One thing he definitely should have made in chap1, though, was giving far more lines to Snake.
This is not a series for silent protagonists. No "make it easier to immerse yourself in the main character" excuse.
That'll always be divisive and come down to personal preference, like every single silent protagonist game design argument since half life 1.
Don't think this applies to a series so old, long and that never used it.
All silent protagonists are like that since always. And there's plenty of open-world games and silent protagonist games with plenty more gameplay interjections and exclamations.
The way snake is so silent in this is super annoying. It's all miller and ocelot all the time and it's often hard to tell them apart.
I haven't read that yet, but I dunno. The overall impression I got from all the game previews and such, and one that was reinforced by actually playing the game, was that V is a jacked up super version of Peace Walker. And... I don't remember PW having these issues with the story.
That wasn't super related, I was just reminded that I hadn't posted that here yet. It does happen to mention some of the considerations he had to think about when designing the game though, among other things.
And yeah nah this is not Peacewalker.
Peacewalker was a lot more linear in, well, everything, and more importantly didn't have a huge open world to tool around in.
The missions were tiny and very on rails.
It was basically a traditional linear metal gear solid game chopped up into bits with extra missions. The only similarity is the motherbase aspects and the chopped up missions. The actual structure of the missions and the way you can approach them from the freeroam is very different. For example, approaching missions from freeroam often gives you different starting positions from the helicopter, and even changes the timing of approaching the mission because the helicopter ride counts. The freeroam is something you can go into and almost never come out of unless you change maps or have to do specific missions. A lot of people probably go back to the helicopter: a lot of people probably also launch straight back to do side ops.
This is a different beast entirely. There is no way for Kojima to be able to tell how long someone has spent tooling around in freeroam. Trying to just make a linear game chopped up into bits would have the problem of "I just spent two days tooling around fultoning dudes and throwing sheep at goats, I don't remember what the fuck I am supposed to be doing anymore" So he took a more isolated and self contained approach to each mission, so that people don't have to struggle as much to remember everything. If you play them through straight one by one, this isn't going to work as well, especially if you are expecting the traditional linear on rails experience, which you were not going to get.
The tapes are there for people who want a bit more depth, and there's quite a lot of them. They form a major part of the story.
You are meant to play them while tooling around in freefroam. It's worth noting that this didn't work for me at all, I couldn't do this, couldn't pay attention to them while playing, so the tapes don't gel as well for me. But I can recognize the intent.
The overriding goal of this game is player freedom. The on rails restrictions that make for a better traditional narrative experience would have curtailed the freedom. So the story was implemented in a way that doesn't take up a humongous chunk of your time, so that you are spending more time playing the game, and more importantly, playing it how you want to play.
He didn't fall flat on his face. It's just that he ran a cropper of the problem all freeroam games have, and his solution was not to force players into long back to back mission sequences they can't back out of like most of them do (cough assassin's creed), but to step back and focus on freedom over traditional narrative considerations.
That's not something I am comfortable calling a flaw. I will not fault him for truly going out and focusing on gameplay freedom first. I really hate it when freeroam games lock you into long sequences for the sake of narration. I really appreciated this games approach. I was never lost, and never had to struggle to remember why I was there, as I often do in many freeroam games because I've been busy doing everything except the missions.
I also never felt like my actions were out of kilter with the ongoing plot, because the ongoing plot was presented as a kind of fresh slate each mission due to the episodic structure, rather than acting as if I'd just been mr professional for the entire game when I hadn't. It was sort of like "Alright, back to business." each time.
This is a different, and very non traditional way of telling a story. There isn't anything intrinsically wrong with telling it this way, and it isn't at all fair to compare it to past metal gears, because the only narrative game design considerations this game shares with past games is that it is called Metal Gear.
Now after chapter 1, things get a lot sketchier, and that's where you can tell things were affected by development.
I still stand by my "jacked up Peace Walker" comment. The whole individual mission structure from a menu feel for one. PW dumped you into tiny segmented rooms while TPP drops you into the whole world with no loading screens. But the overall feel is the same to me. The only real reason PW isn't "open world" is because of that segmented A-B-C structure and because there was no option to just jump into the world at will. In the final "Find X" missions at the end, they would basically drop you in the first area of the game and give you almost complete access to the world, you just had to walk there. TPP filled in the blanks so to speak, and lets you get to your destination however and from wherever you want.
As for the story, I remember stuff actually happening pretty frequently in PW. Every few missions, something important or interesting would happen with the story. Here, so many of these missions feel like extended side-ops. "Find the guy. Extract the guy. Leave.". The number of times something actually interesting happens feel few and far between. And when they do happen, Snake just stands like a goober like he's part of the scenery or something.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
0
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited October 2015
If it's something new, it's something new. No amount of "but it's the last in the series" matters to me.
Sure, it's natural to view it that way. That isn't, to me, the same as justified.
I'm not a traditionalist when it comes to things like this. I don't mind when people want to do new things. All I care about is if it works stand alone, without looking back at the past.
This game does, so I don't mind it.
It doesn't if you look at the past, because the past doesn't apply here. It's a new approach.
Like, it doesn't make sense to me to view it based on the past series. It's too different. I can't even do it. My mind doesn't work that way.
The fact that people get stuck on superficial similarity to peace walker is basically my point. It's nothing like Peacewalker in its gameplay depth and entire approach. You can't just imagine a freeroam in Peacewalker and declare them the same. That's inventing something that game was never meant to have, that was never part of the story design considerations in that game, and then declaring them similar based on this invented thing.
The mission structure in Peacewalker was a normal MGS experience split up into individual missions: five missions for a single strand of the tale. You would actually start a mission sequence, and then go through several little mini missions that dumped you back to motherbase in between, before you got to the next relevant story cutscene. I actually found it really disjointed, because it was trying to present the story one way, but this wasn't being supported by the gameplay structure. You had missions whose entire purpose was "be the middle level" without no story relevance whatsoever. This game has the majority of its missions as stand alone, except for a couple with major boss fights. The story is told throughout the entire game: some in side ops, some in motherbase, at the end of intel gathering missions, through tapes, in conversations between guards, and so on. It's spread out organically throughout the whole thing. The vast majority of Peacewalker was just the straight missions themselves. The tapes added a little, the sideops and motherbase were completely irrelevant.
In peacewalker, you are doing "story content" when you do the missions and listen to tapes. In this game, you have it happen to you as a function of playing the game as a total experience. It's delivered to you through all the different parts that make up the game, and some of it you have to go out and engage with yourself (the tapes).
It's painting an apple orange. You can try to claim they're the same if you like, but all I see when I look at what you have in your hands is an orange and a painted apple.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I'm not saying it's like Peace Walker as a negative. I loved Peace Walker. Even though you can plainly see it was designed on and with a handheld in mind (the segmented mission structure). TPP feels similar, with a "Ok what if this was on an actual full console and not a handheld", and I love it. You can tell me I'm wrong, but I don't really care.
But there are weird issues with the plot and story. Two Best Friends put up their latest video on it which is the end of Ch.1, and they had the pitch perfect quote that I agree with.
"This is an awesome Metal Gear game, but a crappy Metal Gear movie."
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
0
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited October 2015
Er, you liking Peacewalker is basically implied. I didn't misunderstand that.
I knew that you were talking about the story.
I agree with that quote. It isn't meant to be one. So of course it is.
that about sums this conversation up.
It isn't like x.
Well yes, it isn't meant to be.
Yes but it isn't like x.
Repeat.
I haven't been saying its better at any point. I've been saying its different. That, automatically, implies it is going to be bad at whatever it is you liked about the previous metal gear stories. Because it's different.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I apologize if it seems like I'm all up in your grill.
I also agree that it's different somewhat. But that, to me, it's also similar in aspects. That I can see the ideas and plans they used in PW (and to a lesser extent POps... somewhat) and expanded heavily on them.
Either way, I really liked the game. Dunno if I could say it was my favourite Metal Gear game though. Like, I don't know if I'd ever replay it. Or to a certain extent, how would I replay it? Replay in this case being "I want to experience the story again". I guess just boot the game up and play the 10 or so missions where real plot happened or something.
Replay as in "I wanna sneak into a base in a box and snipe a dude" though, this game has in fucking spades.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
0
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited October 2015
It's fine, I woke up grumpy today, I'm sorry for being impatient.
This is the metal gear game that I will play along with 3 when I want to play me some metal gear. All the others are too restrictive to keep my attention for long on a replay. Three has just enough fun stuff you can do and the cutscenes are spaced out long enough that it keeps me engaged.
I managed to get through MGS again and I established that the me now is nowhere near as nice about Liquid in that game as the me back then.
He annoyed the crap out of me, in fact. He certainly didn't do that the first time. I thought he was a great villain the first time. Guess I've just changed.
I had to stop and start going back through MGS2 because the style of gameplay of those early metal gear games just aren't my cup of tea. Even though I really like the story in 2 and really like Raiden. It's the gameplay and the restrictive camera that puts me off.
But I can start up and play through MGS3 really easily.
4 I need to finish my replay of. I kept getting sidetracked. I still have things to do in that game.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
So, "listen to all the conversation" objectives, right? Everyone hates those, amirite? I'm sure everyone has their own terrible story about them, but here's mine:
Extreme Traitor's Caravan. I listen to the first two conversations no problem. I'd done it before on normal difficulty and I had every detail memorized.
But then I get to Kiziba camp. The final area. I'm confident I'll be getting a no-restart bonus. And then:
"ka-boom."
Some goshdang goose of a soldier wanders into a mine and explodes. Are you telling me that you butts place these mines around your camp and can't even be bothered to remember where you put them? Anyway, the caravan arrives, they find his stupid dead body and go on alert. No last conversation for me.
After enough times playing Groundhog's day, I eventually perfected the art of zooming straight to this soldier and saving his idiotic, worthless life by tranq/fultoning him moments before he blew up.
What a stupid pain to go through just to listen to a stupid conversation. I really wish the conversations had been better implemented.
Anyway, is anyone playing MGO on PS4? At first, it seemed like the game was actively trying to make me dislike it, but I've slowly come around to it. I still spend a lot of time getting killed, however. My PSN is rex95605 in case anyone wants to get killed with me!
0
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
edited October 2015
In previous Metal Gear titles Solid Snake was supposed to be designed as a cipher for player to project themselves onto, as a classic videogame protagonist - this is something that Kojima iterated multiple times and for all intents and purposes Solid Snake serves as a canvas much like a silent protagonist does. That was basically the reason why MGS2 was designed the way it was, to explore that projection and subvert those expectations.
The silent-style protagonist of Venom Snake fits in with the theme of Kojima handing back the character to the players, the "You're the man now dog!" rant that was posted in the previous page. Or in more spoilery terms,
"You're the Big Boss now!"
:P
And he's more talkative and expressive than most other silent protagonists, by that metric. My favorite scenes are where Kiefer Sutherland emotes wordlessly with Quiet, because it's honestly pretty rare in videogames to have entire scenes that have emotion in them with a complete lack of dialogue.
Overall MGSV retains its GOTY status for me. It's a little shaky with the somewhat lacking plot, but I think it's hands-down the most mechanically-superior game I've played all year, and the best-playing game in the franchise. The intricacy of its gameplay systems and the way they interact with each other is on a granular level that most other game creators wouldn't care to have. There are things that I look at and think of wistfully that were probably cut from the game due to schedule constraints and Konami drama bullshit, but the majority of it is there and it met my expectations. They promised purposeful player freedom as one of the pillars of which the game was built around and they delivered it in spades. It also helps that it's one of the best-performing games of this generation and one of the better-looking ones to boot.
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Beautiful.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
+1
Werewolf2000adSuckers, I know exactly what went wrong.Registered Userregular
That counting as 'No Traces' is hilarious.
EVERYBODY WANTS TO SIT IN THE BIG CHAIR, MEG!
0
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited October 2015
Skulls don't count for No Traces.
I got it for mission 16.
Extracting the truck and sprinting straight for the nearby cargo container.
I think that possibly the sprinting punch doesn't count for no traces, which is unusual, because I thought it did. Otherwise countering isn't explicitly ruled out, and running enemies over with vehicles are allowed.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
0
Werewolf2000adSuckers, I know exactly what went wrong.Registered Userregular
Yeah, I'd been given the impression that hitting the right trigger at all = fail on No Traces, but apparently not.
In previous Metal Gear titles Solid Snake was supposed to be designed as a cipher for player to project themselves onto, as a classic videogame protagonist - this is something that Kojima iterated multiple times and for all intents and purposes Solid Snake serves as a canvas much like a silent protagonist does. That was basically the reason why MGS2 was designed the way it was, to explore that projection and subvert those expectations.
The silent-style protagonist of Venom Snake fits in with the theme of Kojima handing back the character to the players, the "You're the man now dog!" rant that was posted in the previous page. Or in more spoilery terms,
"You're the Big Boss now!"
:P
There are a number of moments where it feels STRANGE though.
Skull Face delivers his piece face to face with Snake, and then they proceed to stare at each other in silence for a few minutes. Boss doesn't respond to Skull Face in ANY WAY AT ALL. That just feels weird. He doesn't disagree, or agree, or make any comment at all.
Or there's the time when Miller goes absolutely paranoid nuts, and Snake just goes along with it quietly. Snake lived through the era of McCarthyism! He has met multiple flavors of crazy across MGS3 and Peace Walker. Even if Snake so often is the cipher for the player (what with his endless dialogue wherein he repeats the subject of the what the other person just said, but in the form of a question), by the end of Peace Walker, Snake is established as a hero in deeds as well as a charismatic leader. Snake doesn't feel like a "Big Boss", because he's always just filling jobs Miller has picked out. He barely vocalizes opposition OR assent to what is happening around him, and that seems out of character, especially given that he has profound personal motivations for what he does. If we buy into the whole "via hypnosis he has the experiences and thinking of Big Boss", Snake should absolutely have things to say.
Internally, I rationalize it like this:
- I was never the real Big Boss in the first place, and since all the techniques of trying to make me think I'm Big Boss at best make me someone that others accept as Big Boss, I'M STILL NOT ACTUALLY BIG BOSS. I don't truly have his personality/thoughts/memories/language skills, so of course I don't say things he would.
- Kiefer Sutherland providing a new voice for Snake I now accept for the same reason, he's not really Big Boss at all. Am I conveniently pretending all the speech he does make in the role of the actual Big Boss is not in his voice? You bet I am!
It's worth pointing out that in the hospital scenes, Ishmael is VERY CHATTY. In fact, I was totally thrown off that he was Big Boss at the start because he said "You're pretty good", which made me think he was Ocelot, which I guess is a sort of memetic brainwashing trigger.
A weird thing about MGSV is that it almost precisely re-invokes the notion of MGS2, that a legendary soldier is created through experiences. By creating a context in which an already good soldier is given the best supporting cast in the world and thrust into incredibly hard operations, he can gain the experiences needed to become Big Boss levels of great. I can pretend that by the time MGS2 hits, Zero is already sufficiently senile and he has never given out what truly happened with Big Boss that people are simply re-discovering the same theory. Ocelot keeps his mouth shut on it all, too. But I'm never quite sure what the judgement is on this because MGS2 is so on about "you can't REALLY pass on experiences/knowledge/deep personal modes of thinking to another person" while Peace Walker and MGSV is all about "we can totally reconstruct a plausible actor following plausible thought patterns of any particular person through science and psychological manipulation". Even though Strangelove in the end mourns the fact that the Reptile pod isn't truly the mind of the Boss, and we've probably got a more realized version of the Chinese Room than pretty much any game has ever done...
This it certainly does. There are some too-easily exploitable AI issues, like causing a ruckus and then taking advantage of the open fields to just run AROUND the zone you've caused the ruckus in which now all the guards are attracted to, that bother me a little. I wish that there were more environments that didn't give me so many options for too-easy circumvention, and I wish that there were a few more of the rich, carefully constructed indoor environments that MGS series executes so well for me to play in.
One complaint I have about how the game sounds is that after you collect the cassette tapes from a place, that song will never again play in the wild. Playing it through the iDroid makes the song dominate the audio mix, rather than being an environmental sound that comes from a position in the world. It feels like collecting the songs winds up making the world a little less alive. There's probably a Nier joke in there I could make.
- Kiefer Sutherland providing a new voice for Snake I now accept for the same reason, he's not really Big Boss at all. Am I conveniently pretending all the speech he does make in the role of the actual Big Boss is not in his voice? You bet I am!
You're also conveniently forgetting Ground Zeroes, right?
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Ziang Tan is someone on the development team AFAIK, that's an easter egg.
Also, I've finally "beaten" the game.
Cool reveal, shitty way of finishing a game...
BIG RANT WITH ALL SPOILERS BELOW
It was pretty obvious you're not snake, and Kojima had to outright "cheat" on the prologue to hide it. But man that was a stupid thing to do. So any dude with hypno training can be boss? Why not turn all 12 hundred Diamond Dogs in my base into Big Bosses then? Also, what's the point? How does that tie into Language? why didn't they pepper the whole game with some sort of flashbacks or visions of Phantom reverting back? It was all played 100% straight right until Ocelot goes "GUESS YOU CANT RUN AWAY FROM YOURSELF FOREVER HUH NOD NOD WINK WINK" and BAM. There was ONE foreshadowing with the whole "HE'S NOT YOUR CLONE" thing.
The Phantom Boss thing also doesn't justify Snake being so quiet the whole game. He was, for all intents and purposes, both to himself and to the player, the REAL Snake the whole game. He was conditioned to think, feel and remember like the Big Boss. So why doesn't he even grunt or say yeah or ok or anything at all during scenes like the jeep ride with Skull Face? it's so weird and sticks out like a sore thumb. The series, in 17 years, never used the "silent protagonist as a means of immersing the player" shtick (which I don't usually mind), what's the point now? I didn't get more immersed into being Big Boss this time, it actually wrenched me out of that effect. Ok, granted, the scenes with Quiet were nice (Snake's part I mean, her writhing and gyrating and all the shit she kept doing in the chopper was fucking embarrassing), but all the other (lack) of interaction killed my immersion as Big Boss. I felt much more attached and connected to Naked Snake in MGS3 and and Solid Snake in MGS1 and 4. And don't tell me the past way the series did things is irrelevant. It might be to YOU, but not for millions of fans of the series.
As for being a mere surrogate, Phantom was just way too great and awesome... He had all the right instincts and all the integrity, as seen in mission 43. That's not something some "learn while sleeping" tape can make you be. His reaction to the Quarantine Massacre completely contradicts the supposed "fall into hell" arc from Naked Snake to Outer Heaven Big Boss. Which is later further shat upon by him not even being Big Big Boss. So what's the point of this whole journey if this is NOT Jack's story? Sure, "I'm the Big Boss" now, but wasn't this theme properly explored in MGS2? They don't really work it right here. If only Phantom was not an English speaker at all before the whole 9 years, I dunno.
BTW, the change in actor has nothing to do with the Phantom Boss thing, because the real Big Boss still has Kiefer's voice, and the Japanese actor wasn't changed.
Skull Face didn't sell me his role either. So he wanted to kill the English language because the Soviets burned him and took him out of his village in Hungary? What? He's ridiculously villanous in his methods and actions, and how did he get XOF rebuilt after the inspection nine years past if he had been cast out of Cypher? Who's even running Cypher right now? Code Talker had much more reason to hatching that whole plan. He shoulda been the evil mastermind puppetting Skull Face.
I'm not even gonna go into the "Liquid+Psycho Mantis+Sahelantropus" thing because I know it was flat out cut from the game. BTW, I got to mission 46 without playing mission 45 + side op 150, because I put up the Butterfly Emblem... Other than Quiet's goodbye, did I miss anything?
And FUCK chapter two lacked anything remotely resembling coherence, consistency, theme, plot, aim, drive, ANYTHING. They should have called it "epilogue" or "post-game mess" "scratch pile" or "random jumble" or something. Calling it a CHAPTER 2 makes it seem like it's gonna be the second half of the arc, and it mos def wasn't.
I still wanna do stuff with the gameplay, but I guess I'm gonna give it a short break. This was kinda sad. I still love the game as a whole, and I had a great 150 hours. But man...
Ok, please talk to me. Share impressions. No need to argue tho, I'm still ruminating the end.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited October 2015
Haven't beaten the game yet (I don't really give a crap about the story spoilers), but those complaints seem to match with Kojima's style just fine as far as I can tell. When Kojima can be bothered to make an actual point instead of layering so much vague abstraction on top of it that anybody can justify anything about it, his points are frequently... bad, or at least heavily flawed. In a not-very-well-thought out kind of way, considering how much he gives the impression of thinking about this stuff.
Though in the case of MGSV, I'm thinking all the cut story content magnifies this issue a ton and adds lots of extra problems to it, simply because a lot of the info to fit various bits together just didn't make it to the final game. Kojima gets pretty obtuse with his "messages", but he has always tended to at least put enough pieces in place for players to make some kinda sense about what is really happening. Even if that sense is purely a fiction of the players, the pieces are still there in the other games, usually.
But the guy has always struck me as putting out lots of messages he thinks are cool and stylish and avant garde, rather than making any kind of actual rational sense. It's just that, in the past, the stories were focused enough to let him keep piling on the random esoteric stuff until something could get pulled out of it all and have some matching justification, instead of having development interrupted and cutting off all that extra info. I may think the story of MGS2 was a pile of poo, but it also benefited from a narrower focus that MGSV definitely lacked; the latter game just isn't able to deliver all of Kojima's usual stuff for reasons out of his control.
Ziang Tan is someone on the development team AFAIK, that's an easter egg.
Also, I've finally "beaten" the game.
Cool reveal, shitty way of finishing a game...
BIG RANT WITH ALL SPOILERS BELOW
It was pretty obvious you're not snake, and Kojima had to outright "cheat" on the prologue to hide it. But man that was a stupid thing to do. So any dude with hypno training can be boss? Why not turn all 12 hundred Diamond Dogs in my base into Big Bosses then? Also, what's the point? How does that tie into Language? why didn't they pepper the whole game with some sort of flashbacks or visions of Phantom reverting back? It was all played 100% straight right until Ocelot goes "GUESS YOU CANT RUN AWAY FROM YOURSELF FOREVER HUH NOD NOD WINK WINK" and BAM. There was ONE foreshadowing with the whole "HE'S NOT YOUR CLONE" thing.
The Phantom Boss thing also doesn't justify Snake being so quiet the whole game. He was, for all intents and purposes, both to himself and to the player, the REAL Snake the whole game. He was conditioned to think, feel and remember like the Big Boss. So why doesn't he even grunt or say yeah or ok or anything at all during scenes like the jeep ride with Skull Face? it's so weird and sticks out like a sore thumb. The series, in 17 years, never used the "silent protagonist as a means of immersing the player" shtick (which I don't usually mind), what's the point now? I didn't get more immersed into being Big Boss this time, it actually wrenched me out of that effect. Ok, granted, the scenes with Quiet were nice (Snake's part I mean, her writhing and gyrating and all the shit she kept doing in the chopper was fucking embarrassing), but all the other (lack) of interaction killed my immersion as Big Boss. I felt much more attached and connected to Naked Snake in MGS3 and and Solid Snake in MGS1 and 4. And don't tell me the past way the series did things is irrelevant. It might be to YOU, but not for millions of fans of the series.
As for being a mere surrogate, Phantom was just way too great and awesome... He had all the right instincts and all the integrity, as seen in mission 43. That's not something some "learn while sleeping" tape can make you be. His reaction to the Quarantine Massacre completely contradicts the supposed "fall into hell" arc from Naked Snake to Outer Heaven Big Boss. Which is later further shat upon by him not even being Big Big Boss. So what's the point of this whole journey if this is NOT Jack's story? Sure, "I'm the Big Boss" now, but wasn't this theme properly explored in MGS2? They don't really work it right here. If only Phantom was not an English speaker at all before the whole 9 years, I dunno.
BTW, the change in actor has nothing to do with the Phantom Boss thing, because the real Big Boss still has Kiefer's voice, and the Japanese actor wasn't changed.
Skull Face didn't sell me his role either. So he wanted to kill the English language because the Soviets burned him and took him out of his village in Hungary? What? He's ridiculously villanous in his methods and actions, and how did he get XOF rebuilt after the inspection nine years past if he had been cast out of Cypher? Who's even running Cypher right now? Code Talker had much more reason to hatching that whole plan. He shoulda been the evil mastermind puppetting Skull Face.
I'm not even gonna go into the "Liquid+Psycho Mantis+Sahelantropus" thing because I know it was flat out cut from the game. BTW, I got to mission 46 without playing mission 45 + side op 150, because I put up the Butterfly Emblem... Other than Quiet's goodbye, did I miss anything?
And FUCK chapter two lacked anything remotely resembling coherence, consistency, theme, plot, aim, drive, ANYTHING. They should have called it "epilogue" or "post-game mess" "scratch pile" or "random jumble" or something. Calling it a CHAPTER 2 makes it seem like it's gonna be the second half of the arc, and it mos def wasn't.
I still wanna do stuff with the gameplay, but I guess I'm gonna give it a short break. This was kinda sad. I still love the game as a whole, and I had a great 150 hours. But man...
Ok, please talk to me. Share impressions. No need to argue tho, I'm still ruminating the end.
Oh, it's okay
Everyone goes through this stage when they first beat the game.
That's the thing. Metal Gear Solid V IS the culmination of Jack/Ishmael/Big Bosses journey from Hero to Villian.
Think of it this way.
Zero creates a body double out of one of Big Bosses most loyal soldiers. A soldier that will act as a decoy while the real Big Boss can forward his plans. He will basically act as a sacrifice, a tool, abusing his loyalty to Big Boss, in order to further his goals. And Jack? AGREES to it. He uses the Medic the exact same way the United States used the Boss. The whole reason why he started this "crusade" in the first place. And that, is Naked Snake's fall to hell. He's come full circle, and become what he hated.
The reason why The Medic is so quiet, in comparison to Snake, is simple. Even if he's conditioned to BE Big Boss, little cracks in the facade slip through. Specifically, he tries to carry himself how he THINKS Big Boss carried himself. Hell he tells Kaz to "Tell me what to do, like you used to" which you can interpret as a little Big Boss, and even a little Medic(He was a soldier under him, after all). A common theme in every mission? He just follows orders. He doesn't question them, he doesn't debate them, he just carries out whatever mission Ocelot or Kaz lay before him. Like a good soldier. Like the MODEL soldier. Like "Big Boss". The only times, and I mean, the ONLY times The Medic shows any agency, is when you, the player, make choices, and when involving children, which, even then is sort of a Joint thing with Kaz. The only person he's vocal for, the only time he's really vocal at ALL, by himself, is advocating Quiet.
And how you're feeling about not being "immersed" in Big Boss? That's really the whole point. You're feeling exactly the way you should. He feels blank because he IS blank, and either you fill him up with yourself(for the We're all Big Boss angle) or, it feels wrong, because he's NOT Jack. He's NOT Big Boss. He's just a grunt, pretending to be Big Boss as best as he can. That's why any character he shows, is driven by a choice that you make(The one with Quiet). You have to choose to save Quiet, to work with Quiet, and to raiser her Bond in ORDER to get character development from the Medic.
As for The Medic being awesome at everything, people theorize that's why the Patriot A.I. system starts looking into the ability to recreate Solid Snake through situation, rather than cloning him. Since, The Medic was able to basically become Big Boss without actually being Big Boss.
As for Skull Face/Cypher. Listen to the Truth tapes. They literally tell you everything, and how the whole Skull Face situation went down.
And yes, the game ends Mission 31. Chapter 2 is an epilogue tying up loose ends. Which is honestly, pretty apt, the game never was never about a big bad and a righteous crusade, it's about coping with loss, the absolute worst way possible.
+3
MongerI got the ham stink.Dallas, TXRegistered Userregular
Ziang Tan is someone on the development team AFAIK, that's an easter egg.
Also, I've finally "beaten" the game.
Cool reveal, shitty way of finishing a game...
BIG RANT WITH ALL SPOILERS BELOW
It was pretty obvious you're not snake, and Kojima had to outright "cheat" on the prologue to hide it. But man that was a stupid thing to do. So any dude with hypno training can be boss? Why not turn all 12 hundred Diamond Dogs in my base into Big Bosses then? Also, what's the point? How does that tie into Language? why didn't they pepper the whole game with some sort of flashbacks or visions of Phantom reverting back? It was all played 100% straight right until Ocelot goes "GUESS YOU CANT RUN AWAY FROM YOURSELF FOREVER HUH NOD NOD WINK WINK" and BAM. There was ONE foreshadowing with the whole "HE'S NOT YOUR CLONE" thing.
The Phantom Boss thing also doesn't justify Snake being so quiet the whole game. He was, for all intents and purposes, both to himself and to the player, the REAL Snake the whole game. He was conditioned to think, feel and remember like the Big Boss. So why doesn't he even grunt or say yeah or ok or anything at all during scenes like the jeep ride with Skull Face? it's so weird and sticks out like a sore thumb. The series, in 17 years, never used the "silent protagonist as a means of immersing the player" shtick (which I don't usually mind), what's the point now? I didn't get more immersed into being Big Boss this time, it actually wrenched me out of that effect. Ok, granted, the scenes with Quiet were nice (Snake's part I mean, her writhing and gyrating and all the shit she kept doing in the chopper was fucking embarrassing), but all the other (lack) of interaction killed my immersion as Big Boss. I felt much more attached and connected to Naked Snake in MGS3 and and Solid Snake in MGS1 and 4. And don't tell me the past way the series did things is irrelevant. It might be to YOU, but not for millions of fans of the series.
As for being a mere surrogate, Phantom was just way too great and awesome... He had all the right instincts and all the integrity, as seen in mission 43. That's not something some "learn while sleeping" tape can make you be. His reaction to the Quarantine Massacre completely contradicts the supposed "fall into hell" arc from Naked Snake to Outer Heaven Big Boss. Which is later further shat upon by him not even being Big Big Boss. So what's the point of this whole journey if this is NOT Jack's story? Sure, "I'm the Big Boss" now, but wasn't this theme properly explored in MGS2? They don't really work it right here. If only Phantom was not an English speaker at all before the whole 9 years, I dunno.
BTW, the change in actor has nothing to do with the Phantom Boss thing, because the real Big Boss still has Kiefer's voice, and the Japanese actor wasn't changed.
Skull Face didn't sell me his role either. So he wanted to kill the English language because the Soviets burned him and took him out of his village in Hungary? What? He's ridiculously villanous in his methods and actions, and how did he get XOF rebuilt after the inspection nine years past if he had been cast out of Cypher? Who's even running Cypher right now? Code Talker had much more reason to hatching that whole plan. He shoulda been the evil mastermind puppetting Skull Face.
I'm not even gonna go into the "Liquid+Psycho Mantis+Sahelantropus" thing because I know it was flat out cut from the game. BTW, I got to mission 46 without playing mission 45 + side op 150, because I put up the Butterfly Emblem... Other than Quiet's goodbye, did I miss anything?
And FUCK chapter two lacked anything remotely resembling coherence, consistency, theme, plot, aim, drive, ANYTHING. They should have called it "epilogue" or "post-game mess" "scratch pile" or "random jumble" or something. Calling it a CHAPTER 2 makes it seem like it's gonna be the second half of the arc, and it mos def wasn't.
I still wanna do stuff with the gameplay, but I guess I'm gonna give it a short break. This was kinda sad. I still love the game as a whole, and I had a great 150 hours. But man...
Ok, please talk to me. Share impressions. No need to argue tho, I'm still ruminating the end.
Oh, it's okay
Everyone goes through this stage when they first beat the game.
That's the thing. Metal Gear Solid V IS the culmination of Jack/Ishmael/Big Bosses journey from Hero to Villian.
Think of it this way.
Zero creates a body double out of one of Big Bosses most loyal soldiers. A soldier that will act as a decoy while the real Big Boss can forward his plans. He will basically act as a sacrifice, a tool, abusing his loyalty to Big Boss, in order to further his goals. And Jack? AGREES to it. He uses the Medic the exact same way the United States used the Boss. The whole reason why he started this "crusade" in the first place. And that, is Naked Snake's fall to hell. He's come full circle, and become what he hated.
The reason why The Medic is so quiet, in comparison to Snake, is simple. Even if he's conditioned to BE Big Boss, little cracks in the facade slip through. Specifically, he tries to carry himself how he THINKS Big Boss carried himself. Hell he tells Kaz to "Tell me what to do, like you used to" which you can interpret as a little Big Boss, and even a little Medic(He was a soldier under him, after all). A common theme in every mission? He just follows orders. He doesn't question them, he doesn't debate them, he just carries out whatever mission Ocelot or Kaz lay before him. Like a good soldier. Like the MODEL soldier. Like "Big Boss". The only times, and I mean, the ONLY times The Medic shows any agency, is when you, the player, make choices, and when involving children, which, even then is sort of a Joint thing with Kaz. The only person he's vocal for, the only time he's really vocal at ALL, by himself, is advocating Quiet.
And how you're feeling about not being "immersed" in Big Boss? That's really the whole point. You're feeling exactly the way you should. He feels blank because he IS blank, and either you fill him up with yourself(for the We're all Big Boss angle) or, it feels wrong, because he's NOT Jack. He's NOT Big Boss. He's just a grunt, pretending to be Big Boss as best as he can. That's why any character he shows, is driven by a choice that you make(The one with Quiet). You have to choose to save Quiet, to work with Quiet, and to raiser her Bond in ORDER to get character development from the Medic.
As for The Medic being awesome at everything, people theorize that's why the Patriot A.I. system starts looking into the ability to recreate Solid Snake through situation, rather than cloning him. Since, The Medic was able to basically become Big Boss without actually being Big Boss.
As for Skull Face/Cypher. Listen to the Truth tapes. They literally tell you everything, and how the whole Skull Face situation went down.
And yes, the game ends Mission 31. Chapter 2 is an epilogue tying up loose ends. Which is honestly, pretty apt, the game never was never about a big bad and a righteous crusade, it's about coping with loss, the absolute worst way possible.
Here's the thing, though:
You as a player aren't ever given a choice about anything insofar as the story is concerned. You are, at best, given the illusion of choice on a couple of occasions. You can "choose" to save Quiet, but you know what happens if you don't? Nothing. She doesn't show up in some cutscenes, you don't get to do some missions (which denies you 100% completion until you go back and save her), and then the story progresses exactly as if she was there. Skull Face still tells you that the English strain is very close to you, even though it isn't. Because you're supposed to save Quiet. It's not a choice any more than choosing to stop playing the game before it's over is a choice. You can also choose to shoot Skull Face at the end of chapter 1, but Snake won't do it. He imagines himself doing it, hallucinates himself as he was back in the hospital, and then freezes until Miller does it for him.
Snake asserts himself on a handful of occasions:
1. Not killing the kids.
2. Not killing Quiet.
3. Not shooting Skull Face.
4. Not executing Huey.
5. Making diamonds from his soldiers' ashes.
That's the thing that's so disorienting about the experience. Kojima frames the game as a descent into villainy and he has repeatedly talked about how Venom is a character that is purely motivated by revenge, but it isn't true. Every single time the character asserts himself, it's out of compassion rather than vengeance, and it's never as a result of any decision from the player.
Well, I've just watched the Special Edition video for Operation 51. Fuck Konami for making KojiPro cut it. It was not "extra", it was the fucking ending of the game, it was 100% necessary and core to the experience, and it would have made chapter 2 a lot better.
BTW, I love how "phantom-paining" any complaints is the way to defend all shortcomings in the game (which I still love to bits).
No real boss fights? "That's to make you feel the phantom-pain of not having them".
Snake never talks? "That's to make you feel the phantom-pain of not hearing him".
What about... —Phantom pain dude.
And... —That too.
- Kiefer Sutherland providing a new voice for Snake I now accept for the same reason, he's not really Big Boss at all. Am I conveniently pretending all the speech he does make in the role of the actual Big Boss is not in his voice? You bet I am!
You're also conveniently forgetting Ground Zeroes, right?
Not forgetting, just mentally recasting it, but absolutely.
Cole's Law: "Thinly sliced cabbage."
0
Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
I never got to see this scene. Shame, it's pretty great. Venom is more talkative than usual, some fun one liners.
Almost wish this scene wasn't optional. It would've made some of that later stuff hurt all the more.
Scenes like this pain me because he talks so rarely. When Kiefer gets to go in, he's fantastic at it.
Also, it amazes me how they expect 'new' players to jump right in. This references Peace Walker and MGS3 left and right, not to mention GZ.
Every time some Paul Marketing says about the 4th or 5th game in a series, "And we've made the story really accessible for newcomers!" They are literally lying through their teeth.
0
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
Posts
This is not a series for silent protagonists. No "make it easier to immerse yourself in the main character" excuse.
Don't think this applies to a series so old, long and that never used it.
All silent protagonists are like that since always. And there's plenty of open-world games and silent protagonist games with plenty more gameplay interjections and exclamations.
The way snake is so silent in this is super annoying. It's all miller and ocelot all the time and it's often hard to tell them apart.
I still stand by my "jacked up Peace Walker" comment. The whole individual mission structure from a menu feel for one. PW dumped you into tiny segmented rooms while TPP drops you into the whole world with no loading screens. But the overall feel is the same to me. The only real reason PW isn't "open world" is because of that segmented A-B-C structure and because there was no option to just jump into the world at will. In the final "Find X" missions at the end, they would basically drop you in the first area of the game and give you almost complete access to the world, you just had to walk there. TPP filled in the blanks so to speak, and lets you get to your destination however and from wherever you want.
As for the story, I remember stuff actually happening pretty frequently in PW. Every few missions, something important or interesting would happen with the story. Here, so many of these missions feel like extended side-ops. "Find the guy. Extract the guy. Leave.". The number of times something actually interesting happens feel few and far between. And when they do happen, Snake just stands like a goober like he's part of the scenery or something.
Sure, it's natural to view it that way. That isn't, to me, the same as justified.
I'm not a traditionalist when it comes to things like this. I don't mind when people want to do new things. All I care about is if it works stand alone, without looking back at the past.
This game does, so I don't mind it.
It doesn't if you look at the past, because the past doesn't apply here. It's a new approach.
Like, it doesn't make sense to me to view it based on the past series. It's too different. I can't even do it. My mind doesn't work that way.
The fact that people get stuck on superficial similarity to peace walker is basically my point. It's nothing like Peacewalker in its gameplay depth and entire approach. You can't just imagine a freeroam in Peacewalker and declare them the same. That's inventing something that game was never meant to have, that was never part of the story design considerations in that game, and then declaring them similar based on this invented thing.
The mission structure in Peacewalker was a normal MGS experience split up into individual missions: five missions for a single strand of the tale. You would actually start a mission sequence, and then go through several little mini missions that dumped you back to motherbase in between, before you got to the next relevant story cutscene. I actually found it really disjointed, because it was trying to present the story one way, but this wasn't being supported by the gameplay structure. You had missions whose entire purpose was "be the middle level" without no story relevance whatsoever. This game has the majority of its missions as stand alone, except for a couple with major boss fights. The story is told throughout the entire game: some in side ops, some in motherbase, at the end of intel gathering missions, through tapes, in conversations between guards, and so on. It's spread out organically throughout the whole thing. The vast majority of Peacewalker was just the straight missions themselves. The tapes added a little, the sideops and motherbase were completely irrelevant.
In peacewalker, you are doing "story content" when you do the missions and listen to tapes. In this game, you have it happen to you as a function of playing the game as a total experience. It's delivered to you through all the different parts that make up the game, and some of it you have to go out and engage with yourself (the tapes).
It's painting an apple orange. You can try to claim they're the same if you like, but all I see when I look at what you have in your hands is an orange and a painted apple.
But there are weird issues with the plot and story. Two Best Friends put up their latest video on it which is the end of Ch.1, and they had the pitch perfect quote that I agree with.
"This is an awesome Metal Gear game, but a crappy Metal Gear movie."
I knew that you were talking about the story.
I agree with that quote. It isn't meant to be one. So of course it is.
that about sums this conversation up.
It isn't like x.
Well yes, it isn't meant to be.
Yes but it isn't like x.
Repeat.
I haven't been saying its better at any point. I've been saying its different. That, automatically, implies it is going to be bad at whatever it is you liked about the previous metal gear stories. Because it's different.
I also agree that it's different somewhat. But that, to me, it's also similar in aspects. That I can see the ideas and plans they used in PW (and to a lesser extent POps... somewhat) and expanded heavily on them.
Either way, I really liked the game. Dunno if I could say it was my favourite Metal Gear game though. Like, I don't know if I'd ever replay it. Or to a certain extent, how would I replay it? Replay in this case being "I want to experience the story again". I guess just boot the game up and play the 10 or so missions where real plot happened or something.
Replay as in "I wanna sneak into a base in a box and snipe a dude" though, this game has in fucking spades.
This is the metal gear game that I will play along with 3 when I want to play me some metal gear. All the others are too restrictive to keep my attention for long on a replay. Three has just enough fun stuff you can do and the cutscenes are spaced out long enough that it keeps me engaged.
I managed to get through MGS again and I established that the me now is nowhere near as nice about Liquid in that game as the me back then.
He annoyed the crap out of me, in fact. He certainly didn't do that the first time. I thought he was a great villain the first time. Guess I've just changed.
I had to stop and start going back through MGS2 because the style of gameplay of those early metal gear games just aren't my cup of tea. Even though I really like the story in 2 and really like Raiden. It's the gameplay and the restrictive camera that puts me off.
But I can start up and play through MGS3 really easily.
4 I need to finish my replay of. I kept getting sidetracked. I still have things to do in that game.
What a bunch of bologna.
But then I get to Kiziba camp. The final area. I'm confident I'll be getting a no-restart bonus. And then:
"ka-boom."
Some goshdang goose of a soldier wanders into a mine and explodes. Are you telling me that you butts place these mines around your camp and can't even be bothered to remember where you put them? Anyway, the caravan arrives, they find his stupid dead body and go on alert. No last conversation for me.
After enough times playing Groundhog's day, I eventually perfected the art of zooming straight to this soldier and saving his idiotic, worthless life by tranq/fultoning him moments before he blew up.
What a stupid pain to go through just to listen to a stupid conversation. I really wish the conversations had been better implemented.
Anyway, is anyone playing MGO on PS4? At first, it seemed like the game was actively trying to make me dislike it, but I've slowly come around to it. I still spend a lot of time getting killed, however. My PSN is rex95605 in case anyone wants to get killed with me!
The silent-style protagonist of Venom Snake fits in with the theme of Kojima handing back the character to the players, the "You're the man now dog!" rant that was posted in the previous page. Or in more spoilery terms,
And he's more talkative and expressive than most other silent protagonists, by that metric. My favorite scenes are where Kiefer Sutherland emotes wordlessly with Quiet, because it's honestly pretty rare in videogames to have entire scenes that have emotion in them with a complete lack of dialogue.
Overall MGSV retains its GOTY status for me. It's a little shaky with the somewhat lacking plot, but I think it's hands-down the most mechanically-superior game I've played all year, and the best-playing game in the franchise. The intricacy of its gameplay systems and the way they interact with each other is on a granular level that most other game creators wouldn't care to have. There are things that I look at and think of wistfully that were probably cut from the game due to schedule constraints and Konami drama bullshit, but the majority of it is there and it met my expectations. They promised purposeful player freedom as one of the pillars of which the game was built around and they delivered it in spades. It also helps that it's one of the best-performing games of this generation and one of the better-looking ones to boot.
Remember the basics of CQC Boss.
EVERYBODY WANTS TO SIT IN THE BIG CHAIR, MEG!
I got it for mission 16.
I think that possibly the sprinting punch doesn't count for no traces, which is unusual, because I thought it did. Otherwise countering isn't explicitly ruled out, and running enemies over with vehicles are allowed.
EVERYBODY WANTS TO SIT IN THE BIG CHAIR, MEG!
It's right trigger on a weapon and standard offensive CQC. Grabs, throws, combos. Also bumping enemies.
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/582448419920781162/FB23FF83294E76E071086F92D22AF8119F626706/
There are a number of moments where it feels STRANGE though.
Or there's the time when Miller goes absolutely paranoid nuts, and Snake just goes along with it quietly. Snake lived through the era of McCarthyism! He has met multiple flavors of crazy across MGS3 and Peace Walker. Even if Snake so often is the cipher for the player (what with his endless dialogue wherein he repeats the subject of the what the other person just said, but in the form of a question), by the end of Peace Walker, Snake is established as a hero in deeds as well as a charismatic leader. Snake doesn't feel like a "Big Boss", because he's always just filling jobs Miller has picked out. He barely vocalizes opposition OR assent to what is happening around him, and that seems out of character, especially given that he has profound personal motivations for what he does. If we buy into the whole "via hypnosis he has the experiences and thinking of Big Boss", Snake should absolutely have things to say.
Internally, I rationalize it like this:
- I was never the real Big Boss in the first place, and since all the techniques of trying to make me think I'm Big Boss at best make me someone that others accept as Big Boss, I'M STILL NOT ACTUALLY BIG BOSS. I don't truly have his personality/thoughts/memories/language skills, so of course I don't say things he would.
- Kiefer Sutherland providing a new voice for Snake I now accept for the same reason, he's not really Big Boss at all. Am I conveniently pretending all the speech he does make in the role of the actual Big Boss is not in his voice? You bet I am!
It's worth pointing out that in the hospital scenes, Ishmael is VERY CHATTY. In fact, I was totally thrown off that he was Big Boss at the start because he said "You're pretty good", which made me think he was Ocelot, which I guess is a sort of memetic brainwashing trigger.
A weird thing about MGSV is that it almost precisely re-invokes the notion of MGS2, that a legendary soldier is created through experiences. By creating a context in which an already good soldier is given the best supporting cast in the world and thrust into incredibly hard operations, he can gain the experiences needed to become Big Boss levels of great. I can pretend that by the time MGS2 hits, Zero is already sufficiently senile and he has never given out what truly happened with Big Boss that people are simply re-discovering the same theory. Ocelot keeps his mouth shut on it all, too. But I'm never quite sure what the judgement is on this because MGS2 is so on about "you can't REALLY pass on experiences/knowledge/deep personal modes of thinking to another person" while Peace Walker and MGSV is all about "we can totally reconstruct a plausible actor following plausible thought patterns of any particular person through science and psychological manipulation". Even though Strangelove in the end mourns the fact that the Reptile pod isn't truly the mind of the Boss, and we've probably got a more realized version of the Chinese Room than pretty much any game has ever done...
This it certainly does. There are some too-easily exploitable AI issues, like causing a ruckus and then taking advantage of the open fields to just run AROUND the zone you've caused the ruckus in which now all the guards are attracted to, that bother me a little. I wish that there were more environments that didn't give me so many options for too-easy circumvention, and I wish that there were a few more of the rich, carefully constructed indoor environments that MGS series executes so well for me to play in.
One complaint I have about how the game sounds is that after you collect the cassette tapes from a place, that song will never again play in the wild. Playing it through the iDroid makes the song dominate the audio mix, rather than being an environmental sound that comes from a position in the world. It feels like collecting the songs winds up making the world a little less alive. There's probably a Nier joke in there I could make.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
that guy is just coded that you cant boot him from mother base. You're stuck with him, cause he's technically a storyman.
Also, I've finally "beaten" the game.
Cool reveal, shitty way of finishing a game...
BIG RANT WITH ALL SPOILERS BELOW
The Phantom Boss thing also doesn't justify Snake being so quiet the whole game. He was, for all intents and purposes, both to himself and to the player, the REAL Snake the whole game. He was conditioned to think, feel and remember like the Big Boss. So why doesn't he even grunt or say yeah or ok or anything at all during scenes like the jeep ride with Skull Face? it's so weird and sticks out like a sore thumb. The series, in 17 years, never used the "silent protagonist as a means of immersing the player" shtick (which I don't usually mind), what's the point now? I didn't get more immersed into being Big Boss this time, it actually wrenched me out of that effect. Ok, granted, the scenes with Quiet were nice (Snake's part I mean, her writhing and gyrating and all the shit she kept doing in the chopper was fucking embarrassing), but all the other (lack) of interaction killed my immersion as Big Boss. I felt much more attached and connected to Naked Snake in MGS3 and and Solid Snake in MGS1 and 4. And don't tell me the past way the series did things is irrelevant. It might be to YOU, but not for millions of fans of the series.
As for being a mere surrogate, Phantom was just way too great and awesome... He had all the right instincts and all the integrity, as seen in mission 43. That's not something some "learn while sleeping" tape can make you be. His reaction to the Quarantine Massacre completely contradicts the supposed "fall into hell" arc from Naked Snake to Outer Heaven Big Boss. Which is later further shat upon by him not even being Big Big Boss. So what's the point of this whole journey if this is NOT Jack's story? Sure, "I'm the Big Boss" now, but wasn't this theme properly explored in MGS2? They don't really work it right here. If only Phantom was not an English speaker at all before the whole 9 years, I dunno.
BTW, the change in actor has nothing to do with the Phantom Boss thing, because the real Big Boss still has Kiefer's voice, and the Japanese actor wasn't changed.
Skull Face didn't sell me his role either. So he wanted to kill the English language because the Soviets burned him and took him out of his village in Hungary? What? He's ridiculously villanous in his methods and actions, and how did he get XOF rebuilt after the inspection nine years past if he had been cast out of Cypher? Who's even running Cypher right now? Code Talker had much more reason to hatching that whole plan. He shoulda been the evil mastermind puppetting Skull Face.
I'm not even gonna go into the "Liquid+Psycho Mantis+Sahelantropus" thing because I know it was flat out cut from the game. BTW, I got to mission 46 without playing mission 45 + side op 150, because I put up the Butterfly Emblem... Other than Quiet's goodbye, did I miss anything?
And FUCK chapter two lacked anything remotely resembling coherence, consistency, theme, plot, aim, drive, ANYTHING. They should have called it "epilogue" or "post-game mess" "scratch pile" or "random jumble" or something. Calling it a CHAPTER 2 makes it seem like it's gonna be the second half of the arc, and it mos def wasn't.
I still wanna do stuff with the gameplay, but I guess I'm gonna give it a short break. This was kinda sad. I still love the game as a whole, and I had a great 150 hours. But man...
Ok, please talk to me. Share impressions. No need to argue tho, I'm still ruminating the end.
Though in the case of MGSV, I'm thinking all the cut story content magnifies this issue a ton and adds lots of extra problems to it, simply because a lot of the info to fit various bits together just didn't make it to the final game. Kojima gets pretty obtuse with his "messages", but he has always tended to at least put enough pieces in place for players to make some kinda sense about what is really happening. Even if that sense is purely a fiction of the players, the pieces are still there in the other games, usually.
But the guy has always struck me as putting out lots of messages he thinks are cool and stylish and avant garde, rather than making any kind of actual rational sense. It's just that, in the past, the stories were focused enough to let him keep piling on the random esoteric stuff until something could get pulled out of it all and have some matching justification, instead of having development interrupted and cutting off all that extra info. I may think the story of MGS2 was a pile of poo, but it also benefited from a narrower focus that MGSV definitely lacked; the latter game just isn't able to deliver all of Kojima's usual stuff for reasons out of his control.
Oh, it's okay
Everyone goes through this stage when they first beat the game.
That's the thing. Metal Gear Solid V IS the culmination of Jack/Ishmael/Big Bosses journey from Hero to Villian.
Think of it this way.
Zero creates a body double out of one of Big Bosses most loyal soldiers. A soldier that will act as a decoy while the real Big Boss can forward his plans. He will basically act as a sacrifice, a tool, abusing his loyalty to Big Boss, in order to further his goals. And Jack? AGREES to it. He uses the Medic the exact same way the United States used the Boss. The whole reason why he started this "crusade" in the first place. And that, is Naked Snake's fall to hell. He's come full circle, and become what he hated.
The reason why The Medic is so quiet, in comparison to Snake, is simple. Even if he's conditioned to BE Big Boss, little cracks in the facade slip through. Specifically, he tries to carry himself how he THINKS Big Boss carried himself. Hell he tells Kaz to "Tell me what to do, like you used to" which you can interpret as a little Big Boss, and even a little Medic(He was a soldier under him, after all). A common theme in every mission? He just follows orders. He doesn't question them, he doesn't debate them, he just carries out whatever mission Ocelot or Kaz lay before him. Like a good soldier. Like the MODEL soldier. Like "Big Boss". The only times, and I mean, the ONLY times The Medic shows any agency, is when you, the player, make choices, and when involving children, which, even then is sort of a Joint thing with Kaz. The only person he's vocal for, the only time he's really vocal at ALL, by himself, is advocating Quiet.
And how you're feeling about not being "immersed" in Big Boss? That's really the whole point. You're feeling exactly the way you should. He feels blank because he IS blank, and either you fill him up with yourself(for the We're all Big Boss angle) or, it feels wrong, because he's NOT Jack. He's NOT Big Boss. He's just a grunt, pretending to be Big Boss as best as he can. That's why any character he shows, is driven by a choice that you make(The one with Quiet). You have to choose to save Quiet, to work with Quiet, and to raiser her Bond in ORDER to get character development from the Medic.
As for The Medic being awesome at everything, people theorize that's why the Patriot A.I. system starts looking into the ability to recreate Solid Snake through situation, rather than cloning him. Since, The Medic was able to basically become Big Boss without actually being Big Boss.
As for Skull Face/Cypher. Listen to the Truth tapes. They literally tell you everything, and how the whole Skull Face situation went down.
And yes, the game ends Mission 31. Chapter 2 is an epilogue tying up loose ends. Which is honestly, pretty apt, the game never was never about a big bad and a righteous crusade, it's about coping with loss, the absolute worst way possible.
Snake asserts himself on a handful of occasions:
1. Not killing the kids.
2. Not killing Quiet.
3. Not shooting Skull Face.
4. Not executing Huey.
5. Making diamonds from his soldiers' ashes.
That's the thing that's so disorienting about the experience. Kojima frames the game as a descent into villainy and he has repeatedly talked about how Venom is a character that is purely motivated by revenge, but it isn't true. Every single time the character asserts himself, it's out of compassion rather than vengeance, and it's never as a result of any decision from the player.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
I liked the "ending" we got a lot more after reading this, the OP is amazing:
http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/metal-gear-solid-v-the-phantom-pain-8968/the-ultimate-ending-discussion-spoilers-1781915/
This ULTRA spoilery comic is super cute and heartwarming too.
No real boss fights? "That's to make you feel the phantom-pain of not having them".
Snake never talks? "That's to make you feel the phantom-pain of not hearing him".
What about... —Phantom pain dude.
And... —That too.
Not forgetting, just mentally recasting it, but absolutely.
Almost wish this scene wasn't optional. It would've made some of that later stuff hurt all the more.
Scenes like this pain me because he talks so rarely. When Kiefer gets to go in, he's fantastic at it.
Also, it amazes me how they expect 'new' players to jump right in. This references Peace Walker and MGS3 left and right, not to mention GZ.
Every time some Paul Marketing says about the 4th or 5th game in a series, "And we've made the story really accessible for newcomers!" They are literally lying through their teeth.
Only happens when you return to Mother Base while GMP is in the red.
(I was going into the red frequently early game so I was pretty well-paced with my cutscenes early on lol)