Metal Gear V - The Phantom Pain - Spoilers Ahead

Turns out Big Boss isn't so big after all.

Big Boss is free to be you and me.

When the credits finished rolling and then they started this text crawl with dates and events I was like woah woah slow down I can't read all of this Eli is Liquid and David is Snake? Who is David? You are scrolling too fast!!!

finally beat it. (i think.)

david isn't in this game i don't think, but at the end of mgs1, if you get the dead-meryl ending (or maybe in both endings?), snake states that his name is David.
Also if you missed a bunch of the scroll, i found it on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmrdzOHmlXw

what's funny is that as soon as i got 15 minutes into the game, i called the twist ending. (when it makes you pick a face, and then swerves you, i was like "yeah this isn't just a big fuck you to everyone who hated mgs2--this is telegraphing the end game.) but then as the game went on, i more or less forgot? and when they say eli isn't your clone, i wasl ike "oh shit, i guess it's not liquid then?", completely forgetting my early call.

i enjoyed the hell out of this but i don't think that was ever even really in question. still thinking about it and processing.

i was really concerned for the first like 20 missions or so that the game was going to be viciously lacking in Kojima Swerves(tm) but once the 'kik' thing happened and you had to in-menu quarantine your dudes, i was like "holy shit, koj still got it." and then mission 43. goddamn. actually the worst part about that: the last person i had to kill was the first woman soldier i ever recruited, and the one i used for about 20 hours of the game. i don't know if it did that for everyone, where it took one of your main sortie people and put them right at the end of mission 43, but JESUS i just stared at her for like 90 seconds going "there's gotta be a way. i can't kill her."

MORE THOUGHTS AS I HAVE THEM.

shit sorry about the embed, forgot to put an s on that http

Timeline-wise, the real Big Boss has undergone plastic surgery to look like YOU (if you input your name into the UI in the prologue) so while if you played the original Metal Gear games in the 80s and wondered how did Big Boss ever become the legend that he is, the answer is because it was actually you IN THE FUTURE. On a meta level, Kojima is saying thank you to the original fans for helping make the series possible.

so has anybody played Ground Zeroes after beating TPP?

i thought it was crazy the difference between Big Boss (GZ) and Venom (TPP), it was apparent immediately! the first time you hear BB is when Kaz is briefing you on the mission, telling you about Paz, and BB's first instinct is to "silence her before we're compromised?" it also puts BB's actions during "rescuing" Chico in a new light. i always thought it was a weird thing for him to do to someone he is supposedly friends with, choking Chico out against his will like that. and Chico is scared shitless of BB. maybe he knows BB is bad news, and they are good as dead. for Paz, being rescued by Big Boss is literally a fate worse than death. the horrific forced surgery effectively acting as torture, she was going to die anyways. they are in effect child soldiers, or were recruited as such. MGSV was never meant to be about Big Boss's fall to evil, as that already happened. is GZ the nadir of his career? or did he pick the medic bc they do this shit all the time and he knew how to handle it? especially compared to TPP where you are saving everyone (and every animal) in the world, Ground Zeroes shows how Big Boss is so far gone, so consumed by his and Kaz's ideology, that it would be ridiculous to even pretend he is on some moral level where he can "fall from".

Any thoughts on whether someone (saaaaaay...me) could go into Metal Gear Online cold without getting completely brutalized? I want to buy PP while it's on sale and I'm curious about MGO but I haven't even finished the first MG or played any of the subsequent games at all. Should I expect an endless stream of snipes to the brainpan or is the environment at all welcoming to newbs?

i had to give up MGO bc of endless snipes/killing me over and over. getting brutalized seems to be a large part of the experience.

So we have to talk about this, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRuWY39grHo

that scar on Del Toro's head, looks like he's had brain surgery. this looks like it's going to be insane.

i've gone back to playing this after beating Survive. Survive was fun but the end game is exactly the same as the regular game.

really still amazed at how well put together MGSV is. Kojima was given several impossible tasks:

- create an origin story for somebody who already has 3 origin story games (MGS3, PO, PW)
- create an interesting ending to that story while keeping in mind everybody already knows how it ends since the first Metal Gear
- tell origin stories for all the later MGS-era characters
- connect the Big Boss games to the Solid Snake games (technologically the series loops in on itself. imagine making a brand new HD Mario with a story that ends at the start of Super Mario Bros.)
- do all this while watching the axe fall in slow motion (in fact the axe cut off a limb (GZ) and was ready to fall again)

it makes sense that the second half of MGSV is new game+, concerned with doing missions, FOB defense, etc. after the intro starting in 1984 there really aren't many allusions to the time period, so it all takes place over the following decade (which would put it square up against MG in the timeline). from the start the whole game is about building up your base, recruiting the worst private mercs and warlords to be in your personal army. in effect you are literally building up the main bad guy's army in the first Metal Gear, single-handedly, one soldier at a time.

i really like how the "Shining Lights, Even in Dark" mission parallels the first hospital prologue. both are the linear story based missions in the game. both directly lead into the opening/ending of the game. in the intro, it is a trial by fire, survival is the name of the game, from the perspective of a wounded soldier. in the "Shining Lights", you have completed the transformation to villain by killing your own soldiers in order to hold onto your WMDs. it is now the perspective of the commander, the solider's lives are there for your disposal.

honestly can't imagine why people think the story is unfinished or they never showed Big Boss as a bad guy. they do all of that but they do it even one better: Big Boss doesn't simply corrupt himself, he takes a wounded soldier (a medic! - symbolism!!!) and transforms him into a power hungry killer. brilliant.

anyways, just thoughts, triggered by still seeing the "unfinished" complaint (which reads more and more like outsized gamer entitlement) on the webs.