#Phonepunk#
Banned
RTTP
I'm writing this with over 900 hours of playtime, on my 3rd playthrough of TPP. The second time through, I made sure to 100% the game, and there is a lot of good stuff you can miss, such as the alt mission objectives like listening in on the CIA arm's dealer's tour of the Airport base in Africa.
The Missing Link
Some people think it failed to be "the missing link". But to me, it wildly succeeded. MGSV connects the prequel Big Boss series (MGS3, PW) with the Solid Snake-focused console games (MGS, MGS2, MGS4). Timeline-wise, it even butts up directly against the start of the first Metal Gear game. Venom is literally rebooting the series, creating a sort of infinite loop, with the MSX original. He is the link. The character of V even symbolizes this: a point connecting two separate lines.
The MGS2 of MGS3
By this I mean it is a 2-part commentary on the power fantasy of Big Boss. Like MGS2, MGSV is presented in two chunks:
- Tanker Chapter, Ground Zeroes, which portrays "the real Big Boss" for one final mission before he dies/goes in a coma/etc.
- Plant Chapter, The Phantom Pain, where the artificially created clone of Big Boss attempts to live up to the legend.
Sadly, MGSV was sold as two separate games, which has helped warp public perception of the overall package. The main difference is that MGS2 had the feeling of a young, rebellious creator, mocking the power fantasies in the super successful MGS. With MGSV, that rebelliousness has turned toward gratitude and wisdom with age. It is EMBRACING of the legend that is at hand, a welcoming to create, with both player and game working together, to create the legend of Big Boss. It's a creator looking back over a longtime career with many ups and downs and saying thanks. We did this together. Venom pretty much says as much directly into the camera, right after booting up an MSX with the first game on it.
A lot of bases in Africa began reminding me of MGS3, and there were plenty of blatant call-backs. The biggest being Quiet's introduction, the female sniper, a MGS tradition, a living WMD just like Snake. It is framed the same as The Boss, the camera panning out to reveal Snake, his gun drawn. In MGS3 he had no choice, this was his mission. Now, he is working for himself. Kaz and Ocelot vie for his attention, and he sides with his former enemy in bringing Quiet back to base.
Like Venom she undergoes a birth by fire (Big Boss sets her on fire with a makeshift flamethrower, in a manner much like his own demise at the hands of Solid Snake in the game of the same name), she is the center of Snake's relationships of this game in much the same way as The Boss was in MGS3, and Venom at the very least feels a strong kinship with her as a soldier. She is one of the first people that he meets from outside the hospital, and is key to his psyche, and remembering who is was. When everyone is leaving him in Chapter 2, she is the last to leave, and she departs following the harrowing, penultimate Shining Lights mission, where Snake really earns the title of Big Boss, by methodically killing his own soldiers, in order that he maintains control of a WMD.
Snake to Big Boss Initiation
The quarantine mission is an inverse of the hospital mission, and functions as it's own Rites of Initiaition. These are the two main narrative missions in the game, they are the two linear missions that take place in areas that cannot be normally visited. They are very significant.
The hospital mission has you starting at the top and working your way to the ground level, in the quarantine, you start at the ground and work your way to the roof. In the latter mission you have taken the place of the invading force that you once hid from, once you were a disabled veteran desperately hiding amongst a pile of dead bodies, now you are single-handedly shooting everyone in the head after passionlessly checking them, and ordering your own fleeing men to be firebombed on your own Mother Base. The hospital mission has the real Big Boss use flame to burn Quiet, who stabs him in the shoulder with a knife. A soldier also stabs Venom in the shoulder with a knife in the quarantine mission. Lastly, there is the odd mirrored effect, of starting on your knees the hospital and escaping on horseback, whereas in the quarantine facility, you enter fully upright, but by the end of the mission, Venom is on his knees, crying out in pain. No doubt Kaz immediately calls you up following this mission, to ask you about the hospital, something he doesn't bring up once in the previous dozens of hours. This leads directly to the Truth mission, which I believe to be Venom finally snapping out of a state and remembering an event long buried.
Unfinished?
The funny thing is, not much has surfaced. There are tapes of unreleased Big Boss dialog but it is like less than 10 minutes. There is the Chapter 51 cutscene but it is unfinished, and would have just been a repeat of a boss that you already fight 3 times! Nobody has found any maps, have they?
I think a lot of the "unfinished" status is bullshit, that most of it was anti-hype sold to us by gaming media that had a huge FucKonami hard-on. Everyone from Kotaku to Jim Sterling were doing the same hit pieces, it was in their interest to say the game was unfinished, it made Konami look worse. With other games, we have cut maps, we have cut level design, cut enemies, cut bosses, etc. Nothing has surfaced from this, has it?
IMO Kojima is smart, when Ground Zeroes happened, and the Tanker Chapter was amputated, he wrote the ending to the game, he saw the writing on the wall. The twist is that TPP's intro is the ending. The first footage released included Big Boss's naked butt, basically mooning everyone without them knowing it. The twist was written into the ending of GZ and this ending is what came first, then Skull Face's unsatisfying demise, then Chapter 2, the open-ended New Game+, where Kojima and co. could make side ops and challenge runs while waiting for the axe to fall.
True, Ground Zeroes has a polish that was denied The Phantom Pain. That much is true, and IMO this is the main way in which is it unfinished. Beyond that, I don't think much would have changed. Maybe we would have more options in FOB, we could customize our Outer Heavens a bit more. Certainly the cutscene camera & lighting work would have improved. But not much would be added.
I never understood what people thought was "cut" from the game. There was a faked leak on Reddit that listed 5 chapters, i think this is what most people think was real. It was entirely faked though. IMO Chapter 3 was about the post-game FOB, hence "Peace", which follows with the nuclear FOB ending. If you look at the entire MGSV, there are 5 endings, complete with end credits, GZ, Skull Face, Quiet Exit, The Truth, Peace.
What more did people want? I guess they always wanted more Metal Gear, is sort of the point.
I'm writing this with over 900 hours of playtime, on my 3rd playthrough of TPP. The second time through, I made sure to 100% the game, and there is a lot of good stuff you can miss, such as the alt mission objectives like listening in on the CIA arm's dealer's tour of the Airport base in Africa.
The Missing Link
Some people think it failed to be "the missing link". But to me, it wildly succeeded. MGSV connects the prequel Big Boss series (MGS3, PW) with the Solid Snake-focused console games (MGS, MGS2, MGS4). Timeline-wise, it even butts up directly against the start of the first Metal Gear game. Venom is literally rebooting the series, creating a sort of infinite loop, with the MSX original. He is the link. The character of V even symbolizes this: a point connecting two separate lines.
The MGS2 of MGS3
By this I mean it is a 2-part commentary on the power fantasy of Big Boss. Like MGS2, MGSV is presented in two chunks:
- Tanker Chapter, Ground Zeroes, which portrays "the real Big Boss" for one final mission before he dies/goes in a coma/etc.
- Plant Chapter, The Phantom Pain, where the artificially created clone of Big Boss attempts to live up to the legend.
Sadly, MGSV was sold as two separate games, which has helped warp public perception of the overall package. The main difference is that MGS2 had the feeling of a young, rebellious creator, mocking the power fantasies in the super successful MGS. With MGSV, that rebelliousness has turned toward gratitude and wisdom with age. It is EMBRACING of the legend that is at hand, a welcoming to create, with both player and game working together, to create the legend of Big Boss. It's a creator looking back over a longtime career with many ups and downs and saying thanks. We did this together. Venom pretty much says as much directly into the camera, right after booting up an MSX with the first game on it.
A lot of bases in Africa began reminding me of MGS3, and there were plenty of blatant call-backs. The biggest being Quiet's introduction, the female sniper, a MGS tradition, a living WMD just like Snake. It is framed the same as The Boss, the camera panning out to reveal Snake, his gun drawn. In MGS3 he had no choice, this was his mission. Now, he is working for himself. Kaz and Ocelot vie for his attention, and he sides with his former enemy in bringing Quiet back to base.
Like Venom she undergoes a birth by fire (Big Boss sets her on fire with a makeshift flamethrower, in a manner much like his own demise at the hands of Solid Snake in the game of the same name), she is the center of Snake's relationships of this game in much the same way as The Boss was in MGS3, and Venom at the very least feels a strong kinship with her as a soldier. She is one of the first people that he meets from outside the hospital, and is key to his psyche, and remembering who is was. When everyone is leaving him in Chapter 2, she is the last to leave, and she departs following the harrowing, penultimate Shining Lights mission, where Snake really earns the title of Big Boss, by methodically killing his own soldiers, in order that he maintains control of a WMD.
Snake to Big Boss Initiation
The quarantine mission is an inverse of the hospital mission, and functions as it's own Rites of Initiaition. These are the two main narrative missions in the game, they are the two linear missions that take place in areas that cannot be normally visited. They are very significant.
The hospital mission has you starting at the top and working your way to the ground level, in the quarantine, you start at the ground and work your way to the roof. In the latter mission you have taken the place of the invading force that you once hid from, once you were a disabled veteran desperately hiding amongst a pile of dead bodies, now you are single-handedly shooting everyone in the head after passionlessly checking them, and ordering your own fleeing men to be firebombed on your own Mother Base. The hospital mission has the real Big Boss use flame to burn Quiet, who stabs him in the shoulder with a knife. A soldier also stabs Venom in the shoulder with a knife in the quarantine mission. Lastly, there is the odd mirrored effect, of starting on your knees the hospital and escaping on horseback, whereas in the quarantine facility, you enter fully upright, but by the end of the mission, Venom is on his knees, crying out in pain. No doubt Kaz immediately calls you up following this mission, to ask you about the hospital, something he doesn't bring up once in the previous dozens of hours. This leads directly to the Truth mission, which I believe to be Venom finally snapping out of a state and remembering an event long buried.
Unfinished?
The funny thing is, not much has surfaced. There are tapes of unreleased Big Boss dialog but it is like less than 10 minutes. There is the Chapter 51 cutscene but it is unfinished, and would have just been a repeat of a boss that you already fight 3 times! Nobody has found any maps, have they?
I think a lot of the "unfinished" status is bullshit, that most of it was anti-hype sold to us by gaming media that had a huge FucKonami hard-on. Everyone from Kotaku to Jim Sterling were doing the same hit pieces, it was in their interest to say the game was unfinished, it made Konami look worse. With other games, we have cut maps, we have cut level design, cut enemies, cut bosses, etc. Nothing has surfaced from this, has it?
IMO Kojima is smart, when Ground Zeroes happened, and the Tanker Chapter was amputated, he wrote the ending to the game, he saw the writing on the wall. The twist is that TPP's intro is the ending. The first footage released included Big Boss's naked butt, basically mooning everyone without them knowing it. The twist was written into the ending of GZ and this ending is what came first, then Skull Face's unsatisfying demise, then Chapter 2, the open-ended New Game+, where Kojima and co. could make side ops and challenge runs while waiting for the axe to fall.
True, Ground Zeroes has a polish that was denied The Phantom Pain. That much is true, and IMO this is the main way in which is it unfinished. Beyond that, I don't think much would have changed. Maybe we would have more options in FOB, we could customize our Outer Heavens a bit more. Certainly the cutscene camera & lighting work would have improved. But not much would be added.
I never understood what people thought was "cut" from the game. There was a faked leak on Reddit that listed 5 chapters, i think this is what most people think was real. It was entirely faked though. IMO Chapter 3 was about the post-game FOB, hence "Peace", which follows with the nuclear FOB ending. If you look at the entire MGSV, there are 5 endings, complete with end credits, GZ, Skull Face, Quiet Exit, The Truth, Peace.
What more did people want? I guess they always wanted more Metal Gear, is sort of the point.
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