Finally, some free time. I've been itching to get back to this thread.
I think some people may be taking the meta-narrative element (player = "Big Boss") a bit too literally.
The meta-narrative begins and ends with the idea that you, the player, with your own skill and ingenuity, overcame the challenges crafted for you by the designers, advancing the story from beginning to end. You were "writing" the battlefield narrative, and only the battlefield narrative. And you must "write" that narrative in order to advance the rest of the story.
But the story still exists separate from you. In real life, you are probably not a star soldier specializing in field surgery who took a bomb blast for your CO and was reworked in his image and put in harm's way so you could perpetuate his legend after a nine-year absence, drawing out his enemies while he works on building his military nation in secret. In real life, you may not be a haunted introvert who submitted to your assertive sub-commanders and pursued their quest for revenge, only to feel unfulfilled once you had it and become more benevolent toward your enemies after the fact. In real life, you may not be able to empathize with monsters like Quiet; you may not make well-meaning but ill-informed decisions about how to handle child soldiers; you may not think that putting down your terminally ill men is an act of mercy or the only way to prevent an outbreak. Heck, in real life, you might not even be a man.
But that's fine because that's not your story.
That story is the story of Venom, a.k.a. Punished Snake, a.k.a. Ahab, a.k.a. The Medic, a.k.a. Big Boss' Phantom.
Only the battlefield narrative is yours, and that narrative is the act of turning the pages. The game allows you to define several in-story elements of The Medic — his name, his face, his birthday — but beyond that his personality and premise is fixed, many of his decisions are already decided by the plot, and at that point you're experiencing
his story. Again, it's you turning the pages, your skills carrying you from the beginning to the end. This is true of every MGS game. It's just that for the last MGS game, Kojima allowed you to add a personal touch and take superficial ownership of the character as a sort of "thank you" for all your years of playing his games. It's recognizing that he wrote a story but you had to overcome challenges to see it through. You had to earn it. It's fitting, then, that this nod to the player comes at the end of the game.
And like I said, the value of the twist from a story standpoint is not whether Venom will be remembered (even though his actions undeniably shaped the world, preventing the fall of Western civilization, for starters), but rather, seeing how the real BB "broke bad."
To quote myself from earlier in the thread: Instead of seeing a dramatic Darth Vader story where BB shoots up kids and commits other heinous acts, we see a story from the viewpoint of his victims. BB went along with a plan that robbed his best soldier of his identity and put him in harm's way; he went along with a plan that put -all- of the Diamond Dogs in harm's way; and he agreed to a plan where they would put the hospital in harm's way. We're seeing BB go against the values of the Boss because he is a hypocrite and a coward. He is now treating people like a means to an end, rather than the end itself. Venom might not be able to see this -- not until it's too late, anyways -- but from the player's standpoint it's clear we're looking at a different BB, post-GZ, and the one that needed to be established for the events to come.
