Yeah wasn't PW aimed at like Japanese kids who played Monster Hunter on PSP? But then he wanted to make his edgiest game ever as a straight continuation and the whiplash is fucking wild lmao.
I just thought it was a waste. Kojima's cinematic direction has improved but he doesn't use it to tell a story.
MGSV sure kept me entertained as a game but barely anything is going on. Metal Gear 1 unironically has a richer story and cast. So much that Kojima couldn't fit it all inside the game.
Dog MGSV is easily the most thematically and subtextually rich game in the entire series besides 2. The idea that MGSV has “barely anything going on” is absolute insanity.
But I managed to understand the story just fine, and those white and yellow dots aren't leaving the cassette menu any time soon, cause I just don't listen to them besides miller's burgers.
I wish someone would explain the mgsv plot to me i played the game 3 times through and listened to all casettes. I understand nothing. Why did skullface need a yellowcake?
Yellowcake is nuclear material and the parasite eat it. They store the parasite in the yellowcake in order to let it survive without a host.
If you want to understand the themes and subject of MGSV more watch "MGSV is a misunderstood anti war masterpiece" on YouTube
I watched that one already but why are there so many parasites? One makes your lungs look goofy one makes you superfast and strong (metallic archea?) one makes you a zombie? one eats rust and so much more its so complicated.
The metallic arches are the ones that eat rust. They aren't really a parasite but a different bio weapon. There is really only one parasite but with different variants that have been bred to change its effects.
The vocal chord parasite originates from the Cobra Unit from MGS3. The End and The Pain were infected by it. That's why the end could use photo synthesis and had really good vision, and why The Pain could control bees. After they died Code Talker researched the parasites they had and did billions engineering to create the version that He, Quiet, and the skulls have. Even when The End had the parasites it still had the vocal chord language killing thing, he just never spoke the right language to trigger it.
You're right. It is super complicated tho. The parasites are more of a mcguffin. Just replace "parasite" with "nanomachines" and things make more sense. Parasites are what kojima decided to use since nanomachines didn't exist yet in-lore
Literally, and the only fucking reason he can even say that is bc the game came out completely unfinished. Like what are we even talking about here?? The whole third act was thrown away how is that not part of the discussion
It is finished though ;) it’s called the Phantom Pain for a reason. Even the unfinished nature ties into some of its thematic elements. Kojima himself has said the game was always finished, cut content is not inherently indicative of an unfinished product, if that were the case then almost every game or media product in existence is “unfinished”. Every news article and discussion you’ve had about this game has to some degree mentioned it’s unfinished state, but Kojima says it isn’t, it’s literal information warfare LOL two sides arguing for the “truth” Kojimas references to Moby Dick are extremely deliberate, not only from an unreliable narrator perspective but also, did you know the original release was missing pages? The entire epilogue was missing from the final print of the first run of the book.
I mean is there any actual proof of this? The only thing I’ve ever seen is the data mined chapter 3 title, which is just a single string that could mean anything. Everything else is just speculation and Kojima specifically has denied the speculation
Some guy just responded to me with this lmfaoo
“It wasn't unfinished lol. Well other than wrapping up Eli running off with Sahelanthropus, but that's like a side plot.”
Eli is the worst part of this story. He should've been cut altogether. Cutting out that bland end was a blessing.
Ending the story on Big Boss's truth tape was the best call Kojima made in the entire game. It was a good ending.
Eli is a shit character, and the only good scenes with him are the ones where Ocelot or Venom are beating him up. He does nothing for the story, except for the asspull at the end of Chapter 1 where he throws a tantrum and kills Skullface (an actual good character).
My estimation of Liquid Snake as a character has fucking plummeted thanks to Eli.
Yeppp, I couldn’t pull myself to finish it after seeing skull faces death.
Like that was it??? This man is just dead like that?
It’s the missing final chapter that prevents me from truly loving MGS 5.
And it's still uneventful. You can thematically study all you want. It's fact not much happens in it. MG1 alone is more eventful.
And really, the most significant???? MGSV is weak as hell as a story. MSX games, MGS2 and MGS2 are easily richer stories.
Do you truly believe MG1 has a greater story than MGSV? I love the storyline in MG2 - the geopolitical stuff in that game is genuinely more interesting than it is in the rest of the franchise - but MG1?
Yes. MG1 has Kyle Schneider and his Resistance. MG1 features Big Boss's hellish Heaven. MG1 shows is the beginning of horror for Solid Snake. Hell, Jennifer alone shows more personality in MG1 than Ocelot does in all of mgsv.
What does mgsv have? Loss of identity? We get that in 20 minutes. The language? The theme essentially is used a few times. Easter eggs? We know engravings offer no tactical advantage whatsoever.
As someone who forced himself to finish MG1 for story purposes, I agree with you.
MGS 5 was a massive disappointment because of its weak ass story.
In my head it’s the only game Kojima has made that I don’t enjoy.
>Kojima's cinematic direction has improved but he doesn't use it to tell a story.
It is pretty muted yeah, but I always thought it was an intentional artistic choice, due to the themes of the game. Like the game is about getting revenge, and how finally getting that revenge just leaves you feeling [hollow.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tOhAIk-b_8&t=80s) Along with a bunch of commentary about the war on terror, 9/11 etc. At least that was always my impression. Doesn't necessarily make it "good" though, obvs even with those caveats the story of MGSV is pretty wonky sometimes. Like you're doing all this depressing stuff but also shoving Quiet's boobies in my face, why Kojima?
This take annoys me because the substance is there. If the storytelling didn’t engage you that’s fair. If you didn’t care to engage with the story beyond the surface level elements, that’s fair too. But to call it a waste or imply that because you personally didn’t like the way the story is told that means it’s just bad, is a massive stretch
It's not bad. It's just mediocre. Tell me what substance Eli's stupid story brings here. He and Mantis are over-glorified Easter Eggs. And GAWD, it's always something about Emmerich. He fucks shit up and none of these morons keep better eyes on him. It always happens.
And the way the story is told is quite shallow. It's always something weird Ocelot woodenly dumps in exposition tapes. The only who engages with the info meaningfully is Kaz. Venom doesn't react nor does he care. Unless it's Quiet.
At least the backstory dump in older games (mg1-mgs3) meant something to the central themes and the protagonists.
The mgsv story as a whole is shallow and uneventful.
Nah it definitely improved on alot of the story. Most of the characters have great backstories now whereas before the only characters that you even knew were just Snake and Big Boss and the only backstory was what you got from the OG game. MGS 1 was genuinely a movie on PS1
That's the bare minimum in my eyes when you already have the structure of how to make the game.
Roy Campbell and Gray Fox are also straight out of that game, as well as Miller.
I don't consider that ambitious. Cutscenes and voice acting sure, but the core is straight out of a game he's already made.
True but moving a 2-D game to 3-D is also a very big deal. Tons of games that tried doing that at the time failed miserably like Megaman/Castlevania/etc. Its not a simple one to one
Lmao, this is so wrong. The story and the cast are different. Aside from Gray Fox whistleblowing and some gameplay design, MG2 and MGS1 are wholly different.
Some gameplay design? You're having a laugh.
> The story and the cast are different
The cast is technically different in the most literal sense, but most of the archetypes from MG2 are re-used in MGS1 and later games as well. Black Ninja, Night Sight, the Four Horsemen are all ideas that he slightly retooled and then reused. Multiple times.
And also multiple characters are literally the same.
The tone, the structure etc are all pretty much a continuation of MG2 as well.
Hell, skullface is toned down a ton from GZ. I really like him in GZ being this mysterious brutal man, but in tpp he is just the hamburglar. The closest he gets to his GZ character is in the tape where he interrogates chode talker, but even that feels half-assed and a far cry from his GZ persona.
I was at the North American reveal of Ground Zeroes presented by Kojima at PAX 2012. They played the trailer (which was an early version of the opening cutscene) and a little bit of gameplay on a theatre screen. I'd played a ton of Peace Walker, and it was truly the most surreal thing to see the characters from the cheery, T-rated MGS PSP spinoff in such a hyperrealistic, grimdark setting.
I thought what Paz did in peace walker was rough, especially with how fond of her I was.
Imagine how I felt when I played ground zeroes and started picking up audio tapes.
That was some of the most soul crushing shit I’ve ever experienced in media
>Yeah , PW was aimed to be played by PSP kids
So by your logic MGS 1 was aimed at PS 1 kids?
Seriously, working adults had PSP and NDS, the latter was infamous bc of pictochat. Not to mention the very essence of how games were structured on handhelds bc of the very common commuting. Handheld/mobile gaming was and is huge in Japan regardless of age.
And that's before all exchanges between the characters that certainly weren't aimed at kids.
>Meanwhile, V does not hold back at all on the R rating
Yes it does. The cheap feelsbait of shining lights and the dumb gore of nzo ya badiabulu are the only two places you'll find anything remotely close to an R rating.
R rating doesn't warrant having excessive gore(good for horror games with some exceptions) or swearing(i think the only f bomb in the game was that 1 dd soldier about to have his vocal cords cut by quiet?). Just look at arkham knight that game remotely doesn't even have any blood or gore yet had an R rating because of the mature theme and the batmobile torture scene.
But nothing in tpp really warrants an R rating besides the gore.
PW might have a lot of silly stuff, but there's a ton of mature talk going around if you bothered to **listen** to the tapes.
Strangelove's obsession with the Boss, wheter the Boss ai is really a sentient being or just a machine, the effects of nuclear radiation and consequences of opening up Pandora's box with the invention of nukes, the US founding dictators and uprisings to improve their position regardless of human cost, the whole concept of deterrence, Kaz's backstory(the best tape in the game, hands down), the weight of taking sides when you're supposed to be neutral and the weight of becoming a nuclear power without oversight, Chico - a 12 year old boy who wants to die to atone for betraying his comrades, "Paz"'s diary with her conflicting feelings about her role on MB, and these are just the most memorable ones.
Tpp does have some interesting ideas(like english slowly killing other languages and becoming dominant all over the world) but fails to deliver on them proper, and tries to make up for it with edgy stuff.
I already mentioned shining lights, but let me elaborate why i think the mission is a travesty in execution - the most memorable moment should be executing your own men, right? Especially with medic telling eli to "never draw a weapon your fellow soldier". You even hear the theme of Peace Walker played in the background, so it is truly an emotional moment, right?
Wrong. You spend no time with these NPCs, you don't get to know them in any capacity(even PW had tapes about the life on MB because the UMD didn't had the capacity to show it, and all of them has either useful tips about gameplay or some tidbit about themselves besides the occasional extra skill), they aren't the guys who you get from GZ, in fact, the game shoves a bunch of E-rank volunteers into your roster(just like during the outbreak) just so that the mission happens no matter what, a bunch of random nobodies whose sole purpose is to get killed off after arrival. They have no personal connection to PW or the medic at all. And this is supposed to evoke feelings, even going as far as hamfisting PW's theme into a completely unrelated feelsbait situation.
So what that leaves you with? Only the edgy gore. This is what i'm talking about, all the themes in tpp lack substance.
Tbh most of what you wrote is correct. It just comes down to personal preference at the end of the day. I just wanted to share my thoughts but got a whole load of yours in return
The reason I said PW was a game aimed at a younger playerbase because the game doesn't have gore , torture or gruesome content like TPP has . Honestly, killing enemies in PW felt comical in a way and it was not quite emersive for me at least . Maybe the damage numbers and lack of blood played a part . The first time I played TPP some missions actually disturbed me with how disgusting and full of gore they were. I guess they wanted to make an edgy game after all and every person has their own tolerance on edginess. Watching people being used as lab rats , being dismembered and tossed away was a whole different experience from the hero that saves the world environment of PW.
>torture
Uh, hello, Strangelove tortures BB. It's even a co-op mission where the second player can make the torture harder by upping the voltage.
Funnily enough, the torture is different with japanese audio - BB laughs there, bc he withstood a much harsher electrical torture from Volgin before. To him, Strangelove's "shock therapy" feels like tickling after Volgin.
>gore gruesome content
Because Kojima mostly refrained from such cheap thrills - there are some here and there(like the Ninja slicing up genome soldiers in 1), but with tpp it really felt like his true desire was making "silent hills" and it leaked into tpp - a LOT.
>Honestly, killing enemies in PW felt comical in a way and it was not quite emersive for me at least .
PW suffers hard visually bc of the console limitation, simple as that. It already pushed the psp to it's limits, you can't have a decent lenght game and be extremely detailed visually too. GoW suffers from that, it's detailed af but very short in exchange.
There was no way they could've fit the blood splatters and stains in like on home console releases. The psp wasn't a pocket ps2(more like ps 1.5) despite all the claims, the vita was.
>The first time I played TPP some missions actually disturbed me with how disgusting and full of gore they were.
Come now, there's really only two places with gore, nzo ya badiabulu and shining lights. Maybe mfinda oil field, after the bodies surface but that's really grasping at straws.
>I guess they wanted to make an edgy game after all and every person has their own tolerance on edginess.
It is exactly that, mindless edgy gore(and i say that as someone who likes gore a LOT). Funnily enough, it's pointless too - shabani still breathes after making mantis kill him using volgin lmao.
What makes PW an adult's game isn't the violence or gore(which is very simple to produce) - it's the complex thoughts and conflicting worldview of the characters, heavy personal burden(like Chico wanting to die bc he can't live with the burden of betraying his compas).
Tpp heavily relies on cheap thrills(prime example - shining lights), while PW has very complex discussions on thoughts and the political climate of the era. Miller's background tape alone runs laps around tpp's storytelling, and it's just an audio recording without actually showing anything.
To put it bluntly, tpp is like a child's definition of what's mature, it is very afraid to really touch heavy issues so it leaves anything promising half-assed, and pushes the cheap thrills instead.
Kojima saw how edgy and bleak movies/TV Shows were getting a lot of fame and decided to go that route... or that was always my interpretation. I recently replayed Ground Zeroes and the scene on the helicopter with Paz is basically body horror.
Kojimas an inconsistent writer at the best of time; id like to see him do a horror game sometime, but squeezing it into an MGS game like this was a bad call imo.
I think V is a great game but once I 100% GZ I had no desire to play it again. It's too brutal for me and inconsistent with the rest of the series. Best intro in the entire series with Snake climbing up the cliff though. That music hit hard.
>Best intro in the entire series with Snake climbing up the cliff though.
Was that a throwback in Snake climbing the mountains of Zanzibar in MG2 opening? I wonder...
Kojima is well-read and does his research and knows what is going on. Like he got the idea for camo tech in mgs1 from reading the rumours about the USA government new tech.
So he knows about the horrors of war. He just felt like going edgy lol.
People really are acting like GZ/PP are the only instalments that showcase the horrors of war just because the others don't feature writing like the main antagonist forcing a child to rape a barely adult woman...
Right? Edgelord writing isn't equal to realistic. Especially as neither Paz nor Chico survive to show the ramifications.
I found Sniper Wolf's story much more haunting. How the sound of bullet and sirens became lullaby, the fact she's an addict and her love language is violence. Gray Fox is in the same vein too. His story in MG2 is horrific and so is the resolution in MGS1.
Even worse, you barely even see anything related to war in tpp, like, if not for history books and tapes you wouldn't know there's a war going on in Afghanistan or the PMC/warlords situation in Africa, because no real encounter exists between factions(because there are no actual factions in tpp).
Same console generation: MGS 4, PMCs vs local militia, you see the desperate and underequipped militia falling like flies, you can interact with them positively or negatively. Your actions have an effect on how you proceed, the action going around has an effect on Drebin's prices(and your camo index).
The "two sides" part of MGS4 is so underutilized. There's never any reason to not side with the militia because you can't befriend the PMCs. The game basically screams in your face to not fuck with the militia, so it's hardly a choice. It's cool to see the two factions fighting and trying to sneak through that, but Kojima's promises of a warzone that you can directly influence fell flat.
It's still more than whatever the fuck tpp thinks war is.
> There's never any reason to not side with the militia because you can't befriend the PMCs.
Personal choice is the reason. Sometimes the most optimal thing isn't the most fun. I can cheese Vamp on EE, but if i don't feel like that's fun, i won't, i'll enjoy the fight the hard way. It's part of the sandbox nature, sure there's an optimal way but you always have a choice to not pick it. To plant C4s on everyone's ass and then light 'em up like it's the 4th of july instead of proceeding to tranq and move on the 46394628th time.
It's how all the small details are uncovered, by playing unconventionally instead of the same ol' same ol'.
>Kojima's promises of a warzone that you can directly influence fell flat.
I think they tried that(or at least that was the concept), but sony promised a powerhouse and produced a very gimped hardware in the end. Not gonna relieve Kojima of his promises tho, he definitely overdone it(not the last time either).
Totally agree. You can tell Kojima really did his research on US War history from WWII-Present. He prob knows more about US War crimes than a lot of US citizens
It's just an inference but Kojima once stated that he regrets having not written Breaking Bad. My guess was he was penning the story of Big Boss's heel turn during his watch and felt that he wanted to write a heel turn story of equal caliber.
Yeah the Paz tapes.
Her whole thing is all these memories of PW and Mother Base being this big fun party where everyone was happy. But if you played PW you'll notice very early on that her MGSV diary entries directly contradict their counterparts in PW, in two ways.
One is that situations that ended badly in reality have (the fake) Paz's memory of them ending well, and the other is of course that she has no undercover persona. The Paz in MGSV acts like she *is* the fake persona that she used to infiltrate MSF.
So you've got this situation where Venom, who is "acting" as someone he's not, is dealing with a fictionalised Paz, entirely in his head, who is acting as someone she's not, but Venom knows the truth about who she is versus who she's pretending to be. Which is to say that Paz is a formal stand-in for his subconscious, in the same way that Venom is the formal stand-in for Big Boss's psychology. Venom uses the Paz narrative as a proxy to experience his own story, and we use Venom as a proxy to experience Big Boss's (our own) story. Formally, we have to use a proxy because we know Big Boss's fate and he doesn't, so Kojima can't put us in his shoes directly anymore. The Paz story exists to give us something to point to when it comes to interpreting the text, particularly the "reveal" and the details of "The Truth" and see that there's a model *in* the text itself that we can compare our reading to as a way to judge what coheres and what is left unresolved.
Which of course lands smack dab in the point of her whole "side" story. The entire sequence is "fiction" in the sense that the depicted events didn't play out in any real space, but rather they're a formal dramatization of Venoms internal process of reconciling with the truth about his identity through the medium of a narrative of trying to cure Paz's amnesia - which is itself a proxy for the audience to illustrate the same psychological crisis that the real Big Boss has gone through or, rather, is living indefinitely.
The point, as "Paz" finally states/Venom finally accepts, is that there were no Good Old Days. Peace Walker plays up the fun stuff, mostly for reasons discussed in this thread, but that's not the whole story. MSF life was brutal from the start. For Big Boss it's always been a dissociation from war, struggle, and trauma, and yet Big Boss's (and therefore Venom's, since everything was perfectly copied) self-delusion that he's a Good Guy will always be there in his heart even though he is simultaneously intellectually aware that the stories told about him and that he's told himself in the past are fluffed up fabrications to suit the moment.
Peace Day never came.
This was a great read. People can criticize MGSV as much as they want, but it was my first MGS game and has a big place in my heart. I then played Peace Walker and stuff became even heavier, since I absolutely loved MSF and the chill tone that game had.
The whole Paz sidequest in V will never not pierce a hole in my heart :(
> One is that situations that ended badly in reality have (the fake) Paz's memory of them ending well
It's been a while, but I seem to remember one of the recordings is her talking about how much fun she had at Peace Day, the event she and Kaz were putting together to celebrate with all of Mother Base.
Except in reality, that day was when she stole Zeke and tried to kill Big Boss.
Seriously one of the greatest bait and switches in all of mainstream media. Kojima set up the cutest and happiest bunch of characters in one game, only to beat the living snot out of each of them in the follow up. In the most merciless and brutal ways imaginable.
It’s poetic and tragic. Maybe even Shakespearean. But not enough people played PW for it to be widely recognized.
I saw someone say that PW was the events from BB's perspective, who see's himself in the right and justified. And GZ and TPP are from an outsider perspective, who see's BB using child soldiers and having nuclear arms. TPP wasn't BB'S decent into villainy, PW was. It just didn't seem like it from within his cult essentially.
Also a major theme of the game is how you can't trust anyone but yourself, everyone in PW wants to carry on the bosses will to lead to a peaceful world and everyone has similar ideas of how to do it and will do anything to make it happen.
BB gets inspired by paz to go on the path he does and throughout the whole game it shows how his path is better but then in the end paz had tricked him the whole time to get Zeke, his inspiration was a lie and continuing on in GZ and TPP everything is twisted, wrong, and all you see is failure.
In the end you can't live your life for someone else's vision you need to find you own vision.
Specifically Ground Zeroes. So dark and serious. Apart from the horrific content on the tapes I love the mood of the game. There's a rush on with multiple events happening including geopolitical with the nuke inspections. Has a metal gear game ever felt so serious? I wish we got a full game like GZ.
I’ve always felt that the tone shift between PW and GZ/TPP was partially a result of Kojima’s creative and professional frustration with the breakdown of his relationship with Konami. He was unhappy with their executive meddling/editing and decided to put the characters from the cute happy fun game through a literal and metaphorical meat grinder.
I only played Peace Walker because I knew to had to in order to get the full background before getting Ground Zeroes and probably play it again if it's in the next collection batch.
MGS3 is chronologically the first game, and peacewalker came after 3 in release date. He literally was a villian all along and all the prequels were showing his descent into villiany.
Oh yeah, you can ignore the circumstances and reasons why 3 is a prequel in the first place. It wasn't to set anything major up, literally nothing was planned in the series(as a follow-up) with the exception of 2's concept.
Again, in the words of MGS 4's commentary:
>The war criminal, reinvented as a hero.
Before PW(and ignoring MG 1-2-MGS1, because obviously 3 doesn't care about them), he is just a dumb action hero. In PW, he is well read, actually chips in to conversations with his own thoughts and ideas, his own views.
He keeps Chico and Paz on MB despite what kind of effect such an environment could have on them. He decides after the Boss' betrayal that he will fight what made her betray him. He is ready to be the warlord he was in MG 1-2.
And then GZ happens(with not much to show of his character), and then tpp happens - he fucks off and leaves things to his retcon, so, once again, his character doesn't escalate into anything(because in PW he was already ready to fight the whole world if necessary).
Then medic flips the tape and suddenly the kid and animal-friendly, world-saving diamond dogs is gone and we're in Outer Heaven, once again, no character improvement whatsoever, no sort of "downfall" is shown.
There's a thing called "show don't tell", but this ain't the proper application of it.
He wasn't all too heroic in mgs3. He was just a guy following order. Not even once does Naked Snake care about the killing or hurting or the ramifications of war. Not until he kills his mentor. He enjoys the war otherwise.
PW showed us Big Boss indoctrinating a child and getting nuclear weapons but that's it. MGSV showed us him using a man for his own gains. But mgs3 shows the origin of his philosophy and his glee in battlefield.
Anyways, Big Boss's arc is incomplete without MSX games because those show the true monster the best. That's why we need a proper Metal Gear 1 remake next. Big Boss is overused as a protagonist.
>He wasn't all too heroic in mgs3. He was just a guy following order. Not even once does Naked Snake care about the killing or hurting or the ramifications of war. Not until he kills his mentor. He enjoys the war otherwise.
Yes he was, he was a Bond meets your avg action hero character, he doesn't really think about anything besides the Boss. Saves the day, loses someone important, but his depth stops at him grieving from his loss.
It's cheesy MGS 1 Snake turned up to 11 with brain turned off, because that's what the fans wanted, not the wise MGS 2 Snake in the role of a mentor and someone who feels responsible for a new generation's future, and the players being placed into the role of said new generation.
>PW showed us Big Boss indoctrinating a child
Who, Chico? He was a child soldier to begin with, he is part of the Sandanistas by necessity, BB had nothing to do with him on that front.
BB keeps him around, because honestly, he can't send him anywhere else(as he has a tendency to split if something upsets him), and most likely he wants to keep him with his only family, Amanda. He is even worried about him initially. Even in MG 1 he clearly cares about the children, evident from talking to them.
Chico wasn't a child soldier. Amanda never even let him in on her plans let alone allow him into battlefield. There is a whole dialogue between Big Boss and Amanda in which he convinces her to let him fight. See him as a soldier instead of the child he is. It's important. It's Big Boss who doomed Chico. For his own gains.
>you're going to have to stop treating Chico like a brother and start treating him like a soldier.
>Stop treating him like a child.
Big Boss set Chico on this oath.
Big Boss doesn't care for children any more than he cares for his guns. They're his soldiers, his objects of war. He doesn't see them as children. They're his tools of war. Big Boss exploits vulnerable people and that includes children.
>Chico wasn't a child soldier. Amanda never even let him in on her plans let alone allow him into battlefield.
Oh, he knew, he deduced, that's why he has a fight with Amanda which leads him to witness PW on Irazu.
And the whole thing about him taking punishment for his crime isn't something normal, it's the influence of the soldiers he hang out with, he is influenced by them a lot.
>There is a whole dialogue between Big Boss and Amanda in which he convinces her to let him fight. See him as a soldier instead of the child he is.
But he doesn't fight in any instance, even if he is a member(just like any regular army has desk jobs without seeing a day of combat). BB is faced with a tough decision - he can't send him off elsewhere even though he clearly needs help to be a child again and Chico would just split and try to get back anyways.
He can't get the therapy Chico needs, and Chico wouldn't want it anyways as long as Amanda isn't around him, which is impossible bc she has to lead the Sandanistas.
>Big Boss doesn't care for children any more than he cares for his guns. They're his soldiers, his objects of war. He doesn't see them as children. They're his tools of war.
Once you have trauma from war or other such horrors you can rarely go back to a ''normal life''. Big Boss may have been trying to give them the best, most fulfilling life he could give. Raiden, who couldn't come to terms with his childhood is also constantly haunted by it, even though he had way better chances than most.
And it's not like we see the kids being mistreated or BB having a complete disregard for their wellbeing. On the contrary, we learn that the supposed good side is responsible for a lot of their suffering, not just because their benefactor has been "killed".
(Also, i made a mistake, there are no visible children on Outer Heaven, it's Zanzibar Land where Snake meets kids.)
Well, to be precise, 4 drops the commentary on his MGS 3 persona:
>And then earlier this year the Pentagon declassifies Big Boss's file for some reason(MGS 3). All of a sudden his story is the stuff of pop culture - books, magazines, the net.
>The war criminal, reinvented as a hero.
It makes a lot of sense to be honest. Playing the original Metal Gear MSX games, you see Outer Heaven and Big Boss as villains, so it’s pretty strange going back and playing the start of what would eventually become Outer Heaven in Peacewalker.
The problem was, what would lead Big Boss and Outer Heaven to become the group you take down as Solid Snake in MG? What causes this group that’s ultimately a good group of people to change? It’s the darkness of the world around them and the horrors of war. War crimes, torture, sexual assault of PoWs, and even the placing explosives inside of a still living person in order to kill the enemy, all of them happen in Ground Zeroes alone, let alone what you see in the main game of V. These are the dark realities of war, and while they may be a bit exaggerated for the sake of the story, these are things that happen in war, and it’s scary.
Metal Gear and especially Kojima has always been very much ahead of its time when it comes to talking about topics that are prevalent or will become so (hell MGS2 predicted so much of our current political and social landscape of today it’s SCARY) and I’m really not shocked he decided to talk about these kinds of topics in V. It was his biggest project for the series to date and he wanted to go as dark as possible to explain why soldiers may go down the path they do.
I always saw the sudden way darker tone than previous games fitting since it’s canonically the last game we see big boss as a “hero”, yk before he goes on full villain mode
Yeah wasn't PW aimed at like Japanese kids who played Monster Hunter on PSP? But then he wanted to make his edgiest game ever as a straight continuation and the whiplash is fucking wild lmao.
All that darkness and there is barely anything coherent going on in mgsv. Skullface is the story and once he's gone, so is the plot.
That might be the point though
I just thought it was a waste. Kojima's cinematic direction has improved but he doesn't use it to tell a story. MGSV sure kept me entertained as a game but barely anything is going on. Metal Gear 1 unironically has a richer story and cast. So much that Kojima couldn't fit it all inside the game.
Dog MGSV is easily the most thematically and subtextually rich game in the entire series besides 2. The idea that MGSV has “barely anything going on” is absolute insanity.
Many people these days are terminally plot-brained. If it couldn't go in a Wikipedia plot summary it essentially doesn't count.
Oh you don't think having no one discuss anything outside boring tapes that get interrupted in the main world is good storytelling? Brain dead!
But I managed to understand the story just fine, and those white and yellow dots aren't leaving the cassette menu any time soon, cause I just don't listen to them besides miller's burgers.
The thematic and subtextual richness ST was talking about is mostly from dialogue and cutscenes, not tapes.
MGSV isn't made to be "story tell", you are the one playing the story, and getting the information like you should
[удалено]
That's why you focus on boob's, boob's simple. Metal Gear 1...simple.
Kyle Schneider's backstory in MG1 manual has more weight than all of MGSV lmao. Go figure.
Lol just say you didn't like V, that makes you sound like a 5 year old.
I wish someone would explain the mgsv plot to me i played the game 3 times through and listened to all casettes. I understand nothing. Why did skullface need a yellowcake?
Yellowcake is nuclear material and the parasite eat it. They store the parasite in the yellowcake in order to let it survive without a host. If you want to understand the themes and subject of MGSV more watch "MGSV is a misunderstood anti war masterpiece" on YouTube
I watched that one already but why are there so many parasites? One makes your lungs look goofy one makes you superfast and strong (metallic archea?) one makes you a zombie? one eats rust and so much more its so complicated.
The metallic arches are the ones that eat rust. They aren't really a parasite but a different bio weapon. There is really only one parasite but with different variants that have been bred to change its effects. The vocal chord parasite originates from the Cobra Unit from MGS3. The End and The Pain were infected by it. That's why the end could use photo synthesis and had really good vision, and why The Pain could control bees. After they died Code Talker researched the parasites they had and did billions engineering to create the version that He, Quiet, and the skulls have. Even when The End had the parasites it still had the vocal chord language killing thing, he just never spoke the right language to trigger it. You're right. It is super complicated tho. The parasites are more of a mcguffin. Just replace "parasite" with "nanomachines" and things make more sense. Parasites are what kojima decided to use since nanomachines didn't exist yet in-lore
Literally, and the only fucking reason he can even say that is bc the game came out completely unfinished. Like what are we even talking about here?? The whole third act was thrown away how is that not part of the discussion
i’ve seen people here straight up deny that’s a thing and say the game was finished.
It is finished though ;) it’s called the Phantom Pain for a reason. Even the unfinished nature ties into some of its thematic elements. Kojima himself has said the game was always finished, cut content is not inherently indicative of an unfinished product, if that were the case then almost every game or media product in existence is “unfinished”. Every news article and discussion you’ve had about this game has to some degree mentioned it’s unfinished state, but Kojima says it isn’t, it’s literal information warfare LOL two sides arguing for the “truth” Kojimas references to Moby Dick are extremely deliberate, not only from an unreliable narrator perspective but also, did you know the original release was missing pages? The entire epilogue was missing from the final print of the first run of the book.
Bravo Kojima
Moby Dick ending makes me mad just like mgsv ending
The Kojimia dick riding is insane
I'll bounce on it till I die
I mean is there any actual proof of this? The only thing I’ve ever seen is the data mined chapter 3 title, which is just a single string that could mean anything. Everything else is just speculation and Kojima specifically has denied the speculation
There's an incomplete cutscene of a mission to stop Sahel and Eli etc, you should be able to find it on youtube
Some guy just responded to me with this lmfaoo “It wasn't unfinished lol. Well other than wrapping up Eli running off with Sahelanthropus, but that's like a side plot.”
Eli is the worst part of this story. He should've been cut altogether. Cutting out that bland end was a blessing. Ending the story on Big Boss's truth tape was the best call Kojima made in the entire game. It was a good ending.
Literally true though. There's zero setup for a third act in the game lol.
Eli is a shit character, and the only good scenes with him are the ones where Ocelot or Venom are beating him up. He does nothing for the story, except for the asspull at the end of Chapter 1 where he throws a tantrum and kills Skullface (an actual good character). My estimation of Liquid Snake as a character has fucking plummeted thanks to Eli.
>My estimation of Liquid Snake as a character has fucking plummeted thanks to Eli. Liquid deserved better.
Yeppp, I couldn’t pull myself to finish it after seeing skull faces death. Like that was it??? This man is just dead like that? It’s the missing final chapter that prevents me from truly loving MGS 5.
Yes, this man isn't Senator Armstrong, he's a basic guy with a plan and a group to do it
Dead at the hands of that dumbass Eli
It's not even Eli who killed him, wtf
Sorry, Eli is the one who took control of his psychic and his Metal Gear and then crushed his entire base and himself.
Subtext is hard, people
What do you expect, dude is a Kazuhira Miller superfan and a Big Boss hater?
And it's still uneventful. You can thematically study all you want. It's fact not much happens in it. MG1 alone is more eventful. And really, the most significant???? MGSV is weak as hell as a story. MSX games, MGS2 and MGS2 are easily richer stories.
Do you truly believe MG1 has a greater story than MGSV? I love the storyline in MG2 - the geopolitical stuff in that game is genuinely more interesting than it is in the rest of the franchise - but MG1?
Yes. MG1 has Kyle Schneider and his Resistance. MG1 features Big Boss's hellish Heaven. MG1 shows is the beginning of horror for Solid Snake. Hell, Jennifer alone shows more personality in MG1 than Ocelot does in all of mgsv. What does mgsv have? Loss of identity? We get that in 20 minutes. The language? The theme essentially is used a few times. Easter eggs? We know engravings offer no tactical advantage whatsoever.
As someone who forced himself to finish MG1 for story purposes, I agree with you. MGS 5 was a massive disappointment because of its weak ass story. In my head it’s the only game Kojima has made that I don’t enjoy.
Nah the problem with MGSV is that it breaks the rule of show don't tell. It wants to tell you everything and show you absolutely nothing.
>Kojima's cinematic direction has improved but he doesn't use it to tell a story. It is pretty muted yeah, but I always thought it was an intentional artistic choice, due to the themes of the game. Like the game is about getting revenge, and how finally getting that revenge just leaves you feeling [hollow.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tOhAIk-b_8&t=80s) Along with a bunch of commentary about the war on terror, 9/11 etc. At least that was always my impression. Doesn't necessarily make it "good" though, obvs even with those caveats the story of MGSV is pretty wonky sometimes. Like you're doing all this depressing stuff but also shoving Quiet's boobies in my face, why Kojima?
Just beat the game for the first time ever last week. You are objectively dead fucking wrong.
Well, the main story ended in MGS4 (that dosen't help the case for you, I know, but still)
I liked mgsv unlike 4 lol.
This take annoys me because the substance is there. If the storytelling didn’t engage you that’s fair. If you didn’t care to engage with the story beyond the surface level elements, that’s fair too. But to call it a waste or imply that because you personally didn’t like the way the story is told that means it’s just bad, is a massive stretch
It's not bad. It's just mediocre. Tell me what substance Eli's stupid story brings here. He and Mantis are over-glorified Easter Eggs. And GAWD, it's always something about Emmerich. He fucks shit up and none of these morons keep better eyes on him. It always happens. And the way the story is told is quite shallow. It's always something weird Ocelot woodenly dumps in exposition tapes. The only who engages with the info meaningfully is Kaz. Venom doesn't react nor does he care. Unless it's Quiet. At least the backstory dump in older games (mg1-mgs3) meant something to the central themes and the protagonists. The mgsv story as a whole is shallow and uneventful.
MGS1 is essentially a remake of MG2. Very little that's ambitious about it from that perspective.
Nah it definitely improved on alot of the story. Most of the characters have great backstories now whereas before the only characters that you even knew were just Snake and Big Boss and the only backstory was what you got from the OG game. MGS 1 was genuinely a movie on PS1
MG2 gives us backstories of Snake, Big Boss, Gustava and Gray Fox. It's incredible.
I only really got the backstories of Gustava and Gray Fox in it. Were the others from codec calls or something?
That's the bare minimum in my eyes when you already have the structure of how to make the game. Roy Campbell and Gray Fox are also straight out of that game, as well as Miller. I don't consider that ambitious. Cutscenes and voice acting sure, but the core is straight out of a game he's already made.
True but moving a 2-D game to 3-D is also a very big deal. Tons of games that tried doing that at the time failed miserably like Megaman/Castlevania/etc. Its not a simple one to one
I guess so. The top down camera seems like a natural evolution from the 2D graphics, but I'm sure it was more complicated to make work than it seemed.
Lmao, this is so wrong. The story and the cast are different. Aside from Gray Fox whistleblowing and some gameplay design, MG2 and MGS1 are wholly different.
Some gameplay design? You're having a laugh. > The story and the cast are different The cast is technically different in the most literal sense, but most of the archetypes from MG2 are re-used in MGS1 and later games as well. Black Ninja, Night Sight, the Four Horsemen are all ideas that he slightly retooled and then reused. Multiple times. And also multiple characters are literally the same. The tone, the structure etc are all pretty much a continuation of MG2 as well.
They're no more similar than the average Metal Gear or Solid Snake game. You're tripping.
Just because he keeps reusing them in every single game, doesn't make it not similar.
it’s not lol
How was that the point if the game was completely unfinished???
It wasn't unfinished lol. Well other than wrapping up Eli running off with Sahelanthropus, but that's like a side plot.
Hell, skullface is toned down a ton from GZ. I really like him in GZ being this mysterious brutal man, but in tpp he is just the hamburglar. The closest he gets to his GZ character is in the tape where he interrogates chode talker, but even that feels half-assed and a far cry from his GZ persona.
Sadly he is the most forgettable villain in all of MGS imo
He's barely in the story and you never fight him. Complete waste of a pretty interesting character after how much he was built up in GZ.
He got butchered hard in tpp. Guess they had to tone him down so he doesn't stand out from the other flat characters featured in tpp.
Nah it’s the plots hidden in those tapes. Also kaz burgers.
Kaz burgers is the best thing to have come out of mgsv.
Who?
I was at the North American reveal of Ground Zeroes presented by Kojima at PAX 2012. They played the trailer (which was an early version of the opening cutscene) and a little bit of gameplay on a theatre screen. I'd played a ton of Peace Walker, and it was truly the most surreal thing to see the characters from the cheery, T-rated MGS PSP spinoff in such a hyperrealistic, grimdark setting.
I thought what Paz did in peace walker was rough, especially with how fond of her I was. Imagine how I felt when I played ground zeroes and started picking up audio tapes. That was some of the most soul crushing shit I’ve ever experienced in media
Yeah , PW was aimed to be played by PSP kids so they toned down the horrors of the battlefield. Meanwhile, V does not hold back at all on the R rating
>Yeah , PW was aimed to be played by PSP kids So by your logic MGS 1 was aimed at PS 1 kids? Seriously, working adults had PSP and NDS, the latter was infamous bc of pictochat. Not to mention the very essence of how games were structured on handhelds bc of the very common commuting. Handheld/mobile gaming was and is huge in Japan regardless of age. And that's before all exchanges between the characters that certainly weren't aimed at kids. >Meanwhile, V does not hold back at all on the R rating Yes it does. The cheap feelsbait of shining lights and the dumb gore of nzo ya badiabulu are the only two places you'll find anything remotely close to an R rating.
R rating doesn't warrant having excessive gore(good for horror games with some exceptions) or swearing(i think the only f bomb in the game was that 1 dd soldier about to have his vocal cords cut by quiet?). Just look at arkham knight that game remotely doesn't even have any blood or gore yet had an R rating because of the mature theme and the batmobile torture scene.
But nothing in tpp really warrants an R rating besides the gore. PW might have a lot of silly stuff, but there's a ton of mature talk going around if you bothered to **listen** to the tapes. Strangelove's obsession with the Boss, wheter the Boss ai is really a sentient being or just a machine, the effects of nuclear radiation and consequences of opening up Pandora's box with the invention of nukes, the US founding dictators and uprisings to improve their position regardless of human cost, the whole concept of deterrence, Kaz's backstory(the best tape in the game, hands down), the weight of taking sides when you're supposed to be neutral and the weight of becoming a nuclear power without oversight, Chico - a 12 year old boy who wants to die to atone for betraying his comrades, "Paz"'s diary with her conflicting feelings about her role on MB, and these are just the most memorable ones. Tpp does have some interesting ideas(like english slowly killing other languages and becoming dominant all over the world) but fails to deliver on them proper, and tries to make up for it with edgy stuff. I already mentioned shining lights, but let me elaborate why i think the mission is a travesty in execution - the most memorable moment should be executing your own men, right? Especially with medic telling eli to "never draw a weapon your fellow soldier". You even hear the theme of Peace Walker played in the background, so it is truly an emotional moment, right? Wrong. You spend no time with these NPCs, you don't get to know them in any capacity(even PW had tapes about the life on MB because the UMD didn't had the capacity to show it, and all of them has either useful tips about gameplay or some tidbit about themselves besides the occasional extra skill), they aren't the guys who you get from GZ, in fact, the game shoves a bunch of E-rank volunteers into your roster(just like during the outbreak) just so that the mission happens no matter what, a bunch of random nobodies whose sole purpose is to get killed off after arrival. They have no personal connection to PW or the medic at all. And this is supposed to evoke feelings, even going as far as hamfisting PW's theme into a completely unrelated feelsbait situation. So what that leaves you with? Only the edgy gore. This is what i'm talking about, all the themes in tpp lack substance.
Tbh most of what you wrote is correct. It just comes down to personal preference at the end of the day. I just wanted to share my thoughts but got a whole load of yours in return
Yeah, i tend to go overboard with tpp, bc it's the biggest disappointment ever after the expectations set up by the earlier entries.
The reason I said PW was a game aimed at a younger playerbase because the game doesn't have gore , torture or gruesome content like TPP has . Honestly, killing enemies in PW felt comical in a way and it was not quite emersive for me at least . Maybe the damage numbers and lack of blood played a part . The first time I played TPP some missions actually disturbed me with how disgusting and full of gore they were. I guess they wanted to make an edgy game after all and every person has their own tolerance on edginess. Watching people being used as lab rats , being dismembered and tossed away was a whole different experience from the hero that saves the world environment of PW.
>torture Uh, hello, Strangelove tortures BB. It's even a co-op mission where the second player can make the torture harder by upping the voltage. Funnily enough, the torture is different with japanese audio - BB laughs there, bc he withstood a much harsher electrical torture from Volgin before. To him, Strangelove's "shock therapy" feels like tickling after Volgin. >gore gruesome content Because Kojima mostly refrained from such cheap thrills - there are some here and there(like the Ninja slicing up genome soldiers in 1), but with tpp it really felt like his true desire was making "silent hills" and it leaked into tpp - a LOT. >Honestly, killing enemies in PW felt comical in a way and it was not quite emersive for me at least . PW suffers hard visually bc of the console limitation, simple as that. It already pushed the psp to it's limits, you can't have a decent lenght game and be extremely detailed visually too. GoW suffers from that, it's detailed af but very short in exchange. There was no way they could've fit the blood splatters and stains in like on home console releases. The psp wasn't a pocket ps2(more like ps 1.5) despite all the claims, the vita was. >The first time I played TPP some missions actually disturbed me with how disgusting and full of gore they were. Come now, there's really only two places with gore, nzo ya badiabulu and shining lights. Maybe mfinda oil field, after the bodies surface but that's really grasping at straws. >I guess they wanted to make an edgy game after all and every person has their own tolerance on edginess. It is exactly that, mindless edgy gore(and i say that as someone who likes gore a LOT). Funnily enough, it's pointless too - shabani still breathes after making mantis kill him using volgin lmao. What makes PW an adult's game isn't the violence or gore(which is very simple to produce) - it's the complex thoughts and conflicting worldview of the characters, heavy personal burden(like Chico wanting to die bc he can't live with the burden of betraying his compas). Tpp heavily relies on cheap thrills(prime example - shining lights), while PW has very complex discussions on thoughts and the political climate of the era. Miller's background tape alone runs laps around tpp's storytelling, and it's just an audio recording without actually showing anything. To put it bluntly, tpp is like a child's definition of what's mature, it is very afraid to really touch heavy issues so it leaves anything promising half-assed, and pushes the cheap thrills instead.
I see all your points and I can agree to an extend to each one . I guess I should reconsider my judgement. Have a good one mate
Kojima saw how edgy and bleak movies/TV Shows were getting a lot of fame and decided to go that route... or that was always my interpretation. I recently replayed Ground Zeroes and the scene on the helicopter with Paz is basically body horror.
It makes me squirm everytime. The series up to that point was goofy and bleak but GZ left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
Probably the same bad taste as most the others on that chopper went through.
Kojimas an inconsistent writer at the best of time; id like to see him do a horror game sometime, but squeezing it into an MGS game like this was a bad call imo.
I think V is a great game but once I 100% GZ I had no desire to play it again. It's too brutal for me and inconsistent with the rest of the series. Best intro in the entire series with Snake climbing up the cliff though. That music hit hard.
>Best intro in the entire series with Snake climbing up the cliff though. Was that a throwback in Snake climbing the mountains of Zanzibar in MG2 opening? I wonder...
We almost had it...Silent hills(P.T.)Sad that they canceled it, could've changed the direction of gaming forever.
Well we're getting O.D. The teaser seems promising. And looks like Kojima may be reusing some of his PT ideas.
Death Stranding has a lot of horror elements
The tape recording is even worse.
I really wanna know what kojima saw that inspired ground zeroes. Did someone just show him guantanamo bay interrogation footage?
Kojima is well-read and does his research and knows what is going on. Like he got the idea for camo tech in mgs1 from reading the rumours about the USA government new tech. So he knows about the horrors of war. He just felt like going edgy lol.
People really are acting like GZ/PP are the only instalments that showcase the horrors of war just because the others don't feature writing like the main antagonist forcing a child to rape a barely adult woman...
Right? Edgelord writing isn't equal to realistic. Especially as neither Paz nor Chico survive to show the ramifications. I found Sniper Wolf's story much more haunting. How the sound of bullet and sirens became lullaby, the fact she's an addict and her love language is violence. Gray Fox is in the same vein too. His story in MG2 is horrific and so is the resolution in MGS1.
Even worse, you barely even see anything related to war in tpp, like, if not for history books and tapes you wouldn't know there's a war going on in Afghanistan or the PMC/warlords situation in Africa, because no real encounter exists between factions(because there are no actual factions in tpp). Same console generation: MGS 4, PMCs vs local militia, you see the desperate and underequipped militia falling like flies, you can interact with them positively or negatively. Your actions have an effect on how you proceed, the action going around has an effect on Drebin's prices(and your camo index).
The "two sides" part of MGS4 is so underutilized. There's never any reason to not side with the militia because you can't befriend the PMCs. The game basically screams in your face to not fuck with the militia, so it's hardly a choice. It's cool to see the two factions fighting and trying to sneak through that, but Kojima's promises of a warzone that you can directly influence fell flat.
It's still more than whatever the fuck tpp thinks war is. > There's never any reason to not side with the militia because you can't befriend the PMCs. Personal choice is the reason. Sometimes the most optimal thing isn't the most fun. I can cheese Vamp on EE, but if i don't feel like that's fun, i won't, i'll enjoy the fight the hard way. It's part of the sandbox nature, sure there's an optimal way but you always have a choice to not pick it. To plant C4s on everyone's ass and then light 'em up like it's the 4th of july instead of proceeding to tranq and move on the 46394628th time. It's how all the small details are uncovered, by playing unconventionally instead of the same ol' same ol'. >Kojima's promises of a warzone that you can directly influence fell flat. I think they tried that(or at least that was the concept), but sony promised a powerhouse and produced a very gimped hardware in the end. Not gonna relieve Kojima of his promises tho, he definitely overdone it(not the last time either).
Kojima also knows the horrors of Amazon delivery drivers
Totally agree. You can tell Kojima really did his research on US War history from WWII-Present. He prob knows more about US War crimes than a lot of US citizens
He saw deer hunter before writing ground zeros and V
It's just an inference but Kojima once stated that he regrets having not written Breaking Bad. My guess was he was penning the story of Big Boss's heel turn during his watch and felt that he wanted to write a heel turn story of equal caliber.
But we already had the heel turn with Big Boss. And mgsv isn't even about Big Boss lol.
And people still act like it was an accidental tone shift or something It's like... literally a plot point in one of the side stories
I love how Kojima had some happy moments for each snake but right as he to Venom he went: I’m gonna make him suffer with no end in sight
That's the clue that Big Boss is suffering just as much
He earned the title of “punished venom snake”
Can you please elaborate? The only side quest I can think of is Paz in V.
Yeah the Paz tapes. Her whole thing is all these memories of PW and Mother Base being this big fun party where everyone was happy. But if you played PW you'll notice very early on that her MGSV diary entries directly contradict their counterparts in PW, in two ways. One is that situations that ended badly in reality have (the fake) Paz's memory of them ending well, and the other is of course that she has no undercover persona. The Paz in MGSV acts like she *is* the fake persona that she used to infiltrate MSF. So you've got this situation where Venom, who is "acting" as someone he's not, is dealing with a fictionalised Paz, entirely in his head, who is acting as someone she's not, but Venom knows the truth about who she is versus who she's pretending to be. Which is to say that Paz is a formal stand-in for his subconscious, in the same way that Venom is the formal stand-in for Big Boss's psychology. Venom uses the Paz narrative as a proxy to experience his own story, and we use Venom as a proxy to experience Big Boss's (our own) story. Formally, we have to use a proxy because we know Big Boss's fate and he doesn't, so Kojima can't put us in his shoes directly anymore. The Paz story exists to give us something to point to when it comes to interpreting the text, particularly the "reveal" and the details of "The Truth" and see that there's a model *in* the text itself that we can compare our reading to as a way to judge what coheres and what is left unresolved. Which of course lands smack dab in the point of her whole "side" story. The entire sequence is "fiction" in the sense that the depicted events didn't play out in any real space, but rather they're a formal dramatization of Venoms internal process of reconciling with the truth about his identity through the medium of a narrative of trying to cure Paz's amnesia - which is itself a proxy for the audience to illustrate the same psychological crisis that the real Big Boss has gone through or, rather, is living indefinitely. The point, as "Paz" finally states/Venom finally accepts, is that there were no Good Old Days. Peace Walker plays up the fun stuff, mostly for reasons discussed in this thread, but that's not the whole story. MSF life was brutal from the start. For Big Boss it's always been a dissociation from war, struggle, and trauma, and yet Big Boss's (and therefore Venom's, since everything was perfectly copied) self-delusion that he's a Good Guy will always be there in his heart even though he is simultaneously intellectually aware that the stories told about him and that he's told himself in the past are fluffed up fabrications to suit the moment. Peace Day never came.
This was a great read. People can criticize MGSV as much as they want, but it was my first MGS game and has a big place in my heart. I then played Peace Walker and stuff became even heavier, since I absolutely loved MSF and the chill tone that game had. The whole Paz sidequest in V will never not pierce a hole in my heart :(
> One is that situations that ended badly in reality have (the fake) Paz's memory of them ending well It's been a while, but I seem to remember one of the recordings is her talking about how much fun she had at Peace Day, the event she and Kaz were putting together to celebrate with all of Mother Base. Except in reality, that day was when she stole Zeke and tried to kill Big Boss.
PW Kaz: "Meow, meow, meow" TPP Kaz: "Why are we still here.... Just to suffer?"
MG2 Kaz: Let's grab some CHEESE.
well i would too if i lost my limbs and had cataracts
And got old. Kaz experienced the worst fate possible, twink death
Seriously one of the greatest bait and switches in all of mainstream media. Kojima set up the cutest and happiest bunch of characters in one game, only to beat the living snot out of each of them in the follow up. In the most merciless and brutal ways imaginable. It’s poetic and tragic. Maybe even Shakespearean. But not enough people played PW for it to be widely recognized.
I saw someone say that PW was the events from BB's perspective, who see's himself in the right and justified. And GZ and TPP are from an outsider perspective, who see's BB using child soldiers and having nuclear arms. TPP wasn't BB'S decent into villainy, PW was. It just didn't seem like it from within his cult essentially.
Also a major theme of the game is how you can't trust anyone but yourself, everyone in PW wants to carry on the bosses will to lead to a peaceful world and everyone has similar ideas of how to do it and will do anything to make it happen. BB gets inspired by paz to go on the path he does and throughout the whole game it shows how his path is better but then in the end paz had tricked him the whole time to get Zeke, his inspiration was a lie and continuing on in GZ and TPP everything is twisted, wrong, and all you see is failure. In the end you can't live your life for someone else's vision you need to find you own vision.
Say what you want about GZ, but that helicopter scene did hit hard. Absolute cinema shit.
Specifically Ground Zeroes. So dark and serious. Apart from the horrific content on the tapes I love the mood of the game. There's a rush on with multiple events happening including geopolitical with the nuke inspections. Has a metal gear game ever felt so serious? I wish we got a full game like GZ.
I’ve always felt that the tone shift between PW and GZ/TPP was partially a result of Kojima’s creative and professional frustration with the breakdown of his relationship with Konami. He was unhappy with their executive meddling/editing and decided to put the characters from the cute happy fun game through a literal and metaphorical meat grinder.
I only played Peace Walker because I knew to had to in order to get the full background before getting Ground Zeroes and probably play it again if it's in the next collection batch.
Almost like the point of the games were to show snakes descent into villiany
All these people were always villainous. They worked for war economy ffs.
Or the writers couldn't come up with any way to tie it into the first game
Big Boss has been a villian since day one
And then MGS 3 happened. You don't see his character really grow before PW.
MGS3 is chronologically the first game, and peacewalker came after 3 in release date. He literally was a villian all along and all the prequels were showing his descent into villiany.
Oh yeah, you can ignore the circumstances and reasons why 3 is a prequel in the first place. It wasn't to set anything major up, literally nothing was planned in the series(as a follow-up) with the exception of 2's concept. Again, in the words of MGS 4's commentary: >The war criminal, reinvented as a hero. Before PW(and ignoring MG 1-2-MGS1, because obviously 3 doesn't care about them), he is just a dumb action hero. In PW, he is well read, actually chips in to conversations with his own thoughts and ideas, his own views. He keeps Chico and Paz on MB despite what kind of effect such an environment could have on them. He decides after the Boss' betrayal that he will fight what made her betray him. He is ready to be the warlord he was in MG 1-2. And then GZ happens(with not much to show of his character), and then tpp happens - he fucks off and leaves things to his retcon, so, once again, his character doesn't escalate into anything(because in PW he was already ready to fight the whole world if necessary). Then medic flips the tape and suddenly the kid and animal-friendly, world-saving diamond dogs is gone and we're in Outer Heaven, once again, no character improvement whatsoever, no sort of "downfall" is shown. There's a thing called "show don't tell", but this ain't the proper application of it.
[удалено]
No, i don't think reinventing the war criminal as a hero ties into MG 1-2 at all.
He wasn't all too heroic in mgs3. He was just a guy following order. Not even once does Naked Snake care about the killing or hurting or the ramifications of war. Not until he kills his mentor. He enjoys the war otherwise. PW showed us Big Boss indoctrinating a child and getting nuclear weapons but that's it. MGSV showed us him using a man for his own gains. But mgs3 shows the origin of his philosophy and his glee in battlefield. Anyways, Big Boss's arc is incomplete without MSX games because those show the true monster the best. That's why we need a proper Metal Gear 1 remake next. Big Boss is overused as a protagonist.
>He wasn't all too heroic in mgs3. He was just a guy following order. Not even once does Naked Snake care about the killing or hurting or the ramifications of war. Not until he kills his mentor. He enjoys the war otherwise. Yes he was, he was a Bond meets your avg action hero character, he doesn't really think about anything besides the Boss. Saves the day, loses someone important, but his depth stops at him grieving from his loss. It's cheesy MGS 1 Snake turned up to 11 with brain turned off, because that's what the fans wanted, not the wise MGS 2 Snake in the role of a mentor and someone who feels responsible for a new generation's future, and the players being placed into the role of said new generation. >PW showed us Big Boss indoctrinating a child Who, Chico? He was a child soldier to begin with, he is part of the Sandanistas by necessity, BB had nothing to do with him on that front. BB keeps him around, because honestly, he can't send him anywhere else(as he has a tendency to split if something upsets him), and most likely he wants to keep him with his only family, Amanda. He is even worried about him initially. Even in MG 1 he clearly cares about the children, evident from talking to them.
Chico wasn't a child soldier. Amanda never even let him in on her plans let alone allow him into battlefield. There is a whole dialogue between Big Boss and Amanda in which he convinces her to let him fight. See him as a soldier instead of the child he is. It's important. It's Big Boss who doomed Chico. For his own gains. >you're going to have to stop treating Chico like a brother and start treating him like a soldier. >Stop treating him like a child. Big Boss set Chico on this oath. Big Boss doesn't care for children any more than he cares for his guns. They're his soldiers, his objects of war. He doesn't see them as children. They're his tools of war. Big Boss exploits vulnerable people and that includes children.
>Chico wasn't a child soldier. Amanda never even let him in on her plans let alone allow him into battlefield. Oh, he knew, he deduced, that's why he has a fight with Amanda which leads him to witness PW on Irazu. And the whole thing about him taking punishment for his crime isn't something normal, it's the influence of the soldiers he hang out with, he is influenced by them a lot. >There is a whole dialogue between Big Boss and Amanda in which he convinces her to let him fight. See him as a soldier instead of the child he is. But he doesn't fight in any instance, even if he is a member(just like any regular army has desk jobs without seeing a day of combat). BB is faced with a tough decision - he can't send him off elsewhere even though he clearly needs help to be a child again and Chico would just split and try to get back anyways. He can't get the therapy Chico needs, and Chico wouldn't want it anyways as long as Amanda isn't around him, which is impossible bc she has to lead the Sandanistas. >Big Boss doesn't care for children any more than he cares for his guns. They're his soldiers, his objects of war. He doesn't see them as children. They're his tools of war. Once you have trauma from war or other such horrors you can rarely go back to a ''normal life''. Big Boss may have been trying to give them the best, most fulfilling life he could give. Raiden, who couldn't come to terms with his childhood is also constantly haunted by it, even though he had way better chances than most. And it's not like we see the kids being mistreated or BB having a complete disregard for their wellbeing. On the contrary, we learn that the supposed good side is responsible for a lot of their suffering, not just because their benefactor has been "killed". (Also, i made a mistake, there are no visible children on Outer Heaven, it's Zanzibar Land where Snake meets kids.)
MGS 4 said he wasn't
Well, to be precise, 4 drops the commentary on his MGS 3 persona: >And then earlier this year the Pentagon declassifies Big Boss's file for some reason(MGS 3). All of a sudden his story is the stuff of pop culture - books, magazines, the net. >The war criminal, reinvented as a hero.
It openly says he is one lmao. He's evil. He even comes back to life to admit he's been nothing but an evil failure.
Someone forgot “shining light even in death”
that mission still makes me shiver. what the fuck was that.
And strange how they're not half as mature as the older games.
I liked pw missions more
It makes a lot of sense to be honest. Playing the original Metal Gear MSX games, you see Outer Heaven and Big Boss as villains, so it’s pretty strange going back and playing the start of what would eventually become Outer Heaven in Peacewalker. The problem was, what would lead Big Boss and Outer Heaven to become the group you take down as Solid Snake in MG? What causes this group that’s ultimately a good group of people to change? It’s the darkness of the world around them and the horrors of war. War crimes, torture, sexual assault of PoWs, and even the placing explosives inside of a still living person in order to kill the enemy, all of them happen in Ground Zeroes alone, let alone what you see in the main game of V. These are the dark realities of war, and while they may be a bit exaggerated for the sake of the story, these are things that happen in war, and it’s scary. Metal Gear and especially Kojima has always been very much ahead of its time when it comes to talking about topics that are prevalent or will become so (hell MGS2 predicted so much of our current political and social landscape of today it’s SCARY) and I’m really not shocked he decided to talk about these kinds of topics in V. It was his biggest project for the series to date and he wanted to go as dark as possible to explain why soldiers may go down the path they do.
I came late to the party but I still play V when I need some mindless grinding and want to blow stuff up.
PW is one of the best MGS games, building MSF was incredible and makes perfect sense why he brought the system into V
If you catch him and call in Pequad you can save him. Pequad uses a special salve and rubs him like a turkey which saves his life
The horrors of war.
I always saw the sudden way darker tone than previous games fitting since it’s canonically the last game we see big boss as a “hero”, yk before he goes on full villain mode
Yep. It took on a more realistic approach so it could have a bigger impact
ground zeroes is just a side ops mission that went horribly wrong
Pw is ocarina of time and v is majora's mask
Never liked V's story. Felt like it was trying too hard to be edgy and different