaz hamburger tapes, the game was just starting to use tapes for funny shit like they did in PW).

The codec started to go downhill in MGS4, surely you noticed (their main codec writer for the previous games left before MGS4). And plus, forced codec conversations interrupted gameplay quite often in MGS1-3 (when you had so little gameplay to begin with). And while optional codecs were definitely cool and all, you couldn't move around while they played. With tapes it makes more logical sense for you to be able to move around and a classic codec system simply wouldn't work -- you'd sit in the open world, in place, listening to codecs for however long you wanted. And tweaking the codec to work similarly to the tapes... well... then you might as well have tapes? Other than the fact the codec covered all sorts of items and information the player could ask about for the respective people who knew about it.

In addition, the Intel Radio in TPP is supposed to replace the informational optional codecs in previous games but from what I've found of it... it doesn't really work -- at least the implementation compared to GZ isn't the same. Where in GZ it actually worked as a replacement for the codec optional information calls OK here it doesn't seem to work at all as that and instead as just a general "tutorial" radio (I haven't tried to use it like GZ much but anytime I did I would get info about the mission objective rather than what I was looking at to get more intel on). Maybe it works better in Free Roam? I dunno.

A shame but it is what it is. It's not Kiefer's fault, some people are just pinning the blame on him because they don't like him.

my bad, I worded that horribly. I didn't mean to imply that Kiefer was stomping around the studio saying "no, i'm not doing this much work unless you pay me more", but maybe the price for the work itself? I liked Kiefer way more than Hayter actually so it's a goddamn shame that he's underutilized int he main game. I'm pretty sure he has more tape convos in the goddamn 30 minute demo which is a goddamn bitter pill to swallow.

I think having a codec on the idroid that played exactly like tapes you listen to on the field wouldn't have been that cumbersome or at least have way more fun/flavor tapes. The hamburger tapes were great, but what else does the game have? There's just so much missing charm from this game that was in the previous games. I'm feeling the phantom pain
 
I kinda hoped that they would bring the original Metal Gear bosses in to this game, it would've been nice to see those pixels turned in to actual characters. It would've worked narratively and gameplay wise, with Venom fighting and recruiting them for Outer heaven.. maybe even have some Naked Snake / Young Ocelot style rivalry with one of them.

I would have rather seen modern renditions of those guys instead of Liquid and Mantis.
 
Not gonna lie.. I cried listening to that last Paz cassette. Wtf Kojima

Tara Strong did a good job IMO

Brb, drying my eyes.

Got a fucking lump in my throat. Doesn't help I just finished watching Kojima's last MGS trailer for the first time, right before listening to the cassette. The feels
 
and the amount of charm that chief kief oozes in the truth tapes is a goddamn travesty. Why the fuck couldn't we get that guy in the cutscenes? Instead we get a brainwashed fucking mute. Don't get me wrong, I actually like Venom now, but jesus didn't they realize how goddamn awkward and distracting his silence was in 90% of his scenes?

his only good dialogue was literally shown in the trailer
 
Ocelot: So when he wakes up, you should probably imply he's Big Boss, cos that's what he believes.
Doctor: Okay.
Ocelot: You should use these pictures to show him pictures of Big Boss.
Doctor: But there's pictures of him right there! And it's signed on the back!
Ocelot: That's no good. Tell you what, hold this picture over it suspiciously and make sure you don't turn it over.
Doctor: Oh, that'll work. That always works.
Ocelot: I'm a genius.
 
Sadly not, PS4.
While I appreciate what Kojima was trying to do, I invested so much into her equipment and my play style was all about her support. It's like taking Sonic's spin dash away half way through a game.
Yeah, it's a bit bothersome that you don't even get a faux Ersatz.

Ocelot: So when he wakes up, you should probably imply he's Big Boss, cos that's what he believes.
Doctor: Okay.
Ocelot: You should use these pictures to show him pictures of Big Boss.
Doctor: But there's pictures of him right there! And it's signed on the back!
Ocelot: That's no good. Tell you what, hold this picture over it suspiciously and make sure you don't turn it over.
Doctor: Oh, that'll work. That always works.
Ocelot: I'm a genius.
lol
 
I've not missed Quiet all that much.

I mean, sure. I'd love to still have her as an option to redo all the missions, but I like the ending of her story and I like that they decided to make her loss permanent.
 
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