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

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I'm starting to buy into the whole "you are a Big Boss - your experiences are his story" thing.

FOB invasions and very advanced research makes the game very fun in silly ways. I love the Hand of Jehuty.
 
Yeah, those are the two big problems here.

A) The twist is so barely explored. Speculate on how this makes Big Boss really evil now because he went along with it or what Venom Snake was thinking by the time of the MSX game happening, but it's all just empty speculation with neither character really giving any kind of honest introspection about it.

B) The whole game feels ultimately pointless in a lot of ways. We know how things end up, and there's so much lore already, that a ton of characters' actions and additions to the lore either end up being needless precursors or have to end anticlimactically because we already know what happens to them in future games. Sahelanthropus is super advanced, but it doesn't actually work without a psychic. And that psychic was apparently a floating plot device/rage powered Gradius option in his childhood... before he stopped being that. Volgin's alive sorta! Now he's dead. Skull Face is gonna do something! Now he's crushed. Miller and Huey are huge dicks! Miller goes on to be a mellow radio man, Huey does nothing of import ever again, because we know exactly what happens to them later. A legendary mercenary builds a merc company on an oil rig that's the precursor to Outer Heaven... we already did that. Did you know that there were these superpower bugs? Neat, huh? Well, later.

I actually kind of like this theory/subtext on the story: https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgears...ing_spoilers_why_does_metal_gear_solid_5_end/
 
Okay we all beat the game already but has anyone had injuries in the game that show broken limbs like in the prologue
like this

1442297979011.jpg
 
Okay we all beat the game already but has anyone had injuries in the game that show broken limbs like in the prologue
like this
Several times. Usually from explosions.
 
Okay we all beat the game already but has anyone had injuries in the game that show broken limbs like in the prologue
like this

http://i.4cdn.org/v/1442297979011.jpg[/MG][/QUOTE]

The only actual tense thing that happened to me in the Sahelanthropus fight was that when he was below 10% health I had to run to another vehicle and accidentally fell from too high of a spot and broke my leg. Seriously thought I was gonna die because of it lol.
 
Yeah, those are the two big problems here.

A) The twist is so barely explored. Speculate on how this makes Big Boss really evil now because he went along with it or what Venom Snake was thinking by the time of the MSX game happening, but it's all just empty speculation with neither character really giving any kind of honest introspection about it.

B) The whole game feels ultimately pointless in a lot of ways. We know how things end up, and there's so much lore already, that a ton of characters' actions and additions to the lore either end up being needless precursors or have to end anticlimactically because we already know what happens to them in future games. Sahelanthropus is super advanced, but it doesn't actually work without a psychic. And that psychic was apparently a floating plot device/rage powered Gradius option in his childhood... before he stopped being that. Volgin's alive sorta! Now he's dead. Skull Face is gonna do something! Now he's crushed. Miller and Huey are huge dicks! Miller goes on to be a mellow radio man, Huey does nothing of import ever again, because we know exactly what happens to them later. A legendary mercenary builds a merc company on an oil rig that's the precursor to Outer Heaven... we already did that. Did you know that there were these superpower bugs? Neat, huh? Well, later.

Point B is what pisses me off so much, man. Like, I've always just been like "OK, the series was meant to end at 2 but I'm cool with more." I never had a problem with 3, Portable Ops (for as long as it was assumed to be canon), 4, nor Peace Walker - they all did something for me, and would have satisfied me immensely as send-off games. But this one? Not in the slightest. I feel the lust for revenge that I didn't even feel after Ground Zeroes - and I want to direct it at Kojima.
 
You know, after this game... I think Huey is the most atrocious villain in all of MGS.

If every accusation Miller and Ocelot made against him are true then he

- Is responsible for the destruction of MSF
-Built Saelanthrophus for Skullface
-Let his wife (Strangelove) die inside the Ai pod
-Let Eli and the other kids run off with Saelanthrophus
-Is responsible for the second virus outbreak on MB (and he has the gall for cursing Venom for putting down his men, or else the virus would spread throughout the world)

and then after all that, after finding out Hal and his second wife had an affair, he commits suicide and tried to take Emma with him.

The fucking worst.
 
The sigint/DARPA chief thing always made me so mad.
Everyone in this franchise is so connected to each other it's annoying.

Everyone's a son or daughter or becomes someone else later on down the line. Hate it.

This drives me nuts too.

I actualay can't believe Skull face didn't turn out to be some one we already knew or at least related to a known character.
 
Point B is what pisses me off so much, man. Like, I've always just been like "OK, the series was meant to end at 2 but I'm cool with more." I never had a problem with 3, Portable Ops (for as long as it was assumed to be canon), 4, nor Peace Walker - they all did something for me, and would have satisfied me immensely as send-off games. But this one? Not in the slightest. I feel the lust for revenge that I didn't even feel after Ground Zeroes - and I want to direct it at Kojima.

...This is probably the best gameplay in the series, but this story is nothing.

My feelings for the story is overshadowing how much fun I had with this game.

Words can kill enjoyment, I guess
 
You know, after this game... I think Huey is the most atrocious villain in all of MGS.

If every accusation Miller and Ocelot made against him are true then he

- Is responsible for the destruction of MSF
-Built Saelanthrophus for Skullface
-Let his wife (Strangelove) die inside the Ai pod
-Let Eli and the other kids run off with Saelanthrophus
-Is responsible for the second virus outbreak on MB (and he has the gall for cursing Venom for putting down his men, or else the virus would spread throughout the world)

and then after all that, after finding out Hal and his second wife had an affair, he commits suicide and tried to take Emma with him.

The fucking worst.
For all people say about Kojima not willing to make his characters do despicable things, he really went all out with Huey.

I did love how Strangelove was Otacon's mom. Huey's coincidental relation to Boss was kind of a mistake to begin with, but now that it's in the established canon it only makes sense. Otacon's Twin Snakes model makes him really look like Huey and Strangelove's son, moreso than his MGS2/MGS4 self, maybe because of the grey in his hair.

mgst_024.jpg
 
This drives me nuts too.

I actualay can't believe Skull face didn't turn out to be some one we already knew or at least related to a known character.

XOF being a unit that existed before Operation Snake Eater and was helping BB in the background all along counts for me.
 

Thanks!

Lots of great ideas in there, would have made for a killer send off to the franchise.

I'm going to expand a bit because I've decided you deserve more than a one sentence recognition.

I like how you've resisted the temptation to completely rewrite the game and instead largely worked within the framework of existing plot-points and beats. I also appreciate that you've not gone overboard on the content; you add quite a bit, but a lot of it builds off existing assets and seems feasible.

You've also manages to take the Venom Snake twist, a completely impotent beat in the original game, and given it some merit. Far from the first to do a hallucinating protagonist, but I enjoy that you embraced it rather than Kojima's lame one time use.

All in all, you're pretty good.

Thanks, I appreciate that. Took a long while to think through and write it.

Frankly, Kojima's ideas on the individual plot points are really cool and interesting, but it's poorly structured and lacks real dramatic tension.

I think it makes better dramatic sense to make Snake an unreliable narrator early on, where he's not even sure what's real and what isn't. Plus, I love trippy surreal stuff in games.

And I like the Venom Snake twist because... it's an interesting examination of soldiers that wholly give themselves over to a cause. What if that's the theme that was here? A soldier forcibly given over to a cause, waking up to it, and continuing anyway? It could have been a powerful Manchurian Candidate-esque ending.

Plus, Skull Face and Venom Snake are shadows/mirrors to Big Boss... we really needed that imagery played up. We need the ties into the other games like "I'm you! I'm your shadow!" Playing up themes of memories.

There's a lot of great stuff that could have been done that just... wasn't. Like, involving the native fighters of those lands, and having Snake establish his rep amongst the people.

Plus, we needed bosses, why not have the bosses be based in the pre-existing wars that we're exploring? They don't need to work for Skull Face, because now we're in a situation where Big Boss is... well, he's recruiting bosses, he's recruiting the people that his successors will eventually have to do battle with.

And returning to where it all started, Camp Omega, that just makes narrative sense to me. The shadowy fight between Snake and Skull that echoes the battle against The Boss?

The reason that the Venom Snake twist should work ties into the themes of Metal Gear as a whole: Your birth, your genes, even your memories, all of that? That isn't what defines you. Your actions towards the world are what defines you.

Venom Snake was born from the destruction wrought in Ground Zeroes. What he does after that with the truth... that is what will define him.
 
Yeah, those are the two big problems here.

A) The twist is so barely explored. Speculate on how this makes Big Boss really evil now because he went along with it or what Venom Snake was thinking by the time of the MSX game happening, but it's all just empty speculation with neither character really giving any kind of honest introspection about it.

B) The whole game feels ultimately pointless in a lot of ways. We know how things end up, and there's so much lore already, that a ton of characters' actions and additions to the lore either end up being needless precursors or have to end anticlimactically because we already know what happens to them in future games. Sahelanthropus is super advanced, but it doesn't actually work without a psychic. And that psychic was apparently a floating plot device/rage powered Gradius option in his childhood... before he stopped being that. Volgin's alive sorta! Now he's dead. Skull Face is gonna do something! Now he's crushed. Miller and Huey are huge dicks! Miller goes on to be a mellow radio man, Huey does nothing of import ever again, because we know exactly what happens to them later. A legendary mercenary builds a merc company on an oil rig that's the precursor to Outer Heaven... we already did that. Did you know that there were these superpower bugs? Neat, huh? Well, later.

As you said, watching how the characters act in the missing chapter of the series was the appeal. But I think Kojima assumed that would be a little too boring, so he opted for the twist. The problem is the twist just drowned out everything else and not in a good way like "She was a true patriot" did, as someone else mentioned.

Even when you take the twist out, the characters feel like cardboard cut-outs. Kojima made the mistake of assuming that a lack of detail lead to an implication of complexity. You see occasional signs of why Ocelot is so fully dedicating his life to the Boss' plan, but they're few and far between. He seems to exist to drive the plot bus forward and open the door on the necessary stops. Miller's just angry and there's little-to-none exploration of that anger.

On the other hand, some stuff was too on the nose - Ocelot just outright saying "Yo one day Huey is going to realize everything he has done" was totally unnecessary. It was supposed to give us an alternate theory of why he killed himself, since we only ever had Otacon's interpretation. I would have also bought that Huey is incredibly scared of abandonment and being alone and did kill himself after finding out about Otacon and his wife. Either of those implications work, Ocelot's line was just a bit too much.

I don't mind the twist in a vacuum, but the "Why" of it all still doesn't make sense to me.
 
Welp finally got through 46. I don't think I'm gonna pick this back up for a few days. That ending just sorta left me like, "really, that's it?"
 
Although, in terms of retrospective revelations, the fact that Snake doesn't remember to say "Kept you waiting, huh?" to Kaz when he rescues him because he's never done that before is kind of great.
 
Although, in terms of retrospective revelations, the fact that Snake doesn't remember to say "Kept you waiting, huh?" to Kaz when he rescues him because he's never done that before is kind of great.
If you press triangle he does.
 
Although, in terms of retrospective revelations, the fact that Snake doesn't remember to say "Kept you waiting, huh?" to Kaz when he rescues him because he's never done that before is kind of great.

You can respond "Kept you waiting, huh?" to Kaz when he asks you by pressing Triangle though.

Edit : Beaten like a Volgin by a Sahelanthropus.
 
XOF being a unit that existed before Operation Snake Eater and was helping BB in the background all along counts for me.
This is actually really fascinating in concept, much like the Venom twist, but like the Venom twist it's never expanded upon. Also Skull Face and Zero's war buddy seemed to be leading to something, but it didn't. Their mutual respect for guy who died in the 40's was enough to put Zero's suspicions about Skull Face to the side.
 
Somebody needs to make a gif of Fake Boss flipping the picture and it says "Johnny" on the back. It would be great to think "Hmm is Johnny not in this game.......OH MY GOD!"

Also, Real Big Boss should have said "Kept you waiting, huh?" to Ocelot.
 
The only good boss fights in this game were sniper battles. The rest was just uninspired. I did like sahalantrapus's scale but other than that it was meh.
 
i wouldn't have minded a few more set pieces, but they're not totally conductive to the ethos of free infiltration.

more places like okb zero might have been nice though. i cleared that place out and just went around looking at avenues through it and i was gobsmacked by the amount of potential hiding places and routes deep into the base. makes camp omega look weak in comparison.

also a big fan of the mfinda oilfield and bwala ya masa. getting to masa village for the first time was great because of how totally fucked everything looked. looked like a real war zone.
 
Skull Face is walking wasted potential.

He's a villain who seems to exist almost entirely in back story. Which would have been find if what they were really setting him up for was to show that even someone that deranged and angry could be usurped by Liquid.

But then they did nothing with Liquid.
 
As you said, watching how the characters act in the missing chapter of the series was the appeal. But I think Kojima assumed that would be a little too boring, so he opted for the twist. The problem is the twist just drowned out everything else and not in a good way like "She was a true patriot" did, as someone else mentioned.

Even when you take the twist out, the characters feel like cardboard cut-outs. Kojima made the mistake of assuming that a lack of detail lead to an implication of complexity. You see occasional signs of why Ocelot is so fully dedicating his life to the Boss' plan, but they're few and far between. He seems to exist to drive the plot bus forward and open the door on the necessary stops. Miller's just angry and there's little-to-none exploration of that anger.

On the other hand, some stuff was too on the nose - Ocelot just outright saying "Yo one day Huey is going to realize everything he has done" was totally unnecessary. It was supposed to give us an alternate theory of why he killed himself, since we only ever had Otacon's interpretation. I would have also bought that Huey is incredibly scared of abandonment and being alone and did kill himself after finding out about Otacon and his wife. Either of those implications work, Ocelot's line was just a bit too much.

I don't mind the twist in a vacuum, but the "Why" of it all still doesn't make sense to me.

That and the post-credits "and then Big Boss's age will end, and then we'll each have to back a different son, and one of us may have to kill the other" shit.

The literal psychic having a vision in Portable Ops was less specific than that.
 
The only good boss fights in this game were sniper battles. The rest was just uninspired. I did like sahalantrapus's scale but other than that it was meh.

Yeah, for all the other issues I had with the game, the fact that this is the worst MGS for boss fights in the series really bums me out.

MGS4 was already a disappointment in that regard, I didn't think MGS5 would be worse about it.

That and the post-credits "and then Big Boss's age will end, and then we'll each have to back a different son, and one of us may have to kill the other" shit.

The literal psychic having a vision in Portable Ops was less specific than that.

I actually super don't understand how Ocelot knew any of that or how it fit in with any of his plans in MGS1, 2, and 4.
 
Skull Face is walking wasted potential.

He's a villain who seems to exist almost entirely in back story. Which would have been find if what they were really setting him up for was to show that even someone that deranged and angry could be usurped by Liquid.

But then they did nothing with Liquid.

At least we got to see more of him and his motivations than Zero (not that I'm saying Skullface is a good character but the entirety of a character's a existence being offscreen is a problem which has persisted with Metal Gear).
 
Yeah, for all the other issues I had with the game, the fact that this is the worst MGS for boss fights in the series really bums me out.

MGS4 was already a disappointment in that regard, I didn't think MGS5 would be worse about it.

Actually V has the second best boss fights after 3.
You can't possibly believe that 1,4 and PW had better biss fights. Especially 4 and PW.
 
Actually V has the second best boss fights after 3.
You can't possibly believe that 1,4 and PW had better biss fights. Especially 4 and PW.

I had one fight against the skulls I'd really say I enjoyed. The rest, yeah, I'd say they were inferior to the other games.

They could have done some really interesting stuff with Quiet's fight in the open world structure. It could have been The End 2.0. Instead it was, like, The End 0.2.
 
The second the Battle Gear was finished, and Volgin's body was brought to the quarantine platform, I assumed he was going to ride that thing like the Shagohod and we were going to get a killer boss fight.

Instead both those things amounted to nothing.
 
Btq. when I am supposed to get Battle Gear? Huey already left and it didn't finish. I mean, I already got all dispatch missions without it, but it would bother me to not have it.
 
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