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[Valkyri von Thanatos]

Kojima's a coward.

He sends the real big boss to do the real villainous shit some place else, and we stay with mcnormal chillcelot spreading messages of goodness and rainbows everywhere.

The story is such a scatterbrained mess too. There's no build up to a climax anywhere in this game. It's fucking abysmally paced. And the best shit is saved for audio recordings? Fucking really?

The truth tapes sound like something that should have been the beginning/intro in cutscene form. Fuck the "twist". What's the point of that even? The interesting shit is between Snake and his clones, not that constant "phantom this phantom that" symbolic babble bullshit. It's his wretched legacy, his perversion of the Joy's future. But that's absent or was cut from the game lol... Fuck off Kojima.


There's no character development anywhere, save for Huey, barely. And what a dumb ass psycho he was.

Quiet was just some random bitch that was loyal to the penis, rather than the mission, served no fucking purpose...

Turns out Skull Face pampered Big Boss through everything he "accomplished" in his glory days. Fucks sake...

What a goddamned mess. I can't believe I've been a fan of these series for so long, waiting for that brilliance to become fully realized with more capable hardware. And this fucking hack squanders everything salvageable after MGS4.

I wouldn't say exactly that he was a "coward" for not doing that story. I think in some ways he really doesn't want to make BB who he becomes eventually, and wants to avoid it, but I think the main reason he didn't do that story is because I think he honestly just thinks that would be boring and that this story is much better. So I wouldn't say he's necessarily "a coward", just someone who has sometimes too much "imagination" for his own good.

should have been the tagline on the TPP cover.

Damn, Skullface has seen his fair share of fire, so believe him when he says "IT BUUUUURNS!"

Kojima shouldn't be allowed to write his games. It isn't his forte.

MGS4, PW and MGSV are what happen when bad ideas can't be vetoed.

He's a game director. Quiet is what results when Kojima advises Shinkawa on character design, and that guy has the deciding hand in the story.

I feel like you could throw a stone in a room of writers and hit someone who would have done MGSV more justice.

My problems with the plot started with its rejection of the given premise, but that's what MGS2 already did so its not really inherently unexpected or problematic. What really sucks is just how bad what story is actually there is.

So, I think I heard the most depressing defense on why Ocelot is the most boring bland nothing character in this game.

It's because it's the first time we've ever seen him not manipulating anyone, or planning to betray anyone. So the Ocelot in literally every other game isn't the real Ocelot. The Ocelot you've seen up to now has always been an act, basically almost all of him. The real Ocelot is apparently perfectly comfortable just staying on the base, doing nothing, following orders, being a janitor. Being nothing.

The Ocelot you liked never existed.

Nooooooooooo!!! (Kiefer "Noooo")

Kojima is humanist towards clones.

I hope in MGS6 they reveal that Big Boss's gunshot actually didn't kill The Boss because she had parasites that helped her survive, and right before the MiGS showed up Skullface went up to The Boss to finish the job. But before he killed her The Boss told Skullface she knew what his job was and told him to be his own man instead of a puppet for Zero.

Then it's revealed that the vision The Boss told Snake wasn't actually her TRUE vision, and she tells Skullface that her TRUE vision is to unify the world by the one thing everyone on the planet has the potential to share. Language. But Skullface took it the wrong way and wanted to unify the world by destroying all other languages.

And then in Portable Ops right before Gene died while Snake was making his Pre-Pre Outer Heaven speech, Skullface tried to kill him but Gene told him to carry on his will to create a nation for soldiers that weren't puppets for the government. And this made Skullface begin his plans to kill Zero and Big Boss because of how his fate was tied to the two of them.

And finally, in the post credits scene Skullface is reporting back to Zero after helping Big Boss complete a mission, and they drop SUBTLE foreshadowing lines like

Skullface "You know eventually the two of us will be enemies, and the world will be torn asunder. And then it shall be free."
Zero "Then I suppose I'll have to have the DIAMOND DOG take care of you."
Skullface "Sorry to disappoint you major, but you can't kill a PHANTOM."
Zero "That may be, but you can certainly cause it PAIN."

Posts like these are why I can't stop checking this thread, too full of diamonds. It's affecting my grades at this point.

MGS6: Parasitic nanomachines.

"The vocal cord parasites entered young David's throat and changed his voice to that of an adult man. This is how Cipher intends to accelerate the aging of your sons, bilagaana. First the vocal cords parasites make his voice ragged, as the particular frequencies the modified Wolbachia that are living in them respond to are low, and would normally only function in an adult man.

By injecting these parasites into David, and artificially accelerating the development of his vocal cords as a pre pubescent boy, Cipher's Wolbachia have successfully prevented copulation of your genes. Otherwise, he would become sterile only after his voice broke and normalized after a few years, and who is to say what a young man may do during those years. Why I even-"

"OK, I get it."

"Regardless, the acceleration of the development of his vocal cords development may lower his life expectancy by affecting other regions of the body, but Cipher does not care. Just as the Dine suffered with diseases given to them by foreigners, your sons will suffer from the vocal cord parasites they now carry."

12 year old David:

"Woah, I heard about changes, but that was quicker than I expected!"

Vocal cord parasites (AKA: "Throaty")

'Kept you waiting, huh?"

And so David gained a life long friend in "Throaty", who did all the smooth talk in his life, while the majority of David's self spoken dialogue consists mostly of repetitive questions. "Metal... Gear?" "Cloned?" "Nanomachines?"

Also "Throaty" prevented FOXDIE from killing Solid in Shadow Moses because we needed that explained.

Neutrinos possessed by vengeful ghosts.

Hey, as long as they don't retcon ghosts and psychic as being some kind of faked phenomenon, using neutrinos to retro actively destroy all of the mystique left, I might be alright with this. Hell, who am I kidding, even ignoring how stupid that is, of course they'd fuck it up.

 

[SomTervo]

Man formerly on Fire wasn't catchy enough.

The Genocidal Artist Formerly Known as Man on Fire.

Where the fuck is Decoy Octopus?

There was a discussion way earlier about how Decoy Octopus probably bases a lot of his technique on Venom Snake's transformation, that this is what enables the 'Decoy Octopus' character as the greatest imitator/mimic in history.

Not that he gets very far anyway.

 

[Unknown One]

Posts like these are why I can't stop checking this thread, too full of diamonds. It's affecting my grades at this point.

I had more fun with this thread than the game. It's a goldmine for MGS fans. You can tell who is a long term fan in here. When you love a series, you are more likely to rag on it.

 

[SomTervo]

So, I think I heard the most depressing defense on why Ocelot is the most boring bland nothing character in this game.

It's because it's the first time we've ever seen him not manipulating anyone, or planning to betray anyone. So the Ocelot in literally every other game isn't the real Ocelot. The Ocelot you've seen up to now has always been an act, basically almost all of him. The real Ocelot is apparently perfectly comfortable just staying on the base, doing nothing, following orders, being a janitor. Being nothing.

The Ocelot you liked never existed.

I said this hundreds of pages ago. This is exactly it. This is the first time we see Ocelot not being a spy. It's just him being an intel operative in an office, basically.

I'm fine with it, but when I said this back then people were still raging.

 

[Unknown One]

Ocelot peaked at MGS2. I liked seeing his transformation from a cheesy youngster to a triple-quadruple crossing agent.

 

[Solidino]

Knack 2 confirmed.

 

[Golnei]

I said this hundreds of pages ago. This is exactly it. This is the first time we see Ocelot not being a spy. It's just him being an intel operative in an office, basically.

I'm fine with it, but when I said this back then people were still raging.

That might have been the intention, but in practice it was less like 'this is what the man we've seen through the rest of the series looks like under the layers of theatrics and deceit' and closer to 'here's a completely different character with a familiar name'. Nothing's really done with the idea of the Ocelot we're familiar with being a constructed persona, and the "real Ocelot" isn't explored much as a character.

 

[JayEH]

One thing I've noticed in the truth tapes is how awkward it is when boss and ocelot call each other by their real name. Like there's a big emphasis/pause when they say John or Adam.

 

[Hypron]

I'm certain Huey didn't get hit at all (soldiers never even noticed or fired at me), yet I didn't get the associated mission task.

sdhajhdsajhda

Sure it had to happen on one of the longest/most annoying missions in the game.

 

[Erigu]

One thing I've noticed in the truth tapes is how awkward it is when boss and ocelot call each other by their real name. Like there's a big emphasis/pause when they say John or Adam.

Trivia: In the Japanese version of that tape, Big Boss doesn't call Ocelot "Adam", but "Junior" (and the furigana clarify that he means "son of The Boss").

 

[Valkyri von Thanatos]

yah the door leading directly outside is really cool (though i didnt realize it read it on youtube comments) i think the tapes just kind of fuck things up. but it does make alot of sense since venom being the medic would have the most guilt about this because he didnt find the second bomb and these hallucinations were a coping method.

hmm actually they should have let you open the paz door after the ending and made it obvious that it just leads directly to that unfinished outside platform.



agreed! still i really liked it conceptually and the final scene is well done

Didn't realize that either until you pointed it out. That gives a bit more context to Venom just laying on some weird scaffolding in the final scene.

Even though the way to make it play out, and the justifications were sometimes badly done, the scenes involved literally were the only ones that got me emotionally invested and actually really made me feel the sadness and emptiness of Venom and feel even more for Paz. It's the only plot in the game that is satisfying, though I would have preffered my original theory from the E3 2015 trailer, that she was a legit ghost, not just a "phantom". That trailer really made it seem like the Skull unit were just ghosts really, so why not?

Hell, I actually even thought that instead of being killed mid game as people speculated (correctly), Skullface either escapes with a fatal wound or seems to die ambiguously, or simply "dissapears into the fog" with his Skull unit at some point, just like they did in the trailer, but keeps appearing only to BB later on. Skullface's haunting presence (making the player unsure whether he was even "alive" for any part of the game) would truly build up to Big Boss' degrading psyche, influencing the creation of Outer Heaven,(and the logo). He's trying to satisfy the demons that haunt him (Skullface). The player would also be unsure whether Skullface as a ghost was responsible for this, or maybe the horn was implanted during BB's coma as a form of mind control or maybe a "focusing rod" to make him more susceptible to psychic suggestion?

But nope. I thought him disappearing out of the blue would have been especially interesting, and if they implied that he was really just a "ghost of war", it would have made the "phantom pain" of not getting revenge on him still work as it tries to here, but while actually capitalizing on the Skullface hallucinations Big Boss seems to have (two in trailers if you count his walk scene in the launch trailer and the scene with Sahel in E3 2015 trailer), but only ended up having one.

I also thought the tape "From the man who sold the world" was either from Zero, or more interestingly Skullface. Skullface might have made it as his "final gift" to Big Boss, that he receives after Skullface's death or total traceless disappearance, with the tape implying that his plan conrinues its work in the shadows, and that Skullface will forever be by Big Boss' side "every step of the way, until Heaven turns to Hell". I really liked the idea that Skullface was more supernatural than was let on, what with the "don't die!" and "you too, can return to this world for revenge!" lines in GZ.

I really thought he'd actually be a ghost with very powerful effects on the world compared to even the Sorrow and Mantis, who'd literally haunt Big Boss until his death. I mean, people appearing out of thin air seemed like some straight ghost powers in June, so why not? But nope, super power parasites. If parasites can do all this shit, why couldn't the powers be from Hyman's instead?

"When my time came calling, I didn't die!"

So the medic is a fan of Moby Dick book?

Nah, how'd they know anyways? I guess maybe you could say that Medic just wouldn't shut up about it around BB, and that's the only thing BB remembers him for. "Oh yeah, the Moby Dick guy, let's have some fun with that. >:>"

Edit:

But seriously though, "Those who don't exist"? I thought this was the game to full supernatural, but we just got more nanomachines. If you can't tell, I prefer characters actually have their superpowers, like Mantis, Raven, and the Sorrow, not have them given through McGuffin tech. They'll still have super powers regardless, but there's something a lot more interesting in the idea that Skullface would have survived through sheer will alone and would have perhaps begun to exist as only a semi-corporeal entity.

Later he'd experiment to create others like him "Those who don't exist", those who should be dead, and for all intents and purposes actually are, but somehow, their will lives on and affects the world. This could have been done to Paz and one of the reasons why he set up his "kill BB plan" in such a way, to see if Paz could "live for revenge" against him. Basically, I thought they might leave the series on a supernatural note with unexplained powers popping up like in MGS3 again, making up for over explaining and justifying things that didn't need it with nanomachines. But we got nanomachines 2.0. With arbitrary rules that seem to silently imply that Quiet even refusing to speak English wasn't enough to prevent the spread of the disease, but apparently she didn't want to write, nod, gesture, anything?

Also, how do skin parasites explain transparent bodies? "Those who don't exist" being a unit made entirely of ghosts would have been pretty interesting IMO, and could have messed with players, not knowing what is "real" or not.

 

[Shin Kojima]

What if ground zeroes is actually venom in a coma having his memories altered to believe it was him there.

I'll take it!

 

[Solidino]

http://www.gamesradar.com/mgs-5-fans-are-trying-decode-secret-game-hidden-code/?tag=grsocial-20

what is this shit? O___o'

 

[SomTervo]

Yeah, well, you're just going to have to be more negative. Ok? Ok.

Thanks.

This. I love discussion but this thread is 80% a negativity train in a feedback loop/echo chamber. People only really seem to talk about what they dislike rather than what they like, even if I know the very same people like certain aspects of the story.

Can we all just list what we liked about the story? Naturally it'll be shorter than a list of dislikes, but that's OK.

Re the rape scene, I thought it was infinitely better than the helicopter sexy dances or the rain scene which I didn't see until afterwards. It still had terrible elements, but I didn't think it was as bad as other Quiet moments.

The attempted rape scene is garbage.

It's a character being depowered because reasons and defending herself against being raped by conveniently getting her super powers back and super kicking and stabbing her would be rapists, then a shot of her boobs.

Like every other theme in this game it is handled with the nuance and consideration of a 9 year old.

I'm curious Alienous - back in the OT before many people had finished the game, I asked you what you thought of the story, and you said it was very creative and well executed on the whole. What changed, exactly? Our opinions seem to have diverged significantly.

the constant and real complain I have about the game, the over sexualisation of Quite in general, I couldn't just ignore it because it was constatly throw in my face, I really hated it.

EDIT: and the boob bouncing mechanic, UUUUGH... such a lust for boobs!! WHOOOOOOOO

This. I like the story very much on the whole, but Quiet is just fucked because of how her scenes are directed. It's not even her backstory or her actions. It's literally the cinematic direction. It would take so little tweaking to make her all-round brilliant.

I'm 115 hours into the game, 85% of side ops completed and several mission on S rank and I still don't know how I'm supposed to handle D-Walker, I just don't know how..

I suck at it and the whole FOB system, I tried 3 times yesterday for the first time and I got shot down so easily..

It took me a while to get it –

> hold Square/X and he's basically a car
> to quickly stop, hold down Cross/A (tap to start power sliding)
> when moving normally tap Cross/A to go into Walk Mode or Silent Rolling mode

That's essentially it. His legs have pretty high reach so you can step up 3-4 feet ledges.

FOB infiltrations - basically just nick their containers and staff and don't worry about getting to the objective or losing/dying. You're still nicking someone's hard-earned stuff either way. I came back from a week-long holiday a couple of days ago to find 7 thefts from my place and all of my fucking fuel gone.

Reposting my favorite

Snickering at work

 

[Clear]

This. I love discussion but this thread is 80% a negativity train in a feedback loop/echo chamber.

Well, it doesn't help when you can't argue against the negative points without being accused of attacking the person expressing the view or trying to stifle discussion.

Seems less about discussion than about venting to me.

 

[giancarlo123x]

Am I a terrible friend for not giving my best friend any heads up that in a few missions he's going to lose quiet forever? I kinda want him to feel my phantom pain also.

 

[Shin Kojima]

Am I a terrible friend for not giving my best friend any heads up that in a few missions he's going to lose quiet forever? I kinda want him to feel my phantom pain also.

You're a good friend for not spoiling. I hate having lost Quiet but I would have hated getting spoiled more.
I'll hang on to her when I eventually replay the game.

 

[Alienous]

I'm curious Alienous - back in the OT before many people had finished the game, I asked you what you thought of the story, and you said it was very creative and well executed on the whole. What changed, exactly? Our opinions seem to have diverged significantly.

I think I had just finished mission 28. I liked the language-triggered virus idea, and I still do. The Metal Gear not being the actual plan was awesome, as that's pretty much series tradition. The cutscenes were back in force. After hours of nothing I was excited for the story.

The story was pretty much a decline from that point on. The parasites also do the superpowers, and explain every other weakly explained element.

After that impression I wanted to find the story. So I reserved further judgement and completed Chapter 1, then went on to 2. I'm not sure if I elaborated on my impressions in the |OT| afterwards but I was keen to let people experience the ups and downs themselves.

 

[Johndoey]

Kojima's a coward.

He sends the real big boss to do the real villainous shit some place else, and we stay with mcnormal chillcelot spreading messages of goodness and rainbows everywhere.

The story is such a scatterbrained mess too. There's no build up to a climax anywhere in this game. It's fucking abysmally paced. And the best shit is saved for audio recordings? Fucking really?

The truth tapes sound like something that should have been the beginning/intro in cutscene form. Fuck the "twist". What's the point of that even? The interesting shit is between Snake and his clones, not that constant "phantom this phantom that" symbolic babble bullshit. It's his wretched legacy, his perversion of the Joy's future. But that's absent or was cut from the game lol... Fuck off Kojima.


There's no character development anywhere, save for Huey, barely. And what a dumb ass psycho he was.

Quiet was just some random bitch that was loyal to the penis, rather than the mission, served no fucking purpose...

Turns out Skull Face pampered Big Boss through everything he "accomplished" in his glory days. Fucks sake...

What a goddamned mess. I can't believe I've been a fan of these series for so long, waiting for that brilliance to become fully realized with more capable hardware. And this fucking hack squanders everything salvageable after MGS4.

Haha! I told you, I told all of you before this game came out the writing would be a mess and you all cast me down as a false prophet.

VINDICATION IS MINE!

That might have been the intention, but in practice it was less like 'this is what the man we've seen through the rest of the series looks like under the layers of theatrics and deceit' and closer to 'here's a completely different character with a familiar name'. Nothing's really done with the idea of the Ocelot we're familiar with being a constructed persona, and the "real Ocelot" isn't explored much as a character.

Ocelot is basically a creepy drug dealer in this game, you don't see him unless he's a syringe in his hand and he has an old west fetish. Other than that he bums around bitching about children and verbally masturbating over Quiet.

 

[Unknown One]

The first main mission had already lost me due the fucking Skulls. Was riding D-Horse to the LZ and I have these speedy jackasses running past me and shooting at me.

Oh I got spotted. Let's watch these stupid enemies close up, pulling a weapon out of their asses.

Fuck the skulls, the worst enemy Kojima ever designed.

 

[TheBoss1]

Well, it doesn't help when you can't argue against the negative points without being accused of attacking the person expressing the view or trying to stifle discussion.

Seems less about discussion than about venting to me.

.

Am I a terrible friend for not giving my best friend any heads up that in a few missions he's going to lose quiet forever? I kinda want him to feel my phantom pain also.

When he does lose her ask him, "You feel it too, don't you?"

 

[PedroPanache]

I think it's had quite a mixed reception in the end, but I really enjoyed MGS: Skull Eater. Sure, it was interesting to see the Snake Eater mission from another point of view, but, at the same time, it was a bit boring and you didn't do much. Aat least, Kojima lived up to the all the hype and broke the taboo that got him kicked out of the industry. That scene was just a bit too much in the end, if you know what I mean.




SKULL FACE: Come in Zero. I'm at the field. The Boss is dead. Snake shot her in the head with her own gun. What do you want me to do with the body?
ZERO: Burn it. We don't want the Russians getting their hands on it.
SKULL FACE: Say, Zero, this has been a really long mission and I know, I know this is going to sound a little bit wacky, but I'm going to throw it out there anyway. A man, a man has needs. Snake, he's got Eva, but why do I have?
ZERO: Oh no, no Skull Face.... just no. I want you to burn the body and meet me before Snake's debriefing at Langley in three days time. You're not a pretty chap, I know, but we don't have to resort to that sort of thing. It's just not cricket, chap.
SKULL FACE: Oh, but Zero, I don't think she'll mind. I really don't. She's dead and the dating pool for a creepy Hungarian with a skull for face is..... well, let's just say it's limited. REALLY, REALLY limited. So, c'mon, just this once. Let me go crazy. Mission's over. I should get the lady, right?
ZERO: You're a very strange fellow, Skull Face. But, OK, just this once. You can violate the dead body of the mother of our special forces. This is a Hideo Kojima game after all.
SKULL FACE: YES!!!! Thank you, boss, but, wait, who is Hideo Kojima? WHOOOO?
ZERO: I've told you to stop doing that, Skull Face. It just sounds silly. Besides, Hideo, he's our creator. I'm breaking the fourth wall. We do it all the time with Snake.
SKULL FACE: The fourth wall?
ZERO: You know Snake does that question thing a lot too, but anyway, it's a hidden wall. In any given mission there are three walls. Occasionally, when the mission requires it, we'll break the fourth wall. Now, Skull Face, Hideo wants you, and by extension, the player, to know that we MUST press the action button ourselves to violate The Boss. We must be complicit. It's a metaphor for how Konami fucke......
SKULL FACE: Oh God!! Oh God!!! Sorry to interrupt, but I'm done. Oh God! I'm done. I've action buttoned all over her chest. The final taboo, Zero. Skull Face, over and out.
-------------------------------
END CREDITS PLAY
-------------------------------
Screen fades to black. A phone can be heard ringing in the background. Somebody picks it up.

SKULL FACE: Yes, the operation was a complete success. The Boss was eliminated and nobody was any the wiser that I witnessed the entire mission. No, no, he thought it was perfectly normal to find all this shit scattered on the battlefield. He never knew it was me who, it was me who ... WHOOOO?? Oh, I'm sorry sir, really sorry that ... that word, it just sets me off for some reason. I don't know why. Now, where were we again? Yes, yes Mr. President.........he missed one Kerotan Frog during the chase sequence with Eva. He'll never know that it was me who shot that last frog for him. Oh, yes, and err... I ... fucked the dead body of The Boss....... Mr. President? Hello? Are you still there? Mr. President? MR. PRESIDENT?!!

SKULL EATER ZINGER MUSIC PLAYS
DUN...DUN....DER...DERR!!!!

Thank you for playing Metal Gear Solid : Skull Eater
You never saved once.....Medic refused. She just didn't see the point.
You killed nobody. Snake took care of them all. You didn't even kill The End when Snake hid in a hut for two weeks.
You placed 64 Kerotan Frogs on the battlefield
Alert Phase - 0
Final Mission Rank - WHY? WHY WHERE YOU EVEN HERE?

 

[sappyday]

http://www.gamesradar.com/mgs-5-fans-are-trying-decode-secret-game-hidden-code/?tag=grsocial-20

what is this shit? O___o'

Fans that are feeling the phantom pain worse than Kaz.


It looks like it's gotten to the point where people are looking at P.T. for clues. Some even suggesting the hidden message in P.T. pertains to the Medic reveal in TPP.


God Kojima what have you done. You've broken these poor people.

 

[Chariot]

http://www.gamesradar.com/mgs-5-fans-are-trying-decode-secret-game-hidden-code/?tag=grsocial-20

what is this shit? O___o'

Da fuck.

 

[Johndoey]

I really appreciate how Kojima thought killing faceless goons in the quarantine level was supposed to be emotionally affecting, just because their MY faceless goons doesn't make that shit more engaging.

 

[Golnei]

Some even suggesting the hidden message in P.T. pertains to the Medic reveal in TPP.

Searching for hidden messages in random numbers might be going too far, but I don't think it's much of a stretch to suggest something like "the only me is me, are you sure the only you is you?" might have been an intentional reference.

Speaking of which, I wish they hadn't scrubbed the Lisa decoy out of the game. Surely having it there but disabled so that it could easily be modded back in wouldn't have caused any problems?

 

[Corpsepyre]

Just curious. Would people be talking about how unfinished the game is if we never got that article by Kotaku and all the Mission 51 videos on Youtube and in the CE? Sure, the Eli subplot had no closure, but I thought that it was a deliberate loose end and that they left it open for some reason, but I never thought it was a result of an unfinished product.

What do you think? If the game had ended at Mission 46, with a highly open ending, with no leaked documents and articles or anything, would you be calling this an unfinished game?

 

[Alienous]

I really appreciate how Kojima thought killing faceless goons in the quarantine level was supposed to be emotionally affecting, just because their MY faceless goons doesn't make that shit more engaging.

Kojima should have had the balls to make them all of your top staff.

I'd go legit nuclear.

 

[Unknown One]

Kojima should have had the balls to make them all of your top staff.

I'd go legit nuclear.

A soldiers would get replaced by S soldiers anyways.

 

[Lanrutcon]

What did you think of the story? If you think positive, please contribute to the spoiler thread where people are crazy and only see the negatives

So as someone who's previous MGS experience comes down to watching Let's Plays of all of them: I found the story to be interesting and more than sufficient.

Like, I can see the story being all about Punished Snake going from hero to demon. That part I liked, as it was mirrored by the gameplay (as the game wore on, I became less worried about bodycounts and that showed). Loved the way we pursued vengeance and punished our enemies like actual people would. I especially loved how they didn't wuss out when it came time to pull the trigger on Skullface, and how Huey got his. Satisfying, reasonable, logical. Helped me grow attached to the key characters, and during the mission where I had to kill the infected I actually felt a bit uncomfortable. Good job. Would have loved the tapes to be cutscenes, but I guess that came down to dev time. I grew to like Quiet, even though she didn't enjoy a lot of screen time.

What kind of lost me (and long term MGS fans will probably disagree me) was the heavy reliance on sci fi bullshit. The giant robots and parasites seemed so fucking stupid. I know the gears are a thing, but seriously? If super giant robot can be taken down by one lone dude and a chopper then the technology sucks, sorry folks. Same for the parasite soldiers: the practicalities surrounding their abilities make them unbelievable and quite silly. Doesn't help that encounters with them are essentially boss fights which essentially have their own rules that don't fit the rest of the game. I'm also curious as to how the skulls wiped us out in the first place, as for all their vaunted badassness you can still kill them quite easily with a heavy weapons. Did the previous base not have .50 cals? Questions like these, man.

I think the story would have been much better served with a light sprinkling of sci fi as opposed to giant burning dudes, mecha and magic parasites.

 

[SomTervo]

Kojima's a coward.

What a goddamned mess. I can't believe I've been a fan of these series for so long, waiting for that brilliance to become fully realized with more capable hardware. And this fucking hack squanders everything salvageable after MGS4.

So extreme!

Kojima fluffed the story in MGS4 so bad he decided to go the opposite direction and focus on gameplay first and foremost this time around, by orders of magnitude.

Also the rest of the games filled in 99% of the series' story. We didnt need much/anything from MGSV. So he sorted out the gameplay. A great job imo, possibly my goty.

 

[OmegaTreeFish]

.


When he does lose her ask him, "You feel it too, don't you?"

I think losing quiet will be a good thing. She has become a complete crutch. While maxing d dog I just used him as an auto spotter. I would then methodically take out evenyone my self and Fulton them. Once maxed I switched to quiet. I now just tell her to do her thing and while everyone one is looking for her I just can tranq from a different angle and the whole base is down in seconds. Or if its tons of heavy armour guys just run up behind them and chock them all out because they are all looking at quiet. Made things kinda boring but its the most efficient way so....

She a touch over powered is what I'm saying.

 

[GoldenCrow]

Searching for hidden messages in random numbers might be going too far…

It is batshit crazy. You can pretty much make anything possible, the reason hidden messages work is that one end has the key and the information being displayed is of a very consistent format so code breakers can figure it out then independently testable. Though I have always wondered if the Moby Dick reference is Kojimas reference to Brendan McKay and his critique of the "bible code" by using Moby Dick to predict more world events than they could simply because they were better mathematicians and to highlight how stupid it was.

 

[Salaadin]

I really appreciate how Kojima thought killing faceless goons in the quarantine level was supposed to be emotionally affecting, just because their MY faceless goons doesn't make that shit more engaging.

It worked on me. I loved everything about 43. Next to Paz and A Quiet Exits ending, it's the most Metal Gear thing in the game.

 

[SJRB]

This. I love discussion but this thread is 80% a negativity train in a feedback loop/echo chamber. People only really seem to talk about what they dislike rather than what they like, even if I know the very same people like certain aspects of the story.

Can we all just list what we liked about the story? Naturally it'll be shorter than a list of dislikes, but that's OK.

There is a reason the MGSV spoiler thread is on its second iteration, gearing up towards the third. Everyone's anger greatly outweighs their enjoyment. Every page new people who just finished the game visit this thread, expressing their disbelief at what they just experienced. Which is only natural, first thing I did when I finished 46 was go here.

I am so fucking angry at what this game turned out to be, no amount of discussion on mission 12/43/45 can set that right. And even those missions aren't perfect by any stretch, 45 for example has great cutscenes but the actual mission is beyond terrible. Of course this thread cycles in certain patterns, but what threads don't? The reason for that is because there is so little positive to discuss everyone keeps coming back to the basics:

The core gameplay in MGSV is second to none, easily the best I've ever played. But literally, LITERALLY everything else in this game is bad. Different tiers of bad, but it's all bad. The story [obviously], the terrible characters [sans mayby Miller] and their complete lack of any form of development aside from Huey and maybe Quiet, the mission pacing and structure [credits before each mission is one of the worst design decisions I've ever seen in a game of this magnitude], mindless filler "main missions" that add nothing to the narrative [Honey Bee was super important right everyone? No? Exactly]. Mother Base "management", the mindless busywork like picking flowers, the mindboggingly empty maps. The terribly uninspired Side Ops, the way Peace Walker's "Outer Ops" were butchered into some RNG "fill the bar" Combat Deployments without any actual engaging gameplay mechanics. FOB system being a waste of everybody's time with insanely unfair mechanics.

This game wasted my time. Because that's what it did - at the end everything you did, EVERYTHING was for naught because guess what - you're not the character you thought you were and in fact the real Big Boss is out somewhere doing something that actually matters in the series' timeline while you were a distraction for a throwaway plot twist nobody asked for. The entire game you wonder when the "real" game starts, because everything feels like it's building up to something that never actually ends up happening. And that's of course because the game randomly ends in the middle of a second chapter, which is like reading a book halfway through and then read the last two pages and then being forced to go on Youtube to read an early draft of the epilogue. But thanks for playing, YOU are the real Big Boss! We're all Big Boss. Kojima tries so hard to be meta it's as subtle as a brick to the face.

"But you had fun doing it, right?" doesn't cut it when you spent 5 years [FIVE YEARS] waiting for the "missing link", the narrative finale of a 25-year old franchise, whilst [unbeknownst] being trolled to hell and back by Kojima and his fucking trailers showing a vastly different game than we eventually got. "You should've known, Kojima the master ruseman, it's your own fault!". Yeah no, not really. There's a massive difference between a ruse and literally years of misdirection via trailers, interviews and tweets. Of course the explanation for that might be that Konami stepped in and wanted the game released as soon as possible, or Kojima having mismanaged development process, or whatever - I don't care. I judge the game based on what I played.

MGSV is the biggest gaming-related disappointment I have ever experienced, and that disappointment fuels my rage like I'm fucking Kazuhira Miller.

 

[SomTervo]

Well, it doesn't help when you can't argue against the negative points without being accused of attacking the person expressing the view or trying to stifle discussion.

Seems less about discussion than about venting to me.

Yeah, there seems to be a lot of venting and raging going on.

The story wasn't that bad and MGS2 got a similar amount of raging.

I think I had just finished mission 28. I liked the language-triggered virus idea, and I still do. The Metal Gear not being the actual plan was awesome, as that's pretty much series tradition. The cutscenes were back in force. After hours of nothing I was excited for the story.

The story was pretty much a decline from that point on. The parasites also do the superpowers, and explain every other weakly explained element.

After that impression I wanted to find the story. So I reserved further judgement and completed Chapter 1, then went on to 2. I'm not sure if I elaborated on my impressions in the |OT| afterwards but I was keen to let people experience the ups and downs themselves.

Aha. I thought you had finished the game at that point, I think.

That's the thing, there's actually so much in the game, paced very oddly and with hours and hours of pure gameplay to each plot development, that it's easy to forget the good stuff it does.

I'm replaying on PC and using a mod to enable Subsistence loadouts, and seriously, the opening 20 hours of the game are fantastic. Easily make up for the empty back-end. There's loads of content in there.

 

[crazyrabbits]

The mission pacing and structure [credits before each mission is one of the worst design decisions I've ever seen in a game of this magnitude]

The bizarre gameplay mechanics are the most baffling part of this for me. I kind of understand some of what they did, but there's other choices they made that are just bizarre, especially tying an entire ending to a mechanic that appears to be nigh-impossible to get (disarming every nuke), especially when it has a significant character moment for Snake over the credits.

Same goes for tying a significant cutscene (recruits fighting in the rain, Snake's "brothers in arms" response) to a negative GMP balance.

 

[SomTervo]

There is a reason the MGSV spoiler thread is on its second iteration, gearing up towards the third. Everyone's anger greatly outweighs their enjoyment. Every page new people who just finished the game visit this thread, expressing their disbelief at what they just experienced. Which is only natural, first thing I did when I finished 46 was go here.

I am so fucking angry at what this game turned out to be, no amount of discussion on mission 12/43/45 can set that right. And even those missions aren't perfect by any stretch, 45 for example has great cutscenes but the actual mission is beyond terrible. Of course this thread cycles in certain patterns, but what threads don't? The reason for that is because there is so little positive to discuss everyone keeps coming back to the basics:

The core gameplay in MGSV is second to none, easily the best I've ever played. But literally, LITERALLY everything else in this game is bad. Different tiers of bad, but it's all bad. The story [obviously], the terrible characters [sans mayby Miller] and their complete lack of any form of development aside from Huey and maybe Quiet, the mission pacing and structure [credits before each mission is one of the worst design decisions I've ever seen in a game of this magnitude], mindless filler "main missions" that add nothing to the narrative [Honey Bee was super important right everyone? No? Exactly]. Mother Base "management", the mindless busywork like picking flowers, the mindboggingly empty maps. The terribly uninspired Side Ops, the way Peace Walker's "Outer Ops" were butchered into some RNG "fill the bar" Combat Deployments without any actual engaging gameplay mechanics. FOB system being a waste of everybody's time with insanely unfair mechanics.

I'm not going to respond too fully because our opinions are so different. It's a moot discussion.

"Literally" everything else in the game is bad? Really?

I loved the story - although a handful of aspects hobble it a lot. The rest of the series has developed the characters fully and given us all the plot we could ever need, so this one has very little in comparison, which I think was a good decision. We know what Big Boss does, we know he becomes a demon from the end of MGS3, we know what Ocelot and the others go on to do - none of it was a mystery to begin with. There was no "missing link" to begin with. Many of the Main Missions should deffo have been Side Ops, but they're still brilliantly designed, with excellent side objectives (bar Lingua Franca) and an intelligent use of the smaller area structure. Every time I start thinking Side Ops are mindless, one comes up which has great enemy layout in a unique settings. We never have to travel that far in the gameworld and its "emptiness" is filled up during main missions.

Phenomenal game in my opinion. And for every thing I think it does wrong, it does 4 or 5 things right. I love it.

So as someone who's previous MGS experience comes down to watching Let's Plays of all of them: I found the story to be interesting and more than sufficient.

Like, I can see the story being all about Punished Snake going from hero to demon. That part I liked, as it was mirrored by the gameplay (as the game wore on, I became less worried about bodycounts and that showed). Loved the way we pursued vengeance and punished our enemies like actual people would. I especially loved how they didn't wuss out when it came time to pull the trigger on Skullface, and how Huey got his. Satisfying, reasonable, logical. Helped me grow attached to the key characters, and during the mission where I had to kill the infected I actually felt a bit uncomfortable. Good job. Would have loved the tapes to be cutscenes, but I guess that came down to dev time. I grew to like Quiet, even though she didn't enjoy a lot of screen time.

What kind of lost me (and long term MGS fans will probably disagree me) was the heavy reliance on sci fi bullshit. The giant robots and parasites seemed so fucking stupid. I know the gears are a thing, but seriously? If super giant robot can be taken down by one lone dude and a chopper then the technology sucks, sorry folks. Same for the parasite soldiers: the practicalities surrounding their abilities make them unbelievable and quite silly. Doesn't help that encounters with them are essentially boss fights which essentially have their own rules that don't fit the rest of the game. I'm also curious as to how the skulls wiped us out in the first place, as for all their vaunted badassness you can still kill them quite easily with a heavy weapons. Did the previous base not have .50 cals? Questions like these, man.

I think the story would have been much better served with a light sprinkling of sci fi as opposed to giant burning dudes, mecha and magic parasites.

Yeah, this is how I feel. In essence, it's not an MGS game for MGS fans. And that's OK. On top of that, it did quite a few things wrong - but imo far less than the previous games did wrong (except MGS3 which is the golden child).

The Parasites thing is pretty off the wall. It's no worse than MGS2/4's nanomachines in reality, just as stupid, but still daft. At least most of the idiotic details can be ignored if you don't like them - they're in tapes.

 

[Alienous]

The game needed at least as many Mother Base cutscenes as GTA V had character transition cutscenes.

I should be hit with something short and sweet everytime I return. Soldiers playing soccer, or cards. Soldiers doing group drills. Soldiers trying and failing to spin their guns like Ocelot.

They really failed to make MB feel like a home.

 

[Serpens007]

Oh, yeah, goood thing Konami got rid of Kojima so we can stop having terrible games like TPP with its 80+ hours of phenomenal gameplay or PT. We need more quality games like MGS: Touch or Social Ops!!

Lol at the pissed people. Kojima, never change pls.

http://www.gamesradar.com/mgs-5-fans-are-trying-decode-secret-game-hidden-code/?tag=grsocial-20

what is this shit? O___o'

Is the fact that people thought that in an gigantic game they saw everything so they feel entitled to spit on it, and others felt like it's worth looking for more inside it. Let's give them time and see what comes of this.

I was watching The Codec in YongYea's channel, and one of the guys said that an anonymous source at KojiPro said that the game is deeper than people is thinking and there is a lot more to be seen. The 100% completion means shit (with other words).

 

[crazyrabbits]

The game needed at least as many Mother Base cutscenes as GTA V had transition cutscenes.

I should be hit with something short and sweet everytime I return. Soldiers playing soccer, or cards. Soldiers doing group drills. Soldiers trying and failing to spin their guns like Ocelot.

They really failed to make MB feel like a home.

That's what I thought too, considering some of the stuff they showed off in early gameplay demos. Seeing animals wandering Mother Base, being able to visit Ocelot and chill with him, the mentions that there would be little quirky character moments. MB feels so sterile in the final product.

 

[SomTervo]

The game needed at least as many Mother Base cutscenes as GTA V had character transition cutscenes.

I should be hit with something short and sweet everytime I return. Soldiers playing soccer, or cards. Soldiers doing group drills. Soldiers trying and failing to spin their guns like Ocelot.

They really failed to make MB feel like a home.

They definitely failed to do this.

They clearly used so many resources just making it a huge experience. It broke its own back with the weight.

 

[NotLiquid]

Yeah, there seems to be a lot of venting and raging going on.

The story wasn't that bad and MGS2 got a similar amount of raging.

This isn't even really the same issue though. MGS2 could be accepted well after the fact because we eventually got two more "Snake" games and even for it's time it was somewhat clear to see the game having built up the entire "gotcha" moment by every tiny deliberate detail. Liking it or not wasn't really the issue because I don't think anyone could deny that Kojima built the twist in a masterful way that wholly subverted the notion that the player desperately wanted to be Snake, and criticized them for it.

MGSV is different though. It never builds up to making a point. It dabbles with a bunch of filler that isn't necessary in the context of the plot, the fact that it's a prequel unlike MGS2 means that it's not allowed to flex itself as much as it needs to make the point it wants to, the twist is ungracefully implied for the first hour of the game and then never brought up aside from small things, and most of the payoff from doing story missions never really go anywhere. It brings up interesting concepts but never capitalizes on them. While in the previous games something was always happening, with a clear goal in sight and crazy payoff for each moment, in MGSV all I know is I'll be put back into the chopper, get a static radio dialogue from Miller about who that prisoner is or whatever, and then get kicked back into the menu before I've done it enough for the game to finally let me confront Skull Face for like, I dunno, ten seconds? And then "hooray, you're Big Boss because you did a bunch of pointless crap". That's lovely but I'm going to have to pass on that "reward" cause I didn't do anything of worth and I don't want to be someone who becomes an antagonist immediately after this game.

Even if you don't accept MGS2's twist it was at least trippy enough as an experience for it to make it worthwhile with solid design all around. MGSV is just a drag that doesn't end as much as it just stops.

 

[SomTervo]

This isn't even really the same issue though. MGS2 could be accepted well after the fact because we eventually got two more "Snake" games and even for it's time it was somewhat clear to see the game having built up the entire "gotcha" moment by every tiny deliberate detail. Liking it or not wasn't really the issue because I don't think anyone could deny that Kojima built the twist in a masterful way.

MGSV is different though. It never builds up to making a point. It dabbles with a bunch of filler that isn't necessary in the context of the plot, the fact that it's a prequel unlike MGS2 means that it's not allowed to flex itself as much as it needs to make the point it wants to, the twist is ungracefully implied for the first hour of the game and then never brought up aside from small things, and most of the payoff from doing story missions never really go anywhere. It brings up interesting concepts but never capitalizes on them. While in the previous games something was always happening, with a clear goal in sight and crazy payoff for each moment, in MGSV all I know is I'll be put back into the chopper, get a static radio dialogue from Miller about who that prisoner is or whatever, and then get kicked back into the menu before I've done it enough for the game to finally let me confront Skull Face for like, I dunno, ten seconds?

MGS2 was at least trippy enough for it to make it worthwhile. MGSV is just a drag that doesn't end as much as it just stops.

I thought it was compelling up until the last minute and that the twist was clever. Yes, he could have opened the game with that twist, or could have built up to it in a different way – but then it probably would have been almost identical to MGS2's twist, or twists in other films/games. He clearly wanted to handle it in a new way, with a different structure.

Also I see Chapter 1 as the 'traditional' MGS/game story, and Chapter 2 more as the 'follow-up TV mini-series' part. I felt the pacing was fine because I did loads of Side Ops and explored and made my base better while staggering out the 3-4 story missions and making the most of them. The pacing was fine for me - but that was obviously my subjective playstyle. If you were playing the game just for the story, it would be frustrating. I'm fine with the structural weirdness of it because I love the routine of the chopper and deploying and extracting etc. It's all gold, to me.

Re the development, I can't deny it was all needlessly truncated, but clearly this was Kojima's reaction to how he's handled his stories in the past. The opposite way, bloating them unnecessarily to the point where I fucking hated one of his games and vowed never to play it again (MGS4 - wasted so many hours of my life).

So he decided to not develop the story so much, and it shows. I think he made the right decision.

 

[Naedtrax]

 

[Kazuhira]

http://www.gamesradar.com/mgs-5-fans-are-trying-decode-secret-game-hidden-code/?tag=grsocial-20

what is this shit? O___o'

Man,i hope something good comes out of this.

 

[Salaadin]

Man,i hope something good comes out of this.

Nothing will but it's still fun to watch

 

[akidnamededdy]

I thought it was compelling up until the last minute and that the twist was clever. Yes, he could have opened the game with that twist, or could have built up to it in a different way – but then it probably would have been almost identical to MGS2's twist, or twists in other films/games. He clearly wanted to handle it in a new way, with a different structure.

The problem now though is that it IS almost identical to MGS2's twist, just executed poorly. It just feels like he ripped himself off in the worst way.

As a game designer, Kojima is brilliant. As a writer, he needs to be kept on a short leash. Who knows though, maybe he'll do better in a project where he doesn't have thirty years of canon holding him down.

 

[sappyday]

How the fuck does Ocelot end up looking older than Boss. When Ocelot was like a teenager when they met. He's only 40 by the time of MGSV.

 

[SomTervo]

The problem now though is that it IS almost identical to MGS2's twist, just executed poorly. It just feels like he ripped himself off in the worst way.

As a game designer, Kojima is brilliant. As a writer, he needs to be kept on a short leash. Who knows though, maybe he'll do better in a project where he doesn't have thirty years of canon holding him down.

I don't disagree, but here's my riposte re the twist:

He couldn't do a twist bigger than MGS2's. In a videogame, specifically MGS, that's basically the ultimate hidden twist. You play someone totally different to who you thought. Except this time, rather than reveal it in the first 2 hours, and let the player know they're playing this person the entire time, he reveals it in the final hour, and there's an actual twist (the Raiden thing wasn't really a 'twist') in that we learn something new about a character we thought we knew well. It's like the Keyzer Soze of videogames (but sort of flipped).

I'm not really talking about the actual execution here, obviously, just the nature of the twist/reveal and why I think this was a solid idea. I'd definitely concede that there are execution/writing problems throughout the game. There was no need for us to play the entire Hospital Escape again. He should have edited some bits of it (none of the Ishmael stuff, though).

I thought the very final cutscene with True Big Boss and the following tapes were brilliant though and more than made up for the rest of it. I loved it.

How the fuck does Ocelot end up looking older than Boss. When Ocelot was like a teenager when they met. He's only 40 by the time of MGSV.

(May be slightly off my year counts here, but roughly

Boss is 28 in MGS3 / Ocelot must be 21 (or something)

Boss is 38 in Peace Walker / Ocelot must be 31

Boss is 48 in MGSV / Ocelot must be 41

By MG2 (mid-90s?), Big Boss must be 58 / Ocelot must be 51

By MGS1, Big Boss must be 68 (and being "rebuilt") / Ocelot must be 61

By MGS4, Big Boss must be 78 (very reconstructed, though) / and Ocelot must be 71

Bear in mind Ocelot has naturally straw-blonde hair, so he probably went fully white in his 30s. This is a legit thing and would make him look 'older' like he does in MGSV.