Not in a traditional or deep way. It has gameplay weight though, and if she leaves, there's a tangible absence. Same with killing your infested soldiers who you had to acquire yourself.
Nah, I felt zero emotion during that scene. Oh no, I have to kill those nameless Mother Base soldiers I could never talk to or interact with besides punching them in the face. Oh the horror of having to kill a few guys that I'll just find even better replacements for in about an hour. The humanity! Please don't make me shoot these guys who I barely remember Fultoning.
Hey, want to know an effective way to do a scene like that? Make some actual goddamn characters out of your Mother Base Staff. Think about it if you had to mow down your entire Mass Effect or Dragon Age Companions or hell what about the main leaders in your Base in X-COM, that would be traumatizing. Mother Base as a whole is just a lifeless mesh that felt more alive when all I could do was glare at it in Peace Walker. Fuck, in PW at least a good portion of your squad members had interesting little quotes. Kojima's was like: "70% of my body is made of movies."
Instead, the only thing we get to know about our fulton crew is what languages they speak. Oh boy, I feel really attached to Silent Basilisk now that I know he speaks Russian and fucking Lithuanian. Hot damn. Kojima should have taking que from a plethora of other games when it comes to base management and squad building. Each department should have had their own head who would be their own character. You could then drop into their respective shops and see them doing various shit which would also trigger unique cutscenes. You'd see your support staff dude checking in on a shipment of new supplies, combat leader training some recruits, R&D guys building some new monstrosity and they'd be able to give you unique missions to help level up that department. And then, in Ch. 2 you'd be forced to kill them all.
And that isn't you making stuff up? Okay.
You're right your explanation is much more plausible.
